Tag: TMC Politics
Feb 07 2013
What the CIA Won’t Tell About Rendition and Torture
Since 9/11 and the start of the “Global War on Terror” (GWOT), the US government has denied that the CIA was involved in torture and extraordinary rendition despite the evidence to the contrary. Now the organization Open Society Foundations has released an extensive 216 page report, Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition (pdf), that details the clandestine program that extended to 54 countries.
Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency embarked on a highly classified program of secret detention and extraordinary rendition of terrorist suspects. The program was designed to place detainee interrogations beyond the reach of law. Suspected terrorists were seized and secretly flown across national borders to be interrogated by foreign governments that used torture, or by the CIA itself in clandestine “black sites” using torture techniques.
Globalizing Torture is the most comprehensive account yet assembled of the human rights abuses associated with CIA secret detention and extraordinary rendition operations. It details for the first time what was done to the 136 known victims, and lists the 54 foreign governments that participated in these operations. It shows that responsibility for the abuses lies not only with the United States but with dozens of foreign governments that were complicit.
More than 10 years after the 2001 attacks, Globalizing Torture makes it unequivocally clear that the time has come for the United States and its partners to definitively repudiate these illegal practices and secure accountability for the associated human rights abuses.
At FDL‘s The Dissenter, Kevin Gosztola takes “a comprehensive look” at the report and some of its findings:
It makes clear the Obama administration has not chosen to end rendition, the process of essentially kidnapping a person and transferring them to another country for detention where they are likely to be abused or tortured. The administration has not disclosed policies or practices related to “intelligence transfers” (for example, when the CIA ships individuals to other countries). An executive order Obama signed was “crafted to preserve the CIA’s authority to detain terrorist suspects for short periods prior to ‘rendering’ them to another country for interrogation or trial.” This was a loophole that was designed to make it possible for the CIA to keep certain secret prison sites open. [..]
The report also mentions how the United States has declined to conduct criminal investigations into the CIA’s RDI program. The courts have failed to hold any person from the Executive Branch accountable for abuses associated with the RDI program. “To date, not a single case brought by an extraordinary rendition victim has reached the merits stage in a US court,” the report declares.
Meanwhile, there continues to be reports of secret detentions: in April 2011, the “Associated Press reported that suspected terrorists in Afghanistan were being secretly detained and interrogated for weeks at 20 temporary sites including one run by the military’s elite counterterrorism unit, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), at Bagram Air Base”; in July 2011, “it was reported that the Obama administration had secretly detained and interrogated Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, a Somali national, for two months aboard a US Navy ship, after seizing him on international waters between Yemen and Somalia”; Jeremy Scahill of The Nation reported in July 2011 the CIA was using a secret prison “in the basement of Somalia’s National Security Agency (NSA) headquarters; and the Washington Post reported in August 2012 that “three European men with Somali roots were arrested by local authorities in Djibouti, where they were detained and interrogated for months-including by U.S. interrogators-even though no charges were pending against them.”
(my emphasis)
The senior legal officer at the National Security and Counterterrorism program at the Open Society Justice Initiative and the reports author, Amrit Singh joined Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez on Democracy! Now to discuss the report and CIA Director nominee, John Brennan’s role in the expansive program she’s documented.
Transcript can be read here
Feb 07 2013
Punting the Pundits
“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
New York Times Editorial; To Kill an American
On one level, there were not too many surprises in the newly disclosed “white paper” offering a legal reasoning behind the claim that President Obama has the power to order the killing of American citizens who are believed to be part of Al Qaeda. We knew Mr. Obama and his lawyers believed he has that power under the Constitution and federal law. We also knew that he utterly rejects the idea that Congress or the courts have any right to review such a decision in advance, or even after the fact.
Still, it was disturbing to see the twisted logic of the administration’s lawyers laid out in black and white. It had the air of a legal justification written after the fact for a policy decision that had already been made, and it brought back unwelcome memories of memos written for President George W. Bush to justify illegal wiretapping, indefinite detention, kidnapping, abuse and torture.
Duncan Black, aka Atrios: 401Ks are a disaster
Recent and near-retirees, the first major cohort of the 401(k) era, do not have nearly enough in retirement savings to even come close to maintaining their current lifestyles.
We need an across the board increase in Social Security retirement benefits of 20% or more. We need it to happen right now, even if that means raising taxes on high incomes or removing the salary cap in Social Security taxes.
Over the past few decades, employees fortunate enough to have employer-based retirement benefits have been shifted from defined benefit plans to defined contribution plans. We are now seeing the results of that grand experiment, and they are frightening. Recent and near-retirees, the first major cohort of the 401(k) era, do not have nearly enough in retirement savings to even come close to maintaining their current lifestyles.
Frankly, that’s an optimistic way of putting it. Let me be alarmist for a moment, because the fact is the numbers are truly alarming. We should be worried that large numbers of people nearing retirement will be unable to keep their homes or continue to pay their rent.
Dean Baker: Tax Games and Redistributing Income Upward
The corporate profit share of national income is near a post-World War II high. The share of income going to the richest 1 percent is almost at its pre-Depression peak.
These would seem like impressive accomplishments but the process of upward redistribution, from Joe Sixpack to Joe Six Houses, is a never-ending struggle. Toward this end, Louisiana Governor and Republican wunderkind Bobby Jindal has just proposed replacing the state’s income tax with a sales tax.
Sales taxes will generally be more regressive than income taxes for the simple reason that low- and moderate-income people will spend a larger share of their income than upper-income people. That means that the portion of income that wealthy Louisianans save will escape taxation, imposing a larger burden on low- and middle-income families in any revenue neutral shift.
Amy Goodman; Brennan and Kiriakou, Drones and Torture
John Brennan and John Kiriakou worked together years ago, but their careers have dramatically diverged. Brennan is now on track to head the CIA, while Kiriakou is headed off to prison. Each of their fates is tied to the so-called war on terror, which under President George W. Bush provoked worldwide condemnation. President Barack Obama rebranded the war on terror innocuously as “overseas contingency operations,” but, rather than retrench from the odious practices of his predecessor, Obama instead escalated. His promotion of Brennan, and his prosecution of Kiriakou, demonstrate how the recent excesses of U.S. presidential power are not transient aberrations, but the creation of a frightening new normal, where drone strikes, warrantless surveillance, assassination and indefinite detention are conducted with arrogance and impunity, shielded by secrecy and beyond the reach of law.
Robert Reich: The Real Debate Over American Citizenship
Sometimes we have a national conversation without realizing it. We talk about different aspects of the same larger issue without connecting the dots.
That’s what’s happening now with regard to the meaning of American citizenship and the basic rights that come with it.
On one side are those who think of citizenship as a matter of exclusion and privilege – of protecting the nation by keeping out those who are undesirable, and putting strict limits on who is allowed to exercise the full rights of citizenship.
On the other are those who think of citizenship inclusively – as an ongoing process of helping people become full participants in America.
Richard (RJ) Eskow: Why the Government’s Lawsuit Against Standard & Poor’s Matters
Before we begin, let’s take a moment to ponder the absurdity of a system in which:
a) for-profit corporations are allowed to call themselves “agencies”;
b) the government — that is, us — has given these for-profit companies trillion-dollar influence over the financial system; and
c) these “agencies” are paid by the very financial institutions whose work they’re expected to review objectively — institutions who will take their business elsewhere if their products aren’t rated highly .
We gave these “agencies” all this power, along with a huge financial incentive to rate garbage as if it were roses. Then we, in the form of government regulators, looked the other way. And now we’re shocked — shocked! — that these for-profit companies were behaving… well, like for-profit companies.
Feb 07 2013
These Are the Memos You Want
The secret memos giving the legal justification for drone attacks and “kill lists,” that President Barack Obama has refused to say even existed, are to be released to the two Congressional Intelligence Committees
Until Wednesday, the administration had refused to even officially acknowledge the existence of the documents, which have been reported about in the press. This week, NBC News obtained an unclassified, shorter “white paper” that detailed some of the legal analysis about killing a citizen and was apparently derived from the classified Awlaki memorandum. The paper said the United States could target a citizen if he was a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda involved in plots against the country and if his capture was not feasible. Administration officials said Mr. Obama had decided to take the action, which they described as extraordinary, out of a desire to involve Congress in the development of the legal framework for targeting specific people to be killed in the war against Al Qaeda. Aides noted that Mr. Obama had made a pledge to do that during an appearance on “The Daily Show” last year.
Don’t get too excited, these memos are still classified and will only be released to the members of the two congressional committees consisting of 35 people selected by party leaders. Keep in mind two of those 35 members are Representatives Michelle Bachmann (R-MI) and Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA).
A point that Marcy Wheeler makes is this is being misreported, there is more than one memo. President Obama and Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Dianne Weinstein (D-CA) have all referred to memos, plural, but people persist in reporting that there is one memo. The white paper that MSNBC’s Michael Isikoff reported was given to Congress was not the memo we were looking for
Indeed, Ron Wyden has been referring to memos, in the plural, for a full year (even before, if Isikoff’s report is correct, this white paper was first provided to the Committees in June 2012).
And there is abundant reason to believe that the members of the Senate committees who got this white paper aren’t convinced it describes the rationale the Administration actually used. Just minutes after Pat Leahy reminded the Senate Judiciary Committee they got the white paper at a hearing last August, John Cornyn said this,
Cornyn: As Senator Durbin and others have said that they agree that this is a legitimate question that needs to be answered. But we’re not mere supplicants of the Executive Branch. We are a coequal branch of government with the Constitutional responsibility to conduct oversight and to legislate where we deem appropriate on behalf of our constituents. So it is insufficient to say, “pretty please, Mr. President. pretty please, Mr. Attorney General, will you please tell us the legal authority by which you claim the authority to kill American citizens abroad?” It may be that I would agree with their legal argument, but I simply don’t know what it is, and it hasn’t been provided. [my emphasis]
More importantly, one question that Wyden keeps asking would be nonsensical if he believed the content of this white paper reflected the actual authorization used to kill Awlaki.
I have no idea how this will effect John Brennan’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Select Committee On Intelligence but it should be interesting considering some of the questions that Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) intends to ask.
Every American has the right to know when their government believes that it is allowed to kill them.
The Justice Department memo that was made public yesterday touches on a number of important issues, but it leaves many of the most important questions about the President’s lethal authorities unanswered. Questions like ‘how much evidence does the President need to decide that a particular American is part of a terrorist group?’, ‘does the President have to provide individual Americans with the opportunity to surrender?’ and ‘can the President order intelligence agencies or the military to kill an American who is inside the United States?’ need to be asked and answered in a way that is consistent with American laws and American values. This memo does not answer these questions.
Feb 06 2013
Punting the Pundits
“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.
Wednesday is Ladies’ Day
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
Joan Walsh: When liberals ignore injustice
Why isn’t there more outrage about the president’s unilateral targeted assassination program on the left?
Last year Brown University’s Michael Tesler released a fascinating study showing that Americans inclined to racially blinkered views wound up opposing policies they would otherwise support, once they learned those policies were endorsed by President Obama. Their prejudice extended to the breed of the president’s dog, Bo: They were much more likely to say they liked Portuguese water dogs when told Ted Kennedy owned one than when they learned Obama did.
But Tesler found that the Obama effect worked the opposite way, too: African-Americans and white liberals who supported Obama became more likely to support policies once they learned the president did.
More than once I’ve worried that might carry over to bad policies that Obama has flirted with embracing, that liberals have traditionally opposed: raising the age for Medicare and Social Security or cutting those programs’ benefits. Or hawkish national security policies that liberals shrieked about when carried out by President Bush, from rendition to warrantless spying. Or even worse, policies that Bush stopped short of, like targeted assassination of U.S. citizens loyal to al-Qaida (or “affiliates”) who were (broadly) deemed (likely) to threaten the U.S. with (possible) violence (some day).
Katrina vanden Heuvel: A Few Good (and Fair) Tax Hikes
While the New Year’s deficit deal divided congressional Republicans, there’s one point on which they’re all reading from the same hymnal: No more tax talk! The revenues under the deal are relatively modest-they leave rich people’s taxes well short of Clinton era rates. But Republicans, while claiming to care deeply about the deficit, have locked arms to take further tax increases off the table. We can’t let them.
The truth is, we could do our economy a world of good with some smart and fair tax hikes. While the current deficit hysteria is unmoored from reality, the right tax hikes could improve economic incentives, reduce obscene inequality and fund much-needed programs. Rather than the usual dust-ups over competing flavors of austerity, our budget debate should have healthy tax hikes front and center.
Frances Fox Piven: Movements Making Noise
American political history is usually told as the story of what political elites say and do. The twists and turns, advances and setbacks, wars, disasters and recoveries, are said to be the work of the founders, or of the presidents, or of the courts, or of the influence of a handful of great people who somehow emerge from the mass.
But this history can also be told as the story of the great protest movements that periodically well up from the bottom of American society and the impact these movements have on American institutions. There would be no founders to memorialize without the Revolutionary-era mobs who provided the foot soldiers to fight the British; no films about the quandaries of Abe Lincoln during the Civil War without the abolitionists and the thousands of runaway slaves; no Labor Day to celebrate without the sit-down strikers; no Martin Luther King to beatify without a movement of poor blacks who defied the Southern terror system.
Bryce Covert: Twenty Years After the FMLA, Our Family Leave Policies Are Dragging Us Down
Twenty years ago today, the US passed the Family and Medical Leave Act, finally codifying into law the right for most employees to take time off from work for the birth of a baby or to care for a seriously ill family member. Since then, workers have used it 100 million times to care for themselves and their families.
But this milestone, and all the good it’s done since, hasn’t been enough. We’ve fallen behind our industrialized peers on many key indicators since then. Only about 60 percent of workers have access to paid leave, putting a huge financial burden on new parents and those with sick family members. Our failure hits working families square on. But it’s a problem we all bear, because it’s also threatening our economic edge.
Nona Willis Aronowitz: In Whiter New Orleans, There’s a Gray Area
“The post-Katrina influx just made it harder for people who are from here and are not the right color,” says Tracey Brown, a 24-year-old black New Orleans native who has watched her city get whiter over the past decade. “I have to ask those transplants: ‘Are you working a job where everybody at your job is not only not from here, but also white? Why do you not question that?'”
It’s a well-known fact that behind New Orleans’ sunny story of rebuilding and revitalizing is a tale of a whitening city: Before Hurricane Katrina, the city was 67 percent African American; now that number hovers around 60. But the story isn’t so, well, black and white. As Ingrid Norton pointed out in GOOD last year, young, educated, black entrepreneurs are moving to New Orleans, too. That still makes them gentrifiers, in the cultural and economic sense, but their race affects the way they’re received by their new neighbors.
Ana Marie Cox: Obama Sounds Retreat on Gun Control but Declares War on Gun Crime
The president’s event in Minnesota suggests there is little chance of new gun control laws – but real hope of reducing gun violence
Observers billed Obama’s speech here in the Twin Cities Monday afternoon as the first stop for a White House road show promoting gun control legislation, but the event’s tone, its location, and, yes, even its content signal that the White House has chosen a circuitous route in pursuit of its goals. The goals themselves have changed, too, as the White House shifts our attention away from the specific horror of Sandy Hook to the more mundane living nightmare of daily gun violence.
The White House told reporters that the visit would highlight the strides Minneapolis has made in reducing youth violence – this alone shows an unremarked-on, easy change of lanes, in terms of goals. Minnesota has seen two school shootings in the past decade, including one that ended the lives of ten people, including the shooter; but neither the president nor the White House press team brought them into the conversation.
Feb 06 2013
NDAA: “Systematic Assault on Constitution”
In May of 2011, Pulitzer prize winning author, Chris Hedges and several other prominent activists and politicians filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration over Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) alleging that it violated free speech and associational rights guaranteed by the First Amendment and due process rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution.
Hedges asserted that section 1021 (pdf) of the bill, which authorized indefinite military detention for “a person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces,” left him, as a working journalist, vulnerable to indefinite detention because neither Congress nor the president defined the terms “substantial support,” “associated forces” or “directly supported.” [Emphasis added.]
In a landmark ruling last September, Judge Katherine Forrest of the Southern District of New York struck down the indefinite detention provision, saying it likely violates the First and Fifth Amendments of U.S. citizens. The Obama administration appealed. The arguments for that appeal will be heard today, Wednesday, February 6.
One of the seven plaintiffs, Pentagon Papers whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg joined Amy Goodman and Nermeen Shaikh on Democracy Now! to discuss the case.
Feb 05 2013
Punting the Pundits
“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
New York Times Editorial: More Jobs, Higher Pay
In President Obama’s first term, the fiscal stimulus and the auto-industry rescue of 2009 created and preserved millions of jobs. But the stimulus ended years ago, replaced with temporary measures that have been insufficient to propel the economy forward. Health care reform in 2010 was a major step in the effort to support the middle class, but its broad effects will be felt only in the years and decades to come. [..]
A recent federal court ruling invalidating his recess appointees to the National Labor Relations Board, which enforces federal labor law, will be a further setback to workers’ ability to bargain for higher wages. The misguided decision, if upheld, would deny the board a quorum to rule on legal questions. In seeking to overturn the ruling, all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary, the administration should take aim at the court’s unjustified incursion on presidential power and its antiunion bias. [..]
In his first term – a time of persistent high unemployment, weak job growth, stagnating wages and rising income inequality – Mr. Obama neglected a basic labor agenda. He now has a chance to take corrective action.
Simon Johnson: Who Decided U.S. Megabanks Are Too Big to Jail?
Tom Hanks has a knack for playing the roles that define American generations. In “Saving Private Ryan,” he embodied the courage of the men who landed on the Normandy beaches under heavy fire. In “Apollo 13,” he conveyed calm and ingenuity under intense pressure: “Houston, we have a problem.” And Forrest Gump revealed much about America before, during and after the Vietnam War.
If Hanks turns his attention to our most recent decade, which character should he choose? My suggestion is Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, the head of the criminal division at the Justice Department and the man responsible for determining whether anyone should be prosecuted for the financial crisis of 2008.
In an on-camera interview, which aired recently, Breuer stated plainly that some financial institutions are too large and too complex to be held accountable before the law. Bipartisan pressure is now being applied on the Justice Department to reveal exactly how this determination was made. Breuer, however, has announced he will leave government March 1. Good luck unraveling the cover-up that must already be in place.
Josh Barrow: What ACT UP Teaches About Social Change
Edward Koch, who died last week at 88, figures prominently as an antagonist in “How to Survive a Plague,” David France’s excellent new documentary about the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). The film opens with footage from 1987 of a reporter asking Koch, then New York’s mayor, why he called ACT UP protesters “fascists” but referred to them in a news release as “concerned citizens.” Koch replied, classically, “Fascists can be concerned citizens.” [..]
But “How to Survive a Plague” shows that ACT UP was a movement that worked effectively within the system at the same time that it worked noisily against it. ACT UP activists weren’t just angry about national apathy and inaction on AIDS; they also had specific demands and constructive ideas about how the government and drug companies could do better. Unlike a lot of protest movements, once they got to the stage where the targets of their protests said, “I’m listening. What do you want me to do?” they had concrete answers.
Wendell Potter: Why Americans Pay So Much for Health Care: Friends in High Places (Just Not Your Friends)
If you wonder why we spend more money on health care than any other country but have some of the worst health outcomes, you need look no further than the halls of Congress to it figure out. [..]
Drug makers have long had cozy relationships and outsized influence on lawmakers in Washington. That’s why Obamacare barely touches that industry. Big Pharma essentially blackmailed members of Congress and the White House by threatening to bankroll a huge PR and lobbying campaign to kill health care reform if serious consideration was given to allowing Medicare officials to negotiate for lower drug prices.
Richard (RJ) Eskow: As Public Makes “Hard Choices” On Social Security, Alan Simpson Ducks His “Moment of Truth”
Alan Simpson’s the lead pitchman for a billionaire- and corporate-funded initiative to slash Social Security that has subjected the public to years of nonstop haranguing and lecturing.
The lecturing’s gotten crude, too, as when Simpson insisted that anyone who disagrees with him is shoveling “bullsh*t.”
That’s tough talk, but it’s a funny thing: When the public makes tough decisions, as it did in a new National Academy of Social Insurance (NASI) survey, the tough-talking Mr. Simpson is nowhere to be found.
On Wednesday, the Arkansas legislature lurched forward with a radical measure to ban most abortions if a fetal heartbeat is detected within six weeks of a pregnancy, a requirement experts say will force the state to insert a probe into a woman’s vagina to detect. [..]
Libertarian billionaire Charles Koch, author of his own ideology he touts as the “Science of Liberty,” is famous for spreading his beliefs (and his business interests) through the aggressive use of political donations to candidates, think tanks, media outlets, universities, career-training institutes and dark-money attack-ad groups. But critics, including myself, point to the hundreds of state and federal Koch-backed politicians who seem to prioritize fairly authoritarian policies. Rapert’s transvaginal probes and government-forced pregnancies do not seem to cohere with any notion of individual liberty I’m familiar with.
Feb 05 2013
Down the Rabbit Hole to Follow the Drone Attacks
Lewis Carol has nothing on the Obama administration.
Will Senators Filibuster Chuck Hagel’s Nomination to Get the Targeted Killing Memo?
by Marcy Wheeler, emptywheel
Eleven Senators just sent President Obama a letter asking nicely, for at least the 12th time, the targeted killing memo. They remind him of his promise of transparency and oversight. [..]
And asks – yet again – for “any and all memos.” [..]
But perhaps the most important part of this letter is that it refers not just to John Brennan’s nomination, but to “senior national security positions.”
As the Senate considers a number of nominees for senior national security positions, we ask that you ensure that Congress is provided with the secret legal opinions outlining your authority to authorize the killing of Americans in the course of counterterrorism operations.
There are eleven signers of that letter: Ron Wyden (D-Ore.); Mike Lee (R-Utah); Mark Udall (D-Colo.); Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa); Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.); Susan Collins (R-Maine); Dick Durbin (Ill.); Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.); Tom Udall (D-N.M.); Mark Begich (D-Alaska); and Al Franken (D- Minn.).
Wyden, Mark Udall, and Collins sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee that will consider John Brennan’s nomination to the CIA. Brennen is considered the architect of President Obama’s drone program and targeted assassination program.
While there is still a battle over the original memo that laid out the legal premise for the drone and assassination program, NBC News national investigative correspondent, Michael Isikoff, has obtained a 16 page white paper memo (pdf) that “provides new details about the legal reasoning behind one of the Obama administration’s most secretive and controversial polices:
The secrecy surrounding such strikes is fast emerging as a central issue in this week’s hearing of White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, a key architect of the drone campaign, to be CIA director. Brennan was the first administration official to publicly acknowledge drone strikes in a speech last year, calling them “consistent with the inherent right of self-defense.” In a separate talk at the Northwestern University Law School in March, Attorney General Eric Holder specifically endorsed the constitutionality of targeted killings of Americans, saying they could be justified if government officials determine the target poses “an imminent threat of violent attack.”
But the confidential Justice Department “white paper” introduces a more expansive definition of self-defense or imminent attack than described by Brennan or Holder in their public speeches. It refers, for example, to what it calls a “broader concept of imminence” than actual intelligence about any ongoing plot against the U.S. homeland.
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow doesn’t think that the Republicans would be foolish enough to filibuster Defense Secretary nominee Chuck Hagel and risk Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) invoking the nuclear option to end filibuster altogether. There is the slim possibility that the Senate Intelligence Committee could reject Mr. Brennan’s nomination for the CIA from a vote of the full Senate.
Ms. Maddow talked with Mr. Isikoff about the details of the memo and the legal justification for targeted drone attacks that American citizens without trial in the name of national security.
Not in our names.
Feb 05 2013
Free Public Wi-Fi Coming to the USA
Color me shocked. If this comes to fruition, the US would catch up with the rest of the world.
The federal government wants to create super WiFi networks across the nation, so powerful and broad in reach that consumers could use them to make calls or surf the Internet without paying a cellphone bill every month. […]
The airwaves that FCC officials want to hand over to the public would be much more powerful than existing WiFi networks that have become common in households. They could penetrate thick concrete walls and travel over hills and around trees. If all goes as planned, free access to the Web would be available in just about every metropolitan area and in many rural areas.
The new WiFi networks would also have much farther reach, allowing for a driverless car to communicate with another vehicle a mile away or a patient’s heart monitor to connect to a hospital on the other side of town.
Over at Maddow Blog, Steve Brenen spoke with an FCC spokesperson who explained:
“The FCC’s incentive auction proposal, launched in September of last year, would unleash substantial spectrum for licensed uses like 4G LTE. It would also free up unlicensed spectrum for uses including, but not limited to, next generation Wi-Fi. As the demand for mobile broadband continues to grow rapidly, we need to free up significant amounts of spectrum for commercial use, and both licensed and unlicensed spectrum must be part of the solution.”
This is several years off and faces opposition from the telecom industry and lawmakers in the House and Senate who represent them and not us.
h/t to Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars for this 2010 interview with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski who answered questions submitted and voted on by people on Citizentube.
Feb 05 2013
Now They Can’t Kill the Beast
When I read in the headline in The New York Times that “top Republican donors were seeking more say in Senate races“, I wondered just how much more influence could they want, as it is, frankly, they own the place. But then I read further:
The biggest donors in the Republican Party are financing a new group to recruit seasoned candidates and protect Senate incumbents from challenges by far-right conservatives and Tea Party enthusiasts who Republican leaders worry could complicate the party’s efforts to win control of the Senate.
The group, the Conservative Victory Project, is intended to counter other organizations that have helped defeat establishment Republican candidates over the last two election cycles. It is the most robust attempt yet by Republicans to impose a new sense of discipline on the party, particularly in primary races. [..]
The Conservative Victory Project, which is backed by Karl Rove and his allies who built American Crossroads into the largest Republican super PAC of the 2012 election cycle, will start by intensely vetting prospective contenders for Congressional races to try to weed out candidates who are seen as too flawed to win general elections.
The only thing that ran through my mind after reading the whole piece (and you should but do not eat or drink) were the lyrics from the Eagles’ “Hotel California“:
They stab it with their steely knives, But they just can’t kill the beast
The Republicans, in there zeal to defeat President Obama at any cost, created a monster that they no longer can control. But not all of the big donors are displeased with the beast and are a bit cross with Mr. Rove for trying to euthanize their pet and now they are revolting:
“Because of the bad results of the 2012 cycle, I kind of feel like we’re in a state of gang warfare,” Matt Kibbe, the president of FreedomWorks, a grassroots advocacy group aligned with the Tea Party movement, told MSNBC.com, adding: “The establishment is circling the wagons, and they’re trying to protect their own.”
Kibbe argued that the the energy in today’s GOP comes from the very Tea Party-backed candidates, like Rand Paul and Mike Lee, that Rove has opposed in the past. “What Rove is proposing is a recipe for failure,” he said.
In a press release put out shortly afterwards, Kibbe warned: “The Empire is striking back.”
Tea Party Patriots, perhaps the leading national grassroots Tea Party group, took the same view. “Instead of returning to conservative principles, Rove and the consultant class are pouring millions into picking off conservative leaders,” national coordinator Jenny Beth Martin said in a statement. “The consultant class has been on the wrong side of history and it is time for conservatives to wake-up and stop funding their sabotage of conservatism.”
Right-wing bloggers were no kinder.
Ben Shapiro, an editor at Breitbart News, accused Rove of “declaring war on the Tea Party.”
Influential conservative blogger Michelle Malkin agreed. “This is war,” she wrote, adding: “Who needs Obama and his Team Chicago to destroy the Tea Party when you’ve got Rove and his big government band of elites?”
Erick Erickson, the influential founder of Redstate.com and a long-time champion of the Tea Party, had a similar take. Rove’s goal, Erickson wrote, is to “crush conservatives, destroy the Tea Party, and put a bunch of squishes in Republican leadership positions.”
Fox News should be a very lively place with both Rove and Erickson now on payroll as political analysts.
Over at the Maddow Blog there’s more from Steve Benen:
Roll Call reported over the weekend that the Senate Conservatives Fund, founded by former South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint (R), is already condemning Rove’s new project.
“This is a continuation of the establishment’s effort to avoid blame for their horrible performance in the 2012 elections,” Senate Conservatives Fund Executive Director Matt Hoskins said. “They blew a ton of races up and down the ticket because they recruited moderate Republicans who didn’t stand for anything. Now they want to use this new PAC to trick donors into giving them more money so they can lose more races.”
Club for Growth spokesman Barney Keller echoed the sentiment: “They are welcome to support the likes of Arlen Specter, Charlie Crist and David Dewhurst. We will continue to proudly support the likes of Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.”
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow described the deep division between the right wing Republican base and the moneyed interests, that form the Republican Party, but can’t draw sufficient votes to win elections.
Steve Benin notes the great irony of this fight is that neither side of the Republican divide has any credibility at all. Poor Karl. “You can check out anytime you please but you can never leave.”
Get the popcorn and start the music
Recent Comments