Ok, who put the LSD in the DC water system? George Will is making sense. And he even (almost) accurately describes Democratic party values in a way that doesn’t make us sound like a bunch of ninnies:
Conservatives should be wary of the idea that when they talk about, say, tax cuts and limited government — about things other than abortion, gay marriage, religion in the public square and similar issues — they are engaging in values-free discourse. And by ratifying the social conservatives’ monopoly of the label “values voters,” the media are furthering the fiction that these voters are somehow more morally awake than others.
Today’s liberal agenda includes preservation, even expansion, of the welfare state in its current configuration in order to strengthen an egalitarian ethic of common provision. Liberals favor taxes and other measures to produce a more equal distribution of income. They may value equality indiscriminately, but they vote their values.
Among the various flavors of conservatism, there is libertarianism that is wary of government attempts to nurture morality and there is social conservatism that says unless government nurtures morality, liberty will perish. Both kinds of conservatives use their votes to advance what they value.
I would also argue that libertarians who are wary of government attempts to nurture morality can just as easily be Democrats — and I don’t think that Democrats value equality indiscriminately. But other than that, he’s being rather bracingly … fair. And it confuses me. Again, do you think it’s something in the water or are we looking at a Starbucks conspiracy here?
Sources say project was shelved in part because of bureaucratic infighting
By Siobhan Gorman Sun Reporter
May 17, 2006, 10:27 PM EDT
The National Security Agency developed a pilot program in the late 1990s that would have enabled it to gather and analyze massive amounts of communications data without running afoul of privacy laws. But after the Sept. 11 attacks, it shelved the project — not because it failed to work — but because of bureaucratic infighting and a sudden White House expansion of the agency’s surveillance powers, according to several intelligence officials.
The agency opted instead to adopt only one component of the program, which produced a far less capable and rigorous program. It remains the backbone of the NSA’s warrantless surveillance efforts, tracking domestic and overseas communications from a vast databank of information, and monitoring selected calls.
[…]
n what intelligence experts describe as rigorous testing of ThinThread in 1998, the project succeeded at each task with high marks. For example, its ability to sort through massive amounts of data to find threat-related communications far surpassed the existing system, sources said. It also was able to rapidly separate and encrypt U.S.-related communications to ensure privacy.
But the NSA, then headed by Air Force Gen. Michael V. Hayden, opted against both of those tools, as well as the feature that monitored potential abuse of the records. Only the data analysis facet of the program survived and became the basis for the warrantless surveillance program.
The decision, which one official attributed to “turf protection and empire building,” has undermined the agency’s ability to zero in on potential threats, sources say. In the wake of revelations about the agency’s wide gathering of U.S. phone records, they add, ThinThread could have provided a simple solution to privacy concerns.
A number of independent studies, including a classified 2004 report from the Pentagon’s inspector-general, in addition to the successful pilot tests, found that the program provided “superior processing, filtering and protection of U.S. citizens, and discovery of important and previously unknown targets,” said an intelligence official familiar with the program who described the reports to The Sun. The Pentagon report concluded that ThinThread’s ability to sort through data in 2001 was far superior to that of another NSA system in place in 2004, and that the program should be launched and enhanced.
Is it possible that these people are actually working for Al Qaeda? It’s almost impossible for anyone to fuck things up this consistently without consciously trying.
WTF????
BTW: I don’t know if everyone has noticed, but this reporter Siobhan Gorman has been doing excellent work on this NSA story for the Baltimore Sun. Some kudos accolades are in order.
So, Don Rumsfeld admits that the pentagon is still weighing whether they need to treat “unlawful combatants” humanely or whether our military can be depraved barbarians and make them walk around on all fours and bark like dogs after sitting in their own vomit, excrement and feces for hours on end. It appears to be quite a dilemma for some people. Evidently, the idea of universal human rights, much less the idea that some “combatants” don’t deserve fewer human rights just because they don’t wear a uniform, are much too limiting.
Pentagon probe into the death of Iraqi civilians last November in the Iraqi city of Haditha will show that U.S. Marines “killed innocent civilians in cold blood,” a U.S. lawmaker said Wednesday.
From the beginning, Iraqis in the town of Haditha said U.S. Marines deliberately killed 15 unarmed Iraqi civilians, including seven women and three children.
One young Iraqi girl said the Marines killed six members of her family, including her parents. “The Americans came into the room where my father was praying,” she said, “and shot him.”
On Wednesday, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said the accounts are true.
Military officials told NBC News that the Marine Corps’ own evidence appears to show Murtha is right.
A videotape taken by an Iraqi showed the aftermath of the alleged attack: a blood-smeared bedroom floor and bits of what appear to be human flesh and bullet holes on the walls.
The video, obtained by Time magazine, was broadcast a day after town residents told The Associated Press that American troops entered homes on Nov. 19 and shot dead 15 members of two families, including a 3-year-old girl, after a roadside bomb killed a U.S. Marine.
On Nov. 20, U.S. Marines spokesman Capt. Jeffrey Pool issued a statement saying that on the previous day a roadside bomb had killed 15 civilians and a Marine. In a later gunbattle, U.S. and Iraqi troops killed eight insurgents, he said.
U.S. military officials later confirmed that the version of events was wrong.
Murtha, a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq, said at a news conference Wednesday that sources within the military have told him that an internal investigation will show that “there was no firefight, there was no IED (improvised explosive device) that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood.”
Military officials say Marine Corp photos taken immediately after the incident show many of the victims were shot at close range, in the head and chest, execution-style. One photo shows a mother and young child bent over on the floor as if in prayer, shot dead, said the officials, who spoke to NBC News on condition of anonymity because the investigation hasn’t been completed.
One military official says it appears the civilians were deliberately killed by the Marines, who were outraged at the death of their fellow Marine.
“This one is ugly,” one official told NBC News.
Three Marine officers — commanders in Haditha — have been relieved of duty, and at least 12 Marines in all are under investigation for what would be the worst single incident involving the deliberate killing of civilians by U.S. military in Iraq.
This war was waged for inexplicable reasons and in the course of waging it, the administration has presented a split version of reality that troops have to try to sort out. Liberating the “Iraqi people” and fighting “the terrorists” all of whom look alike to these marines. I don’t excuse them for one minute for emptying guns into three year olds out of anger at their mate being killed. There is no excuse. But when you have the civilian leadership of the military publicly pondering the relative humanity of various enemies, you can see where the troops might just get a little bit addled.
What a mess. What a horrible, horrible mess. This stuff is sickening and wrong when it happens in a war of self-defense. When it happens in a war for Karl Rove’s majority or a war for Halliburton or a war for whatever the hell they started this one for, then it is a moral failure of epic proportions.
Update: John Amato has the video of john Murtha’s statement on Haditha, here.
Paul Glastris has posted this Washington Monthly article from a year ago (that I’d read and then typically forgot where I’d read it and went crazy because I couldn’t find it.) thank yooooo
This article points out that one of the big reasons for this new obsession with the evils of illegals is that the migration pattern has changed: many are settling in towns that never saw any latinos before. The culture shock is disturbing to people who aren’t used to hearing Tejano music and seeing burrito stands crop up in their neighborhoods. And it’s not just that they are settling in regions that are unfamiliar — it’s that they are settling in smaller towns which are by definition less cosmopolitan. This is new for them.
And, because all these things are happening in smaller towns in the south it is evoking certain anxieties and knee jerk reactions among some people — and panic among business owners and others who are desperate to keep migrant workers in the labor pool or lose what they have. Culture meets economic necessity in places like Kentucky and it isn’t an easy problem to solve. Read the article.
There is another angle to all this that is much more disturbing, however. Immigration has been a political football for as long as I can remember. This too shall pass, I think. But there is a dark force at work underneath all this that I mentioned the other day in the context of that startling post by Vox Day about the Nazi’s terrific success at deportation. Glenn Greenwald sees this happening too and put it this way:
They’re … clearly tired of slogging through the political and ethnic complexities of Iraq. That country just doesn’t lend itself to any morally clear good/evil dichotomies. There are no good cartoon villains to hate. Calls for increased “ferocity,” less “sensitive” approaches (“bomb some more mosques!”), and less discriminate bombings can generate some temporary enthusiasm — as it did for a day or so with Shelby Steele’s column — but Iraq is so muddled and ambiguous, and not all that emotionally satisfying. It’s pretty depressing, actually, to think about how everything they said would happen there is not happening, and trying to figure out solutions, ways out, is just not very invigorating stuff for those who thrive on Hating and Warring Against Evil.
As a result, attention gets turned to immigration — Mexican immigration specifically. It entails the opportunity to rail against “appeasement” (of Vincente Fox); to create the anti-terrorist/pro-terrorist dichotomy on which they thrive; and to demonize a clear, foreign enemy as threatening not just our economic prosperity but also our national security (the “Mexican invaders”). And if the weakened, ready-to-be-tossed aside failure, George Bush, is one of the spineless appeasers this time, so be it.
I see that people are beginning to make the national security/mexican invasion argument successfully, now, and that liberals are beginning to discuss explicitly what that means. It’s a problem. And there’s a very apt historical example as to why it’s a problem. From Jesse Walker at Hit and Run:
It reminds me of one of Charles Alexander’s explanations for the nativist and racist sentiment that surged following the first world war:
During the war the American people had been subjected to the first systematic, nationwide propaganda campaign in the history of the Republic. From both official and unofficial sources poured a torrent of material having the objective of teaching Americans to hate — specifically to hate Germans but, more broadly, everything that did not conform to a formalized conception of “100 percent Americanism.” In the fall of 1918, just as the indoctrination process was reaching its peak, as patriotic feeling was mounting to frenzy, the war came abruptly to an end. Americans who had stored up an enormous volume of superpatriotic zeal now no longer had an official enemy on whom to concentrate this fervor.
Walker observes that the war isn’t over, so this may not be a perfect example, but I wonder if that’s true. Isn’t the “war” as constructed by the Bush administration over? World War IV seems to have shriveled overnight into a smallbore police action without a bang a whimper or even a muttered grunt. We’ve just spent the last four and a half years in a frenzy of nationalistic passion, going so far as to burn The Dixie Chicks in effigy and change the name of french fries in the congressional cafeteria (a direct homage to the World War I era change of the word saurkraut to “liberty cabbage.”) Now it looks like we are settling down into an acceptance of the fact that we need to do everything we can to stop terrorist attacks, but if one happens the country will survive and life will go on. We have, after all, just proved that.
So where are the fevered 101st keyboarders and their yellow elephant buddies going to put all that frustrated, video game-fueled testosterone and hatred for “the enemy?” They’re going to put it where it’s easiest, where they can enjoy it and where they don’t have to put their own miserable lives on the line: against illegal immigrants, including women and children.
It’s pathetic, but predictable. When the government gins up martial madness, talking about “gittin’ em dead or alive” it’s hard to put it back in the bottle until the true believers just run out of steam. We aren’t there yet. Somebody has to pay. The newest brownest foreigner in town will do.
I realize that there is a growing contigent of readers who find me guilty of innumerable crimes of bad judgment and hyperbolic swamp fever. (I’m not sure why this is only now becoming a problem — I’ve always been this way.) In any case, here I go again:
I simply cannot understand why there is even a debate among Democrats, much less a public debate, about whether or not they should openly call for investigations if they win office. I realize that the Republicans are mau-mauing the hell out of them on this — and the press is hungrily eating it up — but it still makes no sense to me.
First, on principle, the congress has a constitutional duty to do this. If Democrats want people to know that we stand for something, they need to start with the constitution. It is, regardless of the political challenge, their obligation as citizens and elected officials to provide oversight to any executive, much less an openly lawless one. Sorry, kids. You have no choice. I know it would be nice to pretend all this ugliness never happened, but it did. Precedents have been set, wars have been waged, lives have been lost, billions have been wasted, one of our great cities has been destroyed, our moral standing around the globe is nil and everybody knows it. The congress is mandated to oversee the executive and they have failed to do that for the past five years. If the Democrats continue in that failure, they are also guilty of shirking their constitutional duty. It’s that simple.
Second, as a matter of long term political consideration there is the moral hazard of letting the Republicans skate again on what they’ve done. After three Republican administrations out of the last four were revealed to have ignored the will of the congress and operated imperial presidencies, I think it’s pretty clear that they do not believe in a neutral system of checks and balances between the branches; they believe that Republican presidents have unfettered power to do whatever they wish and that Democratic presidents must submit to non-stop harrassment by the congress. This is not a matter of opinion. This is how they have behaved when they have had power, either executive, legislative or both. To let these actions go unexplored, undebated, unchallenged by the congress is to validate this premise. It will happen again — and why shouldn’t it? The Republicans know that the only thing they will suffer from doing this is a temporary loss of power (time for them to catch their breath and count their profits) until things improve and they can go back in and experiment, consolidate and plunder some more. This has been the pattern for the last 40 years. There has been no price to pay. The Republican party is not going to have a “come to Jesus” moment and recognize that they have been on the wrong track lo these many years and they need to clean up their act. This is how they do things and will continue to do things unless the country calls a halt. They cannot do that if they are not informed of the scope and meaning of these actions.
Now I realize that this is not an argument a politician can easily make in his stump speech. But it is a valid argument that Democrats should be making to themselves. And I mean making to themselves, not on the front pages of the New York Times using named surrogates to carry the message that top Democrats don’t want to make publicly.
Third, as a matter of short term political consideration I simply do not agree that this is an electoral loser. The country is very upset with George W. Bush and the Republican congress. The wrong track number is at 70%. It’s bizarre that politicians believe that the voters don’t want investigations into what in the hell went wrong, just because the Republicans say they don’t. By what strange mathematical equation can Democrats believe that when two thirds of the country thinks the nation is going off the rails and the same two thirds disapprove of the president that they don’t want any accounting? That doesn’t seem human to me.
Zachary Roth has written an interesting article in the latest Washington Monthly on the subject in which he concludes that the Democrats would be best served by holding bi-partisan investigations should they win in November. I don’t disagree, if they can keep the Republicans on the straight and narrow. It’s always more powerful to have both parties involved — and it might just happen what with Bush being repudiated on the right for his kumbayaa liberalism and all. But I wouldn’t trust them as far as I can throw them. One wonders if their cooperation is even possible considering their decision to run against the crazed lynch mob Democrats, but if Democrats could pull it off, it would be fine with me. I’m not holding my breath.
Roth himself points out that the Republicans did a nice job of innoculating against any investigations by bringing up the “partisan withchunt” boogeyman which they, of course, embodied in the 90’s:
Since 1997, the House Government Reform committee has issued over 1000 subpoenas related to allegations of misconduct involving the Clinton administration or the Democratic party—compared to just 15 related to Bush administration or Republican abuses. The seemingly endless probes of the Clinton administration turned up little in the way of corruption, and stymied the Republican revolution: In the 1998 midterm elections, with the Lewinsky scandal in the news, Democrats picked up seats in Congress.
But those investigations left a residue of ill will that Republicans have cleverly turned to their own advantage. In a stunning display of chutzpah, GOP leaders are now exploiting voters’ fears of endless partisan investigations—fears that they themselves created with their own behavior in the ’90s—to caution with faux solemnity that Democrats, if given control of one or both houses of Congress, would impeach the president and plunge the nation into turmoil. In a recent fundraising email, RNC chairman Ken Mehlman warned that Democrats “will censure and impeach the President if they win back Congress.”
They’ve got big brass ones, you have to admit. They behaved like a slavering lynch mob for six solid years and now evoke that image against the party they lynched.
I’m not sure how this call for the smelling salts will play to the independents and Democrats who are watching this thing play out with jaws dropped to the floor, but there’s one constituency who is eating it up:
The press corps has been quick to take the bait. “If Democrats win in the midterm elections in November, will the Democrats in Congress move to impeach this president?” Norah O’Donnell breathlessly asked DNC chair Howard Dean on MSNBC’s “Hardball” in April. Dean’s response suggests how deeply this line of attack has Democrats spooked: He hedged, assuring O’Donnell that impeachment “is going to come pretty low on the list,” and quickly pivoted to talk about jobs and port security. And Dean is the Democrats’ attack dog! Other party leaders want even less to do with the question, for fear of giving the Republicans ammunition to argue that a Democratic House would mean endless partisan rancor.
Let’s first deal with Chairman Dean whom I greatly admire and usually find refreshingly candid in these situations. WTF? I can understand him punting a bit on the impeachment question, but why not use that opportunity to make a case for congressional oversight? Democrats need to focus on those things that are emblematic of the administration’s failure and incorporate the need for investigations of them into their platform, not try to pivot away from the issue and look frightened of the prospect. Running from a direct question like that is transparent to any viewer; politicians fool nobody with a “change of subject” on such a loaded question. Frankly, it feeds directly into the widely held impression that “they all do it.” By hedging on the question of accountability, Dems are perceived as either weak or corrupt themselves. Big mistake.
But what can we say about the press? It’s nuts that they are so eager to sound the GOP alarm about Democrats going off the deep end with investigations. Why in the world wouldn’t any journalist’s juices be flowing profusely at the idea of somebody cracking the vault after all these years?
I find this very interesting in light of the fact that they eagerly swallowed every tid-bit of evidence that Dan Burton and Al D’Amato and Ken Starr dribbled down their willing throats. It really makes you wonder, doesn’t it? We all try to figure out what motivates the political media and we usually figure it has something to do with kissing up to power or social pressure or careerism. But this breathless recitation of the GOP’s primary talking point for the upcoming election, using it as a cudgel in questions put to Democrats as if they are suggesting legalizing pedophilia or putting Republicans in stocks for double parking, cannot be explained by any of these things.
They seem to agree, as John Dickerson did recently in Slate that Democrats are making a big mistake if they promise investigations, even going so far as to use the 1994 takeover as an example of a party taking the high road. (Media Matters ably dispensed with that silly misreading of history.)
Perhaps the press have not yet internalized the implosion of the GOP establishment. Maybe they can’t remember a world in which Republicans do not have the upper hand. It doesn’t matter. The fact that they are out there raising the “spectre” of investigations like it is even more dangerous than illegal wiretaps on their own phones is extremely revealing. If they ever had any journalistic instincts they’ve been bred out of them by 15 years of GOP establishment rule. The kindest thing one can say is that they don’t know how to be real reporters anymore. I suspect that a fair number of them never wanted to be — and quite a few more have an interest in maintaining the status quo. I’ll leave it to you to speculate why that might be.
THOUGHT OF THE DAY: A Blog Divided Against Itself…
If you thought immigration was dividing the GOP, just look what its doing to the righty blogosphere. The group-blog site Polipundit has been ripped asunder by the issue. Lorie Byrd at Byrd Droppings explains: “I received a lengthy email from Polipundit tonight alerting us to an editorial policy change that included the following: “From now on, every blogger at PoliPundit.com will either agree with me completely on the immigration issue, or not blog at PoliPundit.com.” I would provide additional context, but Polipundit has asked that the contents of our emails not be disclosed publicly and I think that is a fair request. There has been plenty written in the posts over the past week alone to let readers figure out what happened. Polipundit ended a later email with this: “It’s over. The group-blogging experiment was nice while it lasted, but we have different priorities now. It’s time to go our own separate ways.”
Polipundit responded: “So far, I’ve allowed the guest bloggers here to write pretty much what they pleased about all issues, including illegal immigration. But on the illegal immigration issue, I now find myself having to contend with at least three out of four guest bloggers who will reflexively try to poke holes in any argument I make.”
There’s a a couple of interesting things in this shameless New Yorker puff piece for a Hollywood film that probably cost more to make and market than the 10 year income of all the residents of Darfur combined.* Let’s start with a strange sin of omission.
Nowhere in this article does it mention the genuinely troubling ties between Opus Dei and the Scalia family or other American rightwing theocrats who have more influence in the American government than they should.
The other is a discussion of the mortification practices enjoyed…oh, I’m sorry, I meant employed… by Opus Dei members. Many of the Opus folks wear a barbed rope called a celice around one of their thighs for two hours a day, and also regularly beat themselves with a knotted rope.
This is true, ladies and gentlemen, they whip themselves, just like in that parody of a medieval procession in a Monty Python movie, except in Opus Dei, they do it for real. Dan Brown – who, by comparison, makes John Grisham look like the American Flaubert – doesn’t have enough interest in his characters to come up with something like that.
Now if the thought that a justice of the Supreme Court in 2006 might be flagellating himself in the name of his religious belief** makes you not a little nauseous, then, well, I’ll let the article explain it:
[Opus Dei member Father William Stetson] and others frequently point out that corporal mortification, which may seem a throwback to medieval mysticism, was not uncommon even among recent exemplars of spiritual piety. Mother Teresa of Calcutta wore a cilice and used the discipline, telling her Sisters, ‘‘If I am sick, I take five strokes. I must feel its need in order to share in the Passion of Christ and the sufferings of our poor.”
Y’see? If Mother Teresa did it, then it’s perfectly ok.
—
*But looked at another way, the film certainly cost less than 24 hours of shocknawe in Iraq, so we can think of Da Vinci Code as mere bargain basement entertainment by Bush’s standards.
**Surely someone in comments will describe the rationales behind the medieval practice of mortifications of the flesh, writing in a dispassionate voice that implicitly urges tolerance for religious practices that seem fucking sick to normal people living in the early 21st Century – and in the most technologically advanced society on the planet to boot. In response, I’d like to point to my dear friend, Ms. Joan of Arc, born 1412, who to the best of my knowledge never beat herself, and had a taste, if not a flair, for clothes that were both practical and very fashionable. She wouldn’t be caught dead in anything like a celice. She’d experienced enough real pain from her war wounds not to go out and seek it.
Finally, longtime readers of mine know that Joan speaks to me as directly as God speaks to the Wondrous Fisherman of Crawford. Therefore, I can personally assure you St. Joan of Arc thinks torturing yourself to get close to God is just about the stupidest thing anyone could do.
[UPDATE: Hat tip to commenter yam for the link to the celice jpg.]
Now you can get your own Special Republican Edition iPod Video. I’m serious. It’s sort of like a U2 iPod but different. You get Bush instead of Bono and The Edge. Apparently you can’t buy it, you have to earn it but it comes with all sorts of very cool stuff including:
The full-length, deeply inspiring music video by former Attorney General John Ashcroft, When the Eagle Soars plus an EXCLUSIVE behind the scenes Making of “When The Eagle Soars” documentary!
Special firewall software that makes it impossible to download any video with St*ph*n C*lb*rt.
La Bamba – Entirely in English!
Automatically contacts the NSA to record all downloads and makes sure you’re not enjoying something you’re not supposed to.
A sneak preview of an edgy new hip hop mix, Mis-Mis-Missionary Position (“It’s Republican Tradition/It’s our Lyin’ Disposition/And It Ain’t No Imposition”) served up by The Hymen Bruthaz.
The long version of the smash hit single Wearin’ Yer Underwear To War by the 101st Fighting Keyboarders.
An enclosed coupon with a special offer to purchase a beautifully boxed set of every Lawrence Welk episode ever broadcast plus a hilarious bonus bloopers DVD – folks, it just doesn’t get better than this, trust me.
The Singing Dogs perform My Boyfriend’s Back – produced by hipper-than-you-could-ever-be blogger Jeff Goldstein.
Excerpts from President George W. Bush’s upcoming book, Mission Truly Accomplished: How I Caught A 7 1/2 Pound Bass In My Own Lake On My Summer Vacation in a special “pondcast” -get it? It’s called a “pun!”- narrated by the president Himself.
