Ballistic

Trying not to go there, but it's hard when faced with stories like this one.

Aravosis makes it sound pretty awful, and it is. I do want to point out one thing though, before I go into my own diatribe:

We just got the brief from reader Lavi Soloway. It's pretty despicable, and gratuitously homophobic. It reads as if it were written by one of George Bush's top political appointees.

It probably was. Remember, Bush not only stacked the Justice Department with ideologues, he put them all in civil service jobs before he left so they wouldn't have to resign when the new administration took office. Odds on this all comes out of a Bush holdover, or a group of them, with their own agenda, which is not going to be gay-friendly -- the reasoning has that sort of John Yoo flavor to it, after all.

However, my next bet is that Obama does nothing to repudiate this brief. Then I will go ballistic.

Conscience

Barbara O'Brien does a slam on the new Bush rules allowing any medical practitioner, pharmacist, bedpan emptier, you-name-it, to refuse to do their jobs for reasons of "conscience."

Shall we just mention in passing that using the word "conscience" in this context is itself a perversion?

She also manages to drag in Dennis Prager, who has once again shown himself to be a complete idiot -- she links to a piece he recently published (oops -- bad link on her blog; I'll see if I can find a good one. Update: found it -- at Townhall, of course -- where else?) that is, as usual with Prager, more notable for what it avoids than what it addresses. I mean, I, who have no investment whatsoever in male-female relationships, couldn't stop laughing; I imagine anyone who's actually married to someone of the opposite sex would have an aneurysm.

The regs, of course, are disgusting and probably unconsitutional. Time to sue the gov, people.

Partisan

Note the "Bush Countdown" widget just below my profile. I'm sure there are those who will consider that overly, even rabidly partisan, hateful, and displaying a bad case of Bush Derangement Syndrome.

My thinking is simply, doesn't it make sense to count the days until the worst president in history is -- well, history?

Getting Real About Military Tribunals

Just a passing note, since it's one of those rushed mornings, but this post by digby drives the point home again: the military commissions trying the Guantanamo detainees are a travesty:

It isn't just the ACLU or liberal hippie bloggers who see this as a travesty. Four prosecutors have resigned in protest. They are military professionals, the most rigid group of people on the planet, trained to take orders and do as they're told. And yet they cannot live with what they see.

This is the fourth prosecutor to resign. The fourth.

Protecting Civil Liberties -- Bush Style

Here's a good summation of the latest revelations about the NSA wiretapping program:

NSA officials have intentionally intercepted, listened to and passed around the phone calls of hundreds of innocent U.S. citizens working overseas, including journalists and international aid workers including the International Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders, even when it was definite the calls were not related to anything to do with national security, while the government misled the American public about the scope of its surveillance activities. But rather than listening for possible connections to suspected terrorists, it seems what really interests those NSA guys with headphones down in the basement is… sex.

What bothers me is not the content of the calls being recorded, but the fact that a) they were listening at all, and b) the fact that they were listening at all.

The big sticking point for me (and I will admit that, under certain circumstances, secret wiretaps might be justified, but those circumstances are pretty few) is that any government activity is prone to abuse, especially under this administration. This just proves it.

And this wasn't a "few bad apples":

The two intercept operators have independently come forward to blow the whistle, feeling what they were doing was illegal, improper, immoral, and shouldn't be done. Both intercept operators said their military commanders rejected questions about listening in to these private conversations. ‘It was just always, that , you know, your job is not to question. Your job is to collect and pass on the information.’ Kinne also resented the waste of time spent listening to innocent Americans instead of looking for the terrorist needle in the haystack, underscoring the failure of the program.

‘By casting the net so wide and continuing to collect on Americans and aid organizations, it's almost like they're making the haystack bigger and it's harder to find that piece of information that might actually be useful to somebody,’ she said.‘You're actually hurting our ability to effectively protect our national security.’

Read the whole thing. And watch the video -- the story following the NSA story is about my sheriff. He's got my vote. And Rachel Maddow is great.

Torture

Check out this post from D-Day. It's long, but pretty thorough, with good analysis.

If this administration doesn't wind up being the most reviled in American history, there is something seriously wrong with historians.

Environmental Note

This is a speech by Severn Suzuki, 12 years old, at the 1992 environmental summit in Rio de Janeiro. Pay attention:



I think she sort of says it.

And then we get this sort of crap from the preznit:

The American leader, who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter."

He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.

Mr Bush, whose second and final term as President ends at the end of the year, then left the meeting at the Windsor Hotel in Hokkaido where the leaders of the world's richest nations had been discussing new targets to cut carbon emissions.

I think describing him as a self-absorbed frat boy is being much too generous.

Bush and Natural Disasters

Myanmar, the Pacific tsunami, NOLA, you name it:

This, from D at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

Theodore Roosevelt, in a message to Congress following the eruption of Mont Pele on the island of Martinique, 12 May 1902:

One of the greatest calamities in history has fallen upon our neighboring island of Martinique. The consul of the United States at Guadeloupe has telegraphed from Fort de France, under date of yesterday, that the disaster is complete; that the city of St. Pierre has ceased to exist; and that the American consul and his family have perished. He is informed that 30,000 people have lost their lives and that 50,000 are homeless and hungry; that there is urgent need of all kinds of provisions, and that the visit of vessels for the work of supply and rescue is imperatively required . . . .

I have directed the departments of the Treasury, of War, and of the Navy to take such measures for the relief of these stricken people as lies within the Executive discretion, and I earnestly commend this case of unexampled disaster to the generous consideration of the Congress. For this purpose I recommend that an appropriation of $500,000 be made, to be immediately available.

Do I have to say anything more?

The Legacy

I've pretty much avoided the torture discourse, simply because to me it's a no-brainer: It's wrong on every level. Period. Maybe I should be writing about it more, just to keep it in front of you, but it disgusts me as much as the fact-free anti-gay right (and, come to think of it, it's a lot of the same people), and you know what I think. However, Digby and her colleagues keep bringing it up, bless their hearts, and you can do a lot worse than note this post which is largely a reprise of a post from 2005:

Today, [Jason Vest] has written a piece on torture for the National Journal that is fascinating because he's spoken to old guard CIA who have had some experience with this stuff in the past. They all agree that the moral dimension is huge, but there are good practical reasons for not doing it as well. These range from the difficulty in getting allies to cooperate because of their distaste for such methods to the fact that the information is unreliable.

But the thing I found most interesting is the observation that it does something quite horrible to the perpetrators as well as the victims:

"If you talk to people who have been tortured, that gives you a pretty good idea not only as to what it does to them, but what it does to the people who do it," he said. "One of my main objections to torture is what it does to the guys who actually inflict the torture. It does bad things. I have talked to a bunch of people who had been tortured who, when they talked to me, would tell me things they had not told their torturers, and I would ask, 'Why didn't you tell that to the guys who were torturing you?' They said that their torturers got so involved that they didn't even bother to ask questions." Ultimately, he said -- echoing Gerber's comments -- "torture becomes an end unto itself. . . ."

To some extent civilization is nothing more than leashing the beast within. When you go to the dark side, no matter what the motives, you run a terrible risk of destroying yourself in the process. I worry about the men and women who are engaging in this torture regime. This is dangerous to their psyches. But this is true on a larger sociological scale as well. For many, many moons, torture has been a simple taboo --- you didn't question its immorality any more than you would question the immorality of pedophilia. You know that it's wrong on a visceral, gut level. Now we are debating it as if there really is a question as to whether it's immoral --- and, more shockingly, whether it's a positive good. Our country is now openly discussing the efficacy of torture as a method for extracting information.

The submerged part of the Bush Legacy: not only do we have former soldiers wandering around with mental conditions that mostly aren't even acknowledged, much less treated, but we now have a whole generation of torturers who are in the same boat, in a country that has come to see something that civilized societies regard as completely immoral as business as usual.

Thanks, George. Heckuva job.

Who'da Thunkit?

Looks like the House has not only showed some spine but is also showing the finger toward the White House. From The Gavel:

The House has just passed the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 3773, to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to establish a procedure for authorizing certain acquisitions of foreign intelligence, and for other purposes, by a vote of 213-197-1. The revised House legislation to amend FISA grants new authorities for conducting electronic surveillance against foreign targets while preserving the requirement that the government obtain an individualized FISA court order, based on probable cause, when targeting Americans at home or abroad. The House bill also strongly enhances oversight of the Administration’s surveillance activities. Finally, the House bill does not provide retroactive immunity for telecom companies but allows the courts to determine whether lawsuits should proceed.The House has just passed the House amendment to the Senate amendment to H.R. 3773, to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to establish a procedure for authorizing certain acquisitions of foreign intelligence, and for other purposes, by a vote of 213-197-1. The revised House legislation to amend FISA grants new authorities for conducting electronic surveillance against foreign targets while preserving the requirement that the government obtain an individualized FISA court order, based on probable cause, when targeting Americans at home or abroad. The House bill also strongly enhances oversight of the Administration’s surveillance activities. Finally, the House bill does not provide retroactive immunity for telecom companies but allows the courts to determine whether lawsuits should proceed.

As if that weren't enough, get this:

Speaker Pelosi:“Why would the Administration oppose a judicial determination of whether the companies already have immunity? There are at least three explanations:

“First, the President knows that it was the Administration’s incompetence in failing to follow the procedures in statute that prevented immunity from being conveyed – that’s one possibility. They simply didn’t do it right. Second, the Administration’s legal argument that the surveillance requests were lawfully authorized was wrong; or public reports that the surveillance activities undertaken by the companies went far beyond anything about which any Member of Congress was notified, as is required by the law.

“None of these alternatives is attractive but they clearly demonstrate why the Administration’s insistence that Congress provide retroactive immunity has never been about national security or about concerns for the companies; it has always been about protecting the Administration.”

Some days you start to have a little bit of confidence in the government again.

Bush will veto the bill, of course. That will give us a good take on his priorities. (As if we didn't know.)

What most refreshing about this is Pelosi giving a speech in which she actually said in so many words what everyone knows, which is so unlike Washington.

Thanks again to Joe Sudbay.

More on the Next War

Spencer Ackerman has a pithy analysis of what Fallon's resignation portends:

Gates said in a press conference just now that no one should think the move reflects any substantive change in policy. That sure won’t be how Teheran sees it. The Iranians will consider Fallon’s resignation to indicate that the bombing begins in the next five minutes.

The Iranians may well be correct. The problem is, we don't know what the administration's policy is. I've gotten to the point where anything rational that comes out of the White House is probably a smokescreen for what they really want to do.

I've seen a couple of pieces pro and con on Fallon's resignation centered around disagreement with policy and civilian control of the military. Digby notes:

CNN military expert General David Grange (ret.) says that this is how an officer responds when he disagrees with an administration's policies and feels decisions have been made that he can't in good conscience carry out. I don't know if Grange knows Fallon or knows his motives, but he seems to think that Fallon resigned in protest --- which is actually worse than if he were fired.

The problem with the "civilian control" point of view is simply that senior military officers are not only there to implement policy, they are there to advise on policy, which to me is a much more important function. The degree of public disagreement is variable -- Colin Powell was outrageously insubordinate over DADT and became a media darling -- not so muich for his position as for publicly disagreeing with president Clinton. Contrast the fact that Bush has systematically disposed of every senior officer who showed any independence, leaving us with a bunch of yes-men leading the military.

To get back to what our policy toward Iran is, who knows? Dick Cheney, maybe. Our general goal seems to be to destabilize the Middle East as thoroughly as possible (shades of Bush I, who refused to end the Gulf War, leaving it for Clinton to clean up). Do I think that Bush will be rattling sabers? Sorry -- I'm so cynical about this administration and it's overriding agenda of politics uber alles that my only possible answer is, of course -- there's an election coming up and the Republicans are in serious trouble. Watch for a lot of tension along about late August. (Digby thinks the saber-rattling will be a facet of incompetence. I'm not so sure. I think it's going to be deliberate -- not that these people know what they're doing, but they have mastered the art of fucking up big-time. However, I think her idea of building an infrastructure to remain in power while out of power has a lot to be said for it.)

Whales 1, Bush 0

I haven't commented much on Bush's environmental policies, mostly because they're so reprehensible as to defy commentary -- the outrage factor goes off the scale, leaving me, for a change, speechless.

Here's some good news (thanks to Nicole Bell at C&L):

A federal appeals court has ruled that the Navy must protect endangered whales from the potentially lethal effects of underwater sonar during anti-submarine training off the Southern California coast, rejecting President Bush's attempt to exempt the exercises from environmental laws.

In a Friday night ruling rushed into print ahead of the next scheduled exercise on Monday, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a federal judge's decision that no emergency existed that would justify Bush's intervention.

The Navy is engaged in "long-planned, routine training exercises" and has had ample time to take the steps that the law requires - conduct a thorough review of the environmental consequences and propose effective measures to minimize the harm to whales and other marine mammals, the three-judge panel said.

The court noted that the Navy has been conducting similar exercises for years, has agreed in the past to restrictions like the ones it is now challenging, and was sued by environmental groups in the current case nearly a year ago. The lower-court judge reviewed the evidence and found nothing to support the Navy's claim that the protective measures would interfere with vital training or hamper national security, the court said.

It should be patently obvious that animals that rely on sound for communication and navigation are going to be affected by sonar. Bush's response? "National security," which the court quite rightly found to be bullshit.

He also tried to declare the Navy above the law -- big surprise! -- after an earlier ruling on this case from the district court in Los Angeles:

The president's Jan. 15 order said the restrictions would interfere with training that was "essential to national security."

But the appeals court said that federal regulations in place since 1978 allow a president to override the environmental law only in an emergency, and that the administration had failed to demonstrate any "sudden unanticipated events" had occurred in this case.

Bush's actions were also constitutionally questionable, the court said, because he cited no evidence that Cooper had not already reviewed, but instead merely disagreed with her conclusions. Under the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers, "it was the job of the appellate court, and not the executive branch," to decide whether the judge erred, said Judge Betty Fletcher in the court ruling.

As might be expected, Dave Neiwert at Orcinus has posted on this story some while back. He had, I think, the right take on the motivation for this ploy:

Last summer I reported earlier that something was afoot with the administration regarding the sonar policy:

One thing I've learned from watching this administration is that when it breaks well-established norms, and then tries to pretend that doing so is normal, it's all a pretense to cover something devious in the offing. Think of the case of the eight fired U.S. attorneys, an action that reflected the White House's now-evident determination to politicize the Justice Department.

In this case, the administration is short-circuiting the normal hearing process -- typically, the public is given 60 to 90 days for comment, not 14 -- because it's self-evident that it is determined to deploy its deadly new sonar in the Puget Sound, the public -- and the wildlife -- be damned. What ulterior motives lie beneath that are hard to discern.

Well, I think we can see what those motives were now: To keep the "unitary presidency" ball moving forward, expanding its purview to even environmental policy.

The goal is simply to create a presidency that is the sole arm of government. It's impacted the rest of our policies badly. Why should we think that Bush has any sympathy for the environment?

In Place of Habeas Corpus

A post by Anonymous Liberal at Crooks and Liars. I don't have much to add to this -- it's pretty sickening.

One observation, however: this is happening under the administration of a man who thought it was funny to feed lit firecrackers to frogs. What did anyone expect?

Speaking of Bush and Wildlife. . . .

or the environment in general, see this notice at The Agonist. David Neiwert also points out the administration's disdain for environmental laws. (And why should those be any different?)

Toldja So

Bush is just going to veto everything Congress passes until he leaves office. See what's going on with hurricane protection for the Gulf Coast.

If One Kid Gets Adequate Health Care

soon everyone will want it.

Bush supports children the same way he supports the troops. Children's health care should be a no-brainer, right? Not for this president.

Here's a key concept:

The immediate goal is to make sure there are more people on private insurance plans. I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room. The question is, will we be wise about how we pay for health care. I believe the best way to do so is to enable more people to have private insurance. And the reason I emphasize private insurance, the best health care plan -- the best health care policy is one that emphasizes private health. In other words, the opposite of that would be government control of health care.

Point one: make sure as many people as possible are forking over money to the sharks who collect premiums and routinely disallow claims.

The second sentence is, at best, prevarication. People have diminishing access to coverage as employers are forced to cut benefits because of rising costs. This doesn't include the 48 million who have no insurance at all, a number that's been growing since Bush took office. Those people don't exist. Just ask him.

The rest of it is word salad. The man's nuts.

And he goes on:

My position is, we ought to help the poor -- and we do, through Medicaid. My position is, we ought to have a modern medical system for the seniors -- and we do, through Medicare. But I strongly object to the government providing incentives for people to leave private medicine, private health care to the public sector. And I think it's wrong and I think it's a mistake. And therefore, I will resist Congress's attempt -- (applause) -- I'll resist Congress's attempt to federalize medicine.

I mean, think of it this way: They're going to increase the number of folks eligible through S-CHIP; some want to lower the age for Medicare. And then all of a sudden, you begin to see a -- I wouldn't call it a plot, just a strategy -- (laughter) -- to get more people to be a part of a federalization of health care. In my judgment, that would be -- it would lead to not better medicine, but worse medicine. It would lead to not more innovation, but less innovation.

Translation: if everybody opts for a plan run by the government that is economical and efficient and provides quality health care for enrollees, how are the insurance companies going have the money to fork over for Republican political campaigns?

Thanks to Crooks and Liars.

Where Does He Find These People?

Jim Burroway has more on Dr. John Holsinger, the wingnut nominee for attorney general. A scientist in the tradition of Paul Cameron.

There's more from Pam's House Blend.

The Torture President

I haven't had a chance to read this story yet, ironically enough, since I work at this paper. And Andrew Sullivan beat me to the link.

Nuts.

This Makes Me Angry

Really, really angry. The next time some yahoo claims that anyone opposing the failed Bush war doesn't support the troops, refer them to this article from WaPo and ask them about the administration's "support for the troops."

While the hospital is a place of scrubbed-down order and daily miracles, with medical advances saving more soldiers than ever, the outpatients in the Other Walter Reed encounter a messy bureaucratic battlefield nearly as chaotic as the real battlefields they faced overseas.

On the worst days, soldiers say they feel like they are living a chapter of "Catch-22." The wounded manage other wounded. Soldiers dealing with psychological disorders of their own have been put in charge of others at risk of suicide.

Disengaged clerks, unqualified platoon sergeants and overworked case managers fumble with simple needs: feeding soldiers' families who are close to poverty, replacing a uniform ripped off by medics in the desert sand or helping a brain-damaged soldier remember his next appointment.

"We've done our duty. We fought the war. We came home wounded. Fine. But whoever the people are back here who are supposed to give us the easy transition should be doing it," said Marine Sgt. Ryan Groves, 26, an amputee who lived at Walter Reed for 16 months. "We don't know what to do. The people who are supposed to know don't have the answers. It's a nonstop process of stalling."

Is this the administration's "support": "OK, you've stopped bleeding. We're done with you."

Apparently it is. Here's Bush's help for veterans:

The Bush administration plans to cut funding for veterans’ health care two years from now — even as wounded troops returning from Iraq could overwhelm the system.

Bush is using the cuts, critics say, to help fulfill his pledge to balance the budget by 2012.

After an increase sought for next year, the Bush budget would turn current trends on their head. Even though the cost of providing medical care to veterans has been growing rapidly — by more than 10 percent in many years — White House budget documents assume consecutive cutbacks in 2009 and 2010 and a freeze thereafter.

The White House claims this doesn't represent a "policy shift." So they're playing with VA numbers to make the borrow-and-spend White House look good, I guess.

And here's a a follow-up to the original WaPo piece.

Perks and stardom do not come to every amputee. Sgt. David Thomas, a gunner with the Tennessee National Guard, spent his first three months at Walter Reed with no decent clothes; medics in Samarra had cut off his uniform. Heavily drugged, missing one leg and suffering from traumatic brain injury, David, 42, was finally told by a physical therapist to go to the Red Cross office, where he was given a T-shirt and sweat pants. He was awarded a Purple Heart but had no underwear.

David tangled with Walter Reed's image machine when he wanted to attend a ceremony for a fellow amputee, a Mexican national who was being granted U.S. citizenship by President Bush. A case worker quizzed him about what he would wear. It was summer, so David said shorts. The case manager said the media would be there and shorts were not advisable because the amputees would be seated in the front row.

" 'Are you telling me that I can't go to the ceremony 'cause I'm an amputee?' " David recalled asking. "She said, 'No, I'm saying you need to wear pants.' "

David told the case worker, "I'm not ashamed of what I did, and y'all shouldn't be neither." When the guest list came out for the ceremony, his name was not on it.

Look, we all know that bureaucracies are the devil's work, but this is beyond incompetence. This is what we get when "support for the troops" means sending them off to fight Halliburton's war and then forgetting about them when the war chews them up and spits them out. Gods forbid the prreznit should actually have to see someone his war has damaged.

So help me, if some Bush-wacko accuses me of not supporting the troops because I think we need to get out of there, I'll just deck the SOB.

Update:

Some additional commentary by Kevin Hayden at American Street.

And myths will arise about how anti-war liberals mistreated the troops. In reality, it’ll be liberals working in underpaid non-profit agency jobs that will be dressing the psychic wounds of the injured long after the rest of the country’s forgotten them.

He also links to this post by Philip Carter at Intel Dump.

This is the tip of the iceberg. The Walter Reed hospital sees the most seriously wounded military personnel who come home. These personnel often require significant medical, mental-health, and rehabilitative care, and this is a mammoth undertaking. I am extremely disturbed to see these problems at the military's flagship hospital. We owe our wounded sons and daughters more.

But these wounded are not the only warriors who are suffering right now. We have had roughly 1.4 million troops rotate through the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters of operation. Hundreds of thousands of reservists have rotated through mobilizations since Sept. 11, 2001. Our military will likely remain engaged in these wars for the foreseeable future, and hundreds of thousands more will rotate through these two theaters. Yet despite these operational facts, the VA budget continues to atrophy. Veterans seeking disability ratings must wait between 6-12 months to receive an adjudication. Veterans without a service-connected disability rating who do not meet a stringent "means test" may be excluded from the system entirely. Although the VA has been rated as the nation's finest medical system, it increasingly cannot deliver that care to the population it exists to serve. Why?

Why, indeed?

Update II:

Given the huge amount of waste and embezzlement in Iraq on the part of the independent contractors and the no-bid contracts to well-connected firms, I guess we can see where the money that should be going to our vets is really headed. See this comment by Skippy at American Street. You can also see how the Investor's Business Daily is supporting the troops.

$245 Billion

For war. For two years.

Tell me that we can't afford to provide free medical care for everyone in this country, and I'll tell you why. Tell me we can't afford to be sure every child has enough to eat and clothes to wear, and I'll tell you why. Tell me we can't afford to insure everyone has a roof over his head, and I'll tell you why. Tell me we can't afford to to rebuild New Orleans, and I'll tell you why. Tell me we can't restore wetlands and other areas devastated by development, and I'll tell you why. Tell me we can't provide decent schools, and I'll tell you why.