Obsidian Wings

But What Will Bril Say?

by hilzoy

McJoan at dKos has a very good post. She's talking about this article in CQ:

"Despite strong objections from many in their caucus, House Democratic leaders introduced lobbying legislation that would toughen restrictions on when former members can lobby Congress and would force disclosure of bundled political contributions.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who helped her party reclaim the majority on an anti-corruption campaign platform, decided to offer the internally unpopular changes even though many in the caucus complained that they would be too drastic and would fail to resonate with constituents.

At a two-hour meeting with other top Democrats late Tuesday, Pelosi chose to move the legislation in two parts: a main lobbying overhaul bill (HR 2316) and a separate bill (HR 2317) requiring registered lobbyists to disclose bundling — the practice of soliciting donation checks and delivering them in a single bunch to candidates — of more than $5,000 per quarter. (...)

House leaders now face the difficult task of finding enough votes in their own party to pass the measure, since Republicans are unlikely to back it. (...)

Pelosi convened the evening leadership meeting after an extended and contentious afternoon caucus session, during which rank-and-file Democrats lined up at a microphone to express what one member described as “angst” about the lobbying measure — in particular a provision that would extend from one year to two years a ban on lobbying by former members.

“There were a lot of people complaining,” said Rep. Carolyn McCarthy of New York, who opposes both the bundling provision and the two-year ban."

McJoan writes:

"What will resonate with constituents, you dunderheads, is if you don't support strong anti-corruption efforts. Lobbying reform might not be the first thing on anyone's lips at a town meeting, but it sure doesn't mean that your constituents won't be paying attention to the news when they find out you resisted these reforms. (...)

So here's a new project for all you Kossacks. Call your U.S. Representative, particularly your Democratic representative, if you have one, and find out where she or he stands on these two bills: HR 2316, the lobbying overhaul bill, and HR 2317, which requires registered lobbyists to disclose campaign contribution bundling. Report back and let us know who is willing to sell out their ethics for a future career as a highly paid lobbyist."

Why should Kossacks have all the fun? I'm about to call my Representative. If anyone else feels strongly about this, you can too. You can find you Representative's number here. Let's give them a better sense of what "resonates" and what doesn't.

Why Oh Why Can't We Have A Better Press Corps?* (Special Leprosy Edition)

by hilzoy

Two years ago, a reporter on Lou Dobbs' show said this:

"ROMANS: It's interesting, because the woman in our piece told us that there were about 900 cases of leprosy for 40 years. There have been 7,000 in the past three years. Leprosy in this country.

DOBBS: Incredible. Christine Romans, thank you. "

Ten days ago, this figure was challenged by Leslie Stahl on Sixty Minutes:

"60 Minutes checked that and found a report issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, saying that 7,000 is the number of leprosy cases over the last 30 years, not the past three. The report also says that nobody knows how many of those cases involve illegal immigrants.

"We went to try and check that number, 7,000. We can’t…," Stahl says.

"Well, I can tell you this. If we reported it, it’s a fact," Dobbs replies.

"You can’t tell me that. You did report it," Stahl says.

"I just did," Dobbs says.

"How can you guarantee that to me?" Stahl asks.

Says Dobbs, "Because I'm the managing editor. And that’s the way we do business. We don’t make up numbers, Lesley.""

As you can see, Lou Dobbs defended the number. He did so again the next day on his own show:

"And there was a question about some of your comments, Christine. Following one of your reports, I told Leslie Stahl, we don't make up numbers, and I will tell everybody here again tonight, I stand 100 percent behind what you said.

ROMANS: That's right, Lou. We don't make up numbers here. This is what we reported."

No one is accusing Lou Dobbs and his reporters of "making up numbers". People are accusing them of reporting things that are false, and that can be seen to be false given any minimal attempt to discover the facts. Below the fold, I'll try to explain what happened.

The reason I bother is that this is a case that illustrates, in miniature, the reason I think there's a serious problem with the media. This isn't Fox, or Rush Limbaugh, or some other group from whom no one expects better. This is CNN. And the only way I can see that they could have reported their story as they did in the first place was simply not to have bothered to check the facts. Having been called on this, they did not retract or clarify their original story, or provide what Anderson Cooper calls "the Raw Data." Lou Dobbs and his reporter just insist that they are right, and Dobbs seems to think that an appeal to his own authority is all that's needed.

Most people don't have the time to track down leprosy figures. They assume that the basic factual claims they hear on the news are, broadly speaking, accurate. And they should be able to assume this: after all, that's why we have news organizations. In this particular case, the actual figures are easy to find. The person Lou Dobbs euphemistically refers to as a "reporter" just didn't bother.

The Wolfowitz Death Watch Continues

by hilzoy

From the Financial Times:

"Paul Wolfowitz’s handling of a secondment deal for his girlfriend Shaha Riza broke the World Bank’s code of conduct, three staff rules and the terms of his contract as bank president, the final report by a panel investigating his role has concluded.

The report asks the bank’s board to consider, in the light of its findings, “whether Mr Wolfowitz will be able to provide the leadership needed to ensure that the bank continues to operate to the fullest extent possible in achieving its mandate”.

It suggested the board should take into account in making this judgment the “damage done to the reputation of the World Bank group and its president, the lack of confidence expressed by internal and external stakeholders in the present leadership, the erosion of operational effectiveness...and the important strategy and governance challenges the World Bank group is facing”.

Following the release of the panel’s report, 37 of the bank’s 39 country directors sent a letter to the board demanding it “practice what it preaches on governance and accountability.”

The letter, obtained by the Financial Times, stopped short of directly recommending that Mr Wolfowitz go. (...)

The report concluded that Mr Wolfowitz broke staff rule 3.01 on professional conduct, rule 5.02 on external service and 6.01 on pay.

It stated that the initial pay rise, 8 per cent a year, later rises and presumed additional promotion on Ms Riza’s return to the bank were excessive and never envisaged by the bank’s ethics committee.

It said Mr Wolfowitz’s attitude evidenced “questionable judgment and a preoccupation with self interest”.

The report also concluded that Mr Wolfowitz violated the terms of his contract, which require him to abide by the bank’s code of conduct."

Actually, the report (pdf) also found that Wolfowitz' contract "requires Mr. Wolfowitz to avoid any conflict of interest, real or apparent", and that he violated that provision as well.

More below.

When Christ Told Us To Visit The Sick In Their Sickrooms, This Is Not What He Meant

by hilzoy

This tells you almost* all you need to know about this administration: when they learn that one of their programs is illegal, they don't stop immediately and try to figure out how to learn what they need to know within the law. No: they go screeching off to the the hospital to try to pester John Ashcroft, who doesn't actually have the power they need, into signing off on it, because they know that the person he has left in charge in his absence won't sign off on a violation of law, and if pestering a seriously ill and possibly disoriented person who's in intensive care is what they have to do to get their way, then the law and compassion be damned.

From ThinkProgress, James Comey's testimony. [UPDATE: Via Marty Lederman, the full transcript (pdf).] He seems to be talking about the warrantless surveillance program:

"COMEY: We had concerns as to our ability to certify its legality, which was our obligation for the program to be renewed.

The attorney general was taken that very afternoon to George Washington Hospital, where he went into intensive care and remained there for over a week. And I became the acting attorney general.

And over the next week — particularly the following week, on Tuesday — we communicated to the relevant parties at the White House and elsewhere our decision that as acting attorney general I would not certify the program as to its legality and explained our reasoning in detail, which I will not go into here. Nor am I confirming it’s any particular program. That was Tuesday that we communicated that.

The next day was Wednesday, March the 10th, the night of the hospital incident. And I was headed home at about 8 o’clock that evening, my security detail was driving me. And I remember exactly where I was — on Constitution Avenue — and got a call from Attorney General Ashcroft’s chief of staff telling me that he had gotten a call… (...)
That he had gotten a call from Mrs. Ashcroft from the hospital. She had banned all visitors and all phone calls. So I hadn’t seen him or talked to him because he was very ill.

And Mrs. Ashcroft reported that a call had come through, and that as a result of that call Mr. Card and Mr. Gonzales were on their way to the hospital to see Mr. Ashcroft. (...)

Told my security detail that I needed to get to George Washington Hospital immediately. They turned on the emergency equipment and drove very quickly to the hospital.

I got out of the car and ran up — literally ran up the stairs with my security detail.

SCHUMER: What was your concern? You were in obviously a huge hurry.

COMEY: I was concerned that, given how ill I knew the attorney general was, that there might be an effort to ask him to overrule me when he was in no condition to that.

SCHUMER: Right, OK.

COMEY: I was worried about him, frankly.

And so I raced to the hospital room, entered. And Mrs. Ashcroft was standing by the hospital bed, Mr. Ashcroft was lying down in the bed, the room was darkened. And I immediately began speaking to him, trying to orient him as to time and place, and try to see if he could focus on what was happening, and it wasn’t clear to me that he could. He seemed pretty bad off. (...)

I tried to see if I could help him get oriented. As I said, it wasn’t clear that I had succeeded.

I went out in the hallway. Spoke to Director Mueller by phone. He was on his way. I handed the phone to the head of the security detail and Director Mueller instructed the FBI agents present not to allow me to be removed from the room under any circumstances. And I went back in the room. (...)

And it was only a matter of minutes that the door opened and in walked Mr. Gonzales, carrying an envelope, and Mr. Card. They came over and stood by the bed. They greeted the attorney general very briefly. And then Mr. Gonzales began to discuss why they were there — to seek his approval for a matter, and explained what the matter was — which I will not do.

And Attorney General Ashcroft then stunned me. He lifted his head off the pillow and in very strong terms expressed his view of the matter, rich in both substance and fact, which stunned me — drawn from the hour-long meeting we’d had a week earlier — and in very strong terms expressed himself, and then laid his head back down on the pillow, seemed spent, and said to them, But that doesn’t matter, because I’m not the attorney general.

SCHUMER: But he expressed his reluctance or he would not sign the statement that they — give the authorization that they had asked, is that right?

COMEY: Yes.

And as he laid back down, he said, But that doesn’t matter, because I’m not the attorney general. There is the attorney general, and he pointed to me, and I was just to his left.

The two men did not acknowledge me. They turned and walked from the room."

Comey was prepared to resign over this:

"SCHUMER: OK.

Can you tell us what happened the next day?

COMEY: The program was reauthorized without us and without a signature from the Department of Justice attesting as to its legality. And I prepared a letter of resignation, intending to resign the next day, Friday, March the 12th.

SCHUMER: OK.

And that was the day, as I understand it, of the Madrid train bombings. (...) Yet, even in light of that, you still felt so strongly that you drafted a letter of resignation.

COMEY: Yes.

SCHUMER: OK.

And why did you decide to resign? COMEY: I just believed…

SCHUMER: Or to offer your resignation, is a better way to put it?

COMEY: I believed that I couldn’t — I couldn’t stay, if the administration was going to engage in conduct that the Department of Justice had said had no legal basis. I just simply couldn’t stay."

Apparently, Ashcroft, Ashcroft's chief of staff, Comey's chief of staff, FBI Director Mueller, and perhaps others were prepared to join him. Good for them.

"SCHUMER: OK.

So let me just (inaudible) — this is an amazing story, has an amazing pattern of fact that you recall. […] So in sum, it was your belief that Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card were trying to take advantage of an ill and maybe disoriented man to try and get him to do something that many, at least in the Justice Department, thought was against the law? Was that a correct summation?

COMEY: I was concerned that this was an effort to do an end-run around the acting attorney general and to get a very sick man to approve something that the Department of Justice had already concluded — the department as a whole — was unable to be certified as to its legality. And that was my concern."

One of the two men who appeared in Ashcroft's room in the ICU to try to get him to approve the program was Alberto Gonzales. And that tells you everything you need to know about Alberto Gonzales' character and his commitment to the rule of law.

Ingratitude

by hilzoy

CharleyCarp, in comments, notes this story from the Miami Herald:

"Nearly a year after an uprising in a communal camp for ''war on terrorism'' captives in this remote U.S. naval base in southeast Cuba, most detainees live in maximum-security lockdown -- in windowless, fluorescent-lighted cells -- a stark contrast to four years of open-air camp confinement.

And lockdown life amounts to this: five prayer calls a day; three meals handed through a slot in the cell door; two hours, at most, of solo recreation inside a pen, with four other captives in adjoining chain-link cages, and a once-a-week cell-door visit from a library cart. (...)

The turning point toward single-occupancy lockdown conditions came a year ago, the most violent period the prison camps had ever seen.

On May 18, two captives were found unconscious in their open-air cells, attempting suicide from prescription drugs hoarded by other detainees. Later that day, dozens of detainees in minimum-security quarters ripped metal out of their communal bunkhouse three camps away and attacked guards.

No one was seriously hurt, but on June 10 guards spotted three Arabs simultaneously hanging in their cells from improvised nooses -- apparent suicides that the prison camps commander, Rear Adm. Harry Harris, declared "asymmetric warfare."

Lawyers said the bunkhouse brawl was triggered by a source of repeated unrest across all five years -- speculation that guards would search their holy Korans, this time for hidden drugs.

Harris and intelligence officials cast it as a wake-up call to a dormant, conspiring and secret leadership bent on embarrassing the U.S. military, which boasts safe, humane and transparent conditions at the site.

"No matter what we do for them, they don't appreciate it," said an Arab named Zaki, the U.S. military's cultural advisor."

Gosh, those ungrateful prisoners. Years of imprisonment without trial, without the ability to let their friends and families know they're alive, without hope, and now with scarcely any human contact, and they're still ungrateful! And we gave them lemon chicken!

For another view of Camp Six, I'll quote from a brief I cited in an earlier post:

"The January 15 meeting was my third meeting with Abdusemet. In previous meetings he had struck me as a kindly man, quite gentle, pleasant in affect, calm, and prone to smile and laugh. On January 15 he appeared extremely anxious. His foot tapped the floor uncontrollably. His affect was deeply sad. He refused offers of the food we had brought. He appeared to be in despair.
He said Camp 6 was "the dungeon above the ground." He said that when they led him into Camp 6, he recalled a movie he had once seen aout a Nazi concentration camp, "a place where, when they take you in, you never come out." (...)

Abdusemet asked us to communicate a message from one of the other Uighurs on his pod to his wife: "Tell her to remarry. She should consider me dead."

Abdusemet asked me, "What did we do? Why do they hate us so much?" (...)

Abdusemet advised that one of the other Uighurs on his block was "hearing voices," and had been shouting out indiscriminately. Abdusemet said the man had been punished by being forced to wear the orange jumpsuit.

Abdusemet said, "I am starting to hear voices, sometimes. There is no one to talk to in my cell and I hear these voices.""

And yet, for some reason, they don't appreciate our generosity. Go figure.

Conduct Unbecoming

by Katherine

This is the saddest story I've read in a while:

Attorneys for a Navy lawyer facing up to 24 years in military prison for mailing a list of Guantánamo detainee names to a civil liberties group -- inside a Valentine -- argued at his court-martial Monday that the document wasn't secret and their disclosure did not endanger national security.

Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Diaz, 41, a Navy JAG or Judge Advocate General, faces five charges ranging from unlawfully releasing classified material to conduct unbecoming an officer....

''This case deals with the deliberate, intentional, conscious release of classified information,'' the prosecutor, Navy Lt. James Hoffman, told a jury of seven Navy officers at the week-long trial's opening here at Naval Station Norfolk.

Defense attorneys countered that the material wasn't marked ''SECRET'' on the computer screen or on the printout, drawn from a Guantánamo database that contains intelligence on war-on-terror captives.

But, in opening arguments, both sides agreed that Diaz mailed the 39-page computer printout of the names and serial numbers to the New York Center for Constitutional Rights in January 2005.

He shrunk the pages in a copier to the size of an index card, Hoffman told the jurors. Then he tucked them inside a Valentine's Day card bearing a picture of a droopy-eyed Chihuahua, and mailed it in a fire-engine-red envelope with a return address of Joint Task Force Guantánamo, at the U.S. Navy base in remote southeast Cuba.

At the time, the civil liberties group was leading the charge in federal court to file unlawful detention suits called habeas corpus petitions on behalf of as-yet-unidentified captives.

But rather than use the list to transform a John Doe lawsuit into one with detainees' names, CCR attorney Barbara Olshansky testified that she called a Washington, D.C., federal court, where the lawsuits were filed, and was instructed to turn it over to a security officer.

FBI agents tracked it back to Diaz through fingerprints.

At issue is whether the information was then classified and whether it endangered U.S. national security and helped America's enemies by mailing it to a New York City human rights attorney whose clients included war-on-terror captives.

The prosecutor argued that trial evidence would show that the information Diaz downloaded from a largely classified intelligence website -- including codes and serial numbers -- ``puts at risk lives of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines on the front line in the war on terror.''

But a defense counsel, Navy Lt. Justin Henderson, said his client had a ''crisis of conscious'' during a six-month tour at the offshore prison, where he was deputy staff judge advocate -- and didn't believe the names were a national security secret.

''We don't expect the evidence will show that Matt Diaz made the right decision. We don't expect the evidence will show he made a wise decision,'' said Henderson. ``He made a decision that was less than forthright. But he did not make an unlawful decision.''

Diaz, a 17-year veteran of U.S. military service, started out as an enlisted soldier but subsequently got a law degree at the Washburn University School of Law in Topeka, Kan., and a commission as a Navy officer.

He was based at Guantánamo in late 2004 and early 2005, when civil liberties lawyers were arguing in federal court that a U.S. Supreme Court decision, Rasul v. Bush, meant the Bush administration should release all Guantánamo detainees' names.

But it would be more than a year before those names were released -- after another court ordered their release in a Freedom of Information lawsuit filed by the Associated Press.

Diaz's civilian attorney, a former Marine Corps major and military judge, Patrick McLain, said lawyers would put on a defense later this week that spoke to Diaz's good character and a ''hardscrabble'' upbringing as a child of divorce whose father has been on California Death Row for more than 20 years.

McLain said his Navy attorney client, Diaz, believes his father was wrongly convicted of killing patients as a healthcare provider -- and said he'd provide details later this week.

When he was charged this summer, Diaz initially faced six charges and, if convicted, a maximum of 36 years in prison.

Through pretrial motions and hearings, the military judge, Navy Capt. Daniel O'Toole, reduced the charges to five, punishable by a maximum of 24 years of incarceration

I don't know precisely what the legal issues are. I'm not so familiar with the military justice system. I would think that the federal court order that this information be released under FOIA demonstrates that it was not properly classified, and I would really like to see the prosecution prove that it actually put soldiers' lives at risk, but I've never understood how "conduct unbecoming an officer" isn't an unconstitutional charge in the first place.

I do know that our classification system is broken. The executive order governing classification forbids classifying information to "conceal violations of law, inefficiency, or administrative error," "prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency," or "prevent or delay the release of information that does not require protection in the interest of national security," but this requirement is violated constantly. The Bush administration wasn't the first to do it, but it's just gotten too blatant now.

The administration has engaged in violations of the Anti-Torture Statute and the War Crimes Act; classified the evidence of these violations; invoked the state secrets privilege to prevent victims from suing for civil damages for their treatment; suspended the writ of habeas corpus; and used their control of the Department of Justice to ensure that these violations are not prosecuted in civilian courts. The military has prosecuted more people, but their track record isn't exactly impressive either. The higher level officials who are ultimately responsible are still in power, or they have retired with medals and generous book deals.

And now it seems that a soldier who turned over a list of prisoner's names to some civil rights lawyers, so that they couldn't be held indefinitely without trial, may go to jail for longer than a number of soldiers and CIA agents who beat prisoners to death. And it's barely even news.

I don't want to live in this kind of country. I don't.

But you all knew that already, right? I've said it 100 times before. And I actually knew about Diaz's case before I read this article. What was new to me, and what's getting to me right now, was the stuff about CCR's role, and Diaz's father being on death row.

I would assume that CCR thought this over very carefully and felt their only option was to call the security officer. I would assume that they concluded to do otherwise would have risked violating the protective order in their case & jeopardized their access to their clients, and their first obligation was to their clients. And they would know. Diaz probably would have been better off sending it to the Associated Press, or some other journalist or NGO not engaged in direct representation, but he probably didn't want it published on the internet. He was probably trying to limit the disclosure to people who really needed the information. 

I obviously don't know a damn thing about his father's death row case. I would assume this is the relevant Wiki entry, but it cites no sources and does not read like the work of a detached, neutral, observer--for all I know it was written by a child who believed their father was wrongfully convicted:

There was no direct evidence against Diaz. No one had seen him inject a patient with a fatal dose of anything. He had no apparent motive to kill anyone. An alleged “smoking gun” syringe filled with an especially high solution of lidocaine was found hidden in the Valleys hospital 7 months after it closed. It fit the prosecution’s theory of how the alleged murders occurred. However, it appears to have been planted.

After Diaz’ arrest, investigators from the public defender’s office found that the hospital’s care was abominable. It was not unusual for there to be a Code Blue alert every night, and not just during Diaz’ employment there. Employees were often unable to read heart monitors and other basic equipment. Doctors often failed to respond to emergencies. During the deaths Diaz reportedly blamed the doctors who showed up late. Diaz may have served as a fall guy for the doctors.

Following standard procedures, Diaz’ defense would be extraordinarily costly to the cash strapped public defender’s office. To save money, a new administrator fired all the investigators and implemented a budget defense for Diaz. The reasoning seemed to be, “Better to sacrifice one suspected serial killer, than to risk harming the mass of office’s clients.” At trial, Diaz’ defense took the unusual tactic of saving money for itself and the state by presenting its case before a judge rather than a jury. This tactic was unusual because a judge would likely feel political pressure to convict a suspected serial killer. Most jurors would not likely feel as much pressure, and a single unconvinced juror could stop a conviction.

The judge convicted Diaz of 12 counts of first-degree murder. At sentencing, the defense failed to present character witnesses. It could at least have had each of Diaz’ five children state, “Don’t kill my Daddy.”

Despite what it may seem I don't usually post this stuff just to depress people, but I'm afraid a constructive or hopeful ending to this post is eluding me. But it's an interesting story, so I'm leaving it up.

Consider this your depressed open thread, or better still, your cheering-up-depressed-people open thread.

Oh, Please

by hilzoy

Why does the Washington Post waste valuable column space on this drivel?

"These days we want "transparency" in all institutions, even private ones. There's one massive exception -- the Internet. It is, we are told, a giant town hall. Indeed, it has millions of people speaking out in millions of online forums. But most of them are wearing the equivalent of paper bags over their heads. We know them only by their Internet "handles" -- gotalife, runningwithscissors, stoptheplanet and myriad other inventive names. (...)

[There follows an example involving someone with the handle 'anticrat424' who spouts off but doesn't give his real name.] In any community in America, if Mr. anticrat424 refused to identify himself, he would be ignored and frozen out of the civic problem-solving process. But on the Internet, Mr. anticrat424 is continually elevated to the podium, where he can have his angriest thoughts amplified through cyberspace as often as he wishes. He can call people the vilest names and that hate-mongering, too, will be amplified for all the world to see. (...)

Online pioneer Vin Crosbie suggests that sites -- whether personal blogs, community sites or major news providers -- should be flexible enough to grant pseudonyms to users who want to blow a whistle. This would require sites to make decisions on a case-by-case basis. How often would such intervention be required? Not enough to require most sites to hire extra staff.

A site that grants a pseudonym would have to know the poster's real name as well as some facts that back up any accusations. The site wouldn't have to cave in whenever it was slapped with a subpoena. Courts have ruled that both anonymous and pseudonymous posters have "qualified privilege" under the First Amendment that protects their identities and puts a high legal bar in front of subpoena seekers.

If Web sites required posters to use their real names, while giving the shield of pseudonymity when it's merited, spirited online debate would continue unimpeded. It might even be enhanced by attracting contributors who are turned off today by name calling and worse. Except for the hate-mongers, who wouldn't want that?"

What's really amazing about this is the sheer level of ignorance about blogs that it displays. Consider this: "How often would such intervention be required? Not enough to require most sites to hire extra staff." -- Extra staff? How much staff does Tom Grubisich think we have? ObWi is a B- or C-list blog with decent though not astounding traffic, and we have a staff of zero, not counting the posters, all of whom have full-time jobs. We don't have ads. We have no source of revenue. We do this for fun. Maybe one of the others would like to do the background checks of commenters that Mr. Grubisich seems to think that we need, but for my part, I have more important things to do, like alphabetizing my DVDs or watching paint dry.

Moreover, there are a lot of good reasons to allow pseudonyms. When I started commenting on blogs, I didn't know them very well, and didn't feel entirely comfortable putting my real name out there. This wasn't because of any deep, compelling reason; it was just that I have had a couple of stalkers in my time, one of whom only really got to be a problem because he found my address in the phone book and took to hanging around outside my door late at night, and ever since then I have been cautious about such things. Requiring real names would probably have prevented me, and a whole lot of people like me, from commenting at all.

It would also prevent the large number of people who have more concrete reasons for not attaching their real names to what they write. Lawyers, for instance, sometimes want not to have their collected political views come up when opposing counsel does a search on their names. Untenured faculty members may wonder exactly how their political views would play with the people who will have to decide on their tenure case, and may prefer to have the considerations available to those people limited to the things that decision ought to be based on: scholarship, teaching, professional service, and the like. All sorts of other people might similarly want to avoid being penalized at work for their political views.

The really puzzling part, however, is this: what, exactly, is the problem that banning pseudonyms is supposed to solve? The clearest example is 'Mr. anticrat424', whom we would supposedly shun in real life. For my part, I would never shun someone because he didn't give his real name. If his views were interesting, I wouldn't care about the name; if they weren't, or if he were consistently unpleasant, I wouldn't continue to seek him out. Is it impossible to do this on the internet? No. (Pie!) Do pseudonyms prevent people from deciding that it's not worth engaging someone? No. Can someone get banned for consistent vileness? Yes.

"Ah," Mr. Grubisich might say, "but on the Internet, Mr. anticrat424 is continually elevated to the podium, where he can have his angriest thoughts amplified through cyberspace as often as he wishes. He can call people the vilest names and that hate-mongering, too, will be amplified for all the world to see." I don't get this "amplification" stuff (let alone 'amplifying something for all the world to see', as though amplified sound waves were more readily visible than the normal kind.) If Mr. anticrat424 decides to start commenting on some blog, how does this constitute "amplifying" his views, or "elevating him to the podium"? Does anything -- anything at all -- force us to read comment threads we don't like? No. Does anything prevent us from scrolling past the comments of people we have previously decided are silly? No. Maybe Mr. Grubisich hasn't figured out how to do use his scroll wheel yet, but that's no reason for him to impose all sorts of pointless new requirements on the rest of us, even if they don't involve "hiring extra staff."

Still, like Ezra, I'm willing to compromise, even if it does mean hiring a background checker instead of the liveried footmen I had planned on adding to my (cough) staff:

"Grubisich thinks the public square has become too open, and he wants to erect some new barriers to entry. That's what the pseudonymity discussions are always about: Privileged members of the media feeling great anxiety that they're no longer set apart simply by access to microphones and looking for ways to keep the barbarians off the stage. But whatever, I'm willing to meet them halfway. I'll start running background checks on my readers if Grubisich and his colleagues consents to some symmetrical constraints: If they write something stupid, inflammatory, or wrong, they will lose their jobs. If what you want is for new entrants to the public sphere to feel more vulnerable when participating, it's only fair that you do the same."

dood he died

by hilzoy

Via atrios, a blog that seems to be devoted to recasting the Sunday talk shows as if they had been IM'd by junior high school kids. It's hilarious. Atrios linked this, but I like this interview with John McCain even better. Excerpt:

"Tim: what a bummer you lose to Bush and then lose because you embraced Bush

McCain: i didn't embrace him - i hugged him

Tim: whatever u were his BFF

McCain: life isn't fair whaaaaaa

Tim: yur career is dying

McCain: i consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth

Tim: yur like Lou Gehrig maybe they'll name the disease of political failure after you

McCain: [clenches teeth and laughs] dood immortaility"

Read to the end to put the title of this post in context.

Otherwise: my irises are blooming, I have planted many vegetables in my community garden plot, my grading is done, and as soon as I give a talk tomorrow and finish up the letters of recommendation, life will be sane again. And you? Open thread!

Univision Mobilizes For Citizenship

by hilzoy

Here's an interesting story from the WSJ (sub. req., h/t TPM):

"Backed by the largest Spanish-language broadcast network in the U.S., a massive campaign by Latino media and grass-roots groups to spur millions of eligible Hispanic residents to become U.S. citizens is showing results that could influence the agenda and outcome of the 2008 election.

More than eight million green-card holders -- that is, legal permanent residents -- are eligible to become U.S. citizens, and the majority are immigrants of Latin American origin, according to U.S. government data. Now, Univision Communications Inc. is using its considerable clout with the Spanish-speaking community in the U.S. to turn this latent voting bloc into an active and potentially potent force. (...)

The citizenship drive began in January, when Univision's largest station -- Los Angeles's KMEX 34 -- began bombarding Southern California airwaves with a campaign designed to steer eligible viewers to become U.S. citizens.

The impact was immediate: In Los Angeles and surrounding counties, the number of citizenship applications filed to the U.S. government more than doubled for the three months ended March 2007 compared with the same period last year. It typically takes six or seven months for green-card holders to complete the citizenship process.

Now, the campaign is spreading quickly to big cities including Miami, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Phoenix. After the yearlong campaign is complete, a second phase is slated for 2008 that will focus on getting the new citizens to register to vote.

"I have never seen anything like it in my career. It's big," said Jane Arellano, a 39-year veteran of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services who is district director in L.A. According to a person close to the situation, the initiative was a factor in the agency's decision to extend the terms of 40 immigration adjudicators in the district whose contracts were due to end in January.

Both major U.S. political parties are acutely aware of the impact that a stinging immigration debate in Congress, set to begin soon, could have on new Hispanic voters. Historically, Latinos have had a lower voter-participation rate than others -- in 2004, 47% of those eligible voted, compared with 67% of whites and 60% of blacks, according to Pew Hispanic Center tabulations. However, Latino immigrants who become citizens report higher rates of political participation than native-born Latinos, according to Pew.

If the citizenship campaign culminates in two million to three million new Hispanic voters, "that could turn the tide in several states," including Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, says Sergio Bendixen, a pollster who specializes in ethnic markets. In 2004, Republicans won by a small margin in those states."

Univision is not just advertising about citizenship, it's holding citizenship fairs:

"Univision's clout was on display at the citizenship drive in the Hispanic section of downtown L.A. Virtually every person questioned about their decision said they were answering a call from Univision TV or radio.

"Univision is waking us up," said Clementina Bonilla, 60, standing in a line that snaked around the block at La Placita Square. "We kept saying 'mañana, mañana' about our citizenship. It's time for Latinos to have a voice."

For $25, green-card holders could get help filling out the form from an army of 50 volunteers, get their pictures taken and leave with an envelope containing all the paperwork ready to be mailed to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The previous week, a similar scene unfolded in the city of Santa Ana in Orange County, Calif., after Univision publicized it."

Good for Univision. People who live in this country and are eligible for citizenship should get it, so that they can have a say in what happens to the country. They seem to want one:

"For example, many at the citizenship fair said they had heard the government intends to soon raise the current $400 fee for becoming a naturalized citizen; a proposed increase is indeed in the pipeline. Others said they were spurred by the heated debate over how to deal with 12 million illegal immigrants, most of them Hispanic.

"We're not illegal, but we have family members who are," said Marina Gonzalez, who has been a legal permanent resident for 20 years. Once she gets her citizenship, Mrs. Gonzalez said, she plans to vote: "We want to have a say in these matters."

Even legal residents feel vulnerable these days. "You never know what law could change and make it harder for us to stay here," said Mayolo Lucas, a 47-year-old Mexican vegetable seller and a green-card holder for 15 years, who had been waiting four hours for help with his application."

US Attorneys: Quick Notes

by hilzoy

(1) (Via TPM): Murray Waas has a new story out:

"The Bush administration has withheld a series of e-mails from Congress showing that senior White House and Justice Department officials worked together to conceal the role of Karl Rove in installing Timothy Griffin, a protégé of Rove's, as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas."

Part of it concerns a flat-out lie that I flagged here. (Shameless self-promotion.)

(2) Remember Murray Waas' last story, the one about Gonzales delegating hiring and firing decisions to Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling? Marty Lederman, who used to work in the DoJ, has an excellent post explaining what it all means. Excerpt:

"The problem is not that political, policy and "loyalty" considerations would be brought to bear on high-level employment decisions at DOJ -- that has always been the case. The White House -- and the Goodlings and Sampsons of the Department -- have always been involved in such decisionmaking. The problem here -- the real radical shift -- is that under the new AG Order, the decisions are left entirely to such persons, so that the decisions are completely politicized -- anyone with any institutional or professional judgment or experience is cut out of the loop."

And:

"There would be nothing inherently problematic about transferring this responsibility away from the DAG to, say, other experienced professionals with law enforcement experience and judgment. The problem here is that this important function has now been delegated to persons having virtually no tie to the cadre of professionals in the Department -- young attorneys who had no background, experience or qualification to evaluate candidates for senior law enforcement positions except their political connections and loyalty to the White House. But the fact that the DAG's traditional responsibility was transferred lock, stock and barrel to these two people, of all the officials in the Department, makes clear that the only relevant considerations for hiring were to be partisan political considerations, not performance. "

(3) Josh Marshall found a ninth fired US Attorney: Todd Graves of Missouri. Curiously, in all the time the US Attorneys scandal has been under investigation, no one from DoJ has mentioned this fact. From Graves' statement about why he resigned:

"I was an elected state prosecutor before I was appointed US Attorney. As a prosecutor I was always fiercely independent--I just called balls and strikes. For instance, when I gave now Senator Claire McCaskill her non-prosecution letter in 2004, I didn’t ask for permission, I just did the right thing. I thought that was my job.

When I first interviewed in 2001 with the United States Attorney screening committee at DOJ, I was asked to give the panel one attribute that describes me. I said independent. Apparently, that was the wrong attribute.

Public office is not an entitlement. I served nearly 12 years as a public prosecutor. It was a privilege. I loved every minute, but it is far better to take a graceful exit than to do something that you should be ashamed of."

Here's TPMMuckraker's coverage of his replacement, Bradley Schlozman. It's pretty depressing.