I Hate What You Just Said

Given how corrupt and ineffectual the federal government has been lately, adding yet another government office hardly seems like the solution to our problems.

But this isn’t a bad idea. From Geoffrey R. Stone, in the NYT:

Presidents have a wide range of official advisers. There is a secretary of defense, a secretary of labor, a national security adviser, to name just a few. The next president should create a new executive branch position: a civil liberties adviser. Within the highest councils of every administration there should be a respected public official whose charge it is to defend our civil liberties against all comers.

Ideally, people like the members of congress, the attorney general, and the president should make it their business to protect our civil liberties. You know, because it is sort of their job. But in warrantless-wiretapping, Patriot-Act America, having an official solely dedicated to protecting our constitutional rights might help. After nearly 8 years of the Bush assault on civil liberties, we need all of the help we can get. And let’s just hope that if we do get an official civil liberties adviser position, the appointment will be made by this guy.

* * *

“I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.”

-Simone de Beauvoir

I would venture a guess that most Americans think that the Environmental Protection Agency is involved in, you know, protecting the environment.

Not under the Bush administration.

Take this example. According to today’s Washington Post, last December the EPA tried to submit a proposed rule to “limit greenhouse-gas emissions on the grounds that they pose a threat to public welfare.”

The EPA emailed the proposal over to the White House for inspection. According to the Post,

[U]pon learning that EPA had hit the “send” button just minutes earlier, the White House called again to demand that the e-mail be recalled.

“I’m sorry, Mr. President, I just sent that official, scientifically-vetted policy proposal seconds ago!”

Not to worry, the White House has a plan for this kind of thing. The New York Times explains what happened next:

The White House . . . refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.

“What email? Anyone see an email from the EPA about CO2 around here?”

“Do you mean the study that was the direct result of the 2007 Supreme Court ruling that stated ‘greenhouse gases are a pollutant’ and subsequently ‘ordered federal environmental officials to re-examine their refusal to limit emissions of the gases from cars and trucks’?

“Yeah, that one.”

“Nope, haven’t seen it anywhere.”

Don’t worry, America; the Bush administration is in the reality business. Everything is going to be OK in the end:

Over the past five days, the officials said, the White House successfully put pressure on the E.P.A. to eliminate large sections of the original analysis that supported regulation, including a finding that tough regulation of motor vehicle emissions could produce $500 billion to $2 trillion in economic benefits over the next 32 years. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

If you’re in the White House and see a plan that makes us healthier, saves the environment, AND is good for the economy, there is only one thing to do: Delete.

Steny Hoyer took some time off from fellating the Bush administration and the legal teams of several of the country’s major telecoms to gratify himself . . . with a goose-stepping interview over at Politico. The subject? What a great job he and the Democrats did on that FISA legislation that just passed the House:

In an interview with Politico on Monday, Hoyer called the FISA legislation a “significant victory” for the Democratic Party — one that neutralized an issue Republicans might have been able to use against Democrats in November while still, in his view, protecting the civil liberties of American citizens.

Hunter, over at DailyKos responds:

Call me old fashioned, but I’m suspicious about anything “protects” the civil liberties of American citizens by acknowledging that those civil liberties were being violated — then declaring amnesty for those acts. Or by protecting those civil liberties by granting that they can be taken from you using secret evidence, presented secretly, banning review, explicitly banning judicial leeway to determine whether laws were violated, or civil liberties infringed upon, or to determine anything at all but whether the administration said it was OK to do the thing in question. Oh — and that evidence is to be presented by the same people who broke the law in the first place, of course.

Greenwald is in the mix too:

In other words, Democrats achieved a “significant victory” because — by giving Republicans everything they demanded — Republicans are no longer able to criticize Democrats on this issue. What a shrewd strategy: “if we comply with all their demands, then they can’t criticize us for anything.” That’s the Democratic Party’s plan for winning, according to Hoyer.

I wish we had a few more like Chris Dodd in Congress.

Steny Hoyer, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid rally the Democrats under a new banner:

This just gives me the warm and fuzzies:

A new poll of citizens’ attitudes about torture in 19 nations finds Americans among the most accepting of the practice. Although a slight majority say torture should be universally prohibited, 44 percent think torture of terrorist suspects should be allowed, and more than one in 10 think torture should generally be allowed.

Thank you, Jack Bauer.

The Rude Pundit explains how I feel about the Democratic compromise capitulation on the FISA bill.

From James Wolcott:

[M]ovie reviewing now has its own Doug Feith,* a blogger who goes by the handle “Dirty Harry,” which is rather sad, considering how far Clint Eastwood himself has evolved beyond such bullet-chewing vigilantism. It’s like being a fifty year old who recreates scenes from Red Dawn in the backyard, reliving those glorious imaginary guerrilla days of adolescence while fending off a coronary. [. . .]

*a.k.a. The Stupidest Fucking Guy on the Face of the Earth

The White House website contains a handy “fact sheet” titled “Reducing Gas Prices and Foreign Oil Dependence.” (This administration cares about “facts” all of a sudden? C’mon, guys. Give us a little credit. How stupid do you think we are? Wait - don’t answer that).

“Fact Sheet” sez:

Today, President Bush called on Congress to help American families by removing barriers to domestic production of oil and gasoline. For many Americans, there is no more pressing concern than high gasoline prices.

Mm hm.

Price of oil on the eve of the Iraq War: about $30 per barrel.

Price of oil today: about $130 per barrel.

Just sayin’.

So - what is the “solution?” “Fact Sheet” tells us the solution lies in a bunch of proposals that will expand domestic oil exploration in fragile environments and eventually add to carbon emissions global warming. And these long-term proposals will do nothing to lower the price at your local filling station tomorrow, next week, or next year. But the additional kick in the pants is that the “solution” to our oil problems will also…

wait for it…

wait for it…

add to the historically obscene profits of oil companies. You know - oil companies - those guys who have already greatly benefited from the massive rise in oil prices in the first place. They’ll benefit from the “solution” to the problem, too.

When Bush and Cheney were, ahem, “elected,” there were plenty of people who were a little squeamish about having two oil men running the executive branch. But did anyone really expect this? An eight-year oilgasm?

I think if we want “facts,” it might be better to consult, say, The Sierra Club.

The Boston Globe reports that the first habeas petition that hit the federal appeals court system has gone against the government:

In the first Guantanamo Bay case to be reviewed, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in favor of Huzaifa Parhat, a Chinese Muslim known as a Uighur, undermining the basis for his more than six years in detention.

The appeals court directed the U.S. military to release Parhat, to transfer him or to hold a new proceeding promptly in light of the appeals court’s ruling.

Considering that this man has been held at Guantanamo Bay for six years, this seems like pretty poor evidence:

Parhat never fought against the United States and the government concedes there’s no evidence he ever intended to. He has been held for six years because he is linked to a Chinese separatist group that the military says has some ties to the al-Qaida terrorist network.

Government attorneys say he can be held under the law authorizing military force against anyone who “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks” of 2001.

Seriously, that’s it? A guy whose enemy is Communist China just spent 6 years in a hole and the government admits that he never attempted, nor desired, to attack the US or our allies?

And before anyone in Congress starts wailing that a bunch of incense-burning, sitar-crazed, liberal judges were “legislating from the bench,” they should check out who the judges were:

Sentelle is an appointee of President Reagan, Garland was appointed by President Clinton and Griffith was appointed by President George W. Bush.

You just have to read this one.

Back in a 2004 State of the Union speech, President Shrub announced that the US was in the process of creating an Arabic news network that would “cut through the barriers of hateful propaganda” and present a truthier image of the US to the Muslim world.

Bush’s reference to “hateful propaganda” was a thinly-veiled reference to the Qatar-based world news organization, Al-Jazzera, which had a pesky way of talking about things like war crimes and torture–things that the US would never do.

Here’s the Plan:

Step One: Use Taxpayer Dollars to Create the Fox News of the Arab World.

So far, U.S. taxpayers have spent nearly $500 million to fund those broadcasts. The television station, called Alhurra, and the radio network, Sawa, were meant to provide an American perspective on world events and counter the wave of global criticism that had been building against the Bush administration since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Step Two: Find Qualified Staff.

Alhurra’s reporters and commentators operate with little oversight. Alhurra’s president, Brian Conniff, does not speak Arabic and is unable to understand anything broadcast on the radio and television networks he is paid to manage. Conniff has no journalism experience and worked previously as a government auditor. His news director, Daniel Nassif, grew up in Lebanon and has no background in television. Before coming to the network, he helped promote the political aspirations in Washington of a Lebanese Christian former general.

Step Three: Create Appropriate Oversight.

During a visit to Alhurra’s studios in June, reporters, producers, cameramen and technical staff were busy preparing broadcasts for an audience half-way around the world. Conniff, who is the president of Alhurra and Radio Sawa, sat in on a morning editorial meeting but could not understand it – his Middle Eastern staff discussed the day’s stories in Arabic and no one offered Conniff a simultaneous translation.

“There is no adult supervision there by people who know what is on the actual broadcasts,” said William Rugh, who served as U.S. Ambassador in Yemen and the United Arab Emirates. “You need bilingual managers who understand both languages and cultures and understand journalism.”

Financial accountability also appears to be lacking. In its four years, the network has been unable to provide full documentation to auditors to account for its spending, according to two people familiar with the records and a 2006 report by the Government Accountability Office.

Step Four: Use this Finely-tuned Organ of Propaganda to Win Hearts and Minds

When Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah railed against the U.S. government and threatened Israel, Alhurra carried it live and unedited.

When U.S. combat deaths in Iraq surpassed 4,000 in March, Radio Sawa interviewed an anonymous militant who told listeners: “Occupation is occupation. We need to resist them and kill more than 4,000.”

In March, Alhurra aired a documentary on the “The Crusades” — a series of military campaigns that Christian Europe waged against the Muslim world during the Middle Ages.

Step Five: Get Sweeeet Haircuts.

Some low-level staff members were highly paid, including a hairdresser from Lebanon who coiffed the anchors for $100,000 a year.