JustOneMinute

The Responsibility For Governing

Adam Nagourney assesses Republican prospects.  Hey, they don't have a vision and they don't have a leader, but they have Barack! 

That will probably be enough.  Mr. Nagourney provides yet another reminder of "Don't Look Back" Barack's bizzare logic:

But as the president was quick to point out, with a 41st vote in the Senate and the ability to block legislation through filibuster come pressure on Republicans to share in the political risks of making hard choices. “The responsibility to govern is now yours as well,” Mr. Obama said in his State of the Union speech, a message that was certainly heard by party leaders here in Honolulu.

Hmm.  The Democrats have had outright majorities of the House and Senate since 2006; they enjoyed a brief Senate majority from the summer of 2000 until January 2003, and have always had more than 41 Senate votes.

So when Obama rails against the failed policies of the past eight years, is he running against Pelosi, Reid, Senator Obama, and the rest of the Democrats?  I don't think so.

Mr. Nagourney also fails to mention the Republican "Better Solutions" package offered to Obama as inoculation against the "no ideas" charge.

War On Terror, Or War On The CIA?

Former CIA head Michael Hayden blasts Obama's legalistic approach to the war on terror and ends with this zinger:

There's a final oddity. In August, the government unveiled the HIG [High Value Detainee Interrogation Group] for questioning al-Qaeda and announced that the FBI would begin questioning CIA officers about the alleged abuses in the 2004 inspector general's report. They are apparently still getting organized for the al-Qaeda interrogations. But the interrogations of CIA personnel are well underway.

Eric Holder knows who the enemy is.

Jersey Girl

Sports Illustrated: "In recognition of National Girls and Women in Sports Day (Feb. 4), SI.com presents the best woman athlete by birth state."

Some of the winners are a bit obscure but Mary Decker Slaney of New Jersey is instantly recognizable.  Here is a YouTube of her classic 1983 race in the 1500 World Championships at Helsinki.

Folks may remember that Ms. Slaney turned into Great Garbo on the track - she wanted to be alone, so she would grab an early lead and hang on for dear life, which made for some exciting "Will she, won't she, can she, can't she" finishes.  Sadly, she morphed from America's Sweetheart to America's Crybaby after being jostled by Zola Budd in the 2004 LA Olympics, but we have moved on.

Back To The Future

Glenn links to more proof that everything new is old again.  Torn from today's headlines:

Afghan Men Struggle With Sexual Identity, Study Finds

...

An unclassified study from a military research unit in southern Afghanistan details how homosexual behavior is unusually common among men in the large ethnic group known as Pashtuns -- though they seem to be in complete denial about it. 

The study, obtained by Fox News, found that Pashtun men commonly have sex with other men, admire other men physically, have sexual relationships with boys and shun women both socially and sexually -- yet they completely reject the label of "homosexual." The research was conducted as part of a longstanding effort to better understand Afghan culture and improve Western interaction with the local people.

Now let's flashback to January 2002, a few months after we first put booty on the ground in Afghanistan:

Kandahar Men Return to Original Love: Teenage Boys

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan —  Now that Taliban rule is over in Mullah Omar's former southern stronghold, it is not only televisions, kites and razors which have begun to emerge. 

Visible again, too, are men with their ashna, or beloveds: young boys they have groomed for sex. 

Kandahar's Pashtuns have been notorious for their homosexuality for centuries, particularly their fondness for na�ve young boys. Before the Taliban arrived in 1994, the streets were filled with teenagers and their sugar daddies, flaunting their relationships. 

Kandahar is called the homosexual capital of south Asia. Such is the Pashtun obsession with sodomy � locals tell you that birds fly over the city using only one wing, the other covering their posterior � that the rape of young boys by warlords was one of the key factors in Mullah Omar mobilising the Taliban. 

A bit more on life under the Taliban:

Men accused of sodomy faced the punishment of having a wall toppled on to them, usually resulting in death. In February 1998 three men sentenced to death for sodomy in Kandahar were taken to the base of a huge mud and brick wall, which was pushed over by tank. Two of them died, but one managed to survive. 

"In the days of the Mujahedeen [the pre-Taliban victors against the Communist government], there were men with their ashna everywhere, at every corner, in shops, on the streets, in hotels: it was completely open, a part of life," said Torjan, 38, one of the soldiers loyal to Kandahar's new governor, Gul Agha Sherzai. 

"But in the later Mujahedeen years, more and more soldiers would take boys by force, and keep them for as long as they wished," Torjan said. "But when the Taliban came, they were very strict about the ban. Of course, it still happened � the Taliban could not enter every house � but one could not see it." 

I am not interested in playing apologist for the Taliban but I do recall articles [e.g., NY Times] explaining that part of their popularity in the Pashtun region was due to their suppression of some of the more unsavory homosexual practices - just for example, young boys were routinely kidnapped by warlords or sold as sex slaves.  From the Times, Feb 21 2002:

An interest in relationships with young boys among warlords and their militia commanders played a part in the Taliban's rise in Afghanistan. In 1994, the Taliban, then a small army of idealistic students of the Koran, were called to rescue a boy over whom two commanders had fought. They freed the boy and the people responded with gratitude and support.

''At that time boys couldn't come to the market because the commanders would come and take away any that they liked,'' said Amin Ullah, a money changer, gesturing to his two teenage sons hunched over wads of afghani bank notes at Kandahar's currency bazaar.

The gay-bashing under the Taliban came out of a very different culture than we see in the US.  And now we have an unclassified study discovering that again.

The NY Times Moves Terror Trials From Manhattan

The NY Times has decided to hold the terror trials elsewhere:

U.S. Drops Plan for a 9/11 Trial in New York City
By SCOTT SHANE and BENJAMIN WEISER

The Obama administration on Friday gave up on its plan to try the Sept. 11 plotters in Lower Manhattan, bowing to almost unanimous pressure from New York officials and business leaders to move the terrorism trial elsewhere.

“I think I can acknowledge the obvious,” an administration official said. “We’re considering other options.”

Friday afternoon was the obvious time for an official announcement but that has apparently not been made:

The Obama administration official said the decision to back out of plans for a New York trial had broad support but had not yet been made public.

I'm sure the Times is right abut this.  But by way of comparison, here is the more restrained WaPo:

Trial of alleged Sept. 11 conspirators probably won't be held in Lower Manhattan

The Obama administration has all but abandoned its plan to put Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, on trial in Lower Manhattan, according to administration officials.

A senior administration official said no decision has been formalized, but the Justice Department is already considering other venues. Said another official close to the discussions: "New York is out."

I'll bet the raging dispute is over what poor fool has to make the announcement. Does the DoJ pressie get stuck with this, since the original decision was ostensibly Holder's baby?  I am hoping to get the word from Robert Gibbs while his brothers stand in the background singing "I Started A Joke".  Just one man's vision...

Now, why the switch (other than the obvious surrender to common sense and ghastly polling data)?  Here we go from the Times:

The story of how prominent New York officials seemed to have so quickly moved from a kind of “bring it on” bravado to an “anywhere but here” involves many factors, including a new anxiety about terrorism after the attempted airliner bombing on Christmas Day.

Ultimately, it appears, New York officials could not tolerate ceding much of the city to a set of trials that could last for years.

“The administration is in a tricky political and legal position,” Julie Menin, a lawyer who is chairwoman of the 50-member Community Board 1 that represents Lower Manhattan, including the federal courthouse and ground zero, said of President Obama and his Justice Department. “But it means shutting down our financial district. It could cost $1 billion. It’s absolutely crazy.”

So let's see - they were serious about the threat from terrorists but not really, really serious until the Christmas package from Al Qaeda.  And it only recently dawned on them that the trials would be long, expensive, and disruptive to lower Manhattan.  Good luck with that spin!  The impact on Manhattan was obvious in an instant.  Oh, well - if the Admin wants to go out and explain that they prefer to make decisions and then afterwards introduce themselves to reality, good for them.

The only sensible thing about that cover story is that it ducks the legal issues swirling around a civilian trial

James O'Keefe Speaks! (Or Writes...)

James O'Keefe tells his side of the telephone tizzy at Sen. Mary Landrieu's office:

I learned from a number of sources that many of Senator Landrieu’s constituents were having trouble getting through to her office to tell her that they didn’t want her taking millions of federal dollars in exchange for her vote on the healthcare bill.  When asked about this, Senator Landrieu’s explanation was that, “Our lines have been jammed for weeks.”  I decided to investigate why a representative of the people would be out of touch with her constituents for “weeks” because her phones were broken.  In investigating this matter, we decided to visit Senator Landrieu’s district office – the people’s office – to ask the staff if their phones were working.

Hmm - "Our lines are jammed" does not mean the same as "our lines are broken."  Pressing on:

On reflection, I could have used a different approach to this investigation, particularly given the sensitivities that people understandably have about security in a federal building.  The sole intent of our investigation was to determine whether or not Senator Landrieu was purposely trying to avoid constituents who were calling to register their views to her as their Senator.  We video taped the entire visit, the government has those tapes, and I’m eager for them to be released because they refute the false claims being repeated by much of the mainstream media.

The affidavit (which of course is not an indictment) mentioned two possible crimes - entering a Federal building under false pretenses, and attempting to tamper with the telephones.

If the judge and prosecutor want to get sticky about the false pretenses charge O'Keefe and his cohorts have a problem.

As to tampering with the phone, if O'Keefe's group was, for example, simply looking for a service log to verify whether the phones had been recently repaired, the prosecutor will have an uphill fight trying to prove malicious tampering.

Patterico had pointed in this direction a few days ago.

Bloomberg Gets Results - Terror Trials *May* Be Moved

We immediately realize this is not an official announcement that the terror trials will be moved out of Manhattan because it was not delivered late on Friday.  However, the Times and Daily News report that Team Obama has begun their long journey back to common sense by asking the Justice Department to study other venues.  The current fantasy is to find another site for a federal civilian trial but, per the Times:

Finding a site for a trial rejected by New York City could prove a challenge. Other Southern District locations appeared to pose problems. Some officials mentioned the Eastern District of Virginia, where terror trials have been held, or the unused Illinois prison where the administration has proposed to move detainees from Guantánamo.

And there are those vexing Republicans:

Republicans in the Senate and House said they would try to block financing for civilian criminal trials for the alleged terrorists, seeking to force the administration to place them on trial before a military commission in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, or on a military base elsewhere.

Gitmo or bust!

KSM - If You Can Try Him Here, You Can Try Him Anywhere

The mayor of the greatest city in the world has had a change of heart about the wisdom of trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York City:

The Obama administration on Wednesday lost its most prominent backer of the plan to try the self-described mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks in Lower Manhattan when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said the trial should not be held in New York City.

The mayor’s reversal was a political blow to the White House’s efforts to resolve a landmark terror case a few blocks from where Al Qaeda hijackers rammed planes into the World Trade Center, a trial that the president saw as an important demonstration of American justice.

Mr. Bloomberg said that a more secure location, like a military base, would be less disruptive and less costly. His remarks echoed growing opposition from Wall Street executives, the real estate industry and neighborhood groups, who have questioned the burdens that such a trial would bring to a heavily trafficked area of the city.

“It’s going to cost an awful lot of money and disturb an awful lot of people,” Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference in Brooklyn. “My hope is that the attorney general and the president decide to change their mind.“

Why the flip-flop?

Mr. Bloomberg had steadfastly supported the location of the trial. When the news broke two months ago, he declared, “It is fitting that 9/11 suspects face justice near the World Trade Center site, where so many New Yorkers were murdered.”

But over the past few weeks, he has heard from scores of business and community leaders who urged him to reverse course. Real estate brokers argued that security restrictions would dampen the market for apartments in Chinatown and TriBeCa; small-business owners feared a severe drop-off in customers; and residents worried that they would be unable to use their local streets.

The Police Department has said that in preparation for the trial, the area around the courthouse would be flooded with uniformed police officers, in cars and on horseback, and surrounded by 2,000 interlocking metal barriers.

“I believe it would destroy the economy in Lower Manhattan,” said Steve Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, which represents property owners. He has urged the mayor’s office to speak out against holding the trial in the city.

The city estimated it would spend more than $200 million a year on security for the trial, making it one of the most expensive security operations it would ever take on.

City Hall aides said that the complex trial could drag on for years, eventually costing the city close to $1 billion in the middle of a deep recession, though most of that is expected to be shouldered by the federal government.

I know a billion ain't what it used to be but that is still a lot of money just to help Obama and Holder feel good about themselves.

Others are deserting the sinking ship as well:

On the heels of Mayor Bloomberg’s flip-flop today over trying Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four henchmen in New York City, two prominent Democratic lawmakers from the state are telling Team Obama to hold the trial elsewhere.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Rep. Nydia Velázquez have sided with President Obama’s GOP opponents in arguing the trial should not be held in New York City after all.

It will be interesting to see whether the White House can climb down gracefully.

An Odd Loss Of Racial Consciousness

Chris Matthews has a brief lapse during which he does not see everything through a prism of race.  Must be disorienting for a liberal:

"He is post-racial by all appearances. You know, I forgot he was black tonight for an hour. You know, he's gone a long way to become a leader of this country and passed so much history in just a year or two."

Too bad - being historically black is one of the few campaign promises Obama has kept.  And time will tell!  Obama was black when his approval rating was near 70; now that it is 49 Matthews can't remember his race; and if it dips into the low 30's, Matthews will see a blond surfer from Hawaii.

BUT ENOUGH ABOUT HIS PROBLEM WITH CIGARETTES:

Embattled Obama declares in speech, 'I don't quit'

Alito On Obama - "Not True". And He's Right!

Supreme Court Justice Alito had a made-for-video moment during Obama's State of the Union address,  mouthing "Not true" after the President inaccurately described the recent Supreme Court decision on campaign finance laws.  Brad Smith is a law prof with the truth, or we could go to David Kirkpatrick of the NY Times:

The president appeared to have mischaracterized the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn restrictions on corporate-paid political commercials by suggesting that the decision invited political advertisements by foreign companies, too.

“Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections,” Mr. Obama said.

“Well, I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, and worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that’s why I’m urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong.”

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., a member of the majority in that decision, broke with the justices’ usual decorum to openly dissent. He shook his head no and mouthed the words “not true.”

...President Obama called for new legislation to prohibit foreign companies from taking advantage of the ruling to spend money to influence American elections. But he is too late; Congress passed the Foreign Agents Registration Act in 1996, which prohibits independent political commercials by foreign nationals or foreign companies.

I think Mr. Kirkpatrick has more of a future as a reporter than as a political strategist - Obama's strategy of calling on Congress to enact laws already on the books should assure him of a useful victory.  A year from now, Obama can appear at the State of the Union and proudly announce that Congress has banned foreign corporations from running ads.

The Times got this right during their live-blogging last night as well:

A Memorable, Unusual Moment | 10:38 p.m. David Kirkpatrick notes a rare moment of confrontation. As Mr. Obama criticized the recent ruling on campaign finance, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. appeared to correct him.
(The justice’s reaction is captured on YouTube.)

When Mr. Obama declared that the ruling would open the floodgates to special interest spending on American elections, including foreign companies, Justice Alito broke with the justices’ usual decorum during such events and shook his head no, mouthing the words, “No, it’s not true.” In fact, though a dissenting opinion and some analysts argued that the opinion could imply a First Amendment right for foreign corporations to spend money on American campaign commercials, the majority opinion explicitly said it was not making that determination with this decision [link to 183 page .pdf].

So the Times, at least, is not in the tank for Obama on this one.  But you can't spell "apologist" without AP!  Their coverage:

The court did upend a 100-year trend that had imposed greater limitations on corporate political activity. Specifically, the court, in a 5-4 decision, said corporations and unions could spend freely from their treasuries to run political ads for or against specific candidates.

In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said the court's majority "would appear to afford the same protection to multinational corporations controlled by foreigners as to individual Americans."

As the Times noted, Stevens was arguing (p. 120 of the .pdf) that a simple-minded extension of the majority logic ought to allow foreign corporations the right to run commercials.  However, the majority expressly addressed that (p. 3 of the .pdf,or p. 46 of the opinion):

We need not reach the question whether the Government has a compelling interest in preventing foreign individuals or associations from influencing our Nation’s political process. Cf. 2 U. S. C. §441e (contribution and expenditure ban applied to “foreign national[s]”).

Geez - what sort of basic skills are they teaching in law schools?

Gays In The Military

If I knew nothing about military life (like Barack!) I might still have a few thoughts about gays in the military and the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

This might be an excellent time to drop Don't Ask.  First, a weak economy should be good for recruiting even if hard cases and macho men decide (absurdly) that the military is now a haven for girly-men.  (FWIW, that macho-man argument is also offered in opposition to gay marriage.)

Secondly, contra McCain (who knows something of military life) the fact that we are fighting two wars may be helpful.  Bored soldiers in a peace time army may invent all sorts of reasons to grate on each other.  In a war zone the focus will be on the mission, and soldiers will be more concerned with whether a fellow soldier can save their sorry ass then with whether he is staring at it.

Or so one might think, but what do I know?  As to the possibility that we are embarking on this social experiment in war time because Obama dropped the ball on health care and needs to play to his base, well, I'm sure the politics had nothing to do with this and Obama is motivated exclusively by his belief that this is the Right Thing To Do.  In any case, talk is cheap - let's see whether Obama pushes to get this done, or blames mysterious forces and Evil Republicans (who control the Senate by 41-59) when nothing happens.

James O'Keefe And The Eerily Prescient Patterico

NBC's Pete Williams offers an explanation for the attempted phone tampering at Sen. Landrieu's office attempted by ACORN stinger James O'Keefe:

A law enforcement official says the four men arrested for attempting to tamper with the phones in the New Orleans office of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D) were not trying to intercept or wiretap the calls.

Instead, the official says, the men, led by conservative videomaker James O'Keefe, wanted to see how her local office staff would respond if the phones were inoperative. They were apparently motivated, the official says, by criticism that when Sen. Landrieu became a big player in the health care debate, people in Louisiana were having a hard time getting through on the phones to register their views. 

That is, the official says, what led the four men to pull this stunt -- to see how the local staffers would react if the phones went out. Would the staff just laugh it off, or would they express great concern that local folks couldn't get through?

Patterico had linked to that very coverage in an Update, then mentioned it again:

What was he doing? I don’t know. You might look at UPDATE x4 to my initial post about this, and consider the story linked there. Which has to do with Landrieu’s phones being “jammed” over calls coming in regarding her position on health care:

“We were stunned to learn that so many phone calls to Sen. Landrieu have been unanswered and met with continuous busy signals,” Perkins said. “We asked them to call their senators. They could get through to Sen. Vitter, but not Sen. Landrieu.”

“Our lines have been jammed for weeks, and I apologize,” Landrieu said in interview after giving a speech on the Senate floor Tuesday. “But no amount of jamming is going to keep me from supporting a good work for Louisiana and the nation.”

Just sayin’.

Well, that's their story.  Maybe.

SOTU Sneak Preview

If the suspense is killing you, Glenn Thrush of The Politico has the White House talking points for the State of the Union.

In Support Of Patterico And O'Keefe

Patterico points out that the WaPo leaps to the notion that ACORN stinger James O'Keefe was part of a plot to bug Sen. Mary Landrieu's office, even though the affidavit says no such thing.

Let me just share this rare moment of solidarity with the NY Times, which included this in their coverage:

The affidavit did not accuse the men of trying to tap the phones, or describe in detail what they did to the equipment.

“There is no wiretap allegation,” said J. Garrison Jordan, the lawyer who represented Mr. Flanagan at a bond hearing, where the men were all released on $10,000 bonds. He declined to give specifics, saying he had not had much time to talk with Mr. Flanagan.

Obviously, the case may change.  One can imagine that the FBI Special Agent swearing the affidavit wanted to limit himself to the facts and declined to speculate on the possible use of any electronic equipment in evidence.  (If he managed to arrest four twenty-somethings without coming up with any cell phones or i-pods, that would merit a headline!).

But at this point, the Times is on my side - wiretapping has yet to be formally alleged, except in WaPo fantasy-land.

Let's also note that the WaPo has since corrected their story:

Earlier versions of this story incorrectly reported that James O'Keefe faced charges in an alleged plot to bug the office of Sen. Mary Landrieu. The charges were related to an alleged plot to tamper with a phone system. The headline incorrectly referred to a plot to bug the phone and a caption incorrectly referred to an alleged wiretap scheme.

And if you wonder why editors go gray - in their initial blog post of the story Carol Leonnig and Garrance Franke-Ruta, the same two WaPo reporters with a byline in the bum story, got it right:

The conservative young filmmaker who tarnished the reputation of a liberal activist group with his undercover videos has been arrested for allegedly trying to tamper with the phones in Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu's News Orleans office.

Baffling.

Hiccup!

I am switching an unexpected double post over to an open thread.

At some point we need to get back to the IPCC bashing - people are perusing the footnotes to their 2007 report and finding citations to the World Wildlife Fund everywhere.  C'mon, what happened to that Nobel-winning peer-reviewed science?

Hey, it looks like the IPCC opted for lots of tedious science seasoned with headline grabbing speculations passed off as science.  Cool for them, utterly dastardly if done by Evil Big Oil.

We Should Thank Arlen Specter Before We Say Goodbye

Embattled Arlen Specter will probably be swept over the electoral falls this year, either by a liberal challenger in the Democratic primary or the conservative Pat Toomey in the general election.

But before he leaves Republicans should thank him, since his defection in April 2009 (followed by Al Franken's court room victory) gave the Democrats the dangerous illusion of control.

Imagine Obama had fewer Democratic Senators to work with on health care.  House liberals would have been told to keep their fantasies in check.  Democratic Senate leaders would have negotiated with real commitment with moderate Republicans, instead of proceeding with a "we like you but we don't need you" mentality.  And the final unsavory and unsightly deals would probably have been cut with Senate Republicans, rather than with members of the President's own party.  The final package would have been less than libs wanted, but it would have arrived.

Joe Biden made the same point (yes, that gave me a flicker of self-doubt, but even a blind squirrel finds his nuts):

“The reports of our demise are premature. It’s time that everybody takes a deep breath,” Mr. Biden said. He added, “When we had 60 votes, there was the expectation left, right and center that we could do everything we wanted to do, which was never realistic. Never.”

Well done, Arlen.  Now get out.

James O'Keefe Busted

James O'Keefe, mastermind of the undercover ACORN sting, has been arrested as part of an alleged pot to interfere with the telephones in the New Orleans office of LA Senator Mary Landrieu (NY Times, WaPo, affidavit).

From the Times:

All four of the men arrested Monday in New Orleans, each in their mid-twenties, were charged with entering federal property under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony, according to the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Louisiana.

The men arrested were Mr. O’Keefe, 25, Joseph Basel, 24, Robert Flanagan, 24, and Stan Dai, 24, the affidavit stated. Mr. Flanagan is the son of William Flanagan, the interim United States Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana.

An affidavit signed by Steven Rayes, a special agent for the F.B.I., detailed parts of the operation, which began about 11 a.m. on Monday. Mr. Basel and Mr. Flanagan entered the building dressed in “blue denim pants, blue work shirts, light green fluorescent vests, tool belts, and construction-style hard hats.”

They said they were there to perform repair work on the telephone system, and later claimed they left their identification in their car.

Mr. O’Keefe was, at the time, already inside, according to the complaint, “holding a cellular phone so as to record” Mr. Basel and Mr. Flanagan.

Puzzling.  The obvious interpretation is that the four intended to bug the telephones; O'Keefe wanted some video to authenticate their final product.

The obvious problem - wiretapping is illegal, which makes publication awkward, and getting caught is dumb; I would have inferred from the ACORN sting that Mr. O'Keefe was far from dumb.

So one wonders - did they have some other venture in mind, such as an expose of shoddy security practices at Federal offices?  Hmm, if so their project took an unexpected turn.

I do note that the affidavit does not mention that the two faux repairmen were in possession of wiretapping equipment.  Just because it is not mentioned it does not follow that they weren't, but still.  The affidavit actually does not mention bugging per se but instead refers to "willfully and maliciously interfering with a telephone system".

It's all troublingly Kerry-esque.  We await the next plot twist.

Brain Pump

Pump some iron, pump up your brain.

Galbraith'ed Out

The Times reports on the impending legal resolution of Peter Galbraith's attempt to score a mega-million dollar payday on Kurdish oil, but they leave out all the juicy backstory:

OSLO — A Norwegian oil producer announced Monday that it would probably have to pay from $12 million to $144 million in an approaching arbitration settlement with parties identified in legal documents and local media reports as the former American diplomat Peter W. Galbraith and a Yemeni businessman.

Mr. Galbraith, who helped negotiators in the Kurdish regional government figure out how oil revenues are shared under the current Iraqi Constitution, spent part of 2004 as a private dealmaker. He helped bring together the Kurdish government and the Norwegian oil company DNO that year to sign an oilfield exploration and production contract that bypassed the central Iraqi government in Baghdad.

Mr. Galbraith has said that he thought the deal would advance the cause of Kurdish autonomy, which he favored. But it also held the promise of making him wealthy, a prospect reinforced by the announcement in Oslo about the coming settlement.

So what is missing from this story?  When the Times first tackled this in November 2009 they at least noted the minor awkwardness that Galbraith was (a) going to get rich from the policies he seemed to be advocating and (b) was an advisor to both John Kerry and Joe Biden.  The Times swept the Biden problem into the dustbin of TimesHistory by pretending that Biden was never on board with Galbraith's calls for a partitioned Iraq:

Mr. Biden and Mr. Kerry, who have been influenced by Mr. Galbraith’s thinking but do not advocate such a partitioning of the country, were not aware of Mr. Galbraith’s oil dealings in Iraq, aides to both politicians say.

I suppose it depends on the meaning of the word "do" - Biden spent years advocating a partition but maybe the Times is pretending that if he has switched his view as of November 2009 then the past does not count.  That creative approach spares Joe (and especially Obama) the embarrassment of a troubling association, and on we move.

Eventually the Times admitted in an Editors Note that maybe they could have checked more carefully before running guest pieces from Mr. Galbraith advocating policies which would have enriched him, but the Biden slide-by reporting has not, to my knowledge, been addressed.

And there is not a hint of any of this in the current Times "coverage".

A Visionary Aggregate Spending Freeze

Obama derided the notion of a spending freeze when John McCain proposed it in 2008.  Whatever!  He also derided McCain's idea of taxing health insurance benefits and Hilary's call for an individual health insurance mandate, so let's look forward, not backward.

Obama's objection in 2008 was that a budget freeze lacked surgical precision, so for his State of the Union address Dr. Obama is going to propose an aggregate spending freeze on discretionary items - some programs will see an expansion of funding while others will actually be cut back (first time for everything!).

As a recession-fighting measure spending cuts are, well, creative.  But as a mad bid for a bit of public support, this may work.

My patriotic suggestion - if Congress wants to consider raising some revenue, they might want to try and sell the broadcast rights to some of the hearings devoted to budget cuts.  Get 'em off of C-Span and onto The Comedy Channel!  Or maybe Spike TV can air the budget cut hearings as a lead in to their next Mixed Martial Art fight night, if people think that won't be too violent.  The hearings, that is, not the martial arts.

GREAT LEAPING LIBS!  Little whispers of discontent from the left:

Paul Krugman:

Obama Liquidates Himself

A spending freeze? That’s the brilliant response of the Obama team to their first serious political setback?

It’s appalling on every level.

Brad DeLong:

Barack Herbert Hoover Obama?

For some time I have been worried about fifty little Herbert Hoovers at the state level. Right now it looks like I have to worry about one big one:

Paul Rosenberg:

It's Official - Obama Is An Idiot

Nate Silver:

The White House's Brain Freeze

First reactions aren't always the best ones, but my first reaction to tonight's news is that it's a mistake on par with John McCain's "suspending my campaign" gaffe.

Let's be fair - it is an aggregate brain freeze.  Some brains will join Joe Biden's in the cyrogenic preserver while others will continue at their current white hot setting.

Incredible Pressure

A WaPo article on Obama's relentless quest for information (or is it affirmation?!?) includes this nugget:

As for what Obama reads online, his advisers said he looks for offbeat blogs and news stories, tracking down firsthand reporting and seeking out writers with opinions about his policies. Obama was particularly interested in Atlantic Online's Andrew Sullivan's tweeting of the Iranian elections last year, said an aide, who requested anonymity to discuss what influences the president.

That puts an extraordinary amount of pressure on Andrew's "underbloggers".

And let's be fair - Andrew christened the "underbloggers" five days before the Underpants Bomber.  In the current environment no person of sane judgment would tell a TSA security officer he was an "underblogger", but any confusion must be laid at Al Qaeda in Yemen.

AND LET ME ADD: I appreciate the access the WaPo gained but a story this up-sucky really ought to come with a warning label.

Contract II - Live Free And Vote Hard

Newt Gingrich lays out the principles that should guide a 2010 Contract With America and suggests ten topics.

We Are Not Worthy

Andrew Sullivan and Joe Klein take a moment to explain that the Great Unwashed are ignorant fools for failing to appreciate the fine points of Obanomics.  Bailing out banks that refuse to lend?  Genius!  Claiming the stimulus bill will hold unemployment under 8%?  Shrewd message management!

Oh, well.  I am already waxing nostalgic for "No Drama Obama", who never seemed to get riled up by Wall Street bonuses, or rising unemployment, or terrorist attacks, or much of anything other than getting to Hawaii by Christmas.  But since he is likely to spend the next ten months playing the Angry President, Klein and Sully had better prepare to shift gears - since Obama is going to embrace and endorse the anger of the American voter, his apologists will need to embrace it as well.

The Unforgettable Mr. Peanut

The current CW is that running against Bush won't win the Dems any elections.  That is a reminder of Carter Exceptionalism, since Republicans were able to run against him until 1992.

We Are All Special Interests Now

Ross Douthat explains why Washington can make big changes to small programs or small changes to big programs, but not big changes to big programs.

Sunday AM

I'm two days late - is Obama still angry about lost jobs, or has he moved back to health care?

Saturday Morning

Let's continue Anniversary Week for Obama.

Does DoJ Also Have The Right To Remain Silent?

Who decided that the Underpants Bomber deserved a lawyer and had the right to remain silent?  Will Attorney General Holder enlighten us?

Sen. Jeff Sessions said the decision was made by "unnamed high-ranking official at the Department of Justice".  Perhaps We the People can find out who.

There seem to be some basic and unanswered questions that might be worth asking the "suspect", if his lawyer would let us.  From the Jan 7 Times:

SANA, Yemen — A senior official here said Thursday that the young Nigerian man accused of trying to bring down an airliner as it was approaching Detroit on Dec. 25 had met with operatives of Al Qaeda and probably with Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American-born Internet preacher, in Yemen before setting out on his journey.

But the official, Rashad al-Alimi, the deputy prime minister for national security and defense, cited Yemeni investigations and said that the Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, had acquired the explosives used in the failed attack not in Yemen, which he left on Dec. 4, but in Nigeria. There he changed planes at the Lagos airport on Dec. 24, boarding a flight to Amsterdam and then another to Detroit.

Mr. Alimi’s remarks, made at a news conference in Sana, offered Yemen’s most definitive public reconstruction of Mr. Abdulmutallab’s movements before the attack. But the account differed on crucial points from those given by British, Ghanaian and Nigerian officials: where Mr. Abdulmutallab was recruited, where he obtained the explosives, even how long he spent in the Nigerian airport.

According to previous accounts, Mr. Abdulmutallab flew from Accra, Ghana, on Dec. 24, and had a layover at the airport in Lagos on his way to boarding the Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight in Amsterdam. American officials have said that Mr. Abdulmutallab told F.B.I. investigators that Al Qaeda in Yemen had trained him and furnished him with the sophisticated bomb he concealed in his underwear.

In a normal military interrogation the detainee could be confronted with discrepancies between his previous story and any new evidence.  In Eric Holder's war, not so much.

Oh, Mama, Can This Really Be The End?

To be stuck inside of DC with the health care debate again...

Paul Krugman exhorts House Democrats to ignore the voters of Massachusetts, ignore the national Gallup poll showing a majority wants a pause in the process, and just jump off a cliff by passing the Senate bill for Obama's signature.  Whether swing seat House Dems are that keen to rejoin the private sector in the current tough job market is untested.

I also score this from Krugman as "Maybe":

The fact is that the Senate bill is a centrist document, which moderate Republicans should find entirely acceptable. In fact, it’s very similar to the plan Mitt Romney introduced in Massachusetts just a few years ago. Yet it has faced lock-step opposition from the G.O.P., which is determined to prevent Democrats from achieving any successes. Why would this change now that Republicans think they’re on a roll?

I suppose a lot of things look centrist from the far left.  Be that as it may, the Republicans can't be the Party Of No forever.  In 1994 Newt Gingrich offered the Contract with America as the Republican agenda; presumably Republican "leaders" (are there any?) will follow that example in 2010.

I can easily imagine Republicans proposing some modest package - a down payment on reform - that could pick up 70 votes in the Senate and 300 in the House.  It won't satisfy the vast scope of Dem aspirations, but if the Democrats refuse, well, who is obstructionist and unrealistic now?  The Times describes such an approach here:

Lawmakers, Congressional aides and health policy experts said the package might plausibly include these elements:

¶Insurers could not deny coverage to children under the age of 19 on account of pre-existing medical conditions.

¶Insurers would have to offer policyholders an opportunity to continue coverage for children through age 25 or 26.

¶The federal government would offer financial incentives to states to expand Medicaid to cover childless adults and parents.

¶The federal government would offer grants to states to establish regulated markets known as insurance exchanges, where consumers and small businesses could buy coverage.

¶The federal government would offer tax credits to small businesses to help them defray the cost of providing health benefits to workers.

¶If a health plan provided care through a network of doctors and hospitals, it could not charge patients more for going outside the network in an emergency. Co-payments for emergency care would have to be the same, regardless of whether a hospital was in the insurer’s network of preferred providers.

The package could also include changes in Medicare, to reduce the growth in payments to doctors and hospitals while rewarding providers of high-quality, lower-cost care. To help older Americans, it could narrow a gap in Medicare coverage of prescription drugs, sometimes known as a doughnut hole.

Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health law and policy at George Washington University, said the proposals were “totally doable” and could help perhaps 15 million people.

“Medicaid already covers poor children through age 18 and could be expanded to cover all nonelderly poor people, regardless of age,” Ms. Rosenbaum said. This proposal does not go as far as the House or Senate bill, but she said, “It’s an idea that has been supported in the past by health policy experts across the political spectrum.”

Those proposals don't raise my blood pressure - readers?

David Brooks identifies four grim paths forward for Obama, one of which is to ignore the voters and press on:

The Democrats now have four bad options. The first is what you might call the Heedless and Arrogant Approach. A clear majority of Americans are against the Congressional health care reform plan. Democrats could say: We know this is unpopular, but we think it is good policy and we are going to ram it through and you voters can judge us by the results.

My major, screaming-out-loud objection to that analysis is that there won't be any results until 2014, unless Democrats think a few early tax hikes will count as popular "results".  If Democrats pass this as is, they will spend the next ten months defending it instead of moving on to jobs.

Josh Marshall thinks there is a small and fading chance that Democrats will realize that there is no other road forward and that sometimes nothing is a really uncool hand.

Ezra Klein can't imagine a world with a pared back bill, but I bet he isn't trying.  Instead, he is locked up on the same argument that Obama utterly rejected during the campaign - if there is a ban on exclusions based on pre-existing conditions then there must be mandates, from which it follows that there must be subsidies.  Hillary backed that logic during the campaign, Obama opposed it (irrationally, IMHO, but I am not smart enough to be a Democrat), and the voters spoke.  OK, Obama then flip-flopped back to reality and supported mandates, but voter support for the mandate notion has been tailgate tested and tailgate-rejected.

Arnold Kling Is Fascinating On Bank Reform

Arnold Kling is madly insightful on bank reform, explaining that each previous round of reform has laid the groundwork for the next debacle.  Let me gracelessly summarize - prior to the Great Depression, banks offered balloon-style home mortgages and lacked deposit insurance.  That ended badly; the cure was to encourage banks to offer long term mortgages funded by insured deposits.

By the 1980's, S&Ls were doing just that.  Rising short term rates wiped out their interest margins but insured deposits and book value accounting of their mortgages allowed them to continue operating and "doubling down" with the taxpayer's money.  That ended badly. 

The cure was the introduction of mark-to-market accounting to realistically depict the value of financial firms and the promotion of securitization as a way to get mortgages into the hands of other investors.  Which brings us to the glorious present.

So the question - what disaster is likely to follow from the next round of reform? 

Blow Me Down

Wind power in 2024 is not exactly dominating discussions this week, but the Times had an interesting story about a fascinating study commissioned for the Energy Department.

The study encompassed wind power in the Eastern Grid, which runs roughly from the Eastern Seaboard to Montana/Louisiana.  Four scenarios were contemplated:

• Scenario 1, 20% penetration – High Capacity Factor, Onshore: Utilizes high-quality wind resources in the Great Plains, with other development in the eastern United States where good wind resources exist.

• Scenario 2, 20% penetration – Hybrid with Offshore: Some wind generation in the Great Plains is moved east. Some East Coast offshore development is included.

• Scenario 3, 20% penetration – Local with Aggressive Offshore: More wind generation is moved east toward load centers, necessitating broader use of offshore resources. The offshore wind assumptions represent an uppermost limit of what could be developed by 2024 under an aggressive technology-push scenario.

• Scenario 4, 30% penetration – Aggressive On- and Offshore: Meeting the 30% energy penetration level uses a substantial amount of the higher quality wind resource in the NREL database. A large amount of offshore generation is needed to reach the target energy level.

Particularly in the Great Plains it is quicker to build wind farms than revamp the grid, so there would be a real benefit from some coordinated planning here. From the Times:

That expansion [of the grid] would require spending about $93 billion in today’s dollars, according to David Corbus, a senior engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which supervised the study. He said that sum, large as it is on its face, was “really, really small compared to other major costs” in the power system.

A bigger obstacle is how to overcome a political impasse over building power lines, and how to find, and finance, sites for 10 times more generating capacity. The study did not address those questions.

The study used wind data at different sites for every ten minutes from 2004 to 2006.  Unsurprisingly, geographic diversification of wind farms somewhat mitigated the base load problem.

So The Defense Is That The Director Of National Intelligence Is Hopelessly Confused?

Somehow this attempt to reassure me is not having the intended effect:

Obama administration officials were flabbergasted Wednesday when Director of National Intelligence Adm. Dennis Blair testified that an alleged Qaeda operative who tried to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day should have been questioned by a special interrogation unit that doesn't exist, rather than the FBI.

DNI Blair referred to a high value interrogation team that is apparently still on the drawing boards.   Is it too much to expect the DNI to know about this?

About an hour after the senior official made those remarks to Declassified, Blair issued this statement [link]: "My remarks today before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs have been misconstrued. The FBI interrogated Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab when they took him into custody. They received important intelligence at that time, drawing on the FBI's expertise in interrogation that will be available in the HIG [High-Value Interrogation Group] once it is fully operational."

More pushback:

But officials who have worked on the issue said Blair was wrong on almost every count. Abdulmutallab couldn't possibly have been questioned by the HIG because the unit doesn't exist yet. The task force had recommended it be created to handle the questioning of "high value"  Qaeda leaders who might be captured overseas—a criterion that clearly doesn't apply in Abdulmutallab's case. But the proposal is still being reviewed by the National Security Council, and the actual unit has not yet been created. 

Tick, tick, tick - any day now, gents.

An official in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said that Blair "fully understand" that work on the HIG "has not been completed" when he gave his initial testimony. The official said officials are now working on the charter for the HIG--a document that will call for teams of intel experts and interrogators known as Mobile Interrogation Teams (or MITs) that will be dispatched when a top suspect is apprehended. When he responded to Collins, Blair was "talking about what should be included in the charter."

Stephen Hayes at The Weeklys Standard has more.  Andy McCarthy quotes this from Sen. Jeff Sessions:

In his testimony today, Mr. Blair stated that the administration failed to deploy the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group that was put in place for this very purpose [Or will be, maybe after we close Gitmo]Ooops]. We learned that the administration had no policy in place to determine whether Abdulmutallab would be treated as a civilian or as an unprivileged belligerent-that, in effect, these decisions were made "on the fly" without any meaningful consideration of the consequences. And we learned from FBI Director Mueller's questioning that responsibility for the decision to switch gears from intelligence collection to criminal processing lies with an unnamed high-ranking official at the Department of Justice.

So who is the unnamed DoJ official?

We Weren't The Ones We Were Waiting For

Hillary supporter Paul Krugman blasts The One for leaving health care reform in the ditch:

He Wasn’t The One We’ve Been Waiting For

...But I have to say, I’m pretty close to giving up on Mr. Obama, who seems determined to confirm every doubt I and others ever had about whether he was ready to fight for what his supporters believed in.

Ben Smith notes that for Israelis and Palestinians, He Wasn't The One They Were Waiting For, either:

That persuasive power, and the notion of Obama himself as game-changer, was part of his promise, but foreign policy has turned out to be less susceptible to personality than many had hoped.

Mr. Smith links to a Joe Klein interview with Obama which foreshadows the debacles of 2010; this is Obama on Iran:

On Iran, one of our trickiest foreign policy challenges, we have held the international community together, both in our engagement strategy, but also now as we move into a dual-track approach. Which is, If they don't accept the open hand, we've got to make sure they understand there are consequences for breaking international rules. It's going to be tough, but I think the relationship we've developed with Russia will be very helpful. The outreach we've done to our traditional NATO allies will be very helpful. The work that we've done with China — including the work we've done with China to enforce sanctions against North Korea — will help us in dealing more effectively with Iran.

Russia and China like us - they really like us! - so it will all come together against Iran.  Oh, brother.

John Edwards Has A Love Child - Who Knew?!?

John Edwards admits the obvious:

For the first time, John Edwards is publicly admitting that he is indeed the father of a 2-year-old daughter conceived with Rielle Hunter, a campaign videographer with whom he had an affair.

The Captain cuts loose:

Well, there are two Americas.  There is the one where people acknowledge the obvious immediately, and there is the other where they hire lawyers and lie like crazy about the obvious.  In that sense, Edwards became a bridge between the two today.

Taylor Marsh was a Hillary-ite who was blasted by her fellow lefties for bashing Edwards.  Today Ms. Marsh is so excited she has abandoned the use of the English language:

The Edwards story a part of why the book “Game Change,” by Halperin and Heileman, who got on background material because people close to campaigns, politicians, but those who know dirt, want to work again in politics, did so through sourcing now being scrutinized and questioned by many. As they talked to people with stories to tell about what the politicians are really like when the gloss is off, but did so providing cover so the people could tell their tales. A lot of criticism being laid at their feet about sourcing, even if, so far, the players in the book who are being portrayed aren’t coming out saying the two reporters are lying. Elizabeth Edwards’s friends even saying it’s all true, same with Harry Reid, while others portrayed are simply staying mum, including the entire hierarchy of the Democratic Party.

Say what?  That almost makes me wish the Dems could pass health reform just so we could read her coverage of that.

Well - Edwards was the 2004 version of the good looking, well spoken visionary with no discernible resume and a desire to be President.  I imagine there is a general consensus that he would have been a disaster.

Obama was the 2008 version of that candidate.  Sadly, Paul Krugman has announced that we aren't the ones we were waiting for.  Or something.  (Krugman was a Hillary supporter, so the idea that he is now wishing he had backed McCain is far-fetched, but he is clearly not happy with The One.)

Now far be it from me to suggest that from this it follows that the Brown 2012 bandwagon ought to slow down a bit, but I will say that it argues for maybe just a bit more skepticism out there amongst the voting public.  Maybe candidates with a track record and a resume are worth keeping around.

WELL, YES:  At various points I have articulated the notion that nominating an unknown is a structural requirement of the Dem Party; on that side of the aisle a candidate with a history is a candidate with a history of popping the balloon of one liberal fantasist or another (Kerry managed to sidestep that by spending eighteen years in the Senate doing nothing.)  But a blank slate like Barack will always be appealing to Dems.

And for Republicans?  Pro-lifers fear the flippers and the Souters.  Stealth is out.  (And Brown ought to be, by that criteria.)

Matt Yglesias pointed to a similar conclusion from a different direction when contemplating the small number of self-identified liberals versus the large number of self-identified conservatives.

In particular, it tells us that a lot of people look at themselves as conservatives. So a president who says “I look at myself as a conservative, and you should look at me that way too” will still need to do some outreach to build a majority, but he’s working from a strong base. By contrast, a president who says “I look at myself as a liberal, and you should look at me that way too” is going to put himself in some pretty serious trouble.

Consequently, neither Barack Obama nor Bill Clinton nor Jimmy Carter nor LBJ self-identified in this way.

That game is harder to play for a Democratic candidate with a record.

Not Even Eric Holder Is This Stupid

The NY Times runs a guest op-ed by Matthew Alexander in which he explains that even interrogation under the Army Field Manual can be abusive:

The adoption last year of the Army Field Manual as the standard for interrogations across the government, including the C.I.A., was a considerable improvement. But we missed a unique opportunity for progress last August when the president’s task force on interrogations recommended no changes to the manual, which was hastily revised in 2006 in the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal.

For example, an appendix to the manual allows the military to keep a detainee in “separation” — solitary confinement — indefinitely. It requires only that a general approve any extension after 30 days. Rest assured, there will be numerous waivers to even that minuscule requirement.

...

But military interrogators do not operate in a vacuum. The consequences of their actions have far-reaching effects — like Al Qaeda’s exploitation of American abuse of prisoners as a recruiting tool. And, in any case, extended solitary confinement is torture, as confirmed by many scientific studies. Even the initial 30 days of isolation could be considered abuse.

If we truly wanted to come up with a humane limit on solitary confinement, we would look at the Golden Rule: what would we consider inhumane treatment if one of our own soldiers were captured by the enemy? My answer: Given the youth of our men and women in uniform, that number is probably around two weeks. This limit, however, should be determined by medical professionals, not soldiers or politicians.

The Army Field Manual also does not explicitly prohibit stress positions, putting detainees into close confinement or environmental manipulation (other than hypothermia and “heat injury”). These omissions open a window of opportunity for abuse.

The manual also allows limiting detainees to just four hours of sleep in 24 hours. Let’s face it: extended captivity with only four hours of sleep a night (consider detainees at Guantánamo Bay who have been held for seven years) does not meet the minimum standard of humane treatment, either in terms of American law or simple human decency.

So the key to Al Qaeda recruiting is that America is imprisoning a bunch of lonely, tired terrorists who need more sack drill and playdates?  We've come a long way from their worries about infidels in the Holy Land and restoration of the Caliphate.

I am not sure how the Attorney General could insert himself into this debate but I hope Eric Holder gets behind these ideas.  And while we are at it, I bet their food could be a lot better, too - how is the arugula at Gitmo?  The world is watching.

A Body Blow To McCain-Feingold

The Supreme Court finds, by a 5-4 vote, that corporations (and presumaby others, such as unions) can spend as much as they want advocating whatever and whomever they want whenever they want.  Coordination and direct contributions to a campaign are still limited.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court has ruled that corporations may spend freely to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress, easing decades-old limits on their participation in federal campaigns.

By a 5-4 vote, the court on Thursday overturned a 20-year-old ruling that said corporations can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to pay for their own campaign ads. The decision, which almost certainly will also allow labor unions to participate more freely in campaigns, threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states.

It leaves in place a prohibition on direct contributions to candidates from corporations and unions.

...The justices also struck down part of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill that barred union- and corporate-paid issue ads in the closing days of election campaigns.

The ruling comes at an interesting time.  Getting the money out of politics was a vital liberal fantasy at a time when Republicans routinely raised more money than Democrats.  When Obama out-raised McCain, well, Obama's promise to accept public financing and abide by its limits went by the boards.  However, its easy to imagine energized righties out-raising and out-spending dispirited lefties in 2010.

The print media will bleat, of course.  They had quite a powerful position when they, alone among corporations, were free to publicly and loudly endorse whomever they preferred.  The broadcast media pick up a whole new group of potential buyers for ad space.

I Assume There Is A "Geithner Exception"

Contractors who are also tax cheats can't win more government contacts.  From the Times:

WASHINGTON — President Obama, cracking down on tax cheats, said on Wednesday that the federal government would no longer award contracts to companies that did not pay their taxes, and called on Congress to pass legislation allowing the Internal Revenue Service to share information about businesses that owe back taxes.

Mr. Obama used his executive authority to direct the heads of federal agencies to bar “deadbeat companies” from doing business with the government. Studies by the Government Accountability Office have identified tens of thousands of such companies that, collectively, owe more than $5 billion in back taxes, the president said.

“In a time of great need, when our families and our nation are finding it necessary to tighten our belts and be more responsible with how we spend our money, we can’t afford to waste taxpayer dollars,” Mr. Obama said. “And we especially can’t afford to let companies game the system.”

I assume there is a "Geithner exception" for companies providing a seemingly vital service.  In fact, Congress ought to invite Mr. Geithner himself to explain it to us.

I hope there is some materiality limit - if a company has the low bid by $100,000 but also has a $20,000 tax dispute with the IRS, do We the People benefit by awarding the contact to the higher bidder?  Maybe, it it "sends a message" to aspiring tax cheats everywhere; maybe not, if the message is one of mindless nose-cutting and face-spiting. 

As a matter of due process, is the contractor deemed to be delinquent based solely on o IRS determination, or will the procedure allow time for appeals and a final resolution before barring the contractor?

And I don't want to know enough about taxes to answer this, but I have the notion that many small businesses do not file taxes separately but are consolidated onto the owners overall return.  If the owner has a delinquency for income items not related not related to the business, should we bar the business from winning government contracts anyway?  (If the answer is yes, then maybe we should look at resolving delinquencies by withholding Social Security checks, hmm?)

All Credit To Obama!

Conservatives scoffed, but Obama's efforts to end enhanced interrogation and close Guantanamo someday have yielded results:

The Taliban’s spiritual leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, issued a lengthy directive late last spring outlining a new code of conduct for the Taliban. The dictates include bans on suicide bombings against civilians, burning down schools, or cutting off ears, lips and tongues.

Unfortunately, like Obama the kinder, gentler Taliban is not really hope and change we can believe in:

The code, which has been spottily enforced, does not necessarily mean a gentler insurgency. Although the Taliban warned some civilians away before the assault on the heart of Kabul on Monday, they were still responsible for three-quarters of civilian casualties last year, according to the United Nations.

The Taliban also seems to be taking inspiration from Obama and the Netroots in other areas:

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban have embarked on a sophisticated information war, using modern media tools as well as some old-fashioned ones, to soften their image and win favor with local Afghans as they try to counter the Americans’ new campaign to win Afghan hearts and minds.

...American and Afghan analysts see the Taliban’s effort as part of a broad initiative that employs every tool they can muster, including the Internet technology they once denounced as un-Islamic. Now they use word of mouth, messages to cellphones and Internet videos to get their message out.

Cellphones?  The Taliban is nowhere until they offer the world a chance to be their Facebook friends.

Book 'Em, Danno

So when the Underpants Bomber was arrested in Detroit neither the FBI Director nor the Director of National Intelligence were consulted as to whether he should have been processed through the civilian system (with Miranda rights and a lawyer) or the military system.  This, despite the fact that Obama authorized the creation of a special team for the interrogation of high value terrorism suspects.

Per FBI Director Mueller's testimony the agents on the spot made the decision without seeking guidance from above. So, did they not get the memo, or was there no memo advising the FBI (and presumably, local law enforcement) about the desirability of a higher review?

The Importance Of Positive Wishful Thinking

Josh Marshall runs a long letter in which a Democratic Senate staffer bares his soul about a lifetime of futility toiling in the legislative wilderness.  My favorite absurdity is this:

While I always thought we had the better ideas but the weaker messaging, it feels like somewhere along the line Members internalized a belief that we actually have weaker ideas.

Weaker messaging.  Let's see - whatever message the Dems want to get out will be backed by sympathetic faculty members of every major university, reported by a press that, barring Fox and the WSJ, is totally sympatico, and trumpeted by the reliably liberal Hollywood machine. 

Yet Dems just can't get their superior message out.  What would it take?

Director Of National Intelligence Opposes Miranda For Terrorists

No, a terrorist from Nigeria trained in Yemen does not have the right to remain silent, or so says Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, who told the Senate he was not even part of the decision process that Mirandized the Underpants Bomber and lawyered him up:

Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair told senators today that it was a mistake for authorities to give the accused bomber in the attempted Christmas Day attack on a U.S.-bound airliner a reading of his Miranda right to an attorney without consulting Blair's office, the Homeland Security secretary and other officials.

Blair noted that the administration has created a special team for interrogating high-value terrorism suspects and that it wasn’t used -- but should have been -- after the arrest of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian accused of attempting to take down the Northwest Airlines flight traveling from Amsterdam to Detroit.

"That unit was created exactly for this purpose," Blair told the Senate Homeland Security Committee. “We did not invoke the HIG in this case. We should have. Frankly, we were thinking more of overseas people. And, duh  ... the decision was made on the scene."

If this had broken earlier Coakley would have been toast.  Obama's team is so intent on coddling terrorists that they won't even follow their own procedures and get the right people involved?  Oh, well, there is always November.

And let's flash back a few weeks - Blair is advocating the perfect legal use of the military detainee system, where an interrogation of Abdulmutallab would have been controlled by the Army Field Manual.  But 58% of Rasmussen respondents would have gone even farther and dusted off the waterboard.

MORE:  WaPo and Detroit Free Press coverage.  From the DFP blog:

10:41 a.m. | U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, who chairs the committee, and Sen. Susan Collins, the ranking Republican, wondered why Napolitano and National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair weren't part of the decision to charge Abdulmutallab as a civilian.

According to Collins, once Abdulmutallab received his Miranda warning, "he stopped talking."

Lieberman said he was very concerned that Napolitano wasn't consulted about how he should be treated, given the security concerns which would surround trying a suspect in Detroit or anywhere else in the U.S.

"In my opinion, he's a prisoner of war, an enemy combatant."

If he had been charged militarily, Abdulmutallab could have been moved elsewhere -- including perhaps the detention facility for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. President Barack Obama has said he intends to close that facility.

Blair said there is a process for determining whether a person should be treated as an enemy combatant but it wasn't used in this incident.

"We were thinking more of overseas people and 'duh,' " he said.

There Is No "We" In "House of Representatives"

There is no "we" in "House of Representatives" but it is easy to find an "I" - 435 of them, in fact.  So when Democratic leaders say that "we" need to pass health care reform, about whom do they speak?  Nancy Pelosi may need a bill to justify her leadership role, but she comes from a safe seat in San Francisco.  Meanwhile, there are more than 50 Democrats who were first elected to the House in either 2006 or 2008.  If these people were smart enough to get elected they are smart enough to notice that Martha Coakley didn't. They are not going to quietly pass the Senate bill so that Nancy can keep her job and they can lose theirs.

And if health reform crashes and burns?  These people go back to their districts and tell their supporters that they understand voters are unhappy, they understand they were sent to help change Washington, but right now about the only thing that is bipartisan in Washington is the dysfunction.

After flipping the keys to Harry and Nancy and putting them in charge of both the stimulus bill and health reform Obama may or may not try to triangulate against a Democratic Congress but I bet plenty of swing-seat Dems will do exactly that.

ADS I DON'T WANT TO SEE:  I have a vision of an ad touting a remedy for "Congressional dysfunction".  I sorta see Nancy and Harry (and Mitch!) gazing moonily at each other while the voice over explains that the pill lasts for 36 hours, so "when the bipartisan moment is right, you'll be ready".

But if the voting lasts more than four hours, call your doctor.

DEATH KNELL?  Barney Frank exhorts Dems to respect the process and the voters of his home state.

THERE'S STILL PLENTY OF KOOL-AID FOR THE REST OF THEM:  Jon Chait explains that since voters are really unhappy about the economy, Dems should ignore the polls, ignore Massachusetts, continue to ignore the economy, and resume their focus on healthcare. 

This passage is especially unplugged:

Abandoning health care reform after they’ve already paid whatever political cost that comes from voting for it in both houses would be suicide. Even if Coakley loses, the House could pass the Senate bill as is, avoiding the need to break a filibuster, and tinker with it in a reconciliation bill that can’t be filibustered. The only thing preventing the Democrats from following through would be sheer panic.

Well, House members have not yet voted for the Senate bill; they voted for a notably different House bill, so the political price they pay for abandoning a failed process and blaming the Senate (or the House liberals, or the House moderates) may be quite small.

Brown Is This Season's Black

Michael Cooper of the Times tells us that Democrats are stunned.

Carl Hulse tells us that the health care bill is fading to black.

Adam Nagourney describes "the White House" as "arguably humiliated" (what, now people in Massachusetts don't like its architecture?); presumably he does not want Times readers to spill their morning coffee upon learning of Obama's arguable humiliation.

Mr. Nagourney also sidles up to another abyss here:

Most ominously, independent voters — who embraced Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign and are an increasingly critical constituency — seemed to have fled to Mr. Brown in Massachusetts, as they did to Republicans in races for governor in Virginia and New Jersey last November. It is hard not to view that as a repudiation of the way Mr. Obama and Democratic Congressional leaders have run things.

It's hard not to view it as a repudiation, but I'm sure when the spin is ready the Times will present it.

STILL TO COME:  Obama has not experienced much adversity in his political life but I eagerly await a spate of stories explaining how he will apply the lessons he took from his 2000 defeat by Bobby Rush to the current situation.  I do like this quote from Mr. Rush himself:

“He was blinded by his ambition,” Mr. Rush said. “Obama has never suffered from a lack of believing that he can accomplish whatever it is he decides to try. Obama believes in Obama. And, frankly, that has its good side but it also has its negative side.”

Eerily prescient.

The lesson the Times took when they covered this in 2007 does not seem broadly applicable:

Not that the loss hurt Mr. Obama. Not long after getting “my rear end handed to me,” as he later put it, he ran successfully for the United States Senate — this time with no sitting Democrat to displace, with abundant planning and with a more experienced campaign staff, including David Axelrod, a Daley consultant who is the senior political adviser on Mr. Obama’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Pick an easier district?  Maybe Obama could run for UN Secretary General.  Hire Axelrod?  Already done.

Polls Are Closed, Comments Are Open

I had the Cowboys and the Chargers this weekend so don't look to me for fearless (Cough* Brown) predictions. 

However - if Brown wins, we can get the spate of Hubris/Nemesis stories now rather than waiting until November.

Looking For The Disappearing Glaciers

Andew Revkin has a Times blog post about the controversial Himalayan glaciers, which apparently will be with us long past 2035.

The Times also has a story, which includes this summary and insight:

But it now appears that the estimate about Himalayan glacial melt was based on a decade-old interview of one climate scientist in a science magazine, The New Scientist, and that hard scientific evidence to support that figure is lacking. The scientist, Dr. Syed Hasnain, a glacier specialist with the government of the Indian state of Sikkim and currently a fellow at the TERI research institute in Delhi, said in an e-mail message that he was “misquoted” about the 2035 estimate in The New Scientist article. He has more recently said that his research suggests that only small glaciers could disappear entirely.

The panel, which relies on contributions from hundreds of scientists, is considering whether to amend the estimate or remove it.

So the IPCC relies on some combination of peer-reviewed scientific papers and articles they stumble across in the press which may or not accurately characterize a scientist's conclusions?

Dare we ask if this is standard practice at the IPCC?  The Times nearly does:

The flawed estimate raises more questions about the panel’s vetting procedures than it does about the melting of Himalayan glaciers, which most scientists believe is a major problem.

As I noted a few days back as well as in December, the IPCC was almost surely aware of their dubious sourcing when they wrote the report, since they footnoted a World Wildlife Fund report from 2005 rather than a specific research paper.  And as the Times notes, they included the 2035 claim in the full report but dropped it elsewhere:

He noted that the potentially erroneous figure in question had appeared only in the panel’s full report of more than 1,000 pages and had been omitted in later summary documents that the panel produced to guide policy. The summaries said only that the Himalayan glaciers “could decay at very rapid rates” if warming continued. Such documents are produced after panel members review a full-length report, although if a figure in the report is deemed to be in error, it is supposed to be removed.

Is that supposed to reassure me?  It is having the opposite effect.

UPDATE:  The BBC reports that the IPCC is dropping the glacier claim.  This BBC article from December is very good. 

Coakley v. Brown

Voters in Massachusetts seem to be planning a special early observance of the first anniversary of the Obama inauguration.

Early turnout seems to be heavy.

The Times presets brief profiles of Coakley and Brown.  Coakley's is helpful primarily as a crib sheet of the utterly conventional liberal catechism.  The Times describes her as a "straightforward progressive", which is certainly kinder than "rigid", "utterly conventional", or "stale".  There closing paragraph is a triumph of omission:

On civil liberties issues, Ms. Coakley was the first state attorney general to sue the federal government to overturn a section of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as being between a man and woman. She also opposes the death penalty and advocates civilian trials for terrorism suspects.

No mention of her role in promoting the Amirault conviction long after the truth was obvious?  Nope - too vexing.  We want someone who respects the civil liberties of foreign terrorists and tramples the rights of Americans falsely accused of child molestation!

Meanwhile, the Times buries this about Brown in the last paragraph:

Mr. Brown was a star shooting guard at Tufts University, and is not shy of talking about his early-morning workouts or touting his everyman appeal.

Gee - a basketball stud who actually played college ball and is holding Ted Kennedy's seat (aka, "the people's seat") ought to be welcome in Obama's b-ball boys club.  That little disagreement over health care notwithstanding, of course.  Bygones.

Happy Martin Luther King Day

Let's open thread it for now.

Now It Is The IPCC That Is Melting Down

Last December we wondered about a Pajamas Media story telling us that the widely repeated IPCC claim that Himalayan glaciers might disappear by 2035 was based on a typo.  After trying to follow the trail of footnotes and citations we came away suspecting that a story in the New Scientist based on an interview with a Dr. Hasnain was the cause of the confusion.

And now the Times Online confirms that hypothesis:

A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.

Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.

In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC's 2007 report.

It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

Like scientists and the rest of us, they believed what they wanted to believe.

H/t to Glenn and Walter Russell Mead.

Curt Schilling A Yankees Fan?

Martha Coakley explains that Curt Schilling is a Yankees fan; presumably she was thinking of Hillary Clinton. 

It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over

Mickey Kaus appraises The Brown Ascendancy and its possible impact on the health care bill.

I sometimes find it helpful to think in terms of truisms, so - this bill will fail when enough Dems realize they are better off with it failing.

Obama is not up for reelection until 2012.  He ought to be able to persuade himself that he can play this like Bill Clinton's late play on welfare reform by blaming a partisan Congress for failing to produce a bill, then working an a scaled back bipartisan effort that can be billed as real reform in time for 2012.

Liberal House members can survive a collapse of the bill and stave off a primary challenge by blaming the crazy, conservative Senate.  Swing seat House Dems and worried Dem Senators can blame the crazy House liberals.

If the Dems stand together its Jonestown.  If someone yells "SPUD" and they all scatter, individually they can survive.  Or so they will convince themselves if Brown wins in Massachusetts or even comes close.