Brian Beutler

Best reporters in the business?

Yochi Dreazen of the Wall Street Journal:

Sensing that his argument might fall on deaf ears, Cheney got creative in the interviews as he searched for the best image for conveying his simultaneous membership in the two branches of government.

“The fact is, the vice president is sort of a weird duck in the sense that you do have some duties that are executive and some are legislative,” he told King.

In the CBS interview, Cheney opted for a different image. “The vice president is kind of a unique creature, if you will, in that you’ve got a foot in both branches,” he said.

Dick Cheney, creative wordsmith. We do learn though that, say what you will about Dick Cheney's declining influence, he still sits on the National Security Council.

More eugenics, Pelosi edition

It turns out, Nancy Pelosi is also a eugenicist. Why? Because she sees science  as a generally (not universally, of course) great guide to policy making--even though she actually used the word "thingamabob" at breakfast today. She wants to use it to enhance our military (quibbles with which see below), to improve family life and health care and as the main bulwark against global warming.

Some of her ideas were a bit more substantive than others. The idea that in expanding access to health care, we should also be encouraging personalized health services--incorporating medical advancements and care in such a way that treatments are administered less routinely and in a more individually tailored way--is exactly the sort of policy we should be advancing based upon scientific findings about patient specific treatments.

The idea that we need to be a mighty nation with an incredibly powerful and technologically honed military in order to be a model to the world on other issues seemed pretty half-baked and platitudinous to me, but I guess it's still not exactly popular to suggest that we in any way shrink our defense spending. And inasmuch as we're going to have a huge military, I see relatively few problems with directing its funds towards implementing better and better technologies.

The two most interesting answers came to questions from Adele Stan and Harold Meyerson. Addie asked Pelosi about preserving the Constitution through impeachment and where Pelosi stands on the Democrats' various ways forward. Pelosi's answer is, I think, telling of just how pragmatic she is in her progressivism. She admitted, fairly forthrightly, that if she were not a member of the House she'd be agitating for impeachment herself, but seems at the same time to believe that too few people in the country are so riled by what's going on to make impeachment feasible. That may be the case, but her reaction does in fact clash with the oath she took (as she reminded us all today) to uphold the Constitution. Obviously there's no easy way forward here, but hers is either way a fairly cautious pragmatism.

Harold asked her about climate change and tensions with John Dingell. On this point, she was fairly candid. She came about as close as possible to saying that if Dingell blocks climate change legislation, it will be another example of money corrupting politics. She's right, of course. Fortunately she seemed convincingly resolved not to let that happened.

My question...got timed out. I did pass it along, though, and have been told I'll get an answer. At one point, while discussing the public's and her own disapproval with the Congress, Pelosi touched on the issue Republican obstructionism, noting that the Senate only offered the people one shot at a withdrawal bill. The president, of course, vetoed that. Obviously the bulk of the problem here is... Republican obstructionism. But she did seem to think that more could have been done by Senate leadership. I somewhat agree. My question: How would you handle/have handled Iraq/general obstructionism if you were Senate Majority Leader instead of House Speaker? Answers (hopefully) forthcoming.

Down syndrome

My first post on this--though more specifically about the "eugenics" rap--has sparked an important and somewhat heated discussion about Down Syndrome. I want to address a few things and cede a few others. First, when I described Down Syndrome as "medically disastrous" I was quoting language from a different blog post, written by somebody else. Nonetheless I did endorse that description (and still to some extent do), and I want to put some of the criticism front and center:

• Kathy G: The fact is, most people with Down Syndrome have IQs in the mild to moderately retarded range -- very few are in the severe or profound range. People with Down Syndrome are at higher risk for a range of physical problems, but proper physical therapy, medical care, and education at an early age has dramatically improved their health, life span, and cognitive functioning....[T]hrowing around terms like "medically disastrous" and "tragic" is highly stigmatizing and helps spread damaging misinformation about Down syndrome kids. The fact is that most people with Down syndrome are only mildly or moderately retarded and most have no serious physical problems (although they're at greater risk for a variety of physical problems). And unfortunately when you describe Down syndrome in such a negative, highly charged, and misleading way, you only add to people's fears and prejudices about this subject.
• Dave White: I just want to emphasize that so much is now known about the condition that parents can very easily anticipate complications, be they thyroid related, hearing or gastrointestinal, or even something as serious as CHD. We've (happily) progressed to a stage where raising a child with Down syndrome is not as difficult or heartbreaking as it was even just a generation or two ago. My fear is that, due to ignorance of the condition itself, we now have too many parents choosing to terminate a potential gift out of a misguided fear.
• Michael Bérubé: Roughly one in six babies with Down syndrome are born with heart anomalies. But mostly they're the kind of heart anomalies that don't kill infants anymore in the industrialized world. As for "extreme" mental retardation . . . sigh. "Severe and profound" is the term given to people with IQs below 20. Most people with Down syndrome, as Kathy points out, have mild to moderate retardation....Raising a kid with Down syndrome is tough work, no doubt about it.  A little tougher, on balance, than raising a kid.

In light of this, I want to concede that--though I used the word "extreme" and not "severe and profound"--my description was a bit overheated. Likewise, I want to refine here the language I used in my description of Down Syndrome death age. I wrote unclearly. My understanding had been (correctly) that people with Down Syndrome have, in the last 20 years or so, enjoyed an increased life expectancy of about 30 years (now about age 50). Still a very early age to die. But my original language could have been read to imply that DS life expectancy was much lower yet. It's not. What is true, though, is that infant mortality is still rather higher in babies with Down Syndrome than in babies without.

Obviously, any normative claims about how "disastrous" a disorder like Down Syndrome is don't really solidify all that much. To somebody like me--somebody extremely unprepared to raise even an unusually healthy baby--adding Down Syndrome to the mix would constitute a serious, serious complication. To somebody who has successfully raised a child with Down Syndrome--and cherished the experience--it wouldn't seem nearly as bad. What's always been plain is that Down Syndrome is nothing like Tay Sachs.

What still seems plain (at least to me) is that, though most parents-to-be expect their lives to change drastically in many different ways, they do not expect an in utero diagnosis of Down Syndrome. When the diagnosis does come, some I'm sure handle the bad news better than others, but all I imagine are aware that they are no longer going to get what they had been expecting out of parenthood and that their child's life will be beset by any in a wide range of associated maladies. That fact is enough to, I think perfectly reasonably, drive some parents to choose abortion. I get the sense that among my commenters (including the estimable Michale Berube) there is wide agreement on that point. I've tried to treat the actual disorder more clearly in this post, but it still seems to me that the maladies that, to Michael, make raising a child with Down Syndrome "a little tougher, on balance" might constitute a real catastrophe for others. And that severe Down Syndrome really does rise to the level of medical disaster.

More Douthat eugenics

This actually demonstrates a rather significant factual ignorance:

First of all, Down's Syndrome is not a "medically disastrous" genetic mutation, unless you take an extremely broad definition of the term "disastrous." Second, while the means of "traditional eugenics" were obviously very different from what's emerging now - involving state power rather than parental choice, and selective breeding/sterilization rather than prenatal genetic screening and abortion - the ends were the same: the genetic improvement of the human species through the scientific management of the reproductive process.

The idea that this is about "genetic improvement of the human species" is really, really off the mark. Start with Down Syndrome. Down Syndrome is a non-specific mutation. Its incidence is not predicated upon parents' heritable traits. Abort every Down Syndrome fetus on the planet, set things in fast forward, and you'll see--in proportion--an equal number of incidents of Down Syndrome in the next generation.

As for inherited diseases that result--I would imagine--in a lot of abortions (Tay Sachs comes to mind), we're almost never talking about an infant that will mature to adulthood and pass along his or her genetic disease to offspring. Whether because of death or sterility or incompatibility, there are just very, very few cases wherein the ultimate impact of the abortion is to improve the overall stock of the human genetic lode. One of the main reasons these fetuses are being aborted is that they have tragic illnesses that happen to all but destroy their reproductive fitnesses. Frankly, for somebody who waves off the idea that the right ignores science, Ross seems to be doing exactly that. I'd suggest he stick to arguments about the humanity of fetuses and steer clear of the eugenics charges if he wants to be compelling on the point of reproductive choice.

Peaches, cream, and Down Syndrome

In making the case that aborting babies with genetic disorders amounts to eugenics, Ross Douthat writes:

Ezra writes that it's "very unfair" to apply the word "eugenics" to, say, the contemporary trend toward the elimination of Down's Syndrome by selective abortion, because "traditionally, the term has been used to denote efforts to direct or encourage breeding by high status, socially dominant individuals in order to select for their characteristics, and discourage breeding by low status individuals (criminals, the insane, blacks, etc) in order to wipe their characteristics from the gene pool. For Ross to conflate that with parents who decide to abort infants with medically disastrous genetic mutations is a real stretch."

First of all, Down's Syndrome is not a "medically disastrous" genetic mutation, unless you take an extremely broad definition of the term "disastrous."

Between the amount of money spent on supervisory care for a baby with Down Syndrome, the amount of money spent on associated medical ailments for a baby with Down Syndrome, the extreme mental retardation and physical disabilities of a baby with Down syndrome, and the very early deaths of a very large percentage of people with Down syndrome, I'd say that Down Syndrome is extraordinarily medically disastrous unless you're very heavily invested in the idea that aborting a baby with Down Syndrome constitutes a type of eugenics.

WSJ RIP?

Kevin reports sadly on the Murdoch takeover.

My counterintuitive thought is that this will be either neutral or net positive for the media world. My actual hope is that Murdoch screws both hemispheres of the paper up so badly that the good reporters find great jobs elsewhere (McClatchy? I dunno, somebody create a big WSJ recovery endowment) and what's left behind has such low credibility that its op-ed writers can no longer stand shamelessly on the shoulders of their reporters. 

Not war. Just some violence

Ok, one more time and then I'm just going to sit back and wait for my celebratory beer: I do not think it's very likely that we'll soon go to war with Iran. I've never contended this. What I have contended is that there's a high likelihood (or at least I believe there is a high likelihood) that in the next 16 months tensions with Iran will escalate to a point at which there is some exchange of violence between the U.S. (or U.S.-backed persons) and Iran and that this will occur inside Iran. If that happens, and happens soon, then I might revise my thinking on the issue of full-scale war. But right now I am (and have been) talking about a narrow exchange of violence only.

I think the stimulus for such an exchange has relatively little to do with the balance of power between neo-cons and realists in the Executive Branch. If Cheney and his team were on the ascent, then yes, it would obviously increase the chances that Iran and the U.S. exchange direct violence. But the fact that they're on the decline in no way precludes the possibility that violence happens--as a consequence of the greater conflagration in the region, almost as if by accident. Suppose we discover some crucial link in the chain that connects Tehran with the Shiite insurgents. Suppose an American soldier is taken prisoner. Suppose there's a border skirmish. I could go on. The fact is that if anything like this comes to pass (and, remember, these are the sorts of things that just happen in a war) whose philosophies will be on George Bush's mind, Condoleezza Rice's? Or Dick Cheney's?

Meanwhile, on that other issue (the foreign policy balance of power within the administration), Ezra's not wrong. But I fear he's been overly chastened by the reports we've all read by now. Remember, it's not as if on the one hand you have the entire State Department leaning in a new direction, and on the other you have Dick Cheney holding fast to hawkishness. It's that on the one hand you have many new (much more welcome) faces in a couple executive branch agencies, and on the other you have OVP and a significant segment of the Defense Department. In the end, Bush will be swayed by one or the other of these poles, and I'm relatively confident that in the event of some sort of Iranian provocation--real or imagined--Bush will default to Cheney. And I think the chances of that provocation--or the perception thereof--are fairly high.

Pelosi, me, and Dupree

I, along with Adele and several others, attended a breakfast hosted by Nancy Pelosi today. I'll write more about it later today, but if you were wondering to yourself, "Gee, where's Brian?" well that's where I was.

Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran

One more note on Ezra's response to my thoughts on Iran. I was the tiniest bit chastened a couple months ago when this (the article he linked to) came out. One thing that escaped notice, though, came out a few days after the piece appeared, when they appended the article with this note:

Editor's Note: After this story appeared in print, John Bolton contacted Newsweek to further address the circumstances under which he left the Bush administration. According to Bolton, he left when his recess appointment ended; Bush asked him to stay at the UN "without Senate confirmation, using a second recess appointment and the Vacancies Act," but Bolton says he declined. Bolton added that White House lawyers had used this approach in another case at an earlier juncture in the administration.

Where again is Bush's center of gravity? Basically, I disagree that this administration is, as Ezra put it, "a deeply ideological group, with a set of fairly coherent goals, who approach the world in an almost surprisingly predictable way." In fact, I think this administration is almost exactly the opposite of this. There are plenty of ideologues there, yes, but they don't necessarily believe the same thing. There are "neo-cons" with a variety of reasons for wanting to advance American hegemony, there are (or were) Christian rightists and there are Athiests, each promoting the same social agenda for the sake of advancing the political power of the administration and the party. That's why we've seen cronies--Bolton, Cheney, Rice--as opposed to intellectual comrades, running the show. Predictably, maybe, the results of the policies this group has come up with have been disastrous. Sadly, though, they still have much more power than such a defeated bunch should ever be allowed.

Ezra writes, "None of this is to say that we couldn't yet bomb Iran. But literally no foreign policy type I've spoken to -- which includes establishment folks who wouldn't be unhappy with that outcome -- thinks there's much of a chance that we will." I've had the chance to interact with many of the same people, actually. And while it's not untrue, it's neither the full story, nor, as I see it, particularly germane. That's because, for one, there's a palpable desire (call it the "anti-Sy Hersh impulse") on the part of a lot of people--foreign policy experts included--to not want to believe that any sort of attack against Iran will happen under Bush. At the same time, though, the people who actually have that impulse--foreign policy experts perhaps especially--feel that way at least in part because they understand how utterly terrible that course of events would be (or at least worry about it a little). I sympathize with that, but at the same time, for the above reasons, I don't think the administration really acts the way liberal or establishmentarian foreign policy experts might. The two relevant questions are, first, Is this administration capable of doing something so insane? And, if it is, how likely is it (and what might be nudging them in either direction)?

Clinton, Obama, Clinton, Obama

Kevin again:

Clinton and Obama themselves didn't exactly take the chance to elevate this into a scholarly colloquium themselves, did they? Instead we got Clinton calling Obama "naive" and "irresponsible," and Obama hitting back by accusing Clinton of endorsing a "Bush/Cheney lite" foreign policy. Enlightening stuff, no? Is it any wonder the press covered this as a food fight rather than a serious debate?

Well first of all, I think that "naive and irresponsible" and "Bush/Cheney lite" are actually fairly good distillations of the two candidates beliefs about their opponent's policy ideas. 

But what's more, here's what Hillary Clinton said. In context, she provides a significant rationale for her position that, in fact, a year might not provide her with enough time to get the right diplomatic concessions from Chavez, Castro, et al, before she'd agree to meet in person to get yet more diplomatic concessions from them.

And here's what Barack Obama said, "I don't want more Bush-Cheney. I don't want Bush-Cheney lite. The times are over when talking tough or refusing to talk to your enemies is an emblem of toughness. We will meet and talk and discuss our values and our ideals, because our values and our ideals, when we're true to them, are ideas and values the entire world looks to."

What happened next is that, instead of reporting that the two leading Democratic candidates were actually having a rather important policy disagreement, the media reported that they were trading barbs with each other for political points. Moreover, they were wrong about the question of who "won" the barb trading. My hope is that, now that it looks as if Obama's point proved to be fairly popular with the public, the media will refocus its reporting--away from what the media incorrectly believed the political ramifications of Obama's position would be, and on to the merits of the dispute itself. Now, commence laughter.

More Iran

Let me be clear. I think a straight-off invasion of Iran sometime in the next 16 months isn't all that likely. What I think is much more likely is some sort of violent escalation, perhaps towards an eventual invasion of Iran, in the next 16 months.

[I]t's worth remembering that when the Bush administration wanted to invade Iraq, they spent the better part of two years pursuing a massive PR strategy to sell the deployment. Going to war is actually a relatively tough thing to do, even in a system that gives fairly significant levels of foreign policy autonomy to the executive.

It's also worth remembering that, as it turned out, the deployment to Iraq actually happened and, as a result, the military is right there right now. And while we're remembering things, remember too that a relatively narrowly focused attack on what we think of (or describe) as some functioning element of the Iranian insurgency would be easy. It would be easy to pull off logistically. It would be easy to excuse rhetorically. It would be easy to do without giving anybody in this country any notice. It would be easy to do before the election. It would be easy in a box, it would be easy with a fox. I want us not to bomb Iran. I want no shit to hit the fan. I do not like that sort of plan. I do not like it, Sam I am. (Applause. Thank you.)

Cold War?

One big reason the Cold War didn't become the most epic of disasters is that the USSR was big and powerful. Another was that, though some of our Cold War presidents were pretty nuts, they hovered for the most part at sub-Bushian levels of craziness. Neither of those facts are relevant to the U.S.-Iran standoff. That, I think, makes adds to the inherent danger of a U.S.-Iran standoff. And that's also why I'd read this article very, very skeptically.

Journalistic prerogative

Well lookee here! It turns out Alberto Gonzales might be some sort of liar.

The accusation that Gonzales has been deceptive in his public remarks has erupted this summer into a full-blown political crisis for the Bush administration, as the beleaguered attorney general struggles repeatedly to explain to Congress the removal of a batch of U.S. attorneys, the wiretapping program and other actions.

In each case, Gonzales has appeared to lawmakers to be shielding uncomfortable facts about the Bush administration's conduct on sensitive matters. A series of misstatements and omissions has come to define his tenure at the helm of the Justice Department and is the central reason that lawmakers in both parties have been trying for months to push him out of his job.

Interestingly, this article was co-written by Dan Eggen. Also interestingly, Eggen's name came up in last week's Gonzales testimony when the attorney general suggested he didn't intentionally lie about intelligence activities at a press conference back in June. Apparently, out of a highly moral concern for the truth, Gonzales "corrected the record" two days after the press conference by having somebody on his staff call Eggen to let him know that the intelligence activities Comey called into question had not, in fact, been "confirmed to the American people sometime ago."

In today's article, Eggen spends some time suggesting that many, many people think Gonzales has a big honesty problem. I understand why this won't happen anytime soon, but I'd sort of like to hear Eggen's own assessment. It looks very much as if, one way or another, Gonzales lied to him too.

Fail in order to succeed

More good news from Iraq:

Iraq’s national government is refusing to take possession of thousands of American-financed reconstruction projects, forcing the United States either to hand them over to local Iraqis, who often lack the proper training and resources to keep the projects running, or commit new money to an effort that has already consumed billions of taxpayer dollars.

On the one hand, this, along with other aspects of the growing rift between the White House and Baghdad, along with the ever-mushrooming chaos in greater Iraq, along with increasing rivalries between just about every nation in the region and its neighbors, should probably point sensible people to the conclusion that we ought to call it quits sooner rather than later. On the other hand, this is exactly what we've come to expect in this war--the kinds of failures that can are used by insensible people as arguments for never leaving Iraq. Of course, it's insensible people who are in charge of the whole operation, so I imagine you can guess what our official reaction to this news will be.

Elizabeth: awesome

According to this many-thousand word article, Elizabeth Edwards is pretty awesome.

Party on!

This weekend I attended what one might call a "liberals only party", or, if I'm being perfectly accurate a "liberals (and a handful of token libertarians) only party". Great fun all around. At some point, though, as often happens at these sorts of events, I started a conversation about the high likelihood that at some point in the next 16 months the United States will initiate or sponsor some sort of attack against Iran. Not necessarily a full-scale invasion, or even a large-scale aerial bombardment campaign. Perhaps a covert attack against suspected arms dealers. Something.

What I found, to my surprise, is that literally nobody I know thinks this will ever happen. Instead, I heard a lot of oddly optimistic thoughts about... the administration's thinking: They don't have the political support. They may be crazy, but they're not that crazy. Etc.

Obviously, I don't know what's going to happen, and clearly there's some significant chance that we'll escape the Bush years without escalating things with Iran, but it seems like a lot of people still aren't heeding at least three things when they're trying to understand this administration:

1). There's no way to understand this administration. More specifically, it's absolutely impossible to know at what point they will become responsive to real-world political pressures. Whether it's because they think they can get away with almost anything, or because they're politically tone deaf, or both, the only thing we know for sure is that they're willing to try crazier and crazier things as time goes on.

2). At this point, there are very, very few ways tensions between Iran and the United States can escalate without at least some small measure of violence being involved. That's where the rhetoric is. That's where the military is. If we're going to exacerbate things with Iran, there's very little reason to think that we're going to shift away from either of those facts and instead follow the diktats of international law.

3). And most importantly, people are spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to make a full-fledged war happen.

Heritage decided to model the economic effects of bombing Iran and concluded that those effects would be bad (oil prices up, GDP down, employment down, recession in the offing, etc.). However, since Heritage is institutionally committed to insane hawkery, they reran their model with a few changes and discovered that the results weren't so bad after all. In fact, bombing Iran might even be good for the economy!

Now, my first thought when I read this was: holy hell. Out of all the possible things they could spend their time doing, they decided to expend a substantial effort on torturing the data to come up with some plausible way of claiming that bombing Iran would be just peachy as far as the U.S. economy is concerned. Wow. That's dedication to the cause.

But it gets even better. Guess what policy actions we need to take in order to turn bombing Iran from a net negative to a net positive? You guessed it: policy actions that the Heritage Foundation prefers in the first place. Fund the military! Ease regulatory burdens! End tariffs on ethanol! Don't raise gasoline taxes! Approve drilling in ANWR!

Admittedly this is a little weird. What we've come to understand about hawks (or at least neocon hawks) is that they want wars in order to advance political goals, not that they want to advance political goals in order to have more wars. But whatever. That's the depth of their depravity. They're trying as hard as they can to configure "things" in the United States such that the chances of escalation go up. The obvious way to respond if you're against the war is to try equally hard to configure "things" in the United States such that the chances of escalation down (keep impeachment talk in the air, introduce many, many pieces of legislation forbidding the use of military equipment of dollars in any action against Iran without Congress' approval for the next 16 months, etc). Simply assuming, though, that we won't go that route is, I think, a huge mistake, especially when so much is already happening right before our eyes. The only good that will come of it is that--per the bets I made on Friday--a lot of people will owe me free beer. As much as I like free beer, that's an awfully tiny payoff.

Update: Read more here.

Two for the price of one

Kevin spent the weekend breaking down the latest right-wing hobby horse. It's an attempt, it seems, to bring both the word "progressive" and the idea of basing policy on empirical reality into disrepute:

A few old-time progressives touted eugenics as a "scientific" approach to improving human nature back in the early 20th century, and modern-day progressives tout "science" as evidence that global warming is real in the early 21st century. Our reliance on science, then, basically means that we're pining away for the days of legalized racism.

Fortunately, I'm fairly confident that precisely nobody will be swayed by such an absurd argument. It appears, as Kevin points out, that this argument will replace the old "strategy" of contending that the right and the left are equally guilty of ignoring science when its findings cut against ideology. Honestly, though, why the switch? The old argument had the benefit of faint plausibility, even if it can probably be shown (yes, empirically!) that liberalism has much deeper roots in, well, empiricism than does conservatism. And, for that matter, the old argument rather conveniently ignored the differences between liberals and conservatives in the instances when either side has sought to  marginalize the role of science in policy-making. Obviously there's a large element of constituent pandering any time this happens. But surely it's clear to everybody that the reasons and methods by which liberals have sought to avoid mixing scientific arguments about gene-linked IQ with policy discussions about education and welfare are extremely different and less objectionable than the reasons and methods by which conservatives have sought to avoid mixing scientific arguments about climate change with policy arguments about...climate change.

(Or scientific arguments about stem-cell research with policy discussions about stem-cell research, etc., etc.)

Conservatism reduced

Here it is, distilled into two paragraphs:

[W]hy should Mr. Bush fear that insuring uninsured children would lead to a further “federalization” of health care, even though nothing like that is actually in either the Senate plan or the House plan? It’s not because he thinks the plans wouldn’t work. It’s because he’s afraid that they would. That is, he fears that voters, having seen how the government can help children, would ask why it can’t do the same for adults.

And there you have the core of Mr. Bush’s philosophy. He wants the public to believe that government is always the problem, never the solution. But it’s hard to convince people that government is always bad when they see it doing good things. So his philosophy says that the government must be prevented from solving problems, even if it can. In fact, the more good a proposed government program would do, the more fiercely it must be opposed.

Right. Remember, the SCHIP extension will be paid for with revenue from increased tobacco taxes. The fear for conservatives is that it'll work so well that people will begin to realize that it might be worth paying for broader reforms with broader taxes, and so would blossom socialism a vastly improved health care system in this country at the expense of a few very powerful interests.

Remember also, it is utterly unimportant to the conservatives of today how popular or well-tested an idea is. If that idea threatens--in a direct but myopic way--an ally's bottom line, then they will oppose it; either with misinformation ("Go ask a Canadian!") or with whatever political power they have to wield (veto, filibuster, etc). That's how it's played.

Simpsons movie

The worst thing I can say about it is that, perhaps because it's a non-R-rated animated feature, the previews were uniformly awful. Given how much I enjoy previews, this is actually a pretty serious criticism.

More NSA

Marty Lederman hypothesizes about the nature of the original NSA program in an exceptionally thorough and legally taut post. It's far, far too long to fully run through, so read the whole thing. The big takeaway is here, though:

[T]his is to my mind the most likely possibility -- the legal problem wasn't the data mining itself, but instead that the uses of the data that were mined violated FISA. The Times story hints at this -- that perhaps it was not so much the data mining itself, but instead what what NSA did with the mined data, that caused the legal uproar: "Some of the officials said the 2004 dispute involved other issues in addition to the data mining, but would not provide details. They would not say whether the differences were over how the databases were searched or how the resulting information was used."

Here's the theory, roughly:

There was some sort of data mining program going on. Probably not of content, almost certainly not content reviewed by humans. That is to say, it involved computers searching through "meta-data" related to calls and e-mails, looking for certain patterns that might suggest connections to Al Qaeda or to suspicious activitiy that might be terrorism-related. (I have my theories as to what the programs might have been looking for, but don't want to get into such speculation in this forum. And in any case, my theories are probably way off.)

This data-mining indicated that it might be valuable to do more targeted searches of particular communications "pipelines" (John Yoo's phrase), looking for more specific information. But that's where FISA came in. In order to target a particular U.S. person, or to wiretap a particular "facility," FISA requires that the NSA demonstrate to the FISA court probable cause to believe (i) that the target of the electronic surveillance is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power, and (ii) that each of the facilities or places at which the electronic surveillance is directed is being used, or is about to be used, by a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power. 50 U.S.C. 1805(a)(3).

Perhaps, as John Yoo suggests in his book, FISA would have prohibited following up on the leads revealed by the data mining with more targeted wiretaps of suspicious "channels" or "pipelines," "because we would have no specific al Qaeda suspects, and thus no probable cause." 

I think what happened is that the data mining revealed something that the NSA, with DOJ's blessing, followed up on, perhaps using quite long and attenuated "connections" (e.g., phone calls and e-mails three degrees of separation removed) -- what Risen and Lichtblau's original story referred to as "an expanding chain" -- and this follow-up surveillance involved purely domestic communications, as well as communications of persons for whom there was no probable cause to believe they were Al Qaeda agents. Further speculation, with links to plenty of other bloggers, here.) If this is corerct, then it was the follow-up surveillance, not the data mining, that was the legal problem -- it didn't satisfy FISA because whatever it was NSA learned from the data mining, it was something far short of probable cause that all the subsequent targets were agents of Al Qaeda. And OLC concluded that Article II did not justify disregarding FISA.

And that's why the cover-up. Here's where Marty and I part company, though:

Unfortunately, most of the reaction to the Times story is about the question of whether it helps or hurts the allegations that the Attorney General lied to Congress. Folks, really, that's a sideshow. Of course he tried as much as possible to deceive the Congress, in numerous respects, including in order to keep them from discovering what Comey bravely and responsibly revealed. No one -- no one -- still thinks that Gonzales's testimony is at all valuable or relevant, or ever has been, for purposes of informing Congress about anything.  For goodness sake, when Newt Gingrich and Jonah Goldberg and Orrin Hatch and Jeff Sessions all think you're dishonest, well . . . there isn't a single issue on which there is more consensus in America than whether Alberto Gonzales is trustworthy and has been a truthful Attorney General.

This is fairly odd reasoning for a few reasons, I think. There are a number of good reasons to go after Gonzales for perjury, not least of which is that that's perhaps the only ways we'll ever learn exactly what the NSA and DOJ were up to. But there are other, more important things at stake here. These past two weeks, we've been in the midst of something truly unprecedented, watching fairly helplessly as the Bush administration tap dances on the wrong side of its Constitutional limits. If we're trying to make sure the country never goes down this road again, I can think of no worse strategy than ignoring (or leaving the press alone to discover) the illegal steps Bush and Gonzales have taken to cover up its also-illegal underlying activities.

 

Program X = Data mining + TSP

That's one possible formula based on the latest from the New York Times:

A 2004 dispute over the National Security Agency’s secret surveillance program that led top Justice Department officials to threaten resignation involved computer searches through massive electronic databases, according to current and former officials briefed on the program.

It is not known precisely why searching the databases, or data mining, raised such a furious legal debate. But such databases contain records of the phone calls and e-mail messages of millions of Americans, and their examination by the government would raise privacy issues.

The N.S.A.’s data mining has previously been reported. But the disclosure that concerns about it figured in the March 2004 debate helps to clarify the clash this week between Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and senators who accused him of misleading Congress and called for a perjury investigation.

The confrontation in 2004 led to a showdown in the hospital room of then Attorney General John Ashcroft, where Mr. Gonzales, the White House counsel at the time, and Andrew H. Card Jr., then the White House chief of staff,  tried to get the ailing Mr. Ashcroft to reauthorize  the N.S.A. program.

This implies that the original surveillance program (Program X) is the basically the program that James Risen describes in his book. This means Gonzales needs to provide--to my mind--two pieces of exculpatory evidence. First he needs to prove that an entirely new program was launched after Comey's interference. Then he needs to explain why he referred to the TSP as a years-old program as a matter of routine until last week under oath when he decided to change his tune.

Space-age media me

For all of you Sirius subscribers out there, I will be appearing on Mike Feder's program during the 5 pm Eastern time hour. Hope you can tune in.

Program X vs. TSP, redux

Anonymous Liberal makes the case for perjury.

Something I should've read first

Before you read the below post, read, as I should have, this article by Spackerman and Kiel. What you'll learn is it seems quite likely that, until Comey stepped in, there had been a bigger, meaner version of the domestic surveillance program, which had been in effect for years. It's impossible to say (yet!) how much bigger and meaner, but certainly somewhat. Gonzales' testimony creates, then, an epistemological nightmare. Though he doesn't or can't actually say anything, his implicit take (or spin) is that the pre-Comey version of the program (Program X) was different enough from the post-Comey verson (TSP) that it's fair to say that one metamorphosed into the other and that the two are categorically different. Others, including Jane Harman, seem to be suggesting that TSP is a shrunken version of Program X, but that they are essentially two versions of the same thing. Anyhow, read the article. It's the best primer out there on Gonzales, perjury, and the wiretapping program (or programs).

Alberto Gonzales' testimony that there was "no serious disagreement" within the Bush Administration about the NSA warrantless surveillance program has left senators sputtering and fulminating about the attorney general's apparent prevarications. But a closer examination of Gonzales' testimony and other public statements from the Administration suggest that there may be a method to the madness.

There's a lot of evidence to suggest that Gonzales's careful, repeated phrasing to the Senate that he will only discuss the program that "the president described" was deliberate, part of a concerted administration-wide strategy to conceal from the public the very broad scope of that initial program. When, for the first time, Program X (as we'll call it, for convenience's sake) became known to senior Justice Department officials who were not its original architects, those officials -- James Comey and Jack Goldsmith, principally -- balked at its continuation. They did not back down until the program had undergone as-yet-unspecified but apparently significant revisions. But when President Bush announced what he would call the "Terrorist Surveillance Program' in December 2005, he left the clear impression that the program had always functioned the same way since its 2001 inception.

The administration's consistent refusal to discuss any aspect of the program -- current or former -- aside from what President Bush disclosed in December 2005 appears to be intended, specifically, to gloss over Comey and Goldsmith's objections. If that's the case, it could mean that the public has been presented with an inaccurate picture of the origins and scope of Program X. The Bush administration is currently contesting a Senate Judiciary Committee subpoena for documentation establishing Program X's history -- in essence, trying to ensure that the public never learns more about the program and the internal deliberations over it than what President Bush chooses to reveal.

Alberto Gonzales, on this theory, has found himself enmeshed in the administration's attempt to distinguish the less-troublesome Terrorism Surveillance Program from Program X. And it may mean he perjured himself in doing so. Today, Senate Democrats responded to Gonzales's dubious testimony on Tuesday by calling for a perjury investigation. At issue is whether Gonzales' assertions that there was "no serious disagreement" within the government about the TSP was so misleading as to amount to perjury, or whether his distinction between TSP and Program X was merely a careful parsing -- perhaps misleading but not, to use Sen. Arlen Specter's word, actionable.

Intelligence speculation

A few days ago I speculated that Gonzales may have actually been telling the truth before the Senate Judiciary Committee and that there may well be (or have been) some undisclosed domestic surveillance program that caused the clash between Gonzales and Card on the one hand and John Ashcroft on the other.

Since then I've basically disavowed that speculation, concluding instead that Gonzales is referring to some  controversial aspect of the TSP and calling it "other intelligence activities". Interestingly, though, instead of defending Gonzales obliquely, or throwing him under the bus, the White House is suggesting very strongly that the Attorney General's statement was correct down to the letter and that, yes, there is in fact another surveillance program:

The White House offered a vigorous defense of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales today, insisting that he had not given misleading testimony to Congress, but that national security factors prevented further clarification for now.      

“He has testified truthfully and tried to be very accurate,” the chief White House spokesman, Tony Snow, said of Mr. Gonzales’s testimony this week before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Snow said repeatedly that Mr. Gonzales had not been contradicted by Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, as has been widely reported, on whether there were serious disagreements within the Bush administration on its secret surveillance program.

Mr. Snow said, in effect, that Mr. Gonzales had been constrained in what he could say because there was a danger he would divulge classified material. “I understand it’s difficult to parse, because what you have involved here are matters of classification,” Mr. Snow said. “Sometimes it’s going to lead people to talk very carefully, and there’s going to be plenty of room for interpretation or conclusion.”

I've still disavowed my primary speculation. I'd think, though, that if there was actually no second, totally distinct program, somebody like Russel Feingold would come out and say so. It can't be classified to say that a program that would in theory be classified doesn't really exist.

But seriously. Does the administration think this will hold water? Mueller said the program in question was the program that got all this media attention. If Ashcroft and others dissented with the adminstration over portions of the TSP, then there was dissent within the DOJ about the TSP. And though they may ultimately get away with it, the fact that they're hiding from an inquiry by claiming classification of the nature of the dissent itself--that is, whether the dissent was over a whole program, an element within that program, or a different program altogether--is seriously shady shit. I know, shocking, right?

Update: Read this. It lays out the possibilities much more clearly than I've been able to. But basically, there's a very, very strong case to be made based on existing public documents and testimony that--as I'd earlier speculated--the TSP was related to or was once some small part of a much larger, more controversial domestic spying program.

Topsy Turvy

Come to Washington D.C. and encounter a world where up is down, good is evil, fact is fiction, and where the president can dodge the accountability citizens demand, while demanding accountability from citizens who he supposedly works for. It's a highly functioning politburo on Pennsylvania avenue.

Fortunately, this seems like an extremely misguided bit of politicking on the part of the administration. My guess is that, whatever happens to Michael Moore, he wins this round.

Outsourcing, bestiality edition

Instead of actually heading over to The Corner on what is a gorgeous Friday afternoon and making myself a little bit ill, I'll just outsource this edition of Corner bashing to Steve Benen:

The Corner had this post, under a headline that read, “Slippery Slope?”

Just a coincidence that this happened in Massachusetts? Sherborn teen charged with bestiality

(And no I’m not equating men and dogs.)

No, but she was equating gay marriage with bestiality. Santorum made a fool out of himself when he argued that national tolerance for gay relationships might lead to “man on dog” sex, and what Lopez suggested was equally offensive.

She may not have been equating men with dogs. But she was equating gay men with dogs. Which is what makes this sink below the level of inane nonsense into the realm of uncloaked bigotry.

Clinton, Obama continued

Good discussion about my Clinton/Obama post here, here, here, and here.

I want to be clear, though, that my point isn't so much about the specific answers the two candidates gave at the debates, which, though somewhat different in both tone and substance, actually had a lot of similarities. My point is instead about the furious spin battle that has been underway ever since. What I think is interesting about the continuing exchange is that, though heated and heavy on rhetoric and ugly sounding, it actually presents us a choice based upon the merits of two candidates, each of whom--but especially Clinton--have a record of statements and actions on this very topic. That record is reflected in the barbs we're hearing, which is a phenomenon that, as near as I can tell, almost never happens.

America: Nuclear proliferator

Here's something that should really be getting a extraordinary amount of attention, but I suppose a Friday web article and a Saturday non-front-page story in the New York Times will have to do. Several months ago, defying all strategic logic, President Bush and some of his Congressional allies pushed through a bill that would allow the United States to dance around the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and supply India with civilian nuclear facilities. The caveat for India was that they would lose our support if they illegally tested any more nuclear weapons. The upshot for the United States was...nothing. In fact, between loss of prestige in the world, and inflaming both American and Indian tensions with Pakistan and China this was almost inarguably a huge loss for us.

But apparently that wasn't enough for New Delhi, who now say that they can't promise not to illegally test any more weapons. Our president's response was to, with almost shocking quickness ,turn over all our chips to them and immediately cede to their wishes.

Until the overall deal was approved by Congress last year, the United States was prohibited by federal law from selling civilian nuclear technology to India because it has refused to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The legislation passed by Congress allows the United States to sell both commercial nuclear technology and fuel to India, but would require a cutoff in nuclear assistance if India again tests a nuclear weapon. Indias Parliament balked at the deal, with many politicians there complaining that the requirements infringed on Indias sovereignty.

Under the deal, which was described on Thursday by senior American officials, Mr. Bush has agreed to go beyond the terms of the deal that Congress approved, promising to help India build a nuclear fuel repository and find alternative sources of nuclear fuel in the event of an American cutoff, skirting some of the provisions of the law.

This is the president violating U.S. law in an a  manner so overt that it would be shocking if it were anybody else. Somehow, though, the controversy isn't presented as one about the pitfalls of arming an extremely unstable part of the world--a part which also happens to contain about half the world's population. Instead this is supposedly all about optics. We're, after all, on the brink of war with Iran over their Non-Proliferation Treaty violations:

The problem is a delicate one for the administration, because this month American officials are working at the United Nations Security Council to win approval of harsher economic sanctions against Iran for trying to enrich uranium. India is already a nuclear weapons state and has refused to sign the treaty; Iran, a signer of the treaty, does not yet have nuclear weapons.

But in an interview Thursday, R. Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, who negotiated the deal, said, “Iran in no way, shape or form would merit similar treatment because Iran is a nuclear outlaw state.”

This is sort of unbelievable. The fact is, both India and Iran are nuclear outlaw states. The difference is that Iran is a signatory to the NPT, and India is not... which means that at the very least Iran is subject to IAEA inspections. We conceive of Iran as a nuclear outlaw state, though, not because they're violating the IAEA, but because we really, really don't like them. If they formally dropped out of the IAEA they'd be in the same legally ambiguous territory as India is, except that we wouldn't be lunging at the chance to help them advance their nuclear capabilities.

This is in some ways business as usual for George Bush. The difference, though, between this and other administration crimes is that most of their other crimes haven't resulted in the very high possibility that millions of people will die*. And what's even more unusual is that we don't have to do any of this if we don't want to--ine of the reasons it should be easy to strengthen ties with India is that they are absolutely dependent upon us for their security. No other country on the planet can possibly help India check both China and Pakistan at the same time. Neither China nor India like India very much but both happen to be very close by. This was our leverage, and we don't have it any longer.

It should be noted, too, that Hillary Clinton--who was once referred to by the Obama campaign as (D-Punjab)--has been a huge advocate of this policy. Obama, who we're supposed to believe is some sort of foreign policy neophyte, voted for the original bill but now has an exceptionally good anti-proliferation platform.

Update: Last paragraph modified to more accurately reflect the differences between Clinton and Obama.

Michael Gerson, frigid prude

Unlike either Ezra or Dana, I find Michael Gerson's addition to the Washington Post's editorial page to be an indefensible example of a lazy editorial desk relying for content on somebody whose qualifications seem to be a somewhat high profile and professional availability.  My problem with him isn't so much that he's an evangelical. Rather, it's the small matter that he's both a verified apparatchick and an architect of a truly immense national disaster. I imagine that when George Bush leaves office it will be about the last we hear from him. In a just world, that would be Gerson's fate, too. Except he can write well so I guess he'll be taken seriously until he dies.

I've gotta say though, this is pretty funny:

When the statistics on teen sexuality are controlled for social and economic factors, conservative Protestant teens first have sex at about the same time as their peers -- the average is midway through their 16th year. That is hardly comforting to conservative Protestant parents, who would expect more bang for the bucks they spend funding Sunday schools -- well, actually, less bang.

Gonzales lied, Mueller... called him on it

My article about yesterday's testimony from FBI Director Robert Mueller is up here and there. It was about the most fascinating thing I've seen on Capitol Hill. If you can find the video on C-SPAN, go watch it. You'll see what happens to the face of a man whose conscience and loyalties are pulling him in two completely opposite directions:

At a House hearing Thursday, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller provided information that added to a growing body of evidence that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales may have perjured himself before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Mueller appeared before the House Judiciary Committee to answer questions about the FBI's role in a number of controversial issues, including its use of National Security Letters. During questioning by committee Democrats, Mueller provided revealing testimony about the National Security Agency’s Terrorist Surveillance Program, which is at the center of the renewed scrutiny of Gonzales' recent congressional testimony.

The disclosures began about an hour into the hearing, when Rep. Mel Watt (D-NC) asked Mueller about his reported discomfort with the NSA's domestic eavesdropping program. "Can you confirm that you had some serious reservations about the warrantless wiretapping program?" he asked. Mueller replied tersely, "Yes."...

Mueller also revealed that he had taken notes of his conversations with Comey and Ashcroft. If made public, these documents could further damage Attorney General Gonzales' version of events. Rep. Arthur Davis (D-AL) asked Mueller why he had taken notes of his meeting with Ashcroft.

"It was out of the ordinary," Mueller replied.   

"What was out of the ordinary Mr. Mueller?" Davis asked.   

"Being asked to go to the hospital and be present at that time."   

When Davis asked if there were any reasons why he might mot submit his notes from the conversation with Ashcroft to the committee, Mueller answered, "Deliberative privilege." Davis said that he "would certainly ask this committee and our colleagues in the Senate to make a formal inquiry to obtain those notes."

Shortly after the hearing, Rep. Conyers officially requested that Mueller delivered his notes to the committee by August 1.    

Talking Points Media me

My impeachment post is up at TPM Cafe.

I have a somewhat serious question for anybody--liberal or conservative, impeachment advocate or opponent--who's been closely following the last two weeks' events. Here it is: If Jeffery Taylor, in a fit of good conscience, chooses to adjudicate the contempt citations against Harriet Miers and John Bolten and anybody else who may soon be cited, will the president allow the case to move forward, or will he, driven by pique, dismiss the Constitution, like the Geneva Conventions, as quaint and fire his tenth U.S. Attorney?

My guess is it will never get that far. My guess is that Taylor will announce, as Bush expects him to, that he honors the president's wishes and refuses to hear the case at all. When that happens--and only then--should Congressional Democrats begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush and the vice president.

It's a tough argument, but I believe there's a strong case to be made that obstructiveness of such magnitude--that brazenly pivots past the Constitution--is of a different category than the seemingly more heinous crimes--fabricated intelligence, warrantless wiretapping, torture, ending habeas, the U.S. Attorney firings themselves--that this president has committed. It's subtle, but those scandals can each, in their own tragic ways, be excused by the sorts of dubious legal arguments that could plausibly sway even non-partisans and skeptics.

Contempt is different. What the president is threatening now is more than just to recklessly claim executive privilege. He's threatening to prevent, by diktat, any court in the country from ever evaluating the legitimacy of those claims, however legally thin they are widely agreed to be. That is, to my knowledge, a coup unprecedented in American History. And it implies that the president can do basically what he pleases (with the Treasury, the Armed Service, the Justice Department) as long as he thinks he'll escape impeachment. The rationale for impeachment, then, will be as much to penalize George Bush for violating the Constitution as it will be to prevent more egregious abuses in his last 16 months in office.

Those are the legal and moral rationales. The politics are much more difficult. I can't say how it is that Democrats can best assure they don't lose this fight--either in the Senate or with the public. What I do suggest is that the Congress should attempt to impeach both the president and the vice president simultaneously, with the stipulation that no Democrat in the chain of command (Nancy Pelosi and Robert Byrd) will accept the presidency if both Bush and Cheney are removed from office. That course of action would advance, yes, Condoleezza Rice to the White House--an unhappy thought but probably necessary to avoid any public perception that this move is intended only to secure power for Democrats. I can also say, precisely because this will be a political fight, that perceptions matter. In Iraq we've seen that a hopeless situation can't possibly be salvaged by sheer dint of will power. Impeachment is different--its success will hinge largely on how confidently and clearly the president's political opponents present their case and how sure they seem that they can win it.

Why TNR

The Netroots did ultimately come to TNR's defense on the Beauchamp controversy. Good for them. My belief is basically that if the right had directed this sort of venom at The American Prospect or The Nation or Mother Jones, there would have been a massive and immediate pushback. That may well be in part because the Netroots are more familiar with those magazines and their staffs, but I think it's also in part because of TNR's difficult relationship with the Netroots going back months and months now.

But I also don't really think that (for instance) The Nation would ever have born the brunt of a tantrum like this in the first place, even if it had run an identical, pseudonymous article. Matt writes:

All these people need to stop. They need to take a deep breath. They need to apologize to the people at TNR who've wasted huge amounts of time dealing with their nonsense. And they need to think a bit about the epistemic situation they're creating where information about Iraq that they don't want to hear -- even when published in a pro-war publication -- can just be immediately dismissed as fraudulent even though the misconduct it described was far, far less severe than all sorts of other well-document misconduct in Iraq.

I think it's pretty clear, though, that TNR is being pummeled right now precisely because it was--and in many ways still is--a pro-war publication. This is how the right treats its apostates. It's happened, over and over again, to both individual hawks and groups of them, who have lost their taste for the war and broken from the line. To them, it's OK to ignore basically all of the other liberal magazines because their treason is a foregone conclusion. But TNR! TNR was the one magazine out there put together by the elusive species of liberal that many on the right still thought of as a fellow traveler. To the right this is a capital crime. A heresy. And while it's appalling to see how relentlessly and effectively they've managed to tar TNR and Beauchamp and his defenders, this is exactly what everybody involved should have expected.

What's an insurgent?

Well, I suppose an honest definition of an insurgent is a fighter from a foreign country, armed by its government, who enters a different country and commits acts of violence intended to help his homeland. The Bush administration, on the other hand, defines an insurgent as anybody who meets that description but only if they happen to be fighting on behalf of an enemy country. That's the best I can distill it.

Bush administration officials are voicing increasing anger at what they say has been Saudi Arabia’s counterproductive role in the Iraq war. They say that beyond regarding Mr. Maliki as an Iranian agent, the Saudis have offered financial support to Sunni groups in Iraq. Of an estimated 60 to 80 foreign fighters who enter Iraq each month, American military and intelligence officials say that nearly half are coming from Saudi Arabia and that the Saudis have not done enough to stem the flow.

One senior administration official says he has seen evidence that Saudi Arabia is providing financial support to opponents of Mr. Maliki. He declined to say whether that support was going to Sunni insurgents because, he said, “That would get into disagreements over who is an insurgent and who is not.”

I suppose if the civil war in Iraq was adhering to some sort of cartoonish rule about how civil wars are supposed to be fought--one big Sunni army was fighting one big Shiite army for control of the country--then it might be wise to pick one side comprised of allied local fighters and insurgents. And I suppose then Saudi Arabia wouldn't run the risk of arming the wrong Sunnis as they very well may be now. And I suppose it would make more sense to direct our ire at Iran for arming the "real" insurgents, fighting with the Shiites on the opposite side.

What we're doing instead is arming certain Sunnis outside of Baghdad who are engaged in a fractured proxy with in some cases Shiites and in some cases other Sunnis. We're  at the same time growing upset with Saudi Arabia for arming anybody at all because their Sunni fighters might sometimes take arms against the Sunnis that we're arming. Whatever the logic is there, we're also arming the Shiite led government inside of Baghdad (which is itself being undermined by the Saudi Sunnis) and inching towards war with Iran in part because Iran is arming its own Shiites (who are in some cases sympathetic to the government and in some cases not).

And we're hoping that somehow the mess of conflicting priorities I described above will all lead us to a point in the future when Iraq--freed from interference by neighboring countries--will broadly legitimate the government in Baghdad and suffer minimal factional violence in any of its cities.

Manufacturing that outcome will of course be impossible no matter what we do, but particularly so if we continue actively subverting every one of our own goals.

Obama vs. Clinton, left vs. right

I think the escalating rhetorical battle the two senators is perhaps the only helpful instance of campaign jousting I've ever seen. At the same time, I only think I'll believe that as long as Barack Obama wins, or at least puts up a good show. Because what we are seeing is, in as close to an unfiltered way as possible, a standoff between a status quo foreign policy and a much more constructive (though I hesitate to say new) direction.

Certainly what you're hearing from Clinton and Obama is a healthier debate than what you're hearing from journalists. Clinton's basic position is that Obama has, by announcing his intent to engage enemy leaders, proven that he's too naive to set the country's foreign policy. Obama, on the other hand, contends that Clinton's foreign policy ideas are too similar to George Bush's for comfort. As far as I'm concerned, I think Obama's argument is basically correct and Hillary's argument is totally nuts, but in any case both arguments are pretty close facsimiles to what the two candidates actually believe about foreign policy.

The press, on the other hand, is doing exactly what you'd expect. Conservatives are saying exactly what you'd expect--that Hillary's correct, and that diplomacy is bad and that nobody will ever support Obama's idea. David Brooks wrote, "He continues to attract huge crowds and huge money, but he also continues to make rookie mistakes, like saying he’d talk with Hugo Chávez." Charles Krauthammer wrote,

For Barack Obama, it was strike two. And this one was a right-down-the-middle question from a YouTuber in Monday night's South Carolina debate: "Would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea?"

"I would," responded Obama.

Liberals, of course, responded as they always do--by neglecting to evaluate the merits of the two positions and offering instead a maddeningly typical meta-analysis of the argument--one that defaults with 100 percent regularity to the idea that only hawkish ideas seem serious.

David Corn wrote,

I can see the ad now: Kim Jong Il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Fidel Castro, Bashar al-Assad, and Hugo Chavez all strolling into the White House, and a grinning Barack Obama greeting them with a friendly "Welcome, boys; what do you want to talk about?"

If Obama gets close to the Democratic presidential nomination, pro-Hillary Clinton forces could air such an ad. If he wins the nomination, the Republicans could hammer him with such a spot.

And the junior senator from Illinois will not have much of a defense.

Mickey Kaus wrote, "Am I crazy or did Barack Obama just get suckered into saying that as President within a year he'd personally meet with Fidel Castro?"

Honestly, there's not another instance I can recall when two political foes hashed out an issue in better faith than did the media. But here we have it. And if this is how the press is going to handle it, it will be up to Obama to either maintain his position steadfastly, or lie down and let Hillary or the Republican nominee walk all over him.

Banal observation(s) of the day

It's fun to be the only reporter on Capitol Hill wearing jeans and a t-shirt. It's less fun when your corporate masters (who I love unconditionally) disapprove of your wardrobe. It's less fun still, when you realize that you're about to spend a shitload in dry cleaning.

Fortunately, there's solace in the fact that I'll gain respect amongst my colleagues and contacts. But really, this is a group incentives problem, and we should all insist together that we'll only suffer the D.C. heat if we can wear as few items of clothing as is legal. 

Miers, Bolten contempt article

My take is here. Closing grafs

"There has been no attempt to gather this information through alternative means," Keller said. "For example, the White House has made Harriet Miers available to talk about any communications that she had with DOJ officials, members of Congress or outside sources on an informal basis. They've turned down that interview opportunity. Similarly they're seeking the documents for Josh Bolten. Josh Bolten said, 'I will provide you with any documents regarding this situation between the White House and DOJ as well as any documents between the White House and Congress or other third parties.' They've turned down that ... as well."

Though no Democrat at the hearing specifically questioned his assertions on this point, Keller ignored the fact that the president's offer is contingent upon a host of restrictions, including a refusal to provide the committee with any internal White House correspondence and a refusal to participate at all thereafter. Conyers addressed those restrictions in the 52-page memo.

"On March 20, 2007, White House Counsel made a 'take it or leave it' proposal, under which the Committee was offered limited availability to some documents and limited access to witnesses, but without any transcripts and under severe limitations as to permissible areas for questioning," the memo read. "The White House also insisted that a condition of its proposal was that the Committee commit in advance not to subsequently pursue any additional White House-related information by any other means, regardless of what initial review of documents and informal discussions should reveal."

If the court does not overrule the executive privilege claims and hold Miers and Bolten in contempt -- or if it refuses to hear the citation in the first place -- House Democrats will face some difficult choices. One option would be to pursue citations of inherent -- as opposed to statutory -- contempt of Congress, and try Bolten and Miers before the full House of Representatives. That would require dispatching the House Sergeant-at-Arms to arrest the pair and holding them in jail, an option House aides have suggested Democrats have little appetite for. Failing that, they could begin impeachment proceedings against the president himself, or any Senate-approved appointee involved in the obstruction. Or they could do nothing at all. If that happens, it may well end the congressional inquiry into the U.S. Attorney scandal forever.

Politico on Edwards

It's good to get attention! It's less good when that attention is, you know, anything other than totally laudatory, but I'll take it. Ben Smith responds to my post on the Gail Collins op-ed. It's... other than totally laudatory:

This seems to totally miss the point of the tangerine moment, and of Collins' column. It's one thing to talk about sacrifice; it's another thing to tell ordinary people that when they elect you, gas, fruit and imported goods cost more, to name specific sacrifices.

This isn't to single out Edwards; none of the leading candidates has exactly been going around pledging to make consumer goods more expensive. They talk occasionally about switching to fluorescent light bulbs, but they don't cast that as a sacrifice, more as a win-win. And you see why they avoid it. Calls for real sacrifice are met by jokes about Jimmy Carter's sweaters.

Edwards laid out a plan today to pay for his expanded spending on health care and other initiatives, which he lays out in detail on his site. The plan will call from sacrifice for many of the people who benefited from the Bush tax cuts and for people who pay the Capital Gains Tax -- disproportionately, but not entirely, the rich. Maybe you can cast that as a sort of national sacrifice. But you see Collins' point.

When Collins asked Edwards specifically about the Tangerines, his answer was, at first, that he'd have to think about it. Well, ok, maybe that's not exactly overwhelming forthrightness in the Jimmy Carter/sweater sense of the word. But then again, this issue--the impact of climate change legislation--is extremely tricky.

When you're talking about a major federal program like cap and trade that will include all sorts of incentives, aide, regulations--CAFE and otherwise--it's really, really difficult to disentangle what its microeconomic impact of the actual legislation is from other drivers and also to know what would have happened in the plans absence. You can implement climate change legislation and the price of tangerines might well up or you can not implement climate change legislation, and  instead burn through tons of ever more expensive oil and... the result is exactly the same. Or, by massively ratcheting up CAFE standards, perhaps fuel prices become less of a concern but the cost of transporting tangerines across the land gets shifted to auto companies who will be forced to modify their fleets.

You can say then that they're the ones that get stuck with the cost, but then you can also consider the possibility that without increased CAFE standards the auto companies are, as gas gets more and more expensive, in mortal danger. So it's complicated, right? And the best you can say is that--as Al Gore has said many times--the economy will see both benefits and hard knocks as the result of climate change legislation, and that those pros and cons are difficult to predict. Edwards basically says this, too.

The fact is Edwards has been much more clear than any candidate I can ever remember that the things the country needs and the programs that will benefit the needy actually cost money. He's made it clear to those who make over $200,000 a year, and to the coal industry. I sincerely doubt they'll be shoving a bunch of money at his campaign, and I also doubt that their unions will throw their support his way. And unions constitute some of his biggest supporters. What he could say, I guess, is that with his plan, some people will be penalized for driving big cars, but that much is almost definitional.

Really, though, the best way forward for anybody who doesn't want to suffer big lifestyle changes, or be otherwise deeply impacted by climate legislation, is in pushing their Congressmen and Senators and home town businesses to not just prepare, but embrace any coming regulations, and prepare for them. With enough preparation, we'll lose much, much less than we will if we stall and play gotcha games with the people who are the most serious about this. Maybe we'll even be able to partake guiltlessly in the bucolic excesses of modern American life in perpetuity. Even eating tangerines in the south.

Mort Zuckerman

From Nick Paumgarten's profile in a recent New Yorker (link unavailable) comes Mort Zuckerman's impressions of Dick Cheney.

Hespeaks often of a trait that he has observed in men he admires most, such as Dick Cheney, Robert Rubin, George Shultz, and Ariel Sharon. "They share some quality which incentivizes people to give them power," Zuckerman told me. "You don't get the feeling that they're in it to accumulate power or aggrandize themselves. It's a very rare commodity, especially in politics."

That's a really odd foursome, no? Take out Cheney, and you still have a fairly odd threesome. But as far as Cheney goes, the quality he's talking about isn't particularly mysterious. It's a willingness to extort, intimidate, subvert, and lie about anybody who serves as an obstacle to his ascent to power on the coattails of far more talented people.

Rove subpoenaed

AP reports:

Senate Democrats called for a perjury investigation against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales on Thursday and subpoenaed top presidential aide Karl Rove in a deepening political and legal clash with the Bush administration.                                                 

"It has become apparent that the attorney general has provided at a minimum half-truths and misleading statements," four Democrats on