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Friday, December 23, 2005
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Cool!
9:24:59 PM 
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Josh Marshall wants to know:
When was the last time there was a major terror alert? They were something like a regular occurence for the eighteen months or so before the 2004 election. And through 2004 the administration pushed the line that al Qaida was aiming to disrupt the elections themselves. But as near I can tell there hasn't been a single one since election day. Through 2004, of course, critics of the administration routinely questioned whether the frequency and timing of the various terror alerts were not all or in part for political effect. How do we explain what appears to be a night and day difference between the year prior to November 2004 and the year since in terms of terror alerts and scares? I assume the question is rhetorical, since I think we all know full well how to explain that difference.
(Via Republic of Dogs.)
3:07:31 PM
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From the January 2006 Harper's Index (not yet online), a little historical context to inform your contemplation of the two resolutions introduced on Tuesday by Sen. John Conyers (D-MI) -- one to censure Messrs. Bush and Cheney for abuse of power, the other to investigate administration misconduct in the Iraq war and report on the possibility of impeachment:
- Percentage of Americans who said in November that the Valerie Plame leak scandal was of "great importance": 51
- Percentage who said, two months before President Nixon resigned, that Watergate was "very serious": 49
- Percentage who said it was "just politics": 42
- Percentage approval rating of Bill Clinton the day after impeachment and George W. Bush in November, respectively: 73, 37
In related matters (via AfterDowningStreet.org): A record 55% say the war in Iraq is entirely separate from the war on terrorism that began with the Sept. 11 attacks, the first time a majority has held that opinion.
(Via King of Zembla.)
3:04:47 PM
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With leadership like this, we might as well give up now (via the Progress Report):
“None of your civil liberties matter much after you’re dead,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a former judge and close ally of the president who sits on the Judiciary Committee.
Russ Feingold's response was more than appropriate:
Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), who has led a bipartisan filibuster against a reauthorization of the Patriot Act, quoted Patrick Henry, an icon of the American Revolution, in response: “Give me liberty or give me death.”
He called Cornyn’s comments “a retreat from who we are and who we should be.”
(Via Brendan Nyhan.)
2:09:05 PM
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There was a question in comments earlier about exactly what law Bush broke when he authorized warrantless wiretaps of US persons. You can read the text of the electronic surveillance portion of the statute at this Cornell webpage.
My favorite part is excerpted below:
(a) Prohibited activities
A person is guilty of an offense if he intentionally—
(1) engages in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute; or
(2) discloses or uses information obtained under color of law by electronic surveillance, knowing or having reason to know that the information was obtained through electronic surveillance not authorized by statute.
(b) Defense
It is a defense to a prosecution under subsection (a) of this section that the defendant was a law enforcement or investigative officer engaged in the course of his official duties and the electronic surveillance was authorized by and conducted pursuant to a search warrant or court order of a court of competent jurisdiction.
(c) Penalties
An offense described in this section is punishable by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than five years, or both.
(d) Federal jurisdiction
There is Federal jurisdiction over an offense under this section if the person committing the offense was an officer or employee of the United States at the time the offense was committed.
Federal prison for not more than five years. Sounds about right to me.
(Via The Ape Man.)
2:06:41 PM
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Cynthia talks with author Bart Ehrman about his latest book, "Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why," an exploration of how scribes changed the bible.
(Via KQED's Forum.)
Good interview; looking forward to reading the book.
2:03:17 PM
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You know, I enjoy Boing Boing as much as anyone, but I think you have to pretty much have turned your brain off if you think for a minute that this footage is anything other than a hoax.
1:56:38 PM
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Nice little tour guide, fun reading with good how-to's, and nice pictures.
1:03:56 PM
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 David Letterman is trying to get his lawyers to remove a restraining order made against him by a Santa Fe woman who claims "the CBS late-night host used code words to show he wanted to marry her and train her as his co-host."
A state judge granted a temporary restraining order to Colleen Nestler, who alleged in a request filed last Thursday that Letterman has forced her to go bankrupt and caused her "mental cruelty" and "sleep deprivation" since May 1994.
Nestler's application for a restraining order was accompanied by a six-page typed letter in which she said Letterman used code words, gestures and "eye expressions" to convey his desires for her.
She wrote that she began sending Letterman "thoughts of love" after his "Late Show" began in 1993, and that he responded in code words and gestures, asking her to come East.
She said he asked her to be his wife during a televised "teaser" for his show by saying, "Marry me, Oprah." Her letter said Oprah was the first of many code names for her and that the coded vocabulary increased and changed with time.
I don't know what it takes to become a judge in Santa Fe, but apparently a brain isn't one of the requirements. There's no other explanation for how the restraining got approved in the first place, since the odds of David Letterman sending secret coded messages to an insane woman in Santa Fe are about as likely as me not having sex tonight with a half dozen supermodels. In other words, not very.
(Via The Superficial - Because You're Ugly.)
12:43:05 PM
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From George Packer (2005), The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq (New York: FSG: 0374299633) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/0374299633/braddelong00. Colin Powell's account of his last meeting with George W. Bush, as told by Colin Powell to George Packer:
In the same week of early January... Colin Powell was summoned to the White House for his farewell conversation with the president. All along, Powell had been the dutifully quiet dissenter on Iraq, concerned about the damage to alliances, skeptical (but not enough) of the administration's more fevered claims about weapons and terrorism, realistic about the difficulties of postwar. But his prestige was badly tarnished when his prewar speech to the UN about Iraqi weapons was proved mostly false. Though Iraq became more and more the responsibility of his agency, Powell had lost almost eery major fight back when the crucial decisions were made. His tenure as secretary of state was a great disappointment.... Now, sooner than he wanted, he was being replaced by Condoleezza Rice, a shrewder bureaucratic survivor.
After a few awkward minutes in the Oval Office, Powell realized that Bush had no idea what his secretary of state was doing there. The White House chief of staff, Andrew Card, was summoned, but he, too, was clueless. Who had called for the meeting? It began to seem entirely possible that the phantom vice president had arranged one more parting humiliation for his old colleague and more recent nemesis. Powell drew himself up and informed the president that he had come not for their weekly meeting but to say goodbye. Finding himself alone with Bush for perhaps the last time, Powell decided to speak his mind without constraint. The Defense Department had too much power in shaping foreign policy, he argued, and when Bush asked for an example, Powell offered not Rumsfeld, the secretary who had mastered him bureaucratically, not Wolfowitz, the point man on Iraq, but the department's number three official, Douglas Feith, whom Powell called a card-carrying member of the Likud Party. Warming to his talk, Powell moved on to negotiations with North Korea, and then homed in on Iraq. If, by April 1, the situation there had not improved significantly, the president would need a new strategy and new people to implement it. Bush looked taken aback: No one ever spoke this way in the Oval Office. But because it was the last time, Powell ignored every cue of displeasure and kept going until he said what he had to say, what he perhaps should have said long before.
At least, that's what Powell told Packer he said in his last meeting in the Oval Office. Is it accurate? I don't know: I do know that since his UN speech Powell's word trades at a very high discount indeed.
(Via Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal.)
12:28:33 PM
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The New York Times has Times-Select, which grants you access to its op-ed columnists. The Washington Post has Post-Future-Select, which grants you access to its op-ed columnists future writings. Here we have Charles Krauthammer's column from March 23, 2008, with some strange parallels to his column of December 23, 2005:
TERM LIMITS NONSENSE: By Charles Krauthammer: March 23, 2008: The past seven years have already been the age of the demagogue, having been dominated by the endlessly echoed falsehoods that the president has "violated the Constitution." But today brings yet another round of demagoguery. Administration critics, political and media, charge that by running for a third term, the president has so trampled the Constitution that impeachment should now be considered. (Barbara Boxer, Jonathan Alter, John Dean and various luminaries of the left have already begun floating the idea.) The braying herds have already concluded, Tenet-, Powell-, Hegel-, Sununu-, and Kerry-like, that the president's running for a third term is slam-dunk illegal and unconstitutional. It takes a superior mix of partisanship, animus and ignorance to say that.
Is the president constitutionally prohibited from running for a third term? Law professor Alberto Gonzales (one critic calls him the man who "literally wrote the book on today's legal struggles") finds "pretty decent arguments" on both sides, but his own conclusion is that Bush's actions are "probably constitutional." It is true that Congress and the States tried to restrict the ability of presidents to run for a third term with the Twenty-Second amendment but, as Attorney General Harriet Miers wrote, "No president has denied that he retained inherent power to run for a third term and, if elected, to reassume office" if the dire necessity of war demanded it. It is true that no president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has chosen, so far, to run for a third term. But can it possibly be the case that in these perilous times a president has less power than FDR did? And the unwritten prohibition that Roosevelt broke in deciding to run for a third term because of the necessity of World War II was a stronger law--hallowed by the example of Washington, Jackson, and Lincoln--than a dubious amendment that has never been tested.
President Bush's circumvention of the so-called Twenty-Second Amendment is a classic separation-of-powers dispute in the area in which these powers are most in dispute. For the past four decades, presidents have adhered to the Twenty-Second Amendment for reasons of prudence, to avoid a constitutional fight with Congress, and because the times were not so dire as to require, say, a third term for Ronald Reagan. The fact that past presidents have acquiesced in the Twenty-Second Amendment in no way binds future executives to obey its silly restrictions, so dangerous to our country in circumstances like these.
Attorney General Harriet Miers argues that Bush's use of presidential necessity to override the so-called Twenty-Second Amendment with its illegal and unconstitutional restrictions on presidential terms is firmly established by Justice Yoo's decision in Kollar-Kotelly v. NSA. In that opinion, John Yoo deemed legal the NSA "vacuum cleaner" scanning of all electronic communications whatsoever, and allowed the transfer of Judge Kollar-Kotelly to Guantanamo to be held as an "enemy combatant." "The Fourth Amendment cannot stand against the necessities of wartime," Justice Yoo wrote, "and who is a more effective combatant for the enemy than one who tries to hobble America's ability to kill terrorists through pointless legalisms?" It follows logically that the Twenty-Second Amendment cannot stand either if necessity is opposed--and who can doubt that it is, that only George W. Bush is it to helm the ship of state?
This is a war, dammit!
(Via Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal.)
12:26:38 PM
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© Copyright 2006 Steve Michel.
Last update: 1/1/2006; 11:10:03 AM.
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