The Broad View

Comply, or else

I've been meaning to write something about this post from Glenn Greenwald on the surreal news that Army troops will be deployed here in the U.S. for, among other things, crowd control in what seems to be a direct violation of Posse Comitatus. An Army Times article has some of the details. This is when the water gets hot enough to truly boil us frogs.

However, I couldn't do better than to direct you to Digby's extraordinary addition to the discussion:

So men who've been fighting in Iraq will now be armed with tasers on the streets of the United States. You can be fairly sure that after what they've been trained for they'll believe that tasering someone is completely benign. After all, you get up again.

But as bad as putting more tasers on the streets, there's an even worse possibility.

The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.

I think you have to wonder if this is what they might be talking about:

The US military has given the first public display of what it says is a revolutionary heat-ray weapon to repel enemies or disperse hostile crowds.

Called the Active Denial System, it projects an invisible high energy beam that produces a sudden burning feeling. [...]

It can penetrate clothes, suddenly heating up the skin of anyone in its path to 50C.

But it penetrates the skin only to a tiny depth - enough to cause discomfort but no lasting harm, according to the military.

A Reuters journalist who volunteered to be shot with the beam described the sensation as similar to a blast from a very hot oven - too painful to bear without diving for cover.

But that's not all! Raytheon is also developing a "non-lethal" weapon for the Army -- "Silent Guardian." Here's a description Digby found on Silent Guardian's effectiveness:

When turned on, it emits an invisible, focused beam of radiation - similar to the microwaves in a domestic cooker - that are tuned to a precise frequency to stimulate human nerve endings.

It can throw a wave of agony nearly half a mile.

Because the beam penetrates skin only to a depth of 1/64th of an inch, it cannot, says Raytheon, cause visible, permanent injury.

But anyone in the beam's path will feel, over their entire body, the agonising sensation I've just felt on my fingertip. The prospect doesn't bear thinking about. [...]

Silent Guardian is supposed to be the 21st century equivalent of tear gas or water cannon - a way of getting crowds to disperse quickly and with minimum harm. Its potential is obvious. [...]

This machine has the ability to inflict limitless, unbearable pain.

What makes it OK, says Raytheon, is that the pain stops as soon as you are out of the beam or the machine is turned off.

And still that's not all. Read about the Pulsed Energy Projectile weapon, designed to raise bubbles of superhot gas on the skin of people up to a mile and a half away. This is the stuff of conspiracy thrillers and bad sci-fi movies of authoritarian dystopias run amok.

There has never been a weapon invented (outside of some WMD) that hasn't been used. And the supposed "non-lethality" of these weapons assures that they'll be used in "crowd control," i.e., dispersing political protesters. "Free speech zones" aren't nearly as satisfactory as zapping the fucking hippy traitor bastards.

And if you get trampled to death in the stampede, or your eyes get permanently burned by superheated contact lenses, or your pacemaker goes haywire -- well, that just serves you right for hating America. That'll teach all you malcontents to stay at home and STFU.

This is America in the 21st Century. Paid for by our tax dollars. Who will stop this madness and how?

I weep for us...for our poor, broken country

Glenn Greenwald: "Today's coverup of surveillance crimes and Barack Obama — The Democratic nominee's support for this bill speaks volumes about what he is and isn't."

Read it and you'll weep too.

I ♥ Russ Feingold

I ♥ Russ Feingold, here speaking at the New America Foundation:

Why couldn't he be our president? I suppose the country would sooner vote for a black centrist in progressive clothing, a woman centrist in center-right clothing or an intellectually bankrupt senatorial hack who's spent the last thirty-five years dining out on his wartime captivity and unrepentent warmongering than for a scrupulously straightforward, maverick Jewish liberal.

Update: If not Feingold, how about this guy? Chris Dodd is another hero of mine. He and Feingold are pledged to filibuster the FISA abomination. The latest has Reid suggesting that he may push consideration of the bill to after the 4th of July recess. If so, patriots have more time to push back against Dems determined to sell out their constituents and our Constitution. Let's get to it.

311 Days

I wouldn't think George Bush would be a fan of "The West Wing," but lately I am reminded of the sixth season episode, "365 Days" and Leo's challenge to his White House colleagues:

"...Busy day around here today.... Problem is we're running out of them." Leo looks at the board and then goes and erases the '5' of '365' and replaces it with a '4' and adds the word 'days' and circles it and says, "That's how much time we have left. We have the ability to effect more change in a day in the White House than we will have in a lifetime once we walk out these doors. What do you want to do with them?"

As the days, hours and minutes count down until noon on January 20, 2009, Bush seems more determined than ever to "effect more change in a day," change that will last a lifetime, before he walks out those doors. He has stepped up the pace of imperial decrees, the latest of which guarantee to foul our air for at least a decade. As reported in the Washington Post:

The Environmental Protection Agency weakened one part of its new limits on smog-forming ozone after an unusual last-minute intervention by President Bush, according to documents released by the EPA.

EPA officials initially tried to set a lower seasonal limit on ozone to protect wildlife, parks and farmland, as required under the law. While their proposal was less restrictive than what the EPA's scientific advisers had proposed, Bush overruled EPA officials and on Tuesday ordered the agency to increase the limit, according to the documents.

"It is unprecedented and an unlawful act of political interference for the president personally to override a decision that the Clean Air Act leaves exclusively to EPA's expert scientific judgment," said John Walke, clean-air director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The president's order prompted a scramble by administration officials to rewrite the regulations to avoid a conflict with past EPA statements on the harm caused by ozone. [...]

Under the Clean Air Act, the federal government must reexamine every five years whether its ozone standards are adequate, and the rules that the EPA issued Wednesday will help determine the nation's air quality for at least a decade. [...]

The documents, which were released by the EPA late Wednesday night, provided insight into how White House officials helped shape the new air-quality rules that, by law, are supposed to be decided by the EPA administrator.

Read that last carefully: The air-quality rules are, by law, supposed to be decided by the EPA administrator according to expert scientific judgment. Will Speaker Pelosi please explain again to our country why "impeachment is off the table"?

Bush doesn't care about appearances or fig leaves anymore. After all, he can't justify flouting this particular law on the basis of his role as commander-in-chief or keeping your children safe at night. He knows he won't be impeached and thus feels perfectly free to subvert any branch of government, pervert any traditional checks on the executive and ignore any law that he deems an obstacle to the flourishing of his true constituency: the individual and corporate haves and have-mores.

The EPA is one of Bush's favorite playgrounds. TPM Muckraker has the details on another instance of White House interfering in the agency's compliance with legal obligations:

Last week, we noted that [EPA Administrator Stephen] Johnson seemed to be ignoring a decision by the Supreme Court. The Court said the EPA could no longer avoid deciding whether greenhouse gases were pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act. But almost one year later, Johnson still hasn't released an official determination.

But as [Rep. Henry] Waxman has found out -- and as he detailed in a letter to Johnson yesterday -- the EPA has already done all the necessary work. EPA employees told his staff in interviews that a team of 60 to 70 hashed it out last year and actually sent it to the White House in December (the EPA, of course, found that greenhouse gases did endanger public welfare). They also produced new regulations to reduce CO2 emissions from cars and trucks and sent that off to the Department of Transportation. But since then, nothing has been heard.

So many political favors, so little time...

Bush has been a busy boy, but he did manage to find time for a little daydreaming:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush got an earful on Thursday about problems and progress in Afghanistan where a war has dragged on for more than six years but been largely eclipsed by Iraq.

In a videoconference, Bush heard from U.S. military and civilian personnel about the challenges ranging from fighting local government and police corruption to persuading farmers to abandon a lucrative poppy drug trade for other crops. [...]

"I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush said. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed."

"It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks," Bush said.

Well, come January 20th, he'll be free to seek romance in Afghanistan. I'm sure he can drive a truck or something.

Methinks he doth protest too much

Wow. I happened to catch a break in the Spitzer Scandal and Totally Tanking Economy news coverage: Emperor Bush commanded some live teevee time for a little barking from the bully pulpit on the House Dems' "partisan" FISA bill. Let me tell you, he's trying to sound pissed but it's looking more and more like panic to me.

Anyone who believes Bush is merely an inarticulate clod hasn't seen him when he's really focused and right now he's totally focused on getting telecom immunity. In just a few minutes, he pulled out every bogus argument, hammered each at least twice, implied that House Dems would rather embolden terrorists and trial lawyers than keep your children safe, vowed to veto the House bill and demanded they pass his bill before Easter break. He then turned and stalked off.

I don't expect the craven Dems to hold the line against this. They have no idea how to counter Bush's version of reality. They're too frightened of President Twenty Percent to see or even care that in this we've finally found his Achilles' heel.

Bush knows these telecom suits will pry open the doors of his administration's dungeon and that he could be found criminally liable. I believe there is no issue more important to Bush right now. From now until next Jan. 20 the White House will do everything to shred, burn and bury the evidence of eight years of high crimes and misdemeanors.

The miserable Pelosi may have taken impeachment off the table but there's no reason Bush couldn't be indicted in criminal court or sued in civil court once he's an ordinary citizen again. (Here I must admit to a small irrational fear that Bush and Cheney will engineer the October surprise to end all October surprises, such that elections are "postponed" indefinitely.) The idea -- no, the certainty that Bush and his criminal gang will walk is intolerable.

Update: Kagro X over on DKos is feeling more sanguine about the House Dems' ability to resist Bush:

Every time Congressional Dems actually slow down and take stock of the situation -- from Senator Chris Dodd's brave (and lonely and seemingly futile) stand, to the cautious maneuvering of House Dems today -- new revelations arise that should make all Americans who value our freedoms glad they did. [...]

Every time the Congress seems ready to give in on FISA, we find out more about how crazy Bush is, the deal falls apart, and the Constitution wins back a few inches of turf.

No one will be happier to be wrong about the House Dems than I. If enough of them rediscover their backbones -- with a little help from blogosphere activism -- to defy Bush's demands, I will do a happy dance. Update 2: Glenn Greenwald has more.

Torture to teach

OK. If Attorney General-designate Michael Mukasey and presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani aren't sure if waterboarding is torture, or believe it is sometimes, but not other times, let's put it to them this way:

Would you be willing to submit to waterboarding -- and then make up your minds?

Toujours l'audace

The internets are abuzz over the truly explosive revelations by Qwest's former CEO regarding the administration's interest in supposedly illegal wiretapping six months before the 9/11 attacks. The Washington Post has the story:

A former Qwest Communications International executive, appealing a conviction for insider trading, has alleged that the government withdrew opportunities for contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars after Qwest refused to participate in an unidentified National Security Agency program that the company thought might be illegal.

Former chief executive Joseph P. Nacchio, convicted in April of 19 counts of insider trading, said the NSA approached Qwest more than six months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to court documents unsealed in Denver this week.

Details about the alleged NSA program have been redacted from the documents, but Nacchio's lawyer said last year that the NSA had approached the company about participating in a warrantless surveillance program to gather information about Americans' phone records. [...]

In May 2006, USA Today reported that the NSA had been secretly collecting the phone-call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by major telecom firms. Qwest, it reported, declined to participate because of fears that the program lacked legal standing.

Nacchio has said that the NSA proposal was made at a Feb. 27, 2001 meeting. So less than six weeks after taking office, the administration is pursuing warrantless eavesdropping spying on Americans. Their audacity is breathtaking.

Kagro X spells it out perfectly (h/t Avedon):

So here's the key. The domestic spying has always been justified by saying it was a necessary response to 9/11. But clearly there's damned good reason to believe these programs were conceived and initiated well before the September 11th attacks. [...]

But it's not just that. If Qwest's competitors were already abetting this bloodless(?) coup before 9/11, then the "administration's" domestic spying not only has little if anything to do with response to terrorism, but it also objectively failed to prevent 9/11.

When Congress gets to deciding about retroactive immunity for the telcos who signed on to the program, maybe they can forget the excuse that it was the telcos' patriotic duty to break the law. Perhaps Congress might spend a little time finding out what was really going on in February 2001.

Fred Thompson's "Macaca" moment

Fred Thompson has announced that George Allen -- yes, that George Allen -- has joined his national team of advisors. We'll be all ears and eyes as the right wing's newest performing bear makes his stage debut tomorrow.

Rolling Stone reports on a "monstrous vacuum of patriotism"

Update: This is too important to get lost in the archive, so I'm posting it again with today's date — Sept. 18, 2007.

Henry Waxman is trying to investigate "The Great Iraq Swindle," but he's being thwarted. Duh! The Washington Post has it here. Naomi Klein suggests some frightening fascist outcomes of these depredations in the October Harper's. "Disaster Capitalism; the New Economy of Catastrophe" is behind a subscription wall, but it's a must read!

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What the Bush administration has created in Iraq is a sort of paradise of perverted capitalism...

[ ]

This was about the business of government being corrupted by the profit motive to such an extraordinary degree that now we all have to wonder how we will ever be able to depend on the state to do its job in the future.

[ ]

Today there are more civilians working for private contractors in Iraq than there are troops on the ground. The totality of the thievery in Iraq is such that even the honor of patriotic service has been stolen — we've replaced soldiers and heroes with disposable commodities, men we expected to give us a big bang for a buck and to never call us again.

Rolling Stone has done what looks to be a superb job of reporting on "The Great Iraq Swindle". And it's one that will leave you purple with fury.

Will the Democratic candidates address this, yet another horrific criminal component of the Republican culture of corruption? On its best day the Mob couldn't have dreamed of scamming and skimming to this level of perfection. It took George Bush & Co. to figure out how to cheat and steal to such a remarkable extent.

The man and his minions have broken our country — whom can we trust to piece it back together again?

Red Alert: Watch out, California Democrats. There's danger ahead.

Red Alert!!!

If you read Hendrik Hertzberg in the August 6 New Yorker, or Jonathan Alter in the August 13 Newsweek, or Hannah-Beth Jackson at her Speak Out California website, then you'll know that we California Democrats may be facing a daunting challenge in June 2008.

Note how the three authors have slugged their pieces: Hertzberg calls his "Votescam." Hannah-Beth tells us that the Republicans are "Trying to steal the Presidency — again!" Alter goes with a three-fer: "Is California GOP Trying to Steal the 2008 Election?" "A Red play for the Golden State" "There's some malicious mischief at play in efforts to reform our electoral system." Bam! Bam! Bam!

This is serious stuff, and will require us to be on our activist mettle at the very moment we'd most like to take a breather. Dammit, we have another election — in June 2008. It's only the presidential primary that's been unbundled from our usual June ballot. The primaries are held then for all the other offices up for a vote in November. It's the perfect opportunity to put stealth initiatives on a ballot that too many people will regard as ho-hum.

The Repubs will be angling to get us to vote for something they've named with perfect Rovian pitch. Here's how Alter describes its intended effect:

The Presidential Election Reform Act would award the state's electoral votes based on who wins each congressional district. Had this idea been in effect in 2004, Bush would have won 22 electoral votes from California, about the same number awarded the winners of states like Illinois or Pennsylvania. In practical terms, adopting the initiative would mean that the Democratic candidate would likely have to win both Ohio and Florida in 2008 (instead of one or the other) to be elected.

[Alter tells us that Democrats are hoping to do a similar deal in North Carolina, where far fewer votes are at stake. In all fairness, we should stand in opposition to that ploy as well.]

The California effort may, in fact, not be constitutional — the Constitution gives only state legislatures the power to change how electors are chosen — so it will face a court challenge. Will it pass muster? We don't know that yet. But this is a development that bears close watching, and major action when and if the initiative is cleared for the ballot.

Meanwhile, please read the linked articles, know the stealth terminology, and stay wary.