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It appears you're now responsible for providing humanitarian assistance to Baghdad. Congrats!
Denver officials say the White House prematurely announced that Denver was adopting Baghdad as a sister city.
City officials and members of the Denver Regional Council of Governments were caught off-guard by a news release announcing the partnership Wednesday.
The White House promised that Denver -- which faces a possible $33 million budget shortfall in 2005 -- will give Baghdad "humanitarian assistance" and "other aid initiatives."
But Denver area officials say no vote was taken on the proposal.
(and, yes, I know most people reading don't care about this. Feel free to skip this post.)
Steve G. has some more on advertising on blogs. Let me add first that my earlier post on this was limited to the wisdom of candidates spending their advertising dollars on blogs.
But, more generally, from what a few correspondents who know have told me in email, my (and Kos's and Kevin Drum's and Instapundit's) ad rates are still at the low low end of the range. My ad rates bounce around quite a bit (I lower them when the number drops and raise them again when it raises), but currently my most expensive ad goes for $800 for a week (top left premium ad). This site has gotten 717,413 page views in the past week, meaning that the cost per thousand impressions (CPM) is just over a dollar. For a standard ad, which usual goes for about $200/week, that falls to a quarter CPM.
I know little about advertising and won't speculate on the effectiveness of any form of advertising, but from what people have told me that's at the low end and lower than the going rate.
Let me also add that there is an important distinction between the question of whether or not torture is a "good" or "bad" thing conceptually and the legality of its implementation and the appropriateness of Justice Department personnel putting out memos explaining the best way for the administration to get away with clearly violating the law. Yglesias illustrates that basic point here, and Eric Muller has more.
These people who set about legalizing inhumane behavior on behalf of a president on whom they confer absolute power to order it at will are as shallow and evil as the cliché spouting president who demanded it. The slippery slope to totalitarianism started in a conference room where coffee and donuts and microsoft power point presentations on torture and pain were on the agenda one morning.
I'm not a lawyer so I often hesitate before treading into explicitly legal grounds, but there's something which has been bugging me for some time so I'll just throw it out there.
In the recent hearings, Rumsfeld kept trying to make this fine distinction between "abuse" of prisoners and "torture" of prisoners. In much of the commentary about that, it was as if people were interpreting this to be a matter of severity or degree. That is, if you "hurt someone a little bit" we call that "abuse" as opposed "hurting someone a lot" which we call "torture."
But, that really isn't the conceptual or legal distinction between torture and abuse (I'm not sure if "prisoner abuse" has a real legal definition, so this is a bit murky.) The distinction between torture and abuse is one of intent.
If I'm a prison guard and I, for no good reason, beat the crap out of a prisoner then no matter what the severity of the beating I would not be guilty of "torture." If anyone cares and there happens to be video tape and the prisoner's lawyer gets his/her hands on it, I might find myself getting charged with some form of assault.
What would make that beating torture is if I were doing it to elicit information. From my reading of the various statutes, treaties, etc..., even fairly mild forms of "abuse" are considered to be torture, if the purpose of the activity is to elicit information.
There are a couple of reasons we take (or, at least we did until Bushco got in) such a strong legal stand against torture. The first is one people regularly discuss -- the basic Geneva Convention principle which is in place to a great degree to protect our soldiers.
But, aside from that it also gets at the heart of our entire system of justice -- the right against self-incrimination, innocent until proven guilty, no cruel and unusual punishment.
At this point, only morons with limited intellectual capacity bring up the "ticking time bomb" scenario as a justification. In that situation, we'd all do whatever had to be done no matter what the law said and when we saved the planet we'd be pardoned and declared heroes. This isn't what has been going on in Iraq and Gitmo.
Most prisoners in Iraq were innocent of anything and subsequently let go. Some have been on TV talking about it.
Many prisoners in Guantanamo have been let go. I assume they were innocent too, although since they haven't been charged with anything it isn't clear what they were thought to have been guilty of in the first place.
Abusive cops and prison guards are common. And, while the abuses can be as bad or worse as any of the scenes of torture we've seen, there's a key distinction -- the very concept of torture is anathema to our entire system of justice.
Now's the time to donate. It's only about 7 weeks until the convention, at which point Kerry can no longer accept or (I believe) even spend your money.
I'm not so optimistic. Besides, Bush will just declare the Supremos have no jurisdiction.
June 9 - Justice Department lawyers, fearing a crushing defeat before the U.S. Supreme Court in the next few weeks, are scrambling to develop a conventional criminal case against “enemy combatant” Jose Padilla that would charge him with providing “material support” to Al Qaeda, NEWSWEEK has learned.
The prospective case against Padilla would rely in part on material seized by the FBI in Afghanistan—principally an Al Qaeda “new applicant form” that, authorities said, the former Chicago gang member filled out in July 2000 to enter a terrorist training camp run by Osama bin Laden's organization.
But officials acknowledge that the charges could well be difficult to bring and that none of Padilla’s admissions to interrogators—including an apparent confession that he met with top Al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah and agreed to undertake a terror mission—would ever be admissible in court.
Even more significant, administration officials now concede that the principal claim they have been making about Padilla ever since his detention—that he was dispatched to the United States for the specific purpose of setting off a radiological “dirty bomb”—has turned out to be wrong and most likely can never be used against him in court.
...
Padilla, for his part, has told interrogators that he never swore an oath of allegiance to Al Qaeda and, after spending time in one of the terror group’s training camps, had second thoughts and wanted to return home. “He says he and his accomplice proposed the dirty-bomb plot only as a way to get out of Pakistan and avoid combat in Afghanistan, yet save face with Abu Zubaydah,” according to the Pentagon report. When he flew back to the United States in May 2002, Padilla has told interrogators he also had “no intention of carrying out the apartment-building operation,” the report states.
I think it's time to recognize the following things.
1) It isn't clear "how bad" Padilla was or would've been. 2) The administration has no real evidence about how bad his ongoing associations were. 3) They had no evidence that he had any specific plans. The confessions he's made since may or may not have any basis in reality. 4) Even if Padilla was "bad," putting him on 24/7 surveillance and using that to track down his connections would have been much more productive from an intelligence standpoint than holding him for 2 years. 5) If they can do it to Padilla, they can do it to you.
Someone asked in comments below, and it seems to be an area where people have some misconceptions, so I figured I'd post about.
As of the moment Kerry accepts the nomination, presumably at the convention, he will no longer be allowed to accept private contributions as he's chosen to accept public money for the general election.
So, yes, if you want to contribute the earlier the better.
After the convention, you can still contribute to the DNC which is allowed to spend some limited amount on Kerry election program related activities, as well as GOTV and other efforts.
I think this Salon story gets it about right. When campaigns contact me about advertising and ask for information to justify the expense I'm usually somewhat discouraging - telling them to not advertise or to buy up ads on a lot of cheaper sites. Or, at least I try to lower their expectations. Sure, the advertising department here loves the money but the activist side doesn't want them wasting it.
That isn't to say candidates shouldn't buy blogads, but they shouldn't buy them expecting to get quick return. Ads should be seen as part of a wider longterm internet outreach strategy. One should see bloggers and blog readers as another contituency which can be appealed and pandered to. Candidates and campaigns which spend time and effort reaching out to that constituency may be able to reap some greater rewards over the course of the campaign. Fundraising for Kerry is going to stop cold at the convention, and people are going to be looking to see where else they can donate to. Having name recognition at that time could be a big help.
But, if candidates are going to judge the ads as they'd probably judge most directly mail money pleas (We spent $X to mail the things out and got $Y dollars in return in the pre-paid envelopes) without doing any further internet outreach then they're probably wasting their money.
WASHINGTON — After American Taliban recruit John Walker Lindh was captured in Afghanistan, the office of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld instructed military intelligence officers to "take the gloves off" in interrogating him.
The instructions from Rumsfeld's legal counsel in late 2001, contained in previously undisclosed government documents, are the earliest known evidence that the Bush administration was willing to test the limits of how far it could go legally to extract information from suspected terrorists.
...
The documents, read to The Times by two sources critical of how the government handled the Lindh case, show that after an Army intelligence officer began to question Lindh, a Navy admiral told the intelligence officer that "the secretary of Defense's counsel has authorized him to 'take the gloves off' and ask whatever he wanted."
Lindh was being questioned while he was propped up naked and tied to a stretcher in interrogation sessions that went on for days, according to court papers.
...
Lindh was recaptured, and over a series of interrogations — at a school at Mazar-i-Sharif, at Camp Rhino in Afghanistan and aboard a Navy ship — he was kept in harsh conditions, stripped and tied to a stretcher, and often held for long periods in a large metal container, the government and defense agreed during his legal battle.
In court hearings and legal papers, his attorneys complained that he was deprived of sleep and food, that his leg wound was not treated, and that for 54 days he was neither allowed legal assistance nor told that his father had retained lawyers on his behalf in San Francisco.
...
But court documents suggest that Lindh was treated much as the prisoners later were at Abu Ghraib. Along with nudity and the sleep and food deprivation, Lindh was allegedly threatened with death. One soldier said he "was going to hang." Another "Special Forces soldier offered to shoot him."
I cannot exaggerate how pernicious this argument is, and how incompatible it is with a free society. The Constitution does not make the President a King. This memo does.
... If anyone in the higher levels of government acted in reliance on this advice, those persons should be impeached. If they authorized torture, it may be that they have committed, and should be tried for, war crimes. And, as we learned at Nuremberg, “I was just following orders” is NOT (and should not be) a defense.
THE BUSH administration assures the country, and the world, that it is complying with U.S. and international laws banning torture and maltreatment of prisoners. But, breaking with a practice of openness that had lasted for decades, it has classified as secret and refused to disclose the techniques of interrogation it is using on foreign detainees at U.S. prisons at Guantanamo Bay and in Afghanistan and Iraq. This is a matter of grave concern because the use of some of the methods that have been reported in the press is regarded by independent experts as well as some of the Pentagon's legal professionals as illegal. The administration has responded that its civilian lawyers have certified its methods as proper -- but it has refused to disclose, or even provide to Congress, the justifying opinions and memos.
This week, thanks again to an independent press, we have begun to learn the deeply disturbing truth about the legal opinions that the Pentagon and the Justice Department seek to keep secret. According to copies leaked to several newspapers, they lay out a shocking and immoral set of justifications for torture. In a paper prepared last year under the direction of the Defense Department's chief counsel, and first disclosed by the Wall Street Journal, the president of the United States was declared empowered to disregard U.S. and international law and order the torture of foreign prisoners. Moreover, interrogators following the president's orders were declared immune from punishment. Torture itself was narrowly redefined, so that techniques that inflict pain and mental suffering could be deemed legal. All this was done as a prelude to the designation of 24 interrogation methods for foreign prisoners -- the same techniques, now in use, that President Bush says are humane but refuses to disclose.
There is no justification, legal or moral, for the judgments made by Mr. Bush's political appointees at the Justice and Defense departments. Theirs is the logic of criminal regimes, of dictatorships around the world that sanction torture on grounds of "national security." For decades the U.S. government has waged diplomatic campaigns against such outlaw governments -- from the military juntas in Argentina and Chile to the current autocracies in Islamic countries such as Algeria and Uzbekistan -- that claim torture is justified when used to combat terrorism. The news that serving U.S. officials have officially endorsed principles once advanced by Augusto Pinochet brings shame on American democracy -- even if it is true, as the administration maintains, that its theories have not been put into practice. Even on paper, the administration's reasoning will provide a ready excuse for dictators, especially those allied with the Bush administration, to go on torturing and killing detainees.
Perhaps the president's lawyers have no interest in the global impact of their policies -- but they should be concerned about the treatment of American servicemen and civilians in foreign countries. Before the Bush administration took office, the Army's interrogation procedures -- which were unclassified -- established this simple and sensible test: No technique should be used that, if used by an enemy on an American, would be regarded as a violation of U.S. or international law. Now, imagine that a hostile government were to force an American to take drugs or endure severe mental stress that fell just short of producing irreversible damage; or pain a little milder than that of "organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." What if the foreign interrogator of an American "knows that severe pain will result from his actions" but proceeds because causing such pain is not his main objective? What if a foreign leader were to decide that the torture of an American was needed to protect his country's security? Would Americans regard that as legal, or morally acceptable? According to the Bush administration, they should.
Look, the Bush administration should collectively just be thrown into jail. Really. Now, I don't expect that to happen, but I do expect the media to get their heads out of their collective ass and wake up to the fact that things have gone very wrong indeed.
The reason Reagan is remembered as being such a popular president is because for whatever reason any time any media person talks about Reagan they remind us that "he left office with the highest approval rating of any modern president." While this was true at the time, if you only look at the last poll (63%), which included an apparent last minute expression of popular goodwill for an aging retiring president, instead of doing something a bit more reasonable like averaging the final 3 or 6 polls (Reagan - 54,53,54,51,57,64 ), Eisenhower (61,68, 65,58, 59, 59). A 3 poll average would give Reagan 57.3 and Ike 58.66. Or, a 6 poll average would give Reagan 55.5 and Ike 61.66.
Of course, the statement is no longer true, as Bill Clinton left office with the highest approval rating as judged by the final poll (65). His final 6 polls were 58,63,60,66,65,66. A 3 poll average would have given him 65.66 and a 6 poll average would give him 63.
But, more to the point the phrase "he left office with the highest approval rating of any modern president," which appears to have been inserted into the official script of every anchorperson in the country (yet again, Judy Woodruff said it), and which has been said for years, to the casual listener implies something even grander than (the now not even true) "his last poll was the highest ever!" What most people come away thinking is that "Reagan was the most popular president ever!" Now, there's no single way to determine that, but an obvious way would be to take the average, in which he does quite poorly.
People remember Reagan being a popular president because the media have been telling us that for years. It's really quite simple.
"He made me proud to be an American," said Patricia Fuller, 67, of Thousand Oaks. "We need that again very badly, someone to bring that pride back. I hope there's someone out there."
I wasn't quite old enough to be fully aware of what went on with Iran Contra at the time. But, with hindsight what really has puzzled me is how Ollie North was transformed into a "hero." This was before Fox News, the internet, and the kind of right wing hate radio we have now. So, I never really got where it came from. Now I know - it was Dan Rather's fault. From Alterman:
“The irony of this situation is that the reported reaction of the country to North’s testimony was actually at odds with most Americans’ profound disapproval of both his methods and his aims. The committee’s unwillingness to prosecute North proved less a reaction to the genuine beliefs of the American people than to a phony ‘Potemkin’ pretense of a public reaction created by administration supporters and other conservative movement figures. Most of the media fell for it as well. Time, for instance, reported that “The Boy Scout and patriot had the nation rooting for him,” while Newsweek subtitled its cover story “The ‘Fall Guy’ Becomes a Folk Hero.” Its attendant coverage argued that North “somehow embodied Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper and John Wayne in one bemedaled uniform.” The coverage in both newsweeklies was directly contradicted by published polls at the time, including their own. Time’s own poll showed that 61 percent believed that the term “national hero” did not describe North. According to Newsweek’s polls, 45 percent of respondents believed North was a patriot and a hero, while 48 percent did not. On July 9, 1987 “The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather” reported, without evidence, that “ninety-six percent of you back North up, saying you approve of his actions.” The broadcast went on to compare North to Rambo and Dirty Harry. Overall, in four separate polls taken in June and July of 1987, between 68 and 81 percent of Americans questioned disagreed with the appellation “hero” when applied to Oliver North. The labels “villain,” “victim,” “dangerous,” “fanatic,” and “can be bought” proved considerably more popular.”
Iran-Contra was no Watergate or Lewinsky. Turns out the "scandal" was that a few of the president's men ignored Democrat appeasers in the Senate to prevent another Cuba in Central America. The TV showdown with Ollie North made the Democrats look like modern Joe McCarthys, waving around a secret list of known anti-communists.
Odd how trading arms for hostages with a member of the axis of evil is less important than a blowjob or a 20 year land deal over which no Clinton administration official was convicted of anything.
It truly is okay if you're a Republican. Anything goes.
I know a lot of readers have been unhappy with Daschle as Minority Leader. I think he's done a better job than most people think - behind the scenes at least. Though, I do admit that we're realizing right now why, electorally, Daschle is the wrong man for the job. People in leadership positions need to have relatively safe seats.
Yes, this is where people say I'm just trying to please my advertisers. Note - I get lots of ads and don't send you over to every one of them. Ads get my attention sometimes, but it was Jerome's post that got my attention this time.
