Pruning Shears

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

The Friday news dump by the White House was a doozy (via):

Tucked deep into a recent proposal from the Bush administration is a provision…affirm[ing] that the United States is still at war with Al Qaeda….The language, part of a proposal for hearing legal appeals from detainees at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, goes beyond political symbolism…it carries significant legal and public policy implications for Mr. Bush, and potentially his successor, to claim the imprimatur of Congress to use the tools of war, including detention, interrogation and surveillance, against the enemy, legal and political analysts say. Some lawmakers are concerned that the administration’s effort to declare anew a war footing is an 11th-hour maneuver to re-establish its broad interpretation of the president’s wartime powers, even in the face of challenges from the Supreme Court and Congress….“This seems like a final push by the administration before they go out the door,” said Suzanne Spaulding, a former lawyer for the Central Intelligence Agency and an expert on national security law….Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, introducing a measure almost identical to the administration’s proposal. “Since 9/11,” Mr. Smith said, “we have been at war with an unconventional enemy whose primary goal is to kill innocent Americans.”

Speaking of Gustav, mercenaries and the military are on their way to New Orleans. First, Moira Whelan writes “I just noticed that the daily brief customarily done in advance of a hurricane is happening because Gustov is bearing down on the Gulf Coast…but a big shift here: the briefing is being given by NORTHCOM.” Then Spencer Ackerman: “Looks like Blackwater is on its way back to NOLA.” It looks like the Shock Doctrine will be used to get us further acclimatized to a military-type presence on American soil. (We may have lost to the Rooskies after all.) And just to be clear, it won’t be anything as obvious or crude as a “soldier on every corner” scenario, but the outward appearance of normality interrupted by a flood of gun-toting feds anywhere something goes too many deviations from the norm.

Jane Hamsher and Glenn Greenwald documented just such activity yesterday. People showing up in Minneapolis in order to peacefully assemble and engage in political protest are being detained in advance by federal agents wielding shotguns and assault rifles. They have over nine minutes of video posted of a couple of on-scene interviews, and it includes this from Bruce Nestor of the National Lawyer’s Guild:

We’re not in this country yet where we’re having mass detentions of people like this, so it really is about sending a message. I think what it really is designed to do is to send a message to people who agree with some of the viewpoints of people organizing activity and to say - you know what? You can write an email, it’s okay to write a letter, to vote, but don’t go out in the street, don’t organize public activity, because do you want us bursting into your house? Do you want to be associated with people who are getting arrested? It’s designed to somehow say these aren’t citizens engaged in the exercise of political freedom, but that they’re kooks, they’re freaks, they’re dangerous, stay away from them, don’t get involved.

As further proof that what happens in Iraq doesn’t stay in Iraq, consider the latest raid ostensibly in the name of cracking down on illegal immigration (if that truly was the intent Howard Industries would be shuttered and padlocked):

In another large-scale workplace immigration crackdown, federal officials raided a factory here on Monday, detaining at least 350 workers they said were in the country illegally….Entrances to the sprawling plant, in an industrial section south of town, had been blocked off by ICE. A nearby fast-food restaurant was full of the blue-shirted agents, one of whom would say only that a “little inspection” was under way at the facility…[An ICE spokeswoman] said no lawyers were present while the workers were being interrogated.

You may think, I’m not an illegal immigrant so why should I care? First, it’s hard to quarantine that attitude (see above for God’s sake) and second the “if you’re not doing anything wrong you don’t have anything to worry about” philosophy is essentially authoritarian and completely antithetical to liberty. In a free society law enforcement must show it has reason to intrude on our lives; the burden properly belongs on the government, not the citizen.

If that doesn’t persuade you, then just ask yourself how close to you such activity has to come before you start to worry.

The enormous mounds of cash shoveled into the parties’ vaults got its first display this week and it appears a fabulous time was had by all. When impropriety is so glaringly obvious that even Brian Ross - Brian Ross! - can get it right you know it’s an especially shameless display.

I know I’m already running long so I’ll make this quick: You’re checking out Marcy’s place every day, right? Because if not then this week you might have missed how the US government roped the Swiss into destroying a “huge trove” of data related to an investigation of the export of nuclear technology to Iran and Libya. And you definitely would have missed some fascinating connections to some other unsavory affairs. (You knew all about Operation Merlin, right? Me neither.) Also, let me just say that Marcy must have the patience of Job. She is encouraged by stuff like this; to me it’s just another favorable ruling Congress will refuse to take seriously.

Via, British media:

Russians were told over breakfast yesterday what really happened in Georgia: the conflict in South Ossetia was part of a plot by Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, to stop Barack Obama being elected president of the United States.

Bush administration officials, worried by what they saw as a series of provocative Russian actions, repeatedly warned Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to avoid giving the Kremlin an excuse to intervene in his country militarily, U.S. officials said Monday.

Via, a tiny scrap of good news: “the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit returned the Hepting v. AT&T case to the District Court.” It will more than likely come to nothing but I admire the EFF for fighting the good fight. Another good fight that’s not going well:

A court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act denied an ACLU motion Thursday that would have increased public scrutiny of how the Bush administration’s new spying law is reviewed, according to a statement released Friday.

The latest reason consolidated media ownership is bad - nonsense like this. CBS might just feel a “patriotic duty” to not do anything that might make Republicans uncomfortable, but I could also see a screeching campaign by the right against the company - boycotting TV advertisers and the like.

A series of portraits of American soldiers set to adorn roadside billboards in Minneapolis, site of next week’s Republican convention, was abruptly cancelled by the billboards’ owners, which feared they would be deemed disrespectful to the US military.

Jodi Senese, CBS Outdoor’s executive vice-president of marketing (CBS Outdoor, which is owned by CBS Corporation, owner of the US television network)

“We understand that ‘Soldier’ represents a political art project, and that the individuals depicted are actual soldiers…Out of context [neither in a museum setting or website] the images, as stand-alone highway or city billboards, appear to be deceased soldiers. The presentation in this manner could be perceived as being disrespectful to the men and women in our armed forces.”

Senese acknowledged in her email that the decision was based not on the artist’s intent but “how the image would be perceived by a motorist passing it in transit”.

UNPACKING JANE: That last picture was of Manadel al-Jamadi, and we still do not know who is responsible for his crucifixion. I have a lot of notes on The Dark Side, so I plan to highlight one item each week until I get through them. The death of al-Jamadi on pp. 252-5 is possibly the most disturbing episode in a book full of them. Anyone who attempts to defend or minimize the monstrous brutality described therein is simply not civilized. We still do not know what exactly happened to him, and we only know the details we do because they came out during an investigation related to stolen body armor. There is quite frankly not enough petty thievery among Navy SEALS to turn the wheels of justice, so more conventional methods are required to bring details of this and other atrocities to light. Of course, since media coverage is fixated on the endlessly fascinating and exotic Sarah Palin there are precious few resources left for assignment to lesser issues like state-sanctioned homicide.