Sunday, April 08, 2007
Whatever the Postmarks Say, The Checks Are Made Out to Franken
washingtonpost.com
Whatever the Postmarks Say, The Checks Are Made Out to Franken
By Chris Cillizza And Shailagh Murray
He's good enough, he's smart enough, and, gosh darn it, he can raise the money.
Al Franken, that is. Franken, comedian-turned-Senate candidate, piled up $1.3 million in contributions over the first three months of the year -- wowing neutral observers and proving that he is serious about his race in Minnesota against freshman Sen. Norm Coleman (R).
Franken collected $300,000 more than Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), a top target for Republicans in 2008, and came within $400,000 of Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.). He blew away the $580,000 Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) raised in the first quarter of 2005 to win the Senate race last year.
"Some have reported/opined that Democrats are 'nervous' about the prospect of an Al Franken candidacy," read a memo distributed by his campaign. "Perhaps a better term would be 'really, really excited.' "
Republicans have worked to call attention to the sources of Franken's money, arguing that he is funded largely by out-of-state liberals with ties to the entertainment industry. The political action committee Franken created as a precursor to his Senate campaign received donations from such well-known liberals as Barbra Streisand, Nora Ephron and Larry David, and Franken received contributions from stars such as Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep during the first three months of his Senate candidacy.
But spokeswoman Jess McIntosh said that more contributions were made by Minnesotans than by residents of any other state to Franken's Senate account. "The money itself may not break down that way dollar for dollar, but Minnesotans are notoriously slow to open their wallets in races like this one," McIntosh said.
Neither Coleman nor Mike Ciresi, who is also running for the Democratic Senate nomination, was interested in critiquing Franken's fundraising efforts.
"It's not surprising," said Coleman campaign manager Cullen Sheehan, who would add only that "I don't even know if Franken is going to be the nominee." Coleman collected $1.5 million in the first quarter and ended March with nearly $3 million in the bank.
Ciresi campaign manager Kerry Greeley, who guided Rep. Tim Walz (D-Minn.) to victory last fall, said Franken's fundraising means only that it is a two-person race for the Democratic nod -- although Ciresi did not actively solicit cash in the first fundraising quarter.
Ciresi "can raise at that level," Greeley insisted. "He has the connections and history of doing so."
Another April Filing Rush
Expect a flood of House candidates to formally announce their 2008 bids in the next two weeks. Why? The candidates held off filing their official paperwork prior to the March 31 first quarter fundraising deadline, hoping to avoid the negative perception that raising a meager amount of cash in the first three months of 2007 could create. With the second quarter just beginning, candidates in top targeted races will move quickly to begin the long fundraising slog. In the past week, Kansas Treasurer Lynn Jenkins (R) has jumped into the race in the Kansas 2nd and 2006 candidate Dan Maffei (D) has unveiled his plans for a rematch against Rep. James Walsh (R) in New York's 25th District.
PLAYERS
MVP for the first fundraising quarter: Julianna Smoot, finance director for the Barack Obama campaign. A North Carolina native and Smith College grad, Smoot learned her trade in the Senate, as a fundraiser for Richard Durbin (Ill.), John Edwards (N.C.) and then-Democratic leader Tom Daschle (S.D.). In the 2006 cycle, she served as finance director for the Senate Democratic campaign chairman, Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), raising record sums in the party's successful bid to win Senate control. Obama contacted her shortly after the November election. "She's a fine person," said Schumer, who called Smoot to congratulate her once the Obama numbers were in. "I'm very proud of her."
Posted by politicalstuff at 1:16 AM
Politics Collide With Iraq Realities; Commanders Seek Longer-Term Focus
washingtonpost.com
Politics Collide With Iraq Realities
Commanders Seek Longer-Term Focus
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
There are two Iraq wars being waged, according to military officers on the ground and defense experts: the one fought in the streets of Baghdad, and the war as it is perceived in Washington.
Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, who took over as the top U.S. commander in Iraq in February, cited the disparity last week. "The Washington clock is moving more rapidly than the Baghdad clock," he said in a television interview. "So we're obviously trying to speed up the Baghdad clock a bit and to produce some progress on the ground that can, perhaps . . . put a little more time on the Washington clock."
While Washington appears headed toward a political endgame on Iraq, with the White House and Congress sparring over benchmarks and pullout dates, the war on the ground is at an ebb tide. All sides -- including U.S. military strategists and Iraqi sectarian leaders and insurgents, as well as regional players such as Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Turkey -- are waiting to see whether the new U.S. approach to make the Iraqi capital safer will work. Soldiers on the ground tend to see the Washington debate as irrelevant, and the perspective of many politicians in Washington is that the military schedule is simply too slow.
"The time scale to succeed is years," said John J. Hamre, a former deputy defense secretary, while "the time scale for tolerance here is 12 months for Democrats and 18 months for Republicans."
One result of this disparity is the emergence of radically different views of the impact of the new strategy, which has been referred to as a "surge" because it sends more troops into Iraq but which is more noteworthy for moving U.S. troops off large, isolated bases and into smaller outposts across the capital.
President Bush said last month that "there's been good progress," and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) concluded on a trip to Iraq last week that "we have a new strategy that is making progress." But officers in Iraq tend to be far more cautious. Petraeus himself has repeatedly said it is too early to tell whether the new strategy is showing sustained progress. He and others say they will be able to assess by this fall whether they are succeeding or failing. If so, the current debate over a possible 2008 withdrawal could prove beside the point.
An official in Iraq warned that executing the new approach will take time -- perhaps more than Washington is willing to give. "Early signs are very encouraging -- huge drop in sectarian killings in Baghdad, return of thousands of refugee families," he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity so that he could be candid. "But there is no way we can defeat this insurgency by summer. I believe we can begin to turn the tide by then, and have an idea if we are doing it. To defeat it completely is a five-to-10-year project, minimum -- and rushing it along to meet a D.C. timeline is rushing to failure."
An Army officer who has served in Iraq and is now back in the United States summed up the situation by saying that "we are witnessing the throes . . . of a very messy divorce" between the politics of the war and the way it is being fought. The "kids" scarred by the breakup, he predicted, will be the Iraqi people and the U.S. Army and Marine Corps.
In addition to the new military strategy, a new team is taking over the U.S. effort in Iraq. For the first time since 2004, there is a fresh U.S. commander in Iraq, with Petraeus replacing Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr. He is working with a new No. 2 commander, Army Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, and a new U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker. There are changes at the Pentagon -- a new Army chief of staff and Donald H. Rumsfeld's replacement, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, as well as a vacancy for Army secretary -- and at Central Command, the U.S. military command responsible for the Middle East. The replacements amount to the biggest personnel change of the war -- and the new players are still settling in.
In Baghdad, there are a few signs of improvement, but they tend to be offset by worrisome indications elsewhere in Iraq. Sectarian killings are down about 50 percent since the new strategy began, according to U.S military spokesmen. Car bombings are up, but so are tips from Iraqis. It is impossible to know how much of the decrease in violence is attributable to the biggest Shiite militia -- radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army -- deciding to lie low. In addition, noted a U.S. Army officer preparing for his third Iraq tour, when one side in a war alters its tactics, the other side usually will take time to study the shift and assess vulnerabilities before renewing attacks. Also, in Anbar province, there are solid indications of tribal leaders turning against al-Qaeda extremists.
But, reported one Special Forces veteran who has worked in Iraq in the military and as a civilian, "the surge in Baghdad is pushing the sectarian violence to other parts of Iraq." That is one reason for the increased fighting in nearby Diyala province that led U.S. commanders to send in a Stryker battalion that was part of the troop buildup. Likewise, the Marine Corps' new success in Anbar appears to have forced some al-Qaeda fighters to shift to Mosul, Baqubah and Tall Afar, which in 2006 was hailed as a U.S. success story but in the past month has been the scene of a horrific truck bombing and revenge killings by Shiite police. Also, a military intelligence officer warned of other troubling signs outside Baghdad: Kirkuk edging closer to explosion, the Turks increasingly unhappy with Kurdish activity, and an impending British drawdown in the south that could make U.S. supply lines from Kuwait more vulnerable.
Another military intelligence veteran of Iraq said he thinks the Petraeus approach is getting some results, but he predicted that violence will spike this summer, in part as an attempt by Iraqi factions to influence the U.S. political debate. The bottom line, said Jeffrey White, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst, is that by this fall the picture may be mixed. "Things could look substantially brighter in Baghdad but much worse elsewhere," said White, who is now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
The most that can happen by mid-summer, say senior officers in Iraq, is that the U.S. military might begin to know whether the new approach is working or failing.
"It will be months, not days or weeks, before we see real indicators of progress," Petraeus said in his interview with PBS's Jim Lehrer last week.
Also, officers say, major questions remain about the sustainability of any positive momentum. Military operations can buy time but cannot solve the basic problem in Iraq: the growing threat of a civil war. The U.S. government keeps pushing for reconciliation, but there are few signs of movement toward that goal. "Nothing is going to work until the parties are ready to compromise, and I don't see any indicators yet that they are," said A. Heather Coyne, who has worked in Iraq both as a military reservist and as a civilian. "Until then, any effect of the surge will be temporary."
Larry Diamond, a Stanford University professor who worked with the U.S. occupation authority and has been critical of the Bush administration's approach, agreed: "If we don't get a political breakthrough, nothing we do militarily is going to work."
A political breakthrough in Washington already happened, Hamre said, when November's elections turned into a referendum on the war. "The American people have been waiting to hear how we were going to win in Iraq, and they never heard that, so they turned against it," he said. "But the political evolution is moving much faster here than events there."
Yet, with a new approach underway in Baghdad, the Washington debate is largely irrelevant to the concerns of the soldier on the ground, said the Army officer who recently returned from Baghdad. "All the talk about pullouts, votes and budgets really doesn't mean much to that 18-year-old with his body armor driving across Iraq worried about IEDs," he said, referring to roadside bombs. "For him, life consists of trying to survive for 365 days to get back home -- only to know he'll have to come back again."
Posted by politicalstuff at 1:14 AM
White House Looked Past Alarms on Kerik; Giuliani, Gonzales Pushed DHS Bid Forward
washingtonpost.com
White House Looked Past Alarms on Kerik
Giuliani, Gonzales Pushed DHS Bid Forward
By John Solomon and Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writers
When former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani urged President Bush to make Bernard B. Kerik the next secretary of homeland security, White House aides knew Kerik as the take-charge top cop from Sept. 11, 2001. But it did not take them long to compile an extensive dossier of damaging information about the would-be Cabinet officer.
They learned about questionable financial deals, an ethics violation, allegations of mismanagement and a top deputy prosecuted for corruption. Most disturbing, according to people close to the process, was Kerik's friendship with a businessman who was linked to organized crime. The businessman had told federal authorities that Kerik received gifts, including $165,000 in apartment renovations, from a New Jersey family with alleged Mafia ties.
Alarmed about the raft of allegations, several White House aides tried to raise red flags. But the normal investigation process was short-circuited, the sources said. Bush's top lawyer, Alberto R. Gonzales, took charge of the vetting, repeatedly grilling Kerik about the issues that had been raised. In the end, despite the concerns, the White House moved forward with his nomination -- only to have it collapse a week later.
The selection of Kerik in December 2004 for one of the most sensitive posts in government became an acute but brief embarrassment for Bush at the start of his second term. More than two years later, it has reemerged as part of a federal criminal investigation of Kerik that raises questions about the decisions made by the president, the Republican front-runner to replace him and the embattled attorney general.
A reconstruction of the failed nomination, assembled through interviews with key players, provides new details and a fuller account of the episode -- how Giuliani put forward a flawed candidate for high office, how Bush rushed the usual process in his eagerness to install a political ally and how Gonzales, as White House counsel, failed to stop the nomination despite the many warning signs. "The vetting process clearly broke down," said a senior White House official. "This should not happen."
Federal prosecutors have told Kerik that they are likely to charge him with several felonies, including providing false information to the government when Bush nominated him, sources have told The Washington Post. Kerik recently turned down a proposed agreement in which he would plead guilty and serve time in prison because, his attorney said, he would not "plead to something that he didn't do."
The investigation has put Giuliani's relationship with Kerik back in the spotlight at a time when the former mayor leads the Republican presidential field in national polls. During an appearance in Florida last weekend, Giuliani told reporters that they had a right to question his judgment in putting Kerik in charge of the New York Police Department and recommending him to Bush. "I should have done a better job of investigating him, vetting him," Giuliani said. "It's my responsibility, and I've learned from it."
The White House explanation has shifted significantly. Just after Kerik withdrew, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said that "we have no reason to believe" he lied and that it "would be an inaccurate impression" to say the vetting was rushed. Now current and former White House officials assert that Kerik lied "bald-faced," as one put it, and say they erred by speeding up the nomination.
Aides said they now believe they were lulled by Kerik's swaggering Sept. 11 reputation, and were too passive in accommodating the president's desire for secrecy and speed and too willing to trust Giuliani's judgment.
"There is no question the mayor's support for Kerik was important," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto. "But Kerik was also known to some degree within the administration for his work in Iraq. If we had this to do over again, it certainly would have been done differently. We probably moved more quickly than was appropriate, but fortunately the nomination was withdrawn."
From 9/11 Hero to Nominee
Bush met Kerik in the debris of the World Trade Center and was so impressed that he later sent him to Iraq to train police. The bald, mustachioed street cop appealed to Bush, who admired his can-do persona. By 2004, Kerik was sent to the Democratic National Convention as part of an opposition war room, given a prime speaking slot at the Republican National Convention and tapped to appear with the president on the campaign trail.
Kerik did not fit the button-down model of the Bush administration. A high school dropout and son of a prostitute apparently killed by her pimp, Kerik became an undercover narcotics detective with ponytail and diamond earrings. He joined Giuliani's 1993 campaign as his driver and was later given top appointments, including corrections commissioner and eventually police commissioner. After office, Giuliani and Kerik became partners in a security consulting firm.
So when Giuliani telephoned Bush to recommend that he make Kerik his second-term homeland security secretary, the president jumped at the idea. The sheen of a 9/11 hero seemed to be just what was needed to take on a troubled new department struggling to integrate 22 agencies and 180,000 employees to protect the nation's ports, borders and airports; enforce immigration and customs laws; and respond to major disasters. Only a few aides, including then-Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. and senior adviser Karl Rove, were clued in to the president's decision.
As with every nominee, Kerik was given detailed financial disclosure and personal history questionnaires to fill out, all intended to unearth anything that might prove embarrassing in a confirmation hearing. Giuliani's firm assisted in filling out the forms, according to a source familiar with the situation, and the papers are now an issue in the federal criminal investigation. Kerik, his attorney and Giuliani Partners spokeswoman Sunny Mindel declined to comment.
Presidential nominees typically go through a full-fledged FBI background investigation before their appointments are announced. But because it is hard to keep Cabinet selections secret for so long, they are vetted only by the White House counsel's office before being made public. The FBI then conducts its full probe before Senate confirmation hearings begin.
The counsel's vetting depends heavily on honest responses from a nominee, officials said. Yet in Kerik's case, a quick FBI search and research by the White House turned up a host of problems in the couple of weeks before the nomination was announced. According to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of White House policy against discussing personnel matters, Bush aides discovered that:
· Kerik was fined $2,500 by New York City for using police detectives to help him with his autobiography. He was also a defendant in a civil lawsuit accusing him of retaliation against a corrections official who had disciplined a female prison guard with whom Kerik was having a relationship. Kerik was scheduled to give a deposition in the case right after his nomination was to be announced.
· One of Kerik's former top deputies was convicted of stealing money from a foundation that Kerik ran while serving as Giuliani's corrections chief. The foundation was funded by rebates from tobacco companies selling cigarettes to prison inmates.
· Kerik, who filed for bankruptcy as a police officer, became rich almost overnight after leaving office. Just before his nomination, he made a quick $6.2 million without investing a dime by exercising stock options from his service on the board of Taser International, a stun-gun firm seeking business with homeland security agencies.
· Kerik's tenure in Iraq generated strong criticism of his management. Iraqi officials complained to U.S. authorities about $1.2 billion Kerik spent to train Iraqi police officers in Jordan, spending they called wasteful. Iraqis also questioned why Kerik spent tens of millions of dollars to buy weapons for Iraqi trainees when the U.S. military had confiscated plenty of such weapons after the invasion.
"There were alarm bells all around," said a former White House official.
A Friend Accused of Mob Ties
The loudest alarm bell was Kerik's relationship with Lawrence Ray. The best man at Kerik's wedding in 1998, Ray went to work for a New Jersey construction company, Interstate Industrial Corp., that was seeking a big New York City contract and trying to overcome concerns inside Giuliani's administration that it had mob ties.
Ray, who told friends that he worked with the FBI, military and intelligence agencies in the 1990s, was indicted in 2000 along with organized-crime figures in what prosecutors described as a scheme to manipulate the stock market. He pleaded guilty and was spared prison time.
The White House had the perfect person to question Kerik about his relationship with Ray: Julie Myers, who arrived in the White House personnel office in November 2004 and had worked in the same U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn that prosecuted Ray. She flagged the relationship and other concerns about Kerik for her White House colleagues, sources said. She aggressively questioned Kerik about Ray and other affiliations. He bristled at her tone, sources said.
In an interview last week, Ray said he had told the FBI and U.S. attorney's office as early as 1999, as he tried to stave off indictment, that he had incriminating information about Kerik. After his guilty plea in 2001, Ray said, he told the FBI that Kerik had agreed to help Interstate Industrial and its owners, the DiTomasso family, try to win city business despite their alleged ties with organized crime. At the time, Kerik solicited and received gifts from company sources, including $165,000 in renovations for his apartment.
"They knew 100 percent of it," Ray said. "There was no way they didn't. I was driving the ball on that."
Kerik told the White House that the allegations were untrue, sources said. "He was told many times, 'Be honest,' " said one person familiar with the process. Myers, presidential personnel director Dina Powell and others raised concerns in the West Wing, according to the sources. They were "very, very adamant about how serious the vetting needed to be," one source said.
Gonzales, then the White House counsel, who was about to begin his own confirmation process for attorney general, took charge of questioning Kerik, grilling him for hours on several occasions, the sources said. At one point, Gonzales called while Kerik was having lunch at a New York steakhouse and talked to him on his cellphone for an hour and a half. Nanette Everson, then the White House ethics counsel, was kept on the sideline for the heavy-duty part of the vetting.
But in the end, White House officials knew that Kerik had been head of the nation's largest police department and had a security clearance for his work in Iraq. He was a hero of Sept. 11. He was well liked by the president. No one checked with key officials at the Homeland Security, Defense or State departments or elsewhere in the government. Even within the White House, the choice was kept secret so Bush could make a splash.
"The loop on it was extremely small," said a former official. "That's a president-of-the-United-States, 'I don't want anyone to know, I want to announce it on Friday' [deal]. It drives people to not follow all the normal procedures."
Bush summoned Kerik to the Oval Office for a perfunctory interview Dec. 1 and, without asking any policy questions, asked if he wanted to be homeland security secretary. Kerik accepted. "He told me he wanted someone to go in there and 'break some china,' " Kerik later told New York magazine. Kerik walked out and called Giuliani to tell him the news. Two days later, Bush and Kerik appeared together to make the nomination public. Only then did the china start to break.
The Past Comes to Light
The initial reviews were positive. New York's Democratic senators, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Charles E. Schumer, issued laudatory statements. But from corners of Washington and New York, calls began pouring in to the White House and to newsrooms.
Stories began circulating about Kerik's time in Iraq, about an arrest warrant issued when he failed to respond to a civil lawsuit, about his extramarital affair with book publisher Judith Regan, about his trysts in a city apartment meant as a place for police officials to rest near Ground Zero. Ray went public with his allegations about Kerik's gifts from the DiTomasso family. Kerik and the White House tried to ride it out. Giuliani advised Kerik through the political storm.
But then people at the Giuliani firm who were scouring Kerik's finances discovered that he had not paid Social Security taxes for a nanny who apparently was an illegal immigrant, Kerik later said. By Kerik's account, Giuliani told him he had to call the White House, and by the end of the day on Dec. 10, they agreed he had to pull out. Statements were issued after the evening news, and Giuliani came to console his friend.
"I made some major mistakes, and they catch up to you," Kerik told New York magazine a few months later. "I didn't focus enough on ethical issues. But I still believe that my successes over my 30-year career outweigh the errors in judgment." Except for the nanny, he said, "everything that's come out is stuff I either told the White House about or they already knew."
But more was to come. After Kerik withdrew, Ray became the central witness in several investigations. The New York Department of Investigation and the Bronx district attorney's office opened probes into Kerik's gifts using wiretaps, grand jury testimony and numerous e-mails Ray gave them.
In the e-mails, Kerik appears to be soliciting Ray for money. "I was going to ask you if we had between 18 and 2,000 available," Kerik wrote in 1999. Another time, Kerik mentioned financial difficulties and the apartment. "I've got to make sure we can do the renovations," he said. Sources familiar with the investigation said Kerik may challenge the authenticity of the e-mails if federal charges are filed, but the Bronx district attorney's office authenticated the e-mails as it brought its case against Kerik, according to lead investigator Stephen Bookin.
New Jersey gambling-enforcement authorities also filed a complaint in 2005 accusing Kerik of misusing his Giuliani administration jobs to solicit gifts from the DiTomassos, who have fought allegations of mob ties, while helping them try to win city business. Kerik asserted his Fifth Amendment right not to answer some questions in the proceedings. He pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors in New York court last summer, acknowledging that he had accepted the apartment renovations.
In the White House, there is still resentment toward Giuliani for foisting the problem on the president. "There are two people who are to blame for what happened -- Rudy Giuliani and Bernie Kerik," said one former White House official. Still, a senior administration official acknowledged some responsibility as well. Bush wanted "a hard-charging personality" to get the department in line, he said. "Instead, we ended up shooting ourselves in the foot."
Staff writers Matthew Mosk and R. Jeffrey Smith contributed to this report.
Posted by politicalstuff at 1:12 AM
Thousands in LA Demand Immigrant Rights
Huffington Post
Thousands in LA Demand Immigrant Rights
PETER PRENGAMAN
LOS ANGELES — Thousands of people marched through downtown on Saturday, demanding a way for the country's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants to become citizens and condemning President Bush's latest proposal.
Carrying signs saying "Amnesty Now!" and "Love Thy Neighbor, Don't Deport Him," about 15,000 people danced to Mexican ranchera music, chanted "Si, se puede!" or "It can be done!" and passed large American flags over the crowd.
Many were angry about a White House plan that would grant illegal immigrants work visas but require them to return home to apply for U.S. residency and pay a $10,000 fine.
"Charging that much, Bush is going to be even more expensive than the coyotes," said protester Armando Garcia, 50, referring to smugglers who transport people across the Mexican border.
Immigrant rights advocates say many of the area's illegal immigrants feel betrayed by President Bush, who they had long considered an ally. While illegal immigrants and advocates have long focused their ire at conservative Republicans and Congress, many had seen Bush as an advocate of immigration reform because he had repeatedly said he favors giving many illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.
The White House's draft plan, leaked last week, calls for a new "Z" visa that would allow illegal immigrant workers to apply for three-year work permits. They would be renewable indefinitely, but would cost $3,500 each time.
Then to become legal permanent residents, illegal immigrants would have to return to their home country, apply at a U.S. embassy or consulate to re-enter legally and pay a $10,000 fine.
The proposal has been sharply criticized by Hispanic advocacy groups, Democrats, the Roman Catholic Church and unions that have many immigrants in their ranks. They argue the cost of work permits and the green card application _ which could total more than $20,000 _ are prohibitive for low-wage earners.
"For my wife and I it would cost about $30,000," said Francisco Gomez, 41, who along with his wife is in the country illegally. "Multiply that by all the illegal immigrants here ... It's obvious Bush just wants to fund his Iraq war with our money."
The plan is far more conservative than the one passed by the Senate last year with bipartisan backing and support from President Bush. That plan would have allowed many of the country's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants to stay in the United States, work and apply to become legal residents after learning English, pay small fines and back taxes and clear a background check.
Many Senate conservatives opposed that plan, and it failed to gain traction in the then Republican-controlled House, which at the end of 2005 passed the punitive immigration reform bill that angered immigrant communities and led to massive protests.
"Last year, we were fighting for legalization, and this year we are fighting for legalization and against all these raids," said Maria Lopez, 50, an illegal immigrant who works as a seamstress and sends $200 a month home to family members in Mexico.
"We have no way to come up with that much money, and Bush knows that," she said. "He is doing this on purpose so we don't ever become legal residents."
Posted by politicalstuff at 1:09 AM
Insurgents transform US military jails into ‘terror training camps’
The Times
Insurgents transform US military jails into ‘terror training camps’
James Hider in Baghdad
America’s high-security prisons in Iraq have become “terrorist academies” for the most dangerous militant groups, according to former inmates and Iraqi government officials.
Inmates are left largely to run their blocks, which are segregated on sectarian lines. The policy has created a closed world run by Iraq’s worst terrorists and militias, into which detainees with no links to insurgent groups are often thrown.
Inmates from Camp Cropper, the US prison at Baghdad airport, described to The Times seeing al-Qaeda terrorists club to death a man suspected of being an informer. Others dished out retribution with razor wire stolen from the fences.
Captain Phillip Valenti, a US officer responsible for prisons, said he knew of at least three cases of prisoners being murdered by inmates. “We are very concerned about insurgent efforts to recruit and convert detainees,” he said.
US officials said yesterday that they were investigating the suspicious death of another Camp Cropper inmate.
Saad Sultan, the Iraqi Human Rights Ministry’s official for prisons, said: “It looks like a terrorist academy. There’s a huge number of these ‘students’; they study how they can kill. And we protect them, feed them, give them medical care. The Americans have no solution to this problem.”
Vying factions often feed fake tips about their enemies to US forces, meaning just about anyone can end up in jail. While the US military is scrupulous about separating Sunnis from Shia, they pay less attention to keeping seasoned terrorists apart from people picked up in security sweeps.
Abu Tibeh and his colleagues — four Sunnis and four Shia — were arrested in November when someone told a US patrol that the party offices they were guarding were being used by a death squad. In fact, the party was a moderate secular faction with close ties to the US.
At Camp Cropper they were put in halls of about 85 inmates. The Sunni section was controlled by an imam from an al-Qaeda-affiliated group. The Shia hall was under the authority of a sheikh from al-Mahdi Army, a fundamentalist militia notorious for its death squads.
“I was terrified,” said Abu Tibeh, a balding, podgy Sunni in his mid-thirties. “It was psychological warfare.” His colleague Abu Usama — not their real names — also in the Sunni camp, was so horrified that he suffered a minor heart attack.
Every day Abu Hamza, the al-Qaeda cleric who was in his early twenties, would lecture on the evils of the Government and the need for resistance. To their dismay, the new inmates’ own party was often the target of these rants, forcing them to keep their identities secret. They slept in shifts, with two standing guard.
One night, Abu Usama recalled, a group of al-Qaeda enforcers, their faces masked by towels, murdered an inmate. “Six of them came, two guarding the door and four to kill him. One of them hit him on the head with a sock filled with rocks. They beat him to death.”
The leader of the assassins told the cowering prisoners that the man had been an informer, although merely being seen talking to a US guard could count, said Abu Usama. Another suspected informer was clubbed to death in the latrines, he said.
When a new inmate arrived, the takfiris, or Sunni fundamentalists, would move in quickly to recruit him. Abu Usama listened politely to one recruiter — a youth half his age — then tried to avoid him.
In the Shia camp, their comrade Abu Mustafa, a lean 31-year-old, was faring only slightly better. The imam there was Sayyid Adnan al-Enabi, an al-Mahdi Army commander who ordered the men to join prayer sessions and lectures.
Abu Mustafa refused. “No one should force your religion,” he explained this week. In revenge, the al-Mahdi inmates told the US guards that he was planning to escape. The Americans put him in a metal punishment box 6ft by 4ft (1.9m by 1.2m) known as “the coffin”, and kept him there for days.
Both men were freed when the leader of their party intervened with the US military.
Posted by politicalstuff at 1:06 AM
The "War on Terror"--Is the War Model All Wrong?
Huffington Post
Harry Shearer
The "War on Terror"--Is the War Model All Wrong?
One of the few cogent moments in the 2004 Kerry campaign was when the candidate, briefly, questioned the whole "war" model of the GWOT. He was heckled into silence on the matter, and, aside from those who noticed how the Brits, Italians and Germans solved their terrorism problems in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, few Americans considered the subject still debatable.
Osama declared war, we were told, therefore we were at war.
Now comes a piece in the Asia Times, delineating how the Indonesians have used the "tough law enforcement" model, as opposed to the "war" model, against their home-grown insurgents. Since the war model has served us so well regarding drugs, we might--that is to say, those not in or supporting the administration might--take this lesson to heart.
Posted by politicalstuff at 1:04 AM
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Second Gonzales aide resigns over US attorney flap
Reuters
Second Gonzales aide resigns over US attorney flap
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales abruptly resigned on Friday in another twist in the controversy surrounding the Justice Department's firing of eight U.S. prosecutors.
The aide, Monica Goodling, is the second adviser to Gonzales to depart as criticism mounts in Congress over the department's handling of the dismissals, which Democrats have said were politically motivated.
Goodling had invoked her constitutional right against self-incrimination in refusing to testify before a Senate panel investigating the firings last year of the prosecutors.
She resigned in a brief letter submitted to Gonzales, whose resignation has been demanded by Democrats who charge the U.S. attorney firings were political motivated, an allegation the Bush administration denies.
"We can confirm her resignation," said an aide to Goodling's lawyer John Dowd, of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP. His office would not release her resignation letter.
In a separate letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Acting Assistant Attorney General Richard Hertling said Goodling's resignation would be effective April 7.
Goodling, 33, has been a counselor to Gonzales and the department's White House liaison and was involved in the firings. She had been on personal leave from the department for several weeks.
Democrats, who took power in Congress in January, allege the prosecutors were fired in part because Republicans viewed them as not pursuing corruption allegations against Democrats strongly enough. They and some Republicans want Gonzales, who is close to U.S. President George W. Bush, to resign.
It was not immediately clear whether Goodling's resignation would have an impact the Senate investigation. Gonzales is scheduled to testify on April 17.
Hertling, in his letter, referred the matter to Goodling's attorney. But he added that "the attorney general and deputy attorney general have already taken steps to ensure that no actual or apparent conflict of interest would arise with respect to Ms. Goodling or related matters."
A spokeswoman for the Senate Judiciary Committee could not be immediately reached.
Committee member Sen. Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat who has been leading the effort to get Gonzales to quit, said Goodling had no choice but to resign.
"Attorney General Gonzales' hold on the department gets more tenuous each day," Schumer said in a statement.
In March, Kyle Sampson resigned as chief of staff to Gonzales after acknowledging that he did not tell other department officials sooner about his dealings with the White House over the firings.
Gonzales has said that he was not involved in the firings, but Sampson testified in March that Gonzales was wrong.
Posted by politicalstuff at 3:26 AM
Earth faces a grim future if global warming isn't slowed, U.N. report says
L.A. Times
Earth faces a grim future if global warming isn't slowed, U.N. report says
By Alan Zarembo and Thomas H. Maugh II, Times Staff Writers
A new global warming report issued today by the United Nations paints a near-apocalyptic vision of the Earth's future if temperatures continue to rise unabated: more than a billion people in desperate need of water, extreme food shortages in Africa and elsewhere, a blighted landscape ravaged by fires and floods, and millions of species sentenced to extinction.
The devastating effects will strike all regions of the world and all levels of society, but it will be those without the resources to adapt to the coming changes who will suffer the greatest impact, the report said.
"It's the poorest of the poor in the world, and this includes poor people even in prosperous societies, who are going to be the worst hit," said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which issued the report today in Brussels.
The report is the second issued this year by the group. The first, released in January, characterized global warming as a runaway train that is irreversible but that can be moderated by societal changes.
That report said, with more than 90% confidence, that the warming is caused by humans, and its conclusions were widely accepted because of the years of accumulated scientific data supporting it.
The new report is far more controversial, however, because it cites specific effects of the warming. Scientists and politicians wrangled well into the night Thursday as representatives of some of the world's largest greenhouse gas emitters attempted to tone down the report and scientists fought for their predictions.
In the end, the report survived relatively unscathed, but timelines for future events were largely deleted and the degree of confidence in the projections was scaled back compared to earlier drafts.
Even so, the report paints a gloomy picture of the world's future, region by region. Most of its components were already known, but the accumulation of detail in the authoritative projection carries a much stronger weight than in the past.
North America can expect more hurricanes, floods, droughts, heat waves and wildfires, the report said, and the coasts will be flooded by rising sea levels. Crop production will increase initially as the growing season gets longer, but climbing temperatures and water shortages will ultimately lead to sharp reductions.
Africa will suffer the most extreme effects, with a quarter of a billion people losing most of their water supplies. Food production will fall by half in many countries and governments will have to spend 10% of their budgets or more to adapt to climate changes, the report said.
Asia will suffer from unprecedented flooding as the rising temperatures melt Himalayan glaciers and rock avalanches will wipe out many villages. The same will happen in the European Alps and the South American Andes.
Rising temperatures and drying soil will replace the moist rain forest of the eastern Amazon with drier savannah, eliminating much of the habitat that now supports the greatest diversity of species in the world.
At least 30% of the world's species will disappear if temperatures rise 3.6 degrees above the average levels of the 1980s and 1990s, the report said.
"Don't be poor in a hot country, don't live in hurricane alley, watch out about being on the coasts or in the Arctic, and it's a bad idea to be on a high mountain," said Stephen Schneider of Stanford University, one of the scientists who contributed to the report.
Reaction to the report was mixed.
"The urgency of this report … should be matched with an equally urgent response by governments," said Hans Veroime of the World Wildlife Foundation.
"Global warming is already underway, but it is not too late to slow it down and reduce its harmful effects," said Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco). "We must base our actions on the moral imperative and the scientific record."
But Jim Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said the report would not stampede the administration into taking part in the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, which seeks to limit emissions of carbon dioxide, the most important greenhouse gas. The U.S. withdrew from the protocol in 2001, saying it did not impose enough controls on developing nations.
"Each nation sort of defines their regulatory objectives in different ways to achieve the greenhouse reduction outcome that they seek," he said in a briefing.
Posted by politicalstuff at 3:24 AM
Iraq war protester marches to Bush's ranch
Reuters
Iraq war protester marches to Bush's ranch
By Steve Holland
CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - Iraq war protester Cindy Sheehan urged President George W. Bush to "end this madness" in Iraq on Friday in a march toward Bush's ranch.
Sheehan, a vocal protester of the war since her soldier son, Casey, was killed in Iraq in 2004, also expressed disappointment with Democrats in charge of the U.S. Congress for failing to stop the war.
Sheehan took advantage of a heavy media presence covering Bush's Easter weekend by leading an anti-war protest of about three dozen people in a march to the security checkpoint outside Bush's ranch.
Sheehan asked police at the security checkpoint for permission to go see Bush and was told no. She and her group set up an altar with candles on top and she read aloud some of the names of the more than 3,200 American soldiers killed in Iraq.
She said her message to Bush was for him to "end this madness" in Iraq before more people are killed.
"There are hundreds of thousands of people in Iraq and America who are dead forever, and there are families who are destroyed forever because of George Bush's policies," she told reporters.
Sheehan started visiting Crawford in the summer of 2005 when she wanted to meet with Bush while he vacationing at his ranch. Bush had met with her after her son died but did not see her again, although he sent some top aides to talk to her.
Bush and the Democrats are on a collision course over the president's request for $100 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Democrats have attached a troop withdrawal timetable to their legislation, and Bush has vowed to veto it if it reaches his desk.
Sheehan said the anti-war movement has been betrayed by Democrats because their legislation delays the withdrawal.
"We think the timeline is now, not 18 months or two years or whenever they feel like it," she said, adding that, "Yeah, people are feeling betrayed."
White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe declined comment on Sheehan's march.
He said Democrats calling on Bush to compromise need to reach agreement among themselves on which elements they support among competing versions of their bills in the House of Representatives and the Senate.
"They need to negotiate with themselves, figure out what their positions are," Johndroe said.
Posted by politicalstuff at 3:02 AM
Friday, April 06, 2007
Hussein's Prewar Ties To Al-Qaeda Discounted; Pentagon Report Says Contacts Were Limited
washingtonpost.com
Hussein's Prewar Ties To Al-Qaeda Discounted
Pentagon Report Says Contacts Were Limited
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Captured Iraqi documents and intelligence interrogations of Saddam Hussein and two former aides "all confirmed" that Hussein's regime was not directly cooperating with al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a declassified Defense Department report released yesterday.
The declassified version of the report, by acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble, also contains new details about the intelligence community's prewar consensus that the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda figures had only limited contacts, and about its judgments that reports of deeper links were based on dubious or unconfirmed information. The report had been released in summary form in February.
The report's release came on the same day that Vice President Cheney, appearing on Rush Limbaugh's radio program, repeated his allegation that al-Qaeda was operating inside Iraq "before we ever launched" the war, under the direction of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist killed last June.
"This is al-Qaeda operating in Iraq," Cheney told Limbaugh's listeners about Zarqawi, who he said had "led the charge for Iraq." Cheney cited the alleged history to illustrate his argument that withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq would "play right into the hands of al-Qaeda."
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), who requested the report's declassification, said in a written statement that the complete text demonstrates more fully why the inspector general concluded that a key Pentagon office -- run by then-Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith -- had inappropriately written intelligence assessments before the March 2003 invasion alleging connections between al-Qaeda and Iraq that the U.S. intelligence consensus disputed.
The report, in a passage previously marked secret, said Feith's office had asserted in a briefing given to Cheney's chief of staff in September 2002 that the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda was "mature" and "symbiotic," marked by shared interests and evidenced by cooperation across 10 categories, including training, financing and logistics.
Instead, the report said, the CIA had concluded in June 2002 that there were few substantiated contacts between al-Qaeda operatives and Iraqi officials and had said that it lacked evidence of a long-term relationship like the ones Iraq had forged with other terrorist groups.
"Overall, the reporting provides no conclusive signs of cooperation on specific terrorist operations," that CIA report said, adding that discussions on the issue were "necessarily speculative."
The CIA had separately concluded that reports of Iraqi training on weapons of mass destruction were "episodic, sketchy, or not corroborated in other channels," the inspector general's report said. It quoted an August 2002 CIA report describing the relationship as more closely resembling "two organizations trying to feel out or exploit each other" rather than cooperating operationally.
The CIA was not alone, the defense report emphasized. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) had concluded that year that "available reporting is not firm enough to demonstrate an ongoing relationship" between the Iraqi regime and al-Qaeda, it said.
But the contrary conclusions reached by Feith's office -- and leaked to the conservative Weekly Standard magazine before the war -- were publicly praised by Cheney as the best source of information on the topic, a circumstance the Pentagon report cites in documenting the impact of what it described as "inappropriate" work.
Feith has vigorously defended his work, accusing Gimble of "giving bad advice based on incomplete fact-finding and poor logic," and charging that the acting inspector general has been "cheered on by the chairmen of the Senate intelligence and armed services committees." In January, Feith's successor at the Pentagon, Eric S. Edelman, wrote a 52-page rebuttal to the inspector general's report that disputed its analysis and its recommendations for Pentagon reform.
Cheney's public statements before and after the war about the risks posed by Iraq have closely tracked the briefing Feith's office presented to the vice president's then-chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. That includes the briefing's depiction of an alleged 2001 meeting in Prague between an Iraqi intelligence official and one of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers as one of eight "Known Iraq-Al Qaida Contacts."
The defense report states that at the time, "the intelligence community disagreed with the briefing's assessment that the alleged meeting constituted a 'known contact' " -- a circumstance that the report said was known to Feith's office. But his office had bluntly concluded in a July 2002 critique of a CIA report on Iraq's relationship with al-Qaeda that the CIA's interpretation of the facts it cited "ought to be ignored."
The briefing to Libby was also presented with slight variations to then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet and then-deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley. It was prepared in part by someone whom the defense report described as a "junior Naval Reservist" intelligence analyst detailed to Feith's office from the DIA. The person is not named in the report, but Edelman wrote that she was requested by Feith's office.
The briefing, a copy of which was declassified and released yesterday by Levin, goes so far as to state that "Fragmentary reporting points to possible Iraqi involvement not only in 9/11 but also in previous al Qaida attacks." That idea was dismissed in 2004 by a presidential commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, noting that "no credible evidence" existed to support it.
When a senior intelligence analyst working for the government's counterterrorism task force obtained an early account of the conclusions by Feith's office -- titled "Iraq and al-Qaida: Making the Case" -- the analyst prepared a detailed rebuttal calling it of "no intelligence value" and taking issue with 15 of 26 key conclusions, the report states. The analyst's rebuttal was shared with intelligence officers on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but evidently not with others.
Edelman complained in his own account of the incident that a senior Joint Chiefs analyst -- in responding to a suggestion by the DIA analyst that the "Making the Case" account be widely circulated -- told its author that "putting it out there would be playing into the hands of people" such as then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, and belittled the author for trying to support "some agenda of people in the building."
But the inspector general's report, in a footnote, commented that it is "noteworthy . . . that post-war debriefs of Sadaam Hussein, [former Iraqi foreign minister] Tariq Aziz, [former Iraqi intelligence minister Mani al-Rashid] al Tikriti, and [senior al-Qaeda operative Ibn al-Shaykh] al-Libi, as well as document exploitation by DIA all confirmed that the Intelligence Community was correct: Iraq and al-Qaida did not cooperate in all categories" alleged by Feith's office.
From these sources, the report added, "the terms the Intelligence Community used to describe the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida were validated, [namely] 'no conclusive signs,' and 'direct cooperation . . . has not been established.' "
Zarqawi, whom Cheney depicted yesterday as an agent of al-Qaeda in Iraq before the war, was not then an al-Qaeda member but was the leader of an unaffiliated terrorist group who occasionally associated with al-Qaeda adherents, according to several intelligence analysts. He publicly allied himself with al-Qaeda in early 2004, after the U.S. invasion.
Staff writer Dafna Linzer and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
Posted by politicalstuff at 2:27 AM
Convicted Felon, Elliott Abrams, Works for Bush to Prevent MidEast Peace Talks
Paul Abrams
Convicted Felon, Elliott Abrams, Works for Bush to Prevent MidEast Peace Talks
I spent a week in Washington DC. I wish my findings were encouraging. They are not.
Elliott Abrams (NO relation, our DNA-match is not even as close as the chimp to homo sapiens) is a convicted felon from the first Bush Administration, who knuckle-walks the State Deparment instead of a prison cell because W's Daddy pardoned him along with Caspar Weinberger and other Administration officials in the last days of his Presidency.
(HW Bush continues to assert that he always honored his office!). As part of his well-known concern for rehabilitating convicted felons, George W. appointed Elliott to a position in the State Department that does not require Senate approval.
Elliott is a radical rightwing zealot who opposes a genuine two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. He is willing for other peoples' children to die holding on to the West Bank for Israel (and, I am told, his relatives).
Elliott's title ["Deputy National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy"], however, does not even begin to explain his role. He and Cheney are the two principals advising Bush on foreign policy. At the beginning of the Israeli-Lebanon conflict this summer, I learned, Elliott was in Jerusalem letting the Defense Minister know that he had a "green light" to attack Syria. Remember, that is when there was more than a little suspicion that the US was using Israel as a proxy for regime change, fortunately, the Israelis had a bit more sense than that.
Syria has just told Nancy Pelosi that it is willing to start talks with Israel. Why did they tell Nancy Pelosi? Because George Bush will not speak to them. Watch, Elliott will pressure Israel not to engage in such talks. As a non-Senate confirmed operative, he cannot be called before the Foreign Relations Committee.
Syrian officials have told private parties in the US for months that it is ready to deal with Israel. Immediately before Bill Clinton left office, in January, 2001, the entire Palestine and Syria matters were within a few hundred meters of land, and an agreement on water rights away, from resolution (aka, the Taba initiative). This was after the failure of Arafat to take the deal Ehud Barak negotiated with him at Sharm-el-Sheikh. (Unlike chickenhawk Elliott---I cannot bear to write his last name!--Barak was Israel's most decorated war hero).
As MJ Rosenberg has written in these columns, prior to the 1973 war, Anwar Sadat told Israel that if it pulled back 2 miles from the Suez Canal, that he would open talks for a real peace. Pressure from the Nixon Administration caused the Israeli PM to refuse. Several months later, the 1973 war was launched, and Israel lost more the 3000 soldiers (not to mention the thousands of long-term injuries). To put that in perspective, that is the equivalent of ~100,000 killed in US terms. That is, it is BIG.
And, what happened? A few years later, Sadat sued for a comprehensive peace. Despite all the turmoil in the middle east since, including Sadat's assassination, that peace has held. So has the peace with Jordan. 100,000 US equivalent deaths that could have been avoided.
There is only one pro-Israel position, and that is one that recognizes Israel's right to exist in a real peace with its neighbors, with the normal intercourse between peaceful neighbors, and to be free of terrorist attacks AND the legitimate right of the Palestinians for their own, viable state that will include most of the West Bank and Gaza.
Any other position that declares itself "pro-Israel" is a fraud. Bush's declaration of a two state solution is a fraud because he installed Elliott Abrams, a convicted felon who opposes that policy, to prevent it.
Why do you think that Bush has not appointed a permanent envoy to engage in the kind of shuttle diplomacy that can bring the parties together? Because the risk to Elliott is that such an envoy might be SUCCESSFUL!
How to prove me wrong? See if Olmert is "allowed" to engage in real talks with Syria.
Posted by politicalstuff at 2:24 AM
Cheney Agrees With Limbaugh On "Stalinist" Senate Democrats
Huffington Post
Bob Geiger
Cheney Agrees With Limbaugh On "Stalinist" Senate Democrats
In a wide-ranging radio interview on Thursday with Rush "Oxycontin King" Limbaugh, Vice President Dick Cheney enjoyed some laughs with the right-wing blowhard, including ripping into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her trip to Syria, agreeing with Limbaugh that Democrats want the U.S. to be defeated in Iraq and concurring that the treatment received by Swift Boat Sugar Daddy Sam Fox in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was "Stalinist."
I bet Cheney hasn't had this many yuks since he watched Limbaugh make fun of Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's Disease symptoms.
The most telling part of how sincere the White House is in talking about a new "bipartisan spirit" following the 2006 elections, came when Limbaugh talked about the Foreign Relations Committee hearing in which John Kerry (D-MA) and Barack Obama (D-IL) questioned Swiftie Sam Fox. In that hearing, the Senators had the temerity to ask Fox if funding a bunch of known liars so they could smear a decorated Veteran and swing a presidential election might raise questions about his character and personal qualifications to represent the country diplomatically.
Limbaugh waxed poetic about Fox's life story -- gee, did you know his parents came here as Ukrainian immigrants way before their son turned out to be a self-made scumbag? -- called him a "great American" and said he was "... treated horribly by Senator Kerry and others on that committee, simply because he had made a political donation."
Here's more:
Limbaugh: "They essentially told him he did not have freedom of speech in this country, until he would apologize, until he would go up to Kerry and apologize for supporting the Swift Boats. Now the President has recess-appointed him. And of course, the Democrats have said they're going to investigate this and going to look into this.
"This is the kind of move that garners a lot of support from the people in the country. This shows the administration willing to engage these people and not allow them to get away with this kind of -- well, my term -- you don't have to accept it -- Stalinist behavior from these people on that committee."
Cheney: : Well, you're dead on, Rush. I know Sam well. He's a good friend of mine and has been for many years. I think he's a great appointment. He'll do a superb job as our Ambassador to Belgium. I was delighted when the President made the recess appointment. He clearly has that authority under the Constitution. And you're right, John Kerry basically shot it down.
Rush freakin' Limbaugh labels the conduct of United States Senators "Stalinist behavior" and the vice president says "you're dead on, Rush."
Kind of gives you warm, bipartisan fuzzies, doesn't it?
After describing as "theatrics" the efforts of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Pelosi to bring the troops home from Iraq, Limbaugh asked Cheney the following: "Can you share with us whether or not you understand their devotion, or their seeming allegiance to the concept of U.S. defeat?"
"I can't," said Cheney, obviously not wanting to disabuse Limbaugh of the notion that the leading Congressional Democrats want to see America go down in defeat. "It seems to me so abundantly clear, Rush, that we really need to prevail in this conflict, that there's an awful lot riding on it."
"So it's absolutely essential we do it," Shotgun Dick continued. "I don't know why, what the motive is. They seem to think that we can withdraw from Iraq and walk away from it. They ignore the lessons of the past. Remember what happened in Afghanistan. We had been involved in Afghanistan in the '80s, supporting the Mujahadin against the Soviets and prevailed, we won, everybody walked away. And in the '90s, Afghanistan became a safe haven for terrorists, an area for training camps where al Qaeda trained 20,000 terrorists in the late '90s in the base from which they launched attacks against the United States on 9/11."
"So those are very real problems and to advocate withdrawal from Iraq at this point seems to me simply would play right into the hands of al-Qaeda."
So, to sum up: The Vice President of the United States agrees with a right-wing nutjob -- who has said that anyone who speaks out against America should be deported -- that Senate Democrats have behaved like "Stalinist(s)" and that, of course, Democrats want al-Qaeda to prevail over America.
And we should reach across the aisle to these people?
You can read more from Bob at BobGeiger.com.
Update: Think Progress is also on this and has audio as well.
Posted by politicalstuff at 2:23 AM
Florida police arrest activist for feeding homeless
Reuters
Florida police arrest activist for feeding homeless
MIAMI (Reuters) - Police in Florida have arrested an activist for feeding the homeless in downtown Orlando.
Eric Montanez, 21, of the charity group Food Not Bombs, was charged with violating a controversial law against feeding large groups of destitute people in the city center, police said on Thursday.
Montanez was filmed by undercover officers on Wednesday as he served "30 unidentified persons food from a large pot utilizing a ladle," according to an arrest affidavit. The Orlando area is home to Disney World and Universal Studios Florida.
The Orlando law, which is supported by local business owners who say the homeless drive away customers but has been challenged in court by civil rights groups, allows charities to feed more than 25 people at a time within two miles of Orlando city hall only if they have a special permit. They can get two permits a year.
Police collected a vial of the stew Montanez was serving as evidence.
Police spokeswoman Barbara Jones said in an e-mail it was the first time anyone had been arrested under the feeding ban.
Montanez was charged with a misdemeanor.
Posted by politicalstuff at 2:22 AM
U.S. plans to send more National Guard to Iraq
Reuters
U.S. plans to send more National Guard to Iraq: NBC
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Defense Department is preparing to send another 12,000 National Guard combat troops to Iraq, NBC Nightly News reported on Thursday, citing Pentagon sources.
New orders awaiting the signature of Defense Secretary Robert Gates will put 12,000 National Guard troops on alert to prepare to deploy to Iraq, the report said.
Four Guard combat brigades from units in four states would be involved in the involuntary mobilization, NBC said.
The one-year combat deployment would begin early in 2008, the report said.
The Pentagon referred queries about the report to the National Guard, where a spokesman had no immediate comment.
Gates did not mention a possible Guard deployment at news conference on Thursday.
More than four years into the U.S.-led war in Iraq, the U.S. military shows increasing signs of strain.
On Monday, the Pentagon said it would send another 9,000 U.S. troops to Iraq, with about half of them returning to combat ahead of schedule.
Two of the affected Army units, totaling about 4,500 troops, will return to combat short of their promised year at home, reflecting the strain placed on U.S. forces by operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Under the Bush administration's new Iraq policy announced earlier this year, the Pentagon has increased force levels there by about 30,000 troops in an attempt to regain control of security and reduce sectarian violence.
The units announced this week largely replace forces already in Iraq, which number around 145,000.
Posted by politicalstuff at 2:20 AM
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Reality Check on Bush's Rose Garden Talk
Newsweek.com
Reality Check on Bush's Rose Garden Talk
Bush came out swinging against a Democratic Congress determined, he argues, to undo the benefits of the "surge." Time for a reality check. Finding the thorns in Bush's Rose Garden address.
By Michael Hirsh
Newsweek
April 4, 2007 - President George W. Bush went on the offensive Tuesday against the Democrats, who've retreated from Washington for spring recess. From the sun-splashed setting of the Rose Garden, the president suggested that it was lazy—and possibly even unpatriotic—for the Democratic-controlled Congress to depart with a half-finished Iraq spending bill. "In a time of war, it's irresponsible for the Democrat leadership in Congress to delay for months on end while our troops in combat are waiting for the funds," Bush told reporters. He vowed to veto any bill that set a deadline for troop withdrawal, as legislation approved by both the House and Senate does.
The administration is justifiably worried that the new Congress will use its constitutional prerogative to cut off funding for the Iraq War at a time when, after four years of miscues, Bush thinks he's finally got the right strategy and team in place. But upon closer inspection, some of Bush's warnings suggest that the president is holding the Democrats to a different standard than he held his own party when it ruled Capitol Hill-and building a political case against Congress' course that doesn't quite add up.
Bush began by complaining that it had been "57 days since I requested that Congress pass emergency funds for our troops." He said that if Congress doesn't give him a bill he can sign by mid-April, the Army will be "forced to consider cutting back on equipment, equipment repair and quality-of-life initiatives for our Guard and Reserve forces," as well as training, so that money can go to "troops on the front lines." And if he doesn't get a bill by mid-May, Bush said, "the problems grow even more acute"—forecasting delays in funding repair depots, training active-duty forces needed overseas, and in forming new brigades.
Yet previous Republican-controlled Congresses have left for spring recess without passing the sort of supplemental bill Bush was talking about. In 2006, the GOP Congress didn't approve the supplemental until the middle of June. Sen. Jack Reed, a leading Democratic member of the Armed Services Committee, told NEWSWEEK that "there was no concern then about the dire consequence of running out of funds." Besides, Congress has already passed a huge $70 billion bridge fund last fall that will tide the troops over-even if the spending bill doesn't go through. (This was created because previous Congresses have been concerned that the administration tends to fund the war hand-to-mouth with supplemental bills, rather than asking for the money up front in its annual Defense budget.) "It's hard not to view this [Bush's charges] as somewhat hyped up," says Steve Kosiak of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington-based military think tank. "In addition to [the bridge fund], the Pentagon can tap its regular budget for the last quarter of the fiscal year, and shift money from procurements with a long lead time, like a new armored fighting vehicles. It creates some inefficiencies, but it's part of the process."
In his morning press conference, Bush also charged that the supplemental bill is ungainly and loaded up with Democratic "pork"—i.e., unrelated funding for projects back home. But the main reason for the supplemental in the first place, many Democrats charge, is to avoid tallying the real cost of the Iraq War in the regular budget. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden, D-Del., called the supplemental a "shell game" and told "Fox News Sunday": "If the president had been honest with what he needed for this war in his regular budget, then we wouldn't be having this."
The president also announced that thus far only 40 percent of the troops called up in the "surge" have reached Iraq. Bush said he found it "somewhat astounding that people in Congress would start calling for withdrawal even before all the troops have made it to Baghdad." When will they get there? By "early June," Bush announced. And yet the administration has previously made a point of suggesting strongly that this summer is a fair time to assess the surge's effectiveness. Gen. George Casey, the previous multinational forces commander in Iraq, was asked in late December when he thought troops could come home. "I believe the projections are late summer," Casey told reporters. At a congressional hearing on Jan. 11, new Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the surge's duration would be "a matter of months." Now, without quite saying so, the president seems to have pushed back the target date for the surge's success—and withdrawal. Says Jack Reed: "Most counterinsurgency specialists talk about success coming in years, not months."
Also on Tuesday, Bush countered a reporter's question about the Iraqi government's readiness by ticking off the ways in which Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and his cabinet have stepped up. "They said they'd name a commander for Baghdad. They have done that. They said they'd send up-you know, they'd send troop out into the neighborhoods to clear and hold and then build. They're doing that. They said they would send a budget up that would spend a considerable amount of their money on reconstruction. They have done that. They're working on an oil law that is in progress." Bush added: "The whole [surge] strategy is to give the Iraqi government time to reconcile."
But by many accounts, political progress on reconciliation in Iraq is frozen and possibly has even gone into reverse. The legislature has declined to take up the oil apportionment law, which is critical to creating a sense of unified statehood for ever-bickering Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. And The New York Times reported Tuesday that Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered Shiite cleric in the country, is opposing a U.S.-backed plan to allow thousands of former Baath Party members to re-enter the government. The plan, the chief legacy of the just-departed U.S. ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, was the Bush administration's main means of reaching out to Sunnis who back the insurgency. But Sistani's word is as good as law for many Shiites. "I think that really hurts the cause," says Andrew Krepinevich, a leading military strategist in Washington whose strategy for "spreading oil spots" of stability in Iraq is largely the one that Bush has adopted.
All in all, Bush delivered a powerful broadside in his Rose Garden performance on Tuesday—especially since few Democrats were around to answer him. But a quick reality check suggests that his Rose Garden offensive was all about politics, not policy. His administration knows it badly needs a victory in the arena of public opinion, which continues to tilt in support of early withdrawal. Perhaps that's one reason that Bush tried to make the case — in what was no doubt his biggest stretch — that the Democratic plan calling for a withdrawal date by 2008 "will mean that some of our military families could wait longer for their loved ones to return from the front lines." That's a particularly difficult case to make—since the same day, the newspapers carried stories about how the surge was shrinking the amount of time troops had at home between tours of duty. And his own plan calls for an open-ended commitment—not exactly a hurry-home strategy. Despite Bush's attack on the Democrats Tuesday, "the administration...has lost control of the [Iraq] narrative," says Krepinevich. Bush, with just 20 months left to serve, is trying mightily to get the country once again to listen to his side of the story.
Posted by politicalstuff at 2:07 AM
Reality Check on Bush's Rose Garden Talk
Newsweek.com
Reality Check on Bush's Rose Garden Talk
Bush came out swinging against a Democratic Congress determined, he argues, to undo the benefits of the "surge." Time for a reality check. Finding the thorns in Bush's Rose Garden address.
By Michael Hirsh
April 4, 2007 - President George W. Bush went on the offensive Tuesday against the Democrats, who've retreated from Washington for spring recess. From the sun-splashed setting of the Rose Garden, the president suggested that it was lazy—and possibly even unpatriotic—for the Democratic-controlled Congress to depart with a half-finished Iraq spending bill. "In a time of war, it's irresponsible for the Democrat leadership in Congress to delay for months on end while our troops in combat are waiting for the funds," Bush told reporters. He vowed to veto any bill that set a deadline for troop withdrawal, as legislation approved by both the House and Senate does.
The administration is justifiably worried that the new Congress will use its constitutional prerogative to cut off funding for the Iraq War at a time when, after four years of miscues, Bush thinks he's finally got the right strategy and team in place. But upon closer inspection, some of Bush's warnings suggest that the president is holding the Democrats to a different standard than he held his own party when it ruled Capitol Hill-and building a political case against Congress' course that doesn't quite add up.
Bush began by complaining that it had been "57 days since I requested that Congress pass emergency funds for our troops." He said that if Congress doesn't give him a bill he can sign by mid-April, the Army will be "forced to consider cutting back on equipment, equipment repair and quality-of-life initiatives for our Guard and Reserve forces," as well as training, so that money can go to "troops on the front lines." And if he doesn't get a bill by mid-May, Bush said, "the problems grow even more acute"—forecasting delays in funding repair depots, training active-duty forces needed overseas, and in forming new brigades.
Yet previous Republican-controlled Congresses have left for spring recess without passing the sort of supplemental bill Bush was talking about. In 2006, the GOP Congress didn't approve the supplemental until the middle of June. Sen. Jack Reed, a leading Democratic member of the Armed Services Committee, told NEWSWEEK that "there was no concern then about the dire consequence of running out of funds." Besides, Congress has already passed a huge $70 billion bridge fund last fall that will tide the troops over-even if the spending bill doesn't go through. (This was created because previous Congresses have been concerned that the administration tends to fund the war hand-to-mouth with supplemental bills, rather than asking for the money up front in its annual Defense budget.) "It's hard not to view this [Bush's charges] as somewhat hyped up," says Steve Kosiak of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington-based military think tank. "In addition to [the bridge fund], the Pentagon can tap its regular budget for the last quarter of the fiscal year, and shift money from procurements with a long lead time, like a new armored fighting vehicles. It creates some inefficiencies, but it's part of the process."
In his morning press conference, Bush also charged that the supplemental bill is ungainly and loaded up with Democratic "pork"—i.e., unrelated funding for projects back home. But the main reason for the supplemental in the first place, many Democrats charge, is to avoid tallying the real cost of the Iraq War in the regular budget. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden, D-Del., called the supplemental a "shell game" and told "Fox News Sunday": "If the president had been honest with what he needed for this war in his regular budget, then we wouldn't be having this."
The president also announced that thus far only 40 percent of the troops called up in the "surge" have reached Iraq. Bush said he found it "somewhat astounding that people in Congress would start calling for withdrawal even before all the troops have made it to Baghdad." When will they get there? By "early June," Bush announced. And yet the administration has previously made a point of suggesting strongly that this summer is a fair time to assess the surge's effectiveness. Gen. George Casey, the previous multinational forces commander in Iraq, was asked in late December when he thought troops could come home. "I believe the projections are late summer," Casey told reporters. At a congressional hearing on Jan. 11, new Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the surge's duration would be "a matter of months." Now, without quite saying so, the president seems to have pushed back the target date for the surge's success—and withdrawal. Says Jack Reed: "Most counterinsurgency specialists talk about success coming in years, not months."
Also on Tuesday, Bush countered a reporter's question about the Iraqi government's readiness by ticking off the ways in which Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and his cabinet have stepped up. "They said they'd name a commander for Baghdad. They have done that. They said they'd send up-you know, they'd send troop out into the neighborhoods to clear and hold and then build. They're doing that. They said they would send a budget up that would spend a considerable amount of their money on reconstruction. They have done that. They're working on an oil law that is in progress." Bush added: "The whole [surge] strategy is to give the Iraqi government time to reconcile."
But by many accounts, political progress on reconciliation in Iraq is frozen and possibly has even gone into reverse. The legislature has declined to take up the oil apportionment law, which is critical to creating a sense of unified statehood for ever-bickering Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. And The New York Times reported Tuesday that Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered Shiite cleric in the country, is opposing a U.S.-backed plan to allow thousands of former Baath Party members to re-enter the government. The plan, the chief legacy of the just-departed U.S. ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, was the Bush administration's main means of reaching out to Sunnis who back the insurgency. But Sistani's word is as good as law for many Shiites. "I think that really hurts the cause," says Andrew Krepinevich, a leading military strategist in Washington whose strategy for "spreading oil spots" of stability in Iraq is largely the one that Bush has adopted.
All in all, Bush delivered a powerful broadside in his Rose Garden performance on Tuesday—especially since few Democrats were around to answer him. But a quick reality check suggests that his Rose Garden offensive was all about politics, not policy. His administration knows it badly needs a victory in the arena of public opinion, which continues to tilt in support of early withdrawal. Perhaps that's one reason that Bush tried to make the case — in what was no doubt his biggest stretch — that the Democratic plan calling for a withdrawal date by 2008 "will mean that some of our military families could wait longer for their loved ones to return from the front lines." That's a particularly difficult case to make—since the same day, the newspapers carried stories about how the surge was shrinking the amount of time troops had at home between tours of duty. And his own plan calls for an open-ended commitment—not exactly a hurry-home strategy. Despite Bush's attack on the Democrats Tuesday, "the administration...has lost control of the [Iraq] narrative," says Krepinevich. Bush, with just 20 months left to serve, is trying mightily to get the country once again to listen to his side of the story.
Posted by politicalstuff at 2:05 AM
Robert F. Kennedy
Robert F. Kennedy
by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
In 1968, my father, running for President, addressed in a speech, the White House's proposal for a troop surge in Vietnam. Robert Kennedy had initially supported the U.S. intervention in Vietnam. Forty years later, as Congress and the White House debate the further escalation of yet another war that has already claimed the lives of an astounding 640,000 Iraqis, killed 3,256 U.S. soldiers and wounded another 50,000, his words should have special resonance to those of our political leaders who are still searching for the right course in Iraq:
"I do not want--as I believe most Americans do not want--to sell out American interests, to simply withdraw, to raise the white flag of surrender. That would be unacceptable to us as a country and as a people. But I am concerned--as I believe most Americans are concerned--that the course we are following at the present time is deeply wrong. I am concerned--as I believe most Americans are concerned--that we are acting as if no other nations existed, against the judgment and desires of neutrals and our historic allies alike. I am concerned--as I believe most Americans are concerned--that our present course will not bring victory; will not bring peace; will not stop the bloodshed; and will not advance the interests of the United States or the cause of peace in the world. I am concerned that, at the end of it all, there will only be more Americans killed; more of our treasure spilled out; and because of the bitterness and hatred on every side of this war, more hundreds of thousands of [civilians] slaughtered; so they may say, as Tacitus said of Rome: "They made a desert, and called it peace." . . .
"The reversals of the last several months have led our military to ask for more troops. This weekend, it was announced that some of them--a "moderate" increase, it was said--would soon be sent. But isn't this exactly what we have always done in the past? If we examine the history of this conflict, we find the dismal story repeated time after time. Every time--at every crisis--we have denied that anything was wrong; sent more troops; and issued more confident communiques. Every time, we have been assured that this one last step would bring victory. And every time, the predictions and promises have failed and been forgotten, and the demand has been made again for just one more step up the ladder. But all the escalations, all the last steps, have brought us no closer to success than we were before. . . . And once again the President tells us, as we have been told for twenty years, that "we are going to win"; "victory" is coming. . . . It becoming more evident with every passing day that the victories we achieve will only come at the cost of the destruction for the nation we once hoped to help. . . .
"Let us have no misunderstanding. [They] are a brutal enemy indeed. Time and time again, they have shown their willingness to sacrifice innocent civilians, to engage in torture and murder and despicable terror to achieve their ends. This is a war almost without rules or quarter. There can be no easy moral answer to this war, no one-sided condemnation of American actions. What we must ask ourselves is whether we have a right to bring so much destruction to another land, without clear and convincing evidence that this is what its people want. But that is precisely the evidence we do not have. . . .
"The war, far from being the last critical test for the United States, is in fact weakening our position in Asia and around the world, and eroding the structure of international cooperation which has directly supported our security for the past three decades. . . . All this bears directly and heavily on the question of whether more troops should now be sent--and, if more are sent, what their mission will be. We are entitled to ask--we are required to ask--how many more men, how many more lives, how much more destruction will be asked, to provide the military victory that is always just around the corner, to pour into this bottomless pit of our dreams? But this question the administration does not and cannot answer. It has no answer--none but the ever-expanding use of military force and the lives of our brave soldiers, in a conflict where military force has failed to solve anything yet. . . .
"But the costs of the war's present course far outweigh anything we can reasonably hope to gain by it, for ourselves or for the people of Vietnam. It must be ended, and it can be ended, in a peace of brave men who have fought each other with a terrible fury, each believing he and he alone was in the right. We have prayed to different gods, and the prayers of neither have been answered fully. Now, while there is still time for some of them to be partly answered, now is the time to stop. . . .
"You are the people, as President Kennedy said, who have "the least ties to the present and the greatest ties to the future." I urge you to learn the harsh facts that lurk behind the mask of official illusion with which we have concealed our true circumstances, even from ourselves. Our country is in danger: not just from foreign enemies; but above all, from our misguided policies--and what they can do to the nation that Thomas Jefferson once told us was the last, best hope of man. There is a contest on, not for the rule of America, but for the heart of America. . . . I ask you to go forth and work for new policies--work to change our direction--and thus restore our place at the point of moral leadership, in our country, in our hearts, and all around the world."
Posted by politicalstuff at 2:02 AM
Passing the War Buck
Huffington Post
Alec Baldwin
Passing the War Buck
Watching McCain support Bush's Iraq policy so doggedly makes me think that the Republicans seek not only to hand the war issue over to Bush's successor, they seek to keep the war going in order to create problems for Hillary Clinton. After all, whether or not Americans will elect a woman as Commander-in-Chief during wartime is a potential issue for Clinton's campaign.
McCain, long an enemy of the Bush machine, has been taking direction from that crowd as if his political life depended on it. Perhaps it does. As Hillary, Obama and Edwards report strong numbers in their fund-raising efforts, the co-author of McCain-Feingold, a man who once stood for meaningful reform of campaign financing, looks like he will say anything to tap the Bush-Cheney political ATM. McCain's defense of the war, and his careful choice of language in order to leave some wiggle room down the line, shows the GOP's longterm strategy at its best.
Hillary is the presumed nominee. She says the right things to simultaneously strengthen and immunize herself as a top candidate. She has lots of dough coming in. She has Bill, who is the only thing better than lots of dough coming in. The GOP boardroom believes she is it. And they keep the war going on and on with Hillary in mind.
Posted by politicalstuff at 2:00 AM
High Court Faults EPA Inaction on Emissions
washingtonpost.com
High Court Faults EPA Inaction on Emissions
Critics of Bush Stance on Warming Claim Victory
By Robert Barnes and Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writers
The Supreme Court rebuked the Bush administration yesterday for refusing to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, siding with environmentalists in the court's first examination of the phenomenon of global warming.
The court ruled 5 to 4 that the Environmental Protection Agency violated the Clean Air Act by improperly declining to regulate new-vehicle emissions standards to control the pollutants that scientists say contribute to global warming.
"EPA has offered no reasoned explanation for its refusal to decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate change," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority. The agency "identifies nothing suggesting that Congress meant to curtail EPA's power to treat greenhouse gases as air pollutants," the opinion continued.
The issue at stake in the case, one of two yesterday that the court decided in favor of environmentalists, is somewhat narrow. But environmentalists and some lawmakers said it could serve as a turning point, placing new pressure on the Bush administration to address global warming and adding to the political momentum that the issue has received because of Democratic control of Congress and a desire from the corporate community for a comprehensive government response to the issue.
The Natural Resources Defense Council said in a statement that the ruling "repudiates the Bush administration's do-nothing policy on global warming," undermining the government's refusal to view carbon dioxide as an air pollutant subject to EPA regulation.
The ruling could also lend important authority to efforts by the states either to force the federal government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or to be allowed to do it themselves. New York is leading an effort to strengthen regulations on power-plant emissions. California has passed a law seeking to cut carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles starting in 2009; its regulations have been adopted by 10 other states and may soon be adopted by Maryland.
The decision in Commonwealth of Massachusetts et al. v. Environmental Protection Agency et al . also reinforced the division on the Supreme Court, with its four liberal members in the majority and its four most conservative members dissenting. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy's role as the key justice in this term's 5 to 4 decisions was again on display, as he sided with Stevens, Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David H. Souter.
The case dates from 1999, when the International Center for Technology Assessment and other groups petitioned the EPA to set standards for greenhouse gas emissions for new vehicles. Four years later, the EPA declined, saying that it lacked authority to regulate greenhouse gases and that even if it did, it might not choose to because of "numerous areas of scientific uncertainty" about the causes and effects of global warming. Massachusetts, along with other states and cities, took the agency to court.
The court majority said that the EPA clearly had the authority to regulate the emissions and that its "laundry list" of reasons for not doing so were not based in the law. "We need not and do not reach the question whether on remand EPA must make an endangerment finding. . . . We hold only that EPA must ground its reasons for actions or inaction in the statute," Stevens wrote.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote one dissent, which was joined by Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. He said that global warming may be a "crisis," even "the most pressing environmental problem of our time," but that it is an issue for Congress and the executive branch. He said the court's majority used "sleight-of-hand" to even grant Massachusetts the standing to sue.
Scalia wrote another dissent, which Roberts and the others also joined, saying the EPA had done its duty when it considered the petition and decided not to act. He said the court "has no business substituting its own desired outcome for the reasoned judgment of the responsible agency."
But reaction from even staunch supporters of the EPA's actions seemed to reflect a recognition of the changed political currents and a belief that Congress and the administration must now confront the issue, rather than leaving it to agencies or the states.
"The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers believes that there needs to be a national, federal, economy-wide approach to addressing greenhouse gases," said the alliance's president, Dave McCurdy, whose group had supported the EPA's position.
In a sign that the ruling is already reverberating on Capitol Hill, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John D. Dingell (D-Mich.) -- a key player in the House debate over global warming -- issued a statement saying: "While I still believe Congress did not intend for the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases, the Supreme Court has made its decision and the matter is now settled. Today's ruling provides another compelling reason why Congress must enact, and the President must sign, comprehensive climate change legislation."
House Democrats have vowed to pass global warming legislation by July 4, and Senate leaders are working on their version of the bill. But it is unclear what kind of plan they will adopt and whether they will pass it as soon as they have promised.
Senate leaders said they will call EPA officials before the Environment and Public Works Committee this month to ask them how they plan to deal with the court's decision.
In the other environmental case, Environmental Defense et al. v. Duke Energy Corp. et al ., the court unanimously supported a decades-old initiative aimed at forcing power plants to install pollution-control equipment.
The case involved a movement launched during the Clinton administration to force companies to install pollution-control equipment in aging coal-fired power plants. More than two dozen plants in the South and the Midwest still have cases pending.
Staff writer William Branigin contributed to this report.
Posted by politicalstuff at 1:59 AM
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