Saturday Catchup: Stuff you might have missed

Politics: Guilty of Sedition? How the Right Is Undermining Our Government's Authority and Capability to Run the Country by Sara Robinson (Campaign for America's Future/AlterNet) | For more than 40 years, the Right has systematically sought to delegitimize the United States government. It is time to make them stop.

Public Policy: Wealth for the Common Good is a sensible, factual report -- by a network of business leaders, wealthy individuals and partners supporting public policies that promote shared prosperity and fair taxation -- that shows how tax policy over the last half century has favored the wealthiest Americans at the expense of a strong and secure middle class. Read the report. Sign a petition to end tax breaks for households with incomes over $235,000.

Security State: Abu Zubaydah: Tortured for Nothing by Andy Worthington (AndyWorthington.com 2010-04-06): A year ago, summing up the results of Zubaydah’s torture, a former intelligence official stated, bluntly, “We spent millions of dollars chasing false alarms.”

Media: Is This the Future of Journalism?: Why Wikileaks matters by Jonathan Stray (Foreign Policy 2010-04-07) | Dismissed as just a website, Wikileaks shows how journalism is done, new media-style. Also: Wikileaks: reaction to the Collateral Murder video by Richard Adams (Guardian UK 2010-04-08). Update: WikiLeaks has a problem going mainstream: The content WikiLeaks has released has been shocking. So why has it has had so little effect? by Colin Horgan (Guardian UK 2010-06-27).

Media: How journalists become prisoners of their preconceptions: The Bias of Veteran Journalists by Lane Wallace (The Atlantic 2010-04-05).

Musical Interlude:
One, two, kiss your daddy do
Nine, ten, daddy will say when
Daddy loves his baby, daddy loves his baby
Daddy loves his baby and baby's gonna get a big bang outa that
(writer: unknown)

I'm just sayin'.

Media: The Creed of Objectivity and The New York Times by Barnabe F. Geisweiller: Just how objective can the New York Times' correspondent in Israel and Palestine, Ethan Bronner, be when he has a son serving in the Israel Defense Forces - the Israeli army. In an article published March 28, Bronner showed there was cause for concern (truthout 2010-04-06).

Media: Inside The Media Blackout Scandal in The Middle East’s Only Democracy by Max Blumenthal (AlterNet 2010-04-06) | Ours is not the only country where the military is intimidating the elected government.

Bozo Nation: "Right. I get it. I should probably ignore him. Why should I waste time writing about Glenn Beck again? As hard as it is to believe, most days I intentionally ignore Glenn Beck posts and videos on the blogs. My recurring reaction is generally twofold. One: he's exhausting to watch because just as I'm wrapping my head around one line of googly-eyed horseshit, he belts out another ridiculous, melodramatic or dangerous line, and before I know it, I'm faced with a log-jam of crazy, forcing me to scramble for either an oxygen mask or a stiff drink. And, two: why pay attention to the television equivalent of an escaped mental patient screaming gibberish on the median strip at a busy intersection?" -- Bob Cesca Exposing Glenn Beck as a Dangerous Fraud (Huffington Post 2010-04-07)

Profile: Merry Prankster still stirring the pot by Brad Oswald (Winnipeg Free Press 2010-04-05) | Paul Krassner has been an inspiration to me for 45 years. Plus, yesterday was his birthday.



Politics: Progressive Caucus Outlines Their Plan To Give Coal Lobby Everything It Wants
by Jane Hamsher (FireDogLake) The Hill has an article on the Progressive Caucus strategy for dealing with cap & trade. It leaves the reader to infer quite a bit, so FDL's mother hen helpfully translates.

If Duane Allman and Jack Bruce had a baby...


Book review: Behind Obama’s Cool by Gary Wills (New York Times 2010-04-07) | In his reading of The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama, David Remnick's exhaustive pre-presidential biography, the always thoughtful Wills ponders how our shape-shifting prez got that way.

Social Media: How I learned to love Twitter by @MargaretAtwood (Guardian UK 2010-04-07) | I keep telling writers why they should love Twitter. Maybe now they'll believe me.

Oddities: Finally, a reminder from an unexpected source of all the little wonders of the universe that we miss every day:

The Military State: Disposable Soldiers

Another must read article from The Nation:

by Joshua Kors

For three years The Nation has been reporting on military doctors' fraudulent use of personality disorder to discharge wounded soldiers. PD is a severe mental illness that emerges during childhood and is listed in military regulations as a pre-existing condition, not a result of combat. Thus those who are discharged with PD are denied a lifetime of disability benefits, which the military is required to provide to soldiers wounded during service. Soldiers discharged with PD are also denied long-term medical care. And they have to give back a slice of their re-enlistment bonus. That amount is often larger than the soldier's final paycheck. As a result, on the day of their discharge, many injured vets learn that they owe the Army several thousand dollars.

According to figures from the Pentagon and a Harvard University study, the military is saving billions by discharging soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan with personality disorder.

In July 2007 the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs called a hearing to investigate PD discharges. Barack Obama, then a senator, put forward a bill to halt all PD discharges. And before leaving office, President Bush signed a law requiring the defense secretary to conduct his own investigation of the PD discharge system. But Obama's bill did not pass, and the Defense Department concluded that no soldiers had been wrongly discharged. The PD dismissals have continued. Since 2001 more than 22,600 soldiers have been discharged with personality disorder. That number includes soldiers who have served two and three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"This should have been resolved during the Bush administration. And it should have been stopped now by the Obama administration," says Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense. "The fact that it hasn't is a national disgrace."

The rest of the story: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100426/kors/print by Joshua Kors (The Nation 2010-04-07)

The Military State: Tom Engelhardt and Jonathan Schell on America's Nuclear Trajectory

They discuss American involvement in Vietnam and Afghanistan, and US nuclear policy from the 1960s to the present.
Play:
For cable:
For dial-up:
Download: MP3 File

Jonathan Schell's thinking on nuclear strategy is distilled in Reaching Zero (The Nation 2010-04-01).

See, also: Believe It or Not (2010 Imperial Edition) -- U.S. War-Fighting Numbers to Knock Your Socks Off by Tom Engelhardt (TomDispatch 2010-04-06)
Analysis of the "New-START" Treaty (Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation)
Statement on Obama Administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation press release 2010-04-06)
Bombs Away on Administration’s Nuclear Review by Nathan Hodge (Wired's Danger Room 2010-04-06)
Beyond Loophole: Obama’s Nuke Policy ‘Change’ - Administration Very Clear in Threatening to Nuke Iran by Jason Ditz (AntiWar.com 2010-04-06)

Democratic socialism is.

Libertarianism isn't an answer to political corruption, economic disarray and democratic sclerosis.

The Long War: US Iraq Casualties Jump to 75,095

Compiled by Michael Munk (MichaelMunk.com 2010-04-07)

US military occupation forces in Iraq under Commander-in-Chief Obama suffered eight combat casualties in the week ending April 6, 2010* as the official total since the 2003 invasion rose to at least 74,791. The total includes 35,250 dead and wounded from what the Pentagon classifies as "hostile" causes and more than 39,845 (as of April 3, 2010) dead, injured and sick from "non-hostile" causes requiring medical evacuation.

The actual total is well over 100,000 because the Pentagon chooses not to count as "Iraq casualties" the more than 30,000 veterans whose injuries-mainly brain trauma from explosions - were diagnosed only after they had left Iraq.** In addition, Iraq Coalition Casualties names eight service members who died of wounds after they left Iraq but are not counted by the Pentagon.

US media divert attention from the actual cost in American life and limb by occasionally reporting only the total killed (4,391 as of April 6, 2010) but rarely mentioning the 31,770 wounded in combat. To further minimize public perception of the cost, they almost always ignore the 38,845 (as of April 3, 2010)*** military victims of accidents and illness serious enough to require medical air evacuation, although the 4,391 reported deaths include 911 (up one this week) who died from those same causes, including at least 207 suicides through April 3, 2010.***

* The number of wounded is updated weekly (usually Tuesday).
** New York Times, Jan 26, 2009
*** Global War on Terrorism - Operation Iraqi Freedom By Casualty Category Within Service March 19, 2003 - April 3, 2010

Michael Munk is the author of The Portland Red Guide.

The Long War: A murderous action by U.S. forces -- caught on tape

In the longer piece on Peace Action West that this is cut from, Rebecca Griffin argues that we must face the "truly horrifying" costs of the American military adventure in Afghanistan.

by Rebecca Griffin

The US military admitted earlier this week that US special operations forces killed five innocent civilians in Gardez, including two pregnant women. The two women leave behind sixteen motherless children. While the military has denied any kind of cover-up of the raid, there were signs of evidence tampering at the scene:

And in what would be a scandalous turn to the investigation, The Times of London reported Sunday night that Afghan investigators also determined that American forces not only killed the women but had also “dug bullets out of their victims’ bodies in the bloody aftermath” and then “washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened.”

A spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, Zemary Bashary, said that he did not have any information about the Afghan investigation, which he said remained unfinished.

In an interview, a NATO official said the Afghan-led investigation team alerted American and NATO commanders that the inquiry had found signs of evidence tampering. A briefing was given by investigators to General McChrystal and other military officials in late March.

“There was evidence of tampering at the scene, walls being washed, bullets dug out of holes in the wall,” the NATO official said, adding that investigators “couldn’t find bullets from the wounds in the body.”

Civilian casualties have been a continued source of outrage in Afghanistan, and General McChrystal has received praise for his attempts to lower the number of civilian casualties. While the intent is admirable, it is unrealistic in practice. McChrystal recently commented on their inability to decrease the number of shootings of innocent people at military checkpoints with the startling admission that, “We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat.”

Following this tragic story comes the release of a video of US soldiers in a helicopter firing on civilians in Iraq as though they were in a video game. The soldiers killed over a dozen people in the suburb of New Baghdad, including two journalists working for Reuters. (Warning: the video is disturbing and contains some explicit language.)

Wikileaks received the video and supporting documents from military whistleblowers and the Pentagon has confirmed that the video is authentic. It paints a disturbing picture of soldiers shooting into a group of mostly unarmed civilians, and at times laughing about it, with authorization from their superiors. When a van arrives to pick up the wounded and dead, they open fire, wounding two children. One of the pilots can be heard saying, “Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle.”

Julian Assange of Wikileaks made an important point about the nature of the video on Democracy Now this morning:

What’s important to remember is that every step that the Apache takes in opening fire is authorized. It does pause before shooting. It explains the situation, sometimes exaggerating a little to its commanders, and gets authorized permission.

These are not bad apples. This is standard practice. You can hear it from the tones of the voices of the pilots that this is in fact another day at the office. These pilots have evidently and gunners have evidently become so corrupted, morally corrupted, by the war that they are looking for excuses to kill. That is why you hear this segment, “Come on, buddy! Just pick up a weapon,” when Saeed, one of the Reuters employees, is crawling on the curb. They don’t want him for intelligence value to understand the situation. The man is clearly of no threat whatsoever. He’s prostate on the ground. Everyone else has been killed. They just want an excuse to kill. And it’s some kind of—appears to me to be some kind of video game mentality where they just want to get a high score, get their kill count up. And later on you’ll hear them proudly proclaiming how they killed twelve to fifteen people.

The Pentagon has stated that an investigation was already held into the incident and no one is being charged with wrongdoing.

There have been a lot of euphemisms and opaque language used in the debate about the merits of the current strategy in Afghanistan. Many proponents of the war build support around benign-sounding efforts like “population-centric counterinsurgency strategy.” They portray this effort as a more friendly form of war, with the vision of the US troops sweeping into Marja, scaring the bad guys out of town, dropping in a new government and bringing peace and stability to the people. These two incidents are surely just two of many in the hellacious reality of war. Michael Cohen at Democracy Arsenal makes an important point about civilian casualties:

Perhaps right on cue there is this horrifying story that not only did US Special Operations forces kill three Afghan women, they covered up the crime – even going to far as to dig bullets out of the bodies of the victims. It is yet another reminder that for all the talk of protecting civilians – and all of General McChrystal’s noble efforts to prevent civilian deaths — they are still happening, and they are still undermining our population centric goals in Afghanistan (again when you put 100,000 US troops, who are trained to kill and protect themselves, in a foreign country none of this should be even slightly surprising).

And as much as I hate to write it, this is likely only going to continue – and we wonder why we can’t convince local Afghans to side with us?

That’s not to even mention the nearly more than 1,000 US and ISAF soldiers who have died. That trend will only continue with the impending increase in troop levels. The first three months of 2010 already saw double the American casualties of the same period in 2009. Thousands of soldiers have been wounded, and their stories are seldom told to the American public.

When we debate this war, let’s be real about what we are debating. Let’s not debate a sanitized version of military efforts in Afghanistan. Those who think that the war in Afghanistan is essential to our security must weigh our gains against the dirty, messy reality of US and Afghan casualties, not an unrealistic vision of soldiers sitting safely in rooms piloting unmanned drones and Afghans embracing the military presence despite the occasional accidental air strike.

"Light 'em all up."

In the years since the "incident," as Reuters has tried to uncover what happened, U.S. military authorities have stonewalled, whitewashing the horrific actions of our gunners as within the rules of engagement. Watch the video: if these fighters are acting within officially sanctioned parameters, then the rules need to be changed. You can't win the hearts and minds of people by murdering them.

In the video, there are two separate attacks on civilians on the ground: at the first, the gunships fire on an unthreatening group whose main offense seems to be that they are men of fighting age; then they unload on a van of people attempting to tend to the wounded and dying from the first attack. The pilots and gunners sound both bloodthirsty and oddly detached, like teenage boys yelling "Kill! Kill! Kill!" in a video arcade.

Although from the air, the helicopter crews couldn't have known that children were in the cab of the Good Samaritans' van -- "Oh yeah, look at that. Right through the windshield! Haha," American reliance on massive preemptive force makes the killing of civilians certain -- premeditated -- and therefore criminal. Firing on a van of medical workers doesn't spawn political martyrs, it makes real ones. If soldiers who commit acts like these are not held accountable, more such tragedies will be impossible to avoid. Of course, if we weren't there at all, such tragedies would be impossible to occur.

The Afghan war itself is counter-productive and stupid as policy and needs to be brought swiftly to a conclusion. In any war, it is a certainty that some innocent people will be harmed. But Obama's expansion of this war -- essentially an intervention in a civil war -- is especially tragic, because the certainty of the outcome -- the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces from the country -- and the willingness of the other side to negotiate create the conditions for a swift settlement.

The Obama administration, which claims to prefer diplomacy to force, could use the threat of immediate withdrawal to make Karzai negotiate a deal with the Taliban (an outcome made all the easier now that the Afghan president has threatened to join the Taliban as his way of punishing the Americans for criticizing his gangsterish regime). The sooner an agreement is reached the more the Taliban will be deterred from expanding its influence beyond its sanctuaries in the south and east, the more U.S. gains in the recent fighting can be consolidated, and the more reduced will be the opportunities for corruption and fraud in the areas controlled from Kabul.

Even assuming that the entry into Afghanistan was unavoidable in the aftermath of 9/11, there is little question that the project has soured and cannot be won militarily. Comparisons to the Vietnam war are inexact, but there is one eerie echo from that conflict: we appear to be destroying Afghanistan in the effort to save it. Dialogue and serious compromise are far more likely to produce a peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan than blasting villagers from helicopters and pilotless drones.

Obama will not be able to go into the next presidential campaign without progress toward peace in the region, which means that there will be a sit-down with the Taliban sooner or later. Sooner is infinitely preferable. If the corrupt, inept Karzai is an obstruction to peace, he can easily be bargained away as part of the final deal (someone should slip Karzai a copy of the biography of Vietnam's President Diem -- it's possible he takes American rhetoric seriously; it's probably better for all concerned if he finds out now with whom he's in bed).

A negotiated settlement soon would not only save American and Afghan lives, but would avoid a precipitate withdrawal just before 2012 that would embarrass the American president and leave Afghanistan in ruins. Surely we'd rather spend our billions rebuilding the country than destroying it. Better to negotiate a compromise that takes into account the aspirations of both sides in the conflict (by which I mean Kabul and the Taliban) for the future of the country than to continue a policy that is to the advantage of no one. One thing all sides can probably agree on: Afghanistan's future must not, will not, can not include occupation by American troops.

The rest of the story: Debate war as it is, not as you want it to be by Rebecca Griffin (Peace Action West Groundswell Blog 2010-04-06)

Transcript of the audio from the WikiLeaks video

Like Abu Graib, defenders of American militarism will claim the actions on this video are aberrant. But graphic combat porn is pretty easy to find:
Special Forces Firefight with Insurgents in Iraq (night time); Night Attack on Al Qaeda; Mosul Firefight as music video; Iraq - AH-64 Apache; Asaeb Ahul Haqq RPG attack; etc. ad infinitum.

“This Is How These Soldiers Were Trained to Act”–Veteran of Military Unit Involved in 2007 Baghdad Helicopter Shooting Says Incident Is Part of Much Larger Problem (Democracy Now 2010-04-12).
Veterans of Wikileaks video write "Letter of Reconciliation" to Iraqis Injured in Attack (Civilian-Soldier Alliance): Josh Stieber and Ethan McCord, members of Bravo Company 2-16, are making a stand against the war and are rallying supporters. Go to LetterToIraq.com to read the letter they are sending to the Iraqis who survived the Apache attack
.
Actions: Donate to Peace Action West. Help provide information and support to those in the military on ways of standing up for their beliefs through work being done with the GI Rights Hotline. If you are a veteran or service-member, see Iraq Veterans Against the War or Courage to Resist's websites to get involved in anti-war work. Support and spread the word about the Civilian-Soldier Alliance, embracing those within the military or veteran communities who want to talk about their experiences and work towards other options. Question the training that our government and our tax money puts our impressionable young people through: if we object to this video, we need to look at what training led to it. Check out books like On Killing and pressure political and military leaders to reconsider the psychological methods that teach soldiers to dehumanize. Look at what we teach our children, work towards starting peace studies programs in your schools. Question where our tax money is really going and why so much is spent on warfare. Inform yourself on the deeper priorities of our society by watching for example, The Story of Stuff and ask yourself if your lifestyle is contributing to those mistaken priorities.

Media: Top 10 Works of Journalism of the Last Decade

The faculty of New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and a group of distinguished outside judges has selected "The Top Ten Works of Journalism of the Decade in the United States." We began with a list of eighty nominees. Our purpose was to call attention to and honor work of exceptional importance and quality - journalism that brilliantly met the challenges of this difficult decade.

Ten years ago New York University, using some of the same judges, selected "The Top 100 Works of Journalism of the Twentieth Century in the United States."

The official press release is  here.

The staff of The New York Times: "A Nation Challenged" 2001

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc: Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx 2003

Lawrence Wright: The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 2006

Alex Blumberg and Adam Davidson: This American Life & NPR: "The Giant Pool of Money" 2008

C.J. Chivers (reporter), Dexter Filkins (reporter) and Tyler Hicks (photographer): The New York Times ongoing reporting from the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan. More2003-2009

Jane Mayer: The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals 2008

Barbara Ehrenreich: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America 2001

The Times-Picayune staff, New Orleans, La.: Coverage of Hurricane Katrina, August-December 2005

Anne Hull, Dana Priest (reporters) and Michel du Cille (photographer) - The Washington Post: "Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration at Army's Top Medical Facility" 2007

Walter Robinson, Michael Rezendes, Sacha Pfeiffer, Matt Carroll, Stephen Kurkjian, Tom Farragher, Michael Paulson, Kevin Cullen, Ben Bradlee Jr., Mark Morrow - The Boston Globe: Abuse in the Catholic Church"  2002

Endangered Species: In Canada, "clubbing" refers to seals, not partying

In the 2009 seal hunt, Canada's commercial sealers slaughtered just over 72,000 seals, most of them babies. Sealers clubbed, shot, and skinned seal pups as young as 12 days old in the largest hunt of marine mammals in the world. Seal hunting is an off-season activity for Canada's east coast commercial fishermen. They earn a small fraction of their incomes from selling seal skins to the fur industry.

The connection between the commercial fishing industry and the seal hunt gives consumers all over the world the power to end the cruel slaughter of seals. The Canadian fishing industry has suffered a $750 million (Canadian) decline in the value of snow crab exports to the United States since the boycott began. That's more than $200 million a year.

Action: Sign the Human Society's pledge not to buy Canadian seafood until they stop the slaughter of seals.

Saturday Catchup: Must-reads (and sees) from the recent past

Is America ‘Yearning for Fascism’? by Chris Hedges (TruthDig 2010-03-29). "The Democrats and their liberal apologists are so oblivious to the profound personal and economic despair sweeping through this country that they think offering unemployed people the right to keep their unemployed children on their nonexistent health care policies is a step forward. They think that passing a jobs bill that will give tax credits to corporations is a rational response to an unemployment rate that is, in real terms, close to 20 percent. They think that making ordinary Americans, one in eight of whom depends on food stamps to eat, fork over trillions in taxpayer dollars to pay for the crimes of Wall Street and war is acceptable. They think that the refusal to save the estimated 2.4 million people who will be forced out of their homes by foreclosure this year is justified by the bloodless language of fiscal austerity. The message is clear. Laws do not apply to the power elite. Our government does not work. And the longer we stand by and do nothing, the longer we refuse to embrace and recognize the legitimate rage of the working class, the faster we will see our anemic democracy die."

On this week's 42nd anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination, two talented lawyers who've dedicated their careers to fighting inequality join Bill Moyers to examine justice and injustice in America after 42 years of struggle. Watch Bill Moyers interview with Bryan Stevenson and Michelle Alexander. A transcript of the interview. Bill Moyers essay on economic justice (Bill Moyers Journal 2010-04-02). Also: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Economic Dream Still Unfulfilled, 42 Years Later by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship (Salon 2010-04-02)and We Still Don’t Hear Him by Bob Herbert (New York Times 2010-04-02).

The Inhumanity of War by Doug Bandow, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute (Huntington Post 2010-04-03). Constant warfare is good for America and boon to the world. Not.

Nearly six months ago, in a must-read piece in The New Yorker, Jane Mayer pondered the risks of the C.I.A.’s covert drone program (The Predator War 2009-10-26), Obama's ramping up of the terror bombing in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The situation has only become more dire in the months since; as with the torture of prisoners, the debate over the indiscriminately murderous drones has devolved into an argument over how far we can go without committing acts that are actually indictable: see, Drone Attacks Are Legit Self-Defense, Says State Dept. Lawyer by Nathan Hodge (Danger Room 2010-03-26) and The Legal And Moral Issues Of Drone Use (NPR 2010-03-30) with Peter Bergen, Amitai Etzioni and Philip Alston.

Will the Pentagon send surveillance drones and other military support to the Somali government for its offensive against al-Qaida-linked insurgents, as the Associated Press reports? Perhaps you should ask your members of Congress.

Newsweek calls Afghanistan’s police force a ”$6 billion fiasco” that could cost us the war. Nation building is a risky business; no wonder presidential candidates promise not to do it.

"A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the National Security Agency’s program of surveillance without warrants was illegal, rejecting the Obama administration’s effort to keep shrouded in secrecy one of the most disputed counterterrorism policies of former President George W. Bush." By Charlie Savage and James Risen (New York Times 2010-03-31).

The event itself was insignificant, of course, especially by comparison to, say, decades of priestly diddling of deaf children, but the media coverage was characteristically abysmal:

But then, as so often before, Jon Stewart put it all in perspective for you:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
2 Girls 1 GOP
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

And speaking of the important role of late night comedians in our national dialog,  David Letterman's interview of Tea Party member Pam Stout on the Late Show was a "quietly remarkable piece of television," according to Entertainment Weekly's tv critic Ken Tucker.

Catch Henry Farrell and Daniel Drezner's Fun for the Whole Family episode on BloggingHeads -- will health care reform give Obama a foreign policy boost?; Obama and Netanyahu, less than the best of pals; The Frumble in the Jungle; can conservative intellectuals ride the Tea Party tiger?; the Catholic Church’s systemic failure; is the Greek financial crisis just the tip of the iceberg?:


Speaking of the Frumble in the Jungle, Carl Bloice takes on The Myth of the Sensible Center (Black Commentator 2010-04-01). Left, Right and Center become meaningless anyway when the central ideologies controlling our politics, corporatism and militarism, are forbidden subjects.

The Fed in Hot Water by Robert Reich (TalkingPointsMemo 2010-0402). Tim Geithner made secret, unregulated, probably illegal payouts of Bear Stearns and AIG worth tens of billions in public dollars months before Congress authorized taxpayer bailout of the financial community. Also, watch Robert Reich on ABC's This Week: The Obama Administration's Approach To Financial Reform Will Do 'Nothing' To Change Wall Street (Huntington Post 010-04-04).

To battle Wall Street, Obama should channel Teddy Roosevelt by Simon Johnson and James Kwak (The Washington Post 2010-04-04). Like that's going to happen.

And Tepid Reforms Demand that Progressives Mobilize by Katrina vanden Heuvel (Washington Post 2010-03-30).

US GAO releases 2010 Assessments of Selected Weapons Programs (2010-03-30), one- or two-page assessments of 70 weapon programs, most found wanting against "best practices" criteria.

Music video of the week is from a tribute to Skip Spence's legendary Oar (full disclosure: I wrote the liner notes for the second Moby Grape album), with a wild guitar solo by Wilco's Nels Cline:


Women in Their 90'S Who Make A Difference Today by Joan Wile (AfterDowningStreet 2010-04-03). My 94-year-old mother, having lent a hand in the battle to permit wind farms in New England, now wants take on the war in Afghanistan. "I think you should leave the world a little better than you found it," she says.

It took a while for the corporations to lay their cold dead hands fully on the the switches of mass media access after the terrifying (to them) social, intellectual and artistic cacophony of the 60s. Throughout the 70s and 80s, though, brief flashes of anarchy and creativity could still sneak past the cultural police lines, as in this energetic Black Leather Monster by punk rockers Wendy O. Williams and The Plasmatics on “Solid Gold,“ the pop hits countdown that usually featured lipsyncing bubblegum bands and eroto-aerobic dance routines.


A Critic's Place, Thumb and All is a thoughtful meditation on the future of arts criticism by Times film critic A.O.Scott (New York Times 2010-03-30).

Finally, a song much abused by karaoke singers is given its most disturbing reading ever:

Resource: Digitized Newspapers from the turn of the last century

The Library of Congress' Chronicling America provides free access to more than a million pages of historic newspapers from 11 states, published between 1880 and 1922.

War Crimes: Civilian deaths in AfPak adventure

“We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat.” -- Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, Commander, International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces Afghanistan

The rest of the story: McChrystal admits Afghan atrocities, press yawns by Allison Kilkenny (True/Slant 2010-03-28)

See, also: Tighter Rules Fail to Stem Deaths of Innocent Afghans at Checkpoints by Richard A. Oppel Jr. (New York Times 2010-03-26)

Propaganda: Don't let Texas rewrite your kids' history books

Led by far-right ideologues, the Texas State Board of Education recently gave preliminary approval to a plan that would radically change what children across the country learn in history class.

The ultra-conservative majority on the board - none of whom are experts in any academic discipline and many of whom are explicitly anti-science - took the curricula proposed by teachers and made over a hundred changes to "correct" the perceived left-wing bias.

But it gets worse. Since Texas is one of the largest textbook markets in the country, material written to cater to the Texas curricula will find its way into textbooks across the country unless textbook publishers take a stand.

Children who use textbooks conforming to the new standards will not learn anything about the political philosophy of Thomas Jefferson or his thoughts on the separation of church and state. When they learn about the Civil War, they'll have to study Jefferson Davis' inaugural address alongside Abraham Lincoln's. And when they study the civil rights movement they'll have to learn about the "unintended consequences" of Great Society programs, affirmative action and Title IX.

It's outrageous. Education will fail if we can't teach our children history. We can't let these far-right ideologues co-opt our educational system.

Sign the petition to tell the textbook publishers: Don't let Texas rewrite history. -- from the CREDO Action website

Action: Sign the petition

Background: How Christian Were the Founders? and Texas Conservatives Win Curriculum Change (both New York Times)

Saturday Catchup: Must reads (and sees) from the past week

Taxing Cannabis: This Time, Pot Really Might Become Legal by Kevin Drum (Mother Jones 2010-03-26) -- The only thing that can stop legalization in California is massive spending by the prison guards union.

War Crimes: State Department Declares Illegal Drone Attacks to Be Legal as Part of Eternal Global War by David Swanson (AfterDowningStreet 2010-03-26) -- Because they say so, that's why.

Change Watch: The horrible prospect of Supreme Court Justice Cass Sunstein by Glenn Greenwald (Salon 2010-03-26) -- or Elena Kagan, for that matter. Will Obama move SCOTUS to the right?'

The influence of the Israel Lobby on America's Iran policy (Obama continues Bush's Iran policy 3) by Daan de Wit, translated by Ben Kearney (Deep Journal 2010-03-23) -- Why Washington lives in fear the lobby's long reach. Also, see Obama continues Bush's Iran policy 1 and 2.

Jon Stewart does (in) Glenn Beck:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Conservative Libertarian
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

Is this the Birth of a Nation? by Melissa Harris-Lacewell (The Nation 2010-03-22) -- The return of Jim Crow.

Health Reform Bill Summary: The Top 18 Immediate Effects by Jeremy Binckes and Nick Wing (Huntington Post 2010-03-23) | It's not affordable or universal, but it's a damn sight better than what was there before.

The real hero of health care reform: Nancy Pelosi by Mark Greenbaum (Christian Science Monitor 2010-03-22) -- Whatever you think of the outcome, leadership came from the House not the White House.

If you want to see why Carly Fiorina will never be US Senator you have only to watch this wacko ad for Carly Fiorina:

Secrets of the Tea Party: The troubling history of Tea Party leader Dick Armey by Beau Hodai (In These Times 2010-03-21)

Two Right-Wing Billionaire Brothers Are Remaking America for Their Own Benefit by Jim Hightower (AlterNet 2010-03-19) -- The Moneybags behind the corporate coup d'état.

Health Care: The Unbearable Lightness of Reform

by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

That wickedly satirical Ambrose Bierce described politics as "the conduct of public affairs for private advantage."

Bierce vanished to Mexico nearly a hundred years ago -- to the relief of the American political class of his day, one assumes -- but in an eerie way he was forecasting America's political culture today. It seems like most efforts to reform a system that's gone awry -- to clean house and make a fresh start -- end up benefiting the very people who wrecked it in the first place.

Which is why Bierce, in his classic little book, The Devil's Dictionary, defined reform as "a thing that mostly satisfies reformers opposed to reformation."

So we got health care reform this week -- but it's a far cry from reformation. You can't blame President Obama for celebrating what he did get -- he and the Democrats needed some political points on the scoreboard. And imagine the mood in the White House if the vote had gone the other way; they would have been cutting wrists instead of cake.

Give the victors their due: the bill Obama signed expands coverage to many more people, stops some very ugly and immoral practices by the health insurance industry that should have been stopped long ago, and offers a framework for more change down the road, if there's any heart or will left to fight for it.

But reformation? Hardly. For all their screaming and gnashing of teeth, the insurance companies still make out like bandits. Millions of new customers, under penalty of law, will be required to buy the companies' policies, feeding the insatiable greed of their CEO's and filling the campaign coffers of the politicians they wine and dine. Profits are secure; they don't have to worry about competition from a public alternative to their cartel, and they can continue to scam us without fear of antitrust action.

The big drug companies bought their protection before the fight even began, when the White House agreed that if they supported Obama's brand of health care reform -- not reformation -- they could hold onto their monopoly. No imports of cheaper drugs from abroad, no prescriptions filled at a lower price by our friendly Canadian neighbors to the north.

And let's not forget another, gigantic health care winner: a new report from the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity says the battle for reform has been "a bonanza" for the lobbying industry. According to the Center's analysis, "About 1,750 businesses and organizations hired about 4,525 lobbyists, total -- eight for each member of Congress -- and spent at least $1.2 billion to influence health care bills and other issues."

But while we're at it, a cheer for the federal student loan overhaul -- Democrats managed to pass that reform with an end run around powerful lobbyists, cleverly nestling it in the health care reconciliation package.

Nonetheless, under pressure from the lending industry, it, too, was watered down from its original intent. The three Democratic senators who voted against -- Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor -- have all received campaign contributions from Nelnet, the student loan company based in Nelson's home state of Nebraska, or its lobbyists.

(And would you be amazed to learn that one of the student loan industry's lobbyists used to be Blanche Lincoln's chief of staff? The Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call described Kelly Bingel as Lincoln's "alter ego," and cited a former colleague saying Bingel was "first on the list of the Senator's callbacks," words that would sound like heaven to any Washington lobbyist's ears.)

Another case of reform gone off track: this week, a year and a half after Wall Street brought us so close to fiscal hell we could smell the brimstone, a crippled little financial regulation bill seems to be hobbling out of the wreckage, but still faces an array of well-armed forces gunning for it.

No wonder. In the 2008 and 2010 election cycles, members of the Senate Banking Committee -- which sent the bill to Congress this week -- received more than $39 million from Wall Street and the banks; members of the House Financial Services Committee raked in more than $21 million -- so far. Just how serious do you think they're going to be about true reform?

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd of Connecticut has sounded like a champion of reform ever since he announced he will not run for reelection. It's about time. Since 2005, his top ten campaign contributors have included Citigroup, AIG, Merrill Lynch and the now deceased Bear Stearns, all front-line players in bringing on the financial calamity.

Then there are the Republicans, shamelessly hawking their favors en masse to the highest bidder. The website Politico.com reports that the reelection campaign of Tennessee Senator Bob Corker -- who's one of the key negotiators on financial reform -- sent an e-mail to Wall Street lobbyists and others soliciting contributions of up to $10,000 for a chance to meet or grab a meal with the senator.

Informed of the e-mail, Corker was shocked -- shocked! -- saying the e-mail was "grotesque and inappropriate." But did House Republican leader John Boehner think it was inappropriate last week when he advised the American Bankers Association to fight back against the proposed rules and regulations?

This is, of course, the same John Boehner who in the summer of 1995 walked around the floor of the House of Representatives handing out checks to his fellow Republicans -- checks from a tobacco company. And the same John Boehner who was the grateful recipient of campaign contributions from the four Native American tribes represented by Jack Abramoff, the corrupt lobbyist currently cooling his heels in a Federal corrections facility.

So wouldn't it have been fascinating to have been a fly on the wall earlier this year when Boehner sat down for drinks with Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase? Reportedly, he invited Dimon and the rest of the financial community to pony up the cash and see what good things follow.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Republicans already were receiving an increasing share of campaign contributions from the Street. In the game of reform, it's the political version of loading the dice.

We can't know for sure what Ambrose Bierce would have made of all this; what The Devil's Dictionary author would say about the current DC scams. But he might have agreed that the only answer to organized money is organized people. That would be one hell of a reformation.

Bill Moyers is managing editor and Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program Bill Moyers Journal, which airs Friday night on PBS. Check local airtimes or comment at The Moyers Blog.

This article originally appeared on CommonDreams.Org.

Finance Reform: What A Progressive Victory Would Look Like

Ending Corporate Welfare To Help Regular Americans

"Yesterday was actually big victory for progressivism. Not in health care, but in student loan reform. Finally, a wasteful and worthless corporate welfare program was eliminated. The taxpayer dollars that were being thrown away on private profits will now be redirected to help low income students attend college and pay down the debt. This is what progressive victories look like."

The rest of the story: What Progressive Victory Looks Like: Ending Corporate Welfare To Help Regular Americans by Jon Walker (FireDogLake 2010-03-26)

See, also: Clunker Healthcare Bill Protects Private Insurers Damages Democracy by Billy Wharton (ConterCurrents 2010-03-25)

quote unquote: Mario Savio (1942-1996) on the obligation to resist illegitimate authority

“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious -- makes you so sick at heart -- that you can’t take part. You can’t even passively take part. And you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that the machine will be prevented from working at all.” – Mario Savio, 1964

Mario Savio (Wikipedia)
Freedom's Orator: Mario Savio and the Radical Legacy of the 1960s by Robert Cohen (Oxford University Press, 2009).

War Crimes: Spanish criminals get our criminals off the hook

The big news while I was in Spain last month was the investigation by a local judge of the policy of systematic, institutionalized torture by Bush administration officials as part of the "war on terror." When I got home, I wasn't surprised to find the story hadn't gotten similar play in American papers, even though the six former Bush officials in the judge's sights include former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, torture memoist John Yoo, and David Addington, Cheney's chief of staff.

The judge in question, Baltazar Garzon, one of six investigating magistrates of the Criminal Court of Spain, acts on the legal theory that there is no statue of limitations on war crimes or crimes against humanity. He has pursued investigations of massacres of political opponents by Spanish fascists, murderous regimes in Chile and Argentina, and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's involvement in Operation Condor.

Now it looks like the Bush co-conspirators can rest easier in their beds, if not their souls. Judge Garzon is being targeted by the Spanish Right for investigating "disappearances" during the Spanish Civil War and Franscisco Franco era in contradiction to the granting of an official amnesty by the Spanish state. Since it seems clear the United States will not clean its own house with regard to criminal activity by past leaders, all we can hope for is now is that an international tribunal like the World Court will be moved to hold responsible for their crimes the torture perps of the Bush era.

Further reading:
Spain considers prosecuting U.S. officials for torture by Marjorie Miller (Los Angeles Times 2009-05-06)
Spain rejects US 'torture' probe (BBC News 2009-04-16)
Spanish judge opens probe into Guantanamo torture (Agence France-Presse 2009-04-16)
Spain Allows Case Against Noted Judge by Andrés Cala (New York Times 2010-03-25)

Also, although it is only tangently related, the drily titled Secondary Wars and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century is worth filing for future reference.

We may be in more trouble than we know

Republicans on Obama:

Two-thirds think he's a socialist, 57% suspect he's a Muslim, and 24% say "he may be the Antichrist."

It is time for every American to hold the GOP accountable for tolerating, shielding and encouraging foul, mean-spirited & bigoted behavior.

Press Release O' the Day: Real Socialists Don't Heart Obamacare

Reality check:

Socialist Party USA Co-Chair Opposes Obama Healthcare Bill

March 22, 2009- Co-chair of the Socialist Party USA, Billy Wharton, opposes the healthcare bill passed yesterday by the House of Representatives and scheduled to be signed into law by President Barack Obama on Tuesday. Wharton’s opposition is based on the belief that this bill is not a reform. Instead, it is a corporate restructuring of the health insurance industry created to protect the profit margins of private insurance companies.

The bill passed by the House yesterday would mandate all Americans to purchase health insurance coverage or face a fine. It would also create health insurance exchanges, an idea crafted by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, where people would purchase insurance from private companies. Those not eligible for Medicaid but who still could not afford to purchase insurance would receive public funds from the federal government to purchase bare bones coverage insurance plans from private insurers.

Wharton opposes this restructuring on the grounds that the mandates allow private insurers to use the coercive power of the state to enhance their private profits. Insurance credits will serve as a public subsidy to private companies. It is yet another case of public money that could be used for necessary social programs being funneled towards companies that engage in practices that are abusive and detrimental to the overall society. He believes the bill is also a demonstration of how deeply corporate lobbyists and campaign contributions have infected the country’s political system.

“This is not a healthcare reform bill,” says Wharton, “It is instead a corporate restructuring of the American healthcare system designed to enhance the profits of private health insurance companies disguised with the language of reform”

Instead, Wharton believes that public funds would be better spent in creating a national single-payer system. Democratic socialists see such a system of open access to care as one part of a larger transition toward making healthcare a guaranteed human right for all. Wharton calls for people to take power into their own hands by supporting the demand for single-payer health insurance and by conducting a red and green rebellion at the voting booth and in the streets to claim our human rights.

Wharton encourages people to visit the website of the Socialist Party USA to gain more information about the struggle for healthcare and the organization’s broader vision of a democratic socialist society. -- Socialist Party USA

There you go. Word's still out on whether he's the Antichrist, but at least Obama is not a socialist.

Music: Mistaken for Strangers by The National

See, also: Fake Empire by The National

"Mistaken for Strangers" is from The National's album Boxer.

Health Care Reform: Mr. Weiner kicks butt

If health care reform had been left in the hands of Anthony Weiner (and Dennis Kucinich and John Conyers and Alan Grayson and Sheldon Whitehouse and Sherrod Brown and Bernie Sanders), the bill would deliver real affordable universal care and ass would have been kicked to get it done. Watch how Weiner does it:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Despite lukewarm expressions of support from the president, it was never intended by the White House that a public option would be part of the final plan. Now, however, a majority of senators is on record in support of a public option to create competition for the private insurers and thus lower costs. When the dust settles and the Senate bill has been passed and amended, will a public option survive, or did the senators who indicated support for competition -- the 43 who signed the pledge and the eight others who said they were "open" to it -- do so only because it seemed a safe bet at the time that they'd never have to make good on it?

Health Care: Is that all there is?

“We are on the verge of taking a decisive step to providing access to all Americans, to affordable quality health care. If we do nothing, the system will go bankrupt, premiums will keep skyrocketing and benefits will keep getting slashed.” -- California Democratic Rep. Henry A. Waxman, a steward of the leadership's version health care reform in the House.

While this is true as far as it goes, if the Congress doesn't do enough, the system also will go bankrupt, premiums will keep skyrocketing and benefits will keep getting slashed. Although Obamacare delivers improvements over the current system, it doesn't do nearly enough to cut costs. The irony is that instead of shutting down the rapacious, corrupt and inefficient private insurance industry, the current plan expands it and cements it in place. The industry already has undo influence on policy; after the "reform" delivers 35 million more policy holders and $500 billion in public money into its pockets over the next decade, real reform will become impossible. The Democrats are about to force people to buy health insurance products no matter how substandard they are or how much they cost. This is not what people think they're going to get when they vote for Democrats. In addition, some of the public funds that will go to subsidize the private insurance industry will be taken from Medicare. The most popular, effective and necessary social welfare program in American history will be weakened to strengthen the private insurance giants. This is not what people think they're going to get when they vote for Democrats. As Harvard Department of Social Medicine professor Marcia Angell MD told Bill Moyers, "we have chosen, alone among all advanced countries, to leave health care to for-profit industries, to leave health care to businesses that then distribute health care as a market commodity according to the ability to pay and not according to medical need." Nor is this what people thought they were getting when they gave Democrats control of the legislature and the White House.

The rest of the story: Bill Moyers' Journal (2010-03-05)

Health Care Reform: Medicare For All

It's still the best option, as Florida Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) blogged yesterday on The Hill:

Health care reform -- here's where we are. The House of Representatives is about to vote on a Senate bill without a public option. It looks like the reconciliation amendment will not have a public option. The House bill had a public option, but once the House passes the Senate bill, that's history.

Which is why I introduced H.R. 4789, the Public Option Act. This simple four-page bill lets any American buy into Medicare at cost. You want it, you pay for it, you're in. It adds nothing to the deficit; you pay what it costs.

Let's face it. Health insurance companies charge as much money as possible, and they provide as little care as possible. The difference is called profit. You can't blame them for it; that's what a corporation does. Birds got to fly, fish got to swim, health insurers got to rip you off. And if you get really expensive, they've got to pull the plug on you. So for those of us who would like to stay alive, we need a public option.

In many areas of the country, one or two insurers have over 80% of the market. They can charge anything they want. And when you get sick, they can flip the bird at you. So we need a public option.

And they face no real competition because it costs billions of dollars just to set up a national health care network. In fact, the only one that's nationwide is . . . Medicare. And we limit that to one-eight of the population. It's like saying that only seniors can drive on federal highways. We really need a public option.

And to the right-wing loons who call it socialism, we say, "if you want to be a slave to the insurance companies, that's fine. If you want 30% of your premiums to go to 'administrative costs' and billion-dollar bonuses for insurance CEOs who figure out new and creative ways to deny you the care you need to stay healthy and alive, that's fine. But don't you try to dictate to me that I can't have a public option!"

And there is a way left to get it. By insisting on a vote on H.R. 4789. Three votes on health care, not two. The Senate bill, the reconciliation amendments, and the Public Option Act.

We got 50 co-sponsors for this bill in two days. Including five powerful committee chairman. But we need more.

Sign our Petition at WeWantMedicare.com.

Call. Write. Visit. Do whatever you can do to get you Congressman to co-sponsor this bill, and push it to a vote. Right now, before it's too late.

Let's do it!

In the Senate-Obama plan, universality is achieved at the expense of affordability. Regardless of what happens in the House on Sunday, H.R. 4789 should be voted up as soon as possible.

If someone wants to arrange your funeral, remember: it's not about you. Live with it.

Health Care Reform: House Democrats are sacrificing their seats for a plan they don't believe in

The House of Representatives will vote Sunday for a bill nobody wants. Partly as a result, 2010 will be a Democratic massacree. It doesn't have to be that way.

The House Democrats don’t need to vote for a bill with the “Cornhusker kickback,” the “Louisiana Purchase,” the publicly toxic excise tax, the hated individual mandate to buy private insurance, or the special Medicare Advantage deal for Florida, and they would still be able to pass comprehensive health care reform. All it would take is for Joe Biden plus 50 Senate Democrats, willing, as a result of unprecedented Republican obstructionism, to exploit the existing rules to the maximum extent possible. Heck, House Democrats should proceed with the strategy anyway and drop the burden for passing health care reform squarely on the Senate Democrats instead.

The rest of the story: Why Do House Democrats Care More about Protecting Weird Senate Rules than Protecting Their Seats? by Jon Walker (FireDogLake 2010-03-16)

Press Release O' the Day: ACLU Seeks Information On Predator Drone Program

Group Files Lawsuit For Data On Targeted Killings Of Suspected Terrorists And Civilian Casualties

NEW YORK - The American Civil Liberties Union filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit today demanding that the government disclose the legal basis for its use of unmanned drones to conduct targeted killings overseas. In particular, the lawsuit asks for information on when, where and against whom drone strikes can be authorized, the number and rate of civilian casualties and other basic information essential for assessing the wisdom and legality of using armed drones to conduct targeted killings.

"The public has a right to know whether the targeted killings being carried out in its name are consistent with international law and with the country's interests and values," said Jonathan Manes, a legal fellow with the ACLU National Security Project. "The Obama administration should disclose basic information about the program, including its legal basis and limits, and the civilian casualty toll thus far."

The CIA and the military have used unmanned drones to target and kill individuals not only in Afghanistan and Iraq but also in Pakistan and, in at least one case in 2002, Yemen. The technology allows U.S. personnel to observe targeted individuals in real time and launch missiles intended to kill them from control centers located thousands of miles away. Recent reports, including public statements from the director of national intelligence, indicate that U.S. citizens have been placed on the list of targets who can be hunted and killed with drones.

The ACLU made an initial FOIA request for information on the drone program in January. Today's lawsuit against the Defense Department, the State Department and the Justice Department seeks to enforce that request. None of the three agencies have provided any documents in response to the request, nor have they given any reason for withholding documents. The CIA answered the ACLU's request by refusing to confirm or deny the existence of any relevant documents. The CIA is not a defendant in today's lawsuit because the ACLU will first appeal the CIA's non-response to the Agency Release Panel.

"The government's use of drones to conduct targeted killings raises complicated questions – not only legal questions, but policy and moral questions as well," said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project. "These kinds of questions ought to be discussed and debated publicly, not resolved secretly behind closed doors. While the Obama administration may legitimately withhold intelligence information as well as sensitive information about military strategy, it should disclose basic information about the scope of the drone program, the legal basis for the program and the civilian casualties that have resulted from the program."

The ACLU's lawsuit seeks, in addition to information about the legal basis for the drone program, information about how the program is overseen and data regarding the number of civilians and non-civilians killed in the strikes. Estimates of civilian casualties provided by anonymous government officials quoted in the press and by various non-governmental analysts differ dramatically, from the dozens to the hundreds, giving an incomplete and inconsistent picture of the human cost of the program.

Are there legal, ethical or policy justifications for a program that by all outward appearances violates common sense, common decency, and the rules of civilized behavior?

Link to the ACLU's complaint
Link to the ACLU's FOIA request

Accountability: Freedom of Information - Online

The Sunlight Foundation has proposed Federal legislation that would require government to provide meaningful access to its information online. In the words of its organizational sign-on letter, the Public Online Information Act (POIA)

requires government information that is public to be made available in the broadest, most accessible manner — online. Our vital public information can enhance accountability, spur commerce, and empower citizenship, but only if we create and require meaningful digital access to it. POIA creates this meaningful access through two mechanisms.

First, POIA mandates that the Executive Branch make public records permanently available on the Internet, with a few exceptions....

Second, POIA creates an advisory body of government officials and private citizens to ensure that all three branches of government...will coordinate the development of government-wide Internet disclosure policies.

The act also creates procedures similar to those available under Freedom of Information Act to enable organizations and individual citizen to pry loose information from reluctant bureaucrats.

Sunlight Foundation proposes Public Online Information Act, LII Announce (Legal Information Institute, Cornell University Law School 2010-03-16)
More about the Public Online Information Act (Sunlight Foundation)
Read a summary of the Public Online Information Act or read the entire bill

Perfect is the enemy of good. But so is mediocre. -- John Gabree

Tibi gratias ago pro caelo paulo Pueri

"Pope in sex scandal":

Think he'll step down to spend more time with his family?

A little late in the day to "find Jesus."

The Long War: Why Hayden's Wrong, Why Pelosi's Lying

[I was about to post about Tom Hayden's odd, defeatist piece in The Nation seeming to hold antiwar members of Congress responsible for prolonging the war by challenging it -- "The war now has greater legitimacy" -- but David Swanson said it better than I could]

by David Swanson (AfterDowningStreet.org 2010-02-12)

Tom Hayden wants peace, but he's sincerely mistaken about how to get it. He claims that Wednesday's unsuccessful vote to end the war in Afghanistan makes ending the war less likely, and that the way to end the war is to pass a bill that would then have to pass the Senate and the President, a bill requiring an exit strategy, any exit strategy -- it could be "redeployment" to Iran in 2038 or anything else.

I'm not against moving bills forward, even meaningless bills if they send a helpful message. I'm not against ending the war in a way that leaves the president in charge of Congress, if that proves the fastest way to end the war -- even though it leaves us in a state in which more wars are inevitable. I don't think we're especially likely to force the House to cut off the funding next month.

But forcing a debate on the war, and forcing congress members to put their names down on one side or the other, does not make those members more likely to stick with those positions. It makes them more likely to oppose the wars. Why? Because it raises public awareness and public pressure. Those who voted to end the war are now being thanked and rewarded and pressured to vote no on funding what they just claimed to want to end. Those who voted to keep the war in Afghanistan going are now being pressured to change that position in a way that they were not when all was silent. Hayden, of all people, is leaving the public out of his calculations.

If we are handed an opportunity to -- at least temporarily -- block the funding, because all the Republicans vote No for some unrelated reason, we will need to seize that opportunity. It will increase the same dynamic of public involvement. It will advance a strategy that is one of the most likely to eventually end the wars. And it will advance an understanding of power dynamics in Washington that will discourage wars by shifting war powers back away from presidents, something that will also be needed in the coming months if we are to end the war in Iraq that too many people naively believe we've already ended.

Those who think that opposing wars should involve, you know, opposing wars, should build on the recent debate and vote, by joining in upcoming actions including:

Brown Bag Vigils, and Peace of the Action.

Pelosi does not sincerely want anything substantive and tends to lie whenever her lips move. And here's what she says about war and impeachment:

Pelosi: The issue that … bothers me the most is the issue of the Iraq War. There's so much evidence that there was no reason for us to go into that war at that time or to go into it period. But to think that thousands of lives have been lost, lives affected to the tune of hundreds of thousands, the cost in terms of our military readiness it has not made our military stronger, in terms of dollars to the treasury, but again most of all loss of lives our precious treasure on this war and there was really no price to pay for it so . . .
Maddow: Do you regret having taken impeachment off the table?
Pelosi: No, no, I believe that the if there was evidence, if we could have the evidence to impeach the president then that could come forward. Just because I say it's off doesn't mean if the evidence is there that something wouldn't go forward. It's not a question of not knowing where the culpability is, it's what you can demonstrate and what you can prove. But I do think that those who had a hand in perpetrating not just going to war but misrepresentations to the American people - . Every piece of evidence that we have points to the fact that there was no reason in terms of weapons of mass destruction to go into Iraq…. It's one of the great tragedies.

So it is. And truly tragic as well is the brazenness of it. Pelosi's poodle, John Conyers, who backed off impeachment at her command, offered a wide and varying and self-contradictory list of excuses why, but never present among those excuses was any claim of lacking evidence. Conyers' committee staff spent most of the relevant years publishing books documenting the evidence. His excuses were about electoral campaigns and the corporate media and the likelihood of winning conviction in the Senate.

The level of mendacity in Pelosi's remarks above, her dedication to obeying the president (articulated just prior to what I've quoted), and her allegiance to the war machine: this is what we are up against. We will not defeat it without a massive public movement. We will not generate a massive public movement if we are afraid of raising the issue, pressing our demands forward, naming names, and rewarding and punishing elected officials as merited.

This is a life and death struggle, brothers and sisters, and it's not going to be won through fear, stealth, or timidity.

Challenging the security state is not going to be easy, but militarism can only be stopped by being confronted directly. Hayden's muddled incrementalism strikes me as of a piece with the magical thinking that caused him to urge Barack Obama's election even in the face of clear evidence throughout the 2008 campaign that the candidate would be just the sort of chief executive he has turned out to be. The vote in the House is a small step in a long road to peace.

Health Care Reform: In one day, Grayson piles up another 40 co-sponsors for Medicare buy-in bill

by Chris Bowers (Open Left 2010-03-11)

In just two days, Alan Grayson has piled up 50 co-sponsors to his Medicare buy-in bill, which is designed as a stand-alone bill rather than as an amendment to the health reform bill. Here is the complete list of 50 co-sponsors:

50 CURRENT COSPONSORS : Bob Filner, Jan Schakowsky, Barney Frank, Dennis Kucinich, Donna Edwards, Jared Polis, Chellie Pingree, Sheila Jackson Lee, Carol Shea-Porter, Diane Watson, John Lewis, Anthony Weiner, Jerrold Nadler, Nydia Velazquez, Keith Ellison, Loretta Sanchez, Hank Johnson, Maxine Waters, Luis Gutierrez, Lynn Woolsey, Marcy Kaptur, Charles Rangel, Patrick Kennedy, Raul Grijalva, Donna Christian-Christensen, John Olver, Corrine Brown, Eddie Bernice Johnson, Marcia L. Fudge, Danny K. Davis, Pedro Pierluisi, Grace Napolitano, Alcee Hastings, John Hall, Shelley Berkley, John Conyers, Jim McGovern, Phil Hare, Betty Sutton, Jim McDermott, Gregorio Sablan, Maurice Hinchey, Carolyn Maloney, Barbara Lee, Elijah Cummings, Gregory Meeks, Edolphus Towns, Al Green, David Wu, and Rush Holt.

Every indication has always been that there is overwhelming support for a Medicare buy-in among Congressional Democrats. This could very well pass as a stand-alone bill, especially in 2011 once filibuster reform has taken place. This is definitely one of the ways that progressives can viably continue the fight for real health reform no matter what happens to the current bill.

Forty-one senators now pledge to vote for the public option.

The White House: it doesn't have "political support."

The Military: DoD’s new idea portal

The War Department has a new website, Defense Solutions, designed to encourage companies and inventors not already supplying the armed forces to come in with new ideas.

"Propose an Idea -- Funding decisions fast

"The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is looking for a few really good ideas –- that have the potential to advance our military’s missions. This program focuses on the development of leading edge, research-oriented technology culminating in the assembly of a pre-acquisition prototype or multiple prototypes suitable for field testing.

"DefenseSolutions.gov is a portal through which innovative companies, entrepreneurs, and research organizations can offer potential solutions to the DoD needs. Although anyone can submit an idea, this portal, and the team behind it, primarily are designed to encourage companies to participate that have never considered doing business with the DoD.

Use this portal to submit your ideas and get an initial response in less than 30 days. For the time being, we can accept ideas in only one theme area, but new themes will be added. To begin the submission process for a current theme, click on the theme below, or join our e-mail list and we will notify you when other topics are added.

Our process depends on direct communication with you when you submit an attractive idea in an area needing a solution.

Unfortunately, the DoD appears currently to be unable to hold more than one idea at a time in its collective head, so for the nonce new ideas are being accepted only in Battlefield Forensics, that is, in the application of criminal forensic capabilities and technologies typically used in law enforcement to meet needs in national security and counter-terrorism. "Military operations in the Global War on Terrorism," it says, "demand new capabilities from forensic science, ones that can be used on the battlefield, in exigent circumstances, by non-professionals."

Coming soon to CBS: "AfPak CSI"