Let's do it!

"I think that the House has an absolute obligation to open an inquiry, and I hope there will be a resolution to investigate her. And I think this is a big deal. I don't think the speaker of the House can lie to the country on national security matters," the [Gingrich] said in an interview with ABC Radio. |CNN|

The up-is-downism, the sheer chutzpah, the very idea of investigating Pelosi for allegedly lying about the content of secret briefings given during a period when the Bush administration was publicly lying the country into a war, well, you've got to admire it.

But since a thorough investigation will get more torture documents into the public record, I say go for it. And good luck arguing against those other investigations once the Dems prove willing to investigate their own leadership.

Adding: As long as I'm torture briefing blogging this morning, this is exactly right:

It can’t possibly be the operating assumption of the US government that members of congress and their senior staff are traitors. And if there’s something that genuinely needs to be kept secret for national security purposes, then you have to assume that honest and patriotic members of congress aren’t going to leak damaging information. But it’s clear that in the case of this waterboarding business, there was no real security need for all this operational secrecy. Instead, the Bush administration wanted to keep it secret because it was illegal and if people found out that it was happening they were likely to blow the whistle on the illegal torturing that was happening. But helping powerful people cover-up illegal activity is precisely what classification isn’t supposed to accomplish. |Yglesias|

Excerpts from Letter VI (declassified August 19, 1662)

"One of the methods," resumed the monk, "in which we reconcile these apparent contradictions, is by the interpretation of some phrase or other. Thus, Pope Gregory XIV. decided that assassins are not worthy to enjoy the benefit of sanctuary in churches, and ought to be dragged out of them; and yet our four-and-twenty elders affirm that 'The penalty of this bull is not incurred by all those that kill in treachery.' This may appear to you a contradiction; but we get over this by interpreting the word assassin as follows: 'Are assassins unworthy of sanctuary in churches? Yes, by the bull of Gregory XIV. they are. But by the word assassins we understand those that have received money to murder one; and accordingly, such as kill without taking any reward for the deed, but merely to oblige their friends, do not come under tho category of assassins.

---

"I see very well how that follows from the doctrine of Vasquez," said I. "But how would you answer this objection, that, in working out one's salvation, it would be as safe, according to Vasquez, to give no alms, provided one can muster as much ambition as to have no superfluity; as it is safe, according to the Gospel, to have no ambition at all, in order to have some superfluity for the purpose of alms-giving?"

"Why" returned he, "the answer would be, that both of these ways are safe, according to the Gospel; the one according to the Gospel in its more literal and obvious sense, and the other according to the same Gospel as interpreted by Vasquez. There you see the utility of interpretations. When the terms are so clear, however," he continued, " as not to admit of an interpretation, we have recourse to the observation of favourable circumstances. A single example will illustrate this: The popes have denounced excommunication on monks who lay aside their canonicals; our casuists, notwithstanding, put it as a question, 'On what occasions may a monk lay aside his religious habit without incurring excommunication?' They mention a number of cases in which they may, and among others the following: 'If he has laid it aside for an infamous purpose, such as to pick pockets or to go incognito into haunts of profligacy, meaning shortly after to resume it.' It is evident the bulls have no reference to cases of that description."

---

"And how does he reconcile that?" said I.

"By the most subtle of all the modern methods, and by the nicest possible application of probabilism," replied the monk. "You may recollect you were told the other day, that the affirmative and negative of most opinions have each, according to our doctors, some probability—enough, at least, to be followed with a safe conscience. Not that the pro and con are both true in the same sense—that is impossible—but only they are both probable, and therefore safe, as a matter of course. On this principle our worthy friend Diana remarks: 'To the decision of these three popes, which is contrary to my opinion, I answer, that they spoke in this way by adhering to the affirmative side—which, in fact, even in my judgment, is probable; but it does not follow from this that the negative may not have its probability too.' And in the same treatise, speaking of another subject on which he again differs from a pope, he says: 'The pope, I grant, has said it as the head of the Church; but his decision does not extend beyond the sphere of the probability of his own opinion.' Now, you perceive that this is not doing any harm to the opinions of the popes; such a thing would never be tolerated at Rome, where Diana is in high repute. For he does not say that what the popes have decided is not probable; but leaving their opinion within the sphere of probability, he merely says that the contrary is also probable."

"That is very respectful," said I.

---

"The difficulty lies in discovering probability in the converse of opinions manifestly good; this is an achievement which none but great men can attempt. Father Bauny excels in this department. It is really delightful to see that learned casuist examining, with characteristic ingenuity and subtilty, the negative and affirmative of the same question, and proving both of them to be right! Thus in the matter of priests, he says in one place: 'No law can be made to oblige the curates to say mass every day; for such a law would unquestionably expose them to the danger of saying it sometimes in mortal sin.' And yet in another part of the same treatise, he says, 'that priests who have received money for saying mass every day ought to say it every day, and that they cannot excuse themselves on the ground that they are not always in a fit state for the service; because it is in their power at all times to do penance, and if they neglect this they have themselves to blame for it, and not the person who makes them say mass.' And to relieve their minds from all scruples on the subject, he thus resolves the question: 'May a priest say mass on the same day in which he has committed a mortal sin of the worst kind, in the way of confessing himself beforehand?' Villabolos says he may not, because of his impurity; but Sancius says he may, without any sin; and I hold his opinion to be safe, and one which may be followed in practice."

---

"True," he replied; " but this shows you do not know another capital maxim of our fathers, 'that the laws of the Church lose their authority when they have gone into desuetude'... We know the present exigencies of the Church much better than the ancients could do. Were we to be so strict in excluding priests from the altar, you can understand there would not be such a great number of masses. Now, a multitude of masses brings such a revenue of glory to God and of good to souls, that I may venture to say, with Father Cellot, that there would not be too many priests, 'though not only all men and women, were that possible, but even inanimate bodies, and even brute beasts—bruta animalia—were transformed into priests to celebrate mass.'"

--Blaise Pascal, Provencial Letter #6. April 10, 1656.

How to celebrate Bastille Day

On July 14, 2004, in unclassified written testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, an Associate Deputy Attorney General explained the Department of Justice’s understanding of the substantive constitutional standards embodied in the Senate reservation to Article 16 of the Convention Against Torture. The official’s written testimony stated that under Supreme Court precedent, the substantive due process component of the Fifth Amendment protects against treatment that “shocks the conscience.” In addition, his testimony stated that under Supreme Court precedent, the Eighth Amendment protection against Cruel and Unusual Punishment has no application to the treatment of detainees where there has been no formal adjudication of guilt.

My emphasis.

Source: NARRATIVE DESCRIBING THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE OFFICE OF LEGAL COUNSEL’S OPINIONS ON THE CIA’S DETENTION AND INTERROGATION PROGRAM. SENATOR JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV. APRIL 22, 2009.

How to use torture

But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."

It was during this period that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees repeatedly — Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheik Muhammed 183 times in March 2003 — according to a newly released Justice Department document. |McClatchey|

$7.4 trillion

Jesus Fucking Christ. That's how much cash the U.S. Treasury has proffered in loan guarantees to the finance industry. That's about six months worth of GNP. Probably some of the debt will turn out good, but in the absence of any plan to help the people who owe money to the banks, the prospects look dim.

It's tempting to focus on the injustice. The owning class made this mess and now their plan seems to be to insulate themselves from the consequences by taking advantage of the fact that free market ideologues will control the White House for another two months. This situation is, as Jason said in comments, disgusting.

But, as with many of the policies of the Bush Administration, focusing on the injustice threatens to distract attention from the catastrophic stupidity. We're all in deep water here, but the financiers think that they can stay afloat by standing on the rest of our shoulders. What they don't see is that when the rest of us drown, they'll be stuck treading water with no shoreline in sight.

This far into the Bush Administration I had thought that my capacity for outrage had been exhausted. Guess not.

Just to throw in something constructive: Josh Marshall has the right idea about how we ought to be setting our priorities:

The bottom line, I think, is that the money has to go toward building real stuff -- primarily infrastructure -- and pumped into the hands of people who will immediately spend it, i.e., middle and lower-income people who will spend it on necessities. |TPM|

Also: By my calculations, the guv'mint has promised 300 times as much to the financial industry as the auto industry was asking for.

Executive experience

Palin abruptly fired Monegan on July 11 and later explained she wanted to take the Department of Public Safety in a different, more energetic direction. She replaced him with Chuck Kopp, the former Kenai police chief. But Kopp resigned Friday over questions about a reprimand he received after a sexual harassment complaint lodged against him in Kenai. |source|

Palin's constitutional authority

Palin apologists are saying that Palin had the constitutional authority to fire the trooper, and so did nothing improper. There's a whole lot of wrong in there, but focus on the bare assertion. Does Palin have that power?

Wooten, the employee in question, is a an Alaskan State Trooper employed by the Division of Public Safety. Troopers in Alaska aren't covered by a comprehensive collective bargaining agreement, but they do have a union, the PSEA, and it's clear from the PSEA's grievance update (PDF!) that PSEA represents terminated troopers in arbitration proceedings. That says to me that troopers are not at will employees, but can only be fired for cause.

This is confirmed by Title 2 of the Alaska Administrative Code, specifically by Articles 9 and 10 of Chapter 7.

Article 9 sets the rules for separation and demotion of public employees. Section 415 Dismissal says, in part, "The appointing authority may dismiss a permanent employee for just cause only." Section 400 provides that employees may be suspended with pay while alleged misconduct is investigated, and may be suspended without pay as a result of misconduct. Second, Section 420 says that an employee may be involuntarily demoted "for just cause". Article 10, specifically section 440, sets up an elaborate system of hearings to resolve disputes in cases of suspension, demotion, or dismissal.

Now, I'm no lawyer, and I don't know how this compares to other civil service legislation, but to me this reads pretty straightforwardly as a system in which the governor lacks the authority to fire ordinary state employees.

And, in fact, even insta-astronuts agree:

Monegan alleged shortly after his dismissal that it may have been partly due to his reluctance to fire an Alaska State Trooper, Mike Wooten, who had been involved in a divorce and child custody battle with Palin’s sister, Molly McCann.[47] In 2006, before Palin was governor, Wooten was briefly suspended for ten days for threatening to kill McCann’s (and Palin’s) father, tasering his 11-year-old stepson (at the stepson’s request), and violating game laws. After a union protest, the suspension was reduced to five days. |Right Thinking|

Four more wars! Four more wars!

From the fever swamp:

1) Russian officers are drunk, slow, lazy thieves and are no match for any Western professionals. Their relative success is due purely to Georgian military incompetence, like the failure to block the roads and organize tank ambushes in the mountainous terrain perfectly suited for such operations. Even so, the Georgians managed to down several Russian aircraft and that should present a clear picture of the pathetic condition of the Russian air force.

2) The current Kremlin dwarfs (whichever one is really in charge) are no Hitlers or Stalins, but paper pushers who won the lottery and who, most likely, will not risk a real military confrontation with the West. They will however continue probing to sense weaknesses and to search for small victorious engagements to entertain the revenge hungry masses.

Addendum: Relatedly, you may have heard about wingnut efforts to turn this into another front on the war on terror. As often happens, Yglesias has the defninitive takedown:

In Iraq too, the Kremlin’s projection of power down through Georgia will soon be felt. Take another look at the map. If Russia is allowed to extend its reach southwards, as in Soviet times, down the Caucasus to Iran’s borders, Moscow can support Iran in any showdown with the West. Iran, thus emboldened, will likely attempt to reassert itself in Iraq, Syria and, via Hezbollah, in Lebanon.

This is crazy and paranoid, but also ignorant. The former Soviet Republics of Central Asia already have friendly relations with Moscow — Georgia, the Baltics, and the current regime in Ukraine are trying to get out of the Russian orbit, but the ’stans largely aren’t. But beyond the specific details it’s the constant paranoia and hysteria of the right-wing that really comes through here — the entire American position in the world turns out to hang on the narrow thread of Georgia exercising effective sovereignty over South Ossetia and/or Mikhail Saakashvili’s ability to hold onto power in Tblisis. Nevermind that before he took office, nobody thought him taking power was especially vital to American interests (as opposed to, perhaps, the citizens of Georgia’s interest in democratic elections) or that it’s not clear why the fact that Georgia touches Iran would magically alter the nature of the US-Iran-Russia relationships. |Yglesias|

As I indicated above, this all seems correct. The only thing that I would add is that it's important not to underestimate the strategic vision of the neocons. Consider what would happen if, once a fairly durable cease-fire had been established, the U.S. used this opportunity to negotiate a deal with Georgia to base American troops there. Like magic, Iran and Russia would find that their security concerns suddenly dovetail. Rising tensions would, naturally, be taken as evidence that the neocons were right all along.

Wingnut funtime

Because I was out of icepicks I watched Hardball last night. Tom DeLay was on to argue that:

(1) George Bush has done terrible damage to the GOP brand, so much so that a Democrat is likely to win the White House.

(2) Iran's missile tests show that Iran is determined to continue its nuclear program.

(3) If we don't go to war with Iran, then Iran will eventually acquire nuclear weapons.

(4) We cannot allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.

(5) Thus, we must go to war with Iran.

(6) But we can't trust a Democratic President to start a new war.

(7) Hence, we need to get the war started before November.

When pressed, the only specific hostile act DeLay was willing to explicitly endorse was a blockade. I'd say that's scary enough.

This might be a slow enough boat to sink

Heh.

Context.

Oh my

At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials.

The accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged.

Those who took part, the officials said, included Alberto R. Gonzales, who served as White House counsel until early 2005; David S. Addington, who was the counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney and is now his chief of staff; John B. Bellinger III, who until January 2005 was the senior lawyer at the National Security Council; and Harriet E. Miers, who succeeded Mr. Gonzales as White House counsel. |NY Times|

In the universe that I used to live in, this would be a huge, huge, huge scandal.

Addendum: For some perspective, consider the role John "Death Squad" Negroponte is reported to have played:

Newsweek reported this week that John D. Negroponte, who was director of national intelligence at the time the tapes were destroyed, sent a memorandum in the summer of 2005 to Mr. Goss, the C.I.A. director, advising him against destroying the tapes.

Unlike China, the United States enforces the hightest standards when it comes to food safety

Topps Meat Company LLC announced today that because of the economic impact of the second-largest beef recall in U.S. history involving more than 21.7 million pounds of ground beef products, it is forced to close its Elizabeth plant and go out of business effective today. The company has been in business since 1940. |source|

How did this happen? Well, first George Bush was elected president. Second, the USDA cut back on inspections. Third, the standards slipped at Topps. Fourth, lots of people got sick. Fifth, the state of New York Department of Health launched the investigation which led to the initial recall. Sixth, the USDA finally got into gear, took a close look at Topps, and ordered a recall so large that the company went under.

Till Armageddon no shalam no shalom

When I was a freshman in college back in the eighties, I took an introductory survey course in the humanities. One of the books we read was Into That Darkness, Gitta Sereny's biography of Franz Stangl. This was, of course, at the height of the canon wars, so I suppose that Bloom and Hirsch would have been scandalized to see that book on the reading list. Truth be told, I probably would have sympathized with them. As much as I enjoyed the book, the central question it posed seemed faintly ridiculous. Could the Holocaust happen here? Could decent people, step by tiny step, lose all human moral sense? Of course not.

Paging Machiavelli

Young Prince Yglesias needs a lesson.

I noticed this absence of actual numbers, too, and all I can say is . . . what's the deal? When I saw Petraeus not including the numbers, I suspected something nefarious. But the Pentagon numbers that contradict Petraeus don't show them either, so it probably isn't nefarious. But it is damned odd. |Yglesias|

The upshot of relying on charts that don't include numbers, as Yglesias notes in his post, is that newspapers like The Washington Post, find themselves writing things like, "The charts are difficult to compare" instead of things like, "Somebody is lying." Maybe it's all innocent, but it's plausibly nefarious.

Just because you're paranoid...

The White House hawks in Dick Cheney's office and elsewhere who want to stage an attack on Iran are clearly winning the internal power stuggle. And an often overlooked sub-plot on the long road toward war with Tehran is this: How could Bush stage an attack on Iran without the authorization of a skeptical, Democratic Congress?

Today, the White House has solved that pesky problem in one fell swoop. By explicitly linking the Iranian elite guard into the post 9/11 "global war on terror" in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush's lawyers would certainly now argue that any military strike on Iran is now covered by the October 2002 authorization to use military force in Iraq, as part of their overly sweeping response to the 2001 attacks. |Attytood|

(via)

One small comment. When the Bush Administration does something that's stupid on the surface (as in declaring Shia Iran to be allied with Sunni Al Quaeda), it's tempting to just mark it up to their transcendant unrealism. It's important to remember, though, that these idiots are very, very clever when it comes to finding means to accomplish fundamentally stupid ends.

New frontiers in newspeak

When Congress returns in September the Intelligence committees and leaders in both parties will need to complete work on the comprehensive reforms requested by Director McConnell, including the important issue of providing meaningful liability protection to those who are alleged to have assisted our Nation following the attacks of September 11, 2001. |George W. Bush|

Emphasis added. For more, read Balkin.

The Republican noise machine, or "It depends on what the meaning of Terrorist Surveillance Program is"

Tony Snow at today's White House press briefing:


Compare that (not much contrast) to this morning's editorial over at the National Review:

As best as we can tell, here is how events unfolded. After September 11, the NSA began running wiretaps on suspected al Qaeda operatives. The surveillance program was reauthorized every 45 days. In 2004, however, Justice Department officials, for the first time, raised legal objections to the scope of the program. The resulting dispute within the administration led to the famous hospital scene, after which President Bush sided with the Justice Department officials and narrowed the program. Many months later, the New York Times revealed the existence of this now-narrowed program; President Bush then confirmed its existence and named it the “Terrorist Surveillance Program”; and Gonzales defended it.

When Gonzales said that “there has not been any serious disagreement about the program that the president has confirmed,” then, he was referring to the later, narrowed version of terrorist surveillance, and as far as we know he was correct. Other disputed Gonzales comments appear to follow the same basic pattern.

Thursday afternoon, the press and the Democrats started to play up testimony by FBI director Robert Mueller about the hospital-room meeting, testimony that supposedly contradicts Gonzales. But all Mueller said was that the meeting concerned a legal disagreement over the NSA’s surveillance. If our account of the chronology of the program is correct, there is no contradiction here. |link|

Good to see that everybody got the memo.

The nuclear option

Operation Ivy Nuclear Test, October 31, 1952 (NARA) by pingnews.

I'm not a big believer in vast corporate-media conspiracy theory, but how else can one explain why reporters seem to have such short memories?

A quick search of Google News reveals that absolutely no mainstream media outlets are bothering to point out the fact that--not very long ago--the same Republicans who've been using the filibuster all year were ready to change the rules of the Senate to eliminate the filibuster. In fact, the only applicable Google News result mentioning "the nuclear option" is from Think Progress. At least they do a nice job of it, offering up the following quotes:

Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS): “[Filibustering] is wrong. It’s not supportable under the Constitution. And if they insist on persisting with these filibusters, I’m perfectly prepared to blow the place up.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) spokesman: “Senator McConnell always has and continues to fully support the use of what has become known as the ‘[nuclear]’ option in order to restore the norms and traditions of the Senate.”

It's incredibly frustrating!

National Security, hey

I guess if you were the sort of person who would be inclined to read the Post's Cheney expose then you wouldn't need a link from me to find it. Anyway, this paragraph, discussing an incident from late 2001, jumped out.

One lawyer in his office said that Bellinger was chagrined to learn, indirectly, that Cheney had read the confidential memo and "was concerned" about his advice. Thus Bellinger discovered an unannounced standing order: Documents prepared for the national security adviser, another White House official said, were "routed outside the formal process" to Cheney, too. The reverse did not apply.

Prediction

Something very like the following will appear in a forthcoming edition of Harper's Index:

Number of emails sent to Karl Rove's RNC account during Bush's first term: (a very large number)
Number of those emails preserved in accordance with the Presidential Records Act: 130