Brooksley Born And The Financial-Political Complex

by dday

I almost missed this one yesterday, but the WaPo had a profile of Brooksley Born, the lawyer who, while the Clinton Administration’s Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, foresaw the coming crisis in unregulated derivatives, including credit default swaps, and staged an ultimately futile campaign to rein them in. Within this article are some of the most fascinating and unbelievable quotes from the men who led our financial efforts then – and some who continue to do so now.

You expect a house organ like the Wall Street Journal to respond to Born’s concern over derivatives by saying, “the nation’s top financial regulators wish Brooksley Born would just shut up.” But this line just absolutely floored me:

Born’s baptism as a new agency head in 1996 came in the form of an invitation. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan — routinely hailed as a “genius,” the “maestro,” the “Oracle” — wanted her to come over for lunch.

Greenspan had an unusual take on market fraud, Born recounted: “He explained there wasn’t a need for a law against fraud because if a floor broker was committing fraud, the customer would figure it out and stop doing business with him.”

This is the Randian mindset of the perfection of the market that has caused so much pain for so many millions of people. Greenspan either was literally so in thrall to the Masters of the Universe and his perfect little system that he found greed written out of the program, or so clever that he used transparently idiotic theories to simply allow legalized theft. Either way, everyone should know that this is the philosophy under which the United States, and really the world, financial system operated for three decades, directly from the mouth of its most powerful practitioner. Andrea Mitchell should resign in shame.

Sadly, however, it doesn’t stop there.

That was just the beginning. By early 1998, Born had also tangled with Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, his deputy, Summers, and Securities and Exchange Commission head Arthur Levitt, not to mention members of Congress, financial industry heavyweights and business columnists. She wanted to release a “concept paper” — essentially a set of questions — that explored whether there should be regulation of over-the-counter derivatives. (Derivatives are so-named because they derive their value from something else, such as currency or bond rates.)

They warned that if she did so, the market would implode and predicted tidal waves of lawsuits. On top of that, Rubin told her, she didn’t have legal authority to regulate the derivatives anyway […]

In early 1998, Born’s plan to release her concept paper was turning into a showdown. Financial industry executives howled, streaming into her office to try to talk her out of it. Summers, then the deputy Treasury secretary, mounted a campaign against it, CFTC officials recalled.

“Larry Summers expressed himself several times, very strongly, that this was something we should back down from,” Waldman recalled.

In one call, Summers said, “I have 13 bankers in my office and they say if you go forward with this you will cause the worst financial crisis since World War II,” recounted Greenberger, a University of Maryland law school professor who was Born’s director of the Division of Trading and Markets. Summers declined to comment for this article.

The discordant notes crescendoed in April 1998 during a tension-filled meeting of the President’s Working Group, a gathering of top financial regulators that periodically met behind closed doors at the Treasury Department. At that meeting, Greenspan and Rubin forcefully opposed Born’s plans, Waldman said.

“Greenspan was saying we shouldn’t do it,” Waldman recalled. “Rubin was saying we couldn’t do it.”

The rest of it reads like a Hollywood potboiler, with Born trying to outmaneuver her more powerful counterparts, ultimately falling short even after being partially vindicated by the failure of Long Term Capital Management, and finally resigning. We’re living with the consequences.

But surely you recognize some of the Democratic named involved in shutting Born down. Now let that color your impressions of this report (subs. req.):

Some banks are prodding the government to let them use public money to help buy troubled assets from the banks themselves.

Banking trade groups are lobbying the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. for permission to bid on the same assets that the banks would put up for sale as part of the government’s Public Private Investment Program.

The lobbying push is aimed at the Legacy Loans Program, which will use about half of the government’s overall PPIP infusion to facilitate the sale of whole loans such as residential and commercial mortgages […]

Some critics see the proposal as an example of banks trying to profit through financial engineering at taxpayer expense, because the government would subsidize the asset purchases.

Surely, Larry Summers would follow the refrain of the Maestro, that there couldn’t possibly be any fraud because the customer would figure it out and stop doing the business. Of course, in this case, the “customer” and the vendor are… the same people.

James Kwak has more on this plan, which I pretty much expected (what’s to stop the banks from using shell companies to buy up their own assets at the right price, with government guarantees, even if the Feds break precedent and reject this?). Kwak has a good short version of this: “It allows a bank to sell half of its toxic loans to Treasury – at a price set by the bank.”

And he wants Tim Geithner and Sheila Bair to reject this. But the experience of Brooksley Born suggests that the problem with the incestuous political-financial complex is one of mindset. They view the goals of the banksters as superior to the goals of the country, or at best relatively aligned. And thus, regulating those complex financial instruments, or blocking clear giveaways of public money, somehow equals hurting the greater economy. Whether through dime-store philosophy or simply looking out for the interests of the wealthy – and themselves – we’ve become completely subservient to oligarchs who clearly value their success over that of the country. Which is fine for them – but there’s nobody advocating for the greater public, warning of the dangers of runaway capitalism, arguing for a return to the core mission of finance, to smoothly flow capital to those who need it, rather than the Wild West show we still see today. In other words, there are no more Brooksley Borns. And even if there were, the system is so rotted that not even someone of her talent and determination can get the message through. Despite the worst financial crisis since the Depression. I am happy to be surprised, but I don’t think anyone in Washington has gotten this message.

Because we have “green shoots.”

Here’s the coda to the Born article, by the way:

Born keeps informed, but she has other concerns, bird-watching jaunts and trips to Antarctica to plan, mystery novels to read, four grandchildren to dote on. “I’m very happily retired,” she says. “I’ve really enjoyed getting older. You don’t have ambition. You know who you are.”

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“Returning Wealth To It’s Rightful Owners”

by digby

Al Hunt just told Andrea Mitchell that Obama could have picked a “more formidable intellectual force” for the court but he threaded the political needle very well. When Andrea Mitchell went on to ask if the White House was holding a conference call later to reassure people about her intellectual abilities, Hunt said that she wasn’t as bad as Alberto Gonzales.

Hunt is a villager of the highest order and his robotic drivel is the result of that nasty little gossip piece by Jeffrey Rosen in EventhelibrulNewRepublic. It is hard to over emphasize the damage that article did to Sotomayor’s reputation; it’s pretty clear that among the villagers she will always be seen as an undeserving affirmative action hire. And let’s not pretend that the complaints about Sotomayor for being a “bully” and a “hothead” and dumb as a post don’t have their roots in the usual places. A person with her exact professional background and reputation named Steven Myers would not be seen this way.

Limbaugh lays out the real right wing case in stark terms:

The fact that she uses empathy, the fact that she is a racist and a bigot is perfect because in Obama’s world it’s permitted to be a racist and bigot if you are a minority because you have been discriminated against since the founding of the country and it’s about time that that was made right. And that’s what all of this is about. That’s what all of his administration and his presidency is about, returning the nation’s wealth to its rightful owners.

I’m sure villagers like Al Hunt, who are so willing to believe that snide backstabbing about Sotomayor’s intellect despite the clear evidence to the contrary, don’t believe that they are on the same page as Limbaugh, but they are.

Limbaugh’s “slave revolt” thesis plays nicely into the emphasis on the Ricci case, which greatly offends bobble heads like Pat Buchanan, Chris Matthews and Bill O’Reilly, who despite their vast wealth and celebrity, like to pretend that they are oppressed working class white guys. Indeed, the whole phony construct of the Village is based upon the idea that these people inhabit a small middle class town in 1950s Real America, which is under seige from rapid social changes that threatens their traditional values. What they are, however, is a decadent ruling elite who inhabit the most powerful capital on earth who are under seige from social progress which is allowing members of unrepresented groups to have a seat at the table. There are certain shared characteristics between the illusion and the reality, but the results are hardly similar.

Limbaugh, who spends hours each week railing against the unions which represent both the firefighters and the autoworkers, may be down to his last quarter billion, but the idea that he’s got more in common with those firefighters than the black and Hispanic colleagues who are competing for the promotions is ludicrous. But it’s the way the aristocrats have always put down the rebellion when the folks get a little bit too uppity — they turn them on each other and set them to fighting over the scraps. Sometimes they use tribal loyalty, race or religion. Lately, it’s this phony idea of “class” as a state of mind rather than an economic status.

As always, the working class white guys Limbaugh is enlisting in his posse are being duped. The enemy is the fellow who’s telling them they should fight all the women and minorities who are coming to “return the country’s wealth to its rightful owners” instead of looking to the old boys network that pays that same blowhard hundreds of millions of dollars to misdirect their legitimate anger away from the people who are bleeding the country dry.

Right wing populism always comes down to demagoguing on race, religion or some such which always ends up serving the wealthy interests very nicely. Complaining that a Latina judge is both a racist and an “affirmative action” hire for the court is an excellent phony symbol of the change that inspires the anger and insecurity so many people feel out there — including the anger and insecurity of the villagers, who are feeling that the riff-raff are coming to town to trash the place — and it’s not their place.

Update: What Yglesias said.

And might I add, that the feeling among many women tracks the same way. Whenever a female gets into a position of power, a whole special language suddenly enters the conversation that usually includes words like “calculation,” “bullying” and “temperament.” And, of course, there’s the usual “affirmative action” argument which holds that women and minorities have a really easy time making it in America these days at the expense of all those deserving white males. Therefore, the fact that they are still hugely under represented is validation that they are so stupid and inferior that they can’t make it even when they get all the breaks.

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Playing The Percentages

by dday

Did you know there was a statistic for appeals court judges? Yeah, you can actually separate the wheat from the chaff based on the all-important, revealing statistic of the reversal rate. This is clearly as crucial a stat in the American psyche as the RBI or free throw percentage. Divide the percentage of cases written by an appeals court judge overturned by the Supreme Court by the cases written by that judge taken up by the Court. A low reversal rate, under this stat, means a solid judge, while a high reversal rate means they are simply awful.

Depending on how much you want to stretch the truth, Sonia Sotomayor has a 90%, 80% or 50% reversal rate. Now, this statistic, which apparently is the only thing you have to know about any appeals court judge – it’s on the back of their trading card – neglects the hundreds of opinions Sotomayor wrote or participated in that WERE NOT TAKEN UP BY THE SUPREME COURT. So maybe Nate Silver will come up with some alternative statistic, a “true reversal rate,” which in Sotomayor’s case would be less than one percent. Also, the average reversal rate for any case SCOTUS takes up is around 61% (activist judges!), putting Sotomayor below that bar even under the completely misleading standard of the statistic.

I’m pretty sure I never heard about John Roberts’ or Samuel Alito’s reversal rate. But the right has discussed Sotomayor’s as if she’s a free agent utility infielder with a lifetime .228 batting average. They’ve just invented the “reversal rate” as a meaningful reflection of judicial ability, and massively distorted the statistic to set those needs, besides. And by and large, media types allow this to go unchallenged.

Others may think that the best way to understand Sotomayor’s judicial philosophy would be through, you know, reading her opinions. There you find a portrait of a judge who is deliberative and mostly consistent in following the law.

But why deal with all that “reading” when you can just reduce an entire legal career to a percentage?

…from biggerbox in the comments: “You don’t understand – when a white male judge is reversed, that’s merely an example of competent legal minds disagreeing about fine points of the law. When a Latina judge is reversed, that shows she’s a dumb girl who doesn’t know what the hell she is doing pretending to be a judge. What could be clearer?”

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Viva La Green Day

by digby

What Howie says, squared. I’m crazy about this new Green Day album too. Our mutual affinity for the band isn’t surprising to me since Howie and I swam in the same punk and power pop musical pond in San Francisco back in the day, although Howie was a renowned underground DJ while I was merely a spectator. (He famously started a label and became a music mogul, while I nursed a long hangover, but that’s another story…) The minute I heard Green Day some years later, I knew they were from the Bay Area. It was a sound that seemed to be recognized somewhere deep in my DNA and I’ve always loved them.

During the Dark Days of Bush and Cheney, they were among the small handful of successful artists who were paying attention to what was really going on and had the courage to use their artistic platform to talk about it (as opposed to appearing at a rally somewhere while making music about bullshit so as not to cause a conflict between their “politics” and their “business” as so many others did.) With few exceptions, commercial political art was left to the flag waving country artists who boldly stood with Real America and the corporations which owned them. (These same Real Americans are now agitating for secession, but whatever.)

But, setting aside both Howie’s excitement and mine over this new album, Howie makes a larger point about the music business (and American business in general) with his post that is important to note:

[A]ccording to yesterday’s NY Times the release couldn’t have come at a better time for Warner Bros, their label. Reporting on the cascading economics of the music industry, the Times points to CD sales that have been cut in half in the last 10 years. Warner Bros doesn’t really stay in business by selling music; they sell bonds to investors who get sold a bill of goods.

Last week the group led by Edgar Bronfman Jr. decided to try to sell $500 million of new bonds to replace some of its existing debt and extend the overall maturity of its liabilities.

Like tickets for a 1970s concert for The Who, investors practically stampeded to get their hands on the paper. Investors were so enthusiastic that the company expanded the deal and sold $1.1 billion of senior secured notes. As a result, Warner paid off all its existing debt and extended the date by which it needed to pay it back until 2016.

U.S. Treasury bonds, for the same time span, are offering a modest 3.4% return while the Warner Music bonds are offering a juicy 9.5% annually. Some people never learn but unless Green Day puts out an album like 21st Century Breakdown every year between now and 2016, my guess is that the suckers who bought the bonds– or, more likely, the poor saps they get unloaded on– will wish they had stuck with the Treasuries… or invested their retirement funds in autographed Green Day memorabilia.

Again — still — the scams continue, and the public buys into financial magical thinking. The irony, of course, is that it’s exactly that kind of mindlessness that Green Day is talking about.

Howie updates his post with this:

The American record industry allowed itself to be bamboozled into giving WalMart and similar operations a near monopoly over their music. It was a catastrophe for them and their artists, especially emerging artists who now have no place to sell their CDs. But it should be no problem for a superstar act like Green Day, right? Well, no. Green Day won’t self-censor their songs, which WalMart demands of artists, even platinum-selling ones. So they’re not carrying 21st Century Breakdown. Billie Joe isn’t budging. “They want artists to censor their records in order to be carried in there. We just said no. We’ve never done it before. You feel like you’re in 1953 or something.”

No kidding.

Here’s Howie on the music:

I might as well admit that the whole post was just an excuse for me to kick back and work on a clip for a Green Day song. It’s a daunting task because the songs are so amazing that even before I start looking for photos, I know there’s no chance I can do the music justice. It’s kept me at bay all week. But… There are two songs called “Viva La Gloria!” (well one is “Viva La Gloria?”) that are woven into the only artistically successful rock opera I’ve ever heard. I’m opting for “Viva La Gloria?” more because there are homages that remind me of the Doors and Queen than because I like it any more than the other–!– rendition.

Viva La Gloria by Green Day from Howie Klein on Vimeo.

Update: Thinking about about Green Day keeping hope alive for me during the Dark Days reminds me that Matt Stoller sent along an email over the week-end that I’ve been meaning to pass on:

American democracy is a sprawling concept. There are hundreds of thousands of elected public positions in this country, along with tens of thousands of open meetings to consider public policy. There is candidate recruiting, volunteering, fundraising, policy-making, and campaigning for all of these positions, one way or another. And post-election, there is pressure, participation, and idea generation, all built on a civic culture that encourages people, or discourages them, from taking power and being a part of decision-making. A civic culture dominated by politicized hypernationalist conservative groups and a highly organized resource-extractive financial elite leads to certain policy outcomes, and a civic culture dominated by younger multicultural leaders focused on a sustainable society leads to a different set of policy outcomes.

Much of the damage that has happened in the last ten years has come, not from poor political leadership (though bad political leadership hasn’t helped), but from the apathetic civic culture on the left, which has been defeated by a powerfully aggressive conservative civic culture. Fortunately, a lot of us noticed this problem, and some of us started organizing to fix it. And I think we saw with the Congressional elections of 2006 and 2008, and of course, President Obama, that a culture of empowerment can change political leadership. What most of us didn’t see, however, were the cultural entrepreneurs that set the stage for allowing this change to happen.

One of them, and an important one, is Justin Krebs of Living Liberally. Living Liberally’s primary function is to run a network of clubs all over the country called Drinking Liberally, where liberals come together and socialize. There are more than 300 of these clubs, in every state (including more than 13 in Texas and 4 in Idaho). These clubs are used as recruiting grounds for volunteers and candidates, networking hubs for influential local opinion leaders, stops on liberal book tours, and places where campaigns around local and state issues can be launched. Often, the leader of a Drinking Liberally chapter will be recruited into a political or advocacy position, because it turns out that being able to organize a fun and lively get-together every week is a good screen for natural leadership abilities. Basically, they are cultural centers where people who don’t know any other liberals like them can get together and socialize. There are a lot of reasons it’s a very good idea to have a strong network of such clubs, but let me give you a tangible way to think about it.

For most Democrats thinking of running for Congress in the 1990s, a political ‘base’ meant a set of wealthy people. You had to either self-fund, work at a law firm with wealthy partners, or have a strong connection to well-capitalized interests. Today, because of Drinking Liberally, you can find a bunch of ordinary people with widespread community networks, and tap into small dollar internet fundraising, just by going to a bar on a regular basis. Think about the change that creates in who can run for office, and how they can run. Think about what that means for changing the incentives in politics.

That is just one small part of what a strong liberal civic culture means. Now, obviously, a lot more needs to be done. And I can’t quantify how many people got elected, how many volunteers went out and volunteers, or engaged in policy changes because of this organization, though many many politicians attend these gatherings or ensure their staffers go. But I can assure you that tens of thousands of highly engaged people are able to get together and organize, learn how they can make an impact, and build a new civic culture, brick by brick.

Drinking Liberally operates on a budget of less than $100k a year. There’s no foundation funding for this group and obviously the economy is awful. I know I’m feeling the pinch, as are a lot of my friends. But this is when we have to keep organizations like this alive, because this kind of social value, though hard to quantify, takes years to recreate. And I can assure you that the costs of a weak civic culture are far higher than a hundred bucks today.

So if you can, I highly encourage you to come to their annual celebration on May 30 in New York City, and buy a ticket. If you can’t make it, or just want to support this work, you can give some money here.

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Context

by digby

For anyone who is interested in knowing what Sotomayor actually said as opposed to what the wingnuts are robotically mouthing, here’s the full quote:

From Sotomayor’s speech delivered at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law and published in 2002 in the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal:

In our private conversations, Judge Cedarbaum has pointed out to me that seminal decisions in race and sex discrimination cases have come from Supreme Courts composed exclusively of white males. I agree that this is significant but I also choose to emphasize that the people who argued those cases before the Supreme Court which changed the legal landscape ultimately were largely people of color and women. I recall that Justice Thurgood Marshall, Judge Connie Baker Motley, the first black woman appointed to the federal bench, and others of the NAACP argued Brown v. Board of Education. Similarly, Justice Ginsburg, with other women attorneys, was instrumental in advocating and convincing the Court that equality of work required equality in terms and conditions of employment.

Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O’Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O’Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.

Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown.

However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see.

One can’t know for sure that the fact that Chief Justice John Roberts, who has so far voted every single time with the ruling elites was affected by his personal experience as a privileged white male, coddled, groomed and rewarded from his earliest days by the conservative establishment he served, but it certainly isn’t unfair to think he might have been.

Moreover, her sentence about the “wise Latina” is qualified in the very next paragraph with, “I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown.”

This is going to be a very annoying argument, but it’s perfectly in keeping with the ongoing degradation of our political discourse. All humans bring their personal experiences to everything they do. Even judges. Admitting this, and believing that your experience gives you a unique insight into certain aspects of how the world works, does not make you a “reverse racist.” In fact, very serious conservative legal intellectuals have argued exactly the same thing Sotomayor argued:

Yoo touted the unique perspective that he said Thomas brings to the bench. Yoo wrote that Thomas “is a black man with a much greater range of personal experience than most of the upper-class liberals who take potshots at him” and argued that Thomas’ work on the court has been influenced by his understanding of the less fortunate acquired through personal experience.

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Even The Liberal…

by dday

Jeffrey Rosen expressed shock today that conservatives have glommed on to his gossip piece calling into question the intelligence of Judge Sotomayor. Surely he was blindsided by such a turn of events. Why, Rosen was just allowing anonymous clerks to smear the nominee for the benefit of his friends in Washington. He could never have anticipated in a million years that anyone would use such materail against her.

Conservatives are already citing my initial piece on Sotomayor as a basis for opposing her. This willfully misreads both my piece and the follow-up response. My concern was that she might not make the most effective liberal voice on the Court–not that she didn’t have the potential to be a fine justice. Questions of temperament are often overlooked, but history suggests that they are the most relevant in predicting judicial success.

See, Rosen was making a narrow point, as exemplified by referring to Sotomayor as “not that smart,” “domineering during oral arguments,” and “her questions aren’t penetrating.” How anyone could have characterized from such a collection of quotes that she wasn’t qualified for the Court is just beyond him.

Indeed, every single conservative I’ve seen talking about this pick today, all of them, not only cited Rosen’s article, but when challenged on it as composed of a collection of unsourced quotes, screamed “But Jeff Rosen is a liberal and he’s writing for The New Republic and he said all this!” Which is how this ALWAYS works. Rosen is playing dumb here; surely he knew this would be the outcome. To his credit, the President ignored this character assassination. But it’s patently ridiculous for Rosen to suggest that everyone else would.

More here.

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Been There, Done That

by tristero

Here is some rightwing loon named Ralph Peters:

Pretending to be impartial, the self-segregating personalities drawn to media careers overwhelmingly take a side, and that side is rarely ours. Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media.

Sounds crazy, right? Beyond the pale, right? Deliberately killing journalists? That’s something we would never do, that’s NoKo/Saddam-level totalitarianism, plain and simple.

Well, Mr. and Ms. America, I got some news for you. It’s already happened. On April 8, 2003:

…a U.S. tank fired a shell at the Palestine Hotel, which housed most foreign correspondents in Baghdad, killing cameramen Taras Protsyuk of Reuters and José Couso of Spanish television channel Telecinco. U.S. troops claimed that they were responding to hostile fire emanating from the hotel. A CPJ investigative report published in May concluded that the shelling of the hotel, while not deliberate, was avoidable since U.S. commanders knew that journalists were in the hotel but failed to relay this information to soldiers on the ground.

On August 12, U.S. Central Command (Centcom) issued a news release summarizing the results of its investigation into the incident, which determined that the tank unit that opened fire on the hotel did so “in a proportionate and justifiably measured response.” Centcom called the shelling “fully in accordance with the Rules of Engagement.” While Centcom’s summary was mostly consistent with CPJ’s findings, it failed to address one of the conclusions in CPJ’s report: U.S. commanders knew that journalists were in the Palestine Hotel but failed to convey this knowledge to forces on the ground. CPJ has urged Centcom to make the full report public, but a Centcom spokesperson told CPJ on August 13 that the report is classified. At press time, CPJ was still waiting for the Defense Department to respond to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests related to both April 8 attacks.

We must never forget how seriously criminal the Bush administration’s behavior was in 2002 and 2003. And there is only one way for the country to put it behind us and that is by serious investigations and indictments. That, to our everlasting shame, is very unlikely to happen.

PS In case you’re inclined to trust the public version of the military’s classified report, Reporters sans frontieres called the official version “Two Murders and a Lie”. And Amy Goodman has an interview in which we learn that the Palestine Hotel was listed as a military target , ie, it was no accident of war.

Update: from digby

This wasn’t the only wacko thing the sick piece of work Ralph Peters said today on Fox. Get this:

“We’re dealing with people who aren’t human anymore. They’re monsters. And monsters deserve to die.”

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Conflict Of Interest

by digby

John Yoo should keep his yap shut about the Sotomayor nomination and not just because complaints about thin, ideological legal reasoning coming from his pen is cause for wild gales of laughter. He should keep his mouth shut because he needs all the friends he can get on the Supreme Court. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that he could find himself the subject of a case in which the Supremes must decide whether he can be indicted for war crimes.

It looks as though nobody is willing to pursue that at the moment, but nobody thought there could possibly be a taping system in the Nixon White House either. Anything could happen. He needs his lawyer to tell him to STFU.

Update: not to put too fine a point on it, but Yoo complaining about the use of “empathy” in the law is just sick, considering his legal reasoning with respect to torture.

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Norm’s Firm Judgment

by digby

I know you’ve all been waiting with bated breath to hear what Norm Loserman has to say about the nomination:

“When debating judges, I was firm that I would use the same standard to evaluate judges under a Democrat President as I would a Republican President. Are they intellectually competent, do they have a record of integrity, and most importantly, are they committed to following the Constitution rather than creating new law and policy. When I am re-elected, I intend to review Judge Sotomayor’s record using this process. Certainly, the nomination of a Hispanic woman to the nation’s highest court is something all American’s should applaud.”

He sounds like one of those crazy guys who thinks he’s Napoleon and hangs around the bus station ordering the lost luggage pile to invade Russia.

You know what to do.

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Keep Fighting

by digby

Unsurprisingly, but depressing nonetheless, the California Supreme’s upheld Prop 8. Courage Campaign isn’t giving up:

PROP 8 UPHELD: Be fearless in response — Contribute now to air our new “Fidelity” TV ad across California. The California Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Proposition 8 is extremely disappointing, but we don’t have time to mourn their failure to restore marriage equality to California.

It’s time to go on offense. To be fearless in our fight for equality.
Starting right now.

Contribute here.

In response, the Courage Campaign will hit the California airwaves with a 60-second TV ad version of “Fidelity” — the heartbreaking online video viewed by more than 1.2 million people, making it the most-watched video ever in the history of California politics.

We are launching this provocative new TV ad in the spirit of Harvey Milk’s call
to “come out, come out wherever you are” and proudly tell the stories of the people most affected by the passage of Prop 8 — in moving images set to the beat of Regina Spektor’s beautiful song.

Watch the new “Fidelity” TV ad now and — if you want more people to see it — make a contribution to put it on the air in Bakersfield, Fresno, Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento and San Francisco.

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