Entries Tagged with Senate
October 3rd, 2006
On Terror-steria
mass hysteria
n. A socially contagious frenzy of irrational behavior in a group of people as a reaction to an event.
- The Suntan Menace — The Cunning Realist writes about another incident in our friendly skies where an innocent man is assumed by other passengers to be a terrorist because of “suspicious activities” like going to the toilet when he got on the plane and having an iPod. The most damning piece of evidence was the color of his skin, which was tanned due to the vacation the Jewish father of three was returning from. Mr. Stein was physically attacked by another passenger “claiming” to be a NY police officer and put in a head lock an hour into the flight while he was minding his own business reading a book and sipping his ginger ale. He sounds terribly dangerous. He’s suing the airline for failing to protect him since the cabin crew was aware of the passenger’s obsession with him. He should sue the passenger too.
As someone who travels a lot, owns gadgets, is dark-complected, and even uses the restroom, I keep waiting — with anticipation, I must admit — for some overeager vigilante/Charles Bronson-wannabe to try this crap on me.
- Please step to the white courtesy phone [for a brain] — Mac @ peskyapostrophe reports that a man missed his flight after being detained in an airport in Seattle because he was speaking a foreign language into his cell phone. Hmmmmm… That does sound suspicious. Apparently he was discussing sports, which is really suspicious. The language was Tamil, which is a language largely used in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore and the person who called it in was an off-duty airline personnell. The passenger indicated that in the future, he wouldn’t be speaking Tamil into his cell phone in the airport. That’s just a shame.
- The TSA sucks - hey, better detain me — Mac @ peskyapostrophe also has a post about a Wisconsin man who wrote “Kip Hawley is an Idiot” on a plastic bag containing toiletries said he was detained at an airport security checkpoint for about 25 minutes before authorities concluded the statement was not a threat. You know, because Kip Hawley is the head of the Transportation Security Administration. “A TSA spokeswoman acknowledged a man was stopped, but likened the incident to cases in which people inappropriately joke about bombs.” *snort* Talk about going overboard.
On Torture
- Is The U.S. A Rogue State? — Matthew Yglesias (op-ed writer for The American Prospect) @ CBS News wrote a brilliant opinion piece about how in 2003 President George Bush gave a speech indicating that the U.S. was committed to “world-wide elimination of torture” and leading the fight by example. He said it was an inalienable human right to be free of torture. He also said, “The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, ratified by the United States and more than 130 other countries since 1984, forbids governments from deliberately inflicting severe physical or mental pain or suffering on those within their custody or control….Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit.” Based on that statement from Bush’s own claims, Yglesias wants to know if the United States is now a rogue state since we now legally torture. Have we now become what we set out to eliminate?
Other countries, of course, practice torture in violation of international law. As has now been clear for a while, we have been in their company for some years. The latest twist, however, is that we now won’t show any shame about it. Rather than simply violating the laws to which we have agreed to adhere, we’re repudiating them, simply denying that the standard by which civilized nations operate apply to us.
The problems here will be widespread. One of the strengths of democracies on the international scene is precisely that it’s much harder for liberal states to violate agreements. Dictatorships can say one thing and do another with ease. Democracies feature free presses, free speech, the rule of law, independent judiciaries, legislative oversight, and other measures to ensure that laws and treaties are followed. This is, to the conservative mind, a weakness. In their view, cheating is a good thing, and America’s historical difficulty in cheating constitutes a problem. They’re dead wrong. Cooperation is a good thing — the best ticket to prosperity, security, and international peace. Democracies can cooperate with other countries — and especially with other democracies — more credibly and effectively, and that’s one of the reasons the world’s democratic block is so much stronger and more prosperous than the rest of the world.
But the rule of law is now off the table as far as Bush is concerned. What’s more, insofar as national-security policy is at issue, the United States increasingly doesn’t look like much of a democracy. As the congressional Republicans march in lockstep behind the White House’s torture agenda, they don’t even know what that agenda’s composed of. The Boston Globe reported Saturday that 90 percent of members of Congress don’t know “which interrogation techniques have been used in the past, and none of them know which ones would be permissible under proposed changes to the War Crimes Act.” Which is just to say that, in practice, absolutely everything would be permitted, since the only people capable of overseeing the interrogation program haven’t done it, won’t do it, and have no intention of doing it in the future.
Consequently, the United States now presents itself as what amounts to the globe’s largest and most powerful rogue state — a nuclear-armed superpower capable of projecting military force to the furthest corners of the earth, acting utterly without legal or moral constraint whenever the president proclaims it necessary. The idea that striking such a posture on the world stage will serve our long-term interests is daft. American power has, for decades, rested crucially on the sense that the United States can be trusted and relied upon, on the belief that we use our power primarily to defend the community of liberal states and the liberal rules by which they conduct themselves rather than to undermine them.
An America prepared to casually toss out the most fundamental principles of international humanitarian diplomacy, along with basic human decency and the rule of law as side helpings, is not a country others are going to want to cooperate with.
Hat tip: Sean Aqui.
- How long till they come and take your favorite blogger away? — Punkass Mac @ PunkAssBlog.com expresses concern that the inclusion of the term “leftist terrorist” in the NIE report may eventually lead to serious problems for leftist bloggers once the new torture/detainee legislation passes. Pain-in-the-ass lefty bloggers can be labeled as having “leftist terrorist agendas” and disappear into some CIA black prison or Gitmo.
On Iraq
- Batiste — Gregory @ The Belgravia Dispatch wrote an excellent piece, quoting former Major General John Batiste’s testimony before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee which presented a rather scathing review of Rumsfeld’s competence as a wartime leader. Gregory’s analysis is dead on, suggesting that the Bush-Chenney Administration is all talk but no real muscle to back it up, meaning they haven’t or can’t put the resources in to match their own rhetoric.
That is to say, the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld troika are only pretending to have the sang-froid and will and staying power and Churchillian courage to prevail in Iraq. But they are being dishonest with us. They are empty suits, presiding over a failing strategy, none of them with the energy or intellectual courage to own up and demand either that the nation sacrifice and devote adequate resources to the effort, or failing that pursue a convincing alternative strategy. Of course, it’s not all their fault, as they are bowing to some realities, one suspects. If Bush gave a speech calling for re-institution of the draft, or implemention of a war tax, or even less dramatic moves but nevertheless ones that demanded more sacrifice (sending another 50,000 troops in, with casualty rates inevitably increasing, especially if we adopted less conservative force postures in keeping with best counter-insurgency practice) one presumes the nation would turn on the war all the faster (though if such moves changed the tenor of the war for the better perhaps support would not drop as much as one might suspect, although one would need real leaders at the helm explicating the need persuasively, which we don’t). Worth noting too, Rove would allow none of it, with midterms looming in November.
Regardless, what we have now is not quite ’stay the course’, or the comically desperate sounding ‘adapting to win’, or some such soundbite. What we are doing, really, is half-assing along as best we can without truly summoning all the national reservoirs of power (military, economic, diplomatic, humanitarian) to really have a real go at prevailing, assuming one believes there is still a shot at eking out a victory, an issue where intelligent people (as the previous thread indicated) can disagree. At some point, we either step up, talk to the Iranians and Syrians so as to get more intelligent about pursuing a regional strategy, make clear and signal to Iraqis we’re there to truly prevail by sending in more forces, and otherwise get more serious (more robust force posture to truly “clear”, not via endless rounds of whack-a-mole, but with a convincing footprint and level of sustained effort through entire areas of concern simultaneously, more funds for reconstruction and infrastructure to effectively “build”, increasing American embeds operating with both Iraqi Army and even Police units so as to help develop more of an indigenuous “hold” function, and so on)–or we need to think much more about pursuing an intelligent withdrawal strategy–if perhaps we don’t think the additional effort is worth it (perhaps presiding over a confederation, but holding out the prospects of a unitary state in the future, a la Dayton, is worthy of more thought). Either way, the rough status quo, with a couple soldiers dying a day, dishonors their sacrifice, because it is a sacrifice made in vain. And our leaders are not honest enough to come clean with us about this, or if they think they are being honest with us, it is only because they are living in a deluded fantasy land where fundamentalist-style verities reign, rather than the grim realities presented by the empirical evidence around them.
Hat tip: John Cole.
Have an opinion on these topics to share or found a post you want to add? Add your opinion or the post link to the comments section. My inquiring mind wants to know!
Tags: John Batiste, Senate Democratic Policy Committee, George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Iraq, War, stay the course, adapting to win, propaganda, American soldiers, Middle East, Seth Stein, American Airlines, mass hysteria, terrorism, rogue state, The American Prospect, CBS News, torture, War Crimes Act, Geneva Convention, Congress, Seattle, Tamil, TSA, Kip Hawley, leftist terrorist agenda, NIE report, Guantanamo Bay
April 7th, 2006
Is there anyone left in this country who really truly believes that Bush hasn’t already authorized the NSA to spy on Americans using wiretaps on purely domestic calls?
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales left open the possibility yesterday that President Bush could order warrantless wiretaps on telephone calls occurring solely within the United States — a move that would dramatically expand the reach of a controversial National Security Agency surveillance program.
In response to a question from Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) during an appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, Gonzales suggested that the administration could decide it was legal to listen in on a domestic call without supervision if it were related to al-Qaeda.
“I’m not going to rule it out,” Gonzales said.
In the past, Gonzales and other officials refused to say whether they had the legal authority to conduct warrantless eavesdropping on domestic calls, and have stressed that the NSA eavesdropping program is focused only on international communications.
Gonzales previously testified in the Senate that Bush had considered including purely domestic communications in the NSA spying program, but he said the idea was rejected in part because of fears of a public outcry. He also testified at the time that the Justice Department had not fully analyzed the legal issues of such a move. [“Warrantless Wiretaps Possible in U.S.” (Washington Post)]
Generally, by the time this kind of questioning is going on publically, the authorization has apparently already been made if history is any indication with Bush and his administration. Of course, my crazy activist co-worker’s been calling the phone company trying to get them to admit her phone is tapped for months and I’ve assumed since working for the government that mine is so I don’t actually blame Bush for that one. I just thought I’d pass the news on.
Tags: Alberto Gonzales, George W. Bush, Senate, warrantless wiretapping, spying on Americans, Adam Schiff, House Judiciary Committee, NSA
March 16th, 2006
Well, this has kind of slipped by with little hooplah, but while everyone was arguing about whether or not to censure President Bush over warrantless wiretapping and whether or not Democrats are spineless cowards (which they are), the Senate voted 52-48 yesterday to raise the limit on the national debt to $9 trillion so the U.S. Treasury wouldn’t default for the first time ever. In case you’re wondering, “$9 trillion represents about $30,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States.” [“Senate votes to raise debt limit” (ABS News)] Of course, it’s all up to President Bush now, but with his veto record, I’m not sure whether it’s worth the brain energy to wonder if he’ll sign it.
Granted, this “extra” money will allow the government to pay for the war in Iraq, Medicare, and other Federal programs, but they did it rather than do the responsible thing which is raise taxes. Let’s face it, Bush’s tax cuts have not trickled down to revive anything and they haven’t helped the economy. The only ones benefiting are large corporations and the rich, who can afford to help foot the bill a little more so that our country doesn’t go further into debt.
One of the things I agreed with John Kerry about was responsible spending. O.K. I don’t know if he was serious about it when he said it anymore, but it’s my belief that if you don’t have the money, you don’t spend it. This administration seems to be on a wild spending spree, shopping at all the expensive stores and forgetting to pay rent and utilities and the credit cards and the other necessities. If I managed my checkbook the way they managed the Federal budget, I’d be in prison by now or at least I’d be living in a shopping cart.
Is it too much to ask that my goverment be a little bit more responsible with the money I’m giving it?
Tags: Senate, Congress, George W. Bush, politics, national debt, taxes, Federal budget
March 13th, 2006
Susie @ Suburban Guerrilla has a link today to firedoglake where they’re organizing support for Senator Russ Feingold’s censure yesterday. They want everyone to call their senators, Republican or Democrat, and ask them where they stand on the matter. The idea is two fold: First of all, it lets the Senate know just how many people care and support this resolution even if their representative is a line-stepping Republican (like here in Maine) and it gives those of us out here in America an idea of what the intial reaction in the Senate looks like.
This really isn’t a lot to ask. Russ Feingold is putting a lot on the line for us and we need to back him up now. We need to show our support and we need to show Washington that we are tired of the complacency and the incompetency and the line-stepping. We want answers.
You can contact the US Senate via the switchboard at (202) 224-3121, and they will connect you with any Senator’s office. Or you can find your particular Senator’s direct dial here.
I’ve already contacted Senators Snowe and Collins; how about you?
Tags: Russ Feingold, Censure, George W. Bush, Impeach, Senate, Republicans, Democrats, politics
March 12th, 2006
Senator Russ Feingold, one of the few Democrats in Washington who actually does what he says and stands for something anymore, appeared on ABC’s This Week today and announced that tomorrow he’s introducing a very special resolution to the Senate. The resolution would censure President Bush for authorizing an illegal warrantless domestic surveillance program, something many Americans on both sides of the political fence have considered within impeachment territory. Certainly, it brings up some unanswered questions and it displays once again President Bush’s nose-thumbing at the U.S. Constitution and the laws he’s supposed to uphold as our top-most leader. I think we all deserve some answers, and if Bush is well within his rights, then fine, but let’s do this right.
If you want to see the video, go here.
But if you’re lazy, here’s the transcript:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Tomorrow in the Senate you’ll introduce a resolution to censure George W. Bush. Let me show it to our viewers. It says, “Resolved: that the United States Senate does hereby censure George W. Bush, President of the United States, and does condemn his unlawful authorization of wiretaps of Americans.” That is a big step. Why are you taking it now?
FEINGOLD: It’s an unusual step. It’s a big step, but what the President did by consciously and intentionally violating the constitutional laws of this country with this illegal wiretapping has to be answered. There can be debate about whether the law should be changed. There can be debate about how best to fight terrorism. We all believe that there should be wiretapping in appropriate cases. But the idea that the President can just make up a law in violation of his oath of office has to be answered.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But as you know, the President says he was acting on his inherent authority under the Constitution, and even your resolution acknowledges that no federal court has ruled that a president does not have that authority as Commander in Chief, so aren’t you jumping the gun?
FEINGOLD: Not at all. You know, we’ve had a chance here for three months to look at whether there’s any legal basis for this, and they’re using shifting legal justifications. First they try to argue that somehow, under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, they can do this. It’s pretty clear that they can’t. Then there’s the argument that somehow the military authorization for Afghanistan allowed this. This has basically been laughed out of the room in the Congress. So the last resort is to somehow say that the President has inherent authority to ignore the law of the United States of America, and that has the consequence that the President could even order the assassination of American citizens if that’s the law. So there is no sort of independent inherent authority that allows the president to override the laws passed by the Congress of the United States.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So if you’re so convinced that the President has broken the law, why not file an article of impeachment?
FEINGOLD: Well, you know, that’s an option we could look at, if somebody thought that was a really good idea. There are other options out there. In fact, this conduct is right in the strike zone — even though the Founding Fathers didn’t have strike zones, they didn’t have baseball — but it is right in the strike zone of the concept of high crimes and misdemeanors. We have to consider, is it best for the country to start impeachment proceedings? Is it best for the country to consider removing the President? We’re not mandated to impeach a president who has broken the law, but I think we are required to do our job, to live up to our oath of office, and say, wait a minute, there has to be — at least as a first step — some accountability. Proper accountability is a censuring of the President, to say, “Mr. President, acknowledge you broke the law, return to the law, return to our system of government.” That’s what I think we should do. [“VIDEO: Feingold Will Introduce Resolution To Censure President Bush” (ThinkProgress.org)]
Tags: Russ Feingold, Censure, Democrats, warrantless wiretapping, The U.S. Constitution, George W. Bush, politics, Senate
March 9th, 2006
(Note: Icky personal ahead, but bear with me for the point…)
Over the past sixteen years I’ve been very vocal on the subject of insurance and contraceptives — mostly I’ve been a walking billboard for proponents fighting to force insuance companies to cover contraceptives as part of universal basic coverage.
Why? Didn’t I just confess to the blog world the other day that I am the world’s oldest living virgin?
More
Tags: Women's Rights, birth control, contraceptives, Senate, HIMMAA, Mike Enzi
March 7th, 2006
No, seriously. I’ve been mulling it over since last Thursday when the Patriot Act got renewed.
Mostly I’ve been quietly seething as that’s just another nail in the coffin of our dying civil liberties and freedoms and my first impulse was to write a post about how every single one of those Senators who voted to renew the Patriot Act should be voted out of office when their seat came up — which is saying a lot since I actually like Snowe, Collins, Baucus, Vitter, and up until very recently McCain. However, I decided to sit on it and think on it.
More
Tags: John Kerry, Democrats, Patriot Act, Senate, loss of Freedoms
September 22nd, 2005
I must say that I’ve always liked David Vitter and was really disappointed when Blanco beat him out of the governorship. I was glad to see him elected to the Senate last fall and if I were still living in Louisiana, I’d be proud and grateful for the statements he made last Tuesday at a Senate subcommittee (Disaster Prevention and Prediction) hearing on the prediction of Hurricane Katrina and the work of the National Hurricane Center.
“Mr. Chairman, at your June 26th hearing on hurricane prediction, I gave an opening statement describing a ‘worst case scenario’ – the hypothetical situation of a major hurricane having a direct hit on the parishes of St. Bernard and Plaquemines and on the city of New Orleans.
“We used posters showing the National Weather Service’s predictions of inundation in these areas. Computer models showed up to 18 feet of water in the city of New Orleans.
“At that hearing I expressed my frustrations with the policy at every level of government being reactive to disasters instead of being proactive to prepare and prevent these disasters from ever occurring. My exact quote was ‘we can spend millions now preparing for a disaster, or we can spend billions later responding to a disaster.’
“Finally, I said, ‘it is not if we are hit by a hurricane, but when the disaster occurs.’
“Mr. Chairman, we know the ‘when’ – it was August 29th – two months to the day following your hearing. Both hell and high water came to Louisiana and Mississippi. Now we are spending the billions responding.
“This did not have to happen. It did not have to be this way. Hundreds (or thousands) did not have to lose their lives. Unlike the tragedy of September 11th or the tsunami last year in the Indian Ocean, there was no element of surprise. We knew what was going to happen, and we knew when it was going to happen.
“There has been an extraordinary amount of finger pointing and partisanship in the aftermath of Katrina. In all of this political posturing, some very bright lights have been ignored.
“Due to the great work of Director Max Mayfield and his team at the National Hurricane Center, we knew exactly where Hurricane Katrina was going to make landfall 56 hours before the storm came ashore. That is enough time to drive from New Orleans to New York – twice – with a good night’s sleep both times. Director Mayfield, as you know, hundreds of thousands of Louisianans did load up their families and evacuate. Thank you to you and your team for your hard work.
“Another bright light back here today is Marc Levitan of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center. Marc’s team provided data predicting that the levees on Lake Pontchartrain would be topped a full 36 hours in advance of the storm. New Orleans is a bowl. A topped levee means widespread flooding.
“Another witness here today, Windell Curole, has been expressing his concerns of Louisiana’s hurricane preparedness for years. Windell brought this to our attention and helped Congress design the ongoing hurricane protection evaluation currently underway by the Corps of Engineers.
“Again, it did not have to happen this way.
“Now we are moving toward the recovery and rebuilding phase of this disaster. Some estimates have exceeded $300 billion dollars, and a few Members of Congress have expressed reservations with the restoration price tag. For those that view this as a parochial issue or an unjustified need, let me assure you otherwise.
“Every single one of your constituents have felt the pain of Hurricane Katrina through higher energy prices. Gasoline prices alone have escalated 90 cents a gallon in some areas due to the hurricane. Offshore Louisiana and our associated infrastructure provide 20 percent of this nation’s energy. Our waters have provided this country with nearly $140 billion for the U.S. Treasury in the form of energy royalties. Our state also has 16 percent of the nation’s refining capacity.
“The ports between Baton Rouge and New Orleans comprise the largest port system in the world. We provide 36 states with maritime commerce and mid-western farmers depend upon our ports and waterways to get their crops to market.
“Finally, Louisiana’s offshore industry provides up to 30 percent of the domestic seafood consumed in this country – shrimp, crawfish, oysters and many more. Much of our ecosystem and fishing fleet is destroyed.” [“Vitter: This didn’t have to happen (WWL)”]
And to think he’s a Republican! 
Tags: David Vitter, Hurricane Katrina, Senate
August 21st, 2005
We might just be better off picking the first 100 people who enter a Wal Mart and have them run the Senate for a year. [“Same Old Song And Dance”]
As Karen Walker says, “It’s funny ‘cuz it’s true!”
Tags: Quote of the Day, Senate, politics
July 25th, 2005
The following comes from democrats.gov’s website where they currently have a clock tallying the number of days, hours, minutes and seconds that the Republican’s have not spent investigating the CI Leak case. (Currently it is over 742 days as of this posting.)
As Earl Pitts, Redneck American, has been known to say, “Wake up, America!“
Number of days after the article outing Ambassador Wilson’s wife appeared that the White House required its staff to turn over evidence relating to the leak: 85
Approximate hours between then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez’s advance notification to White House Chief of Staff Andy Card that he would require staff to turn over evidence relating to the case and formal notification to staff of that requirement: 12
Minimum number of times an Administration official leaked classified information about the identity of Ambassador Wilson’s wife: 11
Minimum number of times after the beginning of the Justice Department’s investigation that White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan claimed Karl Rove was not involved: 5
Minimum number of times since evidence linking Karl Rove to the leak was made public that Press Secretary McClellan has refused to comment on the case, citing an ongoing investigation: 7
Minimum number of hearings held by Senate Republicans to investigate accusations against President Clinton involving the “Whitewater” case: 20
Total hearings held by Senate Republicans to investigate the leak of the covert identity of Ambassador Joseph Wilson;s wife: 0
Tags: PlameGate, Democrats, Joe Wilson, Republicans, politics, Conspiracy Theories, Andrew Card, Alberto Gonzales, Scott McClellan, Karl Rove, Bill Clinton, Senate
July 11th, 2005
Really, this is just more proof that the government doesn’t have a clue. We certainly aren’t safer. Immigration hasn’t gotten stricter. Most imported cargos are still not thoroughly checked. People are still getting on airplanes with all manner of ridiculous items and there hasn’t seemed much interest in making certain other modes of transportation are safe.
Senate likely to restore cuts to rail security funds:
Three weeks before London’s bus and subway bombings Thursday, a Senate committee voted to slash spending on mass transit security in the United States, a decision sure to be reversed when Congress returns next week.
And yet, most of the Homeland Security Funding has been misspent on things like air-conditioned garbage trucks, sending sanitation workers to a Dale Carnegie course that has nothing to do with emergency preparedness ($100K, btw), a computerized car towing service, and other things that don’t seem to concern Homeland Security.
What a mess.
Tags: Senate, immigration, Homeland Security
