Your tax dollars abused

"Too many government employees have viewed purchase cards as their personal line of credit.
It's time to cut up their cards and start over." Sen. Norm Coleman, R-MN

Ya know, it sets my teeth on edge to have to agree with Norm Coleman first thing in the morning. It really, truly does. But that is exactly where I find myself today, reading the GAO report and corresponding Washington Post article on the abuse and misuse of purchase cards by government employees.

About a decade ago, it was decided that department managers, shift supervisors and certain other personnel working in the various and sundry federal departments should have a little latitude. Cards were issues for routine and ordinary purchases. The old procurement process was a bureaucratic nightmare. The old process is where those "speed of government" jokes came from. Let me illustrate by example. In 1988, if a monitor crapped out, an entire workstation would be down for weeks while a new monitor was requisitioned and ordered from a specific supplier who had the contract to supply all of the monitors to a specific government entity. This was stupid, and it was infuriating.

Fast forward one decade...purchase cards were issued to certain federal employees that situations like I just described might be eliminated. People like me had the option of performing the troubleshooting checklist and then going to Office Max or Best Buy or Comp USA and buying a new monitor and getting the workstation back up after lunch instead of having it sit idle for weeks, perhaps months.

Makes sense, right? You trust me with submitting all these man hours to payroll, you can trust me to buy office supplies. Right?

Me personally? Sure. Every penny accounted for properly. Justified, verified and immediate supervisor informed. All "i's" dotted and "t's" crossed. Hand delivered to the appropriate administrator and a receipt requested. Copies made and filed in my file cabinet in my office. No screwing around, since at the end of the journey, I always figured I was ultimately spending my own money, since as a taxpayer I am the origin of the governments funding source.

I'm such a chump!

The GAO found that nearly half the "purchase card" transactions it examined were improper, some because they weren't authorized correctly and others because they did not meet requirements for the cards' use. The audit determined that the overall rate of problems "is unacceptably high."

Nearly $2 million was spent on items such as laptops and digital cameras and can not be accounted for. The Department of the Army charged more than a dozen computer servers worth a hundred grand apiece to the cards, and now can't account for them.

The audit is the culmination of a series of GAO reports over the past decade that have uncovered improper use of government-issued purchase cards at agencies, including the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Government employees spent nearly $20 billion last year using "SmartPay" cards and related convenience checks, for items ranging from pencils to computers to utility trucks.

Purchase cards, used by about 300,000 government employees in 2007, are essentially the federal government's equivalent of corporate credit cards. Issued by five major banks, they are primarily for transactions under $2,500 but can be used for larger contract payments. All transactions are supposed to comport with federal purchasing guidelines, including proper authorization and documentation.

The latest study used scientific sampling to gauge problems with the cards across numerous federal agencies from July 2005 to September 2006. The report singles out incidents for special criticism as "abusive," "improper" or "fraudulent."

In the fraudulent category, a longtime employee of the U.S. Forest Service in Oregon, Debra K. Durfey, wrote convenience checks worth more than $640,000 from 2000 to 2006 to a live-in boyfriend, who used the money for gambling, car expenses and mortgage payments, according to the GAO and the Justice Department.

The fraud went undetected until a whistle-blower forwarded a tip to the Agriculture Department's inspector general. Durfey, who headed her unit's purchasing office, pleaded guilty last year and was sentenced to 21 months in prison and restitution.

Another fraud case involved the U.S. Postal Service, where an unidentified postmaster used his card to charge $1,100 over a 15-month period for "various online dating services" while he was under investigation for viewing pornography on a government computer. The employee worked out an agreement to remain on sick leave until he retired in 2007 and paid back the money spent on the dating services, according to the GAO report and a Postal Service spokesman.

In a case the GAO deemed "abusive," the Postal Service spent $13,500 in 2006 on a dinner at a Ruth's Chris Steak House in Orlando, including "over 200 appetizers and over $3,000 of alcohol, including more than 40 bottles of wine costing more than $50 each and brand-name liquor such as Courvoisier, Belvedere and Johnny Walker Gold." The tab came to more than $160 a head for the 81 guests, the report said.

A spokesman for the Postal Service, Gerry McKiernan, seemed almost indignant that the expense for the dinner would even raise an eyebrow and he would have to answer questions about it by unctuous guttersnipes from the GAO. "When you're having dinner with customers, it's normal to have a drink," McKiernan asserted.In another glaring example of perfidy, a State Department cardholder spent $360 at a lingerie boutique in Ecuador. Ostensibly, the expense was for "women's underwear/lingerie for use during jungle training by trainees of a drug enforcement program." No further details of the purchase were revealed, but a State Department official "agreed that the charge was questionable." (Ya think???)

Reading reports like this just disgusts me to my very core. I am easily infuriated by people who just don't know how to act. People who, apparently, have never managed to grow up. Narcissistic brats who think the world owes them something instead of realizing humbly that it's the other way around.

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The one where I crow a little bit because I beat the Washington Post to this by almost three months

Remember all those heady promises of increased airline security so something like the attacks of September 11 could never happen again?

Technology was going to save us! Technology would provide sniffer machines that would detect explosives and biometric data collection systems would be a able to detect a terrorist by his shifty eyes.

Well...Been to the airport lately? Going on seven years after September 11 and what changes have been made? Lets see - I have to take off my shoes. My shampoo, conditioner and toothpaste are treated as weapons-grade materials, and my three year old granddaughter is likely on a terrorist watch list now because of the fit she threw when they took her sippy cup.

Yet GAO investigators had no problem getting real bomb making components past various incarnations of Roscoe P. Coltrain and his deputy Enos.

(Yes, we were three months ahead of the Washington Post - they are reporting today on the findings of a GAO report we read in November.)

The sluggish pace of technological innovation and deployment has left holes in checkpoint security that could easily be exploited by terrorists, according to government officials and outside experts. Congressional investigators reported last year that they were able to smuggle bomb components through checkpoints despite new security measures. Other investigative reports questioned the government's efforts to get emerging technology into the field.

"The snail's pace of deploying new technology is unacceptable," said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. "We remain vulnerable because we have not kept up with technological innovation."

The TSA in coming months is expected to begin the government's first substantial investment in new checkpoint security technology since the 1970s, according to officials at the TSA, which plans to spend about $250 million on new devices, up from about $89 million last fiscal year. The machines include upgraded X-ray equipment that will provide multiple views of bags and hand-held scanners that can detect liquid explosives in bottles after they are identified by screeners.

The machines my luggage passed through was the same vintage 70's equipment that was screening luggage on September 10, 2001.

So what happened? Why haven't these wonderful technological advances materialized? Well, the government says that private investment has been anemic and the private sector says the government hasn't done it's part to foster investment.

I get frustrated with such maddening petulance. Sometimes you just suck it up and do what's right - or that's how it's supposed to be. But in America 2.0, Beta it doesn't work that way. Nowadays, the mantra is "Fuck you if I can't make a buck!"

Is anyone else just worn out with this shit? I sure as hell am. I'm so god-damned sick of fucked-up priorities and wrong-headed, selfish behavior that it's all I can do to keep from banging my head on the desk out of the sheer frustration of it all.

Can we have the grown ups back in charge please? I don't like this "Lord of the Flies" reality these juvenile nitwits have created.

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Washington Post: "Al-Qaeda in Iraq Reported Crippled"

Well, the foam-flecked loons will have a field day with that WaPo headline. I can hear the chest thumping and chickenhawk bravado from here. They are already lighting bonfires around which to dance naked while chanting “Boo-Ya, Bitches! We Win! U!S!A! U!S!A!”

They are so predictable.

They will read the first sentence:

The U.S. military believes it has dealt devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq in recent months, leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group, which the Bush administration has long described as the most lethal U.S. adversary in Iraq.

Then conveniently overlook the inconvenient parts…

But as the White House and its military commanders plan the next phase of the war, other officials have cautioned against taking what they see as a premature step that could create strategic and political difficulties for the United States. Such a declaration could fuel criticism that the Iraq conflict has become a civil war in which U.S. combat forces should not be involved. At the same time, the intelligence community, and some in the military itself, worry about underestimating an enemy that has shown great resilience in the past.

"I think it would be premature at this point," a senior intelligence official said of a victory declaration over AQI, as the group is known. Despite recent U.S. gains, he said, AQI retains "the ability for surprise and for catastrophic attacks." Earlier periods of optimism, such as immediately following the June 2006 death of AQI founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a U.S. air raid, not only proved unfounded but were followed by expanded operations by the militant organization.

[keep reading]

I hate that these jokers make me a conspiracy theorist, but what the hell? I’m just a crackpot blogger anyway, so here goes…is the WaPo article just a piece of a larger PR campaign?

Let’s take stock…last spring more astute observers started noticing that suddenly every single thing that happened in Iraq was the work of al Qaeda in Iraq. If a swarthy man sneezed, it was the work of al Qaeda. By last summer, virtually every report out of Iraq was citing violence by “al Qaeda” – but in reality, al Qaeda in Iraq has never really been more than a bogey-man, even the most generous assessments put their numbers at 10% of the insurgency, and likely only about 4%. (It has been long acknowledged that Shi’ite militias have represented a far greater threat than Sunni insurgents and jihadist fighters professing membership in AQI.)

Then the references slowed down.

And now, the WaPo prints a specious headline (Fred Hiatt is a perennial contender for the Wurlitzer Prize) and yellow feathers fill the air as the self-congratulating cowards and chickenhawks bust out the beer-bongs, launch at one another in belly-bumps and exchange high-fives and Hulk poses. “We’re kickin’ ass!!!”

Of a piece? That’s possible I suppose.

It’s always good news when groups attacking Americans are on the wane. But only if there is some “there” there, and this cast of characters has a lousy track record where honesty is concerned - having lied to get us into the war in the first damned place - so you'll just have to pardon me if I don't come running when the little boy cries "wolf!"

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Fighting less & winning more

Following up on the discussion about taking a love-compassion-awareness approach to politics in general, here's a post about taking, let's call it, an "awareness approach" to fighting an insurgency.

Nathaniel Fick, a former Marine captain, provides perspective today of why a new approach to fighting is key, and how the kill-them-all strategy can't keep us safe.

In a Washington Post column, Fick talks about his experience teaching counterinsurgency tactics in Afghanistan. One of his key points is that fighting less, leads to winning more. Fick writes that he asked his students to list their top three targets in a Taliban stronghold.

When I asked a U.S. officer to share his list, he rattled off the names of three senior Taliban leaders to be captured or killed. Then I turned and asked an Afghan officer the same question. "First we must target the local councils to see how we can best help them," he replied. "Then we must target the local mullahs to find out their needs and let them know we respect their authority." Exactly. In counterinsurgency warfare, targeting is more about whom you bring in than whom you take out.

It's a column well worth reading.

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Occupation going badly? All you need is better advertising!

Image is everything

They have decided that what the military really needs in Iraq is…a new branding effort! To that end, they are looking into ways to repackage a hostile occupation to make it palatable and desirable for the occupied population. A veritable “must have” if you will.

“Well, why not?” They must be thinking. “The American sheeple sure bought the “greeted with flowers and candy as liberators” hokum.

Since the whole “show of force” thing has proven to be wildly unpopular with the targeted consumers – the citizens of Iraq – maybe repackaging the occupation will improve the market share. Even though every focus group conducted shows that the Iraqis simply want us to leave.

The key to boosting the image and effectiveness of U.S. military operations around the world involves "shaping" both the product and the marketplace, and then establishing a brand identity that places what you are selling in a positive light, said clinical psychologist Todd C. Helmus, the author of "Enlisting Madison Avenue: The Marketing Approach to Earning Popular Support in Theaters of Operation." The 211-page study, for which the U.S. Joint Forces Command paid the Rand Corp. $400,000, was released this week.

Helmus and his co-authors concluded that the "force" brand, which the United States peddled for the first few years of the occupation, was doomed from the start and lost ground to enemies' competing brands. While not abandoning the more aggressive elements of warfare, the report suggested, a more attractive brand for the Iraqi people might have been "We will help you." That is what President Bush's new Iraq strategy is striving for as it focuses on establishing a protective U.S. troop presence in Baghdad neighborhoods, training Iraq's security forces, and encouraging the central and local governments to take the lead in making things better.

Many of the study's conclusions may seem as obvious as they are hard to implement amid combat operations and terrorist attacks, and Helmus acknowledged that it could be too late for extensive rebranding of the U.S. effort in Iraq. But Duane Schattle, whose urban operations office at the Joint Forces Command ordered the study, said that "cities are the battlegrounds of the future" and what has happened in Baghdad provides lessons for the future. "This isn't just about going in and blowing things up," Schattle said. "This is about working in a very complex environment."

Can you even stand it? They went rushing into a country, destabilized the entire region, gave the Iranians a long-awaited victory in their war with Iraq, and fomented a civil war…now they are convinced that all they really need is to rebrand the whole thing. That’ll be just the ticket…That is what the Joint Forces Command paid the Rand Corporation $400,000 dollars to conclude.

"Certain things do not translate well," the study warned. "Danger lies behind assumptions of similarity." A gesture Bush made during his 2005 inaugural parade -- the University of Texas "hook 'em horns" salute with raised index and pinkie fingers -- stands for the "sign of the devil" in some cultures and an indication of marital infidelity in others. A leaflet dropped to intimidate Iraqi insurgents, the study noted, "also reached noncombatants" and "gave everyone who picked it up the 'evil eye.' "

I bang my head on my desk in frustration. It’s a bit late for that, don’t you think?

The arrogant bastards who ignored reality in favor of the alternate one they created think they can salvage this whole fiasco with a new image?

There is only one explanation…They must think Iraqis are as gullible and stupid as most Americans.

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You can always count on this crew to get it exactly wrong

While the resident grows ever more shrill, while Hadley makes the rounds to all the bobble-head Sunday morning venues; while the administration beats the drum, the hangers-on and true believers chant over and over again “al Qaeda, al Qaeda, al Qaeda”

If we cut our losses in Iraq, it will be a victory for al Qaeda. If we don’t fight them there, al Qaeda will follow us home and attack a shopping mall near you. The only possible thing we can do is keep feeding ~30 American kids a week in the meatgrinder, sacrificing them to appease the cruel al Qaeda, who will apparently salt our fields, poison our wells, wither our crops and cause our cows to go dry and our chickens to molt. At least. So we must keep the sacrifices going until January 2009.

You see, if you aren’t pissing-down-your-leg terrified of al Qaeda, you are obviously tetched.

Well, fine. Color me tetched.

I have been telling anyone who would listen to just calm down a bit, al Qaeda is not nearly the threat that too many people have been deluded into thinking it is.

There was no al Qaeda in Iraq before this cocked-up invasion was launched. I have also been trying to get people to remember that Iraq is a Shia majority country and al and the boys are fundamentalist Sunnis. Just like there was no al Qaeda in Iraq before the U.S. invaded, there will be no al Qaeda in Iraq after the US forces leave.

They are simply not the threat this resident makes them out to be.

Instead, the gravest threat many American G.I.’s face comes from Jaish al-Mahdi (the Mahdi Army)

In the 10-square-mile district of West Rashid, the Mahdi Army also controls the housing market, the gas stations and the loyalty of many of the residents, according to the soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division's 1st Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment. The militia has a structure familiar to U.S. soldiers: brigade and battalion commanders leading legions of foot soldiers. Its fighters are willing and able to attack Americans with armor-piercing bombs, mortars, machine guns and grenades. Meanwhile, the political wing of Sadr's movement plays an outsize role in the national government.

West Rashid confounds the prevailing narrative from top U.S. military officials that the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq is the city's most formidable and disruptive force. While there are signs that the group has been active in the area, over the past several months, the Mahdi Army has transformed the composition of the district's neighborhoods by ruthlessly killing and driving out Sunnis and denying basic services to residents who remain. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, described the area as "one of the three or four most challenging areas in all of Baghdad."

Dominance by Shiite militias is typically associated with places in eastern Baghdad, such as Sadr City, while areas west of the Tigris River and south of the Baghdad airport road are home to large Sunni enclaves. Not long ago the western neighborhoods conformed clearly with this perception. U.S. soldiers estimate that a year ago, Sunnis made up about 80 percent of the population there and Shiites 20 percent. But those numbers have now reversed, after a concerted effort to cleanse Sunnis from the area, according to U.S. military officials. Graffiti marking the walls in these neighborhoods herald the new order: "Every land is Karbala, and every day is Ashura," read one slogan, extolling the Shiite holy city in southern Iraq and a major Shiite religious holiday.

The brazen attacks on U.S. soldiers also appear to challenge the idea that the Mahdi Army has been lying low to avoid confrontations with Americans. Street fighting between the Mahdi Army and U.S. forces has also broken out in other parts of the capital recently, including clashes in the al-Amin neighborhood Thursday in which Apache attack helicopters were called in to quell the gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades targeting U.S. troops. The next day, U.S. soldiers killed six Iraqi policemen during a raid in which they captured a police lieutenant believed to be working with Iranian-backed Shiite militias.

American soldiers who oversee West Rashid -- a district of about 700,000 people that includes the al-Amil, Bayaa and al-Jihad neighborhoods -- described an organized, well-financed Shiite enemy that rules ruthlessly and distributes the spoils of war to the area's impoverished residents.

In recent months, U.S. commanders have contended that the Mahdi Army, also known by its Arabic initials JAM, has splintered into a loosely connected militia in which its leader, Sadr, exerts a tenuous grip over disparate factions.

American commanders attribute much of the current violence to what they are now calling "special groups" or "secret cells" of Iranian-backed militiamen who may be acting independently of, or against, Sadr and his followers. But taken together, they say, militiamen acting as criminal power-brokers seeking profit and the perhaps more moderate Sadr loyalists constitute a formidable challenge for the soldiers who arrived in the capital in March as part of President Bush's troop buildup.

"We have a different fight than the rest of Baghdad," said Capt. Jay Wink, the battalion's intelligence officer. "It's all JAM, really. In one way, shape or form, everybody who lives there is associated with it."

Reading the piece in the Washington Post today, I was immediately drawn back to one of the tenets set forth in the white paper Rethinking Counterinsurgency by Dr. Steven Metz.

In cases where a serious insurgency cannot be managed, the state and its supporters might consider an approach designed to deliberately encourage the insurgency to mutate into something less dangerous such as an organized criminal organization. This is never desirable, but there may be rare instances where organized crime is less of a threat than sustained insurgency. Call this strategic methadone. [p.52]

Even before I got to this part:

"The Mahdi Army kind of shorts them out of power," said Capt. Charles Turner, who oversees reconstruction projects for the battalion. "You drive down the roads, you look over here, it's light. And you look over there, it's dark. From what I've seen, it's kind of a Tony Soprano thing: 'I outnumber you, so I'm going to do what I want.' "

Along certain militia-controlled blocks, "the curbs are painted, the streets are cleaner, they have beautification projects," Turner said. "It would be cool if it was a positive thing, but it's not."

Well, positive thing or not, it represents the current reality. And since that reality was addressed in Dr. Metz’ paper, maybe it is time the Pentagon stopped trying their level best to ignore it until it goes away.

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Good news or bad? Supreme Court agrees to review Gitmo detainee case

Normally I'd be thrilled by the news that the U.S. Supreme Court will review whether Guantanamo Bay detainees can go before federal courts. Normally I'd be just as giddy as Professor Eric Freedman. The Washington Post reports:

"This is a stunning victory for the detainees," said Eric M. Freedman, professor of constitutional law at Hofstra Law School, who has been advising the detainees. "It goes well beyond what we asked for, and clearly indicates the unease up there" at the Supreme Court.

But this is the George W. Bush packed court. As we've noted over at In This Moment, these aren't folks who have been very friendly to ideas that are any more recent than the 17th Century.

Of course, the really good news is that if this very conservative court strikes down the Bushie approach to locking detainees away and throwing out the key, then George W. and friends are truly up the creek without a paddle.

Stay tuned for more thrilling episodes of "George W. vs. The Constitution."

By the way, the cases the Supremes are taking up are are Boumediene v. Bush, 06-1195, and Al Odah v. U.S., 06-1196.

[cross posted from In This Moment.]

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New GAO report could be used to take legal action against Bush

You have to get through the entire Washington Post story to get to the point, but it's there and it's clear: George W. Bush is using signing statements to set himself above the law, and that has legal consequences for both the president and nation.

In the second to the last paragraph of the story, The Post reports that at least one legal expert believes that a just-released General Accounting Office report could provide the evidence Congress needs to "take collective legal action against the White House."

The Post reports:

(T)he GAO's findings are legally significant, said Bruce Fein, a conservative constitutional lawyer who served on an American Bar Association task force that excoriated the president's use of signing statements in a report last year. White House officials have dismissed such concerns as overblown, suggesting that the statements were staking out legal positions, not broadcasting the administration's intentions.

But the GAO report suggests that the dispute over signing statements is not an academic one, Fein said, adding that Congress could use the report to take collective legal action against the White House.

"At least it makes clear the signing statements aren't solely for staking out a legal position, with the president just saying, 'I don't have to do these things, but I will,' " Fein said. "In fact they are not doing some of these things. You can't just vaporize it as an academic question."

Alternet has a good explanation of the signing statements controversy and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's role in providing legal cover for Bush.

Personally, I've never been able to understand how Bush or any president can justify ignoring Congress. The president has the power to veto, but this president ignores that Constitutional remedy for any disagreement with Congress and simply declares himself above the law.

If Bush and company are allowed to get away with ignoring the law, the Constitution will be weakened, and we will be paying the price far into the future.

This is cross posted from In This Moment.

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After facing angry letters & calls, judge refuses to keep Scooter Libby out of jail

The news just keeps getting better and better today.

A judge has just refused to allow Scooter Libby to stay out of jail pending his appeal. No date has been set for Libby to report to prison, but it is expected to be within six to eight weeks.

It's nice to see justice -- and not influence -- being done.

Interestingly, the judge's decision today could well put our not-so-beloved president in a hard spot.

The Washington Post reports:

U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton's decision will send Libby's attorneys rushing to an appeals court to block the sentence and could force President Bush to consider calls from Libby's supporters to pardon the former aide....

Walton never appeared to waiver from his opinion that a delay was unwarranted. After 12 prominent law professors filed documents supporting Libby's request, the judge waived it off as "not something I would expect from a first-year in law school."

He also said he received several "angry, harassing, mean-spirited" letters and phone calls following his sentencing but said they wouldn't factor into his decision.

This is also posted on In This Moment.

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Is the imperial presidency ending? Could be.

[updated 4:03 pm]

Was all of the Bushies' maneuvering about torturing this guy?
-----------------------

[updated 3:32 p.m.]

The blog of the American Constitution Society has links to more details on the case and to the actual decision.
------------------------

The New York Times and Washington Post have the details on today's appeals court ruling that rejects the Bushies' claims that they can do anything they darn well please with anyone, that is, as long as they claim said individual is an enemy combatant. The Post reports:

The opinion is a major blow to the Bush administration's assertion that as the president seeks to combat terrorism, he has exceptionally broad powers to detain without charges both foreign citizens abroad and those living legally in the United States. The government is expected to appeal the 2-1 decision handed down by a three-judge panel of the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which is in Richmond, Va.

Although this decision is from a divided court, it also comes from a conservative panel. Very interesting.

The New York Times quotes one judge who does not sound at all pleased with the Bushies.

“To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians, Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote, “even if the President calls them ‘enemy combatants,’ would have disastrous consequences for the Constitution — and the country.”

“We refuse to recognize a claim to power,” Judge Motz added, “that would so alter the constitutional foundations of our Republic.”

I can already hear the screams, though, claiming that this is a horrible decision because Bush and company say the defendant is an Al Qaeda member. Well, perhaps he is and perhaps he isn't. What counts, though, is that in the United States you can't just point to someone and scream "bad guy," and then lock that person away forever.

If there are no rules, if there is no need for evidence, then anyone can be called an enemy combatant and locked away. That "anyone" could be folks like you or me who post unpopular political opinions on blogs. That could be my 80-year-old mother who might go to a peace march. Heck, I suppose they could prosecute my late, lamented cat Ernestine for, just well, being wrong.

I do not want a terrorist out on our streets anymore than anyone else does. However, this ruling gives the Bushies ample ways to keep this guy locked up if there is reason to do so.

It is. Way. Past. Time. To end this imperial presidency.

This is cross posted from In This Moment.

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I Am Sick Of Anonymous Sources

I have been following the outstanding coverage of the US Attorney scandal provided by The Washington Post's Dan Eggen since the beginning. I have never failed to learn something new reading his articles. Never, until today.

This morning Eggen filed a pretty routine story describing Bradley Schlozman's testimony about the election fraud indictments he brought just prior to the 2006 election. Schlozman claimed, under oath, that he didn't think the indictments against four former low level employees of the left leaning voter registration group ACORN would have any impact on the election. Eggen noted (as all of us who live in Missouri knew) that in the final four days of that election the GOP used the indictments in their campaign against Claire McCaskill.

Eggen reports that Todd Graves, who was familiar with the DoJ manual on the subject, later testified he was surprised that Schlozman brought the indictments so close to an election. The manual states United States Attorneys "must refrain from any conduct which has the possibility of affecting the election itself," and "most, if not all, investigation of an alleged election crime must await the end of the election to which the allegation relates."

So far there nothing in Eggen's piece that hasn't been reported elsewhere.

Then at the end of the story he trots out the following.

A department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the policy "does not mean . . . that the department forbids the filing of any charges, ever, around the time of an election." The Missouri case involved voter-registration efforts, rather than the election itself, the official said.

Who is the department official Dan? Is it Schlozman, or somebody in his camp? Is it Craig Donsanto, the official Schlozman spent all day hiding behind? To whom did you give anonymity? If it is Schlozman or somebody in his camp, that's no big whoop. If it is Donsanto, that is news, especially since TPMmuckraker is reporting that Donsanto, who wrote the manual, told David Iglesias something entirely different in a similar case. Without the official's identity there is not a single bit of news in your article. Why would you give the official anonymity anyway? The guy didn't exactly give you a whistle blowing quote.

A sad day for Dan Eggen. He seems to have gone Washington.

Dan, if you want a real story, try finding out when the GOP wrote and produced its negative ads. There were only four days between the indictments and the election. The ads were up pronto. If the ads were in production before the indictments then you have caught Schlozman in a giant lie. He says he didn't talk to anybody besides Donsanto and his people prior to the indictments. He also says that he didn't think the indictments would affect the election. The GOP obviously did. The timing was so precise, I wouldn't be surprised to learn the date of the indictment was on somebody's election campaign flowchart.

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The Loss Of A Single Soldier

Recently I took Steve Clemons and Josh Marshall to task for essentially claiming that the loss of Andrew J. Bacevich Jr. is somehow more tragic than the loss of any other American child. I stand by that position, but it should never be forgotten that Lt. Bacevich's death was just as tragic as any other in the unnecessary Iraqi war. On this memorial day his life should be honored just as we should honor the lives of all the others who have fought and died in our service.

Yesterday the Washington Post published an op-ed by Lt. Bacevich's father entitled I Lost My Son to a War I Oppose. We Were Both Doing Our Duty. It is a remarkable answer to the cretins who have written the Bacevich family to tell them that his father's anti-war writings are directly responsible for their son's death. I recommend everyone concerned about Iraq read it, and read it carefully.

There is a passage in the op-ed that I would like everyone to consider. The Bacevich family lives in Massachusetts. Senators Kennedy and Kerry both called to express condolences. Their Congressman, Stephen F. Lynch, attended the wake. Kerry was present for the funeral Mass. Hopefully the families of all of America's lost children receive similar expressions of condolence from their elected representatives.

Bacevich says that he got a brushoff when he suggested to each of them the necessity of ending the war. "More accurately," wrote Bacevich, "after ever so briefly pretending to listen, each treated me to a convoluted explanation that said in essence: Don't blame me." Emphasis added.

To whom do Kennedy, Kerry and Lynch listen? We know the answer: to the same people who have the ear of George W. Bush and Karl Rove -- namely, wealthy individuals and institutions. Money buys access and influence. Money greases the process that will yield us a new president in 2008. When it comes to Iraq, money ensures that the concerns of big business, big oil, bellicose evangelicals and Middle East allies gain a hearing. By comparison, the lives of U.S. soldiers figure as an afterthought.

Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.'s life is priceless. Don't believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier's life: I've been handed the check. It's roughly what the Yankees will pay Roger Clemens per inning once he starts pitching next month.

Money maintains the Republican/Democratic duopoly of trivialized politics. It confines the debate over U.S. policy to well-hewn channels. It preserves intact the cliches of 1933-45 about isolationism, appeasement and the nation's call to "global leadership." It inhibits any serious accounting of exactly how much our misadventure in Iraq is costing. It ignores completely the question of who actually pays. It negates democracy, rendering free speech little more than a means of recording dissent.

This is not some great conspiracy. It's the way our system works.

Until the politicians stop listening exclusively to the rich and powerful the war will continue. Until we get their attention, our elected representatives, even liberal lions like Kennedy and Kerry, will continue to tell grieving families "don't blame me," as they eagerly take money from the rich and powerful in exchange for the priceless lives of our children.

The political pressure we need to apply to our representatives must be unrelenting. They must never forget that they are "our" representatives. Sorry Blue Girl, I am not willing to exchange a Summer of Death in the hope of a Republican collapse in the Fall. I don't want my government to have to send another Roger Clemens Inning Check to another family during the coming Friedman.

We have to continually work to peacefully end the Iraq war.

There's more: "The Loss Of A Single Soldier" >>

How Very Soviet of Him

What, in the name of all that is sacred and holy, motivated Karl Rove to turn the Department of Justice into the enforcement arm of the Republican National Committee?

The answer is simple: He only cares about The Party. Principle and Country are obstructions to furthering his own petty political agenda. To his fevered, partisan brain, the Department of Justice was his to do with as he pleased. Screw you, screw me, screw the election process, screw the Constitution; and the hell with Justice being just. That sort of thing is for chumps and Democrats, and apparently Rove thinks the terms are synonymous. I can not wait for his come-uppance.

The wonderful Dan Froomkin has a terrific piece on the Washington Post website that pulls together information from different sources and paints a disturbing picture of the unprincipled, dishonorable and frankly un-American purely partisan political hack Rove.

Dan Eggen and Amy Goldstein write in today's Washington Post: "Nearly half the U.S. attorneys slated for removal by the administration last year were targets of Republican complaints that they were lax on voter fraud, including efforts by presidential adviser Karl Rove to encourage more prosecutions of election-law violations, according to new documents and interviews. . .

"It has been clear for months that the administration's eagerness to launch voter-fraud prosecutions played a role in some of the firings, but recent testimony, documents and interviews show the issue was more central than previously known. The new details include the names of additional prosecutors who were targeted and other districts that were of concern, as well as previously unknown information about the White House's role. . . .

"New information also emerged showing the extent to which the White House encouraged investigations of election fraud within weeks of November balloting.

"Rove, in particular, was preoccupied with pressing [Attorney General Alberto] Gonzales and his aides about alleged voting problems in a handful of battleground states, according to testimony and documents.

Long-standing precedent was tossed aside and actual rules were broken as well. At least one woman was incarcerated in a federal prison because she worked for a Democratic governor that a US Attorney wanted to see unseated. (It did not happen.)

I live just a few blocks from ground zero in the attorney firing scandal. I sure as hell care that “some attorneys got fired.” Especially when one of those attorneys that replaced the fired prosecutors was put here to manipulate the electoral process in my own state.

Elections are sacred, and so is Justice. That’s just how it is supposed to be in America, damnit. Subvert that process, like Rove apparently has, and I can see an application of the gallows as appropriate.

[Cross-posted from Blue Girl, Red State]

There's more: "How Very Soviet of Him" >>

Language on the Supplemental Resolved

Negotiators from the House of Representatives and the Senate have finished hammering out a compromise agreement on the Supplemental War Spending Bill.

The legislation establishes benchmarks for the government of Iraq, and includes measurable progress in the development of Iraqi security forces. It would also give U.S. soldiers and Marines more authority to pursue extremists and wuld establish a program to disarm militias and pursue political reconciliation between the sects and protect minority rights.

If the benchmarks are not being met, troop withdrawals would start on 01 July of this year, with a goal of completing the draw-down in 180 days. If benchmarks are beign met, then withdrawal would start on 01 October, also with a goal of completing the draw-down in 180 days.

The current language must be ratified by both chambers of the congress and then it will go to the president for either a signature or a veto.

The president has promised a veto as he is allergic to any form of accountability.

Bush "is the only person who fails to face this war's reality -- and that failure is devastating not just for Iraq's future, but for ours," Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) declared in a speech this afternoon.

Bush has repeatedly vowed he will not sign any bill with benchmarks or timetables, and he repeated himself today on that assertion in brief comments to reporters followign a meeting with General Petraeus. "I will strongly reject an artificial timetable [for] withdrawal and/or Washington politicians trying to tell those who wear the uniform how to do their job," Bush said.

Here is hoping the Democrats retain this newfound backbone and make him accept accountability. It's high time. He's sixty years old, and most of us start to develop a modicum of it by age six.

There's more: "Language on the Supplemental Resolved" >>

Domenici Lawyers Up

The most excellent TPM Muckraker reports that Senator Pete Dominici has retained Lee Blalack to represent him in the ongoing Senate ethics investigation into the purge of U.S. Attorneys in the Pearl Harbor Day Massacre.

Blalack, a partner in O'Melveny & Myers LLP's Washington office, is an experienced defense lawyer. As attorney for Cunningham, who is serving a sentence of more than eight years, Blalack dealt with one of the federal prosecutors who was later ousted, Carol S. Lam of San Diego.

Color me cynical, but I read this as Dominici knows that he abrogated ethics rules and proper protocol, and most likely, the worst is still to come. Perhaps one of the attorneys who posts here will let us know what the mechanism is for replacing a Senator under New Mexico law...

At least thats the feeling I got reading this article from the Washington Post. I finished the article with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. The founders of this nation established three co-equal branches of government, and set things up the way they did to assure that the citizens of this nation would not be ground under the heel of tyranny by the majority.

Those grand ideals held for over 200 years, until the appointment of Bush the younger to the office of the presidency. In six short years, we have seen over-reach after over-reach. We have been introduced to the concept of the Unitary Executive. We have seen Habeas Corpus, the Insurrection Acts of 1807 and Posse Comitatus suspended.

Yet in spite of all that, the politicization of Justice is the greatest existential threat to this nation that we have faced in the century and a half since the end of the Civil War. The thing that sickens me about it is that the existential threat we face does not come from outside our country, or even a rebel faction inside.

The existential threat we face comes from within our own government.

There's more: "Domenici Lawyers Up" >>