Declan McCullagh reported on the efforts to give law enforcement agencies direct access to ISP traffic. At the end of the article the Cato Institute throws in the towel and admits it doesn’t give a damn about individual liberty. I try to link to right-leaning civil libertarians on my blogroll (Cato was until this morning), but they seem susceptible to putting political considerations above principles. Stuff like this makes them look like frauds.

Cato is off my blogroll, but Marcy and Glenn showed why they’re pretty well cemented onto it at the moment.

A nice note of caution from Steve Benen, but I’d just like to point out Jonathan Alter is not a liberal. He blows with the capitol winds.

You know, Barack Obama has taken steps to close Guantánamo, real ones not symbolic. Here is another one. The fact that Congressional Democrats have still not found a way to stand up to the lily livered, pabulum puking, namby pamby, pants wetting conniptions on the right hasn’t made this task any easier. You’d think it would be pretty easy to defeat the GOP’s dedicated commitment to weakness. You’d be wrong.

Eric Holder cited the previous administration to push back on Republican fearmongering. Reflect on the following: Conservatives have succeeded in making George Bush look enlightened on civil rights. The beast is loosed.

I try to avoid long excerpts, but this (via) from Corey Pein of the Santa Fe Reporter is hard to do justice to in brief. It’s a long article on Samuel Bowles, the head of the Behavioral Sciences Program at the Santa Fe Institute and an economist whose theories ought to turn the conventional wisdom on its head.

Zero describes the ultimate level playing field, a nonexistent land in which everyone has all the same stuff. A completely unequal society, in which one person has sole control of literally everything, would have a Gini of 100. New Mexico’s Gini score (45.7) reveals this state is more unequal than most. Utah is the most egalitarian state (with a 41.3 Gini), while the District of Columbia (53.7) is the most economically polarized, according to the most recent Census report, from 2006.

The second figure, 23, is the Gini for Sweden, the world’s most egalitarian country. Whereas most of Europe, Canada and Australia have Ginis in the low 30s, the US has over the past several decades developed inequalities usually found only in poor countries with autocratic governments.

So what? Isn’t inequality merely the price of America being No. 1?

“That’s almost certainly false,” Bowles tells SFR. “Prior to about 20 years ago, most economists thought that inequality just greased the wheels of progress. Overwhelmingly now, people who study it empirically think that it’s sand in the wheels.”

[snip]

Inequality leads to an excess of what Bowles calls “guard labor.” In a 2007 paper on the subject, he and co-author Arjun Jayadev, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts, make an astonishing claim: Roughly 1 in 4 Americans is employed to keep fellow citizens in line and protect private wealth from would-be Robin Hoods.

The job descriptions of guard labor range from “imposing work discipline”—think of the corporate IT spies who keep desk jockeys from slacking off online—to enforcing laws, like the officers in the Santa Fe Police Department paddy wagon parked outside of Walmart.

The greater the inequalities in a society, the more guard labor it requires, Bowles finds. This holds true among US states, with relatively unequal states like New Mexico employing a greater share of guard labor than relatively egalitarian states like Wisconsin.

A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes. - Mark Twain

James Wolcott had a sublime take on the neocons: “Feeding fiery coals and nameless corpses into their gaping jaws is an endless, inexhaustible task.”

Two longer pieces from later in the week that I’ll be getting to shortly. Jane Mayer on the KSM trial, and Marcy has a first take on it. Then Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story look at Goldman’s relationship with AIG, and Yves Smith and Tom Adams point to the missing actors: the Fed and the Treasury.

How obstruction works: “When there’s a 94-2 vote, it tells us that this was a fine nominee, who shouldn’t have had to wait nine months for an up-or-down vote.”

Pete Hoekstra: Still crazy. If he wins this November he will be the Detroit Lions of governors.

Spencer Ackerman has some details on why cutting military spending is necessary, and why it will be so hard.

Privacy and Security are Complimentary. This is the kind of thing civil libertarians could really make hay with. And liberals could really get some traction with this (via): “If we want more globalization, we must either give up some democracy or some national sovereignty. Pretending that we can have all three simultaneously leaves us in an unstable no-man’s land.”

Finally, LarryE pushes back on Greenwald (emph. in orig.):

We can and we damn well should find that corporations do not have rights of free speech even as we may well want to (and should) say they have rights of due process. If the concern is about the effect of limitations on advocacy groups, we can treat non-profits differently from for-profits (including saying that for-profits can’t set up non-profits to evade the restrictions). The point is, we can choose.

To suggest otherwise, to suggest corporations, by definition, either must have all the Constitutional rights of people or they can have no rights at all, that our only choice is between allowing huge corporations to spend untold amounts of cash in support of political candidates and having the ACLU, labor unions, and the Ma-and-Pa store down the street be at constant risk of being crushed under the heel of jack-booted FBI agents, Is. Utter. Pathetic. Nonsense.

I forgot to link to this last week. Your Sunday funny.

I WISH I COULD WRITE LIKE Matt Yglesias: “I congratulate Shelby on fully exploring the logic of the modern United States Senate.”

One of my favorite blog posts is L33T Justice by Kung Fu Monkey. Aside from being very funny and concisely getting at an important truth, it seems to represent a tipping point - one that mirrored my own. Prior to that things had been bad; we were lied into a war of aggression that was being planned well before 9/11, intelligence agencies engaged in 4th Amendment-destroying activities that major journalists appeared committed to reporting incorrectly, and of course we had already set up our modern gulags.

It seemed to me the country was frightened enough to disregard Benjamin Franklin’s warning for a while. As a fallback explanation I was prepared to believe we were simply a more bellicose and primitive culture than I had previously thought. By 2005 there was plenty of evidence that America had decided to make all its decisions with the lizard brain. I hadn’t made my peace with this prospect, mind you, but seeing your country willingly hand the reins to those committed to fearmongering and militarism has a way of blunting the sense of righteous indignation.

That is why when the Democrats took back Congress in 2006 relatively minor episodes like the Libby commutation and Gonzales’ deliberately obtuse testimony were more infuriating than the horrors that came before. There was finally a sense that yes, as a country we went crazy for a while but we were finally getting our bearings. It was happening too late for too many, but it was happening. What the summer of Scooter and Fredo showed was: No, it is not and it will not. Revelations began to trickle out, the first verdicts were finally coming in, and it became unmistakably clear that some of our leaders were criminals who were audacious enough to defiantly live publicly guilty lives. Among the rest of our leadership, there was a critical mass that was too cowardly to do anything about it.

That has been the situation for several years now. For the foreseeable future our government appears content to simply ignore the great crimes plainly in its midst. There is no sense of urgency, significant new developments are not acknowledged, and the plan seems to be to resolutely ignore all of it lest some turbulence disturb the ruling class. For those of us who care deeply about these issues it seems the best reaction now is not angry demands for real investigations and real consequences (outrage is difficult to sustain), but placid, ongoing documentation of the atrocities in order to have as complete a record as possible.

All of this is my somewhat awkward attempt to explain my reaction to Scott Horton’s report on detainee deaths at Guantánamo. It alleges war crimes that go all the way to the White House, it has been out for several weeks now, and continues to be developed. Yet there are no investigations, no hearings, nothing. We just postulate that our leaders did it, refuse to talk or do anything about it, and move on.

The problem is that such a corrosively cynical approach to governance causes foundational damage, and typically it is not recognized until the whole thing collapses. No one thinks anything will come of it, but nobody thought the Soviet Union would collapse either. In fact, a vignette from that period comes to mind; I recall seeing video of this as reported by the New York Times:

The next day [Romanian leader Nicolae] Ceausescu himself in effect brought the revolt to Bucharest, when a crowd of 100,000 he had summoned to denounce the Timisoara revolt suddenly took up a chant of ”Timisoara! Timisoara!” The last televised image was Ceausescu’s shocked face shouting ”Be quiet!” That moment, all agree, finished him.

The investigations on Iraq in Britain and Guantánamo torture in Spain seem remote and of little interest right now. The erosion of credibility and good will that they symbolize is easy to ignore as well. In fact, the whole thing is. If anything comes of all that, however, we will be oblivious to it - carrying on as if nothing will change until the moment we, like a clueless dictator, look on uncomprehendingly as our world turns upside down.

That probably will not come to pass, though. The odds favor stagnation. I used to think it was a matter of getting the word out, making enough noise, keeping the issues alive and waiting for our political and media elite to finally catch on. Horton’s reporting, and the radio silence greeting it, puts the lie to that. We can - and must - continue to catalog these evils, but out of respect for the historical record and not any expectation that those responsible will be called to account. It’s L33T Justice, baby, and everyone gets a pass.

• The Impolitic
• Prairie Weather
• at-Largely
• 3hive (music)
• Menopausal Stoners
• Secrecy News

Bruce Schneier writes, “In order to comply with government search warrants on user data, Google created a backdoor access system into Gmail accounts.” The bargaining away of our civil liberties in the name of keeping us Safe From Terrorists and Protecting The Children needs to be looked at in light of news like this. Leaders have been attempting (successfully) to exploit our fears in order to seize more power for themselves. It is not surprising, nor are unintended consequences like the Chinese hack of Google. Could we all be grownups and acknowledge this deal with the devil?

Fearmongering is still very popular though. Senators Joe Lieberman, Susan Collins, Robert Bennett and John Ensign are still strongly in favor of it. According to ACLU executive director Anthony D. Romero they “are essentially calling for Obama administration officials to discard the Constitution when a terrorist suspect is apprehended – as if the Constitution should be applied on a case by case basis.” It truly boggles my mind that our lawmakers have such contempt for due process. I guess for some of them the body can’t turn into the Roman Senate fast enough.

A tissue of lies. Surprised? It served its purpose though - it got us to embrace torture as official policy. The actual truth is a historical footnote, a bit of trivia with no importance or impact.

Speaking of the utility of relentless delaying, my newborn son will be a grandfather before we find out what happened to David Kelly.

Obama administration not terribly fired up about transparency:

Meredith Fuchs, an open-records expert and general counsel at the nonprofit National Security Archive, said she has seen improvement in the amount of material some agencies provide. But in cases her group has taken to court, “it’s more of a mixed bag” with the Obama administration. She suspects that the administration reflexively defends decisions made years earlier to withhold records.

I don’t like this. It’s not illegal or even strictly unethical, but it’s got a bad whiff about it.

Tim Geithner claims that while he was head of the New York Federal Reserve he was unaware it wanted to smother details about the AIG bailout, and the efforts to hide them were treated “like a request to protect matters of national security.” Either he is lying or he is not capable of heading any large agency.

This Week In Speculation:

• The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility may be releasing its long awaited report soon, and it looks like it might be a whitewash.
• The KSM trial might not be held in New York City after all.

  “The administration is in a tricky political and legal position,” Julie Menin, a lawyer who is chairwoman of the 50-member Community Board 1 that represents Lower Manhattan, including the federal courthouse and ground zero, said of President Obama and his Justice Department. “But it means shutting down our financial district. It could cost $1 billion. It’s absolutely crazy.”

  9/11 shut down the financial district too, and cost considerably more than $1 billion. Trials should be held near the scene of the crime, even if it means inconveniencing the most important and irreplaceable people in world history. Notice too the absence of an alternative site mentioned. The Post has an idea though!
• If Jonathan Turley and Glenn Greenwald are OK with the Citizens United ruling then I can’t get too worked up about it. Who knows what the long term implications will be, but it already seems like there’s plenty of soft money in national politics as it is - and media corporations were already exempt anyway. I would like to note, though, that once again the barnstorming umpires went way out of their way to find a game to call.

I wonder if anyone in Washington is paying attention to this:

UN human rights experts warned on Wednesday that “widespread and systematic” secret detention of terror suspects could pave the way for charges of crimes against humanity.

The American government has a list of its citizens it wishes to murder. That’s probably not a great moment in human rights either.

Hmmmm. This is not a prank, folks. It’s a crime.

Jamison Foser:

I’ve always bristled at the Post’s insistence* that its news and opinion sections are “wholly separate and independent operations.” They aren’t, really. They can’t be truly separate as long as they report to the same people — and, ultimately, they do.

[snip]

* And that of other newspapers, though the Post seems to make this claim more often than most, perhaps owing to the generally poor quality of its opinion pages.

CARTER WATCH, PARTS I AND II: I’ve been seeing rumblings lately from conservatives about Democrats using the tired old playbook of running against George W. Bush. But Republicans are celebrating thirty years of running against Jimmy Carter (he must have been the most powerful president ever!), so I’ve decided to note their ongoing obsession with the man as a reality check for their “don’t blame W!” theme. This, by the way, is not an exhaustive catalog; it starts with new developments and will not dig back for previous ones. That said, I would like to note how the right attempted to blame the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act for the economic meltdown, which is a truly superb bit of historical revisionism.

The first two installments of the Carter Watch come from Mona Charen and Mike Pence.

I WISH I COULD WRITE LIKE watertiger:

It’s not every ophidian, carpetbagging politician who can apologize to a group of potential constituents by insulting them. Besides, I’m sure some of your best friends are Jews bankers New Yorkers.

In the short time since Ford decided to take a territorial piss on this political tree (as a proxy for his BFFs on Wall Street), we New Yorkers have come to delight in the special kind of tone deaf gaffe-a-liciousness from the Joe Lieberman wannabe from Tennessee.

NOTE: Shortly before I finished this post Ben Bernanke was confirmed by the Senate for a second term as Fed chairman. I’m posting this anyway because I think it was a terrible decision that will only look worse with time, and maybe if we are lucky he will not serve his full term - in which case the post is relevant again. Stranger things have happened; you never know.

In December I made the case for Kansas City Fed chairman Thomas Hoenig to succeed Ben Bernanke. It was a mostly speculative post based on Bernanke’s less-than-inspiring Senate appearance and scattered rumblings among activists. Scott Brown’s surprising victory last week appears to have been a “come to Jesus” moment for Washington Democrats, though, and now the astounding unpopularity of Wall Street has made everyone a populist.

The Obama administration is issuing cool assurances that Bernanke will sail through, but opposition has grown. If nothing else, rejecting him would imply a small measure of responsibility. During his tenure he presided over the popping of a huge speculative bubble, the economy went into a tailspin, and conditions remain terrible. People want a scalp, and they want a senior one - not some low level schmuck who was left holding the bag and didn’t have the savvy to cover his tracks.

The tepid support for Bernanke outlined in my previous post has remained lukewarm. Paul Krugman favors it “only because rejecting him could make the Fed’s policies worse,” and after laying out his case concludes it is “not a ringing endorsement, but it’s the best I can do.” He then writes the following, which sums up the corrosive and unworkable conventional wisdom that seems to have set in on even liberal economists: “If Mr. Bernanke is reappointed, he and his colleagues need to realize that what they consider a policy success is actually a policy failure.”

It is hard to imagine a more depressing formulation. He calls for reappointment and then admonishes Bernanke to change course, which gets it exactly backwards. The onus is on Bernanke to admit his policy was a disaster prior to being reappointed. It is pure madness to send the architect back to his post based on the hope, supported by no evidence whatsoever, that he will change course. If Bernanke had gone before Congress, frankly admitted his failure, and outlined what aggressive steps he was planning to correct them if he were fortunate enough to win another term, that might be a different matter. (Might.)

He did no such thing though, and the sensible conclusion is that firmly intends more of the same. We would be better off with not just another nominee but one with another economic philosophy entirely. (The soundness of doing so was further endorsed in the form of egregious dumbass Tim Geithner’s dire warnings against it.)

For those who care about this issue, it is extremely important to get some other names out there immediately. MIT professor of economics Simon Johnson recommends Hoenig. In his Bernanke piece Krugman mentions San Francisco Fed chairwoman Janet Yellen, as has the economics blog Calculated Risk. She may well be a fine candidate, even better than Hoenig, but I heard her name floated just this week. Since I have not had time to familiarize myself with her I will restate the case for Hoenig.

First, the caveats. Hoenig, like Bernanke, privileges inflation over employment. There is no reason to think he would substantially depart from the current fantastically exaggerated fear of it. He could regard the current double digit unemployment rate as undesirable but inevitable. Moreover, he sees inflation in an undifferentiated way; in a 2005 speech on it he noted “businesses may face higher labor cost pressures, and depending on competitive conditions, these costs may increasingly be passed on to consumers.” That such higher labor cost pressures translate into a better standard of living for the labor in question, a situation once known as “The American Dream,” does not seem to matter.

That same speech utters not a word about real estate. It would have been nice to know he was at least aware of that massive time bomb as it ticked towards detonation.

These drawbacks may actually make him a better nominee, though. Last year’s speech “Too Big Has Failed” outlines an attitude towards large financial institutions that twenty years ago would have been unexciting, boilerplate economic conservatism, but now has a revolutionary ring to it. That may be about as sharp a break as the capitol can handle. Maybe it would be more acceptable if accompanied with a dose of familiar, soothing DC orthodoxy and washed down with a cup of Wrong On Housing Too.

There are probably many nominees who would serve the country well. I first became acquainted with Hoenig because of “Too Big Has Failed” and have tried to learn more about him since. People whose judgment I greatly respect like Yellen as a first choice, so she would probably be great too. There does not need to be unanimity on a successor, just that it not be another victim of cognitive regulatory capture.

I keep waiting for some official word on Scott Horton’s blockbuster exposé on detainee deaths in Guantánamo. In the mean time here are two observations on media coverage of this bombshell story. First, Yves Smith:

Anyone familiar with the cognitive bias literature will recognize that the differences in the two renditions (AP US versus AP Canada) make a great deal of difference in their plausibility. Starting as the first one does, with a question, suggests that either rendition might be equally valid. But accounts that provide detail are consistently found in laboratory studies to be seen as more likely than those that are sketchy (the conjunction fallacy, for instance). The limited detail of the first version makes it seem less plausible, while the second (which includes a key element, that the purported “black site” was denied to exist) would be much more likely to be accepted as true.

The premise of both Thiessen and Yoo is that what was authorized was not torture, and that Gitmo is the best of the best facilities for the worst of the worst prisoners. But the possible deaths-by-torture in Gitmo - which explode their lies and spin - do not rate even a mention.

The Office of Legal Counsel is still being used to retroactively legalize criminality. There’s been a decent amount of pushback on the left from people who think some liberals are wrongly and simplistically claiming there is no difference between Bush and Obama. There definitely is a difference (see last item for one particularly substantial one), but this is one of those cases where it really is true.

So the FBI was “simply persuading” telecom companies with a “stream of urgent requests” for their records. The obvious threat behind such requests makes a mockery of the word persuasion, especially considering “Bureau officials said agents were working quickly under the stress of trying to thwart the next terrorist attack and were not violating the law deliberately.” When the government approaches a company and tells it that it is their patriotic duty to break the law in order to prevent the wholesale slaughter of citizens, there is no more persuasion involved than there is for the casting couch. It is intimidation in an unequal power relationship; it is coercion.

Happily, the Post notes the FBI is “confident that the safeguards enacted in 2007 have ended the problems.” Once more, with feeling: It’s time to look forward and not criminalize political differences. Nothing to see here, everything’s been cleaned up, move along folks. Oh, and one more thing: “Among those whose phone records were searched improperly were journalists for The Washington Post and the New York Times, according to interviews with government officials.” Think the Post would have reported it the same way if it was done to some poor anonymous schmuck in the middle of nowhere? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad it got the coverage it did, but I suspect the subtext of the article isn’t so much “look at what they did!” as “look at what they did TO US!”

Glenn had a great post about the selective outrage towards government spying on citizens. Then later in the week Hillary Clinton gave a speech that included the following criticism:

In the last year, we’ve seen a spike in threats to the free flow of information. China, Tunisia, and Uzbekistan have stepped up their censorship of the internet. In Vietnam, access to popular social networking sites has suddenly disappeared. And last Friday in Egypt, 30 bloggers and activists were detained. One member of this group, Bassem Samir - who is thankfully no longer in prison - is with us today. So while it is clear that the spread of these technologies is transforming our world, it is still unclear how that transformation will affect the human rights and welfare of much of the world’s population.

The free flow of information is an universal value treasured in all nations, including China, but the US government’s ideological imposition is unacceptable and, for that reason, will not be allowed to succeed.

China’s real stake in the “free flow of information” is evident in its refusal to be victimized by information imperialism.

If the government secretly and illegally spies on you, you have standing to sue. But because it is secret, you are not aware you have standing. If you want to find out if you have standing by filing a lawsuit, the suit will be thrown out because you cannot prove you have standing. A nice, tight circle.

Ron Paul had some interesting thoughts on our military and intelligence services. His willingness to take on entrenched powers gets him a lot of good will in my book.

Cynthia Kouril reported on “a direct attack on the prosecutorial independence of DOJ and a direct attack” on Attorney General Eric Holder. The real news is that this attack came from the legislative branch and not the executive. If Holder gets kneecapped on the KSM trial I hope he considers “resign in protest” one of his options.

Weeks before Tuesday’s election debacle Brent Budowsky told (via) Democrats to get their act together. His message is even truer now. Nate Silver brilliantly diagnosed leadership as “nonchalant in good times and panicky in bad ones.”

If I’m ever thinking of picking a fight with Marcy Wheeler I hope someone who loves and cares about me talks me out of it.

On Thursday Barack Obama fired Donald Rumsfeld. Yves Smith’s take: “Obama Plans to Talk Even Tougher”

Last week I forgot to excerpt this from page 156 of Chalmers Johnson’s Nemesis: “The Global Posture Review is a purely military analysis of where the United States might like to have military bases in light of possible future wars, including those we might start.”

Lots of leftover links from the election in Massachusetts. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer:

Nobody in this House believes this next election is a slam dunk, which means they’re out raising money, they’re out in their districts - working hard, communicating on jobs and getting the economy moving.

If Scott Brown wins tonight he’ll win because he became the change-oriented candidate. Voters are still voting for the change they voted for in 2008, but they want to see it. And right now they think they’ve got economic policies for Washington that are delivering more for banks than Main Street.

It is grossly over budget and causing the state severe fiscal problems. In short, Massachusetts voters know the shortcomings of government health care.

The White House just couldn’t seem to “get” that the American people could see that they were constantly coming down on the side of the same bankers who were foreclosing people’s homes and shutting off the credit to small business owners, when they should have been helping the people whose homes were being foreclosed and the small businesses that were trying to stay afloat because of the recklessness of banks that were now starving them.

The only we are able to govern successfully in this country is by liberals and progressives making common cause with independents and moderates. Whenever you have just the furthest left elements of the Dem party attempting to impose their will on the rest of the country - that’s not going to work too well. [How have the left elements imposed their will? Seriously. Name one thing.]

If Democrats can’t run on their record of passing legislation that makes positive change in people’s lives, they will suffer terribly in 2010.

Hoyer and other Democrats point out that they passed a jobs bill late in the year, pushed through a sweeping energy bill — with a controversial cap-and-trade measure — and helped pass a crackdown on credit card companies.

Spencer Ackerman animates a legislator:

DEMOCRATIC SENATOR
Are you motherfucking kidding me? The issue isn’t Guantanamo Bay! It’s indefinite detention without trial! It’s torture! It’s the betrayal of the Constitution! You could put the fucking facility in the middle of a Thai whorehouse and as long as it doesn’t provide its inmates with access to the courts I’ll oppose it! You could have Reed Richards of the motherfucking Fantastic Four open a portal to the Negative Zone, put the thing there and I’ll oppose it!

Goldman under investigation for its securities dealings. Stay tuned.

I will leave you on an extremely positive note: The Iraq war is quietly winding down. Full credit to Obama for that.

Most of the blame in Martha Coakley’s defeat Tuesday is on her. She had a series of blunders, some of which were such a ridiculous caricature of liberal elitism it makes me wonder if she was a GOP double agent. So: That point, first and most importantly. She ran a terrible campaign and gets the lion’s share of the blame.

There were also undoubtedly statewide issues that we will only know about anecdotally, if at all. For example, one of Andrew Sullivan’s readers wrote of Bay State Democrats: “Twice they have fiddled with the election laws in the past five years…to control the process.” That kind of screwing around brings to mind Tom DeLay’s escapades in Texas, and to everyone but partisans such scheming looks plainly corrupt. Another factor may have been gender; so far women are zero for eight in gubernatorial and Senate races there. Presumably it is not a coincidence.

Still, it would be crazy for Democrats to not see some larger warning signs. For one, Barack Obama needs to freshen up his stump speech. He now has a track record, and the populist rhetoric of the 2008 campaign trail is not wearing too well. I listen to his speeches now and contradictory hyperlinks pop into my head. For example:

You know, we always knew that change was going to be hard…there were going to be some who stood on the sidelines, who were protectors of the big banks, and protectors of the big insurance companies, protectors of the big drug companies, who would say, you know what, we can take advantage of this crisis — because it’s going to be so bad, even though we helped initiate these policies, there’s going to be a sleight of hand here because we’re going to let Democrats take responsibility.

Does he not realize that people will increasingly call bullshit on such obvious discrepancies? Is he not aware it will discourage his base, because that is precisely the audience paying the closest attention? Coakley ran a lousy campaign. Know what helps make for a good one? A record to run on, a way to appeal to people’s aspirations and a reasonable expectation that what is being promised on the hustings will be delivered. Coakley was in no position to do any of that.

After his election Obama had energetic supporters champing at the bit to have their idealism harnessed; he continually stoked it during the campaign and they truly were fired up and ready to go. Since then he has made back room deals with the very industries that have been systematically looting the middle class. On health care why was he not constantly banging the drum for the reforms he considered most important, giving speeches in the backyards of recalcitrant lawmakers, urging supporters to contact their representatives, and generally exhorting his base to be passionately involved? It is the most baffling dissipation of enthusiasm since George Bush told the nation to go shopping in the wake of 9/11.

That is where the longer term trends are risky for the Democrats. In the aftermath of the attacks Republicans failed to direct the enormous public willingness to sacrifice, appealed constantly to their fears, and generally discouraged people from being engaged. Is it any wonder the country turned to new leadership a few years later?

Core supporters also became dissatisfied as basic principles of fiscal responsibility, level headed foreign policy and respect for individual liberty were casually disregarded. Then there is perhaps the biggest fraud of all, the promise - promoted loudly for decades - that lower taxes would unleash America’s entrepreneurial spirit, lead to economic expansion and still provide adequate federal revenue. Instead it led to the worst decade since the Depression.

To the extent that the Tea Party movement is about pure antipathy towards government or unhappiness with being out of power, it is nothing more than garden variety conservative bellyaching. A good part of it is deep dissatisfaction with having core principles routinely betrayed over a period of years, though, and that should worry Democrats.

Whether it was a failure to stop the Iraq war on retaking Congress, the refusal to act as a check on the Bush administration, the capitulation on FISA, or more recently the inability to even contemplate reform that does not look like a giveaway to favored lobbies, liberals have a damning bill of particulars against their ostensible allies that has been stacking up for years. Martha Coakley has nothing to do with that. The revolt now in full bloom on the right started with pent up frustration and burst on the national scene with a thumping. It is not hard to see the Democrats of early 2010 in a similar danger to the Republicans of early 2006.

Among the problems with torturing detainees is that your choices afterwards are 1) imprison them until they die 2) kill them 3) release them. If you can’t do #1 and you won’t do #2, #3 implies that all the horrific details will be aired in public.

It’s possible that John Yoo would only consent to be interviewed by a comedy show host, and also possible he knew he would get the better of it as well. Still, it’s a pretty scathing indictment of the DC press corps that Jon Stewart is the only media figure to take a real interest in his book. You’d think the Sunday shows would be tailor made for a thorough discussion of this sort of thing. I kid, of course. We know they just want to keep walking.

On a related note, Glenn Greenwald on Mark Halperin and John Heilemann’s new book, Game Change:

Washington’s journalist class is poring over, studying, and analyzing its contents as though it is the Dead Sea Scrolls, lavishing praise on its authors as though they committed some profound act of journalism, and displaying a level of genuine fascination and giddiness that stands in stark contrast to the boredom and above-it-all indifference they project in those rare instances when forced to talk about anything that actually matters.

If a news organization makes the same mistake repeatedly, eventually it becomes obvious that the problem is not sloppy reporting or inattentive editing, but an institutional commitment to a particular falsehood.

Bloomberg continues to try to get some details on the bailouts:

The ruling by the three-judge appeals panel may not come for months and is unlikely to be the final word. The loser may seek a rehearing or appeal to the full appeals court and eventually petition the U.S. Supreme Court, said Anne Weismann, chief lawyer for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, a Washington advocacy group that supports Bloomberg’s lawsuit.

[snip]

“Bloomberg has been trying for almost two years to break down a brick wall of secrecy in order to vindicate the public’s right to learn basic information,” Thomas Golden, an attorney for the company with Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, wrote in court filings.

Col. Morris D. Davis wrote an article critical of the Guantánamo kangaroo courts and was fired. Now he is suing. Here’s hoping for lots of unintended consequences. Oh and by the way, it turns out civilian courts are better (via) than the tribunals. Not that being right has to do with anything in Washington.

Afghans to Take Over Bagram Prison. Really. The devil is in the details, but on the face of it this looks like a very positive development. Oh, and thanks to the ACLU we also found out who exactly is in there. (The ACLU also got some more documents on the torture tapes destruction, which I’m sure will be the source of additional news as they dig through it. The ACLU is a national treasure.)

Several Iraqis have claimed they were lied to in order to get them to sign settlements for the Blackwater massacre. Given Blackwater’s track record it’s hard to see how this goes well for them if the agreements are tossed.

Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission chairman Phil Angelides noted that a lot of the worthless paper being peddled on Wall Street went to those “representing pension funds who have the life savings of police officers, teachers.” That got the attention of both Robert Johnson (via) and Cynthia Kouril, who wrote:

This is big stuff, people. It’s admissions like this that set up a climate for regulatory reform. I cannot even begin to guess how much backroom work it took to force Goldman into the corner where they were forced to admit this.

You don’t ask a question like that, and get an answer like that, unless both sides already know that the witness is going to go for his own lungs. Here’s a big CAK shout out to the commissioners and staffers who were able to force that break in the case.

It isn’t just terrorist suspects who get brutalized in American custody.

You know, if you pass something you call fundamental reform, and you really believe it is, there is no need to sell it once it passes. You just need to step back and let people start enjoying the benefits. If you need to crank up a propaganda campaign to convince everyone it’s awesome, it’s probably something less than it’s been cracked up to be.

Paul Krugman had a problem with Glenn Greenwald. Glenn Responded. Krugman minimizes it by saying there was “insufficient care about disclosure,” but that’s a big deal. A very big deal. I hate to see him be so dismissive of it. Also, he really goes off the rails with this:

by claiming that there’s a huge scandal when nothing worse happened than insufficient care about disclosure, Greenwald and the people at FDL are actually reducing our ability to call foul on real corruption. After all, if everything is a scandal, nothing is a scandal.

Speaking of FDL, there seems to be two separate issues with their activism. One is their tendency to accuse anyone who compromises on any issue they consider crucial of selling out. The assigning of bad faith by some of the FDL writers is over the line, and to the extent they are doing so it brings down the discourse and ought to stop. But a good part of the critique has to do with whether or not the reform package is good policy. To the extent that they are arguing (with numbers) that the bill will force people to buy lousy insurance they will get no benefit from, it’s fair game. I’m glad they are agitating in that direction - it just might save the Democrats from themselves.

I WISH I COULD WRITE LIKE Jane Hamsher:

The fact is, the people who did the work to uncover the Gruber story were liberals. Neither Fox News nor the right-wing noise machine did that kind of in-depth accountability reporting on George Bush. Stealing our research now and presenting it as their own obscures the fact that there is a profound difference in the way that many liberals respond when “our team” is in office, as compared to the slavish propaganda that Fox offered up in honor of George Bush.

Here is a one paragraph summary of our fiscal policy since 1980: A Republican president cheerfully dismisses probity when lobbying for increased defense spending and tax cuts, with the memorably irresponsible quip “I believe the deficit is big enough to take care of itself.” Then a Democrat comes in and suddenly professional concern trolls are out in force, urging cuts in social programs in the name of responsible budgeting. The Democrat turns the deficit into a surplus, which his prodigal successor dissipates in an orgy of further tax cutting and military spending. The right kicks the concern trolls to the curb, and the sainted GOP predecessor is invoked to justify the recklessness. A Democrat then wins the presidency and balancing the budget is all the rage again.

An absolutely superb specimen of furrowed-brow harrumphing over the parlous state of our nation’s finances was written by Niall Ferguson last month. He hits all the notes with perfect pitch, from his dripping contempt for Keynesians to his dark intimations of yellow peril in the form of crafty Chinamen slyly snapping up America’s vital assets (cf.) to his imperious declaration that “Unless entitlements are cut or taxes are raised, there will never be another balanced budget.” And since everyone knows tax hikes are off the table, that leaves entitlement cuts.

Where Ferguson really shines is in his deceptive characterization of military spending. In an article about budgets, notice how he flips the spotlight over to boots on the ground in order to downplay the impact of the defense budget:

We are, it seems, having the fiscal policy of a world war, without the war. Yes, I know, the United States is at war in Afghanistan and still has a significant contingent of troops in Iraq. But these are trivial conflicts compared with the world wars, and their contribution to the gathering fiscal storm has in fact been quite modest (little more than 1.8 percent of GDP, even if you accept the estimated cumulative cost of $3.2 trillion published by Columbia economist Joseph Stiglitz in February 2008).

Also note how he conflates the cost of the wars with the defense budget. Look at it in the pie chart here, or run the numbers yourself from the CBO if you are a Wikipedia skeptic. It may even be a substantially larger share than that. What we spend on the military is absolutely enormous, and anyone who refuses to put large cuts to the Pentagon budget on the table is not a good faith actor in the budget balancing discussion.

The Fergusons of the world would also give themselves a little more credibility if they demanded auditing and transparency for our intelligence services. It is reflexively accepted that all monies allocated there are vital investments in the War on Terror, but the details that become public never seem to be terribly well spent. Consider the CIA’s Abu Omar kidnapping fiasco, and this vignette from page 133 of Chalmers Johnson’s Nemesis:

The first operative arrived in Milan on December 7, 2002, and stayed at the Milan Westin Palace, according to court documents. The others started arriving in early January and by February 1, 2003, virtually all of them were there. They did not hide in safe houses or private homes but checked into four-star palaces like the Milan Hilton ($340 a night) and the Star Hotel ($325 a night). Seven of the Americans stayed at the Principe di Savoia - billed as “one of the world’s most luxuriously appointed hotels” - for between three days and three weeks at nightly rates of $450. Eating lavishly at gourmet restaurants, they ran up bills of at least $144,984, which they paid for with Diners Club cards that matched their fake passports, which is how police obtained their photos if not their real names. After the delivery of Abu Omar to Aviano, four of the Americans checked into luxury hotels in Venice and others took vacations along the picturesque Mediterranean coast north of Tuscany, all still on the government tab.

Keep in mind we only know about this because a foreign country held a trial for the agents involved and the details came out in the course of the investigation. Is it reasonable to think our money is in the hands of capable stewards everywhere but Italy? We have likely been funding opulent vacations all over the world. The culture of impunity that comes with the complete absence of oversight and accountability virtually guarantees it. Would that the fiscal scolds were as interested in cracking down on that as they are in degrading the medical care of the elderly.

I listen to a technology podcast from CNET called Buzz Out Loud, and on Friday’s show they reported that one Bob Burbach won the Consumer Electronics Association’s “Innovation Movement’s Apps for Innovation” with a site called GovPulse, which “give[s] you a way to browse the [Federal] Register (from 1994 on) and use filters to decide what is important to you. And then act on it.” I first became acquainted with the Federal Register on pp. 68-9 of Barton Gellman’s Angler:

The vice president had an instinct for power and unrivaled knowledge of its junctions around the government. One of his first assignments to his staff was a fast-track review of Bill Clinton’s departing executive orders. That would have been a routine step, sooner or later, but Cheney had the savvy to call a halt to the operations at the Government Printing Office. Not many aides would have thought of it. Cheney knew regulations have no legal force until they are published in the Federal Register. Some of Clinton’s orders, signed in his closing hours as president, never made it.

A couple leftover links from Thursday’s OLC post. Here is the formal withdrawal of the torture memos, and here is a group of OLC memos the ACLU pried loose from the Justice Department.

Here are parts one, two and three of Jeff Kaye’s argument that using the Army Field Manual for interrogation is basically a codification of torture as long as the odious Appendix M stays in it.

Helen Thomas is a tough old broad, and I’m glad she’s on the beat.

The DC Court of Appeals gave away more power to the president. It seems as though a significant part of the judiciary wants to rule itself out of existence. What good are checks and balances when they are entrusted to those with an authoritarian streak?

(This is off my usual beat so maybe I’m way off base.) The recent buyer’s remorse among the Republican establishment for Sarah Palin and Michael Steele seem to be byproducts of the GOP’s inability or unwillingness to honestly grapple with the prospect of real leadership within the party for women or minorities. They roll along with white men running the show, occasionally become acutely aware of the how bad that looks, and in a spasm of diversity optics yank someone manifestly unqualified into a highly visible but largely ceremonial post. When the inevitable failure occurs it’s back to the white men. Say what you will about the heat of the 2008 Democratic primary, you had a woman and a black man battling it out through the party apparatus for leadership. In the Republicans’ “wait your turn” model of succession, does anyone really think it will ever be Kay Bailey Hutchinson’s turn? Can anyone blame ambitious women and minorities for looking at the situation and concluding that the only way to have a shot at really becoming numero uno is to amp up the crazy and work outside the system?

Now, the Palins, Steeles and Bachmanns of the GOP have made their own beds and have to sleep in it; either out of native lunacy or cynical calculation they’ve decided to make that their calling card. But I do have a certain latent sympathy for their circumstances of being where they are now, knowing where they want to go, and realizing that the only way to get there is to be a cartoon.

I WISH I COULD WRITE LIKE Roger Lowenstein:

Time was, Americans would do anything to pay their mortgage - forgo a new car or a vacation, even put a younger family member to work. But the housing collapse left 10.7 million families owing more than their homes are worth. So some of them are making a calculated decision to hang onto their money and let their homes go. Is this irresponsible?

Businesses - in particular Wall Street banks - make such calculations routinely. Morgan Stanley recently decided to stop making payments on five San Francisco office buildings. A Morgan Stanley fund purchased the buildings at the height of the boom, and their value has plunged. Nobody has said Morgan Stanley is immoral - perhaps because no one assumed it was moral to begin with.