Obsidian Wings

The Election Made Simple

by hilzoy

Via Kevin Drum, Fortune's interviews with the two candidates for President:

"What do you see as the gravest long-term threat to the U.S. economy?

Obama: If we don't get a handle on our energy policy, it is possible that the kinds of trends we've seen over the last year will just continue. Demand is clearly outstripping supply. It's not a problem we can drill our way out of. It can be a drag on our economy for a very long time unless we take steps to innovate and invest in the research and development that's required to find alternative fuels. I think it's very important for the federal government to have a role in that process.

McCain: Well, I would think that the absolute gravest threat is the struggle that we're in against Islamic extremism, which can affect, if they prevail, our very existence. Another successful attack on the United States of America could have devastating consequences."

If anyone here supports McCain: please tell me, with a straight face, how you can vote for someone who answers this question in this way. It would be one thing if the economy were burbling along nicely, without requiring any particular attention. It would be another if the economy were a small issue, so that a candidate's silly views on it were like, say, silly views on the mohair subsidy. But it's not. And, as Kevin said, on this non-negligible issue, McCain

"apparently can't come up with any better answer to Fortune's question about economic threats. Not energy, not high taxes, not runaway entitlement growth, not healthcare, not globalization, not any of a dozen plausible answers that would have gone down fine with his base. Instead, "His eyes are narrowed. Nine seconds of silence, ten seconds, 11." And then he came up with Islamic extremism."

I suppose someone might say: well, the economy is important, but national security is even more important. But what's amazing about this quote is that it's not just stupid on the economy, it's stupid on national security too. For starters, it's not true that most Islamic extremists want to destroy us. They want to take over their own countries, and they are targeting us because we support those countries' governments. So it's not even true that they would affect our very existence "if they prevail". Moreover, even that were true, so what? It is true of a whole lot of people that, if they prevailed, they would threaten our existence. The Unabomber, for instance: had he prevailed, we would have been toast.

And yet, while I hated the Unabomber for killing people, I never thought of him as an existential threat to the United States. Why not? Because even though he would have destroyed us 'had he prevailed', he wasn't going to prevail. Neither was the Symbionese Liberation Army or the Montana Militia. And guess what? Neither is Islamic extremism.

Like the Unabomber, Islamic extremists can inflict casualties on us. But the only way in which that turns from a terrible tragedy into an existential threat to the United States is if we overreact in some horribly destructive way. If we elect someone who does not understand the actual problems we face, and who mistakes a bunch of thugs for a threat to our existence, we do ourselves more harm than Osama bin Laden ever could.

George Carlin, RIP

by publius

George Carlin was one of my favorite comics, so I was very saddened to see the news this morning.  So I thought I'd post one of my favorite all-time Carlin bits.  It's him talking about the first Gulf War where he says that "we like war."  It's great -- and fittingly appropriate.

Bigger Wars and A Smaller Recovery

by Eric Martin

A key facet of the argument that we (and/or Israel) should do everything in our power (read: military strikes) to prevent the Iranians from acquiring a nuclear weapon rests on the fact that Iran is, supposedly, undeterrable.  That is, that Iran's leadership is driven by religious zealotry to such an extent that, once it acquired a nuclear weapon, it would be willing to risk annihilation via nuclear counterstrike in order to launch an attack on Israel.  According to this narrative, while nuclear powers such as China, the USSR, India and Pakistan might be deterred from initiating a nuclear exchange by the likelihood of mutual assured destruction, Iran's leadership would be willing to commit "national suicide" in exchange for the pyrrhic satisfaction of destroying the Israeli state.

Despite the boldness and counterintuitive nature of these claims about Iran's unique suicidal nature, there is little actual evidence to support this argument.  Iran's current regime has been in power for approximately 30 years and during that time, rather than rushing headlong toward some suicidal destiny, it has displayed a cagey knack for self-preservation.  This despite ample opportunity to become a nation of martyrs.

An interesting thing happened on the way to bomb Iran because it's an undeterable, irrational actor hellbent on Israel's, and its own, destruction.  John Bolton, who has been urging the Bush administration (and/or Israel) to bomb Iran using any number of justifications ("terrorist" training camps, Iran's interference in Iraq, Iran's nuclear weapons program, just because, etc.), recently sought to assuage fears that Iran could and would retaliate forcefully against US interests in the wake of a US attack on the following grounds (via Think Progress):

Bolton gamed out the fallout from an attack on Iran. He claimed that Iran’s options to retaliate after being attacked are actually “less broad than people think.” He suggested that Iran would not want to escalate a conflict because 1) it still needs to export oil, 2) it would worry about “an even greater response” from Israel, 3) and it would worry about the U.S.’s response.

So let me see if I have this straight: A country that is supposedly so irrational, reckless and religiously fanatical that its leaders would be willing to countenance the end of its very existence (and that of its population) in order to carry out an unprovoked nuclear strike against Israel will be too cautious to retaliate against an actual attack on its country for fear of economic hardship and conventional military counterattacks?

In other words, Bolton is arguing that Iran's leadership is comprised of rational actors with well-honed instincts for self-preservation capable of applying a typical - conservative even - cost-benefit calculus.  Except we have to bomb them because the opposite is true.  Or something.  Faster, please.

(Note: Post edited to improve some of the clunky writing.  My apologies for the remainder.  I blame Monday in its infinite cruelty.)

Two Minutes A Week

by hilzoy

From the NYT:

"According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been “massively scaled back this year.” Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The “CBS Evening News” has devoted the fewest minutes to Iraq, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC’s “World News” and 74 minutes on “NBC Nightly News.” (The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.)

CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed.

Paul Friedman, a senior vice president at CBS News, said the news division does not get reports from Iraq on television “with enough frequency to justify keeping a very, very large bureau in Baghdad.” He said CBS correspondents can “get in there very quickly when a story merits it.”"

Give me a break. What does it mean to say that the news division "does not get reports" from Iraq? Surely not that the reporters there are incapable of sending stories, or that they have nothing to write about. It has to mean that they are not sending things that CBS wants to put on the news. And that's very, very different.

A lot of people are quite interested in what's happening in Iraq. How many? I have no idea: my attempts to find out via Google haven't gotten me very far. But even supposing, for the sake of argument, that our interest has waned: so what? "Viewer interest" isn't static and unalterable. The media decides to hype stories all the time, and in so doing makes people care about things they wouldn't care about otherwise. The war in Iraq has a lot more intrinsic interest than the death of Anna Nicole Smith, the vagaries of Paris Hilton, or any of the other completely inane stories that the networks somehow manage to find time for. It shouldn't be beyond the imaginations of reporters and producers to find a way to bring that interest out.

And we ought to care. We are responsible for the present state of Iraq, and we ought to care what happens there. Besides, we have men and women risking their lives in Iraq. We owe both Iraqis and our troops more than 181 weekday minutes, for all three networks. That's about two minutes of Iraq coverage, per network, per week. And that's far too little.

Those Lobbyists Again...

by hilzoy

Newsweek:

"One of John McCain's most celebrated achievements in recent years was his crusade to block a Pentagon contract with Boeing for a new fleet of midair refueling tankers. Incensed over what he denounced as a taxpayer "rip-off," McCain launched a Senate probe that uncovered cozy relations between top Air Force officials and Boeing execs. A top Air Force officer and Boeing's CFO ended up in prison. Most significantly, the Air Force was forced to cancel the contract—saving taxpayers more than $6 billion, McCain asserted.

But last week, McCain's subsequent effort to redo the tanker deal was dealt a setback. Government auditors ruled that the Air Force made "significant errors" when it rebid the contract and awarded the $35 billion project to Boeing's chief rival, partners European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. (or EADS) and Northrop Grumman. It's likely the Air Force will have to redo the bid yet again, which analysts say will delay the replacement of the fleet's 1950s-era refueling tankers. The auditors' ruling has also cast light on an overlooked aspect of McCain's crusade: five of his campaign's top advisers and fund-raisers—including Tom Loeffler, who resigned last month as his finance co-chairman, and Susan Nelson, his finance director—were registered lobbyists for EADS.

Critics, including some at the Pentagon, cite in particular two tough letters McCain wrote to Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England in 2006 and another to Robert Gates, just prior to his confirmation as Defense secretary. In the first letter, dated Sept. 8, 2006, McCain wrote of hearing from "third parties" that the Air Force was about to redo the tanker competition by factoring in European government subsidies to EADS—a condition that could have seriously hurt the EADS bid. McCain urged that the Pentagon drop the subsidy factor and posed a series of technical questions about the Air Force's process. "He was trying to jam us and bully us to make sure there was competition by giving EADS an advantage," said one senior Pentagon official, who asked for anonymity when discussing a politically sensitive matter. The assumption within the Pentagon, the official added, was that McCain's letters were drafted by EADS lobbyists. "There was no one else that would have had that level of detail," the official said. (A Loeffler associate noted that he and Nelson were retained by EADS after the letters were drafted.)"

The McCain campaign denies that the letters were "provided, or drafted, by EADS or Northrop Grumman or … submitted on their behalf." Moreover, while I am not a defense procurement wonk, my sense is that McCain was absolutely right to go after the initial Boeing contract -- after all, people went to jail over that one. But the subsequent process -- the one that awarded the contract to Northrop Grumman and EADS -- seems to have been badly flawed. (The GAO report hasn't been released, but a summary is here (pdf); it lists some errors that are very significant, like violating its own rules; screwing up the cost estimates in a way that affected who came out ahead in that category; and telling Boeing that it had met a key criterion, changing its mind without telling Boeing, and then docking Boeing for not meeting it.) The response in the papers is full of quotes like this:

"Richard Aboulafia, a defense analyst at the Teal Group in Fairfax, said it is rare for the GAO to uphold a protest and issue such a harsh rebuke of the Pentagon.

"We've not seen a document as scorching as this from an independent, nonpolitical agency," he said. "They are essentially saying there is either incompetency in the Air Force or there was political interference that led them to bend over backwards to benefit one competitor because they feared the power of the purse strings. Either way, the Air Force procurement system has gone horribly, horribly wrong.""

At times like that, having five lobbyists for EADS in senior positions in your campaign is a real problem, and a completely needless one.

Some Thoughts on Executive Privilege

by publius

I’m certainly no expert on executive privilege. But in thinking about when the privilege should apply, it’s important to distinguish between two different types of communications: (1) intra-advisors’ communications; and (2) communications with (or among) agency officials. The claim for executive privilege is much weaker in the latter, which of course is the category that the EPA documents fall into.

To clarify, the first category consists of communications between Bush and Cheney and their inner core of advisors — i.e., people who work directly for the President and Vice President. This group would include people like Miers, Rove, Bolton, and Gonzales (first-term only). Regardless of how distasteful this crew may be, you can understand why executive privilege makes more sense here. You want to encourage frank communications — plus, there are separation of powers issues.

However, the second category — communications with or among agencies — is much different from both a policy and a constitutional perspective. Agencies, unlike the Presidency, are legislatively created. Congressional oversight is part of the deal. And that oversight is a good idea given that agencies are more removed from political accountability than the President himself.

The upshot is that courts shouldn’t recognize executive privilege in the latter context, but should arguably respect it in the former. Thus, Rove’s conversations with Miers are off-limits (unless a future President wants to waive the privilege). However, Rove’s conversations with U.S. Attorneys and DOJ should not be protected. Same deal with the emails that apparently say, “Cheney says don’t let them do it.” It’s an agency email so it should be released. Otherwise, every single email within an agency could be privileged by merely cc’ing Dick Cheney.

Finally, Waxman should keep on them. The contempt orders won’t be enforced right now. But all that’s going to change hopefully in a few months. These people are ignoring subpoenas as if there were no consequences for doing so. They should realize that some very real penalties wait just over the horizon and the era of non-accountability is almost over.

News Of The Weird

by hilzoy

Two stories from the Department of Huh??! First, the quote of the day:

""With the exception of the cross-burning episode. … I believe John Freshwater is teaching the values of the parents in the Mount Vernon school district," he said."

Yep: just that one little exception ... -- When I first read that, I imagined some sort of KKK rally. But it's actually even stranger:

"A Mount Vernon teacher undermined science instruction in the public school district by discrediting evolution in his classroom and focusing on creationism and intelligent design, an investigation has found.

Eighth-graders who were taught by John Freshwater frequently had to be re-taught in high school what they were supposed to have learned in Freshwater's class, according to outside investigators hired by the district.

For 11 years, other teachers in the school district and people in the community complained about Freshwater preaching his Christian beliefs in class and slamming scientific theories, a school administrator told investigators. (...)

HR on Call Inc., the consultants who investigated allegations against Freshwater, released their findings yesterday. Mount Vernon school board members will meet today to discuss the report and decide what, if any, action they will take.

The report confirmed that Freshwater burned crosses onto students' arms, using an electrostatic device, in December."

The teacher in me shrieks: he branded his students?? The ex-Christian adds: with crosses?? -- This is not what Christ meant when he said "suffer the little children".

From a follow-up story:

"Supporters of John Freshwater stood in a parking lot today asking God to inspire the school board to make the right decision.

Three hours later, the board announced that it intends to fire Freshwater, an eighth-grade science teacher."

Proof of the efficacy of prayer.

Second story, from Toronto (h/t):

"Leduc's weird tale began on May 30, when she dropped young Victoria off for class at Terry Fox Elementary and headed in to work, only to receive a frantic phone call from the school telling her it was urgent she come back right away. The frightened mother rushed back to the campus and was stunned by what she heard - the principal, vice-principal and her daughter's teacher were all waiting for her in the office, telling her they'd received allegations that Victoria had been the victim of sexual abuse - and that the CAS had been notified.

How did they come by such startling knowledge? Leduc was incredulous as they poured out their story. "The teacher looked and me and said: 'We have to tell you something. The educational assistant who works with Victoria went to see a psychic last night, and the psychic asked the educational assistant at that particular time if she works with a little girl by the name of "V." And she said 'yes, I do.' And she said, 'well, you need to know that that child is being sexually abused by a man between the ages of 23 and 26.'"

Victoria, who is non-verbal, had also been exhibiting sexualized behaviour in class, actions which are known to be typical of autistic behavior. (See other typical actions here) That lead authorities to suspect she had a bladder infection that may have somehow been related to the 'attack.' Leduc was shaken by the idea. "It's actually your worst nightmare your child being violated," she admits. "So for them to even suggest that, and that be my worst nightmare, it was horrific."

But things got worse when school officials used the "evidence" and accepted the completely unsubstantiated word of the seer by reporting the case to Children's Aid, which promptly opened a file on the family.

"They reported me to Children's Aid," Leduc declares, still disbelieving. "Based on a psychic!""

To add to this already surreal story, it turns out that the school had previously "lost" this child, and so her mother had gotten a GPS device "that provided audio records of everything that was going on around her", which proved that (surprise, surprise) there was no sexual abuse. What are the odds that when an allegation like this surfaces, the parent will happen to have equipped her kid with a GPS device and audio recorder some months previously?

Branding children with crosses. Reporting sexual abuse based on the word of a psychic. Just when I think I've gotten the measure of human weirdness, it surprises me again.

Bleccchh

by hilzoy

So: Obama supports the hateful FISA thing. You can read his full statement here. Excerpts:

"Given the grave threats that we face, our national security agencies must have the capability to gather intelligence and track down terrorists before they strike, while respecting the rule of law and the privacy and civil liberties of the American people. There is also little doubt that the Bush Administration, with the cooperation of major telecommunications companies, has abused that authority and undermined the Constitution by intercepting the communications of innocent Americans without their knowledge or the required court orders. (...)

Under this compromise legislation, an important tool in the fight against terrorism will continue, but the President's illegal program of warrantless surveillance will be over. It restores FISA and existing criminal wiretap statutes as the exclusive means to conduct surveillance - making it clear that the President cannot circumvent the law and disregard the civil liberties of the American people. It also firmly re-establishes basic judicial oversight over all domestic surveillance in the future. It does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses. But this compromise guarantees a thorough review by the Inspectors General of our national security agencies to determine what took place in the past, and ensures that there will be accountability going forward. By demanding oversight and accountability, a grassroots movement of Americans has helped yield a bill that is far better than the Protect America Act.

It is not all that I would want. But given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as President, I will carefully monitor the program, review the report by the Inspectors General, and work with the Congress to take any additional steps I deem necessary to protect the lives - and the liberty - of the American people."

Blech. Feh. Ick.

I should say a couple of things, though. First, I haven't worked through the part of the bill that does not concern telecom immunity. If anyone knows a good nuts-and-bolts account of what the rest of the bill does, please let me know -- ideally, I'd like a straightforward account of what I'd discover if I sat down with it, looked up all the statutes to see what it means when it says "subsection (d) of section 28 of Title 6⅝ of the United States Code is hereby amended by striking the word "the" and inserting "a"", and worked it all out. So I don't know exactly how bad it is. My operating assumption is that it has good parts that are actually necessary, but a lot of expansions of wiretapping power that I would flatly oppose.

Second, much as I dislike Obama's statement, I don't think it's right to say things like this (a rare disagreement with Digby):

"I do know this: they would not have made this "compromise" and then brought this to the floor without his ok, and probably without his direction. He is the leader of the Democratic Party now, in the middle of a hotly contested presidential campaign. If he didn't come to them and say to get this thing done before the fall, then they came to him and asked his permission. That's just a fact. They aren't going to do anything he doesn't want them to do."

We are talking about Democrats. Democrats have never been united in that way during my adult lifetime. (I hear rumors that they might have been back when LBJ was in power, but that was a long, long time ago.) Republicans, yes. Democrats, no. Barack Obama is taking over some parts of the party apparatus. But he does not command the complete obedience of several hundred Representatives, each of whom has their own constituents to answer to, and a lot of whom are still inexplicably gunshy about taking on the Republicans on national security. I am not allowing myself to spin hopeful scenarios today, but if I were, one might be: what if he canvassed the House Democrats and found out that this bill was going to pass with or without his support? In his shoes, would I voluntarily take a position that would make it clear that I cannot deliver the votes in my own party? (Since we are, as I said, talking about the Democrats, this sort of inability ought to be no surprise to anyone, but I'm not sure I'd want to make it obvious right now.)

Third, he's a politician. He's going to disappoint us. If I were one of those people who I suspect live mostly in the imaginations of columnists at the National Review -- the people who think Obama is the messiah, capable of making the lion lie down with the lamb, cooling the planet with the touch of his hand, bringing the dead back to life, and so on -- I suppose I'd have just dissolved in tears and sworn off politics for life. Luckily, I'm not. And at times like this, I just cast my mind back over previous Democratic nominees -- Kerry, Clinton, Dukakis -- and think: FISA compromise or no FISA compromise, he's still the best candidate I can remember.

Not that I wouldn't greatly have preferred the 'no FISA compromise' option. A lot.

Telecom Immunity Passes

by hilzoy

From the Washington Post:

"The House today overwhelmingly approved a sweeping new surveillance law that effectively would shield telecommunications companies from privacy lawsuits for cooperating with the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program.

Ending a year-long battle with President Bush, the House approved, 293 to 129, a re-write of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that extends the government's ability to eavesdrop on espionage and terrorism suspects while providing a legal escape hatch for AT&T, Verizon Communications and other telecommunication firms. The companies face more than 40 lawsuits that allege they violated customers' privacy rights by helping the government conduct a warrantless spying program after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. (...)

One hundred eighty-eight Republicans and 105 Democrats voted for the bill."

Here's a list of the Yeas and Nays.

In the meantime, for your amusement and delectation, here's Chief Justice John Marshall in Little v. Barreme, a case from 1804. Congress had passed a law that "authorized the seizure on the high seas of vessels of the United States bound or sailing to any port or place of the French Republic." President Washington then issued this order to his naval commanders:

"You are not only to do all that in you lies to prevent all intercourse, whether direct or circuitous, between the ports of the United States and those of France and her dependencies in cases where the vessels or cargoes are apparently, as well as really, American and protected by American papers only, but you are to be vigilant that vessels or cargoes really American, but covered by Danish or other foreign papers, and bound to or from French ports do not escape you."

A commander captured a Danish ship, the Flying Fish, which was sailing from (not to!) a French port. Question: did the fact that the President had authorized the seizure of American ships sailing to and from French ports, even though the Congress had authorized only the seizure of American ships sailing to French ports, make the seizure of the Flying Fish OK? Chief Justice Marshall:

"I confess the first bias of my mind was very strong in favor of the opinion that though the instructions of the executive could not give a right, they might yet excuse from damages. I was much inclined to think that a distinction ought to be taken between acts of civil and those of military officers, and between proceedings within the body of the country and those on the high seas. That implicit obedience which military men usually pay to the orders of their superiors, which indeed is indispensably necessary to every military system, appeared to me strongly to imply the principle that those orders, if not to perform a prohibited act, ought to justify the person whose general duty it is to obey them, and who is placed by the laws of his country in a situation which in general requires that he should obey them. I was strongly inclined to think that where, in consequence of orders from the legitimate authority, a vessel is seized with pure intention, the claim of the injured party for damages would be against that government from which the orders proceeded, and would be a proper subject for negotiation. But I have been convinced that I was mistaken, and I have receded from this first opinion. I acquiesce in that of my brethren, which is that the instructions cannot change the nature of the transaction or legalize an act which without those instructions would have been a plain trespass.

It becomes therefore unnecessary to inquire whether the probable cause afforded by the conduct of the Flying Fish to suspect her of being an American, would excuse Captain Little from damages for having seized and sent her into port, since had she actually been an American, the seizure would have been unlawful."

Personally, I'd be a lot more inclined to let military personnel off the hook for violations of a law that they might well not know about. (I'm assuming that this does not encompass violations of the laws of war.) Chief Justice Marshall, who (unlike me) actually served in the military, and who was a lot more familiar with the framers' intentions, apparently disagreed. It's an interesting contrast. (H/t CharleyCarp.)

***

UPDATE: I do very much want to know why Barack Obama didn't say a word throughout all this.

Very Helpful In the Short Term

by hilzoy

John McCain:

"Tomorrow, I'll call for lifting the federal moratorium for states that choose to permit exploration. I think that this, and perhaps providing additional incentives for states to permit exploration off their coasts, would be very helpful in the short term in resolving our energy crisis."

The radical environmentalist Wall Street Journal:

"As politicians debate whether to open federal offshore waters to oil and natural-gas drilling, there is agreement on at least one point: It isn't a short-term fix.

If the bans were lifted tomorrow, it would be at least seven years -- and likely as long as a decade -- before the first oil began to flow off the coasts of Florida, California and the eastern seaboard."

The US Energy Information Administration:

"The projections in the OCS access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030. Leasing would begin no sooner than 2012, and production would not be expected to start before 2017. Total domestic production of crude oil from 2012 through 2030 in the OCS access case is projected to be 1.6 percent higher than in the reference case, and 3 percent higher in 2030 alone, at 5.6 million barrels per day. For the lower 48 OCS, annual crude oil production in 2030 is projected to be 7 percent higher—2.4 million barrels per day in the OCS access case compared with 2.2 million barrels per day in the reference case (Figure 20). Because oil prices are determined on the international market, however, any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant."

At least seven years, and perhaps a decade, before the first oil begins to flow. No significant impact on domestic production or prices before 2030. I suppose that gives us some idea of what John McCain considers "the short term".

And here's what he considers "very helpful": Dean Baker thinks that when this oil finally does start flowing in a serious way, it could lower gas prices by as much as eight cents a gallon. In a decade or more. And Baker is more optimistic than the Energy Information Administration: they think its impact on prices would be "insignificant".