Year: 2005

Abramoff Payola Pundit Resigns from Copley

Buck Banks

Wages of spin: Columnist Doug Bandow resigned Tuesday from Copley News Service, according to Editor&Publisher. Bandow had been under fire for accepting payola from indicted Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff to write op-ed pieces favorable to some of Abramoff’s clients.

Bandow had previously resigned from the Cato Institute last Thursday after admitting he took bribes — a transgression first revealed by BusinessWeek.com. Bandow said he accepted money to write 12-24 pieces starting in the mid-1990s. He received $2,000 for some of the commentaries.

The now-former Copley columnist is one of several conservative commentators who, in a series of 2005 revelations, were found to have accepted money to promote programs and initiatives without disclosing the funding. They include Armstrong Williams of Tribune Media Services (which dropped Williams), Maggie Gallagher of Universal Press Syndicate, and the self-syndicated Michael McManus.

Defense Bills Will Undercut McCain Torture Measure

Buck Banks

Bait and switch: Having just passed Sen. John McCain’s anti-torture measure, the Senate is poised to pass legislation that would undercut it. Two defense bills that have already passed the House could be approved by the Senate this week and would allow the United States’ shameful torture practices to continue.

The Financial Times reports that the proposed legislation would allow the use of evidence extracted through torture to indefinitely detain “enemy combatants” at the U.S. torture center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and prevent them from suing their torturers.

The measure, included in two defence bills already approved by the House and awaiting Senate approval, would also restrict the rights of prisoners at the detention centre to appeal against their detention to US courts.

Human rights groups and lawyers for some of the Guantánamo detainees argue the law would undermine some of the guarantees to detainees following an agreement between Senator John McCain and the White House last week on legislation banning US personnel from abusing prisoners anywhere in the world.

“The most dramatic story is that the same legislation that passes the McCain amendment – which is this historic bill on torture – has this other provision, which undercuts it in two ways,” said Jennifer Daskal, US advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.

Typical of the Bush admin and the Repug Congress to say one thing and do another — which apparently does not constitute lying. Meanwhile the U.S. loses face worldwide for torturing prisoners with Dr. Dre and Eminem music in so-called “dark forts” in Afghanistan.

Rumsfeld Chortles Over Lack of Intelligence, Utter Cluelessness about bin Laden

Trish

Absolutely astounding. Dumbfounding. Just too much for words.

The recent comments by Secretary of Defense Donald Dimwit Rumsfeld about Osama bin Forgotten defy credulity.

The war we’re in has so little to do with this guy that we can’t even be roused to find out if the so-called target has passed away from natural causes while waiting on us to get it together enough to find him

“I think it is interesting that we haven’t heard from him for close to a year,” Rumsfeld told reporters en route to Islamabad.

“I don’t know what it means, but I suspect in any event if he is alive and functioning that he is spending a major fraction of his time trying to avoid being caught,” Rumsfeld said.

So Donnie just finds it “interesting” that bin Laden hasn’t bombed us lately. And he doesn’t know if bin Laden is dead or alive. Doesn’t sound like he cares too much, either. Is it me, or is this guy just begging for something really bad to happen?

Wait, it gets worse.

Rumsfeld’s comments echoed earlier assessments by the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Ryan Crocker, but contradicted the assertion of al Qaeda’s deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahri in a video interview earlier this month that bin Laden’s battle against the West was only just beginning.

Said Rumsfeld, “We just don’t know.”

That’s a big “Duh!” there, good buddy. We don’t know squat and you’re making it sound like you have as much control over that as the weather; like you’re not the frickin’ defense secretary and the war we’re in has so little to do with this guy that we can’t even be roused to find out if the so-called target has passed away from natural causes while waiting on us to get it together enough to find him.

President Lied to Americans in ’04, Said Warrants Were Used for Terrorists’ Wiretaps

Jon Ponder

White House transcript from the President’s remarks in Buffalo, NY, on April 20, 2004:

There are such things as roving wiretaps. Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires — a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so. It’s important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.

Crooks & Liars has audio.

Bush Tried to Kill NYT’s ‘SnoopGate’ Story

Buck Banks

Get me the editor: I tell you, if George Bush isn’t trying to plant news stories in Iraq, he’s trying to kill them here in America.

Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter reveals in a Web-only commentary that Bush summoned the New York Times’ publisher and executive editor to try to convince them not to run the story about the administration’s illegal domestic spying program.

No wonder Bush was so desperate that The New York Times not publish its story on the National Security Agency eavesdropping on American citizens without a warrant, in what lawyers outside the administration say is a clear violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. I learned this week that on December 6, Bush summoned Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive editor Bill Keller to the Oval Office in a futile attempt to talk them out of running the story. The Times will not comment on the meeting,
but one can only imagine the president’s desperation.

The problem was not that the disclosures would compromise national security, as Bush claimed at his press conference. His comparison to the damaging pre-9/11 revelation of Osama bin Laden’s use of a satellite phone, which caused bin Laden to change tactics, is fallacious; any Americans with ties to Muslim extremists—in fact, all American Muslims, period—have long since suspected that the U.S. government might be listening in to their conversations. Bush claimed that “the fact that we are discussing this program is helping the enemy.” But there is simply no evidence, or even reasonable presumption, that this is so. And rather than the leaking being a “shameful act,” it was the work of a patriot inside the government who was trying to stop a presidential power grab.

No, Bush was desperate to keep the Times from running this important story—which the paper had already inexplicably held for a year—because he knew that it would reveal him as a law-breaker. He insists he had “legal authority derived from the Constitution and congressional resolution authorizing force.” But the Constitution explicitly requires the president to obey the law. And the post 9/11 congressional resolution authorizing “all necessary force” in fighting terrorism was made in clear reference to military intervention. It did not scrap the Constitution and allow the president to do whatever he pleased in any area in the name of fighting terrorism.

All of Bush’s B.S. about national security is just so much hoohah. Alter sums up the truth like this:

This time, the president knew publication would cause him great embarrassment and trouble for the rest of his presidency. It was for that reason—and less out of genuine concern about national security—that George W. Bush tried so hard to kill the New York Times story.

Dems Looking to Uncover Secret Docs Bush Uses to Justify Spying on Americans

Buck Banks

Show me the memos: My pal Howard Dean, chair of the Democratic Party, sent me an e-mail this afternoon urging me to sign the Dems’ petition to shake loose Justice Dept. memos created to cover George Bush’s lying and spying through the Freedom of Information Act. So I signed it because it just might be the first step down the path to impeachment.

Here’s what Howard wrote:

By now you have probably heard the news that George Bush is using the National Security Agency to conduct surveillance on American citizens without the consent of any court. After initially refusing to confirm the story, the President has admitted to personally overseeing this domestic spying program for years and he says he intends to continue the program.

These actions explicitly violate a law designed to protect US citizens. But the administration says that other laws somehow allow for this unprecedented use of a foreign intelligence agency to spy on Americans right here in the United States. According to reports, political appointees in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel wrote still-classified legal opinions laying out the supposed justification for this program.

I have asked our General Counsel to draft a Freedom of Information Act request for the relevant legal opinions and memos written by that office. Since the program’s existence is no longer a secret, these memos should be released — Americans deserve to know exactly what authority this administration believes it has.

You can help pressure the administration to release these documents by signing on to our Freedom of Information Act request in the next 48 hours.
[…]

Out of 18,761 FISA Requests, Only Five Were Rejected

Jon Ponder

According to USA Today, the government made 18,761 request for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens between 1979 and 2004. Only five requests were rejected. Fewer than 100 had to be modified.

The assertion that the President Bush had to break the law because getting a FISA warrant would have been too slow or burdensome is simply false.

Presdent Bush willfully broke the law, and now he’s lying about his motives. And, just for good measure, he’s also casting blame for his own transgressions onto the poor luckless Democrats in Congress: “It’s their fault because they didn’t stop me! Maybe you should investigate them.”

Clinton-Hater Toensing Laughs – Literally – at Idea of Investigating Bush’s Allegedly Illegal Spying on U.S. Citizens

Jon Ponder

New lows in hackery: During the 1990’s, Victoria Toensing and her husband, Joe diGenova, made over 300 appearances on cable television in the service of the Republican agenda – often pimping for their friend Ken Starr and his $35 million investigation into President Clinton’s sex life.

In those days, to hear Toensing and diGenova tell it, there was no infraction on the part of the Clintons that was too small to warrant a thorough proctological examination.

So I was flabbergasted to hear Toensing this morning on C-Span’s Washington Journal laughing – literally – at the idea that a special prosecutor should be assigned to investigate whether President Bush broke the law when he ordered the National Security Agency (NSA) to spy on American citizens.

Toensing was debating James Bamford, an investigative reporter who wrote a book about the NSA titled, “The Puzzle Palace.” At the center of their debate is the 1978 law the president apparently broke – the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) – which clearly states that the government must get special permission to spy on U.S. citizens from a FISA court.

BAMFORD: This is a president who has [spied on U.S. citizens] constantly since 2001, bypassing [the FISA] law. This isn’t a one-time deal. And, again, he has a lot of options for going to the court and doing this. He didn’t go to the court and there is a legal provision in that statute that says “if you don’t go to the court, it’s five years in jail and a ten thousand dollar fine.” So the solution here is to get a special prosecutor to take a look at whether the law…
TOENSING: (Off camera) Ha!
BAMFORD: …Was violated. And I don’t know what’s funny about that. You know, we had the Republicans go to impeachment over a minor sexual discretion [sic] by a president. And here’s a president violating a law that says [there’s jailtime and a fine] if you manage to violate it.

All Toensing could say in response was to sputter about how members of Congress had been briefed on the domestic spying so they should be investigated too.

The Precarious Iraq Domino Theory

Trish

Good job of staying on message by Dewayne Wickham in USA Today. Wickham reminds us of last year, when Bush told Matt Lauer that the war on terror couldn’t be won, that we can only “create conditions so that … those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world, let’s put it that way.” He worries that Bush has now morphed into thinking that we can win after all, if we win in Iraq.

It sounds as though he thinks the war on terror will end when the U.S. declares victory in Iraq

…it wasn’t the hunt for Osama bin Laden and his ilk that sparked the war in Iraq. It was the Bush administration’s desire to settle old scores with Saddam. And it’s an illusion because it masks the president’s failure to pursue the man who ordered the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on this country as aggressively as he does the fight in Iraq.

Think about it.

When was the last time you heard Bush speak more than fleetingly about other fronts in the broader war? Virtually all of the troops and resources devoted to the war on terror have been sent to Iraq. If you listen closely to what Bush has been saying recently as he has stumped the country trying to reignite support for the war in Iraq, it sounds as though he thinks the war on terror will end when the U.S. declares victory in Iraq.

“These terrorists view the world as a giant battlefield — and they seek to attack us wherever they can. This has attracted al-Qaeda to Iraq, where they are attempting to frighten and intimidate America into a policy of retreat,” the president said Sunday night in an Oval Office address to the nation.

That’s the new “domino theory.” It’s born of the Bush administration’s warped war policies — a jingoism that used the war on terror as an excuse to topple Saddam’s brutal regime. Unlike the broader war on terror that Bush once said we couldn’t win, the president is certain we will prevail in Iraq.

I worry that he is obsessing on the wrong fight.

Public Relations Effort Paying Off for Prez

Buck Banks

PR works: The BBC is reporting on new polling results that indicate George Bush’s constant appearances over the past couple of weeks are paying off, despite mounting criticism over his authorization of illegal spying on U.S. residents.

The ABC News and the Washington Post poll shows Bush’s approval rating has risen to 47%, from an all-time low of 39% in November. The poll suggests the spike is a result of high voter turnout in Iraq and growing public confidence in Bush’s handling of national security and the economy.

The latest opinion poll shows his approval rating on Iraq has risen by 10% since early November to 46%. On the economy, his rating has jumped 11 points, to 47%, the Washington Post reports.

His overall approval rating has risen to 47%, from 39% in early November. Some 52% say they disapprove of how he is handling his job.

The poll found that approval over Mr Bush’s handling of the fight against terrorism had risen to 56%, from 48% last month.