Chris Boese's Weblog

High Noon at the DC Corral

Link: U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to strike down D.C. handgun ban - Los Angeles Times.

It looks like the conservative supreme court is going to turn handguns loose into that wild west that is the rest of the District of Columbia.

The federal government sits deeply embedded in a massive slum (perhaps not as bad now as it once was), but the Supremes are ready to operate under the assumption that any person you happen to be walking up to is armed. Kinda makes you think they aren't very interested in self-preservation, doesn't it?

What's next? Will D.C. go the way of Florida, where folks are allowed to pack heat in shopping malls, schools, public buildings? That should certainly be interesting.

On one hand, you have all these oppressive encroachments on civil liberties with terrorist watch lists, shakedowns, pat-downs, no-go zones around VIPs and quasi-VIPs, which essentially make the Federal part of D.C. the equivalent of the Baghdad Green Zone for rich people.

And once the Supreme Court gets through with the Second Amendment, the rest of D.C. will also start to resemble the non-Green Zone part of Baghdad as well!

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-scotus19mar19,0,2685078.story

From the Los Angeles Times

U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to strike down D.C. handgun ban

Several justices indicate they believe the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution protects individual rights.

           By David G. Savage
           Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

        10:48 AM PDT, March 18, 2008

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court justices, hearing a historic argument on the meaning of the 2nd Amendment, signaled they are likely to strike down a handgun ban in the District of Columbia and rule that homeowners have a right to keep a gun for self-defense.

But if the oral arguments are any guide, the outcome will not be unanimous. Several justices said they believed the 2nd Amendment was intended to protect the state's right to maintain a "well-regulated militia," not to give gun rights to individuals.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who is the swing vote in close cases, said he believed the 2nd Amendment did more than bolster the state militia. "In my view, there is a general right to bear arms" that goes beyond serving in the militia, Kennedy said.

Most Americans believe the 2nd Amendment protects the right of law-abiding persons to "keep and bear arms." But the legal meaning of this provision remains in doubt. The high court has never invoked this right to strike down a gun law nor has it ruled that it protects a personal right to own a gun.

Justice Antonin Scalia, like Kennedy, described the 2nd Amendment as protecting individual guns. Justice Clarence Thomas is likely to join with them. And Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said they believed the city council in Washington, D.C., went too far by prohibiting homeowners from having handguns.

"Why is that a reasonable regulation?" Roberts asked the lawyer defending the city's law.

Walter Dellinger, arguing for the city, said the framers of the Constitution were concerned about protecting the right of the people to defend the state or the community. The 2nd Amendment creates "a right to participate in the common defense," he said.

The amendment says: "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

Dellinger also argued that the phrase "bear arms" was a military term. He said the Washington law should be upheld because it allows homeowners to have a disassembled rifle or shotgun at home, even while it bans small handguns.

It was clear several justices agreed with this view.

Justice John Paul Stevens noted that Congress and all but two states had focused the "right to keep and bear arms" on the militia, not on personal self-defense. It was seen "as the right to keep and bear arms for the common defense," he said.

But the court's liberal bloc did not appear to have the votes to uphold the law.

[...]

               

Did Scott McClellan accomplish what Patrick Fitzgerald couldn't?

Link: The Nation: Scott McClellan = John Dean?.

Link: Did Bush ask Scott McClellan to lie -- or didn't he? | Salon.

Reuters/Jason Reed

White House press secretary Scott McClellan waves to reporters after his final daily briefing in Washington May 5, 2006.

Here is something I never could have predicted, and logically, Valerie Plame and former Ambassador Joe Wilson are likely thankful for it, because material in the new book by the former White House spokesperson, Scott McClellan, appears to reveal the smoking gun that apparently never came out in Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury. It is sure to help in their civil suit against Scooter Libby and Karl Rove.

Amazing, isn't it? But as John Nichols points out in The Nation below, John Dean was (and continues to be, imho) amazing in much the same way, an unlikely source of so much insight, yet the kind of source that restores your faith in people of principle, and people who remain unwilling to allow their principles to be compromised, even in the face of persuasion by very powerful forces, forces for whom ethical compromise and corruption appear to be more of a mantra than an expedient exception.

I was saying something on a similar topic to a friend recently.  The idea I had (which is neither new nor original, but it just happened to strike me at the time) is this:

We learn nearly everything we need to know about a person when we learn her or his price.

By price, I don't necessarily mean money, but rather, the THING, X, that a person is willing to trade or compromise her or his principles or beliefs in order to get it.

That thing, in other words, is each individual person's 30 pieces of silver. The point at which each of us effectively will "sell out."

Each person's individual Judas Price.

When I was younger, I tended to believe only the worst people had a "Judas Price." As I have gotten older and have seen more behind-the-scenes machinations, have gotten closer to the negotiations of power, what I am astonished to learn, or perhaps in my cynicism am starting to believe, is that every person has a "Judas Price;" it's just a matter of reaching it.

So Scott McClellan and perhaps John Dean publicly have revealed where they haven't hit their Judas Price (well, except perhaps to Nixon, or Bush, because were apparently  betrayed by people who put principle ahead of loyalty to them, or by people who were more loyal to some other idea other than backing their bosses with brains unengaged).

But by seeing where these people did not compromise, it shines an even brighter light on the Judas Price of those around them, PARTICULARLY those who eagerly line up to trade off any principle of integrity for Judas Prices that are so very very low.

Yeah, call me naive, but it's the low level of so many people's Judas Prices that still just takes my breath away. And I don't just mean national politicians or sports figures or celebrities. I mean every workplace I've ever been in, every school.

Some people are just corrupted so very easily. Are they even aware that they are negotiating their Judas Price every time they do it? Making Ye Olde Faustian Bargain?

Here's a couple of articles below on what Scott McClellan reveals (and perhaps is now taking back, for a price!) in his new book. For all the time I spent watching him dance in those White House pressers, holding my nose, I'm starting to feel a little more charitable toward the guy who seemed so terribly over his head, so wooden at times as he seemed to struggle with it, struggled more with it than, say, Ari Fleisher, or that new perfectly lighted and hair-styled woman who is the White House spokesperson now (she scares me, her lighting is just so perfect as she utters those absurd things. Geez, bring me back to the old days of Victoria Clark at the Pentagon. She was at least interesting.)

Link: The Nation: Scott McClellan = John Dean? By John Nichols.

Posted 11/21/2007 @ 12:33pm

Scott McClellan = John Dean?

Scott McClellan's admission that he unintentionally made false statements denying the involvement of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby in the Bush-Cheney administration's plot to discredit former Ambassador Joe Wilson, along with his revelation that Vice President Cheney and President Bush were among those who provided him with the misinformation, sets the former White House press secretary as John Dean to George Bush's Richard Nixon.

It was Dean willingness to reveal the details of what described as "a cancer" on the Nixon presidency that served as a critical turning point in the struggle by a previous Congress to hold the 37th president to account.

Now, McClellan has offered what any honest observer must recognize as the stuff of a similarly significant breakthrough.

[...]

What McClellan has revealed, in a section from an upcoming book on his tenure in the Bush-Cheney White House, is a stunning indictment of the president and the vice president. The former press secretary is confirming that Bush and Cheney not only knew that Rove, the administration's political czar, and Libby, who served as Cheney's top aide, were involved in the scheme to attack Wilson's credibility -- by outing the former ambassador's wife, Valerie Plame, as a Central Intelligence Agency analyst -- but that the president and vice president actively engaged in efforts to prevent the truth from coming out.

"The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby," writes McClellan in an excerpt from his book, What Happened, which is to be published next April by Public Affairs.

"There was one problem," the long-time Bush aide continues. "It was not true. I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration "were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President's chief of staff, and the president himself."

Much has been made about the fact that outing Plame as a CIA operative was a felony, since knowingly revealing the identity of an intelligence asset is illegal. And much will be made about the fact that McClellan's statement links Bush and Cheney to the cover-up of illegal activities and the obstruction of justice, acts that are themselves felonies.

But it is important to recognize that a bigger issue is at stake. If the president and vice president knowingly participated in a scheme to attack a critic of their administration -- Wilson had revealed that the White House had been informed that arguments Bush and Cheney used for attacking Iraq were ungrounded -- they have committed a distinct sort of offense that the House Judiciary Committee has already determined to be grounds for impeachment.

In the summer of 1974, Democrats and Republicans on the committee voted overwhelmingly to recommend the impeachment of President Richard Nixon for having "repeatedly engaged in conduct violating the constitutional rights of citizens, impairing the due and proper administration of justice and the conduct of lawful inquiries, or contravening the laws governing agencies of the executive branch and the purposed of these agencies."

That second article of impeachment against Nixon detailed the president's involvement in schemes to use the power of his position to attack political critics and then to cover up for those attacks.

[...]

As former Common Cause President Chellie Pingree notes with regard to Bush, "The president promised, way back in 2003, that anyone in his administration who took part in the leak of Plame's name would be fired. He neglected to mention that, according to McClellan, he was one of those people. And needless to say, he didn't fire himself. Instead, he fired no one, stonewalled the press and the federal prosecutor in charge of the case, and lied through his teeth."

Pingree, a savvy government watchdog who is bidding for an open House seat representing her native Maine, argues that the Judiciary Committee must subpoena McClellan as part of a renewed investigation of the Wilson case.

She is right about that.

She is right, as well, when she concludes that, if what McClellan says is true "it will call into question the legitimacy of the entire administration. And we may see a changing of the guard at the White House sooner than expected."

[...]

Link: Did Bush ask Scott McClellan to lie -- or didn't he? | Salon.

Did Bush ask Scott McClellan to lie -- or didn't he?

Former press secretary Scott McClellan says someone in the Bush administration made him spread "false information" about Plame-gate to the press. Time for Congress to ask tough questions.

Editor's note: This article has been updated since it was first published, based on McClellan's publisher's statement here that McClellan's book will not say that Bush knowingly misled him about the Plame leak.

By Joe Conason

Nov. 21, 2007 | Scott McClellan, the former Bush press secretary famed for his robotic stylings, repetitive sophistry and rejection of candor, has at last turned on the powerful men who made him. Evidently he now claims to have grown weary of playing the patsy for their crimes and misdemeanors.

In a short, tantalizing excerpt from his forthcoming memoir posted on the Web site of Public Affairs Press, McClellan complains that he was duped into misleading the public

[...]

McClellan is not the first insider to try to escape disgrace by expressing disappointment, and presumably he won't be the last. All such tittle-tattle comes too late to restore the honor of the confessors or repair the damage done. His book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and What's Wrong With Washington," proffers advice on government and politics that we probably can live without.

By press time today, he had called his own probity into question again, in fact, when his publisher partially retracted the incriminating excerpt in an interview with Bloomberg News. According to Peter Osnos of Public Affairs, McClellan didn't mean to say that Bush deliberately lied to him about Libby's and Rove's involvement in the Plame leak.

"[Bush] told him something that wasn't true, but the president didn't know it wasn't true," said Osnos. "The president told him what he thought to be the case." How McClellan knows what Bush knew at that time -- let alone how Osnos knows -- remains to be explained. (Perhaps the former press secretary would speak more clearly and less cutely under oath, as his predecessor did in the Plame grand jury.)

But despite this apparent stunt, McClellan's recollections have value because he reminds us of important business that Congress has yet to complete: namely, a full investigation of what Bush and Cheney knew about the outing of Plame, a veteran operative working to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, and whether they indeed ordered that reckless act.

[...]

Yet Libby took the fall, leaving Fitzgerald bereft of sufficient evidence to prosecute the crime's suspected mastermind. After Libby was convicted and the president commuted his prison sentence, Bush declared that the case had "run its course" and that he no longer felt bound to find out what his subordinates had done and punish them, as he had initially promised.

The Libby commutation silenced the only potential stool pigeon who could implicate his bosses. Rove resigned without penalty, and Cheney sits in his office, mulling an attack on Iran. The Washington press corps, which had brought so little investigative energy to bear on the Plame case (except to speculate idly and stupidly about whether she was actually a covert officer), accepted Bush's facile closure. So did most members of the new Democratic Congress.

But the damning questions remain unanswered.

Those questions date back to McClellan's first remarks on the subject, when he famously said that the president would dismiss any official determined to be responsible for leaking Plame's identity. "If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration. There's been nothing, absolutely nothing, brought to our attention to suggest any White House involvement." Sworn testimony eventually proved that the leakers included Libby, Rove, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, and McClellan's predecessor, former press secretary Ari Fleischer. The same raft of evidence also indicated that Cheney orchestrated Libby's leak to New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

Not only did Cheney oversee the activities of his chief of staff, but he actually ordered McClellan to "clear" Libby in a press briefing on the case. A note in Cheney's own handwriting, explaining why he insisted that the White House press staff should defend Libby just as vigorously as Rove, was introduced as an exhibit at trial.

And that note, echoed in the excerpt from McClellan's book, implicated Bush in the coverup.

Cheney's furious scribbling said, "not going to protect one staffer + sacrifice the guy this Pres. asked to stick his head in the meat grinder because of the incompetence of others." The allusion to "incompetence" was a nasty dig at Rove, whom the vice president evidently blamed for the clumsy execution of their conspiracy. Though Cheney had crossed out the words "this Pres." and replaced them with the phrase "that was," his reference to Bush was both legible and incriminating.

What did Cheney mean when he wrote those words? Why did he write that "this Pres." had asked Libby to "stick his head in the meat grinder"? What did Bush know about the extent of the vice president's involvement? When did he discover what Cheney, Libby, Rove and Fleischer had done? Or was he in on the scheme from the beginning?

[...]

 

Let us consider Iraq and the president who cried "wolf!"

Sy Hersh with more required reading, the kind of thing should just give all thinking people chills.

Let's hit the high points. Bold emphasis below is mine.

Link: Annals of National Security: Shifting Targets: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker.

Annals of National Security

Shifting Targets

The Administration’s plan for Iran.

by Seymour M. Hersh   October 8, 2007

In a series of public statements in recent months, President Bush and members of his Administration have redefined the war in Iraq, to an increasing degree, as a strategic battle between the United States and Iran. “Shia extremists, backed by Iran, are training Iraqis to carry out attacks on our forces and the Iraqi people,” Bush told the national convention of the American Legion in August. “The attacks on our bases and our troops by Iranian-supplied munitions have increased. . . . The Iranian regime must halt these actions. And, until it does, I will take actions necessary to protect our troops.” He then concluded, to applause, “I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran’s murderous activities.”                                                                                 

[Bush is talking about Shia extremists? Like he knows anything about Shia extremists? The guy didn't even know the difference between Shia and Sunni before he went to war against Iraq! That embarrassing truth ought to keep that man from ever uttering the word "Shia" or "Sunni" ever again in this life.

You know, they must have been holed up for their August vacation hatching this brilliant PR offensive, waiting until after August, because, according to Andy Card, "When you’re rolling out a new product onto the market, you don’t do it in August—you wait until September."]

The President’s position, and its corollary—that, if many of America’s problems in Iraq are the responsibility of Tehran, then the solution to them is to confront the Iranians—have taken firm hold in the Administration. This summer, the White House, pushed by the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney, requested that the Joint Chiefs of Staff redraw long-standing plans for a possible attack on Iran, according to former officials and government consultants.

[I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that there is "suddenly" a new head to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (General Peter Pace is out... too close to Rummy to be linked to a PR campaign that they want to be met with more than outright guffaws).]

The focus of the plans had been a broad bombing attack, with targets including Iran’s known and suspected nuclear facilities and other military and infrastructure sites. Now the emphasis is on “surgical” strikes on Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities in Tehran and elsewhere, which, the Administration claims, have been the source of attacks on Americans in Iraq. What had been presented primarily as a counter-proliferation mission has been reconceived as counterterrorism.

The shift in targeting reflects three developments. First, the President and his senior advisers have concluded that their campaign to convince the American public that Iran poses an imminent nuclear threat has failed (unlike a similar campaign before the Iraq war), and that as a result there is not enough popular support for a major bombing campaign. The second development is that the White House has come to terms, in private, with the general consensus of the American intelligence community that Iran is at least five years away from obtaining a bomb. And, finally, there has been a growing recognition in Washington and throughout the Middle East that Iran is emerging as the geopolitical winner of the war in Iraq.

During a secure videoconference that took place early this summer, the President told Ryan Crocker, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, that he was thinking of hitting Iranian targets across the border and that the British “were on board.” At that point, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice interjected that there was a need to proceed carefully, because of the ongoing diplomatic track. Bush ended by instructing Crocker to tell Iran to stop interfering in Iraq or it would face American retribution.

At a White House meeting with Cheney this summer, according to a former senior intelligence official, it was agreed that, if limited strikes on Iran were carried out, the Administration could fend off criticism by arguing that they were a defensive action to save soldiers in Iraq. If Democrats objected, the Administration could say, “Bill Clinton did the same thing; he conducted limited strikes in Afghanistan, the Sudan, and in Baghdad to protect American lives.” The former intelligence official added, “There is a desperate effort by Cheney et al. to bring military action to Iran as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the politicians are saying, ‘You can’t do it, because every Republican is going to be defeated, and we’re only one fact from going over the cliff in Iraq.’ But Cheney doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the Republican worries, and neither does the President.”

[...]

[You know, this should give every Republican candidate for office out there deep and meaningful pause, mid-goose-step, over where their loyalties lie. The Bush administration sees them all as expendable.

I don't know about you, but that speaks volumes about the "scorched earth" GOP tactics undertaken at the talking points direction of the White House the past 7 years. While observing those tactics myself over the years, I thought, these idiots, they either think the world is going to end before the end of Bush's run of office, or they FULLY expect the GOP to NEVER be out of power again.

My mistake was thinking that they were REPUBLICAN scorched earth politics. The realpolitic here knows no party loyalty, yet demands absolute authority over all "followers," the fanatical true believers marching behind the Machiavellis in the White House.

That the White House is ready to scorch the earth of its own party just shows the exact same strategy turned inward, and that's the part that speaks volumes. It says: THE WHITE HOUSE SEES ITSELF AS PERMANENTLY IN POWER. A PARTY UNTO ITSELF.

Consider that idea for a moment. This isn't just Caesar getting ready to cross the Rubicon or nuke Foggy Bottom. Sure, I can invoke Godwin's Law and call Iran Poland to Iraq's Czechoslovakia. I don't think either is that far off base.

But it is more than a lame duck administration which jettisons its own party and continues to act with the same power-mongering, arrogance, and bullying, as if its power is permanent, and will be retained in perpetuity. What does the White House, and Cheney's office in particular, know that we don't know?

Because by their own behavior, it's a poor lie, a pitifully transparent lie, as pathetic as their stupid PR campaigns launched in September, ham-handed, graceless, only viable because party line threats force spineless news networks to repeat them, endlessly, as talking points.

Surely we can see underneath the PR drumbeats for war against Iran for what they really are: a way to up the ante, consolidate power in an imperial permanent war president, who will not become a permanent war president so much as a holder of an office for those who control him as war footing and posturing controls the presidential campaigns all next year, war news carefully timed to bump opposition and/or embarrassing news out of the headlines through the entire electoral season.

And if the polls are looking dim, well, there can always be a declaration of martial law. That's what I see through the transparency. A scorched earth approach that intends to never be out of power. It will hold on to power legitimately as long as it can, and if it looks like these tin horn dictators will be legitimately turned out of power, "something" will "happen" to prevent that from ever happening, to prevent the election from taking place.

I know I'm not the only one thinking this unthinkable thing. These folks may not leave the White House willingly, except under police escort. I hope to god I am wrong, for all our sakes.

Read the NYTimes for free!

Link: Times to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Web Site - New York Times.

Long-awaited, one of the most ridiculous decisions in the history of journalism has been reversed! I've ding-donged about the upcoming death of TimeSelect already, so I'll avoid too much gloating and instead focus on why the decision was so stupid and obviously ill-fated, to lock up a significant portion of the site, its "newspaper of record" historical archives, and influential stable of op-ed columnists, including two, Frank Rich and Paul Krugman, that this sorry excuse for a democracy can LITERALLY not be without.

What the Times essentially did was remove itself from the public agora, the forum, the space where democracy is deliberated, by trying to create a walled-garden of commodities to literally spit in the face of an evolving online "public square" or "commons."

The generica of strip mall and franchise nation has long gobbled up most of the physical public squares or commons, except for old venerated ones, like the Boston Commons. Levitown and the culture of the automobile has created a beast, the Burbs, to isolate people from more traditional senses of community, what Hannah Arendt would call our "civil society," or our less self-consciously active participation in our own communities, rather than staring into the passively-programmed sonambulism, the television.

I say less self-consciously active because sure, many people strive and work very hard at being active in their communities, and good for them. There was a time where just being alive and breathing meant you participated in your community, without having to drag yourself away from the TV to do it, rather than having to be guilted into making something for the bake sale or to participate in clean-up volunteer day at your local park.

I know people like to lump together time spent staring at the boob tube with time spent online, but I would argue that those spaces demand quantitatively different activities from our brains, the kinds of things the interactive version of the New York Times challenges us to do all the time, to talk back, argue, blog, Digg, bookmark, and so on. Yaddah yaddah, and let's all go read Michel de Certeau, "The Practice of Everyday Life," to see how ordinary people seize the day and control their own means of production.

Meanwhile, this is me making fun of what the Times has to say about its "taking down that firewall!"

Link: Times to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Web Site - New York Times.

Times to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Web Site

 

By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

Published: September 18, 2007

 

The New York Times will stop charging for access to parts of its Web site, effective at midnight  tonight.

The move comes two years to the day after The Times began the subscription program, TimesSelect, which has charged $49.95 a year, or $7.95 a month, for online access to the work of its columnists and to the newspaper’s archives. TimesSelect has been free to print subscribers to The Times and to some students and educators.

In addition to opening the entire site to all readers, The Times will also make available its archives from 1987 to the present without charge, as well as those from 1851 to 1922, which are in the public domain. There will be charges for some material from the period 1923 to 1986, and some will be free.

The Times said the project had met expectations, drawing 227,000 paying subscribers — out of 787,000 over all — and generating about $10 million a year in revenue.

“But our projections for growth on that paid subscriber base were low, compared to the growth of online advertising,” said Vivian L. Schiller, senior vice president and general manager of the site, NYTimes.com.

What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYtimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.

“What wasn’t anticipated was the explosion in how much of our traffic would be generated by Google, by Yahoo and some others,” Ms. Schiller said.

[You know, just to belabor the point, but y'all may have not anticipated it, but if you had listened to the chorus of netizens AND new media theorists online, you would have found 80-90 percent of the people anticipating that explosion.

The New York Times may not have anticipated it, but just as MANY MANY people saw quite clearly the fiasco the US invasion of Iraq was to become, long before the ill-fated invasion ever began, a person really didn't have to rent a clue-by-four to know that building a walled garden in the open range of the public online agora would be a disaster, would effectively MUZZLE the newspaper's OWN VOICE.

It boggles the mind, how, in a world, an Information/Knowledge-based society where rising influence (whether in bits, wampum, poker chips, what-have-you) is worth more than any devaluing currencies, that a newspaper that wants to be essentially the nation's newspaper of record would deliberately undermine its own influence.

It would be like if you had nice sharp teeth, and you said, "You know what? These teeth are over-rated and get in the way of my big fat lolling tongue. I think I'm just going to pull these teeth out and de-fang myself. Yeah, that ought to increase my power and influence in the world. I ought to be able to reach more people, larger audiences that way."]

The Times’s site has about 13 million unique visitors each month, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, far more than any other newspaper site. Ms. Schiller would not say how much increased Web traffic the paper expects by eliminating the charges, or how much additional ad revenue the move was expected to generate.

Those who have paid in advance for access to TimesSelect will be reimbursed on a prorated basis.

Colby Atwood, president of Borrell Associates, a media research firm, said that there have always been reasons to question the pay model for news sites, and that doubts have grown along with Web traffic and online ad revenue.

“The business model for advertising revenue, versus subscriber revenue, is so much more attractive,” he said. “The hybrid model has some potential, but in the long run, the advertising side will dominate.”

[...]

Many readers lamented their loss of access to the work of the 23 news and opinion columnists of The Times — as did some of the columnists themselves. Some of those writers have such ardent followings that even with access restricted, their work often appeared on the lists of the most e-mailed articles.

[...]

Is the Justice Department's long national nightmare over?

I just couldn't go with another "Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead" headline, much as I wanted to.

Let me ask, were you ever so happy to see someone go?

I could be cynical and suggest that actually watching Gonzales twist in the wind, after having perjured himself before Congress (I first called it here), and then after subsequent witnesses failed to back up his concocted stories before Congress, so that he was literally dancing around on the thinnest of thin ice, had its entertainment value.

But I can't be entertained by the travesties of justice visited on US society because of Gonzales, through the politicization of the Justice Department, through the butt-wiping with the Constitution visited upon us all through the so-called "Patriot Act," and through the pathetic rationalization of torture by agents of the US government, both military and spook-based.

Much as his resignation stops some of the braying over how badly he screwed up the country (I hope it doesn't stop too much of it), far better that the housecleaning at the Justice Department begin! Here's to hoping the Senate Democrats have the guts to demand it, which the House can continue to hold Gonzales' feet to the fire..

Link: Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales Resigns - The New York Times - Politics - Washington - New York Times.

Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales Resigns

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales delivered a statement on his resignation on Monday at the Justice Department.

By STEVEN LEE MYERS and PHILIP SHENON

Published: August 27, 2007

 

WACO, Tex., Aug. 27 — Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, whose tenure has been marred by controversy and accusations of perjury before Congress, announced his resignation in Washington today, declaring that he had “lived the American dream” by being able to lead the Justice Department.

Mr. Gonzales, who had rebuffed calls for his resignation for months, submitted it to President Bush by telephone on Friday, a senior administration official said. There had been rumblings over the weekend that Mr. Gonzales’s departure was imminent, although the White House sought to quell the rumors.

[...]

Mr. Bush has not yet chosen a replacement but will not leave the position open long, the senior administration official said early this morning. Among those being mentioned as a possible successor were Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security who is a former federal prosecutor, assistant attorney general and federal judge; Christopher Cox, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission; and Larry D. Thompson, a former deputy attorney general who is now senior vice president and general counsel of PepsiCo Inc.

Mr. Bush repeatedly stood by Mr. Gonzales, an old friend and colleague from Texas, even as Mr. Gonzales faced increasing scrutiny for his leadership of the Justice Department over issues including his role in the dismissals of nine United States attorneys late last year and whether he testified truthfully about the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs.

[...]

But Democrats cheered Mr. Gonzales’s departure. “Alberto Gonzales was never the right man for this job,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader. “He lacked independence, he lacked judgment, and he lacked the spine to say ‘no’ to Karl Rove.”

Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who sits on the Judiciary Committee and has been calling for Mr. Gonzales’s resignation for months, said this morning: “It has been a long and difficult struggle, but at last the attorney general has done the right thing and stepped down. For the previous six months, the Justice Department has been virtually nonfunctional, and desperately needs new leadership.”

Senator Schumer said that “Democrats will not obstruct or impede a nominee who we are confident will put the rule of law above political considerations.”

Another Democrat on the Judiciary Committee who has been highly critical of Mr. Gonzales, Senator Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, said the next attorney general must be a person whose first loyalty is “to the law, not the president.”

[...]

 

Get ready for the new government-sponsored high colonics

The New York Times has more details about what we can expect of the federal government's new unsupervised surveillance powers, at least until this version of the recently passed legislation expires. At least I do think it still expires in six months. God, I hope so.

Either that or the next administration had better start cleaning house on this kind of crap from the instant it takes office... if it expects to get elected in the first place, that is. (emphasis below is mine)

Link: Concern Over Wider Spying Under New Law - New York Times.

Concern Over Wider Spying Under New Law

By JAMES RISEN  and ERIC LICHTBLAU

Published: August 19, 2007

WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 — Broad new surveillance powers approved by Congress this month could allow the Bush administration to conduct spy operations that go well beyond wiretapping to include — without court approval — certain types of physical searches on American soil and the collection of Americans’ business records, Democratic Congressional officials and other experts said.

Administration officials acknowledged that they had heard such concerns from Democrats in Congress recently, and that there was a continuing debate over the meaning of the legislative language. But they said the Democrats were simply raising theoretical questions based on a harsh interpretation of the legislation.

They also emphasized that there would be strict rules in place to minimize the extent to which Americans would be caught up in the surveillance.

The dispute illustrates how lawmakers, in a frenetic, end-of-session scramble, passed legislation they may not have fully understood and may have given the administration more surveillance powers than it sought.

It also offers a case study in how changing a few words in a complex piece of legislation has the potential to fundamentally alter the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a landmark national security law. The new legislation is set to expire in less than six months; two weeks after it was signed into law, there is still heated debate over how much power Congress gave to the president.

“This may give the administration even more authority than people thought,” said David Kris, a former senior Justice Department lawyer in the Bush and Clinton administrations and a co-author of “National Security Investigation and Prosecutions,” a new book on surveillance law.

Several legal experts said that by redefining the meaning of “electronic surveillance,” the new law narrows the types of communications covered in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, by indirectly giving the government the power to use intelligence collection methods far beyond wiretapping that previously required court approval if conducted inside the United States.

These new powers include the collection of business records, physical searches and so-called “trap and trace” operations, analyzing specific calling patterns.

[...]

It is possible that some of the changes were the unintended consequences of the rushed legislative process just before this month’s Congressional recess, rather than a purposeful effort by the administration to enhance its ability to spy on Americans.

“We did not cover ourselves in glory,” said one Democratic aide, referring to how the bill was compiled.

[...]

Some civil rights advocates said they suspected that the administration made the language of the bill intentionally vague to allow it even broader discretion over wiretapping decisions. Whether intentional or not, the end result — according to top Democratic aides and other experts on national security law — is that the legislation may grant the government the right to collect a range of information on American citizens inside the United States without warrants, as long as the administration asserts that the spying concerns the monitoring of a person believed to be overseas.

[...]

“This shows why it is so risky to change the law by changing the definition” of something as basic as the meaning of electronic surveillance, said Suzanne Spaulding, a former Congressional staff member who is now a national security legal expert. “You end up with a broad range of consequences that you might not realize.”

The senior intelligence official acknowledged that Congressional staff members had raised concerns about the law in the meetings this week, and that ambiguities in the bill’s wording may have led to some confusion. “I’m sure there will be discussions about how and whether it should be fixed,” the official said.

[...]

The measure, which President Bush signed into law on Aug. 5, was written and pushed through both the House and Senate so quickly that few in Congress had time to absorb its full impact, some Congressional aides say.

Though many Democratic leaders opposed the final version of the legislation, they did not work forcefully to block its passage, largely out of fear that they would be criticized by President Bush and Republican leaders during the August recess as being soft on terrorism.

Yet Bush administration officials have already signaled that, in their view, the president retains his constitutional authority to do whatever it takes to protect the country, regardless of any action Congress takes. At a tense meeting last week with lawyers from a range of private groups active in the wiretapping issue, senior Justice Department officials refused to commit the administration to adhering to the limits laid out in the new legislation and left open the possibility that the president could once again use what they have said in other instances is his constitutional authority to act outside the regulations set by Congress.

At the meeting, Bruce Fein, a Justice Department lawyer in the Reagan administration, along with other critics of the legislation, pressed Justice Department officials repeatedly for an assurance that the administration considered itself bound by the restrictions imposed by Congress. The Justice Department, led by Ken Wainstein, the assistant attorney general for national security, refused to do so, according to three participants in the meeting. That stance angered Mr. Fein and others. It sent the message, Mr. Fein said in an interview, that the new legislation, though it is already broadly worded, “is just advisory. The president can still do whatever he wants to do. They have not changed their position that the president’s Article II powers trump any ability by Congress to regulate the collection of foreign intelligence.”

[God, this presumption makes me simply ill]

[...]

Mr. Bush issued a so-called signing statement about the legislation when he signed it into law, but the statement did not assert his presidential authority to override the legislative limits.

At the Justice Department session, critics of the legislation also complained to administration officials about the diminished role of the FISA court, which is limited to determining whether the procedures set up by the executive administration for intercepting foreign intelligence are “clearly erroneous” or not.

That limitation sets a high bar to set off any court intervention, argued Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, who also attended the Justice Department meeting.

“You’ve turned the court into a spectator,” Mr. Rotenberg said.

Definitive Christopher Hitchens Rant on Falwell

I have very little stomach for Christopher Hitchens anymore. While I don't mind people who piss me off, Hitchens fell into a non-reality-based sleep (or bender) for a while there, and the iconoclastic gadfly seems to wallow more incredulously in wildly irrational rants.

That said, maybe he was more sober or lucid than normal in the bit below, or not, as the case may be. Either way, it's a great epitaph for someone (Jerry Falwell) most of us will only want to remember in terms of the kind of devils we'd like to avoid in the future.

And Hitchens does skewer media culpability in the Falwell narrative so very well...

Here are some of my favorite bits, I want to preserve for posterity, until the next time Hitchens takes leave of his senses and pisses me off (I don't care that he's a darling again now, with his book out).

Link: Jerry Falwell, faith-based fraud. - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine.

fighting words: A wartime lexicon

Faith-Based Fraud

Jerry Falwell's foul rantings prove you can get away with anything if you have "Reverend" in front of your name.

By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Wednesday, May 16, 2007, at 12:46 PM ET

 The Rev. Jerry Falwell

 The discovery of the carcass of Jerry Falwell on the floor of an obscure office in Virginia has almost zero significance, except perhaps for two categories of the species labeled "credulous idiot." The first such category consists of those who expected Falwell (and themselves) to be bodily raptured out of the biosphere and assumed into the heavens, leaving pilotless planes and driverless trucks and taxis to crash with their innocent victims as collateral damage.

[...]

The second such category is of slightly more importance, because it consists of the editors, producers, publicists, and a host of other media riffraff who allowed Falwell to prove, almost every week, that there is no vileness that cannot be freely uttered by a man whose name is prefaced with the word Reverend. Try this: Call a TV station and tell them that you know the Antichrist is already on earth and is an adult Jewish male. See how far you get. Then try the same thing and add that you are the Rev. Jim-Bob Vermin. "Why, Reverend, come right on the show!" What a fool Don Imus was. If he had paid the paltry few bucks to make himself a certified clergyman, he could be jeering and sneering to the present hour.

Falwell went much further than his mad 1999 assertion about the Jewish Antichrist. In the time immediately following the assault by religious fascism on American civil society in September 2001, he used his regular indulgence on the airwaves to commit treason. Entirely exculpating the suicide-murderers, he asserted that their acts were a divine punishment of the United States. Again, I ask you to imagine how such a person would be treated if he were not supposedly a man of faith.

[...]

Seeking to deflect the charge of anti-Jewish prejudice, Falwell adopted the cause of the most thuggish and demented Israeli settlers, proclaiming that their occupation of the West Bank and Gaza was a holy matter and hoping that they might help to bring on Armageddon and the return of the Messiah. A detail in this ghastly narrative, as adepts of the "Left Behind" series will know, is that the return of the risen Christ will require the mass slaughter or mass conversion of all Jews. This consideration did not prevent Menachem Begin from awarding Falwell the Jabotinsky Centennial Medal in 1980 and has not inhibited other Israeli extremists from embracing him and his co-thinkers ever since. All bigots and frauds are brothers under the skin. Trying to interrupt the fiesta of piety on national television on the night of Falwell's death, I found myself waiting while Ralph Reed went all moist about the role of the departed in empowering "people of faith." Here was the hypocritical casino-based Christian who sought and received the kosher stamp from Jack Abramoff. Perfect.

Like many fanatical preachers, Falwell was especially disgusting in exuding an almost sexless personality while railing from dawn to dusk about the sex lives of others. His obsession with homosexuality was on a par with his lip-smacking evocations of hellfire.

[...]

The evil that he did will live after him. This is not just because of the wickedness that he actually preached, but because of the hole that he made in the "wall of separation" that ought to divide religion from politics. In his dingy racist past, Falwell attacked those churchmen who mixed the two worlds of faith and politics and called for civil rights. Then he realized that two could play at this game and learned to play it himself.

[...]

It's a shame that there is no hell for Falwell to go to, and it's extraordinary that not even such a scandalous career is enough to shake our dumb addiction to the "faith-based."

What's up with the L.A. Cops?

Did they think no media were present to report on brutality at an immigrant rights rally?  Or did they think that brutalizing the media as well would lead to good department PR?  And the bigger question is: What is Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa doing about all this? I mean, you'd think the police would be a bit more sensitive to these issues, with their boss, the first latino mayor of L.A. since 1872 (according to Wikipedia)? The dude was a labor organizer, and these rallies are all linked to May Day Labor rallies. What gives?

Hat's off to Telemundo and other L.A. media outlets, for sticking to this story and making sure it gets out.

Link: Police action on journalists at melee is assailed - Los Angeles Times.

Police action on journalists at melee is assailed

Some news outlets whose reporters and camera operators were hurt in melee mull legal claims against LAPD.

By Anna Gorman and Stuart Silverstein, Times Staff Writers
May 3, 2007

One day after several reporters and camera operators were injured while covering an altercation at an immigrant rights rally in MacArthur Park, news organizations condemned the Los Angeles Police Department for its use of batons and riot guns against members of the media, and some said they were considering legal options.

"We are sorry for what happened to our employees and find it unacceptable that they would be abused in that way when they were doing their job," said Alfredo Richard, spokesman for the Spanish-language network Telemundo, of the anchor and the reporter who were hurt during the evening rally.

Other members of the media who were injured included four employees of KVEA-TV Channel 52, a KTTV-TV Channel 11 news reporter who suffered a minor shoulder injury, a camerawoman who has a broken wrist and a reporter for KPCC-FM (89.3) who was bruised by a police baton.

"I was dumbfounded," said the KPCC reporter, Patricia Nazario. "I've covered riots. I've covered chaos. I was never hit or struck or humiliated the way the LAPD violated me yesterday."

Nazario said she was walking away from riot police when she was hit in the back.

Wearing a press pass and holding a microphone, she turned around and told the officer, "Why did you hit me? I'm moving. I'm a reporter," Nazario recalled.

Then the officer hit her on the left leg, she said, knocking her to the ground and sending her cellphone flying.

"I was shocked, trying to scramble to my feet," she said. "At that point, I just started crying…. I just felt totally vulnerable."

Pedro Sevcec was anchoring the evening news for Telemundo when he saw the riot police moving slowly toward the news crews.

A few dozen people had gathered to watch Sevcec do his live broadcast.

"The next thing I heard was the shotguns," he said.

Police knocked over monitors and lights and hit reporters and camera operators with batons, he said.

Sevcec said police hit him three times and pointed a riot gun at his face before pushing him out of the park.

An emergency anchor in Miami took over the broadcast.

"It was so ridiculous," Sevcec said. "They know what a TV camera is. This is not a secret weapon."

Telemundo reporter Carlos Botifoll said he was hit by a baton as he was waiting to go live on the broadcast.

He was carrying a microphone and standing in front of a camera.

"We were obviously reporters," he said. "There could not have been any doubt whatsoever."

Police Chief William J. Bratton, who promised an investigation, said at a news conference Wednesday that a key part of the inquiry into the officers' actions would focus on why they used force against members of the media.

"We should never be engaged in attacking anyone in the media," Bratton said.

[...]

Marc Cooper, associate director of the USC Annenberg Institute for Justice in Journalism, said the video he viewed of the clash led him to believe that the use of force by police was "unjustifiable and excessive."

"From what I saw, it just seemed gratuitous to go after the reporters," Cooper said. "They weren't really in the way, they didn't really pose a threat and, of course, they were trying to do their job."

[...]

Is what Senator Durbin did criminal?

I wonder. If it isn't (and for others who did the same thing) it should be. At the very least, they have a lot of blood on their hands, Iraqi and American.

Link: Democracy Now! | Headlines for May 1, 2007.

Sen. Durbin: I Knew the Public Was Being Misled into the Iraq War

In Washington, the second highest ranking Democrat in the Senate, Majority whip Richard Durbin of Illinois, has admitted that he knew in 2003 that the American public was being misled into the Iraq war but remained silent. Durbin said last week "I was angry about it. [But] frankly, I couldn't do much about it because, in the intelligence committee, we are sworn to secrecy." Durbin went on to say "We can't walk outside the door and say the statement made yesterday by the White House is in direct contradiction to classified information that is being given to this Congress."

Link: Durbin kept silent on prewar knowledge�-Nation/Politics | The Washington Times, America's Newspaper.

Durbin kept silent on prewar knowledge

By Sean Lengell
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
April 27, 2007  

The Senate's No. 2 Democrat says he knew that the American public was being misled into the Iraq war but remained silent because he was sworn to secrecy as a member of the intelligence committee.

"The information we had in the intelligence committee was not the same information being given to the American people. I couldn't believe it," Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, said Wednesday when talking on the Senate floor about the run-up to the Iraq war in 2002.

"I was angry about it. [But] frankly, I couldn't do much about it because, in the intelligence committee, we are sworn to secrecy. We can't walk outside the door and say the statement made yesterday by the White House is in direct contradiction to classified information that is being given to this Congress."

Mr. Durbin's comments come after years of inquiries and debate about prewar intelligence, and as congressional leaders clash over Democrats' calls to pull out of Iraq.

[...]

Bill Moyers and Jon Stewart: two of the most important voices on television, together

What can I say? It is a VERY good night.

Bill Moyers is back, and he's bursting bubbles, loaded for bear. Who's he taking with him? The Daniel Boone of TV, Jon Stewart. (Josh Marshall is on too, but he's still just the Davy Crockett of the Internet).

A new study shows that people who watch Stewart's Daily Show are some of the best informed in the country, about as well informed as listeners of NPR, viewers of PBS. What is wrong with this picture? Or should we be asking, what is right?!

Damn, Bill, I can't say how much I've missed you. I missed the opening salvo, on the media's travesty of Iraq war coverage (pathetic coverage I participated in, and was complicit in, to my eternal shame, even though there was nothing I could do about it). I did get to watch the video online, and I listened to the podcast 2 times thru, at work. I needed to make sure I put this stuff in conscious memory, not just the regular news memory I've carried for the last five years.

You can bet I will be tuning in on Bill Moyers's Journal every Friday night, and running the repeats on podcast.

Link: Bill Moyers Journal . Profile . Jon Stewart | PBS.

 
 
Link: Pew Survey Finds Most Knowledgeable Americans Watch 'Daily Show' and 'Colbert'-- and Visit Newspaper Sites.

[...]

Pew judged the levels of knowledgeability (correct answers) among those surveyed and found that those who scored the highest were regular watchers of Comedy Central's The Daily Show and Colbert Report. They tied with regular readers of major newspapers in the top spot -- with 54% of them getting 2 out of 3 questions correct. Watchers of the Lehrer News Hour on PBS followed just behind.
 
Virtually bringing up the rear were regular watchers of Fox News. Only 1 in 3 could answer 2 out of 3 questions correctly. Fox topped only network morning show viewers.
 
Told that Shia was one group of Muslims struggling in Iraq, only 32% of the total sample could name "Sunni" as the other key group.

[...]