Before I get into the meat of this post, lemme just quote this analogous story that I’ve always found amusing.

Alan McHughen, who works in the field of genetically modified plants, decided that enough was enough. He doesn’t like what he’s seeing and wants people to be able to make informed decisions.
. . .
How bad is the public’s misunderstanding of this field? McHughen cites recent surveys in Great Britain showing that only 40% of respondents correctly said that ordinary tomatoes contain genes. The rest either didn’t know, or thought that the average tomato somehow did without the genetic material that is present in every living thing. Similarly, he relates a story of how an activist in Belgium got into an argument at a summit about genetically modified plants, and stormed out yelling, “You’ll never convince me to eat DNA!”

And this angry fool is what I’ve been thinking of as I’ve seen this ridiculous uproar about the NSA’s website using cookies. To call this a tempest in a teapot would be an exaggeration. In light of the very serious issue of domestic spying by the NSA, getting worked up about this is the equivalent of berating Charles Manson for jaywalking.

As the FAQ at CookieCentral makes clear, for all practical purposes, the NSA can’t spy on you using cookies.

2.4 Are Cookies Dangerous to My Computer?

NO. A cookie is a simple piece of text. It is not a program, or a plug-in. It cannot be used as a virus, and it cannot access your hard drive. Your browser (not a programmer) can save cookie values to your hard disk if it needs to, but that is the limit of the effect on your system.
. . .
2.6 Are Cookies a Threat to My Privacy?

The sad truth is that revealing any kind of personal information opens the door for that information to be spread.

Consider the growing trend of technology conveniences in our lives. We use “frequent buyer” cards at supermarkets and gas stations. We place electronic tags on our cars to pay tolls faster and easier. We let banks pay our bills for us automatically each month without checks.

While each of these technologies (and others like them) have made our lives more convenient, each time we use them exposes us to a loss of privacy. Stores know what foods you eat. Gas stations know how much you spend on gas per fill-up. Turnpike operators know how fast you drive on their highways. Banks know how you spend your money each month.

It’s the same with cookies. In fact, one may argue that cookies in the long-run will be less damaging to privacy efforts than those technologies described above. If you’re going to single-out cookies as your sole vulnerability to personal privacy, you should re-examine how you live your daily life.

More importantly, the NSA website (or any website for that matter) can only view the cookies that come from their domain. In other words, they can’t use cookies to track how often you login to Ebay, check your email, or read a liberal blog.

And if that’s enough to freak you out, then you should just stop going on the WWW altogether. Just from the HTTP logs for this site, I can tell what time a user accessed a page, what site referred them, which pages within my site are being accessed, and the operating system, timezone, browser, and internet service provider. But anything beyond that which you might consider “personal information” (ie. names, passwords, credit card numbers) can only end up in a cookie if you give them that information in the first place.

So, yes, the NSA (like every other website) can use cookies to track when visitors access their site and record that information for later use, but they don’t know who you are unless either (a) you fill out a form on the site that provides them with personal information or (b) they tap into their massive database of information gathered by illegally tapping internet hubs. Either way, stop wasting your time freaking out about cookies guys. It’s really not a big deal compared to everything else they’ve been doing.

As The Talent Show approaches its fourth year, I was thinking of doing one of those year end posts to highlight some of my favorite posts over the last year. Unfortunately, I don’t have the patience to wade through 700 or so posts, so this isn’t going to be a very thorough review. Nonetheless, here’s a few bits from the archives for the first half of the year that re-caught my attention.

From January, this quote from an article about the President’s inauguration might be the funniest and most dead-on comment on right-wing activism I’ve read anywhere :

Anti-abortion protesters have been warned to leave large crosses at home.

It’s not enough for some people to twist the words of Jesus, they have to be Jesus. Except without all that living a virtuous life or sacrificing yourself for a greater good stuff.

Back in February, conservative group Citizens United wasted a few thousand dollars on a big “fuck you” to the blue states with a few “Thank you, Hollywood” billboards celebrating the reelection of George W. Bush. My suggestion at the time was for Hollywood to respond with their own billboards :

You’ve done a “Heck of a job, Bushie”.

In March, I blogged about the Terri Schiavo fiasco a lot. While this post is still my favorite from that time, my living will is the one I want to make sure my family members who frequent this site read again :

By the way, if any of this shit ever happens to me, please pull the plug. Once my body’s cold, let the organ harvesters, medical students, etc. take whatever they want. Cremate anything that’s left over, toss it in the ocean, and go buy yourselves a drink with whatever you found in my wallet. But…..

If I get into the situation as the result of medical malpractice, corporate negligence, or some other dastardly (and preventable) means, keep me alive long enough to turn my situation into a media circus. Since it seems to be the only way cases like this get any attention, make sure to send every videotape or photograph that you may have of me to every news outlet you can find. Use the resulting orgy of coverage to get some attention to the horrible nexus of insurance interests, pharmaceutical companies, and bribed political interests that ensures that millions of Americans (unlike their peers in Japan, Canada, Britain, etc.) without healthcare of any sort. If you find it necessary to split into two opposing camps to pontificate endlessly about “What Greg would have wanted”, please try to keep religion out of it, okay?

In April, I hoped the phrase “No Taxation Without Perspiration” would catch on to describe GOP “tax relief” :

In four words, that’s the Bush Administration’s tax agenda. How else can you explain the urgency behind cutting taxes on capital gains (“earned” through a combination of informed choices and dumb luck), dividends (basically a semi-annual gift to stockholders), and estates (or as many on the left are now calling “Paris Hilton taxes”1)? Meanwhile, the two most regressive forms of taxation (payroll and income taxes) which are the ones you pay for all those hours you spend at your shitty job have barely changed for those who really need tax cuts. They may pretend to care about working people, but the actions of the Republican party show that they’re more interested in helping multi-millionaires than people living below the poverty level.

Also in April, I wrote the post that gives me the strange honor of being the number one Google search result for the term “Jesus Math”, noted the strange cult of people worshiping a giant vagina, and finally figured out why bloggers are obsessed with posting pictures of their pets :

In May, I began my residency over at This Modern World in what is described as a “sucessful experiment”. Though it’s been mostly cross-posting, I’ve found the whole thing incredibly rewarding since I get to reach a different audience and have my writing appear alongside the work of someone who’s really inspired me over the last ten years. Seriously, if you guys aren’t going there daily, you’re missing out.

In June, I quit being a blogger which resulted in mentions on CNN & MSNBC, a gagillion hits, a short-lived blogger meme, and not a single change in the style, content, or design of the site. I miss being a blogger, but sometimes you have to make meaningless semantic changes for the greater good.

Upyernoz takes issue with my statement that George Bush could stop torture “with a phonecall to the Uzbek government” :

the u.s. and uzbekistan had a major falling out after uzbek security forces open fired and killed hundreds of civilians in andijon last may. the bush administration (to their credit, IMHO) called for an investigation which the karimov government in uzbekistan did not want. the u.s. insisted, and relations between the two countries have gone downhill since then. in july, uzbekistan announced that it was evicting u.s. forces from its territory. notably that meant the loss of american access to the karshi-khanabad airbase–a major staging ground for operations in afghanistan. the u.s. scrambled to find a replacement, later getting assurances from kyrgyzstan and tajikistan that the u.s. could use bases there to replace K2 (as karshi-khanabad is called). since then u.s.-uzbek relations have been quite different. these days, the bush administration regularly criticizes uzbekistan over human rights issues. at best, relations between the two countries are called “strained.” uzbekistan simply is not the close bush ally it once was.
. . .
while i am always happy to consider the timeless “idiot or asshole” question, sanders [By the way, it's Saunders with a "u".] is simply wrong about the present state of u.s.-uzbek relations. bush has made that phone call to the uzbek government, or at least members of his administration have. it has threatened cuts in foreign aid and other punitive steps since the andijon massacre.

obviously i am a big critic of the bush administration. but i’m not against everything they do simply because they are the bush administration. on those occasions that they get things more right than wrong, we should give the administration credit. when it came to uzbekistan after the andijon massacre, the administration surprised me, and i really do think they deserve credit for the pressure they have put on uzbekistan since then.

Not to be dismissive of the great post by Upyernoz, this doesn’t really change much. The Bush Administration is still complicit in the torture of children or too dumb to know it happened. Uzbekistan is still a human rights violator that the U.S. government sold its soul to work with. But that particular relationship isn’t as strong as it once was. For anyone who would take solace in the revelation that Uzbekistan is no longer on the list of countries to which we outsource torture (like Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Afghanistan…), there you go.

By the way, as I was writing the last post, television fraud psychic the Amazing Kreskin was revealing his predictions for next year. Yes, what started as a ridiculously over-the-top joke in the movie Network is actually happening. Among Kreskin’s predictions is that people will hear UFO’s on their cell phones next year. And just when you thought Larry King’s “Are Psychics for Real?” episode represented CNN’s nadir, they’ve found a way to sink lower. The most trusted name in news, indeed. What’s next? Having one of the Muppets reporting live from Iraq? Opening the newscast with a horoscope? This goes beyond embarrassing, it’s fucking shameful.

This report is appearing all over the place, but here’s MSNBC’s version :

The U.S. Justice Department has launched an investigation to see who disclosed details about a secret domestic eavesdropping operation, department officials said Friday.

“We are opening an investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of classified materials related to the NSA,” one official said, referring to the National Security Agency.
. . .
“There is a process that goes on inside the Justice Department about leaks, and I presume that process is moving forward,” the president said at a yearend news conference on Dec. 19.

“My personal opinion is it was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in a time of war,” he added. “The fact that we’re discussing this program is helping the enemy.”

I know you guys will do everything in your power to ensure that news doesn’t hurt Junior’s feelings, but after reading five or six articles on this and seeing the coverage by CNN, I can’t help but think that you’re collectively avoiding the use of the word “whistleblower“.

Which is odd since it’s obvious to everyone that the President’s domestic spying program is illegal. That’s not the opinion of some pissed off blogger either. It’s a demonstrable fact that it’s a crime for the President to order wiretaps without judicial oversight. Pointing this out isn’t petty partisan politics, it’s keeping the public informed. People who make a living of reporting and interpreting the news should be able to make this distinction.

So when you’re regurgitating some Bush Administration blowback from the Justice Department, it would be nice if you remembered the context of the story and realized that this is an attempt to go after someone who revealed criminal activity by the President. While the Administration is probably correct that the whistleblower violated the law, they aren’t exactly neutral observers here.

Former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray is defying a gag-order and publishing torture memos on his blog relating to the coordination between the Uzbek, British, and American governments. As Kos says, it’s brutal :

Last year the US gave half a billion dollars in aid to Uzbekistan, about a quarter of it military aid. Bush and Powell repeatedly hail Karimov as a friend and ally. Yet this regime has at least seven thousand prisoners of conscience; it is a one party state without freedom of speech, without freedom of media, without freedom of movement, without freedom of assembly, without freedom of religion. It practices, systematically, the most hideous tortures on thousands. Most of the population live in conditions precisely analogous with medieval serfdom.

Uzbekistan’s geo-strategic position is crucial. It has half the population of the whole of Central Asia. It alone borders all the other states in a region which is important to future Western oil and gas supplies. It is the regional military power. That is why the US is here, and here to stay. Contractors at the US military bases are extending the design life of the buildings from ten to twenty five years.

Democracy and human rights are, despite their protestations to the contrary, in practice a long way down the US agenda here. Aid this year will be slightly less, but there is no intention to introduce any meaningful conditionality. Nobody can believe this level of aid – more than US aid to all of West Africa – is related to comparative developmental need as opposed to political support for Karimov. While the US makes token and low-level references to human rights to appease domestic opinion, they view Karimov’s vicious regime as a bastion against fundamentalism. He – and they – are in fact creating fundamentalism. When the US gives this much support to a regime that tortures people to death for having a beard or praying five times a day, is it any surprise that Muslims come to hate the West?
. . .
The torture record of the Uzbek security services could hardly be more widely known. Plainly there are, at the very least, reasonable grounds for believing the material is obtained under torture. There is helpful guidance at Article 3 of the UN Convention;
“The competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the state concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.” While this article forbids extradition or deportation to Uzbekistan, it is the right test for the present question also.

On the usefulness of the material obtained, this is irrelevant. Article 2 of the Convention, to which we are a party, could not be plainer:

“No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.”

Nonetheless, I repeat that this material is useless – we are selling our souls for dross. It is in fact positively harmful. It is designed to give the message the Uzbeks want the West to hear. It exaggerates the role, size, organisation and activity of the IMU and its links with Al Qaida. The aim is to convince the West that the Uzbeks are a vital cog against a common foe, that they should keep the assistance, especially military assistance, coming, and that they should mute the international criticism on human rights and economic reform.

Here’s what that partnership looks like in action :

At the Khuderbegainov trial I met an old man from Andizhan. Two of his children had been tortured in front of him until he signed a confession on the family’s links with Bin Laden. Tears were streaming down his face. I have no doubt they had as much connection with Bin Laden as I do. This is the standard of the Uzbek intelligence services.

And this is the standard that we’re living under with a President who looks the other way while children are being tortured.

To the fools out there who routinely praise the President for having the “moral clarity” to call terrorists evil, how can you reconcile that with the chummy relationship he’s made with tyrants? The lesser of two evils argument doesn’t really work when you chide anyone whose view of fighting terrorism is more nuanced than “smoke them out of their holes” and you verbally fellate the President for being “right on the only issue that matters”. You’re either in favor of moral relativism or you’re not.

Of course, coming up with a worldview that’s logically consistent has it’s troubles, since it would naturally lead to having an open, honest debate about whether or not the United States should be torturing people. Which is why the Administration (and their sycophantic toadies) ignore the substance of the seemingly-neverending stream of torture memos in the hopes of running out the clock (ie. news cycle) with their vehement denials to misstated questioning.

But to take things back to square one, it should be repeated again and again that this would all stop if the President wanted it to. With a phonecall to the Uzbek government, he could threated to eliminate foreign aid until human rights abuses ceased. With a stroke of his pen, he could fire Donald Rumsfeld and replace him with a Defense Secretary serious about curbing detainee abuse. Working with Congressional leaders, he could cooperate with stymied investigations into torture. For the most powerful man in the world, the torture of innocent people could be eliminated tomorrow if he cared enough.

Why he hasn’t done any of these things leads us back to the eternal debate about the presidency of George W. Bush. Is he so isolated from bad news that he has no idea about the abuses that are happening on his watch? Is he a callous monster who thinks the torture of innocents is justified by the “greater good” of whatever the hell he’s trying to accomplish? Or is it a combination of the two? Either way, I don’t know how much longer we can afford to have the reputation of the United States tarnished while we ponder the endless “idiot or asshole?” debate.

With the President willfully breaking the law to go around the FISA court’s apparently crippling requirement that survelliance warrants be applied for within 72 hours, how far did the President’s cooperation go before he decided to declare himself above the law? I see that there have been some warrants rejected and/or modified by the court. Is there a record of requests being tardy? Was there any serious negotiations by the Administration to get the three days changed to a week? Is the “Six Degrees of Osama Bin Laden” game not sufficient justification for the members of the FISA court? If so, what reasons, if any, are the Bushies giving for spying?

I’m sure some of these questions have been already answered by the daily twists in this case, but I’m really looking forward to seeing them answered in Congressional investigations. An incriminating soundbite is worth more than a million hard-hitting NYT exposes. Once the hearings begin, I’m gonna make a game out of it. Every time an Administration official invokes his/her fifth amendment right to hide the truth behind denying the American people their fourth amendment rights, I’m gonna take a shot of gin (I can’t do whiskey or tequilla). If I’m lucky, I won’t even remember who this “Bush” guy is by the end of the hearings.

By the way, what part of “the President ordered subordinates to break the law” do the wingnuts not understand? I know they’re all about defending Joe McCarthy now, but I was still under the impression that the only people who still defended Nixon were the Watergate “experts” (I prefer the term “criminals”) that were trotted out a few months ago to call Mark Felt an asshole. What maligned historical figure is next up for the GOP spit-shine treatment? George Wallace for blocking the integration of Alabama schools? Andrew Jackson for the trail of tears? Is there anything too embarrasing to get the historical revisionism treatment? Perhaps we should ask Trent Lott and Ollie North.

C’mon guys. If you want to spread an internet meme, you should pass it on to more than one person at a time. I’m gonna steal the ball from my buddies John, Jane, & Kevin, and add the bonus question from Peter Daou :

Four jobs you’ve had in your life: Sandwich artist, dishwasher, movie theater projectionist, systems administrator

Four movies you could watch over and over: Goodfellas, The Wizard of Oz, Rushmore, Citizen Kane

Four places you’ve lived: Tulsa & Stillwater, Oklahoma, Burbank & Pasadena, California

Four TV shows you love to watch: Arrested Development, The Twilight Zone, The Kids in the Hall, The Daily Show

Four places you’ve been on vacation: Italy, Venezuela, New York, Hawaii

Four websites you visit daily: Boing Boing, Eschaton, Google News, Washington Monthly

Four of your favorite foods: Sushi, Saag Paneer, Ice Cream, Salmon

Four places you’d rather be: Riding my bike along the beach, skiiing on a decent slope with perfect snow, my wedding reception (it was a blast), my new home completely unpacked and fixed up.

Four albums you can’t live without: The Beatles’ “Abbey Road”, The Ramones’ “Leave Home”, something more recent like Superdrag’s “In The Valley Of Dying Stars” or the first Ben Folds Five album, & probably something fun from the 30’s like Harry Reser, Cliff Edwards, or George Formby.

Since this is the meme of four, I’m going to pass this on to Ezra Klein, Oliver Willis, Atrios, & my friend in TMW-land, Tom Tomorrow.

With only two days left to milk the “War on Christmas” blogging season, let me just make a point that I’ve been hinting at in previous posts and just wanna get off my chest. This whole Fox News-led crusade against liberal strawmen is embarrasing to watch, but it’s also a part of a much bigger problem. It’s a pretty well-known bit of trivia that the United States is one of the most religious countries in the Western world, but it seems to me that this all depends on how broadly you define “religious” and whether American’s willingness to describe themselves as religious actually translates into serious religious devotion. So while I’m a little unsure about America’s piety, there’s one thing that seems obvious to me : America is fraught with religious insecurity.

At least, that seems to be the thread that ties so many religiously-fueled controversies together. Putting the Ten Commandments in court houses, “intelligent” design in public schools, “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, and this absurd war against anyone who says “Happy Holidays” are really just facets of the same issue if you think about it. For a paranoid minority of Americans, it’s not enough to live in a country that values religious freedom, they want secular aspects of our society to reflect their religious views.

The truly remarkable thing about it, however, is how they’ve found a way to be on the offsensive while convincing the American public that they’re playing defense. Yeah, having an irrational persecution complex helps, but it’s also damn good politics. Religious activists around this country are actively trying to make changes throughout our society, yet their rhetoric (which always seems to be taken at face value) is that they’re somehow “preserving” some phantom aspects of our culture that have only existed in their faulty memories.

But if you really think it through, this modern crusade isn’t just something to get pissed off about. It’s sorta funny and sad. If we take them at face value and cede the point that our religious society is in danger of crumbling, then their tactics for reversing this trend are woefully pathetic. How do they propose returning America to her righteous Christian greatness? Having children mindlessly recite the words “under God” every morning? Making sure department stores use the word “Christmas”? Pathetic.

Is your faith so fragile that it’s in danger of crumbling in the face of mild secularism? Are tolerance and diversity interfering in the relationship between you and your lord? If the only thing stopping your religious worldview from gaining acceptance is a few radical judges who stopped you from displaying a giant chunk of granite emblazoned with an ancient list of rules you probably can’t even recite from memory, is there a chance that maybe your beliefs aren’t as strong as you’d have us all believe?

So if you find yourself in the company of those who are fighting to garnish our country with tiny bits of Jesus, please do us all a favor. Stop making us the targets of your insecurity and weakness. If your views aren’t strong enough to withstand engaging with a secular society, perhaps it’s time for a little self-reflection. If you need to see the words “In God We Trust” written on money, then you’re just fighting a losing battle with your own self-doubt. It’s one thing to battle your own demons in the public square, but I’m tired of being made the boogey man. Your spiritual weakness is not my fault.

Besides, if you’re truly sincere in your beliefs, there are much better ways to proselytize than expending so much energy on unimportant crap. For example, you could try engaging people in coversations about your religion and explain why you believe the way you do. It worked for Jesus.

I’ve gotta hand it to you Mr. President. You may be unable to defeat an insurgency, but you can really beat a metaphor to death :

This new threat required us to think and act differently. And as the 9/11 Commission pointed out, to prevent this from happening again, we need to connect the dots before the enemy attacks, not after.
. . .
You know, there’s an interesting debate in Washington, and you’re part of it, that says, well, they didn’t connect the
dots prior to September the 11th — “they” being not only my administration, but previous administrations. And I understand that debate. I’m not being critical of you bringing this issue up and discussing it, but there was a — you might remember, if you take a step back, people were pretty adamant about hauling people up to testify, and wondering how come the dots weren’t connected.

Well, the Patriot Act helps us connect the dots. And now the United States Senate is going to let this bill expire. Not the Senate — a minority of senators. And I want senators from New York or Los Angeles or Las Vegas to go home and explain why these cities are safer. It is inexcusable to say, on the one hand, connect the dots, and not give us a chance to do so. We’ve connected the dots, or trying to connect the dots with the NSA program. And, again, I understand the press and members of the United States Congress saying, are you sure you’re safeguarding civil liberties. That’s a legitimate question, and an important question. And today I hope I’ll help answer that. But we’re connecting dots as best as we possibly can.

Now Mr. President, I’ve got a homework assignment for you.Sometime over the holidays, you need to read the two big 9/11 reports, the Congressional Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Failures and the one published by the 9/11 Commission (which can be found at Barnes & Noble). By “read”, I don’t mean having an aide verbally paraphrase the portions of the executive summary that agree with your worldview, but actually read the whole thing. If there are any big words, try sounding them out slowly and look up the definitions if you aren’t sure what they mean. When you’re done, come back and read the rest of this post.

[ Pause here to read the 9/11 reports and reflect on their contents. ]

Wow, that was a tough one, huh? What did you think? Do you think there are things that our government could have done better? Yeah, that’s right, we should “connect the dots”. Do you know what that phrase means? Look at the picture below :

Now if the picture above was the intelligence failures described in the 9/11 reports, what do you think those dots would represent? No, they don’t represent “evildoers”, they represent bits of intelligence. Number one, for example, might represent the “Phoenix Memo” that described a possible terrorist plot by terrorists to hijack a plane and crash it into CIA headquarters. Number two, could be the reports of suspicious men in flight training schools who wanted to learn to fly 747’s but didn’t want to know how to land. The third could be the FAA directive to commercial airliners that terrorists may try to board planes.The fourth could be the “chatter” that resulted in the PDB “Bin Laden determined to strike in US”. And so on….

So how do we put these disparate pieces of information together? Yeah, you connect the dots, but how does that work? In some places it means making sure any Arabic communications have been translated. In others it means ensuring that information is shared between various government agencies. And in others, it means cutting through bureaucratic red tape. And once those lines are drawn from one to two to three, then it means having someone step back with a view of the big picture and say “Hey, that’s George Washington”.

Which leads me to why I think you need a refresher course in dot-connecting. What happens when you order warrantless wiretaps, confiscate library records, and spy on mosques and peace protests? It doesn’t make the picture easier to see, it just adds a lot more dots. We don’t need to be making the whole thing more complicated, we need to make it easier to draw lines. That’s why the NSA wiretaps and the PATRIOT ACT are bad ideas. Yes, some portions of the PATRIOT ACT make it easier to draw the lines, but they don’t do much good when they’re lumped together with stuff that just makes the dot-connecting more confusing.

Did you like the movie Die Hard? I thought it totally kicked ass, but at the end of the day, it was just a movie. In real life, the bad guys don’t go wandering around giving monologues about their plans and motives. But that’s what I’m afraid is motivating your current obsession with collecting intelligence. Stop me if I’m wrong here, but it seems like you’re endlessly looking for a “smoking gun” like a wiretapped phone call saying “Tomorrow morning, me and my eighteen friends are gonna hijack planes and crash them into buildings. Don’t tell anybody”. But all this waiting around for something that isn’t likely to happen is fraught with two problems. Number one, you’re collecting so many phone calls and emails that there aren’t enough people around to translate them quickly enough. Number two, your search for obvious intelligence may lead to ignoring mountains of vague intelligence that could lead to the same conclusion.

Which all leads me back to the 9/11 reports that I had you read earlier. Remember the conclusions they reached? It wasn’t that they didn’t have enough information to foil the hijackers, but that they didn’t, say it with me, Connect. The. Dots. So what is the lesson here? That the problems leading up to 9/11 weren’t with intelligence collection but with analysis of that evidence. Got it?

From our “the more things change…” department, here’s a rerun of David Frost’s 1977 interview with Richard Nixon. See if you can notice any similarities between Nixon’s views on executive power and the view of the Bush Administration :

FROST: So what in a sense, you’re saying is that there are certain situations, and the Huston Plan or that part of it was one of them, where the president can decide that it’s in the best interests of the nation or something, and do something illegal.

NIXON: Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.

FROST: By definition.

NIXON: Exactly. Exactly. If the president, for example, approves something because of the national security, or in this case because of a threat to internal peace and order of significant magnitude, then the president’s decision in that instance is one that enables those who carry it out, to carry it out without violating a law. Otherwise they’re in an impossible position.
. . .
FROST: Pulling some of our discussions together, as it were; speaking of the Presidency and in an interrogatory filed with the Church Committee, you stated, quote, “It’s quite obvious that there are certain inherently government activities, which, if undertaken by the sovereign in protection of the interests of the nation’s security are lawful, but which if undertaken by private persons, are not.” What, at root, did you have in mind there?

NIXON: Well, what I, at root I had in mind I think was perhaps much better stated by Lincoln during the War between the States. Lincoln said, and I think I can remember the quote almost exactly, he said, “Actions which otherwise would be unconstitutional, could become lawful if undertaken for the purpose of preserving the Constitution and the Nation.”

Now that’s the kind of action I’m referring to. Of course in Lincoln’s case it was the survival of the Union in wartime, it’s the defense of the nation and, who knows, perhaps the survival of the nation.

FROST: But there was no comparison was there, between the situation you faced and the situation Lincoln faced, for instance?

NIXON: This nation was torn apart in an ideological way by the war in Vietnam, as much as the Civil War tore apart the nation when Lincoln was president. Now it’s true that we didn’t have the North and the South?

FROST: But when you said, as you said when we were talking about the Huston Plan, you know, “If the president orders it, that makes it legal”, as it were: Is the president in that sense?is there anything in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights that suggests the president is that far of a sovereign, that far above the law?

NIXON: No, there isn’t. There’s nothing specific that the Constitution contemplates in that respect. I haven’t read every word, every jot and every title, but I do know this: That it has been, however, argued that as far as a president is concerned, that in war time, a president does have certain extraordinary powers which would make acts that would otherwise be unlawful, lawful if undertaken for the purpose of preserving the nation and the Constitution, which is essential for the rights we’re all talking about.

And this is what you get if you fast-forward thirty years, put the President in a defensive position, and take away his ability to form complete sentences. One of my favorite of the President’s non-answer answers :

Q Thank you, Mr. President. I wonder if you can tell us today, sir, what, if any, limits you believe there are or should be on the powers of a President during a war, at wartime? And if the global war on terror is going to last for decades, as has been forecast, does that mean that we’re going to see, therefore, a more or less permanent expansion of the unchecked power of the executive in American society?

THE PRESIDENT: First of all, I disagree with your assertion of “unchecked power.”

Q Well —

THE PRESIDENT: Hold on a second, please. There is the check of people being sworn to uphold the law, for starters. There is oversight. We’re talking to Congress all the time, and on this program, to suggest there’s unchecked power is not listening to what I’m telling you. I’m telling you, we have briefed the United States Congress on this program a dozen times.

This is an awesome responsibility to make decisions on behalf of the American people, and I understand that, Peter. And we’ll continue to work with the Congress, as well as people within our own administration, to constantly monitor programs such as the one I described to you, to make sure that we’re protecting the civil liberties of the United States. To say “unchecked power” basically is ascribing some kind of dictatorial position to the President, which I strongly reject.

I’m no public relations expert, but I think the “I’m not a dictator” talking point could use a little refining.

Jeez. I take a few days off to move and when I get back, the word “impeachment” is being floated around. I guess I need to get my outrage-meter recalibrated, because when I first heard about the NSA wiretapping story, my first thought was that this was par for the course in this Administration. Of course, after adjusting to the revelation that the President thinks it’s okay to torture people, the only way a Bush transgression could raise my ire is if the President was “caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy”. After reading John Dean’s comment that Bush is ““the first President to admit to an impeachable offense.”, the seriousness of the President’s crimes becomes apparent.

But like many Americans, I’m still a little shell-shocked from the last impeachment to consider the prospects of another one. Hilzoy sums it up nicely :

I am normally extremely wary of talking about impeachment. I think that impeachment is a trauma for the country, and that it should only be considered in extreme cases. Moreover, I think that the fact that Clinton was impeached raises the bar as far as impeaching Bush: two traumas in a row is really not good for the country, and even though my reluctance to go through a second impeachment benefits the very Republicans who needlessly inflicted the first on us, I don’t care. It’s bad for the country, and that matters most.

But I have a high bar, not a nonexistent one. And for a President to order violations of the law meets my criteria for impeachment. This is exactly what got Nixon in trouble: he ordered his subordinates to obstruct justice. To the extent that the two cases differ, the differences make what Bush did worse: after all, it’s not as though warrants are hard to get, or the law makes no provision for emergencies. Bush could have followed the law had he wanted to. He chose to set it aside.

And this is something that no American should tolerate. We claim to have a government of laws, not of men. That claim means nothing if we are not prepared to act when a President (or anyone else) places himself above the law. If the New York Times report is true, then Bush should be impeached.

This was, as you can tell, written before Bush openly boasted of his law-breaking. Since there’s no disputing the facts here, the biggest question on the table is whether the Congress will do their duty to protect the Constitution from an executive branch that wants to destroy it.

Koufax award nominations are open. Give some props to the good people at Wampum for hosting things again and nominate your favorites.

Let freedom reign, we’ve turned a corner, and other stuff you’ve heard a thousand times before :

Iraqis of all sects, creeds and political persuasions swarmed to the polls Thursday in overwhelming numbers, setting aside their differences on a day of rare optimism for this strife-torn nation.

They were casting ballots for a wide array of political groupings offering starkly opposing visions of what the future Iraq should look like. But those turning out to vote for their first full-term legislature since the fall of Saddam Hussein spoke only of their hopes that this election would finally heal the bitter divisions that have threatened to tear their country apart.

“This election is going to change everything, because everyone realizes now that now that the only way to take power is through the ballot box,” said Abdullah Mohammed, 32, a television technician casting his ballot in the Baghdad neighborhood of Yarmouk. “This election is going to unite all Iraqis.”

Election officials said that more than 10 million of Iraq’s 15 million registered voters had cast ballots in this third and most significant of the three landmark elections this year — a million more than in October’s referendum on a new constitution and nearly 2 million more than in January’s election.

The high turnout boosted hopes that the next Iraqi government will enjoy enough popular support to take the sting out of the Sunni-led insurgency and permit U.S. troops to start returning home next year. Swelling the numbers were large numbers of Sunnis, whose boycott of January’s poll left them shut out of power and opened the door to the sectarian rivalries that have helped fuel much of the violence.
. . .
But by the standards of an average day in Iraq, this one was remarkably peaceful. The U.S. command said there were 52 attacks, fewer than usual, with 18 of those against polling centers, The New York Times reported.

What a remarkable achievement. With a relative lack of violence, I’m sure the Iraqi people are ready to take over their own security, right? Well….

Because of a complete ban on traffic to prevent suicide bombers, Iraqis walked to the polls, as they did on the two previous occasions. Police and army soldiers kept watch.

That works too. Now if we can only ban all transportation permanently, Iraq will finally be ready for the self-sustaining democracy we’re giving them.

Seriously though, I’m happy for the Iraqi people. I’m sure the high turnout is due to the rumors that American withdrawal will come as soon as the Iraqis are “ready” (whatever the hell that means). Somebody should tell them that there’s a better chance of getting attacked by dinosaurs than a timely American withdrawal from the Middle East. The fact that anyone believes there’s a chance that we’re getting out of there is pretty adorable. Plenty of Americans are buying into that little fairy tale too.

You don’t build permanent military bases if you’re planning to stay temporarily, kids. Now go to your room and don’t come back until you’ve read the Project for a New American Century. Once we’ve got a democratic country in that region, it’ll spread freedom, puppies, and Jesus throughout the Middle East. After all, just look at how well it’s worked for Israel.

For those of you curious about how far a major corporation will sink in order to screw over its workers, prepare yourselves for a shocker :

A federal grand jury in Los Angeles this morning returned a 53-count indictment against Ralphs Grocery Company, the owner of about 300 Southland supermarkets, alleging that the company secretly rehired hundreds of locked-out employees under false names and false social security numbers during the 2003-2004 grocery workers labor dispute.

The indictment alleges that Ralphs required rehired locked-out employees to work under false identities to hide its illegal activities from labor unions, the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration and the National Labor Relations Board. According to the indictment, in secretly rehiring hundreds of locked-out employees under false identities, Ralphs falsified thousands of employment records, including forms filed with government agencies such as employment eligibility forms (INS Forms I-9), employee withholding allowance certificates (IRS Forms W-4), and income tax statements (IRS Forms W-2). The indictment also alleges that Ralphs falsified reports it submitted to trust funds responsible for providing pension and health benefits for current and retired grocery workers. In addition, Ralphs allegedly issued thousands of weekly payroll checks under the false names used by rehired workers, and then allowed these workers to cash their paychecks at Ralphs stores as means of concealing and promoting the ongoing use of false identities.

The indictment alleges that, in combination with a secret revenue sharing agreement that Ralphs executed with its two main competitors, Ralphs’ covert rehiring of locked-out workers was intended to better Ralphs’ position in the 2003-2004 labor dispute by, among other things, mitigating the financial and operational hardships of a complete lockout. The indictment alleges that Ralphs’ resulting ability to withstand a lengthier lockout provided it with increased leverage over the labor unions, whose financial resources were exhausted by the end of the lockout.
. . .
Ralphs allegedly took numerous steps to conceal its rehiring of locked-out employees, including assigning those employees to stores far from their normal workplaces, moving them from store to store, and requiring them to wear name tags bearing their false names. The indictment alleges that Ralphs’ illegal conduct was the result of “tacit approval, if not encouragement, by Ralphs’ senior management to hire locked-out and striking employees as temporary replacement workers.”
. . .
The indictment specifically charges Ralphs with conspiracy to commit three objectives: to use false social security numbers, to commit identity fraud, and to falsify and conceal material facts in matters within the jurisdiction of the Internal Revenue Service and Social Security Administration. Additionally, the indictment alleges 14 counts of causing the use of false social security numbers, five counts of identity fraud, one count of falsifying and concealing material facts in matters within the jurisdiction of the Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration, one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering, 11 counts of money laundering, 16 counts of false statements relating to an employee benefit plan, one count of concealment of facts relating to an employee benefit plan, two counts of false statements to the NLRB and one count of obstruction of justice.

According to what I heard on the radio, some of the almost 1000 scabs might be in legal trouble as well. Ralph’s is already trying to spin this as the work of a fwe rogue store managers, but that conveniently overlooks the fact that this was going on at approx. 90% of their stores.