MotherJones.com | MoJoBlog - Social Issues and Political Commentary: January 14, 2007

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January 20, 2007

Follow Up on Barack Obama's "Muslim Problem"

I posted yesterday about how the right is attacking Barack Obama's past -- dude allegedly was educated in a madrassa for a few years as a child in Indonesia -- and how it actually makes me like him more. I called Obama's campaign to see if I could get some information on the situation beyond what's in Obama's books:

Dreams of My Father:

In Indonesia, I’d spent 2 years at a Muslim school, 2 years at a Catholic school. In the Muslim school, the teacher wrote to tell mother I made faces during Koranic studies. In the Catholic school, when it came time to pray, I’d pretend to close my eyes, then peek around the room. Nothing happened. No angels descended.

The Audacity of Hope:

Without the money to go to the international school that most expatriate children attended, I went to local Indonesian schools and ran the streets with the children of farmers, servants, tailors, and clerks.

But I couldn't get a call back. As it turns out, Media Matters has a very thorough run-down of the whole situation, including a description of the ways Fox News has inflamed the story. Take a gander.

As Does Sam Brownback

Filling the social conservative void left by the candidacies (or theoretical candidacies, anyway) of "moderates"/"mavericks" John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Rudy Giuliani, Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas has announced today he will pursue the Republican nomination.

Brownback, the very, very pro-life and very, very anti-gay candidate in the field (think Rick Santorum, with less of a tendency to put his foot in his mouth), is so polarizing that his only real hope for the nomination is that McCain, Romney, and Giuliani split the moderate vote and no other bedrock conservative emerges. Not likely. In announcing his candidacy, Brownback said, "My family and I are taking the first steps on the yellow brick road to the White House.'' An odd choice of words for a guy running a fairy tale campaign...

Hillary Announces Candidacy

Senator Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy for president today, via a statement and video.

Mother Jones will have plenty on this in the coming days and weeks, put for now, take a look at our latest cover story, "Harpy, Hero, Heretic: Hillary. Why she stokes our deepest fears and darkest hatreds."

January 19, 2007

Lawsuit Against Corcpork, Inc.'s Animal Cruelty Revived

Corcpork, Inc., a California company, confines breeding pigs in 2-foot cages for most of their lives. They cannot turn around, lie down, or stand on anything but slatted boards. They are constantly inseminated, and their lives are total torture and misery. Corcpork, not surprisingly, is in blatant violation of California's animal cruelty laws. However, a suit filed against Corcpork in 2004 by Farm Sanctuary was dismissed in 2005 because of California's Proposition 64, which substantially limits third-party lawsuits.

Despite the unfair restrictions of Proposition 64, there was nothing stopping the Attorney General of California (other than the obvious special interests) from going after Corcpork on his own. He did not, however, so Farm Sanctuary is arguing in court that unless it or a similar organization is allowed to speak on behalf of the animals, they have no protection from abuses of California law.

It has taken a long time, but Americans are slowing beginning to rebel against the extreme cruelty of factory farming, which is also an environmental threat. Both Florida and Arizona have gone after factory farms, and it is only a matter of time before other states do, and then, one hopes, Congress will act.

Gonzales Argues Against Certainty of the Right Of Habeas Corpus

Very strict constructionism, in the form of creating backwards syllogisms and thereby violating the spirit of the Constitution, has been a hallmark of the Bush administration conservatives. The latest is this gem from U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales: "There is no expressed grant of habeas in the Constitution; there’s a prohibition against taking it away."

Gonzales uttered these words yesterday during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Committee chairman Arlen Specter then asked the Attorney General: "The Constitution says you can’t take it away except in case of rebellion or invasion. Doesn’t that mean you have the right of habeas corpus unless there’s a rebellion or invasion?”

Gonzales: “The Constitution doesn’t say every individual in the United States or citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn’t say that. It simply says the right shall not be suspended” (except in cases of rebellion or invasion).

Robert Parry, writing for Consortiumnews.com, asks a logical question: If Americans do not possess the right of habeas corpus because that right is presented via its negative, then what about other rights that are presented the same way? He uses the First Amendment as an example.

Perry also goes on to cite the Sixth Amendment, which presents habeas corpus as a right in a positive syntax, thereby nullifying Gonzales's strange logic.

(Thanks to Project for the OLD American Century for this lead, and POAC, by the way, could use some help.)

A Showdown at the GSA

Back in December, the Washington Post reported that GSA Chief Lurita Alexis Doan had compared her agency's Investigator General, Brian Miller, to a "terrorist." His audting work had "gone too far," she'd said in August at a staff meeting, and was "eroding the health of the organization."

Today we learn that "going too far" might have meant investigating Doan.

Citing internal documents, WaPo reveals Doan attempted to give a no-bid contract that summer to a company founded and operated by a friend, which would have violated federal law. A former government contractor appointed by Bush, Doan "personally signed the deal to pay a division of her friend's public relations firm $20,000 for a 24-page report promoting the GSA's use of minority- and woman-owned businesses, the documents show."

Not surprisingly, continues the Post:

The GSA's Office of Inspector General has launched an investigation into the episode and briefed Justice Department lawyers, according to sources who said they were not authorized to speak publicly about the ongoing investigation. Officials at the inspector general's office and the Justice Department declined to comment.

If Miller is a terrorist, then I wonder what Doan would call the FBI.

Carbon Offsets... Buyer Beware

Carbon offsets are in. Everybody’s doing it. And Wall Street knows it, which is why here and abroad companies from London's Marks & Spencer to Dell Computers are clamoring to make you, too, "carbon neutral." A crowded field of for-profit offset providers have sprung up, promising to do everything from reforesting the California redwoods to building solar powered greenhouses in India.

But if Expedia can make that flight from LaGuardia to Heathrow guilt free for only ten extra bucks, how is one to know whether the offsets one has bought are really making that cross-Atlantic trip carbon even-steven? At the moment, it’s pretty much a crapshoot (with carbon offset prices ranging from $3.56 to $30 a metric ton). But the UK hopes to change that before the Greenland ice sheet melts into their precious gulfstream. The country’s Ministry of Environment announced yesterday that it would set standards for rating the new club of carbon merchants. That way would-be-offsetters can distinguish between quality outfits and those just full of hot air.

The standards will be based on the same "system used to certify credits from the established Kyoto market." Ideally, this will mean the credits have a "clear audit trail" and be linked to real emission reductions, but don't go back to building your carbon-neutral beachfront villas just yet.

Even long-established projects, endorsed by the World Bank and certified for cap-and-trade under Kyoto's rules, don't always deliver their promised bang for the buck. Last week, The Wall Street Journal ran a great piece on the chemical industry in China. A particularly dire snippet:

"Regulators worry that the carbon market is encouraging companies in the developing world to make more of the underlying refrigerant than they otherwise would—so they can produce more of the global warming gas, destroy it, and sell the credits."

Kudos to the UK for holding the carbon traders to a higher standard, as the EU has in regulating the toxics industry. Still, for now, and for us unregulated Americans, riding a bike may be your best bet.

-- Koshlan Mayer-Blackwell

Attack of the Methodists

The habitually timid clergy of the United Methodist Church is on a rampage. Well, at least as far as Methodists go. Horrified by the prospect of Bush’s presidential library marrying itself to Dallas’ Southern Methodist University, ten Methodist Bishops have signed a petition opposing the move. Rev. Andrew Weaver of Brooklyn, an SMU theology school grad, told the Houston Chronicle:

What this (petition) will show is there are a lot of Methodists out there who don't wish to give him the gift of our good name because he doesn't deserve it. . .Bush has not been willing to speak with Methodist bishops about the war, but he will meet with Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. Why now is he choosing a Methodist school for his library and think tank?

Spindletop in Baghdad

If all goes as expected, Iraq will soon put in place a plan for a revamped oil industry that offers big international oil companies a free ride.

Iraq has bigger oil reserves than any country on earth – the reserves of just one Iraqi field oil equal those of ExxonMobil. As an added bonus, in Iraq exploration isn’t really necessary. Everyone knows where the oil is, all you’ve got to do is start drilling. Then, on top of these virgin fields, there are numerous unmapped areas in the western desert which promise to yield billions more barrels.

Under Iraq’s nationalized system, Saddam gave numerous contracts to companies from a variety of countries from Brazil to Vietnam, France to Russia. But these deals aren’t likely to hold up. Rather, people who have been carefully studying evolving law, expect the existing deals will be subsumed as minor appendages of the agreements with Big Oil.

The probable Big Oil winners are:
*Exxon-Mobil and Chevron of the US
*BP and Shell of the UK
*BHP Billiton of Australia.

The final arrangement ensures continuance of a single but weak state company — so nobody can say we are "privatizing" Iraq’s oil industry. But under the new law the state enterprise can cut contracts with private companies. This will be done through production sharing agreements (PSAs), where the nominal control of the oil will remain with the state, but for all practical purposes, it will be under control of the private firms. James Paul, executive director of the Global Policy Forum, a New York-based non-profit public interest group that tracks the Iraq play, told Mother Jones, "These reserves are estimated to cost $1 per barrel to produce and the sale of the crude will yield $50-plus on the world market."

"The law allows for concessions to global oil companies as a way to achieve the highest benefit for Iraqis, taking into consideration fair competition between these companies regardless of their nationalities," Oil Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad told the Financial Times, adding, "This law stresses that all oil revenues will go to a central fund and then will be distributed to all Iraqis in all regions and provinces according their populations."

The details of the law are not known. The law will go first to the cabinet, then to parliament for final approval. Jihad said the government hopes to get the law passed and loose ends tied up within one month.

Hard line conservatives in the U.S. originally wanted to privatize the industry, but, Paul notes, the oil companies didn’t like the idea of getting tarred as old fashioned colonists. So they opted for the PSAs.

Iraqi oil profits can be parceled out to the different warring groups according to a formula now being worked out. It’s not feasible to just break up the business, handing bits and pieces to the Kurds, Sunnis and Shia, because Bush is talking about strengthening the central state with a workable army, police force, revamped commerce, etc. Since oil provides virtually the only revenues coming in, oil money is going to have to underwrite the economic future of the country.

The new oil law, which will shape the country's future, says Paul, "is grossly undemocratic." But there's no fear oil will get re-nationalized. The International Monetary Fund has negotiated a financial arrangement with post-war Iraq with its usual conditions: Everything has got to be privatized and the free market must rule.

The More the Right Smears Barack Obama, the More I Like Him

Two days ago, right-wing magazine Insight ran a story alleging that Barack Obama is hiding inflammatory details about the four years he spent in Indonesia as a youth -- specifically that he was educated at a madrassa, and may have been raised as a Muslim. Now, Fox News is up and running with the story.

There are two issues here that Obama's enemies are trying to work in their favor. The first is the surprising revelation that Obama is even more "different" than Americans already thought. He's already the son of a Kenyan immigrant and a white woman. He's already someone who spent parts of his youth abroad and in Hawaii. He's already a smoker and former cocaine user.

But here's the thing: The more I learn about Obama's background, with all its cultural diversity and time abroad, the more I believe it is a strong mark in his favor. Look what happened when we elected the almost comically provincial George W. Bush. Before 2000, he had hardly left the country, he knew none of the world's leaders, and he had no background in foreign policy. Is it any surprise that when he took this country to war he had neither an understanding of the region he invaded nor the sensitivity and charm needed to garner international support? Any immigrant, child of an immigrant, or frequent world traveler can tell you: there is invaluable experience to be gained from living amongst the people of the rest of the world, be it in Peru, Tanzania, France, Russia, Indonesia, or anywhere else. Appreciation of America's riches is only one such.

The second issue is that Obama's past can be tagged with "Muslim," which, in this instance, is being used almost like a slur. The story from Insight -- which, by the way, claims that a source within Hillary's opposition research operation gave them the dirt on Obama -- pretends the real issue is that Obama is hiding his past from the American public. But in reality, the story is simply that "Muslim" is a dirty word that engenders suspicion in America, and now its supposedly horrible stain is on the senator from Illinois. Merited or not, he's going to have a hell of a time wiping it off. Of course, this should all be thoroughly ridiculous, but look at what happened to poor Keith Ellison, the nation's first Muslim congressman, who, instead of being celebrated, was greeted by a newscaster who asked him to prove he was "not working with our enemies" and a fellow lawmaker who suggested tighter immigration standards to keep more Muslims out of Congress.

I've put a call out to Obama's folks to get a comment. Stayed tuned.

Bob Ney Sentenced to 30 Months

The AP reports that Bob Ney, the former Ohio congressman who pled guilty on corruption charges stemming from the Abramoff scandal, will spend the next two-and-a-half years at a federal prison in Morgantown, West Virginia. Apparently, the sentence was even harsher than prosecutors had originally recommended. Explaining her reasoning to Ney, Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle said, “Both your constituents and the public trusted you to represent them honestly.”

January 18, 2007

You Go Katie Couric (Er, Um)

Never thought I'd say it, but I feel a deep bond of solidarity with Katie Couric right now. Or at least a little twinge of sisterhood or something. Here's Katie blogging a couple of days ago about being invited to what she cringe-inducingly (sorry, can't help it, sisterhood be damned) calls "the little-known Big Meeting" before the Big Speech -- the president's, that is, speech about Iraq, that is. The Big Meeting was a White House background briefing with TV anchors and talk show hosts. Katie's post gets off to a slow start:

And even though I’ve been in this business for more years than I’d like to admit, and interviewed countless Presidents and world leaders, it’s still thrilling—and even a little awe-inspiring—to get “briefed” at the White House, no matter who is sitting in the Oval Office.

But then we start going somewhere:

And yet, the meeting was a little disconcerting as well. As I was looking at my colleagues around the room—Charlie Gibson, George Stephanopoulos, Brian Williams, Tim Russert, Bob Schieffer, Wolf Blitzer, and Brit Hume—I couldn’t help but notice, despite how far we’ve come, that I was still the only woman there. Well, there was some female support staff near the door. But of the people at the table, the “principals” in the meeting, I was the only one wearing a skirt. Everyone was gracious, though the jocular atmosphere was palpable.

The feminist movement that began in the 1970’s helped women make tremendous strides—but there still haven’t been enough great leaps for womankind. Fifty-one percent of America is female, but women make up only about sixteen percent of Congress—which, as the Washington Monthly recently pointed out, is better than it’s ever been...but still not as good as parliaments in Rwanda (forty-nine percent women) or Sweden (forty-seven percent women). Only nine Fortune 500 companies have women as CEO’s.

That meeting was a reality check for me—and not just about Iraq. It was a reminder that all of us still have an obligation to ask: Don’t more women deserve a place at the table too?

Me, I'd love to hear more on the revelation-about-Iraq part, but maybe that's for another day. Meanwhile, Katie, if you ever need a few more good stats on this front, we can help.

Ted Nugent's Racist Spectacle at Texas Governor's Inaugural Ball

Is Texas Governor Rick Perry crazy, or is he just a big fan of Cat Scratch Fever? The final act at Perry’s inaugural ball in Austin Tuesday night featured redneck rocker Ted Nugent, who, according to the San Antonio Express News, “appeared onstage wearing a cut-off T-shirt emblazoned with a Confederate flag and shouting unflattering remarks about undocumented immigrants, including kicking them out of the country, according to people who were in attendance. Machine guns, including an AK-47, were his props.”

The funny thing for those who know Nugent is that he was actually being pretty tame. Two years ago, when I saw him speak at a National Rifle Association conference in Houston, he had this to say:

Remember the Alamo! Shoot 'em! To show you how radical I am, I want carjackers dead. I want rapists dead. I want burglars dead. I want child molestors dead. I want the bad guys dead. No court case. No parole. No early release. I want 'em dead. Get a gun, and when they attack you, shoot 'em.

That one was widely reported. But the AP didn’t relate several other Nugent gems from that day. Among them was something he said while recounting a USO tour of Iraq: “I was just hoping somebody would take me hostage,” he said. “Just aim for the laundry.” (Which was even more odd when you consider that Iraqis generally don't wear turbans). Much of this was said while Nugent was holding an assault rifle. He wound up the tirade by concluding that Democrats, guilty of tax-raising and gun muzzling, should be “eliminated.”

There has been a lot of talk in Texas that Gov. Perry could be tapped to run for Vice President. Maybe McCain should just nominate Nugent instead. The bigot vote would be in the bag.

Closest Place With No Clear Channel Ads: Bergen, Norway

A small city in Norway shows us that activism can be effective and that advertising doesn't have to consume our (uh... their) lives. Activists in Bergen, a small university town on the Western coast, took on Clear Channel -- not wanting their beautiful town to be overrun with advertisements -- and succeeded. (Well almost -- more later.) I know! As an American, I can't imagine a life without constant ads that are plastered everywhere -- on every highway billboard and on public transit. And then there is product placement in movies and TV shows, and of course, there's cable and local television's 40:20 rate of show-viewing to ads. It's nauseating, really. Mother Jones reported on this very topic in our current issue. "Ad Nauseum" is chock full of statistics, including that children alone are exposed to 40,000 ads per year.

But in Bergen, Norway, citizens weren't going to let their children, or the adults, face this ominous future. Faced with budget constraints, the City Council began negotiations with Clear Channel and one other company in 2004. The winning company would fund the building of the city's bus shelters and in return, the company would gain ad space in the city (on the bus shelters as well as on some lighted billboards elsewhere). It looked like Clear Channel had sealed the deal, when out of the blue, activists in the community showed up on the scene with its "Keep Clear Channel Out of Bergen" campaign. They started a mailing list and instead of demonizing the corporation they rallied around keeping their aesthetically pleasing city, with its deep roots, just the way it is. In the end, the Bergen City Council nixed the deal. Clear Channel of course sued them for breach of conduct and the outcome is pending, but regardless, it is a pretty cool victory.

So, is it that Norwegians are just way more progressive and efficient than we are? Or is it just easier for small towns and universities to take on a clear and concise enemy? Why can’t big cities do this type of work or the entire nation for that matter? Are the problems just too large? Or are they just too far away for people to feel the impact enough to activate?

Maybe His Bus Will be Called the 'Flip-Flop Express'

With news that John McCain has reversed course on a key component of his 2005 lobbying reform bill, the Carpetbagger Report has updated its list of McCain flip-flops.

A quick sample:

McCain went from saying he would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade to saying the exact opposite.

McCain went from saying gay marriage should be allowed, to saying gay marriage shouldn’t be allowed.

McCain used to oppose Bush’s tax cuts for the very wealthy, but he reversed course in February.

McCain was anti-ethanol. Now he’s pro-ethanol.

McCain decided in 2000 that he didn’t want anything to do with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, believing he "would taint the image of the 'Straight Talk Express.'" Kissinger is now the Honorary Co-Chair for his presidential campaign in New York.

It's a long list. Read it in full.

Hagel Gets a Boost as McCain Totters

Yesterday’s Senate circus on the war had one useful purpose. It became a presidential beauty pageant for candidates to strut their stuff on TV. As always, Hillary got headlines, but the most impressive presidential hopeful on the scene was Nebraska’s Chuck Hagel. With John McCain looking sick and tired (he had melanoma removed from the left side of his face in 2000) and wobbling all over the place on the issues, Hagel is emerging as the most attractive Republican presidential possibility, and, as the conservatives like to say, the most "principled." Hagel is important in all of this because he was among the very first, if not the first, member of Congress to get behind George Bush’s presidential push before the 2000 election. Things have changed. Last week Hagel said Bush’s new plan is "the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam." Hagel is a decorated Vietnam vet. He’s now calling the war a "bloodbath."

The proposed Senate resolutions on the war are not binding in any way. "There is very little chance in the short run that we are going to pass any legislation," Hillary told reporters yesterday as she announced her own initiative. How so, she was asked. "I can count," she replied. Or to put it another way, Congressman John McHugh, a New York Republican who traveled with Clinton to Iraq said, "Congress right now has no effective role in this process."

The politics over the war is likely to be fought out—not on the Senate floor—but in John Murtha’s appropriations subcommittee which oversees defense funding. Money bills must come from the House, not the Senate. Murtha, you will remember, was given up for dead when he was beaten by Steny Hoyer to be House majority leader, and sent back to his old job. Recently, Murtha has talked about cutting off war money. He’s the one person who actually has the power to make life plenty tough for Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the White House.

It may appear that the Congress is fast congealing around some sort of opposition to Bush with Republicans like Olympia Snowe jumping on board. Not quite. The administration forces are hoping to spring a trap. If anyone sets an actual withdrawal date, they’ll be up and screaming the Dems are cut and run, leaving our troops in the lurch. For now, they wait to see whether Reid and/or Pelosi spring for the bait.

Update: For Jonathan Alter on Chuck Hagel's presidential chances, see here.

The Mysterious Case of the Federal Prosecutor Firings

Josh Marshall weighs in today with an interesting column in The Hill about the rash of federal prosecutors who have apparently been forced out by the Bush administration in recent weeks. Among the latest to go is San Diego US Attorney Carol Lam, whose office prosecuted the Randy "Duke" Cunningham bribery case and who announced her resignation on Tuesday. "The current work of the other fired USAs has less direct political implications," Marshall writes. "But several seem to have had ongoing investigations of allegedly corrupt Republicans."

While the motivation behind the firings remains a mystery, a look at the people who are being appointed to fill the vacancies is instructive.

Consider the estimable J. Timothy Griffin, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas since Dec. 20 of last year.

If you hadn’t heard about Griffin’s appointment, don’t feel bad; the guy he replaced hadn’t either. Griffin’s appointment was announced Dec. 15, before the then-U.S. attorney Bud Cummins had even been given a chance to resign. Cummins got the call on his cell phone telling him he was out the same day the announcement was made. He was out hiking with his son at the time....

A quick perusal of Griffin’s resume shows that his more-or-less exclusive vocation has been doing opposition research on Democrats on behalf of the Republican Party. Until recently, he was head of oppo research at the White House, working directly for Karl Rove. In 1999 and 2000, he was deputy research director for the Republican National Committee. In 2002 he returned as research director for the national GOP and stayed on for the next three years.

Before getting involved formally in oppo research he worked in what you might call de facto oppo research positions. In 1995 and 1996 he was associate independent counsel in the Henry Cisneros investigation. And after that he headed up to the Hill to work for Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) investigating political contributions from Asian-Americans to Bill Clinton.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, according to Time, back in 2000, when he was in charge of digging up dirt on Al Gore, he apparently had a poster hanging on the wall behind his desk which read: “On my command — unleash hell on Al.”

January 17, 2007

Cutbacks to Earth Satellites Blind Us to Global Warming, Hurricanes

The Doomsday Clock just lurched two minutes closer to midnight. Yet the Bush administration thinks sending a couple of dudes back to the Moon or a handful of exiles on to Mars is more important than seeing what’s going down here on Earth. The National Academy of Sciences reports that half the scientific instruments on our environmental satellites are expected to stop working by 2010. That will amount to a huge loss of data. But if the bad news isn’t streaming in, we don’t have to worry about tracking global warming or the arrival of pesky natural disasters. Right? The Washington Post reports:

The two-year study by the National Academy of Sciences, released yesterday, determined that NASA's earth science budget has declined 30 percent since 2000. It stands to fall further as funding shifts to plans for a manned mission to the moon and Mars. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, meanwhile, has experienced enormous cost overruns and schedule delays with its premier weather and climate mission.

"If things aren't reversed, we will have passed the high-water mark for our Earth observations," said co-chairman Richard Anthes of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. "This country should not be headed in this direction. . . . We need to know more, not less, about long-term aspects of climate change, about trends in droughts and hurricanes, about what's happening in terms of fish stocks and deforestation."

Could it be those oil boys in DC have dibs on the first tickets off our failing planet? If so, do we have to wait for space colonies? Can’t we send them offworld now? Then we could crank the clock back a minute or two.

Global Warming Forces Doomsday Clock Closer to Midnight

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock two minutes closer to midnight today. It now reads 5 minutes to midnight—for the first time reflecting global failures to solve the global climate crisis as well as problems posed by nuclear weapons. The Bulletin Online reports:

“The dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons. The effects may be less dramatic in the short term than the destruction that could be wrought by nuclear explosions, but over the next three to four decades climate change could cause irremediable harm to the habitats upon which human societies depend for survival."

Stephen Hawking, a BAS sponsor, professor of mathematics at the University of Cambridge, and a fellow of The Royal Society, said: "As scientists, we understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and their devastating effects, and we are learning how human activities and technologies are affecting climate systems in ways that may forever change life on Earth. As citizens of the world, we have a duty to alert the public to the unnecessary risks that we live with every day, and to the perils we foresee if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change."

Plame Case: Fitzgerald is Getting Nifonged

What do Patrick Fitzgerald and Mike Nifong share in common? Not much, beyond the fact that both are prosecutors who have pursued politically fraught cases. But don't tell that to Investor's Business Daily, which published an editorial today calling for “all the rogue prosecutors” to be reigned in. The paper’s prime examples of prosecutorial zealotry are Nifong, who recused himself last week from the Duke sexual assault case, and Fitzgerald, whose perjury and obstruction of justice case against Lewis "Scooter" Libby began in D.C. district court on Tuesday. “Like the Duke lacrosse players, Scooter Libby faces jail for alleged involvement in a crime that was never committed, pursued by a vindictive prosecutor,” the editorial reasons. “And also like the Duke case, it’s a national disgrace.”

In lumping Fitzgerald with Nifong, whose case against the Duke lacrosse players appears at best deeply flawed and potentially politically motivated, Investor's Business Daily is only the latest to deploy this disingenuous bait and switch. Making a similar argument in an op-ed last summer, columnist Jack Kelly cast the Plame and Duke cases as part of the same cautionary tale. “This should remind us the greater threat to our civil liberties comes not from the measures the Bush administration has taken to protect us from terrorists, but from prosecutors who abuse their power for political purposes.” More recently the columnist posed this question to his readers: “Is to ‘fitzgerald’ a synonym for to ‘nifong?’”

Perhaps it is, if you base your facts on the Plame leak case on the same, well worn set of conservative talking points used over and over to portray Libby as a victim of liberal activism. As the argument goes, since the charges against Libby derive from Fitzgerald’s investigation of a question he was ultimately unable to settle – whether the disclosure of Valerie Plame’s identity as a covert CIA operative constituted a breach of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act – they should never have been filed in the first place. As Investor's Business Daily put it, “Like District Attorney Michael Nifong in the Duke case, Fitzgerald knew early that he had no real crime and no real criminal. But he had to come up with something. So he charged with lying someone who in his job got hundreds of phone calls every day and talked to dozens of reporters because his memory of earlier conversations differed with those reporters' notes.” (It’s worth noting that Libby’s defense attorneys are likely to make a similar argument.) For those who adhere to this view, the revelation last fall that former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, known as a critic of the Iraq war, was Robert Novak’s initial source for his column outing Plame, was icing on the cake, providing further evidence that the leak of her covert status was not the act of political retribution administration critics claimed it to be. Case closed.

Of course, if government officials were to believe there are no penalties for lying to a grand jury or impeding a federal investigation, they would have little impetus to do anything but obfuscate. (In terms of Libby, the courts certainly seem to regard his alleged crimes as serious enough. If convicted on all five counts, he could be fined up to $1.25 million and sentenced to 30 years in prison.) As for Armitage, while he reportedly revealed Plame’s identity inadvertently, that doesn’t preclude the possibility that a separate, malicious effort was underway within the Office of the Vice President to discredit Plame’s husband, Joseph Wilson, for debunking the administration’s claims about Iraq’s efforts to obtain yellowcake uranium. The Libby trial, however, will not center on the motivations behind the leak, but on whether Libby lied about his role in it.

As far as the Fitzgerald-Nifong comparisons go, that's just the latest salvo in a partisan mud-slinging campaign that has been part of the Plame case since the beginning. But none of that matters at this point. The only question now is whether Fitzgerald has a case against Libby -- and that's in the hands of a jury to decide.

Details on War in the Gulf

Bush hopes his new strategy will jump start his losing war. But as time goes by, we sink further into the quagmire. The President’s speech didn’t do the trick. Opposition to the war builds. Members of both parties in Congress are openly opposed to the war. John Murtha, who sits as chair of the House appropriations subcommittee on defense spending that provides crucial financing for the war, openly threatens to defund the war. Great Britain, our principal ally, is pulling out. The new cumbersome counterinsurgency command looks like an invitation to kill American troops.

On top of all this Bush can’t leave Iran alone, constantly provoking Tehran from just across the border. The latest evidence of this comes from an interview with a former commander of Russia’s Black Sea fleet. Admiral Eduard Baltin told the Interfax news agency, "The presence of U.S. nuclear submarines in the Persian Gulf region means that the Pentagon has not abandoned plans for surprise strikes against nuclear targets in Iran. With this aim a group of multi-purpose submarines ready to accomplish the task is located in the area.’"

He spoke following reports of a collision between an American sub and a Japanese tanker in the Straits of Hormuz. "Submarine commanders go up to the periscope depth and forget about navigation rules and safety measures," the admiral said.

According to Global Security, an independent Washington-based research group that follows military issues, the Iranian navy, battered after the war with Iraq, has been struggling to reorganize and acquire a variety of ships and aircraft. Bejing has supplied patrol boats and silkworm missiles.

"In July 2002 a conventional-arms sale triggered sanctions on several Chinese companies," reports Global Security. Beijing had transfered high-speed catamaran missile patrol boats to Iran. The C-14 patrol boats are outfitted with anti-ship cruise missiles. Short-range anti-ship missiles for the patrol boats also were sold from China to Iran in January 2002. The catamaran and anti-ship missile sales were first disclosed by The Washington Times in May 2002, shortly after the first of the new C-14 patrol boats was observed by U.S. military intelligence at an Iranian port. The high-speed gunboat can carry up to eight C-701 anti-ship cruise missiles, and usually has one gun. There have also been reports of Iran possesing another type of anti-ship system. Up to 16 Sunburst anti-ship missile systems were traded in the early 1990's from the Ukraine.

The Iranians are by no means a push over, and a guerrilla naval war in the Gulf could have unforeseen results.

The smaller boats might do damage to American ships but not enough to have much effect, according to Navy experts. The Iranian subs, for instance, are all Russian imports, and their ins-and-outs are well known to the U.S. Navy. We have two carrier battlegroups in the Gulf area. Each one consists of a carrier, two to three frigates, a cruiser, supply ship and two to three subs.

Nonetheless guerrilla war at sea could become an inferno. One explosive laden skiff rammed into a loaded LNG tanker could cause an inferno of untold proportions. And even low-level small boat attacks on outgoing Gulf shipping could impair western oil supplies, our own included.

Bush Readies Climate Change Announcement

There will likely be more solid news on this as we get closer to the State of the Union, but there are rumblings afoot that President Bush is prepared to soften his line on global warming in his Jan. 23 SOTU. A Reuters article today says the main emphasis will be on ethanol.

One source briefed by White House officials said Bush's speech on January 23 could call for over 60 billion gallons a year of ethanol to be mixed into U.S. gasoline supplies by 2030.

That would be a massive increase from the 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol use by 2012 required by current U.S. law.

Environmentalists have been skeptical of ethanol for quite some time -- in 1995, Mother Jones wrote an article titled "The Real Cost of Ethanol" that pointed out that support for ethanol has less to do with saving the environment and a lot more to do with political donations from and subsidies to the powerful corn lobby. More recently, Slate did a great job of explaining why ethanol is not environmentally-friendly or energy efficient.

David Pimentel, a professor of ecology at Cornell University who has been studying grain alcohol for 20 years, and Tad Patzek, an engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley, co-wrote a recent report that estimates that making ethanol from corn requires 29 percent more fossil energy than the ethanol fuel itself actually contains.

The two scientists calculated all the fuel inputs for ethanol production—from the diesel fuel for the tractor planting the corn, to the fertilizer put in the field, to the energy needed at the processing plant—and found that ethanol is a net energy-loser.

In addition to their findings on corn, they determined that making ethanol from switch grass requires 50 percent more fossil energy than the ethanol yields, wood biomass 57 percent more, and sunflowers 118 percent more. The best yield comes from soybeans, but they, too, are a net loser, requiring 27 percent more fossil energy than the biodiesel fuel produced. In other words, more ethanol production will increase America's total energy consumption, not decrease it.

That may all be besides the point. The appeal of ethanol in many people's minds, I suspect, is not that America gets more green, but that when presented in simplest terms, it looks like an ethanol surge morphs our dependence on foreign oil into a dependence on domestic corn. And Americans like the sound of that, especially in the midwest.

Earlier this week, the UK's Observer reported that Blair and other senior British officials left pre-Christmas talks with Bush with the impression that Bush was ready to make a major move on climate change.

Bush and Blair held private talks on climate change before Christmas, and there is a feeling that the US President will now agree a cap on emissions in the US, meaning that, for the first time, American industry and consumers would be expected to start conserving energy and curbing pollution.

'We could now be seeing the beginning of a consensus on a post-Kyoto framework,' said a source close to the prime minister. 'President Bush is beginning to talk about more radical measures.' ... A change of heart on the environment was signalled earlier this month when the US administration unexpectedly announced that polar bears were now an endangered species because their habitat in the US state of Alaska had suffered from melting ice sheets caused by global warming. The government is now required to act on threats to the bears' survival.

Polar bears, for the record, are probably goners, the first highly-visible casualties of global warming. Read more here.

More speculation on Bush's big environmental move came Monday from Washington Post columnist Sebastian Mallaby:

On Saturday I put the case for a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system to James Connaughton, the head of the Council on Environmental Quality at the White House. Far from denouncing these policies as eco-socialist nonsense, Connaughton sounded open to them. "In concept I can agree with you," he said. Something must be done to stem demand for climate-warming energy, and although there are several ways of getting there, a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system would be the most "elegant."

Whoa! This may be spin, but it's certainly new spin. Only a few months ago, Al Hubbard, director of Bush's National Economic Council, brushed aside the idea of a carbon tax: "The American people are not interested in paying more for gasoline," he told me.

Next week we'll see whether Connaughton's reasonable-sounding views are reflected in Bush's State of the Union speech. The key thing to watch is whether Bush talks only about energy security or whether he emphasizes climate. Energy security is mostly a dumb objective, but climate policy is crucial.

It's true that the United States imports 60 percent of its petroleum, about double the share of two decades ago. But cutting U.S. oil imports won't insulate the nation from instability in petro-states. There is a global price for oil, and Americans will feel the hit from a terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia or a rebellion in Nigeria whether they fill their trucks with gas that's foreign or domestic.

And for good measure, Mallaby throws in a little tidbit on ethanol:

A mistaken focus on energy security can undermine good policy on climate. If you just want to cut imports, switching cars to corn-based ethanol sounds great: The United States will get its fuel from the Midwest rather than the Middle East, a politically irresistible promise. But corn-based ethanol is only marginally better than gasoline in terms of greenhouse emissions. Federal subsidies for this technology would be better spent elsewhere -- for example on next-generation cellulosic ethanol.

For now, the White House is denying that climate change is on the table, but something is in the air in Washington, and it's more than your standard fossil fuel pollution. Stay tuned.

McCain Doesn't Want To Burden the Wealthy With Cost Of War

Bush's new Iraq jobs program is going to cost a billion dollars. As Marty Kaplan points out in The Huffington Post, Congress could "repeal one zillionth of one percent of the cut in capital gains tax that Bush gave the wealthiest Americans. That would raise a billion in a heartbeat."

This idea, though more than sensible, does not appeal to Sen. John McCain, who told Al Hunt: "I'm not sure what the point would be. I would certainly ask Americans to serve. I would ask them to make other sacrifices, but I’m not sure I would want to raise their taxes just because we’re in a war."

E.J. Dionne Jr. points out that, since 2001, we have offered two dollars in tax cuts for every dollar we have spent on war.

Wesley Clark: “N.Y. Money People” Pushing War with Iran

While it is well known that Israeli politicians, in and out of government, are pushing for a hard line on Iran, the role of American Jewish groups on this issue is less clear.

The Jewish Daily Forward reported last Friday that “American Jewish groups have also stepped up their advocacy efforts regarding Iran, though they generally press for aggressive diplomatic steps without pushing for military action. These groups have lavishly praised the Bush administration in recent days, after the U.S. Treasury Department banned an Iranian bank from doing business with American entities.”

The bank in question is the state-owned Bank Sepah, described by a Treasury official in remarks to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency as “the financial linchpin of Iran’s missile-procurement network.”

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Vice Premier Shimon Peres have raised the possibility of an Israeli military retaliation against Iran should it attack Israel. And they have gone further, pointing out that Israel is equipped with a nuclear arsenal.

Former Democratic presidential candidate General Wesley Clark — who is likely to run again in 2008 — threw himself into a political storm when he told Arianna Huffington, “New York money people” are pushing the U.S. into war with Iran, noting, “you just have to read what’s in the Israeli press. The Jewish community is divided, but there is so much pressure being channeled from the New York money people to the office seekers.”

“The phrase ‘New York money people’ struck unpleasant chords with many pro-Israel activists,” the Forward reports. “They interpreted it as referring to the Jewish community, which is known for its significant financial donations to political candidates.”

Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, told the Forward, “He is a friend of Israel and is not an antisemite,” adding, “but some of the things he said are very, very unfortunate.”

Clark followed up with a letter to Foxman saying, “I will not tolerate antisemitic conspiracy webs to permeate the honest debate Americans must have about how best to confront Iran.’’

Clark made a point in the last campaign of noting his pride in the fact his own father was Jewish.

January 16, 2007

In the Eye of Florida's Insurance Storm

The Florida legislature convened a special session today to address the state’s property insurance crisis, in which homeowners, in the wake of recent hurricanes, have seen rates double in many areas and insurers pull out of some communities entirely. Stories in the Orlando Sentinel today and Sunday mapped out the confusing political landscape: In the recent elections, most insurance company money--$2.4 million—went to Republicans, who control the governor’s mansion and both houses of the legislature; yet, perhaps forecasting a typhoon of voter rage, the new governor, Charlie Crist, has vowed to do something about the skyrocketing rates, and last week proclaimed : “Big insurance has a new day coming.” The forecast for that day is less certain. What’s likely is that the state will assume more of the risk of bailing out insurers or insure more homeowners itself—tamping down rates but leaving taxpayers holding the bill in the event of a killer storm.

Not on the plate this week, but sure to be on people’s minds, is of course global warming, which has been blamed, in a roundabout way, for the entire shebang. Until now, lawmakers in the second-lowest state in the union (Louisiana is first) haven’t really paid much notice to the whole global warming thing; the state legislature took a pass on curbing greenhouse gasses last year and the U.S. Congressional delegation voted in lockstep with the Bush crowd. The blasé attitudes might soon change, though. In November, Broward County Democratic Congressional candidate Ron Klein unseated the Republican incumbent, Clay Shaw, after running ads targeting Shaw’s reactionary global warming stance. And the Sierra Club’s Florida lobbyist, Susie Caplowe, tells me that Governor Crist has ousted a number of former Governor Jeb Bush’s environmental appointees and replaced them with people who she likes much better. Crist hasn’t yet stated a position on global warming, but if he wanted to represent his state’s best interests (and perhaps his own), getting to the moral high ground on the issue would be a good place to start.

Give Us Your Diggers, Your Furlers, Your Social Bookmarkers Yearning To Be Free

Mother Jones is on board with the whole Web 2.0 deal (hey, we live in San Francisco) so as of today, we've made it easy to use following social bookmarking and sharing sites from any of our stories or blog posts:

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Should we add others, maybe Facebook? Are you having trouble with the widgets or the interfaces of the ones we have included? We'd like to know.