David Broder's Bipartisanship

Many commentators, including Digby here, have observed that to our media elite "bipartisanship" is indistinguishable from acting Republican. David Broder provides a perfect example of this in his recent column "A Did-Something Congress."

The voters' message is getting through, not only in settling the fights for the Republican and Democratic nominations but in changing the mind-set of Washington.

The clearest evidence of the change is what happened last week on the economic stimulus bill. A week ahead of their self-imposed deadline, the House and Senate, by overwhelming votes, sent to President Bush almost exactly the kind of relief measure he had sought for the staggering economy. [emph. added]

It was a dramatic reversal of the gridlock that had characterized executive-congressional relations throughout 2007, and it reflects the recognition by both Republicans and Democrats of the public disenchantment with official Washington that has been one of the dominant themes of the 2008 presidential campaign.

Broder praises both Republicans and Democrats for the "bipartisan" approach but it's not clear what Republicans did to deserve praise or how Democrats doing exactly what Bush wants is an example of bipartisan action.

This is a ubiquitous theme in beltway media: that gridlock is caused by Democrats opposing Republicans and bipartisanship is achieved when Democrats drop that opposition and act exactly like Republicans. In column after column Democrats are chided for not moving enough, while Republicans get a free pass on not moving at all. Joe Klein writes repeatedly that Democrats should sign off on telecom immunity so we can move on to more pressing matters, but he never argues that Republicans should give up on telecom immunity for the same reasons.

The implicit argument in these sorts of columns is that Democrats have to be the "bigger man", that they have to act responsibly because Republicans won't. Imagine if this argument were explicit:

Bush Administration officials today argued that the expiration of the Protect America Act has left our nation at greater risk to terrorist attack. Republicans in Congress blocked the extension of the act and Bush vowed to veto it because the House rejected a separate bill that included telecom immunity. We call on Democrats in the House to agree to telecom immunity because some party has to act responsibly and it clearly won't be the Republicans. We call on voters to vote Democratic at all levels of government so that a cadre of ideologues can no longer force through bad legislation by holding American lives hostage.

This column has been written dozens of times in the last few weeks, only the parts about irresponsible Republicans has been left out. Yet that is the lynch pin of the entire argument for total Democratic capitulation: something has to give and it's not going to be those stubborn Republicans.

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On Language: Conspiracy Theory

"Conspiracy theory" and similar terms are often used to dismiss reasonable arguments out of hand without engaging them -- a last resort when logic and facts are insufficient. It's to the point where when I hear Bush Administration officials or media pundits label something a "conspiracy theory" it makes me much more apt to believe it. Below is a list of notions dismissed as conspiracy theories that turned out to be mostly if not entirely accurate.

Intel on Iraq WMDs was cooked

Christopher Hitchens, writing for Slate, produced a hilariously awful screed on Iraq WMDs, dismissing doubts about WMD intelligence while spinning his own elaborate and now-disproven conspiracy theory to explain the lack of WMD finds in Iraq.

So this is not just a "find" in itself—such gas centrifuges are used for the enrichment of uranium—but evidence of a larger and wider design to fool the international community and to wait for a better day to restart Saddam's nuclear program. If you find hard physical and documentary evidence, along with a complex plan to keep it under wraps, you are entitled to make a few presumptions, not including the presumption of innocence. Nobody bothers to cover up nothing.

This breakthrough, which comes quite early in the inspection process and which will not be the only one of its kind, might possibly quiet the idiotic and premature wailings of the "anti-war" side, who have been saying for weeks that the whole indictment of Saddam Hussein was a put-up job. Then again, it probably won't have that effect. The wailers will settle for nothing less than the full-dress conspiracy theory.

The "conspiracy theory" of the "wailers" was right while Hitchens' own theory of a nuclear weapons lab buried in pieces around Iraq was wrong. (Hitchens gets bonus points for employing one of the worst extended analogies of all time)

The US is looking to establish permanent bases in Iraq

These days we are openly talking about "continuing force agreements" and a "protective overwatch mission" while McCain muses about staying in Iraq for 100 years or more. Congress and the President dance around a "continuing" or "indefinite" occupation of Iraq. But as Glenn Greenwald documents, suggestions that the US would look to stay in Iraq long-term were until recently derided as fantasy.

From The Washington Times' Donald Lambro, April 28, 2003:

The [New York] Times, in a front-page story last week, reported that the U.S. military was setting up "permanent" bases in Iraq intimating, of course, that we will be occupying the country forever. I read the story and it seems as if it was cooly calculated to inflame the Iraqis. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld countered that the report was totally and completely false, angrily condemning this kind of fear-mongering, "Henny Penny" reporting. Henny is a character in the children's tale about Chicken Little, who claimed that "the sky is falling." It wasn't, it isn't and it won't.

We are going to repair the damage done to Iraq, help the Iraqi people start a government, and then get out of there as soon as we can.

From Fox News, April 21, 2003, Special Report with Brit Hume:

BAIER: The front-page story cited unnamed Bush administration sources saying the United States was planning a long-term military-to-military relationship with Iraq, one that would allow the Pentagon to operate bases inside the country.

RUMSFELD: The impression left around the world is we plan to occupy the country, we plan to use their bases over a long period of time, and it's flat false.

The Iraq War was largely planned and sold by the brainiacs at PNAC

How is this even a question? It is self-evidently true. The PNAC website is open to the public and the policy goals for Iraq and the Middle East are clearly spelled out. The statement of principles is signed by Dick Cheney, Frank Gaffney, Francis Fukuyama, Donald Kagan, Norman Podhoretz, I. Lewis Libby, Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld among others. The letter to President Clinton on Iraq includes many of those same names as well as Richard Perle, Richard L. Armitage, John Bolton and the other Kagan brother.

According to The Weekly Standard it's all conspiracy theory once again. Michael Goldfarb derides the following quote from Phyllis Bennis as conspiracy mongering:

I think the motive [for the administration’s lies] is that the lead people within the Bush administration were convinced from before they ever came into office, from the early 1990’s, when they began to work together when they were outside of power, when they were not in office in the Clinton years and they formed the group that later became known as the Project for the New American Century, when they were working for Bibi Netanyahu in the Israeli election. That same group of neocons had the view that the overthrow of the regime in Iraq was a crucial component of expanding U.S. power in the world…it had to do with oil, it had to do with the expansion of creating new permanent bases throughout the region, it had to with protection of Israel, it had to with a whole range of both regional and international goals.

Nothing in the above passage is false or misleading; PNAC's website alone is enough to confirm most of it. Note that while Goldfarb attacks Bennis what he doesn't do at all is attack the veracity of anything Bennis said.

Halo 3 doesn't run at 720p

I had to include this one for the sheer audacity. The theory is explicitly acknowledged as true while still rejected as the product work of tinfoil-hatters. Now that's real chutzpah!

The grand finale

Dismissing valid arguments as conspiracy theories is invariably ad hominem, an attack not on ideas but on their progenitors. Hitchen's conspiracy theorists are "wailers", Rumsfeld's are cartoonish characters, Goldfarb's are anti-Semites and Bungie's (makers of Halo) are "tinfoil hats." The term "conspiracy theorist" itself brings up images of kooks and crazies.

The common thread in the above examples is that the invocation of conspiracy theory is the main argument while facts are a distant second at best. That's why I wrote up top that such attacks only increase my credulity. If Hitchens or Goldfarb or Rumsfeld had definitive proof why didn't they simply present it? That they rely on slurs is more reason to believe that the "conspiracy theorists" are correct.

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Klein and Gaffney: Twins Separated at Birth

Joe Klein vs. Frank Gaffney Jr. in a battle of the beards.

Why do I keep beating up on Joe Klein? (Other than the fact that he deserves it I mean) Because Joe Klein is representative of a harmful myth in our political media: that liberal and conservative voices are equal and opposite and represent the two and only two sides of any political debate. "Liberals" like Joe Klein buy into the same authoritarian domestic and imperialistic foreign policy that has come to define modern conservatism. On many issues a liberal and a conservative (or those billed as such) do not define endpoints but a singular indistinguishable position. This subjects us, the American people, to a manufactured false consensus that purports to represent a broad range of opinion while excluding genuinely opposing views.

Joe Klein is considered the liberal columnist at Time Magazine. Frank Gaffney Jr. is a conservative commentator who believes Americans should be hanged for opposing the Iraq War. Yet they agree on a variety of issues and define a spectrum that excludes the majority of Americans. They both believe (despite Klein's attempts to rewrite his own history) that the Iraq War was a great idea and that the surge is working -- positioning the majority of Americans as the "anti-war fringe" without a strong proponent in national media. They both believe, contrary to the views of the American people, that telecom amnesty is a good idea and that consensual sexual relationships are a worse offense for a president than cronyism, incompetence and blatant lies the the public.

Reading liberal commentators like Joe Klein and Thomas Friedman opposing conservative commentators like Fred Gaffney Jr and Charles Krauthammer is similar to reading The Onion point/counterpoint following 9/11:

Point: We Must Retaliate With Blind Rage
Counterpoint: We Must Retaliate With Measured, Focused Rage

Compare that to Klein and Gaffney opining on warrantless wiretapping. Each pair of quotes below consists of one from Klein and one from Gaffney; can you tell them apart?

Klein and Gaffney (or is it Gaffney and Klein?) defend FISA legislation:

At this writing, the U.S. Senate is embroiled in the latest round of this fight. Senators Patrick Leahy and Christopher Dodd are among those trying to prevent passage of a bill that was adopted 13-2 last year by the Senate intelligence committee on a broadly bipartisan basis. While not perfect, this legislation has the virtue of: making clear the President’s authority to engage in such battlefield communications intercepts; updating and circumscribing the role of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) courts given changes in telecommunications since they were established in 1979; and providing immunity from lawsuits for companies that facilitate such legal surveillance.

The latest version of the absolutely necessary Patriot Act, which updates the laws regulating the war on terrorism and contains civil-liberties improvements over the first edition, was nearly killed by a stampede of Senate Democrats. Most polls indicate that a strong majority of Americans favor the act, and I suspect that a strong majority would favor the NSA program as well, if its details were declassified and made known.

Here they describe the noble government actions following 9/11:

In the wake of the 9/11’s deadly acts of war, George W. Bush did what one would hope any President would do: He strove to prevent follow-on strikes and brought to bear every available instrument for that purpose.

Preeminent among these was the collection of intelligence that might reveal further plots and the identity and whereabouts of those inclined to perpetrate them. Mr. Bush ordered the National Security Agency to monitor phone calls and data transmissions involving foreign nationals suspected of involvement in terror. In so doing, he exercised a well-established power of the Commander-in-Chief in time of war: monitoring the enemies’ battlefield communications. Given the nature of this particular war and of modern telecommunications, such monitoring had to include some individuals and selected intercepts in this country.

In fact, a 2002 investigation by the Joint Intelligence Committees concluded that the NSA was not doing as much as it could have been doing under the law—and that the entire U.S. intelligence community operated in a hypercautious defensive crouch. "Hayden was taking reasonable steps," a former committee member told me. "Our biggest concern was what more he could be doing."

The Bush Administration had similar concerns. In the days after 9/11, it asked Hayden to push the edge of existing technology and come up with the best possible program to track the terrorists. The result was the now infamous NSA data-mining operation, which began months later, in early 2002. Vast amounts of phone and computer communications by al-Qaeda suspects overseas, including some messages to people in the U.S., could now be scooped up and quickly analyzed.

And finally they castigate those irresponsible Democrats for not acting more like Republicans:

In time of war, our country cannot afford to have one of its two major political parties [the Democrats] at best AWOL on the major security issues of our time and, at worst, seriously wrongheaded about them. Behaving responsibly about FISA reform would be a good place to start...

The Democratic strategy on the FISA legislation in the House is equally foolish. There is broad, bipartisan agreement on how to legalize the surveillance of phone calls and emails of foreign intelligence targets.
[...]
Unfortunately, Speaker Nancy Pelosi quashed the House Intelligence Committee's bipartisan effort and supported a Democratic bill that — Limbaugh is salivating — would require the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target's calls to be approved by the FISA court, an institution founded to protect the rights of U.S. citizens only. In the lethal shorthand of political advertising, it would give terrorists the same legal protections as Americans. That is well beyond stupid.

It should be noted once again that people opposed to warrantless wiretapping, a group which on principle should contain both liberals and conservatives, is entirely absent from the fascinating dialog above, and similarly from most media dialogs on the issue.

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Stuff Unworthy of Full Posts

Time for another roundup.

That Word Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means

From the State of the Union Address:

The Congress must ensure the flow of vital intelligence is not disrupted. The Congress must pass liability protection for companies believed to have assisted in the efforts to defend America. We have had ample time for debate. The time to act is now.

Believed? The most common justification given for telecom immunity is that the telecoms acted patriotically by responding to direct requests from the President. Surely Bush himself knows whether or not that is the case -- what's belief got to do with it? The answer of course is that Bush does know -- he's just not telling.

Makes you wonder though, if our belief is wrong and the telecoms didn't do anything at all then why exactly do they need immunity?

This formulation is not new. Administration officials ususally qualify their desciptions of telecom actions with "believed", "alleged" or a similar variant. They could simply tell us what the telecoms did, but that would run counter to their devotion to secrecy and misinformation.

---

This Sandwhich is a Matter of National Security

Three deep-cover operatives were killed bringing you this photograph of the top-secret government project known only as "Lunch Menu Item 5."

Casinos lobby government to ban internet gambling. Government complies. World Trade Organization cries foul. Government negotiates and resolves dispute. Intrepid go-getter Ed Brayton files Freedom of Information Act request to obtain copy of agreement. Administration response?

Please be advised that the document you seek is being withheld in full pursuant to 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(1), which pertains to information that is properly classified in the interest of national security pursuant to Executive Order 12958.

In his previous post Ed Brayton wrote:

I have submitted an FOIA request for the full text of the settlement. There's no way they can legally deny that request, but given the Bush administration's secrecy fetish I'm willing to bet they'll at least try to stonewall it.

If anything he gave them too much credit. This is an administration that decided the Office of Administration was retroactively not subject to FOIA requests. The same administration that tried to retroactively classify public material. There's nothing this administration can't justify by appealing to national security concerns.

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My Crystal Ball was Right on Mukasey and Waterboarding

The Inquisition was full of good ideas.

A few months ago I gazed into my crystal ball and wrote the following:

Sadly the reality is that no AG under Bush will declare waterboarding illegal. You guys ever read the Ironic Times? They put it well:

"Bush Pick for Attorney General Headed for Confirmation Mukasey last piece in puzzle keeping Bush, Cheney from firing squad."

No AG picked by Bush is going to turn around and call Bush a criminal.

That was quite the limb I went out on. I'm very brave. Today I learned that my crystal ball is in fine working order.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey said Tuesday he will refuse to publicly say whether the interrogation tactic known as waterboarding is illegal, digging in against critics who want the Bush administration to define it as torture.

I haven't been this shocked since the sun rose this morning.

Mukasey had promised to report on the legality of waterboarding at his confirmation hearing. Or did he?

WHITEHOUSE: If it's torture? That's a massive hedge. I mean, it either is or it isn't.

Do you have an opinion on whether water-boarding, which is the practice of putting somebody in a reclining position, strapping them down, putting cloth over their faces and pouring water over the cloth to simulate the feeling of drowning -- is that constitutional?

MUKASEY: If it amounts to torture, it is not constitutional.

WHITEHOUSE: I'm very disappointed in that answer. I think it is purely semantic.
[...]
I want to pin you down and ask you, sir, if you would pledge to undertake some formal process of review and evaluation of those internal protocols, norms and practices so that you get a report from experienced people on what needs to be repaired.

MUKASEY: I'm going to pledge to undertake to review the practices. I am going to pledge to consult people both inside and outside the department in the course of that.

Convening a formal process is something I can't commit to now. If it is necessary, and if I find that the results of inquiry and consultation don't yield a satisfactory result, I will consider that.

WHITEHOUSE: Will you agree to keep me informed of your activities in this area?

MUKASEY: I will.

That's some clever wordsmithing by Mukasey. Although the discussion was specifically about waterboarding he never explicitly agreed to comment on waterboarding, merely on the "internal protocols, norms and practices." And because we are not waterboarding someone as I type this it doesn't qualify as a current practice.

Clever? Yes. Deceitful? Certainly. But as the Ironic Times captured so succinctly, Bush was not going nominate an honest Attorney General any more than he has going to hold a gun to his own head. Refusal to declare waterboarding torture was a prerequisite for nomination.

Joe Klein Still Doesn't Get It

"I have neither the time nor legal background to figure out who's right."

When we last checked in on Joe Klein he and his Time editors were falling all over each other to correct, excuse and explain away the fact that he writes editorials without performing basic research and without understanding the relevant facts. You might think that after that embarrassment he would stick to writing about his area of expertise -- whatever that might be -- but you'd be wrong. What makes Joe Klein such a serious and respected reporter is his ability to compound errors with further errors and to bravely wade once again into issues that mystify him.

Joe Klein once again weighs in on the FISA debate. (It's worth reading the comments at the end -- his readers are on to him) His previous debacle taught him nothing about FISA but it did teach him a neat trick: instead of saying things that are misleading or outright false, he trots out others to do it for him. This way he is merely "reporting" rather than inventing.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve asked Constitutional Law professors from Harvard, Yale and the University of Chicago about the immunity provision. There are differences of opinion—no one is thrilled about immunity, to be sure—but the bottom line is, essentially, that this is a lesser issue diverting attention from the passage of an important law.

Joe Klein talks to some contacts of his and they all agree with Joe Klein. Amazing how that works out.

At the start of his piece Klein rattles off a list of issues that have "broad agreement among most members of Congress." But he never takes the next step in suggesting that Congress go ahead and pass a bill containing those broad agreements. If "no one is thrilled about immunity" Klein could write a piece admonishing Republicans for insisting on it-- but that's not the Klein we know and love. No, our Joe Klein is busy rounding up "experts" as clueless as himself who can join him in uttering a few half-hearted words against telecom amnesty before blindly supporting it.

So how big a deal is the immunity provision? In effect, it is a grandfather clause: it essentially says that telecoms should not be punished for acts that were illegal in the past but now become legal in the FISA reform bill. In other words, it would be like prosecuting a doctor in 1974 for abortions he performed before Roe v. Wade was decided. He had performed abortions when they were illegal, but they were now legal and therefore…what? None of the legal scholars I spoke with were sure how such cases had been handled in the past...[em. added]

His analogy is nonsense but beyond that look at the last line. The entire premise of his piece is that instead of offering his own uninformed opinion he will report on what his experts think -- but they are no more informed than Klein! Klein couldn't be bothered to perform his own research (didn't have the time nor legal background) and neither could his contacts. So now instead of having to listen to one ignorant and lazy pundit we have to listen to a handful. Much better. They argue that telecom amnesty is acceptable while admitting they don't know how it works.

Klein's experts aren't experts on retroactive immunity. Well surely they are experts on the immediate issues surrounding FISA right?

Barron, however, is opposed to lifting immunity for telecoms "because, going forward, you don't want to send the message that anyone has a free pass to act illegally on such a basic Constitutional question, even if they've been asked by the government to do so." Barron acknowledges that there are mitigating circumstances in this case: the country seemed under the threat of imminent attack in the months after 9/11, when these data-mining requests were made, and that such searches will now become legal under the new law. He suggests a compromise. The telecoms should not be granted immunity, but punitive damages should be waived if the cases are litigated.

How wrong are thee? Let me count the ways.

1. The warrantless wiretapping began prior to 9/11. "9/11 changes everything" is annoying enough even when it has some grain of truth, and this claim does not.

2. Klein constantly refer to "data-mining" without explaining what he means or how he knows that data-mining is all that occurred. It's hard to believe he even knows what data-mining is, given that he only speaks about it in shifting generalities.

3. "Such searches will now become legal under the new law" is entirely circular logic. Much of the debate is centered around the question of whether certain surveillance techniques should ever be legal.

4. While arguing that law-breakers should not get a "free pass" the proposed solution is just that: literally a free pass. Some compromise.

Joe Klein's experts are just repeating the same falsities and inane logic Klien himself employs to give his opinions a veneer of respectability.

Professor Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago agrees that if no immunity is granted to the telecoms, there should be no punitive damages: "Huge damage awards would just be passed on to the consumers in any case." But Sunstein also believes that the importance of immunity has been blown out of proportion: "This is a terrible, mostly symbolic fight. The stakes are far lower than the level of noise suggests. The notion that essential civil liberties are at stake here is just an exaggeration. The important thing is to get the new statute right."

If "the important thing is to get the new statute right" then why are Klein and his allies pushing to pass a bill that includes provisions that "no one is thrilled about"? The argument that huge damages would be passed on to consumers could of course be used in defense of virtually any corporate misdeed.

So far Klein has done well in letting his experts make inane assertions on his behalf, but in true Joe Klein fashion he has to get in on the act:

But the NSA program, if operated under the legal restrictions imposed by an updated FISA law, is a crucial intelligence tool. It has the potential to prevent the next 9/11. (And indeed, it should be remembered that the actual data-mining is done by mid-level, apolitical NSA employees—political appointees of the Bush Administration have absolutely no legal access to the information and there have been, to my knowledge, no specific abuses reported so far.) If, for example, it is found that Bush administration officials were sifting through the NSA data to gain information on their political opponents, then they should tried, convicted and thrown in the clink for as long as possible....But there is no suggestion that they, or the telecoms, have done anything like that.

The Bush Administration and the telecoms in question have already demonstrated a willingness to break the law, and people like Joe Klein argue that they deserve no penalties for those illegalities; the argument that things will be swell if everyone follows the law to the letter is naive at best. Given that they already broke the law without penalty what makes this time different? A pinky-swear?

Klein pretends to speak authoritatively that only "apolitical NSA employees" are privy to data and that surveillance powers have not already been abused. How he knows these things is a mystery, especially given that he continuously gets even basic facts wrong. The reality is that nobody knows to what extent surveillance powers have been abused. The Bush Administration has repeatedly hidden behind state's secrets privledges and executive priviledge to avoid divulging information and telecom immunity would short-circuit the already difficult process of discovery through court proceedings.

Joe Klein has no idea what the administration has done so far; he has no interest in finding out and advocates policies that actively prevent those who are interested from further investigations. He's willing to see and hear no evil and wants to force us to do the same by law.

The entire thing is so disengenuos. The clueless Klein lines up equally clueless experts who all back up his opinion that we have to vote for a bill regardless of content or the terrorists will win. He writes editorial after editorial arguing that Democrats should cave and include nonsense provisions but he'll never argue that Republicans should stop politicizing national security policy and stop insisting on policies that even his own experts pay lip-service to opposing.

In Joe Klein's world it just has to be the fault of Democrats. That's his invented narrative and he's sticking to it. They should just suck it up and vote for bad bills because asking Republicans to vote for good bills is not proper decorum.

Just once I'd like to read a pro-amnesty editorial that didn't include falsehoods and purposely misleading rhetoric. I suspect it will never happen because the case for telecom amnesty is so anemic it's impossible to prop up without a relying on a loose relationship with the truth.

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Anatomy of a Dishonest Editorial

Instead of On Language maybe I should do On Dishonest Rhetoric. I am experimenting with a new style of commentary on written pieces that avoids breaking the original piece up into small chunks. Seems to work well but your mileage may vary.

Update: I've changed the wording slightly in response to a comment. Technically there are no outright lies in the editorial, just purposeful distortions.

What's it like to have no shame? Ask the editors of the Wall Street Journal. Their Wiretap Politics op-ed is a perfect example of purposely misleading rhetoric. Time to break out the red pen.

We're told that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is saying privately he now won't attempt to update the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) on the wiretapping of al Qaeda suspects. Instead, he'll merely support another 18-month extension of the six-month-old Protect America Act. Among other problems, the temporary bill includes no retroactive immunity for the telecom companies that cooperated with the feds after 9/11.¹

In October, the Senate Intelligence Committee passed a bill updating FISA on a bipartisan vote led by Democratic Chairman Jay Rockefeller. It would provide a Congressional blessing for warrantless wiretaps of suspected al Qaeda communications overseas that happen to pass through U.S. switching networks², as many do in a world of packet switching and fiber optics. The bill also gives retroactive immunity to the phone companies, which have been sued by the likes of the ACLU for hundreds of billions of dollars for the crime of answering a President's request for assistance.³

1. Note that lack of amnesty for law-breaking corporations is characterized as a "problem", as opposed to "how the law works."

2. This is not what the bill actually does -- a blatant distortion. The text of the bill is freely available. The bill does not merely allow warrantless wiretaps on communications that "happen to pass through U.S. switching networks", it allows warrantless wiretaps on communications where one endpoint is a US citizen inside the US, as long as that person is not the designated target. It's right there in section 702 b.(Which includes the hilarious clause that the surveillance "shall be conducted in a manner consistent with the fourth amendment to the Constitution of the United States." Shouldn't that go without saying?)

Maybe like Joe Klein the WSJ editors don't have the inclination and legal background (AKA basic English language comprehension) to read the text of the bill and figure out what it says? Or maybe they are just cynical manipulators. Take your pick.

3. The ACLU is a favorite punching-bag of conservatives -- somehow fighting for civil liberties is anti-American these days. But the real gem here is the notion that the "crime" these companies committed was "answering a President's request for assistance" -- which is not a crime at all. Helping the President is not illegal, so why aren't these cases instantly thrown out of court? If the only "crime" here is a non-crime then why do these companies need amnesty?

The "logic" here is extraordinary: these companies have done nothing illegal, so they need protection from lawsuits, or else they might be found guilty in court of engaging in illegal activities.

Only lawbreakers benefit from amnesty.

The Bush Administration is aware of Mr. Reid's plans and is debating a response, and we hope Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and the President don't flinch now. Immunity for the telcos is not only fair but crucial. As the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded, these companies acted in response to written requests or directives assuring that their activities were authorized by the President. "The extension of immunity," wrote the panel in its conference report, "reflects the Committee's determination that electronic communication service providers acted on a good faith belief that the President's program, and their assistance, was lawful."

Even I know that ignorance of the law is no excuse for lawbreaking, which is all the above amounts to. At least one telecom company, Qwest, did not believe that participating in warrantless wiretapping was legal. Perhaps Qwest lawyers took the radical step of reading relevant laws.

Title 18 of the US Code already includes a good-faith exemption. It's right here in Section (d). Nothing prevents these companies from using that defense in court.

Who did the Senate Committee call as witnesses? What evidence did they consider? We have no idea. We have a very well-defined system for determining innocence and guilt in this country, and it does not involve the legislative branch making broad proclamations following secretive procedures.

Again, the logic at the root is that these companies need amnesty because they did nothing wrong. Curious.

Mr. Bush also has all the high political cards here. Most Americans think it's preposterous that a judge should have to approve listening to foreign enemies¹, and a fight over this in an election year is the last thing smart Democrats want.² Mr. Bush could help his successor and the public by promising to veto any FISA extension that isn't permanent and infringes too much on Presidential war powers. If this issue were such good politics for Democrats, Chris Dodd might have done better than sixth in Iowa.³

1. Here we have the common "most Americans think exactly what I think" ploy. In this case not only is it a lazy and unsupported argument but also irrelevant, as Democrats do support wireless wiretapping for "communications overseas that happen to pass through U.S. switching networks."

2. And here is another common ploy, the old "the best advice for Democrats is to act exactly like Republicans." Funny how that is always the case. We were told that Democrats were making a huge mistake by opposing the War in Iraq, followed by Democrats sweeping into control of Congress on exactly that platform. According to the WSJ the President "holds the high political cards" and it would be wise for Democrats to follow the lead of an historically unpopular President they were elected to oppose.

3. There is an obvious logical fallacy here in stating that a candidate's issues must be unpopular because candidate did poorly in Iowa, especially a candidate like Dodd that was never given any media attention. By that logic all of Guiliani's issues are unpopular as well, something you won't see the WSJ arguing any time soon. And in fact Dodd received his biggest bumps in popularity and campaign contributions when he championed these issues - it was good politics for Dodd.

The more subtle error here is that the argument has shifted entirely from what is good for US security to what is good politics for Democrats. The argument that we should violate the Fourth Amendment because it is a good career move for politicians is absurd on every level. Why should the citizens of a country or the staff of a newspaper editorial board encourage political careerism?

This editorial is not just silly or poorly reasoned, it contains blatant misrepresentations. Democrats do not oppose modernization fixes to FISA that make foreign-to-foreign warrantless wiretaps legal. That is pure fiction.

It should be scandalous when a major newspaper puts out editorials that deliberately mislead. But instead it is ordinary. Nearly every editorial and every TV pundit appearance in favor of telecom amnesty includes the same mischaracterizations of both what Democrats support and what the bills actually do. These errors have been repeatedly corrected for months -- at this point they must be purposeful. It's not in the best interests of telecom amnesty supporters to deliver the unadulterated truth -- so they don't.

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I Endorse Kodos for President

Kodos drools with anger at having his name spelled incorrectly in the title.

I don't do endorsements. Vote for whoever you want.

It annoys me that from the very start the Democratic race has been billed as Obama vs. Hillary, with Edwards making a cameo. The media creates a chicken-and-egg problem: a candidate does not have buzz, therefore the media doesn't cover him, therefore the candidate does not have buzz. I was saddened to see Chris Dodd depart so soon. Had he gotten the same coverage as Clinton or Obama his numbers would indisputably have risen.

None of the Democratic front-runners align well with the values I blog about.

I don't like telling people who to vote for or even what party to vote for. However I can't understand how anyone could vote for a candidate that is promising to be the next Bush, only more so. (Giuliani, Thompson, Romney and McCain.) If you loved Bush then vote for one of them I suppose. They fall all over each other to claim the Reagan mantle but when you put their policies side by side with the current Bush Administration's the differences are negligible. They are all warmongering anti-Constitutionalists. Romney wants to double Gitmo, Giuliani wants to invade Iran, McCain wants troops in Iraq forever.

I strongly endorse not voting for any of those clowns.

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Will McCain win in New Hampshire tomorrow?

We could pontificate on this for a while -- or we could wait one whole day and find out.

But no, since we're the media, we'll pontificate for a while. Because predicting what will happen tomorrow is a valuable service to the audience.

Oops there is no time to get into candidate policies, we've spent too long handicapping the race. Join us next time!

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We Don't Drink the Kool-Aid Here

Critical thinking is a foreign notion to some people, especially when it comes to analyzing their own viewpoints. Here at Common Nonsense we believe that all views should be subject to critical analysis, including and especially our own. We believe that the means to an end are important, and that a poor argument in our favor is still a poor argument.

Some people disagree. From FreeRepublic.com:

Did the weakest Dem candidate for the general election won tonight? I think so.

By sending forth Hussein Osama out of Iowa, Democrats have unwittingly weakened their general election prospects.

Hussein’s exotic mixture of radical liberalism, Kwanzaa Socialism, antipathy towards the unborn, and weakness against his jihadi brethren will all come back to destroy him against almost any Republican opponent, even the snake-grope from Hope.

I think we as Republicans should be celebrating tonight at the coronation of Hussein, in whose presence millions of Democrat women, from elementary school teachers to journalism majors to law school grads to dykes on bikes will go weak in their knees.

As defenders of this great Republic, and of the pinnacle of Western civilization that it represents, we should all come together tonight and agree on a common strategy that will keep the White House from becoming a madrassa.

How can anyone write read or write this dreck without being painfully embarrassed? First it is the too-common wishful-thinking everything-is-good-for-us variety of conservative "analysis" -- no doubt if Clinton had won a similar piece would have been written about her. Second and more importantly it's just plain stupid. Kwanzaa Socialism? Hussein Osama? Jihadi brethren? It's one empty rhetorical jab after another, cotton-candy writing at its finest.

Were I a conservative who disliked Obama I would still feel compelled to point out that the piece is poor, that "Kwanzaa Socialism" is an invention and that his name is Obama with a 'b'. The readers of FreeRepublic have no such objections. (Read the comments yourself) They agree with the general point, "grr Obama bad!", and that's good enough for them. There are no other standards in play, including basic accuracy.

Not content to let FreeRepublic monopolize stupidity for a moment RedState.com gets in on the act.

The bad news: our liberal “friends” – you know, the ones who believe so strongly in free speech and open debate – have done what they can to prevent us from making these improvements, so that our influence will be minimized just as we head into the 2008 presidential primary season.

No, our Blue State buddies haven’t succeeded in stopping us from improving our website. But they’ve made it more difficult and more expensive – which is why I’m coming to you for help.

Let me explain …

You see, when we started RedState in May of 2004, we used a website program called Scoop — the same program a lot of similar sites on the left used. But, as the number of visitors to our site grew, Scoop kept crashing on us.

If we’d been a liberal website, we would have been able to fix the problem quickly and relatively cheaply. The online left loves Scoop. Unfortunately, there weren’t really any conservative Scoop developers out there to help us. We kept crashing and were out of money. We had to close down or take drastic action.

This from people who fetishize self-reliance. (I left out the part where they beg for money) Liberals may pretend to be for free speech but since they aren't doing charity work for RedState clearly that's merely pretense. Follow the logic, if you can.

It's so absurd it's impossible to satirize. Even their own technical incompetence is somehow the fault of liberals.

Again an honest person who reads RedState should still feel compelled to point out how incredibly stupid this is, how it goes against the RedState disgust with handouts and opposition to victimhood. But again most RedStaters have no problem with it. To them there is no bad way to blame a liberal.

---

Crappy writing does not deserve a free pass based on ideology. Common Nonsense is not a liberal or Democratic blog. It's not about our team winning. Our team is the truth as we best understand it and policies derived from factual analysis.

We reject the notion that what you can be sloppy or deceiving in service to a greater good, one of the hallmark concepts of the Bush Administration. Accuracy and precision are themselves greater goods. The process of deriving conclusions matters more than the conclusions themselves.

Places like RedState and FreeRepublic do not attract people who like to think, they attract people who like to agree to a rigid ideology. That is not our goal. That is why we avoid in-group jargon, why we stick mostly to substantive complaints, why we make arguments based on primary-source material. We do not have to stretch the truth, outright invent, purposely misspell names or rely on cheap rhetorical tricks because unlike at FreeRepublic we don't have to. The simple facts are good enough.

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On Language: Habeas Corpus and Constitutional Text

I meant by that comment, the Constitution doesn’t say, “Every individual in the United States or every citizen is hereby granted or assured the right to habeas.” It doesn’t say that. It simply says the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended except by —
Alberto Gonzales

In a way Alberto Gonzales is quite right: the Constitution does not explicitly grant Habeas Corpus.

The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.

Of course, by that same logic Amendment I does not grant freedom of assembly, Amendment II does not grant the right to bear arms, Amendment IV does not grant protection from search and seizure, Amendment VII does not grant trial by jury and Amendment XV does not grant voting rights. (It's true -- read 'em!)

The completely naive defense against this clever rules-lawyering is that it sure seems strange to include passages in the Constitution with no meaning. But we are not completely naive. The Constitution is written the way it is for good reason. And if you aren't sure what that reason is Amendment IX provides a hint:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

The Constitution does not grant rights to the people as much as it grants rights and places restrictions on the government. When the Constitution was written the right to Habeas Corpus had already existed for at least 500 years, having been formally written-up in the Magna Carta of 1215.

The fact that the Constitution does not expressly grant certain rights (shorthand I am guilty of using) makes a powerful statement about the nature of those rights: that they exist before and outside of our modern government. Rights granted by the government can be repealed; intrinsic rights can not be. The government does not grant us poor peasants rights as it sees fit, instead we force the government to keep it's hands off our pre-existing rights.

You don't have to take my word for it. Federalist Paper #84 explains why the original Constitution did not include a Bill of Rights at all.

The establishment of the writ of habeas corpus, the prohibition of ex post facto laws, and of TITLES OF NOBILITY, to which we have no corresponding provisions in our constitution, are perhaps greater securities to liberty and republicanism than any it contains.
[...] The observations of the judicious Blackstone in reference to the latter [Habeas], are well worthy of recital. "To bereave a man of life (says he) or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole nation; but confinement of the person by secretly hurrying him to goal, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government." And as a remedy for this fatal evil, he is every where peculiarly emphatical in his encomiums on the habeas corpus act, which in one place he calls "the BULWARK of the British constitution."

Gee, Habeas sounds kinda important. But we continue:

It has been several times truly remarked, that bills of rights are in their origin, stipulations between kings and their subjects, abridgments of prerogative in favor of privilege, reservations of rights not surrendered to the prince.
[...]
It is evident, therefore, that according to their primitive signification, they have no application to constitutions professedly founded upon the power of the people, and executed by their immediate representatives and servants. Here, in strictness, the people surrender nothing, and as they retain every thing, they have no need of particular reservations. [...]
I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and in the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers which are not granted; and on this very account, would afford a colourable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why for instance, should it be said, that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed?

Here we see exactly why Alberto Gonzales' words were a purposeful misrepresentation of the truth that should have gotten him impeached on the spot. The Constitution does not grant certain rights because the government cannot grant that which all people naturally already have. Nor can the government restrict rights it has no power to restrict. As we see above, Hamilton believed that including rights in the Constitution only allowed for the plausible fiction that the government decides what rights we possess at all, when it is the people who grant the government its rights, not the reverse.

Sadly the Bush Administration has an antagonistic view of the Constitution and the Justice Department works not to enforce it but to actively undermine it by purposely interpreting it as exactly opposite the intended meaning. Once again the familiar question arises: are they ignorant or dishonest?

Gonzales thought (or pretended) he was on to something when he pointed out that the Constitution does not explicitly grant Habeas Corpus, as if that justified the denial of Habeas rights. Nothing could be further from the truth, a self-evident fact for any good-faith actor with a basic understanding of the Constitution and its history.

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Odds and Sods

Roundup of Excellent Pieces
Glenn Greenwald, always worth reading, has an excellent piece up today titled Oligarchical decay that covers a range of related topics that are favorites of this blog.

In case after case, our political establishment has adopted the "principle" that our most powerful actors are immune from the rule of law. And they've adopted the enabling supplemental "principle" that any information which our political leaders want to keep suppressed is -- by definition, for that reason alone -- information that is "classified" and should not be disclosed.
[...]
And now, our government just destroys evidence crucial both to all sorts of court proceedings and a comprehensive investigation into the worst attack on U.S. soil in our history -- part and parcel of its general pattern of destroying or "losing" key evidence -- and the Honorable, Independent Attorney General tells both the legislative and judicial branches that they have no right even to investigate. And although we know for a fact that the top aides to both Bush and Cheney were involved in discussions of whether the tapes should be destroyed, we have no idea what they said and are unlikely ever to know, and even if we did find out, it's impossible to envision anything happening as a result.

Remember folks: Republicans are "tough on crime."

Digby at Hullabaloo takes on the phony cries for "bipartisanship", more accurately known as shutting up and letting Republicans do what they want in the name of the greater good as they define it.

Isn't it funny that these people were nowhere to be found when George W. Bush seized office under the most dubious terms in history, having been appointed by a partisan supreme court majority and losing the popular vote? If there was ever a time for a bunch of dried up, irrelevant windbags to demand a bipartisan government you'd think it would have been then, wouldn't you? (How about after 9/11, when Republicans were running ads saying Dems were in cahoots with Saddam and bin Laden?) But it isn't all that surprising. They always assert themselves when the Democrats become a majority; it's their duty to save the country from the DFH's who are far more dangerous than Dick Cheney could ever be.

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The Magic 8-Ball was not Available
One of the great things about reading Hullabaloo is that Digby will make predictions that quite frequently come true. As opposed to say William "Quayle's Brain" Kristol, who has been announced as a NYT guest columnist after unceremoniously parting ways with Time Magazine.

A good take down of Bloody Billy is available here, among plenty of other places. I find it hard to believe that he needs to be taken down; anyone with a brain and an honest bone in their body should be able to read and watch him and quickly realize that the omnipresent smug grin is the summation of his character.

William Kristol is a pundit in the mold of Frank Gaffney: someone who will say anything, no matter how dishonest, foul or offensive to the intellect as long as it helps their side score points. Putting party above country is something they take pride in.

In a now-famous strategy memo, Kristol warned that Republicans had to kill, rather than amend, the Clinton proposal. Its success, he warned, would “re-legitimize middle-class dependence for ‘security’ on government spending and regulation,” and “revive ... the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests.”

William Kristol was opposed to the government health care plan because it might succeed and in succeeding help the Democrats. That's a true patriot.

This bit by Bill Maher, while not the most well-sourced or comprehensive comment on William Kristol, is my personal favorite as it is both brutal and funny.

Journalistic "balance" is pure folly, a worthless goal that places keeping up appearances over delivering the truth. But if the NYT is dead-set on maintaining a perceived balance by hiring another conservative writer they could at least pick one who did something more than deliver pure marketing fluff that even he must know has no basis in reality.

The fact the William Kristol can still be found anywhere other than a local cable access channel is an indictment of our media. It seems a conservative commentator can never be too wrong, too destructive and too dishonest to be unemployable.

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On Language: "Satire"

Brilliant Satire? Rape Only Hurts If You Fight It (This link is the best-formatted reproduction I could find)

Rape Only Hurts If You Fight It

John Petroski
Opinions Editor

Most people today would claim that rape is a terrible crime almost akin to murder but I strongly disagree. Far from a vile act, rape is a magical experience that benefits society as a whole. I realize many of you will disagree with this thesis but lend me your ears and I’m sure I’ll sway you towards a darkened alley.
[...]
In actuality, rape’s advantages can very much be seen today. Take ugly women, for example. If it weren’t for rape, how would they ever know the joy of intercourse with a man who isn’t drunk? In a society as plastic-conscious as our own, are we really to believe that some man would ever sleep with a girl resembling a wildebeest if he didn’t have a few schnapps in him? Of course he wouldn’t, at least no self-respecting man would, but therein lies the beauty of rape. No self-respecting man would rape in the first place, so ugly women are guaranteed a romp with not only a sober man, but a bad boy too, and we all know how much ladies like the bad boy.

Dishonest speakers often use words incorrectly on purpose to take advantage of certain connotations. "Satire" is one of those words. Sarcasm, hyperbole and contrariness are similar to sarcasm in that none of them are meant to be taken at face value, but satire alone is considered valuable political discourse. So it's no surprise that hyperbolic and contrarian speakers appeal to satire in attempts to sort-of kind-of but not really disown their own writing.

The above piece was defended as satire. Satire of what? It's impossible to plausibly explain what is being sent-up. People who believe that rape is a "magical experience that benefits society" are in short supply and any satire of those few individuals is an exercise in irrelevance.

The latter excerpted paragraph reads less like satire than like the slight hyperbole of an annoying college-age Limbaugh-wannabe provocateur -- a fairly accurate description of the author. It is mean-spirited in a non-satirical manner, especially when you consider that his "satire" is similar to his serious writing and that his writings on women and humanity in general are full of contempt.

"Anyone who knows me will attest to the fact that I do not endorse, support, or condone rape. That aside, I chose to satirize rape in order to illustrate that no one pays attention to news unless it's sensational," Petroski said.

This explanation by the author is nonsense. The piece does not satirize rape, it does not satirize rapists nor does it satirize the news. His explanation, that it satirizes rape itself, is the most far-fetched of the three already unbelievable interpretations. What it even means to "satirize rape" is beyond me.

Clearly the author enjoys tweaking people and playing the provocateur, his other writing makes that immediately apparent. Unfortunately provocative hyperbole is not satire, it's petulant childishness.

This sort of writing reeks of the typical college conservative fair: mean-spirited attacks divorced from any real politics or philosophy. Which brings us to Ann Coulter, whose work at the Cornell Review helped define the template for hyperbolic gasbags masquerading as satirists.

---

My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.

Editor & Publisher magazine defends Coulter as "satire."

Ann Coulter writes highly charged political commentary that's laced with trenchant satire -- satire that can be traced all the way back to Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal," written in 1729. No one really believed that Swift was seriously advocating that the impoverished Irish relieve themselves of the burden of their children by feeding them to the rich.

Ann's hyperbolic style of delivery delights her conservative audience, much to the displeasure of liberals.

Ann Coulter is the next Jon Swift? Probably not. What Jon Swift wrote was an inversion of what he actually believed; what Coulter's writes is a slight exaggeration of her real views. (At best, according to her it is exactly what she believes) Had Jon Swift been a Coulter-style "satirist" he would have believed that while feeding children to the rich may be a bit much feeding their non-essential parts likes ears and feet to the rich is perfectly acceptable.

David Horowitz is also confused about what "satire" actually means:

I began running Coulter columns on my website shortly after she came up with her most infamous line, which urged America to put jihadists to the sword and convert them to Christianity. Liberals were horrified; I was not. I thought to myself, this is a perfect send-up of what our Islamo-fascist enemies believe - that as infidels we should be put to the sword and converted to Islam. I regarded Coulter's phillipic as a Swiftian commentary on liberal illusions of multi-cultural outreach to people who want to rip out our hearts.

Let's review once again the Swiftian formula: take opinions opposed to your own, exaggerate them and present them as your own opinions as a way of mocking true adherents.

Now let's feed Ann Coulter's dreck into that formula. Ann Coulter wrote that we should invade Muslim countries and forcibly convert them to Christianity. The subjects of her "Swiftian commentary" should therefore be people who honestly beleive something similar. People like Norman Podhoretz, Michael Ledeen and other neo-conservative hawks. Yet oddly enough Christian warrior hawks are a large part of her fan base, which is composed mostly of people who agree with her expressed opinions at face value.

Reading David Horowitz it's clear he has no idea what satire is. He can't decide whether it is funny or serious, taken at face-value or as the opposite. Ann Coulter said of 9/11 widows "I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much." In the following interview Horowitz describes these and other comments as "satire" -- then defends them as accurate and "a service."

HOROWITZ: When Al Franken does satire, people understand it's satire.

RUTTEN: Do you think this was satire?

HOROWITZ: Yeah, I absolutely do.

[...]

HOROWITZ: I think this is serious. I think that Ann has done is a service.

[...]

RUTTEN: David -- David, two-thirds of this book, not about the war in Iraq. About her opposition to stem cell research, the theory of evolution, public school teachers who she accused of mass child molestation.

HOROWITZ: I agree with her.

"I agree with her."

Someone needs to explain to David Horowitz, speaking slowly and with small words, that agreeing with satirical comments is a bad thing. You cannot claim that something is satire and in the same breath claim it is serious and agreeable. Unless you are dumb like David Horowitz.

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On Language: Introduction

Pictured: Mitt Romney's words to live by.

Something I've touched on in some posts without addressing explicitly is abuse of language. Sloppy language is both a cause and effect of sloppy thinking. Or as George Orwell put it:

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. [emph. added]

In the On Language series I'm going to explore the abuse of language directly in the context of political speech, with plenty of examples to keep things interesting. With each post I'll focus on a particular word, phrasing or rhetorical device.

Introductions are boring so on to the first post.

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I am not smart. Not smart at all.

After struggling with custom script solutions to add labels to my posts I finally realized there is a handy "Labels for this post" entry field directly below the box I am currently typing in.

Quite the computer expert am I.

Time to go back and edit old posts.