By Dan Froomkin
WASHINGTON -- A six-year-old memo from within the George W. Bush administration that came to light this week acknowledges that White House-approved interrogation techniques amounted to "war crimes." The memo's release has called attention to what has changed since President Barack Obama took office, but it also raises questions about what hasn't.
The Bush White House tried to destroy every copy of the memo, written by then-State Department counselor Philip Zelikow. Zelikow examined tactics like waterboarding -- which simulates drowning -- and concluded that there was no way they were legal, domestically or internationally.
“We are unaware of any precedent in World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, or any subsequent conflict for authorized, systematic interrogation practices similar to those in question here," Zelikow wrote. The memo has been obtained by George Washington University's National Security Archive and Wired's Spencer Ackerman.
On his second full day in office, President Barack Obama formally disavowed torture, banning the types of techniques Zelikow had objected to so strongly in his memo.
But while Democrats are using the memo as evidence of a new post-torture era under Obama, human rights activists, civil libertarians and opponents of excessive secrecy say they see many ways in which the country's moral compass is still askew -- and in some ways even more so than before.
"If your baseline is the Bush years, it's night and day," said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive. "If your baselines are a set of first principles, as the ACLU calls for, or as us openness advocates call for, then your situation is: Is the glass half full or the glass half empty?"
Obama has refused to pursue legal action against those who may have engaged in law-breaking under his predecessor's watch -- saying he prefers to "look forward instead of looking backward." To some, this indicates there is little assurance that the U.S. won't torture again in the future.
"The administration has clearly disavowed torture, and that is an important and welcome thing," said Jameel Jaffer, a national security expert at the American Civil Liberties Union.
"But they're steadily building a framework for impunity."
When it comes to issues like warrantless surveillance, "continuity is the rule and not the exception and in fact in some very important areas this administration has gone even farther than the Bush Administration did," Jaffer said.
Most alarming, says Jafeer, is the issue of the targeted killing of American citizens who are terrorism suspects.
Jaffer said the idea that the government can mark an American for death without any judicial oversight is something the framers of the Constitution "would have found totally foreign to the project they were engaged in."
"I think there are many Democrats out there who are quiet because they trust President Obama," Jaffer said. But, he added, "there's no doubt that the power we're giving President Obama will be available to a future president."
Jaffer noted that another way things may be worse today than during the Bush era is that at least back then, many people thought things would change dramatically once Bush left office, and that his actions wouldn't establish legal precedents.
"We didn't worry so much about that because the Bush Administration was seen as an outlier and an aberration, and the Bush precedent wouldn't have been seen as weighty," Jaffer said. By contrast, "It's not at all difficult to imagine [future presidents] citing President Obama in their defense of carrying out more targeted killings of American citizens."
"Now we're making many of these emergency powers permanent ... and bipartisan. We're enshrining these things into our permanent law."
Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, sees some good and some bad in terms of where the government stands on national security issues today. "The Obama Administration has made significant and substantial changes to counterterrorism policy as it relates to human rights and civil liberties -- for example, in their detention policies and their recognition of the limits of military power and the importance of following traditional laws of war in an armed conflict," she said.
And yet, she said: "The administration has done much less to fix the problems of too much surveillance, without enough good reasons, of too many people."
Transparency about what the administration is doing and why "is mixed," she said, with both "important disclosures and inexplicable withholdings."
Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, said he doesn't think it is all Obama's fault. He blames congressional Republicans for blocking Obama's attempts to close the Guantanamo prison, for instance, and the intelligence agencies for much of the rest.
"The intelligence agencies are at the front of the resistance," Blanton said. "They're resisting accountability for what they themselves did."
Ten months into Obama's presidency, White House Counsel Greg Craig resigned, a move some saw as a purge and grim sign for any hope that the president would keep fighting on these issues. Craig is known to have advocated strongly for Obama to hold fast to the principles that he has espoused in regards to dealing with torture suspects -- regardless of the immediate political consequences.
Where does that leave us? "I wouldn't call us an outlaw nation," Blanton said, "but I don't think we've come to terms with our gang period."
Writing in Thursday's Wall Street Journal, conservative Shelby Steele announced "Two tragedies are apparent in the Trayvon Martin case." The first was that Martin had been gunned down by a neighborhood watchman. The second calamity, according to Steele, was that the "liberal media" and the "the increasingly redundant civil rights establishment" have exploited the boy's death for their own gain.
It's telling what Steele did not consider to be a tragedy in the Martin case - the fact that the man who admitted shooting the unarmed teen, George Zimmerman, hasn't been arrested or charged with a crime. Indeed, the lack of an arrest is the central reason why the Martin story erupted into national headlines in recent weeks. And yet Steele, busy bashing Martin's advocates as well as the press, raced right past that salient fact.
Steele is not alone. Within the conservative media, it's now become commonplace to pontificate about the Martin story (while often condemning civil rights activists as "race hustlers") without ever mentioning why the story became such a blockbuster; without ever mentioning that the man who shot Martin has not been charged.
That's kind of a crucial fact. Yet conservative pundits seem eager to brush it aside. That amount of obfuscation raises doubts whether they even understand the fundamentals of the Martin story, or whether they are just choosing to ignore them because they raise difficult questions about the law and race in America.
Last week Media Matters noted that Fox News' Bill O'Reilly wondered, as more and more information leaked about Martin's past, whether a "gag order" should be placed in the "case." But of course, only a judge can issue a gag order and the fact is there is no Martin legal "case" because nobody has been arrested for the crime of shooting the unarmed teenager.
And recently, National Review editor Rich Lowry complained there was a double standard with regards to which black murder victims received more media attention, and which black crime victims sparked community protest. Lowry pointed to several black-on-black crimes that he claimed had not "gin[ned] up the outrage machine" the way the "allegedly racially motivated killing" of Martin had been turned into a "cause" and a "national symbol."
What did Lowry not acknowledge in his piece about the Martin story? The fact that the boy's killer, who authorities identified at the scene, hasn't been charged with a crime.
The conservative press has now spent weeks, in full force, trying to spin away the Martin controversy. The fact that so many far-right players won't even acknowledge a key facet of the case suggests it's a story they cannot deal with honestly.
Are Smart Meters health hazards? Smart Meter radiation emissions are both greater in volume and more frequent than PG&E admits, according to more and more independent EMF specialists measuring them. And consumers are getting concerned.
Smart Meters are electric and gas meter reading devices being installed all over the US as a first step in creating a national smart grid. Designed to enhance energy efficiency and make widespread adoption of renewable energy easier, Smart Meters are radio transmitters that communicate data from homes and businesses to the gas and electric company through a matrix of radio signals. They allow people to measure and monitor their own energy consumption in order to reduce it.
Large groups of citizens are complaining that their Smart Meters are over-billing them. Public meetings are being held over the country to discuss this, and many cities have come out in favor of a smart Meter moratorium until the issue is resolved.
But now there are growing numbers of activists who are protesting against Smart Meters for another reason. They contend that the radio frequency (RF) Smart Meters emit is harmful to human health. People living with the meters are claiming mild to severe symptoms that are all over the board: Concentration and memory problems, dizziness, tinnitus, heart palpitations, headaches, sleep disruptions, nausea, anxiety and behavioral problems in children.
People are especially concerned about certain groups who are vulnerable to Smart Meter health risks, such as children (who absorb radiation at a greater rate than adults), electrosensitive people, people with pacemakers, and chronically ill people whose immune systems are compromised.
PG&E seems to be unable to give consistent, believable answers about either how frequently Smart Meter radiation is emitted—or what the peak power is of the radiation signal at certain distances. Some representative say the meters transmit RF six times a day; others, once an hour. Independent RF specialists have measured them every 45 seconds, or even twice in a minute.
As for peak power of Smart Meter radiation signals, there is even more confusion. PG&E maintains that the RF transmissions are well within FCC standards, that they transmit data for only a fraction of a second and are far weaker than other everyday radio frequency emitters, such as cell phones, cell towers and Wi-Fi.
Putting aside for a moment the debate over the safety of even these “everyday” RF emitters, there’s reason to doubt these assurances from PG&E that Smart Meters are safer than these other devices. Independent environmental EMF consultants have found that peak pulses are far greater in intensity than the “average pulse” that many utility companies claim—sometimes up to 1000 times more powerful than a cell phone.(1) Because of the skewed and inaccurate way in which they figure the number of pulses per minutes, their figures of an “average” pulse is greatly reduced.
Indeed, assurances of utility companies are reminiscent of promises that have been made over the years by plastics and chemical manufacturers who initially claimed that what they were producing was safe.
But aside from any of this, what’s important to understand is that the FCC safety standards are based only on thermal effects of radiation, meaning: How high can radiation go before the body tissues start cooking? Research has shown that the thermal effects of microwave radiation are not the only effects to be worried about. There are also non-thermal effects of RF that are very concerning.
One of the most informative reports written on the subject is the Bioinitiative Report of 2007. Authored by 15 scientists, researchers and health policy professionals, this report clearly documents evidence that numerous health problems are created by exposure to RF, including DNA breakage and cancer—and this, at levels far below the FCC standards. The report is recognized by the European Parliament, the European Environment Agency, and the Breast Cancer Fund, among others.
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the National Toxicology Program have also studied the effects RF on human health. Their updated results are that, among other things, RF can significantly increase the risk of a glioma, a deadly brain tumor.
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WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) – The following message was released today by the National Alliance of Funeral Directors:
This week, several Republican Supreme Court Justices have argued that the Affordable Care Act supported by the Obama Administration is unconstitutional. At the National Alliance of Funeral Directors, we couldn’t agree more.
It was Revolutionary War hero Patrick Henry who said, in 1775, “Give me liberty or give me death.” From that moment on, legal scholars have agreed that the Constitution guarantees every American the liberty to be dead. Here at the Alliance, we will fight for your right to be dead to the death.
Let’s take a look, if you will, at the Second Amendment of the Constitution, which protects every American’s right to shoot another American. It says nothing about giving the person who is shot health insurance to prevent him from dying. This cherished constitutional right to shoot people and make them dead is currently recognized in all fifty states, most recently Florida.
In commenting on the Affordable Care Act this week, Justice Samuel Alito compared the Obama healthcare plan to burial insurance. Coincidentally, burial insurance is the Republican healthcare plan, and one that we enthusiastically support. Under this plan, every American would be mandated to buy a coffin from one of our member-owned and operated funeral homes. May we recommend the Peaceful Valley Royale,™ a luxury mahogany casket with sienna satin interior and the finest imitation antique nickel handles ($2899).
As the organization representing America’s funeral directors, gravediggers, embalmers and cremators, we are confident that the Supreme Court will ultimately do the right thing and decide that healthcare flies in the face of every American’s constitutional right to the pursuit of deadness. And when they do, we’ll be waiting for you.
Sincerely,
The National Alliance of Funeral Directors
Dana Milbank/THE WASHINGTON POST - Z.Z. Milbank, a two-year-old Goldendoodle, bears a remarkable resemblance to Mitt Romney.
In Washington, even the dogs are pundits.
My dog, a 2-year-old golden retriever/poodle mix named Z.Z., had her cable news debut this week, on MSNBC’s “The Last Word.” Host Lawrence O’Donnell had us on to discuss Z.Z.’s membership in Dogs Against Romney.
Z.Z. lay quietly at my side, mugging for the camera, as I explained her objections to Mitt Romney driving a car with his dog tied to the roof. At the end of the segment, Z.Z. ate a treat off the anchor’s table.
“Z.Z., thank you very much for joining me tonight,” O’Donnell said. Noticing that the camera had moved back to him, O’Donnell instructed: “No, don’t shoot me. Take a shot of this down here under the desk. Z.Z. gets the last bite tonight. ‘The Ed Show’ is next.”
That would be Ed Schultz, not Mr. Ed.
As I watched video of Z.Z. obediently performing, however, I realized: Z.Z. isn’t a Dog Against Romney. Z.Z. is Mitt Romney.
The similarities are uncanny. Hold a treat in front of Z.Z., and she will go through her whole repertoire of tricks — sit, shake hands, lie down, roll over — until one of them works. So, too, does Romney adopt any number of positions until he finds one that satisfies.
Likewise, Z.Z. shows unstoppable determination in pursuit of a desired object, such as a ball or a squirrel. Giving chase, she will sometimes run smack into a tree or a soccer net, then charge ahead as though nothing had happened. So, too, does Romney pursue his desired object — the Republican nomination — with such doggedness that he ricochets without visible embarrassment from gaffe (“I like being able to fire people”) to blooper (“I have some great friends who are NASCAR team owners”).
Z.Z., hearing her name called in a reproachful tone, hangs her head and looks remorseful, even though she has no idea what she has done wrong. So, too, does Romney adapt his behavior to the perceived mood of his audience (“I’m learning to say ‘y’all’ and I like grits”).
The goldendoodle, Z.Z.’s breed, is playful, smart and gentle. But loyalty is not a strong point. Z.Z. has little concept of a master. She likes her human family well enough, but she probably would be just as happy going home with the UPS delivery guy if he offered her a treat. When a stranger comes to the door, she wags her tail so vigorously her hips twist; she picks up a toy and, forgetting her owners, brings it to her new friend.
To paraphrase Lord Palmerston, Z.Z. has no permanent friends, only permanent interests.
And this is what makes her so much like Romney. Consider Romney’s response when asked about his aide’s claim that the general election would be like an Etch a Sketch, erasing conservative positions he took in the primaries. “I’m running as a conservative Republican,” the candidate told a group of reporters Wednesday after his town-hall event in suburban Baltimore. He didn’t say he is a conservative Republican; he said he’s running as one. As if this is a persona for this particular campaign.
Conservatives are justifiably worried about his loyalty. He obeys the commands of conservatives now because they are the ones feeding him during the primary season. But in the general election, who’s to say he won’t trot after soccer moms as breezily as Z.Z. follows the UPS guy?
An apocryphal Harry Truman quote has it that “if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.” He probably should have specified a breed, such as a collie or a German shepherd. Z.Z., by contrast, was described to me by one of her trainers as a prostitute (the trainer used a different word): She places her loyalty with whoever is making her the best offer. In a town of lobbyists, this is all too familiar.
Don’t get me wrong: I love the dog. I feed her the choicest foods, send her to canine camp and doggy day care, and chase her around the house like Inspector Clouseau and Cato.
But neither can I deny that Z.Z. has a great deal in common with a certain Republican front-runner — and not just because she is good-looking and well-trained. Mostly, it’s that unsettling absence of loyalty. One recent morning, my family and I were puzzling over Z.Z.’s whereabouts because she hadn’t been seen all night. Then we found out why: She had jumped in bed with our houseguest.
This is just what conservatives fear Romney will do in the fall.
Sometimes, in a dumbfounded moment, the only response to the news is to rub your eyes in disbelief. Both of mine are quite irritated today at the audacity of corporate broadcasters as reported in a story online at the Washington Post. The headline sums it up: "Broadcasters Fight Plan to Post Names of Political Ad Buyers on Web."
That's right: The mega-media giants CBS and News Corp. (Rupert Murdoch's minions), enriched beyond the imagination of Midas by money pouring into their local stations from political advertising in an election year, are stamping their feet like spoiled children and shouting: "No! We will not!"
They are defying the Federal Communication Commission's request that they post on the Web the names of billionaires and front organizations -- many of them super PACs -- paying for those ads. That's all: Give citizens access online to find out who's buying our elections. Advocates of transparency in politics say that this is the most efficient way voters can know "the true interests" behind all that money pouring into elections. Reasonable, no? Good for democracy, yes? And why shouldn't CBS and NewsCorp oblige such a modest request, given the tremendous wealth they accumulated from their privileged use of airwaves that belong to all of us?
They should, but won't, because they don't have to as long as we let them get away with it. What to do?
First, read the story.
Second, sign up for email updates from the Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause, Free Press and the Media Access Project, some of the public interest groups fighting for the FCC proposal.
Then be in touch with Flackcheck.org to follow up on our conversation with Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. She's asking citizens to challenge the negative and deceptive political ads running on commercial stations where you live. (Watch Jamieson make her case below).
Let stations know that the poison they're pouring into our political bloodstream has to stop, and so does their obstinate refusal to keep us from knowing who's paying for it.
20 March 12
epublicans are desperate. They can't attack Obama on jobs because the jobs picture is improving.
Their attack on the Administration's rule requiring insurers to cover contraception has backfired, raising hackles even among many Republican women.
Their attack on Obama for raising gas prices has elicited scorn from economists of all persuasions who know oil prices are set in global markets and that demand in the United States has actually fallen.
Their presidential ambitions are being trampled in a furious fraternal war among Republican candidates.
Their Tea Party wing wants to reopen the budget deal forged with Democrats after Republicans got bloodied by threatening to block an increase in the debt limit.
So what are Republicans to do now? What they always do when they have nothing else to say.
Call for a tax cut, of course.
It doesn't matter that their new "tax reform" plan (leaked to the Wall Street Journal late Monday, to be released Tuesday morning) has as much chance of being enacted as Herman Cain has of being elected president.
It doesn't matter that the plan doesn't detail how they plan to pay for the tax cuts. Or whether an even bigger whack would have to be taken out of Medicare than Paul Ryan's original voucher plan - which would drowned many elderly under rising medical costs.
It doesn't even matter that the plan would probably raise taxes on many lower-income Americans,
All that matters is the headlines.
"House Republican Budget to Propose Lower Income Tax Rates," says Bloomberg Businessweek. "Republican Budget Plan Seeks to Play Up Tax Reform," says Reuters. "GOP's Budget Targets Taxes," blares the Wall Street Journal.
Presto. Republicans have gotten what they wanted on the basis of saying absolutely nothing.
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Great column about Romney by Maureen Dowd of the NY Times
On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported on the new fashion to look low-key on the outside while digging deep for opulence — carving out subterranean spaces for Turkish baths, Italianate spas, movie theaters, skateboarding ramps, squash courts, discos and golf-simulation centers.
The Journal reported that Romney has filed an application to replace his single-story 3,000-square-foot beach house in La Jolla, Calif., with a 7,400-square-foot home featuring an additional 3,600 square feet of finished underground space.
It’s a metaphor alert, reinforcing the two image problems Romney has: that he’s an out-of-touch plutocrat and that his true nature is buried where we can’t see it.
His two-year missionary stint in France taught Mitt to steel himself against rejection. Still, he must feel awful heading into Illinois (where Joseph Smith, the Mormon Church founder, was running for president when he was killed by a mob), spending so much money to buy so little affection.
There’s a certain pathos to Romney. His manner is so inauthentic, you can’t find him anywhere. Is he the guy he was on Wednesday or the guy he was on Thursday?
He has the same problem that diminished the equally animatronic Al Gore. Gore kept mum on the one thing that made him come alive, the environment, fearing he’d be cast, as W. liked to say, as “a green, green lima bean.”
Romney also feels he must hide an essential part of who he is: a pillar of the Mormon Church. He fears he would turn off voters by talking too much about a faith that many evangelicals dismiss as a cult and not a true Christian religion.
Rick Santorum is drawn to the extreme and ascetic Opus Dei and sometimes sounds more Catholic than the pope — like his promise on his Web site to banish hard-core porn if he’s elected president. Yet he has successfully crowded Romney with a fraction of his money by wearing his religion and his immigrant, blue-collar roots on his sleeve.
Mitt works overtime pretending he’s a Nascar, cheesy-grits guy and masking his pride in his bank account and faith.
When he talked about his beliefs in his last presidential run, it sometimes provoked confusion, like this explanation to an Iowa radio host about the second coming of Christ: that Jesus would first appear in Jerusalem and then, “over the thousand years that follow, the millennium, he will reign from two places, the law will come from Missouri, and the other will be from Jerusalem.”
Just as Romney did not step up immediately after Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke “a slut,” he has yet to step up as the cases have mounted of Jews posthumously and coercively baptized by Mormons, including hundreds of thousands of Holocaust victims; the parents of the death camp survivor and Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal; and Daniel Pearl, the Jewish Wall Street Journal reporter murdered by Al Qaeda in Pakistan. (His widow, Mariane, told CNN she was “shocked.”)
Believing that only Mormons can get into the highest level of heaven, the Celestial Kingdom, and that others will be limited to the Terrestrial and Telestial Kingdoms, they have baptized anyone and everyone, including Anne Frank, Gandhi, Hitler, Marilyn Monroe, Charlie Chaplin and Elvis.
Asked by Newsweek in 2007 if he had done baptisms for the dead, which involve white garb and immersion in water, a startled Romney replied, “I have in my life, but I haven’t recently.”
Mormon feminists got upset this winter when they found that young women in some temples had not been allowed to do proxy baptisms while they were menstruating.
Church leaders have lately stepped up efforts to stop such baptisms, reminding church members that their “pre-eminent obligation” is not to celebrities and Holocaust victims but to their own ancestors. (Ann Romney’s Welsh dad, who disdained organized religion, was baptized.)
Matthew Bowman, who wrote “The Mormon People,” says Mormons “have a hard time understanding why people from other religions find this so offensive. Mormons don’t think of these people as being made Mormon unless their spirit accepts the Gospel. They just think they’ve given them an opportunity. Mormonism is wildly optimistic.”
Mormons had designated Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor, as “ready” for a posthumous proxy burial, even though he is very much alive at 83 and still teaching at Boston University and in Florida.
Wiesel calls “the whole process very strange,” and faults Romney, a Mormon stake president: “After all, Romney is not simply a Mormon. He’s been a bishop of the Mormon Church. He could have called and told me he wanted me to know that he spoke to the elders and told them to stop it. Silence doesn’t help truth.”
He added: “They have baptized over 600,000 Holocaust victims. There is nothing positive in what they are doing. It’s an insult. You cannot ask the dead their opinion.
“Poor Anne Frank. As if she didn’t suffer enough.”
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