Wednesday, July 09, 2008

RIP Fourth Amendment. Capitulation Accomplished.

  • Dodd Amendment (to strike immunity) fails, 32-66. Those voting in favor included Biden, Boxer, Clinton, Kerry, Obama, Tester and the leaders of this effort, Dodd and Feingold and Leahy. No Republicans, of course. The disturbing part? Democrats voting against included Bayh, Carper, Conrad, Feinstein, Inouye, Johnson, Kohl, Landrieu, Lincoln, McCaskill, Mikulski, both Nelsons, Pryor, Rockefeller, Salazar, and Webb. The two missing votes belonged to Kennedy and McCain.
  • Specter Amendment (allows broader court review) also fails, 37-61. The five Senators who switched to the good side here include Conrad, Kohl, McCaskill, Webb and Arlen Specter, the lone R.
  • Bingaman Amendment (delays immunity until completion of the IG report) also fails, 42-56. The five additional lame defenders of the Constitution and their oath of office are Feinstein, Johnson, Lincoln, Mikulski, Nelson of Florida, and Salazar.
  • Motion to Invoke Cloture on H.R. 6304 (ends debate, eliminated the possibility of a filbuster by Dodd) passes 72-26. This number portends the final tally on the bill itself.
  • H.R. 6304, the FISA amendments act of 2008, passes 69-28. Those voting no -- the last-gasp defenders of a citizens' right against unreasonable search and seizure -- are, in alphabetical order: Daniel Akaka of Alaska, Joe Biden, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, Barbara Boxer, Sherrod Brown, Robert Byrd, Maria Cantwell, Ben Cardin of Maryland, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, Bryan Dorgan, Dick Durbin, Russ Feingold, Tom Harkin, John Kerry, Amy Klobuchar, Frank Lautenberg, Pat Leahy, Carl Levin, Bob Menendez, Patty Murray, Jack Reed, Harry Reid, Bernie Sanders, Chuck Schumer, Debbie Stabenow, Jon Tester, and Ron Wyden. If their name isn't on that list, they are no better than a Republican. I'm looking at you, Barack Obama.

This action today by the Congress signals not just forgiveness of what the telecoms did, but also the felony committed by the President of the United States. As for the legislation, the ACLU will challenge its constitutionality the minute it is signed into law:

"This fight is not over. We intend to challenge this bill as soon as President Bush signs it into law," said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project, in a statement. "The bill allows the warrantless and dragnet surveillance of Americans’ international telephone and email communications. It plainly violates the Fourth Amendment."

On to the Supreme Court eventually, during an Obama administration (and perhaps with a different combination of Justices than the current).

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Contemplating the 5-0

Fifty years and about three hours ago your intrepid reporter entered this realm (I've always been an early riser).

Around 5 a.m. at the St. Therese Hospital in Beaumont, Texas; seven pounds five ounces; a thick shock of wavy black hair, delivered by Dr. Lamar Bevill (I would meet him twenty years later at Lamar University as an undergraduate; he was serving the campus as the medical center's physician).

Herewith an executive summary of my life by decades in approximate:

-- In the summer of '69 I was a Tenderfoot at summer camp in the Boy Scouts of America. It was my first time away from home overnight (beyond the kiddie sleepovers, of course).

-- 1978, age 20: Completing my third year in the college of business at Pecker Tech. Had just moved into Morris Hall and pledged Delta Sigma Pi.

-- 1988, age 30: Two years newlywed as well as advertising director for the Plainview Daily Herald, had a nice party with all of the requisite black and death-themed motifs at one of the finest lounges in town, Reflections at the Conestoga Inn.

-- 1998, age 40: Had just returned from a week-long Alaskan cruise and was fired from my position as financial services manager for Gillman Mitsubishi in Houston (the old Bellaire location that's now a large green field). My old boss -- he was fired shortly thereafter -- was unaware it was my birthday, so I'm guessing he might've waited a day had he known. Anybody who's ever been canned after coming back from vacation knows that they're about to get it anyway.

-- 1998, age 40: Was set to begin at the spanking-new Lexus of Clear Lake as financial services manager, my last job in the car business and in fact my last job ever working for someone besides myself.

-- And here we are today. All I really want for my birthday, in case you were wondering what to get me, is better health and much better government. The United States Senate is poised, unfortunately, to deliver some bad news about the Fourth Amendment.

I'm not going to lie and tell you that the FISA bill (containing retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies for warrantless wiretapping on Americans) isn't going to pass today. I can't see the Senate Democrats mustering more than twenty votes to block it, to strip immunity, or to pass any amendments.

But that doesn't mean that you won't feel better about it if you call your senators between now and when the vote goes down. You can use this tool to clear your conscience.

As Glenn Greenwald notes:

What all of this is really about — the reason why political elites like Nancy Soderberg are so eager to defend it — is because they really do believe that lawbreaking isn’t wrong, that it doesn’t deserve punishment, when engaged in by them rather than by commoners. People who defend telecom immunity or who say that it’s not a big deal are, by logical necessity, adopting this view: “Our highest political officials and largest corporations shouldn’t face consequences when they break our laws as long as they claim it was for our own good.” That’s the destructive premise that lies at the heart of this deeply corrupt measure, the reason it matters so much. Just like the pardon of Nixon, the protection of Iran-contra criminals, and the commutation of Lewis Libby’s sentence, this bill is yet another step in cementing a two-tiered system of justice in America where our highest political officials and connected elite can break our laws with impunity. ...

Our Congress, with the political and media elite cheering, is about to violate every one of these principles. They are taking away from the judiciary the power to adjudicate allegations of lawbreaking. They are creating a two-tiered system of justice in which our most powerful corporations can break the law with impunity and government officials remain immune from consequences. And they are, in unity, spewing rank propaganda to the commoners — who continue to be subjected to the harsh punishment for violations of the law and one of the world’s most merciless justice systems — in order to convince them that granting license to our political and corporate elites to break the law is necessary for their own Good and for their Safety.

I'm going to give Barack Obama holy hell about it here, but it's a mistake to blame Obama mostly for it without placing equal blame on the other 99 senators (and the House, for that matter).

Take a moment to go on the record. You'll feel better.

Update: Greenwald, at Salon, reports that the vote will be not today but tomorrow ...

The votes in the Senate on various amendments to the FISA "compromise" bill and to the underlying bill itself were originally scheduled for today, but have been postponed until tomorrow (Wednesday, July 9) to enable Senators to attend the funeral of Jesse Helms.

That is without a doubt the best thing that nasty evil bastard ever did.

Monday, July 07, 2008

The Weekly Wrangle

Time for another edition of the Texas Progressive Alliance's Weekly Round-Up, composed each week of submissions by TPA member bloggers, and compiled by Vince from Capitol Annex.

According to PDiddie at Brains and Eggs, if Chris Bell -- in his current inclination toward making a run for the Texas Senate in District 17 -- were to stand next to Italy's Leaning Tower of Pisa, it would appear to be at a 90-degree angle compared to him.

It was a week for new contributors at WhosPlayin. Kit asks a million tough questions about America's interventionism and the illusion of national security, and txdemjen expresses the frustration a lot of us have with Obama's sudden right-ward bend.

CouldBeTrue from South Texas Chisme is appalled that special prosecutor Terry McDonald gives former sheriff Michale Ratcliff a sweet plea deal for the sexual assault of a minor supposedly under his protection.

Bay Area Houston says Governor Perry is calling for an investigation into the insurance industry.

Gary at Easter Lemming Liberal News now sees his Pasadena neighbor Joe Horn saying he is no hero. Will he be subject to the same attacks those who have been saying that all along have experienced? Gary has been on vacation, mostly, but remains ticked off over the stupid.

Lovelie99 at McBlogger takes some time out of her busy schedule to inform us about the plight of supermodels. Apparently, there is a shortage of H-1B work visas since far too many math nerds are being imported to, you know, make stuff and program computers and stuff. And make other stuff, such as cellphones, such as. Which means there are too few supermodels who are allowed to work in the US. Well, at least the kind who are emaciated, gaunt and angular. We at McBlogger wondered if possibly there are math nerds who could do double duty. Then we laughed and laughed and laughed.

The Texas Cloverleaf wonders which is the better place to live... Collin County or New Jersey?. Forbes has the answer.

WCNews at Eye On Williamson posts the latest toll scam we'll be paying for soon: Going "Cashless" Will Cost Us All.

Off the Kuff notes a recent CNN presidential poll and says it's not a dead heat if someone is leading.

Last week was a great one for evolutionary biology, but sucked if you happen to be a Conservapedia believer. Over at Texas Kaos Boadicea shares the tale of a Conservapedia Ignoramous Schooled by Evolutionary Biologist, and then discovered a sequel in which Lenski Meets the Naked Scientists.

refinish69 ponders the American Dream on the 4th of July at Doing My Part For The Left.

North Texas Liberal reports on Kim Brimer's cowardly move to keep worthy opponent Wendy Davis off the ballot in Fort Worth's SD-10.

Vince at Capitol Annex tells us about state Rep. Warren Chisum's announcement that he'll be trying again to pass legislation creating a two-year waiting period before couples can divorce.

Sunday, July 06, 2008

Montana turns blue

<p><strong>><a href='http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/interactives/campaign08/electoral-college/'>Electoral College Prediction Map</a></strong> - Predict the winner of the general election. Use the map to experiment with winning combinations of states. Save your prediction and send it to friends.</p>

Let's move Florida and Georgia and Missouri back into The Maveprick's column -- the Barr effect is yet to really show up there -- and let's hold off on Indiana for Obama for the time being.

But the Big Sky is turning blue. I give you The Votemaster (with the requisite cautionaries) ...

Happy Independence day, everyone! Flags as big as baseball fields are all the rage these days. And if you are more into auditory than visual celebrations, how about having someone read the Declaration of Independence out loud? It takes only 6 minutes.

Of course the 438,000 people who lost their jobs this year (including 62,000 announced yesterday) may not be so happy. People who own stocks may also not be so happy with the current bear market (the Dow is off 21% from its recent high). And people whose house was foreclosed may not be so happy, either. All this bad economic news is going to make the Republicans unhappy as the economy is overshadowing everything else as the key election issue and poll after poll shows that the voters prefer the Democrats on the economy. Barack Obama has a built-in advantage here because Democrats believe the government should do something. Republicans believe that leaving matters to the free market is a better approach than having government bureaucrats run the economy, even if it means short-term pain for some people. But it is a tough sell to tell an unemployed steel worker in Ohio that soon there will be a lot of jobs for multimedia specialists in California.

We have four polls today, two of them surprising. Rasmussen has Obama ahead in Montana by 5%. That seems very questionable. Let's wait for a few more before jumping to the conclusion that Montana is competitive in the presidential race (although both senators, Jon Tester and Max Baucus, are Democrats and so is Gov. Brian Schweitzer). The other surprising poll is in Georgia where McCain leads Obama by a mere 2%. Again, even with Bob Barr in the race (polling at 4%), this may not last. But if Obama can register vast numbers of blacks and young people, he could at least make Georgia competitive.

Independence Day Funnies







Saturday, July 05, 2008

Bell leans toward Senate run

Italy's Tower of Pisa stands straight up by comparison. Alan Bernstein, honing the snark:

Officially, Democrat and former Houston congressman Chris Bell is considering running for the seat in the state Senate vacated by Republican Kyle Janek. Bell, the Democratic candidate for governor in 2006, even acknowledges that he is leaning toward running in the District 17 race.

But, with Bell's permission, a current lawmaker and a former lawmaker already have scheduled a July 24 fund-raising event for Bell's candidacy and that of Joe Jaworski, who is running for state Senate in an adjacent district.

State Rep. Craig Eiland of Galveston and former state Sen. Lloyd Criss are helping together the Galveston Yacht Club event (.pdf).

As leanings go, this one's pretty sharp.

Bell said today that he approved the preparations in case he runs. And, he will make his decision public by four days before the fund-raising event. Guess what he'll say!

The district runs from southwest Houston to the Beaumont area to Key West and Cuba. Well, not that far, but the strangely shaped boundaries do go from Braes Bayou to the eastern edge of the state (.pdf).


News we've been eagerly anticipating for some time now. With Joe Jaworski and Wendy Davis and Chris Bell in the Texas Senate, we go a long way toward reversing the red tide in Texas.

Friday, July 04, 2008

Extremism in the defense of liberty


" ... is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."

-- Barry Goldwater, the nation's last respectable conservative (apparently)

(Thanks to Dallas Sidebar)

Thursday, July 03, 2008

Patriot primer

Read Christopher Hitchen's account of getting waterboarded. Watch the video of the "exercise". Spoiler alert: he didn't like it. Thinks it's torture.

Then there's the New York Times' account of how Gitmo interrogators inadvertently adopted Chinese-Korean War-era interrogation methods (once upon a time referred to as "torture" and "brainwashing") that are proven -- like waterboarding -- to produce false confessions. Oops.

Almost as informative: how large GOP donors can influence policy in Texas in a New York minute, or give to both John McCain and to Latin-American death squads. Now that's as All-American as Ollie North and Ronald Reagan.

The tug-of-war going on between my friends and associates in the progressive community revolves around a couple of whip counts worth pondering over the long holiday: how many of us think that things are so bad that the best course of action is to let them get much, much worse so that "things come to a head" and we don't delude ourselves into thinking that our country can get by with incremental changes ...

... and how many of us think things are so bad that the best thing to do is to work as hard as we can to get Barack Obama elected, and likewise elect Democrats in sweeping victories in both houses in Washington, in Austin, and in Harris County so that we can emphatically reject Republican rule and get started ASAP in a better direction.

Or some half-measure of the above (the centrists, in other words).

Personally, I'm still deciding.

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Why don't we celebrate the 4th on the 2nd?

Courtesy LiveScience:

John Adams predicted in a letter to his wife Abigail that Americans would celebrate their Independence Day on July 2. Off by two days -- not too bad for government work.

On July 2, 1776, Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, signed only by Charles Thompson (the secretary of Congress) and John Hancock (the presiding officer). Two days later Congress approved the revised version and ordered it to be printed and distributed to the states and military officers. The other signatures would have to wait.

Many actually viewed the Declaration of Independence as a yawner -- a rehashing of arguments already made against the British government. John Adams would later describe the Declaration as "dress and ornament rather than Body, Soul, or Substance." The exception was the last paragraph that said the united colonies "are and of Right ought to be Free and Independent states" and were "Absolved of all Allegiance to the British Crown."

For Adams, it was the momentum towards achieving American independence initiated on July 2 that future generations would consider worth celebrating, not the approval of this document on July 4.

Interestingly, the pomp and circumstance that many Americans presume took place on July 4, 1776, actually occurred days to weeks afterwards.

The Philadelphia Evening Post published the Declaration's full text in its July 6 newspaper. And the Declaration of Independence was publicly read from the State House in Philadelphia on July 8. Later that day, it was read in Easton, PA, Trenton, NJ, and to the local embryonic militia to provide much-needed inspiration against the formidable British.

The shouting and firing of muskets that followed these first public readings represent America's first celebrations of independence.

As copies spread, the Declaration of Independence would be read at town meetings and religious services. In response, Americans lit bonfires, fired guns, rang bells, and removed symbols of the British monarchy.

The following year, no member of Congress thought about commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence until July 3 -- one day too late. So the first organized elaborate celebration of independence occurred the following day: July 4, 1777, in Philadelphia. Ships in the harbor were decked in the nation's colors. Cannons rained 13-gun salutes in honor of each state. And parades and fireworks spiced up the festivities.

Fireworks did not become staples of July 4 celebrations until after 1816, when Americans began producing their own pyrotechnics and no longer relied on expensive fireworks from across the pond.

Since 1777, the tradition of celebrating America's independence on July 4 has continued.


More of these leading up to Independence Day ...

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Olbermann on Obama/FISA

I snipped a bunch so it's best to just go read the whole thing. Maybe more than once (I had to, in order to fully get it):

The Democratic leadership in the Senate, Republican knuckle-dragging in the same chamber, and the mediocre skills of whoever wrote the final version of the FISA bill, have combined to give Senator Barack Obama a second chance to make a first impression.

And he damned well better take it. ...


Frankly, Senator, this political tight-rope act you’ve tried on FISA the last two weeks, which from the outside seems to have been intended to increase the chances of your election, probably hasn’t helped that chance in the slightest.

There is, fortunately, a possible — a most unexpected — solution.

Your second second chance.

Since the final version of the FISA bill was passed down from on high, John Dean has been reading it, and re-reading it, and cross-referencing it with other relevant law, and thinking.

Something bothered him about it. Or, more correctly, something didn’t bother him about it.

Turns out lawyers at the ACLU have been doing the same thing for the last ten days. John compared notes with them, and will be devoting his column at “Find Law” this week, to this unlikely conclusion:

The Republicans who wrote most of this bill at Mr. Bush’s urging, managed to immunize the telecoms from civil suits.

But not from criminal prosecution. ...


Keep your eye on the wording of the legislation to make sure the Republicans don’t realize its flaws. Then vote for the amendment to strip telecom immunity out of the FISA bill.

Then after that fails, vote for the FISA bill, if that’s your final answer.

Then the minute the president has signed the FISA bill, you announce that you voted for it because it renews FISA and because it permits a bigger prize than just civil suits; that it allows for criminal prosecution of past illegal eavesdropping.

Say, loudly, that your understanding of this bill is such, that if you are elected, your Attorney General will begin a full-scale criminal investigation of the telecom companies who collaborated with President Bush in eavesdropping on Americans.

And mention — oh by the way — that your Attorney General will subpoena such records, notes, e-mail, data, and testimony, from any and all Bush Administration officials, FBI or CIA personnel, or any members of the Executive Branch, who may have as much as breathed in the general direction of these nefarious acts of domestic spying at Mr. Bush’s behest. ...

You’ve already taken the political hit from the Right, for saying you’d seek to strip out, or rescind immunity. You’ve already taken the political hit from the Left, for saying you’d vote for the FISA bill even with the immunity. You’ve paid the political price in advance.

Now buy yourself — and those who have most ardently supported you — something worth more than just class action suits against Verizon.

Explain that you are standing aside on civil immunity, not just for political expediency, but for a greater and more tangible good — the holding to account, of the most-corrupt, the most dangerous, and the most anti-democracy presidential administration in our long history.

Of course, if you disagree with this interpretation — if you think the FISA bill doesn’t have the giant loophole, or if you don’t think you, as president, would be ready to support criminal prosecution of… well, criminals — then your duty is clear.

Vote against the FISA bill, if it still carries that immunity.

The Republicans are going to call you the names any which way, Senator.

They’re going to cry regardless, Senator.

And as the old line goes: give them something to cry about.


Update: via Socratic Gadfly (who is similarly unimpressed), the legal POV from bmaz at emptytwheel is that we are still hosed:

Telcos hire the best, most persistent, and most capable lawyers available. Always. They will not be being represented by some sleepy, understaffed and overworked public defenders; they will have the best criminal defense talent in the world. It will not be necessary; a child could win these proposed Olbermann/Obama master plan prosecutions. So easy that even Alberto Gonzales could carry the day. Bottom line, this is one of the most ridiculous non-starters I have ever heard. If this is the "Master Plan", we are in a world of hurt.