Arrest of 13 CIA agents sought in Spain

This is both breaking news and an ongoing story. From Scott Horton:

Prosecutors attached to the Audiencia Nacional in Madrid are reportedly requesting that Judge Ismael Moreno issue an order for the arrest of thirteen CIA agents involved in an extraordinary rendition operation from 2004, the newspaper El País reports this afternoon, citing sources within the court.

The case relates to Khaled El-Masri, a greengrocer from Neu-Ulm, Germany, seized by the United States as a result of mistaken identity while he was on vacation in the former Yugoslavia. El-Masri was placed on a CIA-chartered jet that arrived in Macedonia from Palma de Majorca in January 2004, en route ultimately to Afghanistan. It appears that Majorca was used regularly as a refueling and temporary sheltering point for the CIA, with the knowledge of the prior conservative government. While held in the notorious CIA prison known as the Salt Pit, El-Masri was apparently tortured during extensive interrogations before intelligence officers realized that they had seized the wrong man.

Read the rest — they tortured the wrong man and had to let him go. Horton's a go-to guy for these snatch-and-torture tales. From the same article:

The Spanish prosecutors have been closely studying the prosecution in Italy of 23 American agents in connection with another extraordinary rendition, involving an Egyptian cleric known as Abu Omar, who was seized off the streets of Milan and taken to Egypt, where he was tortured.

That's 36 agents all told. It won't be long, mark my word. At some point, someone's going to stand trial. Or worse, get snatched off the streets of Milan, or Boston . . . and then stand trial. This feels like a slow-motion nightmare.

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Dramatic photos of Gulf oil spill

I can see why this photographer feels hopeless when you see the photos he took from overhead. What's even more depressing is that they still have not stopped the oil flow. Read More......

TNR: Where Obama should shove his plea for civility

Great piece by Jonathan Chait at the New Republic on President Obama's repeated calls for "civility." This is but an excerpt, read the entire thing.

Obama began his speech by quoting a letter from a kindergartner, who asked, “Are people being nice?” Sadly, the president continued, they are not. “We’ve got politicians calling each other all sorts of unflattering names,” lamented Obama. “Pundits and talking heads shout at each other.”

Obama singled out Fox News. But, of course, the problem with Fox is not that it features pundits who shout at each other. The problem is that it’s a propaganda organ masquerading as a news outlet. The pundits on Fox don’t shout at each other, they bask in mutual agreement. When shouting does occur, it’s usually a one-sided affair in which some hapless liberal is invited on the air to be shouted down. It’s appropriate that Obama cites a child in his indictment of Fox News. To chastise Rupert Murdoch’s brand of pseudo-journalism for its lack of niceness is literally to embrace childlike reasoning.

Obama proceeded to castigate the political culture for “demonizing” opponents. Then his logic went badly awry:

Throwing around phrases like “socialists” and “Soviet-style takeover” and “fascist” and “right-wing nut”—that may grab headlines, but it also has the effect of comparing our government, our political opponents, to authoritarian, even murderous regimes.

Is it uncivil to accuse your opponents of being socialist or of planning a “Soviet-style takeover”? Presumably, Obama would have no problem levying such a charge against, say, Lenin in 1917. It’s not an inherently uncivil accusation. It’s appropriateness depends on whether it’s actually true.

Note how the President, yet again, feels the need to debase Democrats when criticizing Republicans. At some point he needs to learn that it's not all the same, and that there is a real problem - that he has a real problem - with the Republican party. Read More......

Actual amateur video of oil slick

This one is for real. And amazing.

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Never Before Heard: Oil Leak Video With SOUND

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Roy Blunt hearts the Georgetown Social Safeway. He really isn't from Missouri anymore.

There are probably many reasons why Missouri's Roy Blunt is the least popular GOP Senate candidate. His extensive ties to Wall Street and lobbyists (he dumped his first wife to marry one) don't help. But, I suspect one of Blunt's biggest problems is that he's gone DC. Very DC.

And, if one needs proof, Blunt provides it. He was at the reopening of the Georgetown Safeway last week, because it's his local grocery store. Nothing says you're not from Missouri anymore than being a regular at the Social Safeway in Georgetown.

This really further exposes Roy Blunt for the fraud that he is. And, I love this statement from the Missouri Democratic Party. Nails it:

“This might be the one case where we can take Congressman ‘Bailout’ Blunt at his word: he stopped calling Missouri his home a long time ago,” said Ryan Hobart, Communications Director for the Missouri Democratic Party. “In fact, the ‘Social Safeway’ is right around the corner from the multi-million dollar mansion he and his lobbyist wife Abigail are building in Washington. If there is one thing that is clear, it is that Congressman ‘Bailout’ Blunt has forgotten where he came from and is never coming back to Missouri.”

This isn’t the first time Congressman Blunt has forgotten where his home is. Last year, he had listed his Washington, DC mansion in Georgetown as his primary residence and owed nearly $7,000 in back taxes.

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Lead anti-immigration group had ties to extremist group formed by Nazi sympathizers

From the Southern Poverty Law Center:

During the heated debate leading up to the 1994 vote on California’s Proposition 187, a punishing anti-immigrant ordinance that would have denied social services to undocumented immigrants had it not been rejected by the courts, an embarrassing truth about the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) was revealed. Press reports disclosed that FAIR, a major backer of Prop 187, was also a major grant recipient of the Pioneer Fund, a racist organization established by Nazi sympathizers in the 1930s to pursue “race betterment.”

As of that year, FAIR had received a total about $1.2 million from Pioneer, which primarily funds race and IQ studies intended to reveal the inferiority of minorities and to this day describes its grant recipients, generally, as “race realists.” Perhaps the press furor would have died down if FAIR had decided to sever its relationship with Pioneer after the fund’s nature was exposed. But it chose not to.

FAIR ended its financial relationship with Pioneer, which as a foundation must publicly disclose recipients of its grants, in 1994. But it did not end the private relationship of top FAIR officials with leaders of the fund. An SPLC review of John Tanton’s private papers, which are stored at the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, shows how close the relationship between the leaders of Pioneer and FAIR principals has been for three decades, even in the wake of the 1994 scandal. Not only did Tanton carry on a close correspondence with Weyher and his partner at Pioneer, John Trevor Jr., he also visited both at their homes. (In one instance, he took his staffer Roy Beck, who now runs NumbersUSA, to visit Trevor in Florida.) And at a 1997 gathering organized by Tanton at the New York Racquet & Tennis Club — three years after FAIR had stopped taking Pioneer Fund money — Tanton brought FAIR board members Henry Buhl, Sharon Barnes and Alan Weeden to a meeting with Weyher. Held expressly to discuss fundraising efforts to benefit FAIR, the meeting was memorialized in a Feb. 17, 1997, memo that Tanton wrote for his “FAIR Fund-Raising File.” A year later, on Jan. 5, 1998, Tanton wrote to Trevor to thank him for his personal “handsome contribution” to FAIR.

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Harriet Miers' ghost haunts McConnell and GOP with Kagan nomination

Sam Stein:

"She's never had to develop the judicial habit of saying no to an administration, and we can't simply assume that she would," McConnell said.

Taken alone, the attack on Kagan for having held largely political posts ignores the fact that those posts were hardly the only jobs she's held. As Solicitor General for Obama and deputy chief of staff at the Domestic Policy Council for Bill Clinton, Kagan was tasked -- first and foremost -- with carrying out the legal objectives of the administration. But she's held positions outside of politics that certainly allowed her to "say no" to a White House: whether as a clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall, her time in private practice, or as dean of Harvard Law School.

But where McConnell falls short is with consistency. If dependence on a president was a disqualifier for a Supreme Court nominee, than the Kentucky Republican would have had major objections to Bush's choice of Harriet Miers -- the White House counsel whose career was essentially tied to Bush, a man she called the "best governor ever," "cool," and "the greatest!"

When Miers was nominated, however, McConnell was effusive with praise.

"Ms. Miers has an exemplary record of service to our country," he said after her nomination. "She will bring to the Court a lifetime of experience in various levels of government, and at the highest levels of the legal profession. She is a woman of tremendous ability and very sound judgment. ...She is well qualified to join the nation's highest court. ... She will make a fine addition to the Supreme Court, and I look forward to her confirmation."

I think it's good for Dems to point out the inconsistency, though the last thing we need is anyone defending Kagan by comparing her to Harriet Miers. Read More......

Congressional committee report on BP oil spill - even worse than expected

You have to wonder if BP did much of anything right after reading these lowlights. It also seems obvious that BP had very little concern about maintaining proper safety if they were so far off in so many places. Being cozy with government may help run a campaign but when it comes to safety and the rest of us, it's completely off.

A senior House Democrat said that the blowout preventer that failed to stop an oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico had a dead battery in its control pod, leaks in its hydraulic system, a "useless" test version of one of the devices that was supposed to close the flow of oil and a cutting tool that wasn't strong enough to shear through joints that made up 10 percent of the drill pipe.

In a devastating review of the blowout preventer that BP said was supposed to be "fail-safe," Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) said in a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday that the device was anything but fail-safe.

Stupak said that the committee investigators had also uncovered a document prepared in 2001 by the drilling rig operator Transocean that said there were 260 "failure modes" that could require removal of the blowout preventer.

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DSCC 'is pouring cash into funding Specter's TV ad campaign'

In 2004, the GOP hierarchy, led by George W. Bush, went all out for Arlen Specter in his primary against Pat Toomey. In April of 2004, the National Republican Senatorial Committee spent over $500,000 in support of Specter.

In 2010, the Democratic hierarchy, led by Barack Obama with the support of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, is going all out for Arlen Specter in his Democratic primary against Joe Sestak. Greg Sargent reports that the DSCC is funding Specter's latest tv ad, which features Obama:

In a sign of just how heavily invested the Dem establishment in Washington is in protecting Arlen Specter from Dem primary challenger Joe Sestak, the national Democratic Party is pouring cash into funding Specter's TV ad campaign starring President Obama, I'm told.

The ads are being funded by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, meaning national party money is being spent to prop up an incumbent who was a Republican for most of his career -- and to help him defeat a longtime Democrat.

The Specter campaign has not gone out of its way to reveal this fact. The Youtube version of the Obama ad sent out yesterday to reporters featured a disclaimer at the end indicating that the ad was being funded by the Specter campaign.

But a version of the ad that's actually running on at least two Pennsylvania stations -- sent my way by a Pennsylvania Democrat -- features this disclaimer: "Paid for by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee."

Great use of DSCC money.

There are a number of critically important Senate races that could use DSCC resources. But, the DSCC has been busy pumping money into Pennsylvania to prop up a has-been GOPer.

Getting Specter to switch parties was considered a great coup by the Democrats last year. But, I'd still rather have a real Democrat in that seat. Specter being Specter (and only caring about Specter), he'll probably start voting with Republicans again right after the primary. Read More......

Lehman employment comes back to haunt Ohio GOP candidate for Governor John Kasich

Used to be that elected officials would leave the public sector for high paying jobs in the financial services industry. They'd parlay their political connections for business. That's what former GOP Congressman John Kasich did. He went to work for Lehman Brothers. Now, Lehman is gone and Kasich is running for Governor of Ohio. There's a nexus.

Turns out Kasich was trying to get a couple of Ohio state pension funds to invest with Lehman:

Republican gubernatorial candidate John Kasich tried to persuade two state pension funds in 2002 to invest with Lehman Brothers while he was the managing director of the investment banking house's Columbus office.

In a reply to questions from The Dispatch, Kasich campaign officials acknowledged that the former congressman helped arrange the two meetings between Lehman officials and representatives of the Ohio Police and Fire Pension Fund and the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System, known as OPERS.

Kasich campaign officials said in a statement that "these meetings did not result in business for Lehman Brothers, and John earned no commission from this or any other public sector business." Kasich never approached any other Ohio governmental entity about doing business with Lehman, the campaign said.

Still not sure why anyone thinks GOPers are better on fiscal issues. They're not. Read More......

VIDEO: Travel Arizona

Another great one from Andy Cobb of Second City. This one deals with the subject of Arizona's new draconian anti-immigrant law that empowers the police to ask anyone who "looks" like an immigrant to prove their US citizenship.

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Latest poll shows Specter - Sestak primary race now 'too close to call'

The latest Quinnipiac poll of the Pennsylvania Democratic primary shows a dead heat. Arlen Specter leads Joe Sestak by a "too close to call" margin of 44% - 42% among likely voters. That's a dramatic shift in the race:

The Specter-Sestak race has narrowed from a 47 - 39 percent Specter lead May 4 and a 53 - 32 percent Specter lead April 7.

"Sen. Arlen Specter has a history of winning close elections and he'll need that to continue because his once commanding lead is gone. His margin over Sestak is too close to call," said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

"The intangibles are clearly on Sestak's side. He has the momentum and the anti- incumbent wave sweeping the country is a good omen for the challenger," Brown added. "Troubling for Specter is that one in seven likely primary voters are undecided and incumbents - especially 30-year incumbents who have switched parties - rarely get much of the undecided vote."

And, the two major newspapers in the country have nearly identical reports on the race today. Apparently, they've figure out that Specter is in danger of losing.

The Washington Post:

More than a year after making the most controversial move of his career and days before an election that could end his days in politics, Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) is still explaining to voters why he left the Republican Party.

The epitome of a northeastern moderate, Specter sought refuge with Democrats in the face of a conservative uprising over his support for a massive economic stimulus package in 2009. Now, he's finding that the rank and file in his new party may be no more hospitable than those in the one he abandoned.

The New York Times:

One year after leaving the Republican Party in the face of crumbling support, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania is now fighting to avert rejection — and presumably the end of his career — at the hands of Democrats.

After seeming earlier this year to face an easy race for the Democratic nomination against Representative Joe Sestak, Mr. Specter is in what he acknowledges is an unexpectedly tough campaign, buffeted by a national anti-incumbent sentiment as well as resistance among Democrats wary of embracing a longtime Republican in next Tuesday’s primary.

It sure looks like Sestak has the momentum.

The primary is next Tuesday, May 18th. Read More......

Wednesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Today, the President is meeting with his counterpart from Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai. They have a meeting in the Oval Office, followed by a press conference, then a lunch. That's a lot of face time for a foreign leader, but Karzai is very important to Obama's presidency.

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan begins one-on-one visits with Senators today. According to the White House, she will meet with Majority Leader Reid, Minority Leader McConnell, Senator Leahy (Chair of Senate Judiciary), Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (the ranking Republican on Senate Judiciary), Senator Durbin, Senator Hatch, Senator Kohl, and Senator Feinstein. Last night, I saw an ad promoting Kagan's nomination from a group called the "Coalition for Constitutional Values." It wasn't a very good ad and wasn't all that inspiring. But, someone is on the air.

The Senate is still debating the financial reform bill.

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Spain announces plan to slash budget by 4.7%

Ouch. Some of the more delicate economies in Europe are working on their substantial budget problems. Spain in particular has some very serious challenges to address including 20% unemployment. One has to wonder how long the US can push out this issue as well. The Times has an interesting article today on the budget issue as it relates to the US which is definitely worth a read. All along it's been a hard balance between moving to pump money into struggling economies to keep them moving and knowing when to stop. As voters start feeling the pinch of pulling back spending, they're going to start looking more into who is prospering. Again, the bankers at Goldman have to question their flashy numbers and arrogance during times such as this.

Speaking in parliament, PM Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is outlining cuts aimed at bringing down Spain's borrowing levels.

The budget deficit is currently 11% of GDP. On Monday Spain said it planned to cut it by 4.7% by the end of 2011.

Fears Greece's problems would erupt elsewhere has put pressure on the euro.

Spain's unemployment rate exceeds 20% - twice the eurozone average.

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Cameron forms Tory-Lib Dem coalition government

Lots of backroom trading in the last few days on all sides. The Liberal Democrats have an agreement on their key issue - voting reform - and the Tories have enough votes to carry Parliament. Cameron and the Tories will be moving quickly to start chopping the budget which is never pleasant. The Lib Dems have the risk of being associated with what many expect to be a harsh new government during hard times. It's never easy to watch those such as the banks who led everyone over the cliff bounce back and prosper while everyone else is forced to tighten their belt.

One point that I've heard mentioned a few times is how English the Tory government is. Outside of England they remain decidedly unpopular with very little support in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. BBC:

New UK Prime Minister David Cameron is beginning to shape his government, after the Conservatives agreed to form a historic coalition with the Lib Dems.

Mr Cameron, 43, was installed as PM on a dramatic day that saw Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg announced as his deputy.

Four other Lib Dems will take cabinet posts in what is the first coalition government in the UK for 70 years.

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