(May 28, 2005 -- 01:54 PM EDT // link)
Some folks just can't let this drop. One of them is Walter Pincus of the Washington Post. And God bless him for it. In today's paper, Pincus has an article detailing how two intelligence analysts responsible for what is probably the single greatest screw-up about Iraqi WMD (the aluminum tubes issue) have received job performance awards in each of the last three years.
It's always important to avoid punishment or scapegoating not tied to specific malfeasance or poor performance. But, as this and other articles amply demonstrate, the screw-up tied to the aluminum tubes wasn't just a bad call made with imperfect evidence. At a minimum, it also involved bad tradecraft on several fronts.
That each of these men could have been given such high commendations over the period of time in which their errors and poor performance became apparent makes it hard not to think that they were actually being intentionally rewarded for their flawed assessments. At a minimum, it demonstrates a complete indifference to any sort of accountability for a national embarrassment and scandal the magnitude of which the country has not even begun to come to grips with.
Almost across the board in this administration, the people responsible for this trail of error and/or untruth have been rewarded while those who resisted it or went along unwillingly have been marginalized, punished or fired.
It's truly a national scandal -- the surface of which has barely been scratched because the institutions with oversight responsibility have vested interest in not revealing what happened.
It's a national scandal for which, as time goes by, we all collectively become more and more responsible.
(May 27, 2005 -- 02:19 PM EDT // link)
A TPM Reader chimes in on Social Security ...
Josh --I admire the Bushies ability to come up catchy memes and
repeat them endlessly (most recently, "Up or down vote.")Here's my suggestion for what Bush is offering:
His "Nothing For Something"™ proposal.
The government keeps taking the same amount, only the Republicans
give the middle class less. No carrot, all stick. Gee, I wonder why
people aren't going for this?RP
Repeat it enough times and I guess it just might work.
(May 27, 2005 -- 12:23 PM EDT // link)
Social Security partisans winning the battle of Staten Island?
The Staten Island Advance is reporting that Congressman Vito Fossella (R) of Staten Island is distancing himself from President Bush on phasing out Social Security.
Former phase-out man Fosella is saying no way to 'progressive indexing' (aka 'huge cuts for everyone but the working poor'). And while he says he's not against all private accounts, he's not ready to support President Bush's private accounts.
Perhaps this has something to do with the Empty Chair townhall meeting the In This Together campaign held a while back in Fossella's district or the 'Where's Vito' lawn signs they've been putting up around the area to get him to come clean on where he stands on phasing out Social Security.
(May 27, 2005 -- 11:51 AM EDT // link)
Law & Order: Pitiful Intent?
Has The Hammer become a Man of Tender Sensibilities?
You've probably heard this already. But Tom DeLay fired off a letter to NBC this week complaining about an episode of Law & Order CI in which passing reference is made to his threats against members of the judiciary.
Specifically, in an episode about a white supremacist who kills a judge's family, as the detectives hunt for the killer, one of them quips, "Maybe we should put out an APB for somebody in a Tom DeLay T-Shirt."
DeLay's letter claimed that this "slur" was aimed at his statements about "the need for Congress to closely monitor the federal judiciary."
DeLay's interpretation notwithstanding, we thought it might have had more to do with the time he told supporters right after Terry Schiavo's death that: "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior, but not today."
DeLay even claims his First Amendment rights are being traduced: "To equate legitimate constitutional inquiry into the role of our courts with a threat of violence against our judges is to equate the First Amendment with terrorism."
Actually, DeLay's analysis gets even better when he lassos in Brit Hume as the impartial witness to establish his non-judge-whacking bona fides.
"When a responsible journalist like Brit Hume made an inquiry into such comments," DeLay continued, "he quickly understood them to be limited to Congress's oversight responsibilities and nothing more."
Tom DeLay, tender flower.
Late Update: TPM Reader EB tells me that the perp in the episode wasn't a white supremacist but rather someone disgruntled at their treatment by a judge. I was going from press descriptions of the episode. But perhaps they got it wrong. And as long as we're on the subject, aren't there some right-wing press hooligans we have on hand who go nuts when the MSM makes such an outlandish mistake?
(May 27, 2005 -- 10:15 AM EDT // link)
It seems the half-life of the McClellan/DiRita slap-around of Newsweek may be rather short.
According to just-released FBI documents revealed by a FOIA request, there have been repeated claims of desecration or mishandling of the Koran in US detention facilities, some of them including precisely the sort of thing alleged in the Newsweek article. It is also clear that at least some of the accusations were ones the military found credible enough to discipline soldiers over.
What's worth noting is the motivation for all these antics over the last week.
We already know there have been serious problems, to put it charitably, with the treatment of US prisoners in Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan. And it is hard to say that the claims of mishandling Korans were particularly egregious in comparison to things we know for a fact did happen.
Remember, the McClellan/DiRita attacks on Newsweek weren't simply about getting a few facts wrong or weakly sourcing a story. Their claim was that the charges were outrageous, damaging and false, when in fact it turns out they were outrageous, damaging and quite likely true. And even more damaging for the US after McClellan and DiRita spent a couple weeks heaping attention on them.
The result of the White House and DiRita's jihad against Newsweek has only been to encourage a whole new round of international outrage and embarrassment about abuses we have to hope are now being addressed. And all, obviously, to score points in the media wars at home -- which the Bush administration so often seems to consider the true central front in the war on terror.
(May 26, 2005 -- 06:18 PM EDT // link)
Distant rumblings ...
The treasurer for Texans for a Republican Majority violated state election laws when he did not disclose more than $600,000 in corporate money the committee spent during the 2002 legislative campaigns, state District Judge Joe Hart ruled this morning....
Hart's ruling is the first by a judge in the far-flung controversy that has snared the political action committee; DeLay; Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick, R-Midland; and the Texas Association of Business, among others. A Travis County grand jury last fall indicted three of DeLay's associates who worked for the committee and eight corporate donors. Charges were dismissed against four donors in return for their cooperation with investigators. Ceverha was not among those indicted.
Criminal trials are pending against DeLay fund-raisers Jim Ellis and Warren Robold, both of the Washington, D.C., area, and John Colyandro, the executive director of Texans for a Republican Majority, who lobbies in Austin.
The rest is out here from the Austin American-Statesman.
(May 26, 2005 -- 03:19 PM EDT // link)
Okay, a bit more TPMCafe news, if you'll indulge me.
As I mentioned a few times before, there will be several blogs hosted at TPMCafe. The main group blog is one I've mentioned several times before. So let me share with you who the contributors to the main group blog are going to be. They are: Steve Clemons, David Gelber, Todd Gitlin, Reed Hundt, Ed Kilgore, Karen Kornbluh, Annie Lamott, Michael Lind, Josh Marshall, Judith Shulevitz, Mark Schmitt and Marshall Wittman.
A few others will be joining the group shortly. But that's our roster for our kick-off next Tuesday.
You can see the names of the contributors to our foreign policy blog, America Abroad, here.
WarrenReports will be the successor to the TPM Bankruptcy blog that Professor Elizabeth Warren and her students have been running here at TPM since early March.
More later on the discussion areas at TPMCafe.
(May 26, 2005 -- 12:40 PM EDT // link)
There's an article in The Hill today that you should read. It's about a talk Bob Rubin, Clinton's Treasury Secretary, gave to the House Democratic caucus yesterday. The headline topic was Social Security. And his message was unequivocal: Democrats would be fools to fall into the trap of putting forward their own concrete plan on Social Security under current circumstances.
In discussing this question, one must always come back to the simple fact that the Democrats especially shouldn't come up with a concrete plan when the president himself still hasn't put one forward.
But setting that significant matter aside, Rubin is unquestionably right. And it's important for Democrats to hear this from someone like Rubin whose stature within Democratic ranks is unique.
I must admit that I've had moments of wavering on this basic issue. But Rubin strikes on exactly the point that has always brought me back to the same conclusion that Dems shouldn't get sucked in on this one.
Of course, there's a narrowly political argument. And that's important. But it's not the most important reason. The real key is that the playing field in Washington today is terribly skewed. The Republicans have the White House and both chambers of Congress. And they've demonstrated an ability to coordinate those three institutions to what is an almost unprecedented degree (this is the issue of parliamentarization I've referred to before.) In such a setting, any process of negotiation would inevitably lead to a bad result (both politically and substantively) because Republicans exert so much control over the process of negotiation itself. And that would be so because the current Republican party is against Social Security itself. And no negotiation or process of compromise controlled by such a party could, by definition I think, yield a result which was favorable to Social Security.
That has to be the case as long as Republicans are still sticking to their principles of private accounts and sharp benefit cuts for the middle class. And those are their principles -- quite explicitly, in fact
Add to this the fact that the president is clocking in at under 30% support on Social Security and most Americans now understand that he wants to dismantle the program and the whole thing really becomes a no-brainer.
In fact, Dems should really start making the point now that they are the ones who stopped President Bush from phasing out Social Security this year.
Be loud, be proud.
(May 26, 2005 -- 12:00 AM EDT // link)
Folks from the district accuse The Count of flipflopping on Social Security.
(May 25, 2005 -- 06:17 PM EDT // link)
Ahhh, a Fox Newscaster Freudian slip really does end the day on a good note.
MediaMatters catches Fox News David Asman in this exchange with our man Trent Lott ...
So, Senator, if we should have done it and if we had the votes to do it in the Senate -- if you guys in the Republican Party did -- then why did you need a compromise?
We, indeed ...
(May 25, 2005 -- 12:51 PM EDT // link)
As you can see from the image right up there at the top right side of the site, we're about ready to go with TPMCafe. We'll be launching the site on Tuesday, May 31st. And we'll be bringing you various updates throughout the day.
But I wanted to share with you one special addition we'll have in store when we launch.
One of the occasional features of the new site will be a special one week guest blogging stint by some well-known individual who we think our readers would be interested in hearing more from. This won't be part of one of our group blogs. They'll have their own blog for that week, much like any other solo blog like TPM, or the Washington Note, or Eschaton (when Atrios doesn't have others filling in for him) operates.
In most cases, the guest will have some connection to politics or the driving political issues of the day. But not always. We'll try to include a mix of different people -- in each sense of the word.
For now, we're quite pleased to announce that joining us for our debut week will be former Senator John Edwards (D) of North Carolina who was, needless to add, John Kerry's vice-presidential running mate in last year's election.
Edwards will have the guest blogging seat from Tuesday 31st through Friday 3rd.
More news to follow.
(May 25, 2005 -- 12:25 PM EDT // link)
A TPM Reader chimes in ...
Josh,Why is it Social Security that needs fixing when it is the Republicans’ runaway’ spending that is the problem?!
By their own admission, the problem will occur when the excessive SS contributions begin to slow down causing the government to look elsewhere for the money they need to cover all those tax cuts they gave their rich friends (and, I suspect, themselves).
So why is it Social Security that needs fixing?
Please explain.
Thanks.
BH
That pretty much covers it. The real danger to Social Security is to be found in the president's first-term tax cuts.
(May 25, 2005 -- 11:22 AM EDT // link)
Everyone's a critic.
Rep. Spencer Bachus (R) of Alabama says Bill Maher is a traitor because of recent statements he made on his show.
"I want him (Maher) off the air," says the congressman.
(ed.note: Thanks to TPM Reader MJ for the tip.)
Late Update: And Maher responds!
(May 24, 2005 -- 10:44 PM EDT // link)
Bamboozlepalooza, the self-parody phase (from a late AP story) ...
At the same time, President Bush warned members of his own party they would join Democrats in facing voters' wrath if they don't support his proposed overhaul.
I guess in a way this is fair since, after all, don't Republicans deserve the chance to laugh at the president too sometimes?
I mean, this is really rich. Whether it's helped the Democrats or not, privatization has been pretty much a disaster for the president's party in Congress. It's certainly one of the most important reasons their public approval ratings have tanked over the last six months. Less than 30% of the public supports President Bush on this issue. But if these guys don't get on his sinking privatization ship, they'll face voters' wrath.
(May 24, 2005 -- 06:49 PM EDT // link)
There could be a benign synergy between the filibuster compromise in the Senate last night and the stem cell bill that just passed the House.
(May 24, 2005 -- 01:57 PM EDT // link)
In Business Week, Howard Gleckman reports that behind the scenes Republicans and Democrats are moving toward a compromise on Social Security. I'd say this has a great deal to do with which Democrats and which Republicans he's talking to. But, as you'll see in the article, which I highly recommend you read, he seems to be painting a picture in which carved out private accounts are tossed, the cap is raised, though not removed, and various benefit cuts are imposed.
There's also this snippet that suggests Ed Kilgore has been on the right track is supposing that Republicans will try to find their way out of this morass by turning it into a tax windfall for upper-income earners ...
There are three possible pieces to such a package. Republicans would like to see income limits removed for IRAs, 401(k)s, and especially Roth IRAs, whose withdrawals are tax-free. Democrats want new savings incentives for low-income workers, and lawmakers of both parties see the need to fix defined-benefit pensions.
There's a lot to talk about here. But, for my part, all of the Democrats' mental energy should be going into strengthening retirement security for middle-income Americans. Period. That's really not an issue to hash out with Republicans because most of the things the president's party wants to do either damages retirement security or is irrelevant to it.
The first and most obvious thing is preserve Social Security. But that's only the start. Democrats should be thinking of other ways to make retirement more secure. Both on substance and because of what it means to be a party in opposition, that's where the Democrats should be focusing their energy, not on finding palatable ways to split some difference with the GOP.
(May 24, 2005 -- 11:45 AM EDT // link)
Reading over my email this morning there is, to put it mildly, a strong range of opinions about whether the Democrats did well or not by this deal.
Like I said yesterday or the day before, I'm hoping our new set up will allow you to read what I'm reading, to have this sharing of different viewpoints in one of our new discussion areas. In any case, more about that shortly.
I don't disagree with many of the points made by people who think this was a terrible compromise. Some of the most extreme judges go through. The nuclear option is by no means put to bed. It's just put off at the discretion of the seven Republicans who were party to this deal.
We won't know who did better in this until all of this plays out over the next weeks and months. But I think this was a decent resolution, given the range of options on offer. A working majority in the senate wouldn't consent to Bill Frist's Dobsonian radicalism. This potentially introduces a third force into the operation of the senate. And this will send the Dobsonites into a feeding frenzy of intra-party cannibalism.
As for 'Viva Reid', I think his leadership has been unexpectedly able in the last six months. Understated and unaffected, he's become an able co-worker with the president in the dismantling of the White House agenda and the president's popularity. All things being equal, I've learned to trust his judgment.
Trust but verify, of course, as another pol said.
And along those lines, see this passage from the Matthews show last night sent to me by TPM Reader DL ...
MATTHEWS: Social Security, do you think the president‘s plans for some kind of personal accounts has a better shot now?GRAHAM: It has a shot versus no shot. And watch this group of 14 to come out with some deal for Social Security.
MATTHEWS: Really?
GRAHAM: Just keep watching.
On this, redoubled effort.
(May 24, 2005 -- 12:20 AM EDT // link)
Viva Reid!
(May 24, 2005 -- 12:10 AM EDT // link)
Gary Bauer's reaction. The Dobson fatwa.
(May 23, 2005 -- 11:13 PM EDT // link)
A statement on the filibuster compromise from the Filibuster against Frist students.
(May 23, 2005 -- 09:59 PM EDT // link)
A good deal? A bad deal? We're supposed to say we got a great deal to win clearly through spin what could not be won so clearly on the merits. It seems an awfully bitter pill to forego the filibuster on both Brown and Owen, particularly the former. And the main issue isn't resolved so much as it's delayed. The moderate Republicans agree to preserve the filibuster so long as the Democrats use it in what the moderate Republicans deem a reasonable fashion. And yet the use of the filibuster, by its very nature, almost always seems unreasonable to those whom it is used against.
And finally there's the key problem: the White House. Can this agreement really withstand the appointment of another hard right nominee? The subtext of the compromise must be that neither side will be pushed beyond its limits. But that would, I think, force the Democrats to resort to the filibuster. And then everything, presumably, would unravel from there. It's hard for me to see how this deal survives the sort of appointee President Bush seems all but certain to appoint to the Supreme Court.
Having said all that, the whole tenor of the Republican ultras on the Hill today is to demand unimpeded power, to push past conventions and limits, to go for everything. And here they got turned back. A sensible Republican party might be satisfied to have gotten three of its nominees -- numerically speaking, they did fairly well. But this whole enterprise was based on wanting it all, on not accepting limits, on rejecting government by even a modicum of consensus with a sizeable minority party. They got stopped short. And the senate Republican leadership is undermined.
So this isn't a pleasant compromise. But precisely because the Republicans -- or their leading players -- are absolutists in a way the Democrats are not, I think this compromise will batter them more than it will the minority party, which is after all a minority party which nonetheless managed to emerge from this having fought the stronger force to something like a draw.
(May 23, 2005 -- 04:06 PM EDT // link)
Just to follow up on the earlier post about whether there could be a court challenge to the nuclear option, here's what readers have said.
The overwhelming majority of readers who wrote in -- ranging from political junkies to con law profs (many of whom also seem to be political junkies) -- agree with what I've said earlier: absolutely no way this ever gets into court.
A pretty small minority see some arguments that might at least get a hearing. But even they see it as highly unlikely. So all of this suggests that as a practical matter there's no reason to think of this as a serious possibility in evaluating what's transpiring in the senate today.
And just to reaffirm the point, for my part, I think that it certainly should be that way. (I'll try to say more about this in a subsequent post.) This is, at root, a political question. And there's a political remedy: at the ballot box in 2006.
Indeed, if the Democrats' use of the filibuster is really such a bad thing, there's a political remedy for the Republicans too: take it to the voters.
If Republicans believe in their argument and have some confidence about their political future they should take this to the voters next year and ask the voters for the five more senators to confirm any judge they want.
(May 23, 2005 -- 01:00 PM EDT // link)
Here's a question I'd be eager to hear your thoughts on.
Many readers have written in asking why it wouldn't either be possible or likely that Dick Cheney's expected ruling that the judicial filibuster is unconstitutional would not itself spawn a series of lawsuits challenging the constitutionality or legality of his opinion.
Presumably, how this would work, I guess, is that some party would file a suit or, I guess, an appeal challenging the legitimacy of the confirmation of one of the judges that will be seated in the wake of the nuclear option. And the aim would be to get a court, eventually the Supreme Court, no doubt, to review the legitimacy of the set of moves we've collectively dubbed 'the nuclear option'.
Now, my very strong assumption has been that courts would simply treat this as a non-justiciable question, that the senate is the final and sole arbiter of how it conducts its business and interprets its own rules. And I still think that.
But in the last few days I've had a number of people write in, who are far more versed in these matters than I am, who suggest that it may well happen. And in a post-Bush v. Gore world, when the Court muscled its way into a contested presidential election and assigned the presidency to the candidate whose party most of them affiliate with, perhaps it's foolish to put anything by them.
So to all you law profs, lawyers and sundry relevant experts: does this seem even remotely conceivable to you? Again, from my understanding of long-established practice, it doesn't to me. And as a separate matter, it seems like a very dangerous and ill-advised step to take.
But again, what do people think?
(May 23, 2005 -- 11:55 AM EDT // link)
A number of readers wrote in yesterday about my morning post on the 'futility' of aggressively reporting on the secret British government memo (actually, minutes) which surfaced late in the British election and claimed that the White House was rigging the intelligence on Iraq to support a decision for war as far back as mid-2002.
I was less clear than I should have been. Because what I meant was not that there's no point in aggressively reporting on this issue. My point was rather how astonishing it is that such a revelation should even be news. It truly should be old news -- and thus worthy of little more than passing comment -- since it only provides some further level of support or confirmation for something we know or should know clearly did happen.
It was fairly clear when it was all happening. And after the fact the details have been reported in abundance, not just in obscure publications, but in many of the nation's leading newspapers and magazines, albeit usually shoved to the back pages. And yet the claim -- not the individual morsels of the story, but the whole narrative wrapped together -- still seems wildly controversial. And no one has been held to account, or rather only those who tried to stop the scam while it was afoot or put up some resistance to being coopted into it.
And with all that, why exactly did Sen. Rockefeller(D) of West Virginia roll over when Sen. Roberts (R) of Kansas pulled the plug on the rest of the inquiry into administration manipulation of intelligence on Iraqi WMD?
(May 22, 2005 -- 03:48 PM EDT // link)
Yep, just like Kevin says: "This is like watching Darkness at Noon in real life. Newsweek made a small error in a 300-word blurb a couple of weeks ago, and since then the right-wing media hate machine, like a jackal sensing a rare opportunity for blood, has somehow managed to convince them they bear responsibility for riots in Afghanistan that were staged by extremists who obviously used the Newsweek article as nothing more than pretext."
(May 22, 2005 -- 12:54 PM EDT // link)
Okay, AP reporter Devlin Barret definitely wins at least an Honorable Mention in the Exceptional Snark in Social Security Reporting Contest.
From an article this morning on President Bush's Bamboozlepalooza event in Upstate New York on Tuesday ...
When President Bush makes his pitch for personal Social Security accounts at a town-hall meeting Tuesday in suburban Rochester, he may finally win over some key undecided voters: the three Republican congressmen representing the area.
The three reps are Reynolds, Walsh and Kuhl, phase-out hard-to-gets. But when the suitor comes calling in person, who knows?
(May 22, 2005 -- 09:18 AM EDT // link)
I'm sorry there've been so comparatively few posts in the last couple days. I've been spending close to all of my time in the heavily-caffeinated world of TPMCafe, hollering at the foremen, poring over the diagrams and blueprints, hammering nails into the beams and what-have-you. In any case, we're about to launch and we'll have an announcement on that the beginning of this week.
Just this morning I saw this typically-splendid article by the Post's Walter Pincus about yet more evidence of how many questions the intelligence community had about pretty much all the evidence of Iraqi WMD during the lead-up to the war. Pincus also makes mention of the secret British memo, which came to light in the final days of the recent British election, which suggested that almost a year before the start of the war the US was shaping the available intelligence to make the case for war.
I've gotten a stack of emails from readers asking me why I haven't mentioned this or made a bigger deal out of it. Some of this is due to the distractions I mentioned above. But when I asked myself the question what I came up with was a sense of something akin to futility. I mean, how much more evidence do we need exactly to confirm the completely undeniable fact that the administration bent every rule and was reflexively dishonest in almost every way about the claims of Iraqi WMD?
Admittedly, the fact that something is obvious -- or that I perceive it as such -- is not usually a standard I apply before I start hammering on an issue. But it made me think back to an experience I had while working on the Niger uranium story last year, and one I wanted to share with you.
Much of the work I did on the Niger story, both before and after the report was released, gravitated around the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Committee report on Iraqi WMD. And we were working committee sources on both sides of the aisle before and after it was released.
It certainly comes as no surprise to me that such a report would be incomplete and in some ways misleading. Certain highly sensitive subjects might be passed over for legitimate national security reasons and even authors who, as a general matter, wanted to keep the public informed, might shade the truth in some particulars.
But when I read the report's treatment of the topics that I'd gotten to know about in some detail I was genuinely surprised at how much it was not only misleading but how much almost the entire presentation of the facts was quite consciously engineered to give the reader precisely the opposite impression of what actually happened.
The level of mendacity was even more surprising because the report was signed off on by both the committee Republicans and the committee Democrats. And, no, I'm not saying that Democrats are intrinsically any less capable of bamboozlement than Republicans. But in this case they very much did have antagonistc political interests. And it wasn't clear to me why those political interests if nothing else would not have made them less willing to go along with such a whitewash of what happened.
I guess it was probably the same reason the Dems let themselves get scammed by Sen. Roberts with the long-awaited second-half of the committee's investigation (the one set to look at how the administration politicized and manipulated the intelligence), which he blew off once the election was safely over.
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