High Alert - Citizenry at Risk!! (Bush the perp - again)

Frank Rich's columns are harder to track down these days than they used to be. That's because he's one of the elite New York Times writers whose work the paper recently decided to include in their program to get on-line users to pay for access. I wouldn't blame him for feeling a bit of a victim in this - as are his fans. The person I have become acquainted with through Rich's columns knows that what he writes is a rarity in the corporate media these days, and he also knows what a potentially important role he plays.

Whatever the Times is selling these days, I'm not paying or buying, especially given the abuse the paper has inflicted on all of us, our Constitution, and ultimately our form of representative government, in the name of "paper of record" over the past oh, say, five years. Seems like a lifetime, doesn't it? My story (and I'm stickin' to it) is that the paper's provision of a boudoir for non-reporter Judith Miller and her best boy Chalabi, the featuring of her non-journalism boosting the necessity of invading Iraq, and ongoing support of her while she covered for the bush administration is by itself worth free access to everything they do for the next decade for every American citizen. I will indulge the naturally generous, tolerant, forgiving aspects of my personality in not exploiting or even naming the paper's other recent scandals (extra points if you can call them out - see "comments" button below).

As an aside, due to lack of regular access to writers like Paul Krugman and Rich my reading of the NYT is down at least 60%. Informal polls suggest I am no dumber nor out-of-touch than before. That's small consolation.

But here's a Rich one for you. The guy does his homework and writes so well. No wonder he's been getting some purple vilification hearts from the sycophant "just-keep-paying-us" right-wing media. In this column he's going to help us with the ongoing fakery over the illegal wiretapping, hence the evocative title: The Wiretappers That Couldn't Shoot Straight:

Almost two weeks before The New York Times published its scoop about our government's extralegal wiretapping, the cable network Showtime blew the whole top-secret shebang. In its mini-series "Sleeper Cell," about Islamic fundamentalist terrorists in Los Angeles, the cell's ringleader berates an underling for chatting about an impending operation during a phone conversation with an uncle in Egypt. "We can only pray that the N.S.A. is not listening," the leader yells at the miscreant, who is then stoned for his blabbing.

If fictional terrorists concocted by Hollywood can figure out that the National Security Agency is listening to their every call, guess what? Real-life terrorists know this, too. So when a hyperventilating President Bush rants that the exposure of his warrant-free wiretapping in a newspaper is shameful and puts "our citizens at risk" by revealing our espionage playbook, you have to wonder what he is really trying to hide. Our enemies, as America has learned the hard way, are not morons. Even if Al Qaeda hasn't seen "Sleeper Cell" because it refuses to spring for pay cable, it has surely assumed from the get-go that the White House would ignore legal restraints on eavesdropping, just as it has on detainee jurisprudence and torture.

That the White House's over-the-top outrage about the Times scoop is a smokescreen contrived to cover up something else is only confirmed by Dick Cheney's disingenuousness. In last week's oration at a right-wing think tank, he defended warrant-free wiretapping by saying it could have prevented the 9/11 attacks. Really? Not with this administration in charge. On 9/10 the N.S.A. (lawfully) intercepted messages in Arabic saying, "The match is about to begin," and, "Tomorrow is zero hour." You know the rest. Like all the chatter our government picked up during the president's excellent brush-clearing Crawford vacation of 2001, it was relegated to mañana; the N.S.A. didn't rouse itself to translate those warnings until 9/12.

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The warrantless eavesdropping is more of the same incompetence. Like our physical abuse of detainees and our denial of their access to due process, this flouting of the law may yet do as much damage to fighting the war on terrorism as it does to civil liberties. As the First Amendment lawyer Martin Garbus wrote in The Huffington Post, every defense lawyer representing a terrorism suspect charged in the four years since Mr. Bush's N.S.A. decree can challenge the legality of the prosecution's evidence. "The entire criminal process will be brought to a standstill," Mr. Garbus explains, as the government refuses to give the courts information on national security grounds, inviting the dismissal of entire cases, and judges "up and down the appellate ladder" issue conflicting rulings.

Far from "bringing justice to our enemies," as Mr. Bush is fond of saying, he may once again be helping them escape the way he did at Tora Bora. The president who once promised to bring a "culture of responsibility" to Washington can and will blame The Times and the rest of the press for his failures. But maybe, if only for variety's sake, the moment has come to find a new scapegoat. I nominate Showtime.

Believe It: a Truly Republican Scandal

On the likelihood you have encountered a corporate media dismissal of the Abramoff scandal as "bipartisan" or "business as usual," I have real news for you (not the muck of corporate media, this is a genuine first-class web resource!). The reality seems to be that despite the party line being aggressively infiltrated into and then pushed by virtually all of the familiar media (of course that is why we call them "corporate"), Abramoff's personal donations went exclusively to republicans. You heard me right. Harry Reid received donations from several Native American Tribes. Ditto Patty Murray. Ditto a number of other dems. Abramoff is the one facing hard time here, and his money apparently was too dear to make it past the repubs. There is no evidence that any of the Tribal donations are illegal in any way.

Yes, it seems a little improbable to me too that the criminals would be so selective. This is Darwin Awards stuff. Presumably that's the rationale the networks and other media owned pretty exclusively these days by mega-corporations hope will convince you to believe their stories that always seem to have a "they all do it" spin to them. Of course these mega-corps have been the primary beneficiaries of the tax cuts and other outrageous measures that have savaged the Federal budget on Bush's watch, turning a large surplus into the largest deficit in history. Obviously they're going to sing sweetly for their sugar-bear and the party that controls all of the federal gummint and pork now.

The Capital Eyes website features remarkably comprehensive documentation on the donations made by Abramoff to legislators and their organizations over the past few years. Also included in the database are the separate donations made by numerous Native American tribes, most if not all Abramoff clients, presumably representing actual "business as usual" in terms of lobbying and otherwise seeking access and favoritism from lawmakers under the current gone-amuck system. Which is to say, this whole business of corporations and other organizations being free to contribute to lawmakers is totally loathesome. It is critical that we face the reality that this will always be a slippery slope with influence-buying and worse at the bottom and insist on public funding of political campaigns. In the meantime, there is no evidence the Tribal donations are illegal in any sense and what matters are the donations by Abramoff, who is facing criminal charges for his personal donations.

So take a look at this site. I will gently caveat up front that I have not conducted anything resembling due diligence. However, given the wealth of information here and presumably the ease with which an attempt at fraud or serious mischieviousness could be detected and fed to the always-willing routinely sycophantic corporate media, until proven otherwise I believe we can trust this information.

The bottom line appears to be that every single democrat recorded on the site received all of their donations directly from Native Tribes. If you scroll down the website you will find several options for displaying the data. The home screen merely shows summary stats. But choose to display by donor and pick old Mr. and Mrs. Jack. I found not a single "D" for dem in that list.

I imagine a list by any of the other donor choices - Native Tribes exclusively I think - will provide a more mixed picture. But try displaying all recipients, either by name or by total amount. There are many, a discouraging slog through the reality of the government-influencing industry for a naif like me. A click on any individual name will bring up the donor list for that donee. I did not do a completely exhaustive search, but I can save you some trouble - I checked all "D" entries on the recipient list down to a total amount of about $5,000. I found Tribal donations only. I don't know that we can take this as an absolute proof of no possibility of any sort of wrongdoing or skullduggery, or possible future exposure, but it certainly appears to support that surprisingly strong assertion by Howard Dean to Wolf Blitzer under predictably hostile pro-repub questioning the other day that there were NO democrats who received Abramoff donations. This is truly mind-boggling stuff. As best I can tell these folks must have been mixing up hubris-koolaid by the keg on a regular basis to leave such an obvious trail. We're all expected to be just too stupid to notice.

Your action items include not believing a word of the nonsense you will be continuing to hear from corporate media and of course virtually anyone with the slightest connection to the party in power as Abramoff waltzes ("sleazes" is probably closer) through the legal proceedings. Preferably, take that next step, and call out anyone, Op-Ed writer, LTTE author, whoever, who attempts to foment ridiculous cover for the reality; this is a simple sordid case of the republican K-street project folks (DeLay, Abramoff, et al) getting way too full of themselves in the course of their well-documented project of eviscerating the democratic party and hence turning the country into a one-party oligarchy.

The Paper That Now Might Wish to be Off-the-Record

It's quite interesting, the ecosystem sometimes labeled the New York Times. Apparently there are not many sharks, piranhas, or other truly nasty predators, at least from the leakage, but there sure are a lot of omnivores or cross-dressers or something. Political shills pretending to report. Editors-in-chief that can't chief (or edit?) but do a great cockroach imitation. Whatever happened to that business about "fit to print"? Reporter Risen has assembled quite a whistleblower story, possibly up there with Watergate, and doesn't seem to fit in too well in my opin with the rest of the compromised NYT crowd. Will he prosper at the "newspaper of record," jump at first chance (LA Times?), or spend the next year or two talking to a grand jury?

This is just the first part of an excellent article - you owe it to yourself to finish it. And possibly buy the book.

the Anti-Woodward

On Tuesday, Jan. 3, New York Times reporter James Risen’s book, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, arrived in bookstores.

Usually when a reporter’s book hits the shelves, it’s an occasion to congratulate him for his coverage, and his paper for printing the stories on which the book is based.

This book, which appears to end a multi-week race between The Times and Simon & Schuster’s Free Press to get juicy national-security scoops into print, is different.

It’s the capstone for public criticism of The Times’ decision to sit for more than a year on Mr. Risen’s biggest scoop: the news that the National Security Agency has been conducting warrantless domestic espionage through wiretaps, which the paper finally published in the first of a series of stories on Dec. 16.

What’s more, the book raises the question of how much of Mr. Risen’s material—about W.M.D., for instance—was in The Times’ hands but kept out of print until the arrival of State of War.

The Times’ becalmed post–Judy Miller positioning notwithstanding, it’s hard to imagine the paper’s explanation for its W.M.D. bungle—which was largely attributed to Ms. Miller’s bad sources—holding water if reporting from Mr. Risen was coming in at the same time that tended to contradict her accounts.

Certainly, his reporting on W.M.D. as it appears in State of War does just that.

Call him the Anti-Woodward: Though the Washington Post reporter made famous in the Watergate scandal received information about Plamegate, he kept it from his editors. But Mr. Risen, according to several sources at The Times, couldn’t get his material into the paper fast enough. It’s impossible to tell what material Mr. Risen had on W.M.D. while working the national-security beat in 2002 and 2003. Either way, however, the material he has gathered for this book, while keeping his reporting position at The Times, is some stunning stuff.

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Let the Man Say His Piece

I believe in this case I will just yield the floor (screen) to the editorial writer from the National Review, admittedly not a periodical I generally have much appetite for (dangling prepositions are here to stay).

It’s the Republicans, stupid

Republicans are looking for "their" John McCain. The popular Arizona maverick is already a Republican, of course. But the GOP needs a McCain in the "Keating Five" sense. Back in 1990, Senate Democrats roped McCain into the scandal over savings and loan kingpin Charles Keating on tenuous grounds, just so not all the senators involved would be Democrats.

The GOP now craves such bipartisan cover in the Jack Abramoff scandal. Republicans trumpet every Democratic connection to Abramoff in the hope that something resonates. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.), took more than $60,000 from Abramoff clients! North Dakota Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan used Abramoff's skybox! It is true that any Washington influence peddler is going to spread cash and favors as widely as possible, and 210 members of Congress have received Abramoff-connected dollars. But this is, in its essence, a Republican scandal, and any attempt to portray it otherwise is a misdirection.

Abramoff is a Republican who worked closely with two of the country's most prominent conservative activists, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed. Top aides to the most important Republican in Congress, Tom DeLay (R., Tex.) were party to his sleazy schemes. The only people referred to directly in Abramoff's recent plea agreement are a Republican congressmen and two former Republican congressional aides. The GOP members can make a case that the scandal reflects more the way Washington works than the unique perfidy of their party, but even this is self-defeating, since Republicans run Washington.

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The other problem is that Washington makes obscure decisions that enrich small groups of people. Most everyone in Washington supports making these decisions because it increases his or her power. But if Congress really wants to lessen the malign influence of lobbyists, it should reform the inherently corruptible process whereby the Interior Department recognizes new Native American tribes so they can mint money by opening casinos, and end the practice of "earmarking" federal dollars for local and special-interest projects. It's no accident that Abramoff saw the business potential in both of these processes.

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Owls vs. Weyerhaeuser, Simpson, Plum, et al.: Which Side Are You On??

Talk about a mismatch. On one side we've got some of the most merciless resource-exploiting corporations in North America. These folks are lifetime-subscribers to the corporate mania for profit and less and less of anything resembling real competition since they probably share the same shameless "lobbyists" (a term that of course in this age of the Republican Party/DeLay "K-Street Project" stands for what amounts to a government bought and owned by money, no longer representing actual citizens). I have to wonder whether they might be subject to the "LTDs" (my personal coinage of this moment - lobbyist-transmitted disease) that scum like Abramoff have been spreading. Hard to believe that those Corporations have all refrained from the sort of influence-peddling and criminality that seem to have become routine for the Republicans.

This is all of course part of the obvious program in the Bad Washington of shredding any actual control ("regulation") of industry. On the other side we have genetic diversity, the Spotted Owl, innumerable other species that individually are at risk of extinction in the interests of the Big Buck, and, in general, the whole concept of wild space or anything else that might get in the way of profits.

Sometimes the victories seem tiny, but they still IMO merit celebration.
U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman deserves an enthusiastic atta-judge here:

SEATTLE (AP) - A federal judge who struck down a Bush administration decision to ease logging restrictions last summer issued an injunction Monday blocking as many as 144 timber sales in three states.

The sales in Washington, Oregon and northern California had been approved under the administration's decision to stop requiring that the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management look for and protect rare plants and animals before logging on 5.5 million acres covered by the 1994 Northwest Forest Plan.

The Bush administration eliminated the so-called ``survey and manage'' rule in spring 2004 as part of a legal settlement with the timber industry. Environmental groups sued over the decision, arguing that it was arbitrary and that the government had not evaluated what the impact would be on protected species such as the great gray owl.

Last August, U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman agreed, striking down the new rule. At the time, she did not say whether she would allow the 144 timber sales - approved since the rule's adoption - to proceed. About half of those sales included old-growth logging.

In her decision Monday, she reinstated the survey-and-manage rule, and made clear that no timber sales would proceed unless they met that standard.

The potential harm to the approximately 300 species protected by the old rule outweighed the potential harm to the government, which put its projected economic loss from stopping the timber sales at $2.7 million. The judge noted, as the environmental groups had, that the court should not be concerned about any money the government stood to make by breaking the law.

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