Drafting Errors

The 'torture bill' recently crafted by 'dissident' Republicans and the White House -- or, to be precise, by the White House with minor input from a few slightly discomfitted Republicans -- has apparently been firmed-up over the weekend, in an effort to eliminate any remaining American values that escaped the first go-round. According to slightly-discomfitted Lindsey Graham, at least one of the modifications inserted to bring the bill into closer compliance with Soviet guidelines for prisoner treatment was just a wee mistake:

In one change, the original language said that a suspect had the right to "examine and respond to" all evidence used against him. Mr. Graham and his colleagues in resisting the White House, Senators John W. Warner of Virginia and John McCain of Arizona, had insisted that the provision was necessary to prevent so-called secret trials. The bill submitted late Monday dropped the word "examine" and left only "respond to," reviving complaints about secret trials, this time from Democrats.

[...]

Republicans and the White House explained the change to the provision about viewing evidence as, in Mr. Graham’s words, "literally just a drafting error," and said the word "examine" would be restored.

Don't you dare call the President a liar

Our household has recently been eschewing the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer in favor of a pair of back-to-back Everybody Loves Raymond reruns. For a while we'd look at the NewsHour summary and preview of segments for that evening, but the topics of the segments always seemed somewhat irrelevant or off-topic, one way or another. But yesterday I stumbled across some quotes from Jim Lehrer and Ben Bradlee that have solidified my vague sense of irritation and boredom into a somewhat sharper emotion.

The first was from a 6/2/06 interview in Columbia Journalism Review:

JIM LEHRER: [I]f somebody says -- doesn't matter if it's the president or who -- if somebody says, "It rained on Thursday," and you know for a fact it didn't rain on Thursday, ... you would say, "However, according to the weather bureau it didn't." But you don't call the person a liar. ... [T]he person who'd read that story [might] say, "My god, Billy Bob lied." But I'm not doing that. I'm providing the information so that the person can make their decision. People might say, "Well the weather bureau has lied. Or I was out that day and it was raining ...

I'm sure this example sounded a bit less rambling and repetitive in Mr. Lehrer's friendly drawl, but I'm not sure what purpose is served by when a 'journalist' who "know[s] for a fact it didn't rain on Thursday" quotes someone claiming the opposite , without at least pointing out that the statement is, in fact, false. Note that there is a difference between calling someone a liar, which implies knowledge of their thoughts, and describing as statement they made as untrue, which is very different, and (at least sometimes) can be determined unambiguously.

The other quote is actually from Ben Bradlee, but he's talking to Lehrer and Lehrer isn't disagreeing one bit:

BEN BRADLEE: By the seat of their pants, they keep lies out. It's one thing if you know it's a lie. Then you can keep it out.

JIM LEHRER: Sure, just don't run it.

BEN BRADLEE: Just don't run it. But you have to run -- it has become socially proper and right to run what the President of the United States says. And if in the process of that, say, press conference he tells something, he says something that isn't true, you've got to learn how to handle that. You can't come right out, quote the statement and then have a paragraph on your own saying, parenthesis, this is a lie, period.

JIM LEHRER: What do you do?

BEN BRADLEE: Well, you, if it's important enough, you would assign a special story to it and say, when the President said A, he flew in the face of-- there are lots of little euphemisms you can use-- of much of opinion, which says the opposite. And you can highlight the controversy. That seems to me to be quite an intelligent way of doing it.

Note that Bradlee advises against calling the President a liar, but his solution to his lack of mindreading abilities involves characterizing the false statement as "[flying] in the face of ... much of opinion". He completely skips over the possibility of describing the statment as untrue, leaving it in the realm of opinion, which has nothing to do with truth.

I'll stick with Everybody Loves Raymond.

[Source for both quotes : Media Matters]

John Yoo: "How the Presidency Regained Its Balance"

The previous post about John Yoo's nonchalant attitudes towards the torture of children came about because of an Op Ed piece written by Mr. Yoo in yesterday's NY Times (what liberal media?), wherein he displays, among other charming traits, his stunning lack of awareness that in the 1970's the Soviet Union did, in fact, maintain a vast arsonal of intercontinental ballistic missiles armed with thermonuclear warheads and targetted on all major US cities -- a state of affairs known to many of us as the cold war.

I originally peppered the text of this article with emphases, but sometime the exercise really must be left to the reader. (I've included the full text of the article because it will soon disappear behind the Times Select wall.)

Op-Ed Contributor
How the Presidency Regained Its Balance
By JOHN YOO
Published: September 17, 2006

Berkeley, Calif.

FIVE years after 9/11, President Bush has taken his counterterrorism case to the American people. That’s because he has had to. This summer, a plurality of the Supreme Court found, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, that Congress must explicitly approve military commissions to try suspected terrorists. So Mr. Bush has proposed legislation seeking to place the tribunals, and other aggressive antiterrorism measures, on a sounder footing.

But the president has broader goals than even fighting terrorism — he has long intended to make reinvigorating the presidency a priority. Vice President Dick Cheney has rightly deplored the "erosion of the powers and the ability of the president of the United States to do his job" and noted that "we are weaker today as an institution because of the unwise compromises that have been made over the last 30 to 35 years."

Thus the administration has gone to war to pre-empt foreign threats. It has data-mined communications in the United States to root out terrorism. It has detained terrorists without formal charges, interrogating some harshly. And it has formed military tribunals modeled on those of past wars, as when we tried and executed a group of Nazi saboteurs found in the United States.

To his critics, Mr. Bush is a "King George" bent on an "imperial presidency." But the inescapable fact is that war shifts power to the branch most responsible for its waging: the executive. Harry Truman sent troops to fight in Korea without Congressional authority. George H. W. Bush did not have the consent of Congress when he invaded Panama to apprehend Manuel Noriega. Nor did Bill Clinton when he initiated NATO’s air war over Kosovo.

The Bush administration’s decisions to terminate the 1972 antiballistic missile treaty and to withdraw from the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto accords on global warming rested on constitutional precedents going all the way back to Abraham Lincoln.

The administration has also been energetic on the domestic front. It has re-classified national security information made public in earlier administrations and declined, citing executive privilege, to disclose information to Congress or the courts about its energy policy task force. The White House has declared that the Constitution allows the president to sidestep laws that invade his executive authority. That is why Mr. Bush has issued hundreds of signing statements — more than any previous president — reserving his right not to enforce unconstitutional laws.

A reinvigorated presidency enrages President Bush’s critics, who seem to believe that the Constitution created a system of judicial or congressional supremacy. Perhaps this is to be expected of the generation of legislators that views the presidency through the lens of Vietnam and Watergate. But the founders intended that wrongheaded or obsolete legislation and judicial decisions would be checked by presidential action, just as executive overreaching is to be checked by the courts and Congress.

The changes of the 1970’s occurred largely because we had no serious national security threats to United States soil, but plenty of paranoia in the wake of Richard Nixon’s use of national security agencies to spy on political opponents. Congress enacted the War Powers Resolution, which purports to cut off presidential uses of force abroad after 60 days. It passed the Budget and Impoundment Act to eliminate the modest presidential power to rein in wasteful spending. The Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act required the government to get a warrant from a special court to conduct wiretapping for national security reasons.

These statutes have produced little but dysfunction, from flouting of the war powers law, to ever-higher pork barrel spending, to the wall between intelligence and law enforcement that contributed to our failure to stop the 9/11 attacks.

The 1970’s shifted power from the president to Congress, and the latter proved a far more accommodating boss to federal agencies looking for budget dollars — a fragmented legislature is obviously much easier to game than a chief executive. But 535 members of Congress cannot manage day-to-day policy. A legislature’s function is to draft the laws of the land, set broad goals and spend taxpayer revenues in the national interest, not to micromanage.

The judiciary, too, has been increasingly assertive over the last three decades. It has shown far less deference to the executive in this war than in past conflicts. This energetic judiciary is partly a response to Congress’s bulked-up power; the courts have had to step in to try to repair the problems created by vague laws that try to do too much, that state grandiose goals, while avoiding hard policy choices.

Congress’s vague legal mandates are handed off to the states or the agencies or the courts to sort out. Our legislators rarely turn their attention to the problems created by laws that are old and obsolete, or of dubious relevance to new issues. (This is why the Hamdan decision was less a rebuke of the presidency than a sign of frustration with Congress’s failure to update our laws to deal with the terrorist menace.)

Unfortunately, much of the public misunderstands the true role of the executive branch — in large part because today’s culture transforms presidents into celebrities. On TV, a president’s every move seems central to the universe, so he has the image of power that far exceeds the reality. But as the presidential scholar Richard Neustadt, a liberal icon, argued, the presidency is inherently weak, while mythic things are expected of and attributed to it — like maintaining national security and economic growth.

Today many pundits and political scientists seem to want the president’s power to be the sum of his communication and political skills, his organizational ability, his cognitive style and emotional intelligence. It is almost as if any president who uses the constitutional powers allocated to his office to effect policy has failed, not succeeded.

But the presidency, unlike Congress, is the only office elected by and accountable to the nation as a whole. The president has better access to expertise from the unified executive branch — including its top secret data — than the more ad hoc information Congress develops through hearings and investigations.

That is why, while jealous of its prerogatives, Congress usually goes along with a president’s policy decisions. A strong executive can accept responsibility for difficult choices that Congress wants to avoid. The Republican Congress, for instance, wanted to give President Bill Clinton a line-item veto, only to be blocked by the Supreme Court. Despite hearings and criticism of the energetic executive, Congress has yet to pass laws reining in Mr. Bush very much.

Congress has for years been avoiding its duty to revamp or repeal outmoded parts of bygone laws in the light of contemporary threats. We have needed energy in the executive branch to fill in that gap. Congress now must act to guide our counterterror policy, but it should not try to micromanage the executive branch, particularly in war, where flexibility of action is paramount.

-- John Yoo, a deputy assistant attorney general from 2001 to 2003, is a professor at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law and the author of "War by Other Means."

Just a reminder

... of precisely what sort of people are closely advising our current leadership:

Doug Cassel: If the president deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?

John Yoo: No treaty.

Doug Cassel: Also no law by Congress — that is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo [while Yoo was a Justice Department attorney].

John Yoo: I think it depends on why the president thinks he needs to do that. [Emphasis added]

-- From a 12/1/2005 debate between Doug Cassel, director of Notre Dame Law School's Center for Civil and Human Rights, and John Yoo, former member of the Justice Department, author of the infamous 'Yoo memorandum' (some analysis here, complete text here) and advocate of the unitary executive theory of supreme Executive Branch power.

Are we the enemy? Support for amnesty for Iraqi insurgents who have killed American troops

This is a three-month-old story, but it received almost no coverage, and seems to me to be the clearest example to date of one party's homicidal lack of concern for our fighting forces, and that party's desire to provide aid and comfort to the enemy currently engaged in combat with our troops.

The statements below are particularly piquant in light of the trio of books just featured, portraying liberals as terrorist enablers, death-mongers, or heirs of Nazi German ideology, and written by highly visible and respected members of the right wing (i.e., not Ann Coulter).

(From AMERICAblog)

This afternoon [6/15/2006] on the Senate floor, several Senate Republicans are DEFENDING the proposal to give amnesty to terrorists who have killed or wounded American troops. Here is a quick compilation:

MCCONNELL SUGGESTED A RESOLUTION COMMENDING IRAQIS FOR GIVING TERRORISTS AMNESTY. “…might it not just be as useful an exercise to be trying to pass a resolution commending the Iraqi government for the position that they’ve taken today with regard to this discussion of Amnesty?” – Sen. Mitch McConnell [R-KY]

ALEXANDER COMPARED IRAQI AMNESTY FOR TERRORISTS TO NELSON MANDELA’S PEACE EFFORTS. “Is it not true that Nelson Mandela's courage and his ability to create a process of reconciliation and forgiveness was a major factor in what has been a political miracle in Africa…Did not Nelson Mandela, win a - the co-winner of - a noble Nobel Peace Prize just for this sort of gesture?” – Sen. Lamar Alexander [R-TN]

CORNYN: IRAQI AMNESTY DEBATE IS “A DISTRACTION.” “It makes no sense for the United States Senate to shake its finger at the new government of Iraq and to criticize them… it really is a distraction from the debate that I think the American people would want us to have.” - Sen. John Cornyn [R-TX; previously expressed understanding of why alleged fury at 'activist judges' led to murder of a judge, and murders of two family members of another judge.]

CHAMBLISS: AMNESTY IS OK FOR EX-INSURGENTS AS LONG AS THEY ARE ON OUR SIDE NOW. “Is it not true today that we have Iraqis who are fighting the war against the insurgents, who at one time fought against American troops and other coalition troops as they were marching to Baghdad, who have now come over to our side and are doing one heck of a job of fighting along, side by side, with Americans and coalition forces, attacking and killing insurgents on a daily basis?” - Sen. Saxby Chambliss [R-GA; ran a 2002 campaign against Max Cleeland, a Vietnam veteran and triple amputee (Chambliss received a deferral) wherein he placed photos of Cleeland and Osama bin Laden side by side]

TED STEVENS - “IF THAT’S AMNESTY, I’M FOR IT:” “I really believe we ought to try to find some way to encourage that country to demonstrate to those people who have been opposed to what we're trying to do, that it's worthwhile for them and their children to come forward and support this democracy. And if that's amnesty, I'm for it. I'd be for it. And if those people who are, come forward… if they bore arms against our people, what's the difference between those people that bore arms against the Union in the War between the States? What’s the difference between the Germans and Japanese and all the people we’ve forgiven?” – Sen. Ted Stevens [R-AK; author of $220 million dollar pork 'bridge to nowhere']

We are the enemy (III) .. a "howl of indignation"

Liberal Fascism, by Jonah Goldberg:

Since the rise and fall of the Nazis in the midtwentieth century, fascism has been seen as an extreme right-wing phenomenon. Liberals have kept that assumption alive, hurling accusations of fascism at their conservative opponents. LIBERAL FASCISM offers a startling new perspective on the theories and practices that define fascist politics. Replacing conveniently manufactured myths with surprising and enlightening research, Jonah Goldberg shows that the original fascists were really on the Left and that liberals, from Woodrow Wilson to FDR to Hillary Clinton, have advocated policies and principles remarkably similar to those of Hitler's National Socialism.

Goldberg draws striking parallels between historic fascism and contemporary liberal doctrines. He argues that "political correctness" on campuses and calls for campaign finance reform echo the Nazis' suppression of free speech; and that liberals, like their fascist forebears, dismiss the democratic process when it yields results they dislike, insist on the centralization of economic decision-making, and seek to insert the authority of the state in our private lives–from bans on smoking to gun control. Covering such hot issues as morality, anti-Semitism, science versus religion, health care, and cultural values, he boldly illustrates the resemblances between the opinions advanced by Hitler and Mussolini and the current views of the Left.

Impeccably researched and persuasively argued, LIBERAL FASCISM will elicit howls of indignation from the liberal establishment–and rousing cheers from the Right.

We are the enemy (II)

Book two of three in a set ...

The Party of Death:
The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life
by Ramesh Ponnuru

From the Inside Flap

Is the Democratic Party the "Party of Death"?

If you look at their agenda they are.

IT’S NOT JUST abortion-on-demand. It’s euthanasia, embryo destruction, even infanticide—and a potentially deadly concern with "the quality of life" of disabled people. If you think these issues don’t concern you—guess again. The Party of Death could be roaring into the White House, as National Review senior editor Ramesh Ponnuru shows, in the person of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In The Party of Death, Ponnuru details how left-wing radicals, using abortion as their lever, took over the Democratic Party—and how they have used their power to corrupt our law and politics, abolish our fundamental right to life, and push the envelope in ever more dangerous directions. In The Party of Death, Ponnuru reveals:

* How Hillary Clinton could use the abortion issue (but not in the way you think) to become president * Why the conventional wisdom about Roe v.Wade is a lie * How the party of death—a coalition of special interests ranging from Planned Parenthood to Hollywood—came to own the Democratic Party * How the mainstream media promotes the party of death * Why Jesse Jackson, Al Gore, and other leading liberals gave up being pro-life * How liberals use animal rights to displace human rights * The Democratic presidential candidate who said that infanticide is a mother’s "choice" * How doctors—and other health care professionals—are being coerced, by law, into violating their consciences * The ultrasound revolution: why there’s hope to stop the party of death

Ponnuru’s shocking exposé shows just how extreme the Party of Death has become as they seek to destroy every inconvenient life, demand fealty to their radical agenda, and punish anyone who defies them. But he also shows how the tide is turning, how the Party of Death can be defeated, and why its last victim might be the Democratic Party itself.

We are the enemy

[Courtesy of "BB":]

"In THE ENEMY AT HOME, bestselling author Dinesh D'Souza makes the startling claim that the 9/11 attacks and other terrorist acts around the world can be directly traced to the ideas and attitudes perpetrated by America's cultural left.

"D'Souza shows that liberals--people like Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Barney Frank, Bill Moyers, and Michael Moore--are responsible for fostering a culture that angers and repulses not just Muslim countries but also traditional and religious societies around the world. Their outspoken opposition to American foreign policy--including the way the Bush administration is conducting the war on terror--contributes to the growing hostility, encouraging people both at home and abroad to blame America for the problems of the world. He argues that it is not our exercise of freedom that enrages our enemies, but our abuse of that freedom--from the sexual liberty of women to the support of gay marriage, birth control, and no-fault divorce, to the aggressive exportation of our vulgar, licentious popular culture.

"The cultural wars at home and the global war on terror are usually viewed as separate problems. In this groundbreaking book, D'Souza shows that they are one and the same. It is only by curtailing the left's attacks on religion, family, and traditional values that we can persuade moderate Muslims and others around the world to cooperate with us and begin to shun the extremists in their own countries."

Email to Senator George Mitchell, Disney Chairman

Senator George J. Mitchell (george.mitchell@dlapiper.com)
Chairman of the Board
Walt Disney Co.

Dear Sen. Mitchell:

I am writing to request that ABC/Disney cancel "The Path to 9/11", scheduled for broadcast September 10-11. There are several basic facts that indicate that the movie is no more than right-wing propaganda:

1. The movie was written by Cyrus Nowrasteh, a conservative supporter of George W. Bush.

2. Advance copies have been distributed only to conservative pundits and bloggers such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, but have been denied to others more critical of the Bush administration.

3. ABC claims that the movie is based "solely and completely on the 9/11 Commission Report". However, the movie directly contradicts that report in several places, including its depiction of the involvement of Sandy Berger and Madeline Albright as calling off an early attempt to kill Osama bin Laden after he attacked the USS Cole, and its claim that the Clinton administration refused to carry out retributive strikes after the USS Cole attack. (In the latter case, the Commission Report found that it was the Bush administration who declined to attack bin Laden.)

4. There has been diverse criticism of the movie's false portayal of members of the Clinton administration as soft on terrorism. This criticism comes not only from those Clinton administration members themselves, but from such staunch conservatives as Bill Bennet and Fox anchor Chris Wallace, among others.

It seems obvious that a fictionalized and obviously biased movie made by a partisan support of one political party should not be aired on network television at any time, but especially a few months before national elections, unless it is run as a paid political advertisement with equal time for rebuttal offered for opposing viewpoints. The proximity of this propaganda broadcast to the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is also shameful.

I am recommending to all friends and family that they boycott both ABC and Disney productions until such time as this blatant and strategically-timed propaganda is pulled from the air.

I would be grateful for a prompt reply to this email. Thank you.

Email to NPR Ombudsman

NPR's coverage this morning of the controversy over the ABC miniseries "The Path to 9/11" mentioned only that members of the Clinton admin have described innaccuracies in the series. The segment failed to mention (1) that the series was written by a right-wing Bush supporter, (2) that it has only been pre-distributed to right-wing pundits, and (3) that all of these pundits have highly praised the series. The segment also failed to discuss the timing of the show (on the 9/11 anniversary, and just before a major national election).

Details, Details ..

Interviewed by Katie Couric this morning, Mr. Bush seemed uncertain about some pretty important-sounding 'facts' ..

KATIE COURIC:
Can you give us any indication about what kind of information you were able to glean from these, quote/unquote, high value targets?

PRESIDENT BUSH:
Right. Well, for example– there’s a– we– we uncovered a– a potential anthrax attack on the United States. Or the fact that– Kalid Sheik Mohammad had got somebody to– to line up people to fly airlines, to– to crash airlines on, I think, the West Coast or somewhere in America. And these would be Southeast Asians. In other words, we’ve uncovered cells.

Somewhere in America? Somewhere in America? Where? The Coit Tower? The New York Times building? Perhaps they were targeting Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-RI)? Supreme Court Justice Stevens? Sen. John Murtha?

Boycott ABC; cancel "Path to 9/11"

[I sent this email via the Think Progress "Path to 9/11" web page.]

Robert A. Iger, President and CEO, The Walt Disney Company
Charlie Gibson, ABCNews

Dear Messrs. Iger and Gibson:

I am writing to request that ABC/Disney cancel "The Path to 9/11", scheduled for broadcast September 10-11. There are several basic facts that indicate that the movie is no more than right-wing propaganda:

1. The movie was written by Cyrus Nowrasteh, a conservative supporter of George W. Bush.

2. Advance copies have been distributed only to conservative pundits and bloggers such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, but have been denied to others more critical of the Bush administration.

3. ABC claims that the movie is based "solely and completely on the 9/11 Commission Report". However, the movie directly contradicts that report in several places, including its depiction of the involvement of Sandy Berger and Madeline Albright as calling off an early attempt to kill Osama bin Laden after he attacked the USS Cole, and its claim that the Clinton administration refused to carry out retributive strikes after the USS Cole attack. (In the latter case, the Commission Report found that it was the Bush administration who declined to attack bin Laden.)

4. Former governor NJ Tom Keane, head of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission Report, has expressed reservations about its inaccuracy, as have various members of the Clinton administration, and at least one former member of the Bush administration (Richard Clarke).

A fictionalized and obviously biased movie made by a partisan support of one political party obviously should not be aired on network television at any time, but especially a few months before national elections, unless it is run as a paid political advertisement with equal time for rebuttal offered for opposing viewpoints. The proximity of this propaganda broadcast to the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is also shameful.

I know you (Mr. Gibson) have no say in what is broadcast on ABC as entertainment, but surely you must realize the newsworthiness of this decision on ABC's part to broadcast right-wing propoganda in an election season.

I am recommending to all friends and family that they boycott ABC and Disney productions until such time as this propaganda piece is pulled from the air.

I would be grateful for a prompt and meaningful reply to this email. Thank you.