At 3:12 pm PST, in a Fox News story about the Iowa State Fair, Fred Thompson was identified as wearing Gucci loafers. Those babies run a good $375 - $400. When John Edwards’ $400 haircut was mentioned on Fox News, it was called “primping.” and given more attention than the Iraq War. Today, at the end […]
At 3:12 pm PST, in a Fox News story about the Iowa State Fair, Fred Thompson was identified as wearing Gucci loafers.
Those babies $375 - $400. When John Edwards’ $400 haircut was mentioned on Fox News, it was called “primping.” and given than the Iraq War. Today, at the end of the Thompson story, the Fox correspondent bit into a refried Twinkie.
Representative Jim McDermott, Democrat of Washington, said, “Today’s debate comes down to this: Do you favor big tobacco or children?”
This quote was in reference to the Children’s Health Care Bill recently passed by the House. This what I don’t like about politicians, Republican or Democrat, here they have an opportunity to do something worthwhile and beneficial for many of the nation’s children and to redirect our priorities and they do how? As usual by raising taxes, I don’t have a problem with paying taxes. I believe that in order for our society to provide a safety net and to provide vital services we have to pay taxes. The problem I have is that right now we pay enough taxes, having the money is not the problem in Washington. The problem in Washington is how those tax dollars are allocated. So rather than moving some of that money from the bottomless military budget, the corporate subsidies, or any other program that would actually signal a change, they just raise taxes.
Representative Jim McDermott, Democrat of Washington, said, “Today’s debate comes down to this: Do you favor big tobacco or children?”[1]
This quote was in reference to the Children’s Health Care Bill recently passed by the House. This is what I don’t like about politicians, Republican or Democrat, here they have an opportunity to do something worthwhile and beneficial for many of the nation’s children and to redirect our priorities and how do they do it? As usual by raising taxes, I don’t have a problem with paying taxes. I believe that in order for our society to provide a safety net and to provide vital services we have to pay taxes. The problem I have is that right now we pay enough taxes, having the money is not the problem in Washington. The problem in Washington is how those tax dollars are allocated. So rather than moving some of that money from the bottomless military budget, the corporate subsidies, or any other program that would actually signal a change, they just raise taxes.
Now of course because they are taxing the evil tobacco companies it should be done without much resistance. The tobacco companies are an easy target and are always good as a whipping boy for politicians, but this belies the problem. The problem is how the money is being raised, not from whom. The taxes you levy against tobacco will not be paid by the tobacco companies; it will be paid by consumers. Since most poor people are under stress, guess who smokes more? So you are taxing the poor to pay for health care for the poor?
By a vote of 225 to 204, the bill passed, with support from 220 Democrats and 5 Republicans. Ten Democrats joined 194 Republicans in voting against it. The bill would provide coverage for more than four million uninsured children in low-income families, prevent cuts in doctors’ Medicare payments scheduled for Jan. 1 and raise the federal cigarette tax 45 cents a pack, to 84 cents.[2]
There is such a lack of courage in Washington today. If I thought there was a snowballs chance that big tobacco would have to pay the increase I would be all over it, but the truth is they won’t and these guys know it. In this way they can look tough on corporations and yet not be doing anything. Everybody knows people are going to smoke regardless, it is an addiction. Raising the cost of it is only putting a hardship on the consumers, not the tobacco industry. But isn’t it a good thing, it will make people quit smoking? No, it is a bad thing just like all the other laws that infringe on our right to choose. I don’t use seatbelts and I shouldn’t have to, if I want to drive that way it is my choice. As long as my choices do not infringe on the rights of others, so be it.
When it was created in 1997, the children’s program focused on families with incomes less than twice the poverty level. But many states have obtained federal waivers to cover children with somewhat higher family incomes, because those families cannot afford private insurance.
More than eight million of the 43 million Medicare beneficiaries are in plans offered by companies like Humana and United Health. Since December 2005, enrollment in private plans has shot up 40 percent.
On average, the Congressional Budget Office says, Medicare pays the private plans 12 percent more than it would cost to cover the same people under the traditional Medicare program. The House bill would eliminate the differential, saving $50 billion over the next five years and $157 billion from 2008 to 2017.[3]
Here are the good parts, it will expand the coverage for children and it will stop the over payments that the privatization of Medicare that Bush and his cronies tried to expand. Its funny how with all the talk of private insurers being more efficient and cost effective, that it costs more to use a private insurer than Medicare. This is a case of more “sound bite” logic that doesn’t pass the smell test. The reason we want to privatize is not for efficiency or savings, it is to give more of our tax dollars to the corporate whores who patrol Capitol Hill. What happen to free enterprise and capitalism? These are the same guys who berate the developing countries for not allowing free enterprise and they get more government handouts than anyone. Sometimes the hypocrisy with these guys gets to the point of the absurd.
Yes, let’s give health insurance to more Americans especially children, but let’s do it with the funds we already have. You’re telling me we can give billions of dollars in tax cuts to the wealthiest, but we can’t find any money for health insurance for our kids? No Mr. McDermott the question isn’t big tobacco or children, the real question is tax cuts and corporate welfare or children? Stop picking on the little guys and go after the people you were elected to watch over.
Prior to the recently passed Protect America Act, warantless interception of international communication was illegal. In 2005, the NSA allegedly engaged in such interception. The parties that got illegally wiretapped have taken the government to court. Now the government is saying that a court can’t declare the wiretapping illegal because the records of it are “state secret” or “privileged.” Oh, on top of that, in a 2005 press conference President Bush denied such warantless wiretapping ever happened. […]
Prior to the recently passed Protect America Act, warantless interception of international communication was illegal. In 2005, the NSA allegedly engaged in such interception. The parties that got illegally wiretapped have taken the government to court. Now the government is saying that a court can’t declare the wiretapping illegal because the records of it are “state secret” or “privileged.” Oh, on top of that, in a 2005 press conference President Bush denied such warantless wiretapping ever happened.
Body:
There is something very bizarre going on.
As discussed a few days ago, the US Congress passed the Protect America Act (primer here). It allows the administration to tap international communications — without a warrant and without probable cause — even if one of the citizens is an American citizen on American soil, as long as the intercept is undertaken for foreign intelligence purposes and is “directed at a person reasonably believed to be located outside of the United States.” (reasonable usually just means if the law enforcement could think it, which I assure you they always can).
The Protect America Act is the new law of the land.
Which means that before this new law a couple of weeks ago, in order to do that kind of intercept, the NSA did need a warrant/probable cause. Therefore, if prior to early August 2007 the NSA made an intercept of American citizens without warrant/probable cause, it would have been illegal for them to have done so.
Well, would you be surprised that prior to August ‘07, the NSA did engage in precisely in such illegal activity? How do we know? Easy: the government accidentally sent a log of its illegal wiretapping to the people it had been tapping. Now that the illegally tapped individuals have filed a case for $1 million each, the government has come in and : “Whether plaintiffs were subjected to surveillance is a state secret…and information tending to confirm or deny that fact is privileged.”
Uh. I think the govt would be better off defending themselves by invoking .
Anyway, al-Haramain, the Islamic Charity that was investigated for terrorism (indicted but not convicted), and was illegally wiretapped, was in court yesterday, and :
4:00pm PDT
In the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation case, Assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas Bondy (right, entering the courthouse) also says the case should be tossed. “The state secrets privilege requires dismissal of this case.”
Whether the foundation’s lawyers were spied upon, which is the subject of the case, “Is itself a state secret,” Bondy argues.
4:10pm PDT
Expanding on that theme, the government argues that the Al-Haramain case needs to be thrown out because the secret document that the government accidentally gave the foundation is so secret that it is outside of the case.
Bondy claims the plaintiff’s memories of the document can’t be allowed into the case because the only way to test them is against the “totally classified” document.
“Once the document is out of the case, which it has to be since it is privileged, the only way to test the veracity of their recollections is to compare it to the document,” Bondy says.
The lower court allowed the case to go forward based on the Al-Haramain Foundation lawyers’ memories of the document, but ruled that the document itself was not allowed into the case.
Judge Hawkins (left, file photo) wonders if the document is really that secret?
“Every ampersand, every comma is Top Secret?,” Hawkins asks.
“This document is totally non-redactable and non-segregable and cannot even be meaningfully described,” Bondy answers.
The government says the purported log of calls between one of the Islamic charity directors and two American lawyers is classified Top Secret and has the SCI level, meaning that it is “secure compartmented information.” That designation usually applies to surveillance information.
4:25pm PDT
Judge McKeown: “I feel like I’m in Alice and Wonderland.”
Eisenberg: “I feel like I’m in Alice in Wonderland, too.”
4:30pm PDT
Al-Haramain lawyer Eisenberg argues that the government’s rationale for dismissing the cases on state secrets grounds doesn’t apply to his clients, since they already know they were surveilled from seeing the secret document.
McKeown asks whether the foundation’s attorneys would have a case if the government hadn’t inadvertently disclosed the call log.
“We wouldn’t have known we were surveilled,” Eisenberg replies. “Had they not made a mistake and revealed it to the victims… who would be out here to sue?”
The results won’t be in for four months, though it for the Charity.
Many thought that the Al-Haramain plaintiffs, who look to be the only people in America who can prove they were surveilled without warrants by the government’s so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program, would be able to clamber over the legal obstacles standing in the way of getting a court to rule on the legality of warrantless wiretapping.
Instead, the court looks likely to throw out the Al-Haramain challenge because the government says the alleged surveillance call log is too secret to be used in court.
For background and timeline on Al-Haramain and how the charity got the documents from the government, go .
The al-Haramain attorney had an interesting, suggesting that President Bush himself was involved in covering up (lying) about the Terrorist Surveillance Program.
Eight words: “These calls are not intercepted within the country.” That’s how President Bush has described the so-called “Terrorist Surveillance Program” - the president’s warrantless wiretapping of communications between persons inside and outside the United States when the government claims a link to al-Qaida. The president said this during a press conference on Dec. 19, 2005, three days after The New York Times revealed the program’s existence.
But now it seems those eight words weren’t true. In fact, they concealed unlawful conduct.
It seems a potent argument, and one lawyers and the media are completely ignoring. Take the evidence on its face:
a) In 2005, NSA sends evidence of illegal wiretapping to people it is wiretapping.
b) President Bush says such illegal wiretapping never took place.
Uh, Gnostical Turpitde anyone?
Update 1: Apparently the new FISA — the Protect America Act — is retroactive, which means that even if President Bush knowingly covered up the warantless search in 2005, his actions are no longer illegal. Question, doesn’t that create a bill of attainder for those particular victims?
Plural Politics, is a political and social justice news, analysis and policy website. Please bookmark us.
The fact of the matter is that if there is anyone guilty of egregious judicial-activism here, it is the administration. They are taking the authority away from tenured federal judges and putting it in the hands of an appointed political official; and in this case, a man who has fired his subordinates for having different political views than him. […]
Quick criminal law overview. The power to convict people for the death penalty lies with each state. Some states do not allow the DP and some do. Among those that do, before a person is executed, he or she has a right to appeal to the federal courts. This way, before our nation takes an individual’s life, he gets judged by a series of state judges, and a series of federal judges. Given that 205 people on death row (so far) thanks to better DNA evidence, such a multi-level review is a good thing. If the system was faster, they might have been wrongfully killed.
, under the reauthorized version of Patriot Act — which was passed last year — a state can request the attorney general of the United States — Alberto Gonzalez — to shorten the appeals process, thereby speeding up the pace towards execution. This is not a good thing for two reasons. First, Gonzalez, as a person, should not have this kind of authority. Second, the office of the attorney general of the US, should not have this kind of authority.
Gonzalez is the wrong man to wield this power because:
Death penalty foes also say his record on the issue inspires no confidence that the rules will be administered fairly. As legal advisor to then-Texas Gov. George Bush in the 1990s, he gave what many saw as cursory treatment of clemency petitions of capital defendants whom the state subsequently put to death.
The attorney general of the US, no matter what party, shouldn’t have this power:
Critics also say there is a major conflict of interest for the nation’s top law enforcement officer to judge the qualifications of lawyers defending people whom government officials are seeking to put to death.
*
“It is almost a cruel joke for Congress to have said, ‘What we would like to do is improve the way states handle these’ . . . and then put it in the hands of, all people, the attorney general,” said Lawrence Fox, a Philadelphia lawyer who teaches legal ethics at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. “It really is quite extraordinary. He is the chief prosecutor of the United States. He couldn’t possibly be unbiased.”
Here are details about the new powers Gonzalez will have.
The procedures would cut to six months, instead of a year, the time that death row inmates have to file federal appeals once their cases have been resolved in the state courts.
It would also impose strict guidelines on federal judges for deciding such inmates’ petitions. Federal district judges would have 450 days, appeals courts 120 days. Proponents say that would prevent foot-dragging by liberal judges.
Let’s see, six months to file a federal appeal. Lay-people think that is more than enough time. Any right-minded lawyer will tell you that is absurd. First of all, the lawyers representing these individuals are working for pennies ($30,000 a year) which comes to them from the state treasury, not as a salary, but as an occassional disbursement, which is often quite late. On top of that, these lawyers do not have just one client; they have numerous clients for whom they are filing federal appeals. They usually have no staff, and sometimes, not even an office (not in crowded places like San Fran or Philly). Six months, in such circumstances, to learn a capital case from scratch, on which someone’s life depends, all while making pennies? That is our American legal system. Now the Bush administration wants to come in and speed the whole thing up, all while blaming “liberal judges.” Forget due process, lets blame the liberal judges.
The fact of the matter is that if there is anyone guilty of egregious judicial-activism here, it is the administration. They are taking the authority away from tenured federal judges and putting it in the hands of an appointed political official; and in this case, a man who for having different political views than him.
Plural Politics, is a political and social justice news, analysis and policy website.
I’ve often thought that affirmative action recruiting is just good business sense, and the Democratic Party is showing why it’s a good idea. I don’t know how I managed to miss this, as it’s almost a month old, now, but the DNC has created a . Why is this a good idea? […]
I’ve often thought that affirmative action recruiting is just good business sense, and the Democratic Party is showing why it’s a good idea. I don’t know how I managed to miss this, as it’s almost a month old, now, but the DNC has created a .
Man, this is brilliant.
And I don’t say this because of the whole blah blah blah more voices blah blah blah diversity blah blah blah Wax Ecstatic Distribution Curve of Lefty Sunshine Love blah blah blah anything with the word “minority” is autogood blah blah blah thing, although I suppose that there’s a lot of that to consider, too. (Sorry, Ali, I just cannot stand the self-righteousness of most such things. ;->)
This is smart for reasons beyond any of that. Here’s why I think so.
1. People who are up and coming, and trying to get established, work harder. The DNC is pretty much putting together a list of people who are willing to go the extra mile and a half in order to get a good reputation. Good on them.
2. This will bring huge market forces to bear upon the world of political consulting. Currently, there are way too few firms who do the bulk of business with Democrats. It’s the same old warhorses drawn out over and over again, and frankly, it hasn’t done much good. Bob Shrum, anyone? BLECH. Bringing all kinds of new competitors into the mix can only shake things up and make the competition better.
Learn from the fall of Rome, comes the warning. The US Comptroller, head of the Government Accounting Office, which is the investigative arm of Congress, warns that America must take lessons from the end of the Roman Empire. Says the two top issues affecting the internal health of America are “fiscal responsibility and inter-generational equity.” […]
The US Comptroller, head of the Government Accounting Office, which is the investigative arm of Congress, warns that America must take lessons from the end of the Roman Empire. Says the two top issues affecting the internal health of America are “fiscal responsibility and inter-generational equity.”
Over Financial Times:
In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Walker said he had mentioned some of the issues before but now wanted to “turn up the volume”. Some of them were too sensitive for others in government to “have their name associated with”.
“I’m trying to sound an alarm and issue a wake-up call,” he said. “As comptroller general I’ve got an ability to look longer-range and take on issues that others may be hesitant, and in many cases may not be in a position, to take on.
“One of the concerns is obviously we are a great country but we face major sustainability challenges that we are not taking seriously enough,” said Mr Walker, who was appointed during the Clinton administration to the post, which carries a 15-year term.
The fiscal imbalance meant the US was “on a path toward an explosion of debt”.
“With the looming retirement of baby boomers, spiralling healthcare costs, plummeting savings rates and increasing reliance on foreign lenders, we face unprecedented fiscal risks,” said Mr Walker, a former senior executive at PwC auditing firm.
Current US policy on education, energy, the environment, immigration and Iraq also was on an “unsustainable path”.
“Our very prosperity is placing greater demands on our physical infrastructure. Billions of dollars will be needed to modernise everything from highways and airports to water and sewage systems. The recent bridge collapse in Minneapolis was a sobering wake-up call.”
Mr Walker said he would offer to brief the would-be presidential candidates next spring.
“They need to make fiscal responsibility and inter-generational equity one of their top priorities. If they do, I think we have a chance to turn this around but if they don’t, I think the risk of a serious crisis rises considerably”.
Bush’s America? .
Bush borrowed Combined. Rome, here we come:
According to the Treasury Department, from 1776-2000, the first 224 years of U.S. history, 42 U.S. presidents borrowed a combined $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions, but in the past four years alone, the Bush administration borrowed $1.05 trillion.
Last Thursday I saw President Bush holding a press conference at the Department of Treasury, giving Americans assurance that we were financially healthy. Later in the day, the stock market tanked 387 points. No big deal, think the middle class and the poor, we have seen the market tank before and it seems to come back up, doesn’t it?
Then we saw the biggest French bank freeze $400 billion dollars. No big deal, think the middle class and the poor, what do we care what a French bank does.
Then we saw the central banks in US, Europe and Asia, pump $300 billion into various economies. No big deal, think the middle class and the poor, that’s what central banks do right? (No one asked where the money came from, nor cared that Europe injected more into its economies last week than it did after 9/11).
Then we heard that sub-prime lending in the US markets was causing all the trouble [sub-prime lending is when banks and mortgagors give housing loans to people with bad credit, who are at high-risk to default]. No big deal, thought the middle class and the poor, what does my home loan mean to the rest of the world?
Reality is, each one of these is a big deal, because each one of these things end up hurting the middle class and the poor the most. These people — we people — need to know how we were screwed over, and how our getting screwed over, screws up the rest of the world, and reduces American standing and security.
Let’s try and understand what has happened. It starts, as with most fiascoes in America today, with Bush in 2001. […]
Last Thursday I saw President Bush holding a press conference at the Department of Treasury, giving Americans assurance that we were financially healthy. Later in the day, the stock market tanked 387 points. No big deal, think the middle class and the poor, we have seen the market tank before and it seems to come back up, doesn’t it?
Then we saw the biggest French bank freeze $400 billion dollars. No big deal, think the middle class and the poor, what do we care what a French bank does.
Then we saw the central banks in US, Europe and Asia, pump $300 billion into various economies. No big deal, think the middle class and the poor, that’s what central banks do right? (No one asked where the money came from, nor cared that Europe injected more into its economies last week than it did after 9/11).
Then we heard that sub-prime lending in the Us markets was causing all the trouble (sub-prime lending is when banks and mortgagors give housing loans to people with bad credit, who are at high-risk to default). No big deal, thought the middle class and the poor, what does my home loan mean to the rest of the world?
Reality is, each one of these is a big deal, because each one of these things end up hurting the middle class and the poor the most. These people — we people — need to know how we were screwed over, and how our getting screwed over, screws up the rest of the world, and reduces American standing and security.
Let’s try and understand what has happened. It starts, as with most fiascos in America today, with Bush in 2001.
Joseph Stiglitz, a nobel laureate in Economics :
The story goes back to the recession of 2001. With the support of former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, US President George W. Bush pushed through a tax cut designed to benefit the richest Americans but not to lift the economy out of the recession that followed the collapse of the Internet bubble.
Given that mistake, the Fed had little choice if it was to fulfill its mandate to maintain growth and employment. It had to lower interest rates, which it did in an unprecedented way — all the way down to 1 percent.
It worked, but in a way fundamentally different from how monetary policy normally works. Usually, low interest rates lead firms to borrow more to invest more, and greater indebtedness is matched by more productive assets.
But given that over-investment in the 1990s was part of the problem underpinning the recession, lower interest rates did not stimulate much investment. The economy grew, but mainly because American families were persuaded to take on more debt, refinancing their mortgages and spending some of the proceeds [ed: that would be you, middle class and poor people] And, as long as housing prices rose as a result of lower interest rates, Americans could ignore their growing indebtedness.
Even this did not stimulate the economy enough. To get more people to borrow more money, credit standards were lowered, fueling growth in so-called “sub-prime” mortgages. Moreover, new products were invented, which lowered upfront payments, making it easier for individuals to take bigger mortgages (ed: and middle class and poor people you took these big mortgages) .
By the way, why is Stiglitz consigned to the Taipei-Freaking-Times?
Anyway, due to a mixture of fraud by the lenders and the fact that poor and middle class people didn’t have the money to make their mortage payments, the system went bust. How? Like this.
First, those refinancing companies which had been bailing people out (relying on the low interest rates that Bush wanted), went bust. Then, re-refinancing companies moved in, and allowed poor and middle class people to stay in their new homes, except with a kicker: usurious interest rates. When poor and middle class people went bust again, so did the re-refinancing companies who themselves had been running on debt. This hurt Wall Street and global markets directly. How? Because Wall Street gets home mortgages that are packaged together and then sells them to institutional investors (like Public pension funds such as the Teachers Retirement System of California), hedge funds (two of Bear Stearns’ largest hedge funds crashed), and foreign nations. In other words, when poor and middle class people cannot pay, the economy collapses — which is what has happened. Then the poor and middle class people get blamed. But the poor and middle class people aren’t the problem.
When poor and middle class people can’t pay, the Bush administration and rich-conservatives blame the poor and middle class people for making “bad choices.” The reality is that the Bush administration created the conditions in which it was favorable for poor and middle class people to make the decisions they made. In other words, rich-conservatives are blaming the poor and middle class for.being.rational. When interest rates are as low as 1%, shouldn’t you refinance your home? When the interest rates were at 2.5% every law student I knew aggregated their student loans. The mistake wasn’t ours in going after low interest rates and buying homes. The mistake belonged to those (the administration) who to save the economy, lowered interest rates to induce spending by the poor (whom they then benevolently termed “the American consumer”), instead of taxing the rich and using that slough to shake off the recession.
Now, to the most nefarious part of the situation. The poor and middle class people will go under. Meanwhile, the banks, relying on injections by the Federal Reserve Board and their already-available tax-cuts, will survive. It is duly noted by :
But the banks and the bankers will survive. The real victims are ordinary Americans, for whom buying a house and all the prosperity and security that comes with it is now just out of reach. The sub-prime market was not designed to saddle the unsuspecting borrower with usurious terms for life. In fact, there were some very useful mortgage products that gave many Americans a leg-up on to the housing ladder .
Now, with the banks in panic mode, the American Dream will be banished for many until Wall Street wakes up from its credit-crunch nightmare.
And , in slightly nerdier terms:
As it is, sub-prime borrowers are bearing the brunt of the Fed’s inflation-fighting campaign (ed: that would be you, poor and middle class people). In fact, the strongest economic argument against Bernanke’s stand is that it harms the poor and middle class when inflation is actually well in hand.
So, now what? The solution seems quite simple doesn’t it? Do the opposite of what Bush wants, who is literally, . That would mean what Senator Dodd is doing in Congress.
The worst thing in this situation isn’t the fact that this fiasco (according to a former Reagan conservative) China has over the American economy, it is that when this crash is done and over with, Wall Street and corporations will say that the “system has corrected itself.” They will fail to mention that each system-correction has victims. In this case, with most “system-corrections,” the victims will be the middle class and the poor.
Plural Politics, is a political and social justice news, analysis and policy website.
I have had a couple of interesting conversations this week about the concept behind Plural Politics. One with a working class (white) journalist and another with a Blackademic and scholar. I want to highlight the comments from the latter right now. […]
I have had a couple of interesting conversations this week about the concept behind Plural Politics. One with a working class (white) journalist and another with a Blackademic and scholar. I want to highlight the comments from the latter right now.
Kameelah is a “a nerdy black Muslimah and Hijabi” who hails from “a working-class California community” and writes .
I interrupted her as she was writing a paper on the politics of neutrality and had her opine about our About page and introductory remarks. If it seems like I am obsessed with these two documents, you’re correct. In a place where multiple overlapping narratives will be encouraged, there will have to be an intensely sharp focus on the goals. Kameelah provided some additional gloss, which gave me some assurance that I’m not just coming from left field. She writes via email (italicized):
From what I have read so far, the goals of “Plural Politics” are admirable and in particular, I appreciate this point:
Matters are made worse by the fact that this marginalized majority in America is splintered into numerous sub-groups and minority identities. Each group fights – singularly and alone – for dignity and representation. Each group ends up being played off against one another while the institutional power structure remains untouched.
I think this is an excellent point, considering that we engage in the daily narcissistic calculus of Oppression Olympics without ever addressing structural change because we are too busy measuring if the Black queer mother or the Mexican immigrant have it the worst. This divide and conquer tactic has become a necessary distraction that in many ways buttresses existing technologies of oppression and resource hoarding. I am confronting this problem now as I am trying to figure out how to bring Black American activists and Arab American activists [together]. What you are proposing as a “larger we” is definitely idealistic (and in all my unapologetic cynicism [I] still find beauty in this concept), but this does not discount the urgency for and legitimacy of such a move.
I appreciate the sophistication in thought process and analysis that I have already read and as it is articulated in your introductory remarks. In all honesty, I have grown tired of a lot of left blogs that have reached this point of nauseating redundancy and myopic discourse. It has me screaming that there has to be more–that there has to be another way to approach this blogosphere in a more productive and refreshing manner. In a lot of ways I can see Plural Politics being a breathe of fresh air that offers an alternatives to both lefty and righty blogs that rely on tiresome cliches, ad hominems and dead-end rhetoric. Additionally, I think it does what a lot of blogs do not, or are struggling to do: actually organize people and build bridges for solid action. I am definitely feeling this project.
I think her point about Oppression Olympics is an interesting one.
She did add there will be “glitches to address” and in my conversation with the journalist (which I will discuss later), and in one of the earlier comments on the site, I was given a pretty good taste of what that glitch will be. I have been giving thought to these issues and consulting with reliable people and will be offering one solution. I hope some of them will affirmatively offer their suggestions and ideas (whether via email or in the comments).
Nevertheless, this site will not be “launched” until some of these glitches and gaps are addressed.
A surveillance law, called the Protect America Act, which is an amendment to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, pushed through Congress and signed by Bush last Sunday, will allow the government to monitor phone calls and e-mails without a warrant. If you engage in any international communication, this will impact you.
“Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.”
James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, May 13, 1798
You may want to bookmark this link.
A surveillance law, called the Protect America Act, which is an amendment to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, pushed through Congress and signed by Bush last Sunday, will allow the government to monitor phone calls and e-mails without a warrant. If you engage in any international communication, this will impact you. Here is what you need to know, and how to act.
What does the amendment authorize? Until last weekend, FISA prohibited the government from intercepting any international telephone call or email communication involving persons in the United States without a warrant from the FISA court based upon probable cause. The amendment authorizes the government to wiretap or intercept any international communication, even if one of the participants is an American citizen on American soil, as long as the intercept is undertaken for foreign intelligence purposes and is “directed at a person reasonably believed to be located outside of the United States.”
There is no requirement that the government must obtain a search warrant from the FISA court, and no requirement that the government must have probable cause to believe that the person “reasonably believed to be outside of the United States” is a terrorist or even an associate of terrorists. The new legislation empowers the Attorney to authorize such surveillance as long as the purpose is to gather “foreign intelligence” and the surveillance is “directed at a person reasonably believed to be outside the United States.”
Why should we care about this law? In general, United States law (statutory and constitutional) does not restrict the ability of the government to search the homes of people in Iraq, to read the mail of people in France, or to wiretap telephone calls in Japan. Why is the new law any different?
When the government intercepts telephone calls and email exchanges between an American in Chicago and a foreign national in Berlin it intrudes upon the privacy of both parties to the communication. Such surveillance invades the privacy of the American in Chicago just as much when the exchange is with someone in Berlin as when it is with someone in Miami. That the surveillance is “directed at a person reasonably believed to be outside the United States” is no consolation to the American in Chicago.
Until last weekend, the law did not define the privacy interest of the American in Chicago in terms of whether he was speaking or emailing with a person in Miami or Berlin. In either case, because the surveillance invaded the privacy of an American on American soil, the government needed probable cause and a warrant.
The simple and proper solution to this “problem” to require the government to obtain a warrant based upon a showing of probable cause whenever it wants to tap a telephone call or read an email exchange involving an American on American soil. That was the law before last weekend and there is no good reason why it should not be the law now.
, Brennan Center for Justice (also discusses what happens to Americans who are overseas).
The law’s most important effect is arguably not its expansion of raw surveillance power but the sloughing away of judicial or Congressional oversight. In the words of former CIA officer Philip Giraldi, the law provides “unlimited access to currently protected personal information that is already accessible through an oversight procedure.” [snip]
The key term in the Protect America Act is its licensing of “surveillance directed at a person reasonably believed to be located outside of the United States.” This language has a superficial reasonableness, since domestic surveillance has long been understood to raise the most troubling abuse concerns.
But the trouble with this language is that it permits freewheeling surveillance of Americans’ international calls and e-mails. The problem lies in the words “directed at.” Under this language, the NSA could decide to “direct” its surveillance at Peshawar, Pakistan–and seize all US calls going to and from there. It could focus on Amman, or Cairo, or London, or Paris, or Toronto… Simply put, the law is an open-ended invitation to collect Americans’ international calls and e-mails.
Further, the law does not limit the collection of international calls to security purposes: Rather, it seems the government can seize any international call or e-mail for any reason–even if it’s unrelated to security. Indeed, another provision of the law confirms that national security can be merely one of several purposes of an intelligence collection program. This point alone should sink the Administration’s claim to be doing no more than technical fiddling. While the FISA law limited warrantless surveillance absolutely, this law licenses it, not only for national security purposes but also for whatever purpose the government sees fit.
Of further concern is the “reasonably believe” caveat. This means that so long as the NSA “reasonably” believes its antennas are trained overseas, wholly domestic calls can sometimes be collected. And since the NSA uses a filter to separate international calls from wholly domestic calls, it need only “reasonably believe” that it’s getting this right. It’s this new latitude for error that is troubling, especially because this isn’t an Administration known for its care when the rights and lives of others are at stake. It remains deeply unclear how much domestic surveillance this allows.
The problems created by this loosening of standards are compounded by the risibly weak oversight procedures contained in the law. Rather than issuing individualized warrants, now the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General can certify yearlong programs for collecting international calls. The program as a whole is placed before the FISA court, which can only invalidate those procedures and claims that are “clearly erroneous.” The government thus has to meet an extraordinarily low standard, in a one-sided judicial procedure in which the court has no access to details of the program’s actual operation.
Congressional oversight is even more laughable. Attorney General Gonzales, that paragon of probity and full disclosure, is required to report not on the program’s overall operations but solely on “incidents of noncompliance.” Of course, given how weak the constraints imposed by the law are, self-reported noncompliance is likely to be minimal.
Finally, some advocates and legislators have taken comfort in the law’s six-month sunset provision. But this means that the act will be up for authorization in the middle of the presidential campaign, an environment in which the pressures to accede to Administration demands will be even higher than usual. And the law doesn’t really sunset after six months: The provision is artfully drafted to allow the NSA to continue wielding its new surveillance powers for up to a year afterward.
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The Center for National Security Studies strongly opposes the administration’s FISA bill, S. 1927, because it would permit the National Security Agency to acquire and analyze all international communications of Americans, without any meaningful judicial oversight. The administration legislation would allow the NSA warrantless access to virtually all international communications of Americans with anyone outside the US, so long as the government declared that the surveillance was directed at people, which includes foreigners and citizens, reasonably believed to be located outside the US, a definition that covers billions of people.
The administration rejected all reasonable efforts to require that such surveillance be focused on foreigners, be directed at terrorist targets or be limited to protecting against international terrorism. They also rejected efforts to include meaningful court review of the rights of individual Americans’ swept in or even an independent audit of the affect on the privacy of Americans.
This legislation would sunset or expire in six months. However, the sunset has an exception that would allow any directives by Attorney General Gonzales and Director of National Intelligence McConnell that commandeer access to US telephone and internet companies to remain in effect until their expiration (which is likely to be until the end of the administration since the directives can be issued for up to one year, so could be issued to last for the next six months and then reissued on the eve of the sunset, in January 2008, to remain in effect until this administration is finally over in January 2009).
The legislation that passed would allow for the intelligence agencies to intercept – without a court order – the calls and emails of Americans who are communicating with people abroad, and puts authority for doing so in the hands of the attorney general. No protections exist for Americans whose calls or emails are vacuumed up, leaving it to the executive branch to collect, sort, and use this information as it sees fit.
of executive powers.
Bush has said his original surveillance program was restricted to calls and e-mails involving a suspected terrorist, but the new law has no such limit. Instead, it allows executive-branch agencies to conduct oversight-free surveillance of all international calls and e-mails, including those with Americans on the line, with the sole requirement that the intelligence-gathering is “directed at a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States.” There is no requirement that either caller be a suspected terrorist, spy, or criminal.
[with video].
The government can monitor every single phone call that London is making to you in Washington, D.C., to any of the viewers at home. … They can listen to every single international call that you make or receive, every e-mail that you write, and e-mail that you receive, in complete and total secrecy.
C&L.
Text of the bill is (Pdf).
What to do:
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Formaldehyde is a common ingredient in building materials such as paneling, carpeting and glue. At high levels, it causes respiratory diseases, bloody noses, headaches and insomnia. It was also present in the 120,000 trailers FEMA gave out out to Katrina victims. All 120,000 trailers are now being recalled. .