MotherJones.com | MoJoBlog - Social Issues and Political Commentary: August 26, 2007

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August 31, 2007

Protesters in Berkeley: Up a Tree and Fenced In

Okay, so it's Berkeley, not a stranger to protests, but this week's tree shenanigans both play to the historic hippies-in-dreads protest image as well as highlight the era of strapped campuses cracking down on activism in the name of growth.

In case you haven't heard, UC Berkeley students and city residents have been living in oak trees on campus for the past 10 months, protesting their razing for the building of a new sports complex.

This week the protests have elevated to arrests, and even construction. Wednesday, campus police put up an 8-foot chain-link fence meant to both keep protesters inside the grove as well as to prevent conflicts when 72,000 people descend on the area for tomorrow's Cal football game against Tennessee.

The sitters are now going it alone. No one can give them food or water, and once they leave the fenced area they are not allowed to return. This morning, one protester was arrested after putting his arm around a police officer and touching him with a lavender incense wand. "Why is he being arrested?" asked a student. "Battery," the officer replied.

The $125 million sports complex will replace the seismically shaky (and already-cracked) Memorial Stadium, and it will also allow the cash-strapped university to bring in big name recruits, football and otherwise, which can translate into millions a year in revenue. This year Cal is ranked #12 in the nation going into the college football season, something that will bring the university millions in television revenue alone.

Really though, Cal has bigger worries than tree sitters. The city has sued the school to halt construction because the new complex will rest squarely where the old stadium does, on the Hayward Fault. And when it comes to earthquakes, my money's on the oak trees to be left standing.

Justice Department Starves the Jerry Lewis Corruption Investigation

The WSJ's Scot Paltrow reports that the investigation of former House appropriations committee chairman Jerry Lewis (R-Ca) has been stalled by lack of funds. "In Los Angeles, a federal criminal investigation of Rep. Jerry Lewis, a California Republican, stalled for nearly six months due to a lack of funds, according to former prosecutors. The lead prosecutor on the inquiry and other lawyers departed the office, and vacancies couldn't be filled. George Cardona, the interim U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, declined to comment on specific cases but confirmed that lack of funds and unfilled vacancies caused delays in some investigations."

In 2006, Los Angeles federal prosecutors were in the middle of a wide-ranging investigation of Rep. Lewis of California, who until January was chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee. He remains its senior Republican. The investigation focused on earmarks, or special spending measures, that benefited clients of a now-defunct lobbying firm to which he had close ties.

People with knowledge of the case said that by the time the investigation stalled in December 2006, it had branched out into other areas, including Mr. Lewis's June 2003 role in passing legislation that helped giant hedge fund Cerberus Capital Management. People associated with Cerberus around the same time gave at least $140,000 to a political action committee controlled by Mr. Lewis. Cerberus officials didn't respond to phone calls or emailed questions concerning the Lewis inquiry. ...

After the lead prosecutor in the Lewis case quit, others assigned to the case took time getting up to speed. Brian Hershman, a former deputy chief of the Los Angeles office's public corruption section, declined to comment on specific cases, but confirms that his group's work overall was derailed by the departure of experienced prosecutors. Like several others, he says he left for more money to support his family.

Replacements "are mostly rookies," he says. "It will be some time before they'll be able to restore the section to what it was before."

Rumored AG replacement consideree Theodore Olson is a partner at the firm, Gibson, Dunn, which represents Lewis, and which coincidentally hired the former US Attorney for Los Angeles, Debra Wong Yang, who had been pursuing the Lewis case, which now looks all but dead.

Nation Nabs an Exclusive: Maliki Gov't Overrun by Corruption, Unwilling to Change

Capital Gamesman David Corn of The Nation has a noteworthy exclusive. Corn somehow got his hands on an internal report from the U.S. embassy in Baghdad that has this to say about the Maliki government:

...the Maliki government has failed in one significant area: corruption. Maliki's government is "not capable of even rudimentary enforcement of anticorruption laws," the report says, and, perhaps worse, the report notes that Maliki's office has impeded investigations of fraud and crime within the government.

The simple fact that there is corruption in Iraq isn't surprising, I suppose. But this exclusive isn't all-hat-and-no-cattle. The document Corn nabbed is 70 pages and it's loaded with details. Corn elaborates:

The report depicts the Iraqi government as riddled with corruption and criminals—and beyond the reach of anticorruption investigators...

"The Ministry of Interior is seen by Iraqis as untouchable by the anticorruption enforcement infrastructure of Iraq," it says. "Corruption investigations in Ministry of Defense are judged to be ineffectual." The study reports that the Ministry of Trade is "widely recognized as a troubled ministry" and that of 196 corruption complaints involving this ministry merely eight have made it to court, with only one person convicted.

The Ministry of Health, according to the report, "is a sore point; corruption is actually affecting its ability to deliver services and threatens the support of the government." Investigations involving the Ministry of Oil have been manipulated, the study says, and the "CPI and the [Inspector General of the ministry] are completely ill-equipped to handle oil theft cases." There is no accurate accounting of oil production and transportation within the ministry, the report explains, because organized crime groups are stealing oil "for the benefit of militias/insurgents, corrupt public officials and foreign buyers."

And from there it goes on, with indictments of ministry after ministry (click the link above to survey the full damage). Maliki is a big part of the problem, demonstrating "an open hostility" to externally-led (aka possibly effective) corruption investigations.

Staffers leading corruption investigations "have been 'accosted by armed gangs within ministry headquarters and denied access to officials and records.' They and their families are routinely threatened. Some sleep in their office in the Green Zone. In December 2006, a sniper positioned on top of an Iraqi government building in the Green Zone fired three shots at CPI headquarters. Twelve CPI personnel have been murdered in the line of duty."

So what does this all mean?

Well, it means the Maliki government is rotten to the core and we're propping it up. It also means that the calls for Maliki's ouster — from illegitimate and self-serving sources like Iyad Allawi, ironic sources like the neocon right that got us into this mess, and Congressional sources — will only increase.

But is that a good thing? Will switching the head of government in Iraq create positive change or will things remain exactly the same? From Corn's report, it seems evident that you could do no worse. Actually, the only way to do worse is if you replace Maliki with Allawi, who is an ex-CIA asset and thug with no broad support in Iraq except in old Baath Party quarters. But he's got lobbyists in Washington, so watch out. In a year's time, all this corruption will probably be going on under him.

Today is Karl Rove's Last Day on the Job

August 31 is Rove's last scheduled day at the White House, so take a big smile into the holiday weekend. Mother Jones on the Rove resignation here, here, here, and especially here.

Inspectors Find Iraq's Chemical Weapons... in New York City

Just weeks before it is set to go out of existence, the UN Monitoring and Verification Commission (UNMOVIC)—whose inspectors scoured Iraq unsuccessfully in search of Saddam's stockpiles of WMD—has finally found something. Problem is, the discovery was made not in Iraq, but in its own New York offices.

According to news reports (here and here), inspectors were archiving old files last Friday when they came upon an unidentified liquid. Subsequent testing, completed Wednesday, revealed it was a small sample of the deadly chemical agent phosgene, apparently removed from Saddam's Muthanna chemical weapons facility in 1996. Inspectors were at a loss to explain how it could have gotten to New York, not to mention how it would then have been forgotten and left in a filing cabinet. The UN has said it will investigate the matter.

The phosgene was discovered in UNMOVIC's 48th Street storage unit, about a block away from UN Headquarters, along with with "an Iraqi Scud missile engine, Russian gyroscopes and 125 cabinets filled with sensitive information on Iraq's past weapons programs." The materials, including the chemical agent, were originally gathered by the agency's predecessor, the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM).

The FBI and New York police collected the phosgene yesterday. It was flown by helicopter to a U.S. military laboratory in Aberdeen, Maryland. Environmental testing of UNMOVIC's storage facility revealed no contamination. According to Russian weapons expert Svetlana Utkina, who works with UNMOVIC, accidental release of the phosgene would have been deadly for those exposed. "Your lungs would collapse immediately if you inhale this substance," she told reporters. Inspectors reportedly found about a gram's-worth of the phosgene in a soda-can-sized container sealed in a plastic bag. Asked what would happen if the container broke open, Utkina said, "probably about five people will get severe problems, (and a) couple of people will be dead."

The Larry Craig Interrogation Tapes, Ready for Your Consumption

Wonkette has audio of the Larry Craig interrogation from immediately after he was arrested in the Minnesota airport bathroom. Worst. Interrogator. Ever. I'm no expert in police work, but I'm guessing yelling "Disappointed! Disappointed!" at your suspect over and over isn't in the manual.

Speaking of Craig, "well-placed" Republican sources are telling CNN that he will resign soon, possibly as early as today. If Craig hasn't actually made his decision yet, that'll certainly be a kick in the pants. FYI, Friday afternoon before a long weekend is a great time for a news dump — people getting an early start on the holiday, and that's basically everyone, will miss the news.

Update: Salon has a truly excellent article called "Why bathroom sex is hot: Larry Craig is the latest politician to get caught with his pants down. So what is the eternal allure of sex in a stall, and does it make you gay?" Highly worth a read if the events of the last few days have left you scratching your head. Of even if they haven't. Good piece of writing.

August 30, 2007

Why the Texas Governor Commuted a Death Sentence

Kenneth Foster clearly did not deserve to die. His crime: driving a car used in a robbery that led to a murder he never took part in. But his case was by no means unique in Texas, and so it came as a surprise today when Gov. Rick Perry commuted his sentence. "I'm concerned about Texas law that allows capital murder defendants to be tried simultaneously," Perry said in a statement, "and it is an issue I think the legislature should examine." A conservative Republican wants to examine capital murder law? To say the least, Perry is doing his part to Keep Austin Weird.

So why did this happen? It certainly helped that Foster had become an international anti-death penalty cause celebre supported by President Jimmy Carter, South African Archbishop Desmund Tutu and Susan Sarandon. Still, celebrities and activists have adopted other death row inmates (free Mumia!) to little effect.

Weird as it may sound, the pardon is probably best explained as the result of a gradually increasing skepticism in Texas of the criminal justice system and, yes, the death penalty. Consider this: death penalty prosecutions in the nation's execution capital, Harris County, Texas, have been in steep decline; every major newspaper in Texas has called for a moratorium on the death penalty or opposes it entirely; and in 2005 the state legislature passed a law allowing life imprisonment without parole, which has given judges and jurors a new way to be "tough on crime" without killing people. "Perhaps the reality that people aren't so hip on the death penalty anymore is finally getting across, even to Rick Perry," Jeff Blackburn, the founder and chief counsel of the Texas Innocence Project, told me. "I think this is about where people are at in the State of Texas--the old lies that have been told them are starting to be revealed."

Anyone living in Texas in recent years couldn't help but notice a string of high-profile criminal justice scandals--racism in Tulia, pervasively botched evidence in the Houston crime lab, and most recently, a striking number of exonerations in Dallas on DNA evidence. "Ten years ago if you told people that the criminal justice system falsely convicts the innocent, you were either a communist or a nut or both," Blackburn says. "Now, everybody gets that. Everybody has seen it fail."

Including Perry. Which is not to say that he cares most of the time. Blackburn and other defense advocates still believe plenty of people are wrongly put to death in the state. But Perry is a good politician: he appears to understand that the pendulum--or the scythe--is swinging the other way in Texas, and that he needs to get out of the way before it lops his head off.

Want to Know Where the Hurricane Relief Money Went?

The Institute for Southern Studies has released a report suggesting some ways out of the various social, physical, and financial quagmires caused by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The paper also dedicates a section to that ubiquitous question, "Where did the Katrina money go?" A few answers:

Amount that Bush administration says has been spent on Gulf Coast recovery since 2005 hurricanes: $116 billion

Estimated percent of those funds that are for long-term recovery projects: 30

Amount of FEMA's 2005 disaster relief budget that was spent on administrative costs: $7 billion

Percent of the 2005 relief budget that represented: 22

Of $16.7 billion in Community Development Block Grants earmarked for long-term Gulf Coast rebuilding, percent that had been spent as of August 2007: 30

Of $8.4 billion allocated to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for levee repair in Louisiana, percent that had been spent as of July 2007: 20

As of June 2007, value of controversial "cost plus" Katrina contracts given out by three federal agencies, which allows companies to charge taxpayers for cost overruns and guaranteed profits: $2.4 billion

As of August 2006, value of Gulf Coast contracts that a Congressional study found were "plagued by waste, fraud, abuse or mismanagement": $8.75 billion

So the answer to that ubiquitous question in devastated areas—"When will I get my f*cking check?"—still appears to be, "Don't hold your breath."

For more details, check out the report.

D.C. Schools Chancellor to Investigate "School of Shock" That Mother Jones Exposed Saying, "It's Nuts On Multiple Levels"

In her Washington Examiner column, Jonetta Rose Barras follows up on Mother Jones' "School of Shock" piece and prompts the new D.C. Schools Chancellor to investigate why Washington is sending 10 kids to this controversial facility. Writes Barras:

The District government is spending millions to send children to a controversial special education residential facility in Massachusetts that uses electric shock to discipline students. The Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton accepts individuals diagnosed as autistic, mentally retarded, schizophrenic, bipolar and emotionally disturbed. It is “the only facility in the country that disciplines students by shocking them, a form of punishment not inflicted on serial killers, or child molesters, or any of the 2.2 million inmates now incarcerated in U.S. jails and prisons,” says Jennifer Gonnerman, writing in the current issue of Mother Jones magazine.

Typically, a student at Rotenberg is equipped with a “backpack containing five 2-pound, battery-operated devices, each connected to an electrode attached to” the person’s skin. The student is zapped for so-called misbehavior, which could include minor offenses like “yelling or cursing,” according to Gonnerman.

Gonnerman’s story — “School of Shock” — focuses on students from New York and Massachusetts. But five other states and the District send individuals to the facility. The District’s connection isn’t detailed. Still, the horrific portrait painted sent me racing to determine how many children from this city are at Rotenberg.

For weeks, I sought answers. The Department of Health and the Department of Mental Health claim no relations with Rotenberg. Marla Oakes, head of special education reform at DCPS, failed to respond to repeated requests for information. (Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee can’t clean the central administration fast enough.)

The chief financial officer reports the District paid Rotenberg nearly $4 million — $809,498.50 by the Department of Human Services and $2.93 million by the DCPS — between fiscal 2004 and fiscal 2007.

Matthew Israel, psychologist, founder and executive director of Rotenberg, confirms 10 District children are being treated at the facility.During a telephone interview, he takes exception to Gonnerman’s article, calling it “an obviously negative hatchet job.”

He directs me to the center’s Web site for a detailed rebuttal, in which he calls the center the last resort for many of its residents; says electric shock is an “extremely effective” aversive that is “used for only 43 percent of JRC’s school-age students.”

In a conversation Wednesday, Rhee told me she has asked for an investigation into the Rotenberg treatment of District students. “It’s nuts on multiple levels,” she said.

For decades the District has sent some of its most vulnerable children to out-of-state facilities. A 2006 D.C. Board of Education white paper indicated there are more than 11,000 special education students. Twenty percent of them attend 131 private institutions; 91 are residential.

Mayor Adrian Fenty has promised to bring District students home. Let’s hope he starts with the 10 at Rotenberg. Tax dollars shouldn’t be used for a treatment modality that includes the regular infliction of pain on children already struggling against enormous odds.

Indeed. And I concur with my old Washington City Paper coworker Jonetta, that it is long since time that D.C. clean house when it comes to the school system and the special ed program in particular. Sounds like Teach For America alum Rhee is game to try. Godspeed.

More on other officials taking on the Rotenberg Center here.

Meddling in Elections (in Iraq)

In a column in today's Washington Post, David Ignatius says the U.S. should have done more to interfere with the January 2005 Iraqi elections, supposedly to counter "Iranian influence."

Joe Klein agrees that the administration was naive if it expected an anti-Iranian result from an unmanipulated election. But he says the idea that CIA interference could have positively influenced the elections (or won them for "former CIA favorite Iyad Allawi") is just as silly. Was the CIA going to magically change the demographics of Iraq? As Klein points out, every Iraqi election is effectively a "census," with voting split along ethno-religious lines:

Kurds vote for Kurds. Sunnis vote for Sunnis. Shi'ites vote Sadr or the Hakim family.

Shias were likely to win any Iraqi election with or without Iranian help. The "Iranian influence" Ignatius talks about isn't the problem. The Iranians have influence in the first place because there are so many Shias in Iraq. And the inevitably Shia Iraqi government was inevitably going to be friendly to Iran because Iran is a Shia country.

Pinning American hopes on a change in leadership is just as naive as assuming that "if we can just hold elections, everything will turn out all right." It's unlikely that any Iraqi leader could truly bridge the sectarian divides. And Matthew Yglesias reminds his readers that we've heard the whole "a change of leadership will save us" narrative before:

Back when Allawi was booted from power in January 2005 in favor of Ibrahim Jafari, folks proclaimed this a great success and said Bush's Iraq policy had been vindicated. They were wrong. Back when Jafari was ousted in favor of Maliki, people proclaimed this, too, as a crucial step in the right directed. They were wrong. Now Maliki's the problem and Allawi -- again! -- is the solution. But they're still wrong.

The Iraqi leadership obviously isn't the problem. The whole nation-building project would almost certainly be a lot easier if Iraq was ethnically and religiously homogeneous. But the Shias aren't alone. There are also Kurds and Sunnis, and all three groups hate each other. This is not a good starting point for a democracy. And putting someone new in charge isn't going to solve the fundamental problem that Iraq is an ethnically and religiously divided country.

—Nick Baumann

Breaking: Bush to Receive More Than One Point of View From Advisers

McClatchy reports that since the Pentagon can't agree on what to do about Iraq (and who can, really?), top military leaders will be giving their (presumably different) opinions to President Bush separately. After hearing what his Joint Chiefs, Defense Secretary, assorted generals, and much-touted "commanders in the field" have to say, the president will have "a decision to make," in the words of a Pentagon spokesman. Perfect for the The Decider!

And I bet you can guess what he'll decide...

— Nick Baumann

Vitter vs. Craig: Homophobic Hypocrisy from the GOP

Wouldn't you know it, the GOP is treating Sen. Larry Craig, who solicited sex from a man, very, very differently than it treated Sen. David Vitter, who admitted to using a (heterosexual) prostitution service. You can check out Think Progress for details, but here's what you need to know: a number of Republicans have called for Craig to resign, the party leadership has stripped him of his committee assignments, and the GOP has asked for an ethics investigation into his actions.

When David Vitter rose to speak in front of his fellow Republicans a few days after he admitted the "sin" in his past, he received "thunderous applause" from his colleagues.

John McCain and the Sensitivities of Suffering

I have enormous respect for the suffering John McCain experienced as a P.O.W. in Vietnam, and for the courage he displayed during his captivity. I remember being stunned by this article in the LA Times that described the mangling of his body:

George "Bud" Day, a Medal of Honor recipient, vividly remembers the day McCain's broken body was brought by guards through the door of Hoa Lo prison, the infamous Hanoi Hilton.

"He had been starved," Day said. "He was emaciated and weighed around 100 pounds. He had lost a third of his body weight. He had a fracture of his right knee that had been unskillfully repaired, as well as multiple fractures of his right arm. His left shoulder was dislocated and he had been bayoneted in the left leg. And he was filthy. You could smell him a quarter-block away.

"I expected he would die before morning," Day continued. "I thought the Vietnamese had dropped him off with us so he would die with us and they would be able to blame his death on us. About 40% of the prisoners had some kind of a broken limb or combination of broken limbs or skull fractures. I would say John was in the top 2% of the worst-injured in the system."

I don't object to McCain making this part of his campaign narrative. But check out this new campaign video (spotted on The Plank), which is a solid twelve minutes of this stuff. At a certain point, you can't help but having one of two reactions: (1) disgust at the war-porn nature of the whole thing, or (2) pity for McCain. Neither make really make you want to vote for him.

Missing Weapons Found in Turkey

As mentioned here before, a large number of U.S. weapons supplied to the Iraqi Army have gone missing. According to today's New York Times, at least some of them have been located in Turkey. Pentagon officials have confirmed that the serial numbers of an unspecified number of Glock handguns matched those on a list of weapons originally provided to Iraqi military units in 2004 and 2005; estimates for the number of weapons recovered vary from dozens to hundreds. The Turkish government alleges that the U.S. arms have been used in "crimes" committed in Turkey by members of the PKK, a Kurdish separatist group. U.S. officials say they have no proof of this, but they have apparently taken Turkish claims seriously enough to dispatch a high-ranking Pentagon official to investigate the claims. According to the Times article:

Mr. Gates sent the Pentagon general counsel, William J. Haynes II, to Turkey last month for talks with Turkish officials, who had been complaining for months that American-supplied weapons were being used in murders and other violent crimes carried out, in some cases, by Kurdish militants.

Turkey’s allegations that Iraq was being used as a sanctuary to carry out attacks inside Turkey have strained relations between the Bush administration and Ankara over the past six months, with Turkey not ruling out a military intervention into northern Iraq to stop the activity.

American officials said that it appeared that the weapons found in Turkey were given to Iraqi units in 2004 and 2005 when, in the rush to build police and army units, controls on distribution of firearms had been much weaker. Gen. David H. Petraeus, who was then in charge of training and equipping Iraqi forces and who is now the top American commander in Iraq, has said that the imperative to provide weapons to Iraqi security forces was more important at the time than maintaining impeccable records...

Pentagon officials said Wednesday that the problem of weapons turning up in Turkey was part of a larger investigation being carried out by the Pentagon inspector general, Claude M. Kicklighter, a retired Army three-star general, into allegations that American-supplied weapons had been improperly accounted for and fallen into the wrong hands.

The Turkish government claims that Iraqi security forces, particularly Kurdish units loyal to Massoud Barzani, the president of Iraq's northern Kurdish region, may have sold or simply given the weapons to the PKK, which bases itself in the remote mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan. U.S. officials counter that it's more likely the weapons were smuggled across the border into Turkey after being stolen or lost during firefights with insurgents.

Either way, the Pentagon announced this week the establishment of two panels to investigate failures in the military contracting system that may have contributed to the weapons falling into the wrong hands. From the Times:

One panel of retired generals and civilian contracting experts, led by Jacques Gansler, a former top Pentagon acquisition official, will examine the Army contracting system and report back in 45 days how to improve its organization, staffing levels, auditing ability and other functions to prevent fraud, waste and abuse.

The second review, led by Lt. Gen. N. Ross Thompson III and Kathryn Condon, two Army contracting specialists, will examine current operations, Mr. Geren said. It will look for improprieties in the 18,000 contracts awarded from 2003 to 2007 by the Army’s big contracting office in Kuwait. Those contracts to clothe, house and feed American forces moving in and out of Kuwait are valued at more than $3 billion.

In related news, the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies has released its annual "Small Arms Survey." The study found that civilians possess three times more weapons than are held by all the world's armies and police forces combined. Of the estimated 875 million small arms in existence, as many as 650 million belong to private citizens. Researchers contend that growing instability and violence of megacities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America have contributed to civilians' growing desire to arm themselves. As reported by the BBC, gun-related deaths in Brazil's cities outnumber those of many countries at war.

GAO Report: Iraqis Meeting 3 of 18 Benchmarks

In advance of the much-ballyhooed September 15 report on Iraq that General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker are not writing, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is due to release its own report. Today, courtesy of the AP, we have a sneak peek at the contents.

The Associated Press has learned the Government Accountability Office, or GAO, will report that at least 13 of the 18 benchmarks to measure the surge of U.S. troops to Iraq are unfulfilled ahead of a September 15 deadline.... [A] July report said the administration believed the Iraqis had made satisfactory progress on eight of the 13 benchmarks.

The administration is already downplaying the GAO's report, claiming the standards the GAO used are far too demanding.

The GAO, however, has been told to "assess whether or not such benchmarks have been met," and the administration plans to assert that is too tough a standard to be met at this point in the surge, the officials said.

"It's pretty clear that if that's your measurement standard a majority of the benchmarks would be determined not to have been met," said one official. "A lot of them are multipart and so, even if 90 percent of it is done, it's still a failure...The standard the GAO has set is far more stringent," he said. "Some might argue it's impossible to meet."

Okay, so we've got a GAO report that says the Iraqis are meeting 3 of 18 benchmarks, and an upcoming Sept 15 report that is destined to say things are going well, or at least, on balance, not too bad. Just more fuel for congressional members on both sides of the issue. I smell a stalemate. A further stalemate, I mean. The liberal's dream of congressional Republicans giving up on the war one by one this fall looks unlikely to come true.

And what happens to the $50 billion, the $147 billion, and the $460 billion?

"State Secrets" Win Protects Nevada Defense Contractor Connected to Governor, Air Force

Here's the background you need for this story. The FBI is reportedly investigating Nevada governor Jim Gibbons, a former Congressman and House Intelligence committee member, for possible corruption. The crux of the corruption probe centers on alleged evidence that Gibbons accepted trips, gifts and cash from a Nevada defense contractor, Warren Trepp, of eTreppid, in exchange for throwing eTreppid defense and intelligence contracts - many of them apparently from the black budget. Trepp, in turn, has enlisted the help of the FBI, in going after a former employee, Dennis Montgomery, who provided his firm key technology and took it with him when he left the company. There's been lots of spooky stuff about the legal process playing out between Montgomery and Trepp, with an Air Force special investigator apparently having enlisted the FBI to help Trepp go after Montgomery, the sealing of documents, and other mysteries suggesting the Air Force really really doesn't want a court process to uncover just what it hired eTreppid to do.

Got that?

Ok. Today, the Reno Gazette-Journal reports:

In a ruling that could make it difficult for former eTreppid software designer Dennis Montgomery to argue his lawsuit against the company, a federal judge Wednesday granted a Department of Defense request for a protective order to ensure no material involving national security is released.

All sides in the lawsuit involving eTreppid Technologies, the Reno company Gov. Jim Gibbons is accused of helping obtain defense contracts in exchange for gifts and trips, are prohibited from sharing certain information that is subject to the state secrets privilege, U.S. District Judge Philip Pro said in his order.

The information also cannot be used as evidence at trial, Pro said. Disclosure of certain materials "could be expected to cause serious, and (in) some cases exceptionally grave damage to national security," he said.

Pro made a number of exceptions. He said the two sides can discuss the "Big Safari" contract between eTreppid and the Air Force, "including but not limited to the fact that the Big Safari contract required eTreppid to perform data analysis," and involved "image identification technology."

Here's the court order (.pdf).

Nevada is home to a lot of U.S. Air Force real estate, among it Nellis Air Force base and reputed Area 51.

August 29, 2007

Happy Anniversary, Katrina Victims! You Could Celebrate With Cash if You Weren't So Unscrupulous

Today Reason magazine ran the exploration of its first "Myth of Hurricane Katrina," an article refuting that there's not enough money to deal with the disaster's aftermath. There's plenty of money, it explains. The problem is the systems in place for doling it out. To wit:

So it's not a lack of funding that's the problem. It's spending the money. Under existing laws, FEMA can't simply write checks to Katrina victims. Some recipients would undoubtedly squander their funds, and there would be widespread fraud. This isn't idle speculation. According to the Government Accountability Office, immediately after Katrina hit, about a billion dollars of emergency aid—16 percent of the total—was lost to fraudulent claims. Even legitimately obtained pre-paid debit cards given to aid Katrina's victims were used to buy champagne, guns, tattoos, and porn.

FEMA, or somebody—anybody—should indeed be able to simply (that's the best way, isn't it?) write checks to Katrina victims. I left New Orleans two days before the storm with a pair of flip-flops, a deck of cards, and an extra pair of underwear, and couldn't go back until four months later. Like a million others, I desperately needed money for food and clothes and toiletries. Despite hours of sobbing and begging on the phone with FEMA and dozens of paperwork filings and faxes, I still somehow never managed to "legitimately obtain" my debit card. If I had gotten it, I very well may have spent a large portion of that $2,000 on champagne, tattoos, and porn (I'm not really into guns), and I would have had every right to do so. It's none of the government's business what indescribably distressed adults who've been suddenly and forcibly displaced with no job, no place to live, and no reliable information about the state of everything they own or their foreseeable future choose to do with the aid money given them. The government's business is to make sure they get it.

Burma Protests, Gets Shout-out From Jim Carrey

Big news day for Burma yesterday. First, there were reports that the ruling junta cracked down on protesters objecting to an astronomical hike in gas prices. Then Jim Carrey released a weirdly earnest but genuinely important message on YouTube (below) urging people to stand up for the often-ignored country just to the left of Thailand.

In a brief video, Carrey lists some of the military regime's offenses—mass displacement, wholesale village destruction, systematic rape, child-soldier recruitment—and points out that Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the country's rightfully elected party, is still under house arrest after more than a decade. The spot ends with information about a couple advocacy groups. Perhaps Carrey hopes that with enough international attention, the country will finally catch a resolution.

Wyoming Moves Primary to January 5, Drives Me Crazy

I've been blogging a lot about the changes to the primary schedule, and maybe I'm the only one who cares. But I think it's fascinating that what we have on our hands is a complete failure of the prisoner's dilemma. Every state knows that maintaining some degree of sanity in our primary system is good for American democracy, but every state also knows it can get some cheap recognition if its primary is super-duper early. And instead of being mature about it and taking the communal route, everyone's basically grabbing for the brass ring.

The latest such sinner: Wyoming. The least populous state in the nation, Wyoming (and its three electoral votes) deserves no special attention. Regardless, Wyoming has leapfrogged Iowa and New Hampshire and has placed its primary at January 5. "We're first in the nation," State party County Convention Coordinator Tom Sansonetti told the AP. "At least for the next couple, three weeks until New Hampshire and Iowa move, which I expect they will."

Exactly, you jerk. Now we're going to have Iowa on Christmas Eve, and then Florida will move its primary to the day after Thanksgiving and old geriatrics will have a choice between shopping and voting. And then New Hampshire will choose Halloween and then South Carolina will choose Labor Day, ruining your travel plans. As Wonkette noted, "Idaho is having a primary right now, in the men's room!"

The only good that can come of this is if these idiot state parties, state legislatures, and secretaries of state just drive the whole primary system off a cliff and it becomes so hopelessly f-ed up that the DNC and RNC have to reconstruct it from scratch. That's the only chance for sanity here.

Previous angry coverage of the primary calendar's shifts: regional primaries, insufficient candidate responses, South Carolina gets in on the act, someone finally pays a price.

White House Settles First Amendment Suit

Some of you may recall the recent discovery of a 103-page White House manual on how to "handle" protesters. The "Presidential Advance Manual" goes into great detail about how to prevent protesters from showing up at a presidential rally, and how to curtail their activities if they are pesky enough to show up, anyway.

Jeff and Nicole Rank, you will also recall, were two protesters who showed up at a presidential rally in Charleston, West Virginia, in 2004, and they were arrested for wearing T-shirts that had a line through the ersatz president's name on the front, and on the back of one were the words "Love America, Hate Bush." The Ranks were arrested for trespassing when they were asked to leave and refused to do so.

The city of Charleston, suddenly remembering the U.S. Constitution, later apologized to the Ranks. Jeff and Nicole Rank, however, did not believe that the Charleston police were the masterminds of their arrest, so, with the ACLU, they sued the director of the Office of White House Advance for violating their First Amendment rights. The ACLU recently announced that the case has been settled and the U.S. government will pay the Ranks $80,000. Sometimes, it's a pleasure to see your tax dollars at work.

Never Mind. U.S. Forces Release 8 Iranians Seized in Baghdad

Acknowledging a mistake, U.S. forces have released eight Iranians, including two diplomats, seized at the Baghdad Sheraton Ishtar hotel yesterday. The Iranians from the Ministry of Electricity had been working at the invitation of the Iraqi authorities.

"Iraqi Foreign Minister Hosyhar Zebari told the British Broadcasting Corp. the Iranians were released after Iraqi officials intervened and told the Americans they were part of an official delegation on a legal visit to discuss electricity cooperation," the AP reports.

The seizure came hours after President Bush delivered a speech to the American Legion convention in Reno, Nevada in which he had threatened to confront Iranian operatives in Iraq.

"I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran's murderous activities," Bush was cited. "The Iranian regime must halt these actions."

An Iraqi advisor to U.S. Iraq commander General David Petraeus, Saadi Othman, insisted there was no connection between the two events. "Othman ... told British Broadcasting Corp. television that the detentions were 'regrettable' and had 'nothing to do' with President Bush's remarks on Tuesday," the AP reports.

Escalation Forever! Newest War Funding Request from Bush Puts War Cost at $3B/Week

Ugh.

President Bush plans to ask Congress next month for up to $50 billion in additional funding for the war in Iraq, a White House official said yesterday, a move that appears to reflect increasing administration confidence that it can fend off congressional calls for a rapid drawdown of U.S. forces.

The request -- which would come on top of about $460 billion in the fiscal 2008 defense budget and $147 billion in a pending supplemental bill to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq -- is expected to be announced after congressional hearings scheduled for mid-September featuring the two top U.S. officials in Iraq. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker will assess the state of the war and the effect of the new strategy the U.S. military has pursued this year.

Actually, Petraeus and Crocker won't be assessing anything. As the White House plans make clear, it is a foregone conclusion that Petraeus and Crocker will present only good news. So the White House will write (or has already written) the September report, then the White House will send Petraeus and Crocker out to publicize the report, then the White House will use the report it wrote to justify increased war spending. Fantastic. Escalation forever!

Keep this in mind when you argue with your Republican friends:

[T]he cost of the war in Iraq now exceeds $3 billion a week.

Shame on Larry Craig? Or on the Cops?

If, as an open-minded liberal, you are somewhat uncomfortable with the idea that an individual, gay or otherwise, can be arrested for repeatedly tapping his foot in a public bathroom, I would suggest the Slate article up today that contains an email dialogue between the magazine's editors.

Among other excellent points raised, there is this question: since when is propositioning someone illegal, even if done in a public place? Doesn't there need to be more "conduct" involved for a lewd conduct charge?

Update: As you may have seen on today's internets, Larry Craig held a press conference saying that he pleaded guilty — even though he is not really guilty — in order to make the situation go away. (That plan does not seem to have worked out for the senator.) Craig also said, "I am not gay."

No, senator, you are not gay. You just like sex with men. And that's fine. We just wish you would own up to it so young, gay Idahoans don't think being homosexual is the worst thing in the world.

Update Update: Republican heavy ~~Ralph~~ Scott Reed is pissed. From the New York Times:

"The real question for Republicans in Washington is how low can you go, because we are approaching a level of ridiculousness," said Mr. Reed, sounding exasperated in an interview on Tuesday morning. "You can't make this stuff up. And the impact this is having on the grass-roots around the country is devastating. Republicans think the governing class in Washington are a bunch of buffoons who have total disregard for the principles of the party, the law of the land and the future of the country."

All Quiet in Ankara?

Turkey has a new president. The military appears to have accepted him, at least for now... See my previous post on this issue here.

August 28, 2007

Whistleblower Faces Firing For Exposing Indian Rip-Off

Here's a sidebar to the Cobell v. Kempthorne case—the long-running lawsuit over the government's admitted mismanagement of the Individual Indian Trust (MoJo Sept/Oct 2005). An Interior Department attorney who revealed his agency's bungling of Indian properties faces the federal boot for disclosing these problems to a newspaper. According to documents released by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), the government is invoking an obscure criminal statute known as the Trade Secrets Act (TSA).

Robert McCarthy, responsible for overseeing management of properties of individual members of Indian tribes held in trust by Interior, has documented massive losses due to agency missteps. Yet the problems persist, costing Native Americans millions of dollars a month in lost revenues. His concerns were validated by an Inspector General report that has yet to be finally released.

So, McCarthy provided a reporter for the Palm Springs Desert Sun a copy of his Inspector General disclosure with individual names blacked out. The reporter wrote a story in April, and four months later, Regional Solicitor Daniel Shillito proposed that McCarthy be fired for violating the TSA, which prohibits the release of “confidential” financial or commercial information. PEER suggests the TSA doesn't apply since McCarthy revealed no names or any information that could be considered confidential, and since the TSA only prohibits releases which damage the economic interests of the submitter. McCarthy's disclosures were designed to benefit property holders by identifying and ending unjustified losses.

Significantly, Shillito was supposed to clean up large-scale asset mismanagement and losses identified back in 1992. McCarthy found these had never been addressed. JULIA WHITTY

Dueling Accents: Dems Visit the South

Hillary Clinton gets a lot of guff for her now-you-see-it now-you-don't Southern accent...