Fox News defends itself against an attack by the Obama administration by explaining that most of their shows aren't real news.

Are the Obama people really that dumb? They were "surprised," "caught off guard" by the massive dirtstorm unleashed on healthcare reform?

These are the geniuses of 11-dimensional chess? Puhleeze. I think they've started to believe their own press. Obama the Healer, Obama the Post-Racial Lincoln. What a bunch of damned dopes.

Dick Polman, the Philadelphia Inquirer political reporter, is also astounded at just how unprepared Team Obama was for the attacks on healthcare reform:

During the 1993-4 health care reform battle, the Clinton White House was outmaneuvered by the Republican right and their corporate allies, who swayed the electorate with all kinds of devious hyperbole. And, more recently, in the 2004 presidential race, John Kerry and his advisers sat back and did nothing for three crucial summer weeks, absolutely convinced that voters would never believe the Swift Boat attacks on his Vietnam record. That strategy worked out pretty well.

And now we have the Obama people, waking up to the idea that maybe it's not politically wise to sit mute and allow themselves to be tarred as fascists who would euthanize granny, ration health care, and slash Medicare benefits. (It's priceless to hear the Republicans portraying themselves as the defenders of Medicare, given the fact that, if they had been in charge back in 1965, they never would have enacted Medicare in the first place. But I digress.)

The Republican right understands the power of the visceral; it knows how to stoke emotions at the expense of civility. This is not exactly a fresh observation, yet it's amazing how flat-footed Democrats seem always to discover it anew. They seem forever convinced that the power of high ideals should be sufficient for victory - that, in the present case, Americans should simply be convinced, on the merits, that health care reform is preferable to the dysfunctional status quo. As Howard Paster, Clinton's health care guy in 1993, told The Times this morning, "The expectation (among the Obama people) was that things have gotten so bad in the last 16 years that there would be a consensus on the need to act this time."

But that's not how the other team plays the game. Indeed, numerous Democratic strategists and commentators have been trying to make this point for a long time. A couple years ago, for instance, radio host and ex-California Democratic chairman Bill Press offered this advise to his brethren: "In politics, if somebody slaps you on the cheek, you punch him in the nose. Then you punch him in the gut. Then you kick him in the groin. Then you crack a chair over his head. Then, just to make sure, you jump up and down on top of him with both feet...The only way to win is to fight back. Hard and tough. If they don't, they don't deserve to win."

Press was characteristically a tad over the top, but his basic point was that Democrats should stop being surprised to learn that politics ain't beanbag. This is not to suggest that Obama should retaliate by retailing lies equal in virulence to those being spewed by his opponents; if he was to conduct himself as his opponents are doing, he would be promptly attacked for failing to change the tone in Washington.

His best option is to do what he probably should have done months ago: find an attractively repeatable health reform pitch that can fit on a bumper sticker, something that can appeal to positive emotions. (Perhaps if Obama had done that during the spring, he could have at least partially preempted the nabobs of negativity.) Indeed, there are reports today that Obama will now pitch his plan as a vehicle for ending unfair insurance practices, for protecting the millions of Americans who have pre-existing health conditions.

Maybe a positive emotional pitch can still work - unless it is too little, too late, and insufficient weaponry for an alley fight.

It's nice to know that as Americans struggle with unemployment and lack of health insurance, at least one worthy group of lads are doing well!

American International Group is preparing to pay millions of dollars more in bonuses to several dozen top corporate executives after an earlier round of payments four months ago set off a national furor.

The troubled insurance giant has been pressing the federal government to bless the payments in hopes of shielding itself from renewed public outrage.

Uh, hon? We don't care if the Pope himself blesses you. We're not going to be happy about this. Nope.

The request puts the administration's new compensation czar on the spot by seeking his opinion about bonuses that were promised long before he took his post.

AIG doesn't actually need the permission of Kenneth R. Feinberg, who President Obama appointed last month to oversee the compensation of top executives at seven firms that have received large federal bailouts. But officials at AIG, whose federal rescue package stands at $180 billion, have been reluctant to move forward without political cover from the government.

"Anytime we write a check to anybody" it is highly scrutinized, said an AIG official, who declined to speak on the record because the negotiations with Feinberg are ongoing. "We would want to feel comfortable that the government is comfortable with what we are doing."

I don't know about you, but I'm not feeling all that comfortable with this.

The payments coming due next week include $2.4 million in bonuses for about 40 high-ranking executives at AIG, according to administration documents from earlier this year. Though the actual sum may have changed since then, the payments are much smaller than those that caused the upheaval in March.

To those of us who are lucky enough that they're still employed, I'll bet they're thinking about that past ten years of one- and two-percent raises, wondering how to get on that magical merry-go-round. Dream on!

It's kind of funny, isn't it? We seem to get more transparency out of the CIA director than we do out of the president:

WASHINGTON -- Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon E. Panetta has told lawmakers that CIA officials misled Congress "for a number of years" since 2001, according to a letter released Wednesday from seven Democratic lawmakers.

The lawmakers say the CIA also withheld information about unspecified "significant actions."

The letter didn't identify when Mr. Panetta made the statements or to what they referred.

"This is similar to other deceptions of which we are aware from other recent periods," the letter continued.

CIA spokesman George Little said "it is not the policy or practice of the CIA to mislead Congress." Mr. Little said the CIA itself "took the initiative to notify the oversight committees" about the lapses.

The release of the letter is the latest twist in a tussle between House Democrats and the CIA. Earlier this year, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the CIA of misleading her in briefings about the agency's use of waterboarding, an allegation refuted by the agency and challenged by Republicans.

It also comes one day before the House is scheduled to debate an intelligence bill. President Barack Obama issued a veto threat on Wednesday over provisions that would require more expansive briefings of intelligence committee members on sensitive matters.

With this escalation, the mess in Afghanistan becomes the Democrats' war - and Obama's. Good luck with that, fellows:

American marines and Afghan troops poured into southern Afghanistan today in the first major test of Barack Obama's strategy to wrest the initiative from the Taliban.

Daybreak brought the sporadic crackle of gunfire but no immediate heavy fighting as the offensive in Helmand province began shortly after 1am local time near the village of Nawa, about 20 miles south of the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah. Insurgents in Helmand – a Taliban stronghold – have for years put up stubborn resistance against British troops.

Waves of helicopters landed marines in the valley, a crescent of opium poppy and wheat fields crisscrossed by canals and dotted with mud-brick homes. The marines disembarked and fanned out into the fields as the sun rose. Hundreds more arrived in convoys through a barren area known as the desert of death.

In a simultaneous operation, Pakistan deployed troops on its border to stop militants fleeing into its territory.

As the offensive began the US military said one of its soldiers had been captured in Paktita province, in eastern Afghanistan. He was not involved in the operation. The Ministry of Defence reported the deaths of two British soldiers in Helmand; six other Nato soldiers were injured by the same improvised explosive device (IED).

.

Maybe this sinking feeling in my gut would go away if anyone in the Obama administration bothered to explain the specifics of why they believe indefinite detention is necessary. How can you be so sure someone is too dangerous to release, and yet not have enough evidence to prosecute them?

The Obama administration, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, is drafting an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations.

Such an order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. Obama advisers are concerned that bypassing Congress could place the president on weaker footing before the courts and anger key supporters, the officials said.

After months of internal debate over how to close the facility in Cuba, White House officials are increasingly worried that reaching quick agreement with Congress on a new detention system may be impossible. Several officials said there is concern in the White House that the administration may not be able to close the facility by the president's January deadline.

White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said there is no executive order and that the administration has not decided whether to issue one. But one administration official suggested that the White House was already trying to build support.

"Civil liberties groups have encouraged the administration, that if a prolonged detention system were to be sought, to do it through executive order," the official said. Such an order could be rescinded and would not block later efforts to write legislation, but civil liberties groups generally oppose long-term detention, arguing that detainees should be prosecuted or released.

Big Tent Democrat and Glenn Greenwald reactions here.

You gotta love that quote from Rahm Emanuel: "I don't control the Congressional Budget Office." Right. That's why we don't know how much money single payer would save, right, Rahm?

This is such a freakin' joke. So far, we've spent $907.3 billion dollars on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars - and that's just what they're admitting. They have money for just about anything else they want to do - except take care of the people who put them there.

You see how they're all running around like chickens with their heads cut off over this CBO report? Steny Hoyer promised he would get the CBO to score single payer but somehow, it never happened.

Gee, I wonder why? Because they knew what it would show - that single payer would cover everyone for what we're already paying.

(CBS/AP) Eye-popping new cost estimates for President Obama's plan to overhaul the U.S. health care system are forcing majority Democrats to scale back their plans to subsidize coverage for the uninsured.

The $1 trillion-plus estimates come as the Senate Health Committee prepares to meet Wednesday to begin crafting a bill around Mr. Obama's top legislative priority.

Big holes remain to be filled on the most controversial issues in the health care bill authored by the committee's chairman, Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.: a new public insurance plan to compete with the private market, and whether employers must provide health care for their workers.

Of course, anything requiring employer-provided health care will further delay an economic recovery because health insurance is a business's biggest expense.

[...] Negotiations were roiled Monday by an analysis from the Congressional Budget Office that said Kennedy's bill would cost about $1 trillion over 10 years but leave 37 million people uninsured, compared with 50 million who are uninsured now.

Democrats called the numbers inconclusive, reported CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews, and even the CBO called its own report incomplete. But the sheer magnitude of what Congress is considering is undeniable.

"The news yesterday from the CBO is a turning point in the health-care debate," said Rep. Eric Cantor.

Yes, I could see that a report telling you that doing it the wrong way is more expensive would encourage you to further avoid doing it the right way!

Also on Tuesday, a cost estimate for the Finance Committee bill became public: $1.6 trillion. Senators quickly huddled on ways to bring down costs, with Baucus insisting the final price tag on the Finance Committee bill would be around $1 trillion.

At the Senate Health panel, officials said that after penciling in subsidies for families with incomes as high as $110,000, or 500 percent of the federal poverty level, they would limit the help to families up to $88,000 in income, or 400 percent of the poverty level.

While the corporate media is praising Obama's announcement yesterday to more stringently monitor mountaintop mining, those involved in fighting the massive pollution that results from the practice say it's nowhere near enough. One group's attorney called it "rearranging the bureaucratic deck chairs." (Remember how Obama kept talking about "clean coal"? This is what it looks like, folks: powerful poison dumped into people's lives.)

Friday morning, this terrible news:

Just how bad has the coal ash situation gotten in the United States? So bad that the Department of Homeland Security has told Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) that her committee can't publicly disclose the location of coal ash dumps across the country.

The pollution is so toxic, so dangerous, that an enemy of the United States -- or a storm or some other disrupting event -- could easily cause them to spill out and lay waste to any area nearby.

And yet, for some reason, it's perfectly fine when mining companies do it! Hey, how about that "clean coal"?

There are 44 sites deemed by the Environmental Protection Agency to be high hazard, but Boxer said she isn't allowed to talk about them other than to senators in the states affected. "There is a huge muzzle on me and my staff," she said.

In other words, this is a very urgent problem. Activists say all Obama has to do is enforce the Clean Water Act that already exists.

If the Obama administration wants to protect the people and mountains of Appalachia, it needs to end the destructive practice of mountaintop mining, not settle for promises of stricter scrutiny of the mining permits, advocates say.

[...] The White House announced what it described as an “unprecedented” agreement among the Environmental Protection Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Interior Department to better coordinate and tighten the agencies’ oversight of mountaintop mining and to review the mining existing laws.

In a memorandum of understanding, the agencies promised to:

• Require more stringent environmental reviews for future mountaintop mining permits, including using the Clean Water Act to reduce contamination in streams and watersheds;

• Propose a rule change to stop allowing a type of nationwide permit that doesn’t require site-specific reviews for mining operations to dump the mineral-laden debris of former mountaintops into streams;

• Strengthen oversight of state agencies, both in their permitting and enforcement;

• And, if the U.S. District Court vacates the Bush administration’s 2008 Stream Buffer Zone Rule as requested, return to the 1983 rules restoring the 100-foot buffer zone around streams for mining waste.

These are all steps in the right direction, but they aren’t enough, says Willa Mays, Executive Director of Appalachian Voices:

"Their priorities do not take into account that mountains are being blown up today, and until mountaintop removal coal mining is ended, residents will continue to suffer from high disease rates, floods, and poisoned water supplies directly attributable to this mining practice."

Advocates across Appalachia echoed her concern.

Continue reading »

Why are politicians such damned cowards? So terrified someone will accuse them of not keeping the country safe! There has never been an escape from the Colorado super-maximum facility. In a country where we've already seen bank robbers with high-tech weapons and armor keep cops utterly helpless, why are we not panicking about that

Glenn Greenwald on Obama's support for the new Graham-Lieberman Secrecy Act:

It was one thing when President Obama reversed himself last month by announcing that he would appeal the Second Circuit's ruling that the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) compelled disclosure of various photographs of detainee abuse sought by the ACLU. Agree or disagree with Obama's decision, at least the basic legal framework of transparency was being respected, since Obama's actions amounted to nothing more than a request that the Supreme Court review whether the mandates of FOIA actually required disclosure in this case. But now -- obviously anticipating that the Government is likely to lose in court again (.pdf) -- Obama wants Congress to change FOIA by retroactively narrowing its disclosure requirements, prevent a legal ruling by the courts, and vest himself with brand new secrecy powers under the law which, just as a factual matter, not even George Bush sought for himself.

The White House is actively supporting a new bill jointly sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman -- called The Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009 -- that literally has no purpose other than to allow the government to suppress any "photograph taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside of the United States." As long as the Defense Secretary certifies -- with no review possible -- that disclosure would "endanger" American citizens or our troops, then the photographs can be suppressed even if FOIA requires disclosure. The certification lasts 3 years and can be renewed indefinitely. The Senate passed the bill as an amendment last week.

Just imagine if any other country did this. Imagine if a foreign government were accused of systematically torturing and otherwise brutally abusing detainees in its custody for years, and there was ample photographic evidence proving the extent and brutality of the abuse. Further imagine that the country's judiciary -- applying decades-old transparency laws -- ruled that the government was legally required to make that evidence public. But in response, that country's President demanded that those transparency laws be retroactively changed for no reason other than to explicitly empower him to keep the photographic evidence suppressed, and a compliant Congress then immediately passed a new law empowering the President to suppress that evidence. What kind of a country passes a law that has no purpose other than to empower its leader to suppress evidence of the torture it inflicted on people? Read the language of the bill; it doesn't even hide the fact that its only objective is to empower the President to conceal evidence of war crimes.

That this exact scenario is now happening in the U.S. is all the more remarkable given that the President who is demanding these new suppression powers is the same one who repeatedly vowed "to make his administration the most open and transparent in history." After noting the tentative steps Obama has taken to increase transparency, the generally pro-Obama Washington Post Editorial Page today observed: "what makes the administration's support for the photographic records act so regrettable" is that "Mr. Obama runs the risk of taking two steps back in his quest for more open government."

Theoretically, the Obama administration could bring some integrity to the process. But practically speaking? I think the tribunals are too tainted to retain, and I don't pretend to understand why this is happening:

WASHINGTON — - The Obama administration will announce plans Friday to revive the Bush-era military commission system for prosecuting accused terrorists, current and former officials said, reversing a presidential campaign pledge to rely instead on federal courts and the traditional military justice system.

Word of the imminent decision infuriated human rights groups, who argued that any trials under the system created by former President George W. Bush would be widely viewed as tainted and said the Obama administration was duplicating the mistakes of former administration.

[...] White House officials insisted that Obama was not overturning a campaign vow. The president "never promised to abolish" military commissions, an administration official said. However, during his campaign Obama repeatedly called for change.

[...] The administration still intends to prosecute some Guantanamo Bay detainees in federal courts, as Obama had pledged. But officials have concluded that a small number of detainees can be tried only in the military commissions, said a U.S. official familiar with the changes, speaking on condition of anonymity in advance of Friday's announcement.

The administration on Friday also will outline major changes to the military commission system that will be used in future trials.

Gabor Rona, the international legal director of Human Rights First, said military commission trials are unlikely to be seen as legitimate forms of justice.

"Everyone knows the military commissions have been a dismal failure," said Rona. "The results of the cases will be suspect around the world."

But Charles Stimson, a former Bush administration official who oversaw detainee affairs at the Pentagon, applauded Obama's proposal as one that would bring needed change to the military commission system while keeping it intact.

"It is a good start. The closer they get to courts-martial the better," Stimson said. "They should learn from the mistakes the Bush administration made, then proudly defend the military commissions.

"

Here's some good news for a Monday:

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s top antitrust official this week plans to restore an aggressive enforcement policy against corporations that use their market dominance to elbow out competitors or to keep them from gaining market share.

The new enforcement policy would reverse the Bush administration’s approach, which strongly favored defendants against antitrust claims. It would restore a policy that led to the landmark antitrust lawsuits against Microsoft and Intel in the 1990s.

The head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, Christine A. Varney, is to announce the policy reversal in a speech she will give on Monday before the Center for American Progress, a liberal policy research organization. She will deliver the same speech on Tuesday to the United States Chamber of Commerce.

The speeches were described by people who have consulted with her about the policy shift. The administration is hoping to encourage smaller companies in an array of industries to bring their complaints to the Justice Department about potentially improper business practices by their larger rivals. Some of the biggest antitrust cases were initiated by complaints taken to the Justice Department.

Ms. Varney is expected to say that the administration rejects the impulse to go easy on antitrust enforcement during weak economic times.

She will assert instead that severe recessions can provide dangerous incentives for large and dominating companies to engage in predatory behavior that harms consumers and weakens competition. The announcement is aimed at making sure that no court or party to a lawsuit can cite the Bush administration policy as the government’s official view in any pending cases.

In the speeches, Ms. Varney is expected to explicitly warn judges and litigants in antitrust lawsuits not involving the government to ignore the Bush administration’s policies, which were formally outlined in a report by the Justice Department last year. The report applied legal standards that made it difficult to bring new cases involving monopoly and predatory practices.

As a result of the Bush administration’s interpretation of antitrust laws, the enforcement pipeline for major monopoly cases — which can take years for prosecutors to develop — is thin. During the Bush administration, the Justice Department did not file a single case against a dominant firm for violating the antimonopoly law.

Wait, wait, I can hardly read these sad statements through my tears - of laughter! This, from the people who brought us this entire house of cards that just collapsed? The people whose lobbyists have stacked the financial deck against people like us with late fees, pre-payment penalties and unregulated interest rates are actually telling us IT ISN'T FAIR?

WASHINGTON -- The banking industry is aggressively lobbying the Treasury Department to make it less costly for financial institutions to get out of the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

The move could prove controversial for the banking industry, which is busy deflecting criticism about higher fees it is charging consumers for credit cards and other products and services.

At issue are "warrants" the government received when it bought preferred stock in roughly 500 banks over the past six months as part of TARP. The warrants allow the government to buy common stock in the banks at a later date so taxpayers can receive more of a return on their investment when the banking industry recovers.

Many banks want to return their TARP money and, as part of that effort, want to expunge the warrants. To do that, banks must either buy them back from the government or allow the Treasury to sell them to private investors.

Today, most of the warrants are essentially worthless, because their exercise price is higher than where most banks' stocks are trading. But the government believes the warrants still have value, since they give the Treasury the right to buy common stock at a set price for 10 years.

Bankers say it is unfair to charge what amounts to a "prepayment penalty," which makes it additionally onerous to escape TARP. Bank representatives say the cost of buying back the warrants could be equivalent to paying 60% annual interest on short-term loans. That, they argue, would exacerbate banks' existing problems.

Murray Waas has a fascinating piece in the new Atlantic about Dan Bogden, the onetime U.S. Attorney from Nevada who got shoved out by the Rove Crew:

A Justice Department official told me that the idea of hiring Bogden back is in fact a real possibility, and said that the White House counsel’s office has been quietly vetting his background in anticipation of his possible reappointment—not a difficult task, considering that he has been employed by the government for the majority of his adult life.

If Bogden is reappointed as U.S. attorney, his supervisor will be one of the authors of the Justice Department’s report on the U.S. attorney firings that praised Bogden and severely criticized the Bush administration appointees who fired him. Last Thursday, Attorney General Eric Holder reassigned H. Marshall Jarrett, the head of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility, to head the executive office of U.S. attorneys, where he will oversee the nation’s 94 U.S. attorneys. By naming Jarrett to his new position, a senior Obama administration official told me, “I think this administration is sending a message that the era of politicization of the Department should be long due over.” The same official told me: “The continued service of Dan Bogden might hopefully send the same message.”

Slowly but surely, the men whose careers were ruined by Rove and the Gang are being restored, at least incrementally. David Iglesias, the fired New Mexico U.S. Attorney, has been working on Guantanamo cases for the Navy's JAG unit.

John McKay, the fired U.S. attorney from Washington state, is now working for Getty Images.

I wonder if Karl Rove will have any comment about this anytime in the near future on Fox News. I suspect he's too busy bashing Obama, however.

(This piece was written by Ateqa Khaki, who is the Advocacy Coordinator for the ACLU's National Security team.)

As you may know by now, yesterday, the Justice Department released four critical legal memos that provided the legal basis for the CIA’s torture program in response to an ACLU lawsuit. The Obama administration should be highly commended for living up to its promise of transparency by releasing the memos with minimal redactions, instead of covering up the Bush administration’s crimes.

The memos are shocking. They describe in excruciating detail barbaric interrogation methods used by the CIA on its prisoners and the legal contortions used by the Office of Legal Counsel to ratify those methods.

In an 18-page memo (PDF) dated August 1, 2002, then-Assistant Attorney General to the Office of Legal Counsel, Jay Bybee, analyzes specific techniques – facial holds and slaps, placing detainees in confinement boxes (including placing one detainee in a box with an insect after he conveyed having a fear of insects), prolonged sleep deprivation, and waterboarding – and concludes that these methods, administered individually and in combination, do not constitute severe physical or mental pain and suffering. Shockingly, Bybee also states that the presence of medical personnel at the time of interrogation implied that “those carrying out these procedures would not have the specific intent to inflict severe physical pain or suffering.” He concludes that the absence of specific intent negates the charge of torture. This memo is considered one of the cornerstones of the torture program, and provides written authorizations to the CIA to use such harsh interrogation techniques.

And that’s just information contained in one of the four memos released yesterday.

In sum, these documents, and other still missing secret memos make clear that the abusive interrogation techniques employed on detainees were part of a choreographed torture program – one that was authorized by high-ranking officials from the Bush administration. As Jameel Jaffer, the Director of our National Security Project stated, the memos “[A]re simply political documents that were meant to provide window dressing for war crimes.” They were written to insulate the torturers and those who authorized the torture from prosecution for acts that are illegal under several domestic and international laws.

Continue reading »