Open thread

Now I'm busy researching noise-canceling headphones for airplane flights. It's the same story every time I research a product - it always narrows down to a few options, and lots of differing opinions. So far, have been reading good things about the ATH-ANC7, which is new, and the Solitude with Linx - both of which are real competitors to Bose, I'm told, and far far far cheaper than Bose, which is far too expensive at $300 (also, far too many people report that Bose has a tendency to snap in two, which is nice for $300). Read More......

Everything is the fault of the media. No, not Bush - this time it's Blair.

The media is mean says Blair, days before he leaves office. Yes, indeed, especially when you drag a country into war based on lies and are so unwilling to admit the truth. Funny how that works.

The interesting part of this temper tantrum is that Blair invested considerable time and effort reaching out to the trashy tabloid media in the UK, especially Rupert Murdoch's daily, The Sun. For those not familiar with The Sun, Fox News would appear to be refined, classy and high quality when compared to the daily. It does on rare occasions offer something worth noting though and today The Sun has a story about Bush's watch being stolen right off of his wrist during his trip to Albania. Read More......

Tancredo presidential campaign staffer outed

UPDATE: My friend Dan Savage weighs in on the ethical issue of outing an 18 year old. It's a good, short read.

From Mike Signorile's Gist:

Tyler Whitney, the webmaster for the right-wing antigay Colorado Republican Rep. Tom Tancredo's presidential campaign, has been outed by the Michigan gay paper Between the Lines.... Last November, Whitney -- whose father was a speech writer for former conservative Michigan Gov. John Engler, who was no friend to gays -- went to a a YAF-sponsored protest against a pro-gay, pro-trans human rights ordinance and held a sign that said, "Go back in the closet!" Other signs at the protest included "Straight Power" and "Faggotry."

Whitney is 18 years old. Which raises an interesting question as to whether he's too young to be outed. Meaning, can you really commit enough sins, enough hypocrisy, enough damage to your own community by the age of 18 to justify being outed? Then again, once you read the story, your answer might just be "yes." Read More......

About enemy combatants

A federal appeals court in the 4th circuit ruled yesterday that George Bush can't simply declare a US resident an "enemy combatant" and then lock him up for life without a trial. The first surprise from this case is that Bush lost. This is the widely considered to be the most conservative appellate court in the country. Having said that, the administraiton will appeal to the full court - so that all the judges have to hear the case (only 3 of them ruled on the case decided yesterday) - so that may change the odds to Bush's favor. And in fact, the Post notes that:

The 4th Circuit, based in Richmond, is considered one of the most conservative in the country, but the three-judge panel that heard the case was not. Two judges known as moderates, both appointed by President Bill Clinton, made up the majority in the decision.

Still, what the court ruled, and wrote, was so basic, and so obvious, a description of our democracy that it is troubling that it need be explained at all:

"The President cannot eliminate constitutional protections with the stroke of a pen by proclaiming a civilian, even a criminal civilian, an enemy combatant subject to indefinite military detention," the panel found.

George Bush, and those Americans who support him and his policies, need to explain why the American justice system isn't capable of handling a few bad terrorists? I mean, we give a lawyer and a jury trial and appeals to mass-murderers of children like John Wayne Gacy, to traitors who spied on our country for the Soviets, to men who would kill the president, but when it comes to terrorists, suddenly American democracy isn't up to the task. Because the threat is greater than ever before? Tell that to the parents of the children murdered by Gacy. Because our very democracy is at stake? Tell that to the Senators and House members who almost got blown up by Puerto Rican separatists.

As an aside, I have to laugh when people argue that terrorism poses a new and uniquely dangerous threat to our democracy. Really? A bigger threat than the British in the late 1700s when were struggling to defend our newborn democracy? A bigger threat than the civil war, that almost ripped our country in two? A bigger threat than World War I and World War II? A bigger threat than the Soviets? Oh yeah, big bad Osama is much worse than thousands of Soviet warheads. Other than the fact that their names are awfully hard to spell, the new crop of bad guys are no worse than the old crop. Yet now suddenly we're to believe that America's justice system and America's freedoms just aren't up to the task.

As Colin Powell noted this weekend on the Sunday shows, no one has given a very good explanation for why our tried and true, time-honored, system of justice supposedly falls short when the bad guy is named Osama or Ahmed?

I would close Guantanamo — not tomorrow, this afternoon. I’d close it. And I’d not let any of those people go. I would simply move them to the United States and put them into our federal legal system. The concern was, well, then they’ll have access to lawyers, then they’ll have access to writs of habeas corpus. So what? Let them. Isn’t that what our system’s all about? And by the way, America, unfortunately, has too many people in jail, all of whom had lawyers and access to writs of habeas corpus. And so we can handle bad people in our system. And so I would get rid of Guantanamo and I’d get rid of the military commissions system, and use established procedures in federal law or in the manual for courts martial. I would do that because it’s more equatable and it’s more understandable in constitutional terms. But I’d also do it because every morning I pick up a paper and some authoritarian figure, some person somewhere, is using Guantanamo to hide their own misdeeds. So essentially we have shaken the belief that the world had in America’s justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open and creating things like the military commission.

Worse, we've shaken our belief in America's justice system - we've told our own citizens that American justice isn't up to the task of dealing with the big bad terrorists. And we give Osama a mighty pat on the back by declaring publicly that he's such a super-villain, that he poses such a danger to our democracy, that we have to bend the rules in order to deal with him. I can't think of a greater compliment anyone could give a criminal. Osama and the rest of them should be treated like the street thugs they are. Read More......

Brzezinski

Zbigniew Brzezinski is giving the lunch address at this conference, and he really is a striking example of the kind of foreign policy leaders to whom we should listen. He opposed the Iraq war from the beginning, has years and years of experience in government, and he remains interested in improving the U.S. role in the world.

He talks about specifics, which is weirdly rare when the discussion turns to Iraq -- he just mentioned the importance of people like Hakim and Sistani, in contrast to observers who know little about the internal dynamics of Iraq but nonetheless strongly advocate positions based only on their thoughts about America's role. And he speaks cogently and reasonably about the importance of understanding the regional impact of Iraq.

A continuing theme in the discussion of Iraq is the failure to look at the potential negative consequences for staying in (rather than just the potential problems after withdrawal). The recent bombings of bridges in Iraq indicates an improved insurgent learning curve -- going after infrastructure has far more strategic benefit than attacks against soldiers, whether American or Iraqi.

NOTE FROM JOHN: I worked for Brzezinksi as a researcher when I was in graduate school at Georgetown's Foreign Service program. Amazing man. And nice too. Though the few times he called me into his office I was quaking (hey, I was 23). Actually, I'd never realized this before now but he taught me, or at least reinforced, a powerful political tool. Research of minutiae. We were working on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (it was the late 80s) and he had me reading the FBIS reports (Foreign Broadcast Information Service). Basically, they were transcripts of anything and everything being broadcast from official government sources around the world. Mind you, this was pre-Google and even pre-World Wide Web. Brzezinksi believed in scouring the details and looking for the tidbits that you could tie together to form a picture of what was going on behind the curtain. Of course, being a Soviet expert, that's exactly the kind of skill you needed - watching for lights in the windows of the Kremlin late at night to get a sense of whether a crisis was looming. But the skill is useful for far more than Soviet-watching. It's really what many blogs do on a daily basis. Whether Paris Hilton's gossip, or Chris Bower's detailed look at local races, or our own AJ's dissection of every detail from Iraq, or even the exposing of Jeff Gannon (which happened because of minutiae discovered by scores of blogs working together with scores of readers), it's all about spotting details and then stringing them together to paint a picture no one realized was there. It's a fascinating skill. And in many ways, I can thank Brzezinski for helping me hone it. Really had never thought about that till now. Read More......

Religious right won't support GOP if Rudy is the nominee

The leaders of the theocratic -- and dominant -- wing of the GOP are lining up against Rudy Giuliani. Tony Perkins, the head of the religious right activist organization Family Research Council, added his name to the Stop-Rudy movement according to The Politico. This is the hard-core GOP base. This is the base to which George Bush and Karl Rove pandered for the past six years. These theocratic leaders do have influence with their flocks so, in the world of those who actually vote in primaries, the base, this matters:

"Speaking as a private citizen, no, no, I could not support (Giuliani)," said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, which has about a half-million members. "The 20 years I've been involved in politics, the life issue has been at the very top. How could I turn my back on that?"

Perkins said that should Giuliani win the nomination, he would vote for a third-party candidate who reflected his values. "It wouldn't be the first time," Perkins added in an interview last week.

Other prominent cultural conservatives to signal public opposition to Giuliani in recent weeks included James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Louis Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition, veteran activist and former presidential candidate Gary Bauer, and Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Like Perkins, Land has warned that he would not vote for a Republican ticket in 2008 if it were led by Giuliani. Others did not go that far, even as they made plain their wish that Giuliani be weeded out in the primaries.

"When I give my support for a candidate, I am giving the green light, if he wins, all the way down the line in terms of so many moral and social issues," said Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, which represents 43,000 churches. "I'm personally not supporting Giuliani," he added. Sheldon is backing former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in the primaries.

NOTE FROM JOHN: A word about "the base." Yes, everyone thinks that the base is going to support the party candidate no matter what, so who cares what the fundies or the gays or the women or the enviros or the pro-lifers want. This may be true, but disaffected voters don't help the candidate in other ways - they don't donate as much money, they don't volunteer, they don't talk up the candidate. This last point is very important if the disaffected voter has influence, i.e., if he or she is someone with a megaphone, someone their friends and colleagues listen to. I wasn't thrilled with John Kerry's presidential candidacy, and was even less thrilled with his flip-flopping on gay issues. I think that lack of gusto for Kerry came across in my writing, and it certainly came across in my pocketbook. If enough people who have an audience, who can influence others, trash talk the candidate up until the last month or two before the election, or at the very least show no zeal for the candidate, that influences others, it also feeds a larger zeitgeist about the candidate. So, yes, many of us, many of them, will vote for their party's candidate regardless, but I really believe that a lack of enthusiasm for the candidate, or outright annoyance with the candidate, can and will have a serious impact on all of those things that matter for victory - money, volunteers, positive press, positive public chatter, momentum, turnout, and even a few votes. And as we've learned all too often of late, a few votes is all the difference between a Bush and a Gore, or a Kerry. Read More......

Energy security is national security

I'm at a conference today, put on by the Center for American Progress and the Century Foundation (hanging out with Matt and Nico and Ezra, among others), at the moment listening to a panel on energy and the environment as they relate to national security.

The impact of energy and climate upon U.S. (and world) security is tremendous. Various recent reports have predicted massive famine, drought, and rising water levels (in different places, natch), which would create tens of millions of refugees, wild shifts in global economy, etc. There is general agreement among sane, reality-based foreign policy leaders that the U.S. has a responsibility to lead the way on energy and environmental policies . . . but actual movement has been pretty weak.

On a semi-related note, I'm less exercised than Matt (see above link) about invocations of Truman; having a foreign policy rallying cry can be helpful at a macro level if not necessarily a micro one. Republicans, after all, constantly invoke Reagan as a model for foreign policy while concurrently insisting on the decidedly non-Reaganesque strategy of refusing to negotiate with countries we don't like. The intellectual inconsistency of some regarding Truman's legacy (cough *Beinart* cough) doesn't mean Truman isn't someone worth emulating generally.

To go on a tangent from a tangent, having just heard Albright speak, I'm always surprised that Dems don't invoke Clinton (or at least the foreign policy leaders in his administration) more on international relations. The man, after all, won two wars, worked tirelessly on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and made real attempts to counter the rise of terrorist influence. Does Mogadishu overshadow all of that? Anyway, for now, I guess Truman it is. Read More......

Specter: Gonzales vote will make Bush more stubborn

Hard to imagine that George Bush could get more stubborn and ornery. But that's what Arlen Specter predicted after the debate on no confidence in Alberto Gonzales yesterday:

Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania was among the few Republicans to vote to allow the resolution to proceed to a vote. “There is no confidence in the attorney general on this side of the aisle,” said Mr. Specter, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee. Even so, he predicted that the push to take the no confidence vote would just increase President Bush’s resolve to stand by the attorney general.

“My own hunch,” Mr. Specter said, is that the vote “is going to be a boomerang.”

So, Gonzales lost seven Republican votes. Specter claims Republican Senators don't even support him, really. But, they're stuck with Gonzales because Bush acts like a child in these situations. This explains so much. Read More......

Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Morning shows are all excited that George Bush is heading to the Capitol to have lunch with Republican Senators. Wow. Let's see if the GOPers give Bush what he wants -- again. This time it's immigration.

What else is going on? Read More......

Google backs down to EU regulators

Regulators in Europe gave the perception of being protectionist and overbearing for years but more recently Brussels has been improving dramatically. Not perfect, but pretty good. As power migrates away from EU member states where protectionist policies dominate, the issue of fairness with an eye on consumers has taken hold. Consumer protection still has a long way to go, but when I compare some of the actions from the EU to the US, I see a more proactive system that is seeking a middle ground between business and consumers. The privacy issues related to Google are not new, though stepping up and asking for change is.

The world's top provider of Web search services said late on Monday that it is ready to curtail the time it stores user data to a year-and-a-half, the low end of an 18 to 24 month period it had originally proposed to regulators in March.

Read More......

Incoming UK PM criticizes Blair's politicizing of intelligence

In a clear break from Blair policy, Gordon Brown is setting himself apart, informing the public that the days of manipulating facts for political gain are over. With the brewing BAE-Saudi Arabia arms deal in the spotlight and a follow up arms deal in the bidding process, Brown will have a prime opportunity to prove his disgust for political cover-ups and manipulation right away.

On his first visit to Baghdad, the incoming prime minister said he would learn lessons from the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, when Mr Blair based his case for war on intelligence reports about Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction.

Mr Brown said he had already begun discussions with Sir Gus O'Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, to ensure security and intelligence material was collected "free of the party political process" and was " fully verified" if it was to be made public. "That is learning the lessons from things that happened in the past, and we should make sure that we can do things better in the future," he said.

The similarities between political rule in the US and UK are worth noting. The interest in moving Read More......