March, 2008 archive

It was a long day yesterday Dick Polman Dan Froomkin parses the Current Federal Administration’s arguments for indemnifying the telecoms against their failure to obey the law.

And concludes they are pretty much a steaming pile of covering the Current Federal Administration’s anatomy:

On Fairness

Bush on Thursday argued that the telecommunications companies shouldn’t be punished for patriotically carrying out legal orders. And he characterized the lawsuits as being the product of “class-action plaintiffs attorneys, [who] you know — I don’t want to try to get inside their head; I suspect they see, you know, a financial gravy train.”

The Washington Post put Bush’s claim in context on Friday: “Two nonprofit groups are overseeing [the five coordinated, class-action lawsuits pending against the phone companies]: the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.” The Post also noted that “substantial damages would be awarded only if courts rule that they participated in illegal surveillance affecting millions of people, not just communications involving terrorism suspects overseas.”

(snip)

As a result, the telecom lawsuits are the only remaining avenue the public has — at least until the next administration to find out what was done in their name. And immunity would be the final touch to the administration’s stone wall.

On Secrecy

(snip)

“‘I think the administration would be very loath for folks to realize that ordinary people were being surveilled,’ said Kurt Opsahl, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which brought the lead lawsuit, against AT&T.”

Given Bush’s track record at trying to keep information that would embarrass him from the public, it’s reasonable to suspect that the administration’s main goal here is not to keep the program secret from terrorists — but to keep it secret from us.

On Future Cooperation

Bush has been particularly insistent that failure to grant retroactive immunity would have grave consequences going forward.

(snip)

But the telecoms can’t possibly be worried about prospective immunity for following lawful orders — that’s already part of the agreed-upon legislation.

So are they actually telling the government: Unless you get us off the hook for billions in potential damages based on our past actions, we won’t follow the law — or we’ll do so, but only kicking and screaming. That doesn’t sound like a legitimate reason to help them out. In fact, it sounds like extortion.

Or are they simply saying that without retroactive immunity, they’ll feel a greater need to be absolutely sure that what they’re doing is legal? If that’s the case, that sounds like a good thing. Any company being asked to do something by the government that they have plausible reason to believe is illegal should push back. Otherwise, there are no checks and balances at work. We call that a police state.

Another possibility, I suppose, is that the telecoms are balking about doing things that we don’t even know about — and are worried that they could be sued once we find out.

At any rate, none of these points argue for retroactive immunity

Susie has more on what passes for intelligence in the Current Federal Administration.

Dick Polman in today’s local rag. The entire column is worth the five minutes it takes to read it:

Obama warrants all kinds of scrutiny; legitimate questions can be raised about how he’d actually end the war, how he’d tackle the Social Security entitlement woes, how he’d pay for his ambitious domestic ideas, and whether he has the intellectual tools to trump his inexperience. But those who smear do so because they understand the potential power of visceral argument. It is so much easier to exploit people’s fears and ignorance than to debate Obama’s ideas directly.

Consider, for instance, the Pledge of Allegiance flap. A mystery e-mail has been making the rounds, featuring a Time magazine photo that shows Obama at an Iowa event last September with his fingers entwined at waist level, supposedly during the recitation of the pledge. The e-mail stated: “He refused to not only put his hand on his heart during the pledge, but refused to say the pledge . . . how in hell can a man like this expect to be our next Commander-in-Chief?”

This, in turn, is sparking outrage on the right. The other day, commentator Linda Chavez huffed: “You can’t imagine conservatives refusing to fly the flag or say the Pledge of Allegiance.” Georgia Republican congressman Jack Kingston declared on HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher the other night that “the guy would not say the Pledge of Allegiance . . . that is disturbing to Americans.” Therefore, Kingston asked, with respect to Obama and his spouse: “Where do they stand on America?”

But the e-mail is a lie, and these people are perpetuating the lie. It turns out – and this was reported long ago – that the photo was snapped during the playing of the national anthem, not during the pledge. (By the way, it’s amusing that conservatives are so hung up about the pledge, given its actual pedigree. It was authored in 1892 by a prominent American socialist, Francis Bellamy, who lectured widely on the evils of capitalism and conceived the pledge as a socialist credo, especially the words “with liberty and justice for all.”)

Equally specious is the outcry about Obama’s decision not to fly the flag on his suit jacket. William Kristol brought it up again in his Feb. 25 New York Times column. As he sees it, Obama is insulting everybody who chooses to wear a flag pin. Kingston, the congressman, was on MSNBC a few nights ago, stirring the pot, saying that “everybody wears them,” yet “here’s a guy that doesn’t want to do it.”

This all began last October, after a TV reporter in Iowa filed a report that Obama was pinless. It turned out Obama had been pinless for years, ever since the start of the Iraq war. On the stump in Iowa, he explained why: “You start noticing people wearing a flag pin, but not acting very patriotic. Not voting to provide veterans with the resources they need. . . . I’m less concerned about what you’re wearing on your lapel than what’s in your heart.”

In other words, Obama was insisting that true patriotism should be about substance, not symbols. At least he articulated a reason. As I well recall, while watching a Republican presidential debate last autumn, seven of the eight candidates did not wear flag pins. I just cruised John McCain’s campaign Web site. In the official photos, he is not wearing a flag pin. Then I looked at Kingston again on MSNBC, the guy who says that “everybody” wears the pin. He isn’t wearing one, either.