Our President seems to believe not in oversight but in “accountability moments” every four years when the population gives a strict up-or-down judgment on his performance. A thumbs up means a mandate for the entire platform. In some cases like Social Security and immigration the changes are shot down by a growing popular revolt, but essentially the whole package is considered affirmed. At that point Congress passes laws as directed by the President to properly implement the platform, and each policy is a black box to be blessed in the broadest possible terms with no debate or review involved.  Read more 

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post  Read more 

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled this week that the White House’s Office of Administration (OA) does not have to turn over documents relating to the disappearance of potentially millions of emails. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) had filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and in her decision Kollar-Kotelly wrote “the Court concludes that OA is not an agency subject to the FOIA”. CREW plans to appeal.  Read more 

Lame duck periods have historically been very quiet. Eisenhower’s negotiations with the Soviet Union were derailed by the U2 incident, and while he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1960 he didn’t champion it. Johnson was too unpopular to get anything big done by the time he term-limited himself. Reagan limped to the finish in the wake of Iran-Contra and Clinton in the wake of impeachment. Probably all shared some feeling of simple courtesy toward their successors as well - don’t dump some big new program or policy on the President-elect.  Read more 

Scott McClellan’s book has started some extremely interesting conversations. His allegations are not especially important by themselves, mainly because it is easy to suspect ulterior motives. A number of critics have noted he has no natural allies in Washington and could not expect a soft landing at a lobbying firm or think tank; the only way for him to cash in is with blockbuster sales. Another reason could be self-justification, which may well be one of the few high growth areas created by the current administration. The broad contours of this Presidency are clearly visible now, and even the most blinkered partisans know the judgment of history will be extraordinarily harsh.  Read more 

I spent two years in Tanzania teaching secondary school math as a Peace Corps volunteer. The only Swahili left in my head is greetings and curses (one of the latter is substantially more offensive than anything we’ve come up with in English) along with a few memorable phrases. One phrase is “bahati mbaya” which literally translates as “bad luck.” The reason it’s memorable is because it was also used to describe completely predictable bad outcomes. If you started drawing a bath, for some reason left the house for a few hours and came back to a flooded living area…bahati mbaya. It is a wonderfully diplomatic way to avoid saying, wow was that stupid. It is in that spirit that I write: This is the bahati mbaya President.  Read more 

Last year Kung Fu Monkey produced one of the great political analyses of our time in his essay on shamelessness. Among other points he wrote “[y]ou reveal a man’s corrupt, or lying, or incompetent, and what does he do?  Read more 

This week Joe Klein wrote a post that did not attempt to hide his disdain for his critics. While he showed a willingness to outline his reporting process and address concerns raised in his comments, he did so in an extremely defensive, thin-skinned and condescending tone. He also made the following memorably clueless assertion: “Tell me where I’ve been misled by my sources.” His commenters quickly pointed out his factually challenged reporting on the FISA debate.  Read more 

Considering how much attention mass media has spent on electoral politics it has missed the elephant in the room (pardon the pun): The extreme peril of the Republican Party. Almost all coverage is now on the Democratic primary, and the least likely (and most dramatic) scenarios are getting the most focus. But here is what seems most likely: The candidates fight it out, a winner emerges in the next month or so and emotions peak. Everyone takes the summer off, spends some time at the beach with a good book, and returns at the end of August tanned, rested and ready to crank up an energetic election campaign.  Read more 

Congress can be a frustratingly opaque body, and trying to figure out causes and effects can be largely futile. Analyzing a simple proposition like “Congress has failed to adequately check executive power expansion since 2001” quickly becomes incredibly complex (rest in peace Edward Lorenz). Also, much of its work is done behind closed doors, which is probably for the best. If politicians were constantly on display before the public we would reach toxic levels of grandstanding almost immediately and government would grind to a halt (though in light of our recent experience that might be a benefit).  Read more 

The war in Iraq refuses to be dismissed. Its ongoing cost in blood and treasure will be at or near the top of our concerns for as long as it lasts. It stays there no matter how much political elites want us to look elsewhere or media elites want to keep from highlighting the painful, ongoing slog. I believe the vast majority of us grieves a little each time we hear the day’s price. If it is nothing more than a dry recitation of the latest handful of dead in the latest attack, if the report is stuck at the end of a segment or broadcast, if it is treated with the same numerical curiosity as a minor fluctuation of the stock market - it still casts a long shadow with us.  Read more 

Last week a remarkable truth emerged - we need to have a torture debate. On Friday the President admitted that we are now a state sponsor of torture and an amazing thing happened: Nothing. TV news coverage was dominated by the Democratic primary, and if news outlets acknowledged it at all it was in a summary or somewhere in the back pages. I am on record with my deep revulsion for torture, but a critical mass of our upper political and media levels does not consider it worthy of sustained focus.  Read more 

According to its web site the recently-created National Applications Office (NAO) has its roots in the Civil Applications Committee, an agency created in 1974 that “facilitated requests by civil agencies to make use of space-based imaging and remote sensing capabilities for purposes such as monitoring volcanic activity, environmental and geological changes, hurricanes, and floods.” Presumably that is how it was used; if it had been directed against citizens or for political advantage we would have found out before too long. Either the results of the abuse would have led back to it or someone would have spilled the beans somehow.  Read more 

Every adult in America probably remembers 9/11 in the immediate sense - the first time hearing the news, seeing the images, the confusion, uncertainty and fear of that day - but it seems like our memory of the period immediately after is hazy. For a month or two we were traumatized as a nation and had trouble understanding what had happened, and what should come next. By the end of 2001 the drumbeat for war had begun and it is possible that fixing our attention on how best to attack Iraq served as a psychological crutch by giving us something to focus on. This is not a professional opinion, just an observation based on what I went through and saw others going through.  Read more 

There’s been a question rattling around my brain for a while now: Where have the Second Amendment champions been the last few years? Those in favor of liberal gun ownership laws usually speak about it in abstract terms, most commonly harmony with the land and guarantees of liberty. The first argument hasn’t been seriously challenged, but what are their thoughts these days about checks against a tyrannical government? Shouldn’t the burgeoning surveillance state be anathema to them? Isn’t this the kind of issue they should be up in arms (har) about? I would have thought the massive increases in spying and indiscriminate data sweeps would be an unsupportable infringement of their liberty.  Read more 

The President has one thing in common with his predecessors: He claims to not care about his legacy. Most seem to say that at one point or another; in this case “[w]e are still arguing about the record of the first president…I’m sure they will take their time when it comes to judging my record.” It is one of the more benign lies he has told, maybe because it only reveals his comprehensive inability to understand history. There is no harm in that kind of ignorance, though it has grave implications when it comes from your leader. Of course, I would love to know what exactly he thinks we are still arguing about with Washington.  Read more 

What popped into my mind? That scene in “Hunt for Red October,” in which Sean Connery grabs the neck and head of Tim Curry’s Peter Firth’s political officer character and snaps it right before launching the plot to defect with the sub. Oh, wait- in this case the scene would’ve been that Connery gets down on his knees and blows Curry, humming the Andover fight song. Somehow, I don’t think that would’ve made such a great scene in the film…  Read more 

You all already know this, but it’s still a chilling litany:

State Secrets Privilege Shuts Courthouse Doors
The state secrets privilege has been invoked by the Bush Administration with greater frequency than ever before in American history in a wide range of lawsuits that the government says would threaten national security if allowed to proceed.

In virtually every case, the use of the privilege leads to dismissal of the lawsuit and forecloses the opportunity for an injured party to seek judicial relief.

Most recently, a lawsuit brought by Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen who alleged that he was kidnapped by the CIA and tortured over a five month period, was dismissed (pdf) after the CIA invoked the “state secrets” privilege.

The dismissal was not based on a finding that the allegations against the CIA were false.

“It is in no way an adjudication of, or comment on, the merit or lack of merit of El-Masri’s complaint,” wrote Judge T.S. Ellis, III in a May 12 order.

In fact, “It is worth noting that … if El-Masri’s allegations are true or essentially true, then all fair-minded people… must also agree that El-Masri has suffered injuries as a result of our country’s mistake and deserves a remedy,” he wrote in the order dismissing the case.

“Yet, it is also clear from the result reached here that the only sources of that remedy must be the Executive Branch or the Legislative Branch, not the Judicial Branch,” he suggested.  Read more