Month: December 2007
Mukasey: Exposing Spies ‘Not a Risk Worth Taking’ – Except for Valerie Wilson?
I happened to catch the replay on C-SPAN this morning of Attorney Gen. Michael Mukasey’s address to the American Bar Association in which he laid out the case for granting immunity to giant telecom companies that allowed the Bush administration to spy on their customers.
“[The] specific identity of those who assist us with intelligence activities and the nature of their assistance must be protected as vital intelligence sources and methods. The risk of disclosing that kind of information is not a risk worth taking.”
– Mukasey
Despite the fact that my expectations for the speech and the new attorney general’s performance could not have been lower, both the content and delivery of the address were far worse than I could have imagined.
Mukasey read his speech like it was new material to him, like he’d been handed it in the limo that morning. His robotic performance brought to mind a hostage brought before cameras to read his ransom note — which prompts the question: What do the Bushies have on this man? Are they holding his family prisoners in Guantanamo? Are they threatening to shoot his dog? What other reason could there be for Mukasey to toss his reputation onto the crucible of the Bushies’ incompetence and corruption?
And then, three-quarters into his atonal droning, I found myself coming up off the couch when Mukasey made this outrageous assertion:
[The] specific identity of those who assist us with intelligence activities and the nature of their assistance must be protected as vital intelligence sources and methods. The risk of disclosing that kind of information is not a risk worth taking…
Seriously, did he look at the speech before he delivered it — or has Mukasey imbibed the Bushies’ Kool-Aid so deeply that he failed to grasp the tragic irony that, in 2003, his new masters blithely betrayed secret U.S. sources and methods — specifically a covert program that tracked blackmarket sales of terror weapons, in order to attack for political reasons the spouse of the covert agent in charge of the program, Valerie Plame Wilson?
Eventually, he raised the specter of the 9/11 attacks, of course, and suggested that the government needs American companies to fall in line in the phony war on terror, just like they did in the very real struggle against fascism in World War II. And then, finally, his odious, coulda-phoned-it-in reading aloud came to an end:
And of course, our efforts against that threat also must take place with scrupulous respect for civil liberties and within the rule of law. FISA modernization legislation is only one example of how we put in place a tool that we need to fight against terrorists, while protecting the rights of Americans. I recognize that as Attorney General I have to be committed to both of those goals. I am here to tell you that I am Thank you very much for inviting me today.
After those un-heartfelt words, he sat down — and like the true Bushie he has become, the attorney general refused to take questions from the audience.
What Was Really Behind the White House Fire
Borowitz explains what really caused the fire in the Vice President’s office of the White House.
According to White House aides, the blaze started shortly after twelve noon, minutes after Mr. Cheney slipped out of a cabinet meeting, saying that he had to “hit the head.â€
But rather than using the bathroom as he had stated, the vice president instead went to his office and put a blowtorch to a pile of CIA interrogation tapes which the White House had feared might be subpoenaed in the near future.
“I started burning those things and boom, they went up like a rocket,†an apologetic Mr. Cheney later told reporters.
GOP Senator: Trent Lott’s 2002 Pro-Segregationist Statement Was ‘Misconstrued’
The cluelessness of Republicans about their own racism never ceases to amaze. Remember back in 2002 when Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) was caught on tape at a 100th birthday celebration for Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), yearning for what life could have been if Thurmond had won the presidency in 1948 on a single-plank platform of preventing civil rights for African-Americans:
It was George Bush, not the wolfpack of the press, who forced Lott to stand down as Senate majority leader.
“I want to say this about my state: when Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.”
Lott is leaving the Senate now to cash in as a high-priced lobbyist. During farewell speeches on the Senate floor Tuesday, Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) insisted that Lott’s pro-segregation statement misinterpreted:
[His] words were misconstrued, words which we had heard him utter many times in his big warm-heartedness trying to make one of our colleagues, Strom Thurmond, feel good at 100 years old. We knew what he meant. But the wolfpack of the press circled around him, sensed blood in the water, and the exigencies of politics caused a great injustice…”
Leaving aside the fact that Thurmond was barely sentient and thus unable to “feel good” at the time, it’s telling that Lott had “uttered” similar pro-segregation sentiments to his Republican colleagues “many times,” and that none of these GOP pols ever bothered to say, “Hey, Trent, your white sheet is showing.”
Of course, Sen. Smith is wrong about the source of Trent Lott’s troubles over his pro-segregationist remarks. It was George Bush, not the wolfpack of the press, who forced Lott to stand down as Senate majority leader.
Iowa Caucuses, Like the Electoral College, Are Irrelevant
A big “Amen, Sister!” to Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post, who asks the question so many Floridians and others would like to know, “Who Elected Iowa?”
The caucuses draw a small, unrepresentative sample of a small, unrepresentative state…
…[M]ost Iowans view the caucuses as an obscure art practiced by an elect few. “Usually I don’t go, because I’m afraid I’m going to get there and feel like a dummy,” one man on Ahn’s list confides.
And speaking of dummies, I was amazed to see the decision facing one Iowan.
Kay Baccam, 38, who works at an Iowa spice plant, said she liked Thompson but was leaning toward Clinton in part because of her gender.
“She would be the first woman (president) in history. That’s a good role model for kids and women,” she said.
Who winnows down their choices to Fred Thompson or Hillary Clinton? Really.
Florida Democrats were told our campaign blackout was essential to the electoral process, to preserve the system that lets Iowa and New Hampshire — two of our whitest states — choose first
Besides — and I don’t know a thing about how it actually works, but — it sounds like the Democratic caucuses are separate from the Republicans ones. And in the Democratic caucus, if your candidate doesn’t get at least 15 percent of the vote, you have to pick someone else.
Political reporters, myself included, get misty over the notion of neighbors gathering on a cold winter night to hash out differences over who is the best candidate. But the caucus process also serves to disenfranchise…
The bizarre rules of the Democratic contest further distort the results. (Republicans employ a more straightforward method: The candidate with the most votes wins.) Why should a candidate who fails to meet the 15 percent threshold of viability walk away empty-handed? Why should the final outcome depend on how those losing campaigns decide where to throw their backing when, in caucus-speak, nonviable preference groups realign for a second round? No wonder the caucus process makes ordinary people’s heads hurt…
And perhaps the most important question: Given all this, why do we in the media invest the caucuses with such make-or-break significance?
When Florida Democrats were placed under a campaign blackout as punishment for the state legislature changing our primary date, we were told it was essential to the electoral process to preserve the system that lets Iowa and New Hampshire, two of our whitest states, choose first. I have never understood the rationale for this boneheaded move, but I believe it was brought to us by the same folks who sit in Congress now — unable to do anything different, ineffectual and inaudible, and wondering why the Republicans always win.
Worldwide Post Office Conspiracy Perpetuates Santa Myth
According to an Associated Press report, more than 7 million letters to Santa Claus will be sent this year by hopeful little children. Those letters are likely to be answered by demented postal workers bent on perpetuating the myth of Santa in a worldwide conspiracy that includes more than 150 countries.
The bearded gentleman — also known as St. Nicholas, Father Christmas, Pere Noel and dozens of other names worldwide — will receive more than 6 million letters in the mail this year, the U.N. agency that connects national post offices said Tuesday.
And that’s not counting the United States, where the U.S. Postal Service says it handles a million letters yearly to Santa.
‘It matters little where Santa lives; he is evidently everywhere.’
— Universal Postal UnionIn at least 20 countries, postal workers collect and respond to letters addressed to “North Pole,” which otherwise would be stamped “undeliverable” or “address unknown.”
“It matters little where Santa lives; he is evidently everywhere,” the Universal Postal Union said.
This is the first I’ve heard of the Universal Postal Union, but it sounds like an organization just made to perpetuate a myth globally. The UPU was formed in 1874 in Berne, Switzerland, and is an offshoot of the United Nations. Here’s how it describes its nefarious mission:
The UPU has for objective to develop social, cultural and commercial communication between people through the efficient operation of the postal service. As an inter-governmental institution, the UPU is called upon to play an important leadership role in promoting the continued revitalisation of postal services.
There you have it — a global group that’s trying to get people to send more letters, even letters to mythological creatures in flying sleighs. How big is the conspiracy? It’s huge:
Finland, whose northern Lapland frontier claims to be the home of the real Santa, receives the most mail from abroad and responds to children in 150 countries.
Canada’s postal service replies in 26 languages and Germany’s Deutsche Post writes back in 16.
France handles the most letters in total with over 1.22 million sent to Pere Noel last year. It is followed by Canada, with 1.06 million; Britain and Finland, 750,000 each; Germany, 500,000; Portugal, 255,000; and Spain, 232,000.
The U.S. Postal Service has been answering Santa’s letters the longest, since 1912. USPS spokesman Larry Dozier in Los Angeles said the service answers about 1 million letters to Santa each year.
And those are just the letters with return addresses. Who knows how many end up in the Dead Letter Office? But that’s not even the worst of it. Kids in Ukraine who send Santa a letter by Jan. 10 are entered into — get this — a national LOTTERY. Yep, write a letter to a mythological creature and you can legally GAMBLE!
So it’s not the Xmas cards that people send this time of year that delays delivery of my Mother Jones magazine, it’s all those brats begging for Xboxes and Wiis and iPhones and iPods and Barbie dolls, etc.
The best thing we, as the older, wiser generation can do for these misguided tots jonesing for toys is tell it to them straight: “No, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus. Now, shut up and go play with your lump of coal.”
Another Dog Killed by Republicans – Blackwater Shoots Resident Pooch at NYT Bureau in Baghdad
On Monday we learned that Mike Huckabee has been accused of covering up his son’s brutal killing of a stray dog years ago. Now there is word that handlers of security service dogs employed by Blackwater, the paramilitary mercenary group with exclusive, high-level and pervasive ties to the Republican Party — and that has received over $100 million in no-bid contracts from the Bush administration — shot a dog that lived at the New York Times bureau in Baghdad:
Investigators from the State Department have made two visits to The New York Times’s news bureau in Baghdad as they look into the shooting of one of the bureau’s dogs by Blackwater bodyguards last week.
Employees of the bureau said that the Blackwater guards shot the dog, named Hentish, during a search of the Times compound for explosives. A security team was conducting the search ahead of a visit by an American diplomat.
Anne Tyrrell, a spokeswoman for Blackwater, the private security firm, told Reuters that the dog had attacked one of Blackwater’s bomb-sniffing dogs.
“The K-9 handler made several unsuccessful attempts to get the dog to retreat, including placing himself between the dogs,” she said in an e-mail to Reuters. “When those efforts failed, the K-9 handler unfortunately was forced to use a pistol to protect the company’s K-9 and himself.”
It apparently didn’t occur to the Blackwater dog handler to remove the service dog from the area so that someone Hentish trusted could secure him inside. Or maybe saving the dog’s life was considered a waste of Blackwater’s precious time.
I guess we should take comfort that the Blackwater goon didn’t torture Hentish before shooting him.
Bush Lawyers – Including Alberto Gonzales – Discussed Destruction of CIA Torture Tapes
Current and former White House officials have admitted — though not for attribution — that senior Bush officials were deeply involved in discussions about whether to destroy videos of CIA agents torturing terror suspects:
This brings us back to an increasingly familiar question: What did Bush know about the destruction of the tapes, and when did he know it.
At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials.
The accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged.
Those who took part, the officials said, included Alberto R. Gonzales, who served as White House counsel until early 2005; David S. Addington, who was the counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney and is now his chief of staff; John B. Bellinger III, who until January 2005 was the senior lawyer at the National Security Council; and Harriet E. Miers, who succeeded Mr. Gonzales as White House counsel.
It was previously reported that some administration officials had advised against destroying the tapes, but the emerging picture of White House involvement is more complex. In interviews, several administration and intelligence officials provided conflicting accounts as to whether anyone at the White House expressed support for the idea that the tapes should be destroyed.
One former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said there had been “vigorous sentiment†among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes. The former official did not specify which White House officials took this position, but he said that some believed in 2005 that any disclosure of the tapes could have been particularly damaging after revelations a year earlier of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Some other officials assert that no one at the White House advocated destroying the tapes. Those officials acknowledged, however, that no White House lawyer gave a direct order to preserve the tapes or advised that destroying them would be illegal.
This brings us back to an increasingly familiar question: What did Bush know about the destruction of the tapes, and when did he know it.
