Cavalry?

The United Nations Security Council has voted in favour of sending peacekeepers to Sudan's troubled Darfur region.

Up to 26,000 troops and police will make up the world's largest peacekeeping force, under a joint UN and African Union mandate.

The resolution will allow peacekeepers to use force to defend civilians and aid workers in Darfur from any attack.

At least 200,000 people are thought to have died in Darfur and some 2m have fled their homes since 2003.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon described the mission as "historic and unprecedented".

"You are sending a clear and powerful signal of your commitment to improve the lives of the people of the region, and close this tragic chapter in Sudan's history," he told the Security Council.

. . .

Emyr Jones Parry, the British ambassador to the UN, warned that the mere act of voting in favour of a peacekeeping force would not save lives in Darfur.

"But today's action raises the prospect of a new start for Darfur," he told the Security Council after the vote.

Despite the unanimous vote, major powers still wielded the threat of sanctions against Sudan if the situation in Darfur does not improve.

The Security Council backed the force in a unanimous vote after negotiations secured crucial Chinese support and eased the concerns of the Sudanese government.

Under Chapter 7 of the UN charter, the new force will be allowed to take "necessary action" in an effort to ensure stability.

But British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said at the UN on Tuesday that any continuation of attacks on civilians in Darfur would prompt harsh new sanctions.

I gather what they're saying on television is that Gordon Brown was the man most responsible for getting this through the Security Council, which means his stock is continuing to rise at the Long Wall. [And, yes, not that long ago I was spreading gloom about what his time at Number Ten might mean for Britain. Man, it's nice to be wrong.]

My baby wrote me a letter . . .

No, that's the sleep dep talking. What's actually going on is, Arlen Specter's waiting on a letter from the Bush administration in the hopes that it'll put the Gonzales mess into some kind of perspective.

Specter aides released a statement late Monday that suggested a bombshell to come on Tuesday afternoon.

“Given the difficulty of discussing classified matters in public, I think it is preferable to have a letter addressing that question [of Gonzales’ veracity] from the administration … by noon tomorrow, which will be made available to the news media,” Specter wrote in the statement. “The administration has committed to producing such a letter.”

The "noon" part is obviously no longer operational - presumably the White House wants to make sure every comma is vetted.

My prediction? The Bushies are going to acknowledge that there are very serious concerns before reminding us all that Alberto Gonzales is the finest man who ever lived, and then they'll close by saying the president looks forward to seeing his trusted comrade getting on with his job and putting things right and possibly using pure virtue to cure cancer. And you shut your damn word-hole, Arlen Specter.

Just for the record . . .

Iraq's parliament went into summer recess for a month on Monday after political leaders failed to agree on a series of laws that Washington sees as crucial to stabilizing the country.

Lawmakers said the government had yet to present them with any of the laws. The parliament had earlier signaled its intention to go into recess in August after cutting short its summer break that normally starts in July.

"We do not have anything to discuss in the parliament, no laws or constitutional amendments, nothing from the government. Differences between the political factions have delayed the laws," Kurdish lawmaker Mahmoud Othman told Reuters.

More here.

The new arms deal.

Between the US and the Saudis, that is - Kevin Drum has kindly offered up a link to some informed speculation from William Arkin at the Post, and the last few paragraphs read so:

Want early warning of what will happen? Despite congressional opposition, Saudi Arabia will get its arms: the money is just too much and the lobbying will just be too intense. Israel will voice its concern but basically accept the deal; it knows fundamentally that there is no Saudi airplane that threatens it. The Saudis will pledge to rein in extremists supporting the insurgency and terror in Iraq, then basicallly do nothing. And Iran will protest (in fact, it already has), to no avail. Tehran, of course, needn't worry either, although American domination of the arms supply will solidify the American empire in the region, at least militarily.

And in the end, the Bush administration will crow about its diplomacy.

What comes with the deal, though, is far more subtle trouble: Saudi Arabia has demonstrated over decades that it has no interest in building up its own high-tech arms capabilities. American contractors will train, maintain and even operate the new Saudi equipment. American military personnel will follow. We will buy nothing in terms of security, and we will just put our own people in danger. But most important, we will once again renew the cycle of American penetration into the heart of Islam, one of Osama bin Laden's original and most compelling rallying points. That's why the Saudi deal is so dangerous.

Now, obviously, that's speculative - there's room to hope (for our own sakes) that the American footprint in Saudi Arabia will be limited and maybe even transitory. Even beyond that, we certainly shouldn't limit our international actions to a list of those that won't piss Islamist radicals off.

That said, it's not clear how much good this'll do, either, and there's something more than a little bit farcical about handing arms to the country that's supplying most of the foreign insurgents whom we're fighting in Iraq in order to help contain a country that's doing less damage overall.

Bush foreign policy, right? What're ya gonna do?

Hrm. Could you indulge me while launch a little digression?

One of my favorite contemporary authors is a guy named William Dalrymple. His dominant area of interest increasingly seems to be the decline of the Mughal Empire - and, maybe more to the point, the decline of tolerance between Christians, Hindus and Muslims in the last centuries of the dying regime. Before that, though, most of his books were as much travelogue as history, and a recurring theme that was handed up to the reader was the extent to which religious syncretism was the rule over every part of the modern Islamic world into which Dalrymple traveled. Sunnis, Shi'ites and Christians (those outside the orbit of extremist movements, anyway) routinely shared shrines and holy places, local folk traditions trumped larger dogmas, and everyone pretty much got along. I know it all sounds increasingly fairy tale-like (partly because coverage of the Middle East in our part of the world is so imperfect), but I think it's a legitimate observation - remarkably little of the violence in the Arab world since the fall of the Ottoman Empire has been explicitly religious, despite the extent to which Shi'ite populations (outside of Iran) have consistently been underrepresented in government and judiciaries. Remember, even in Iraq, mixed marriages were unremarkable until the rot really started seeping into the occupation. A total, sudden breakdown seemed almost unthinkable just ten years ago.

Part of what bothers me about the Bush team's latest arms deal - and, in fact, its larger approach to the region - is that it really seems to be going out of its way to capitalize on already rising tensions between the two branches of Islam. The other day, my father mentioned to me in passing that he'd just seen or heard part of an interview in which an historian speculated that the next century would be the Muslim world's own personal version of the great religious wars of Europe - Catholic revanchism versus the Protest expansion.

The thing is, the contexts are pretty wildly dissimilar. You don't have a Shi'ite hierarchy being undermined by a sudden wave of conversions to Sunnism, or vice versa - the populations and even the organizational systems of the religious groups are relatively settled, and have been for centuries. The possibility of a major conflict is certainly there - and growing! - but the reasons are different.

Yes, a lot of them are internal to the region and pre-existing. I actually have the dim recollection that Shi'ism caught on in Iraq in the late medieval period among segments of the population already repressed by the (Sunni) Ottomans - it was a sign of political identification with the neighboring Persians against the thuggish rulers as much as it was a wave of conversions based on metaphysical and historical principle. [Apologies if I'm wrong about that.] Certainly, either way, the imposition of Sunni/rump-Ottoman power structures over Shi'ite populations has continued to the present day, with considerable localized tension arising as a result.

But the collapse of Iraq - which, yes, is pretty heavily our fault - has started more wide-ranging fires than I think we've seen in my lifetime, and the Bush administration has been utterly unconcerned with helping to contain them. Offering a massive arms deal (presumably against Israeli interests as well, I should add - hence the extra bribes to Tel Aviv) to a radical-infested Sunni regime for the explicit purpose of intimidating the nearby Shi'ites? Are we confident that that's, um, sane? Particularly insofar as, to the best of my knowledge, no one credible has demonstrated a measurable gain we might expect to receive for the effort. Hell, even as regards the Bushies' stated goals for Iran, presenting the appearance of an arms race is only going to strengthen the Ahmadinejad faction's foreign policy hand; people, not just in Iran, tend to like nuclear programs more as they feel more threatened.

But, whatever. As Mr. Arkin says, the deal is likely to make it through Congress more or less intact, and history probably isn't going to find that it made a decisive impact; it's just one more twig on a fire.

Still, it would be really, really nice if people in positions of authority - in Europe, if not here - would start thinking hard about how to keep the current conflict from getting ratcheted up to a regional firestorm. `Cause I honestly don't see any reason to believe that Team Bush is going to do anything other than keep on blundering for the rest of its time in office, with the panicked and cynical acquiescence of states on the line, and there's going to be a lot of built-up pressure in need of venting when they're done.

So much for accountability (overseas edition)!

“Until now I’ve always voted for the Liberal Democratic Party, but this time I voted for Ozawa,” said Kazuyoshi Tobita, a restaurant owner in Saitama, a prefecture next to Tokyo. “There were all sorts of problems. The pension problem was terrible. I mean, what are they thinking? We’re all worried whether the money we paid into it is actually there.”

Mr. Tobita, 71, said of Mr. Abe, “I’d like him to step down,” adding, “Doesn’t everybody think that?”

If by "everybody" he means most Japanese voters, then the latest election results would seem to say yes. There were 121 seats from the upper house of the Diet up for grabs; Mr. Abe's coalition needed to win 64 to retain the majority bequeathed them by the Koizumi administration. They got 46.

Now, it's the lower house that appoints prime ministers, so the newly empowered opposition can't kick Mr. Abe out. Still, in Japanese political theater, shame is traditionally the best motivator - after leading his party to a humiliating defeat, the popular expectation was indeed that Abe would apologize to the Japanese people for being what he is and shuffle off the stage.

But apparently Shinzo Abe believes only Shinzo Abe understands how important Shinzo Abe is.

The main opposition Democratic Party seized control of the upper house by a landslide, capturing seats not only in cities but also in rural districts that had long been strongholds of the Liberal Democratic Party. The rout was widespread, with household names in the governing party falling one after another before opposition newcomers. It could also stall Tokyo’s moves toward a more assertive foreign policy and active military.

In a devastating rebuke to Mr. Abe, angry voters punished him for his mishandling of bread-and-butter issues and for a series of scandals in a government seemingly in disarray. Past prime ministers have resigned in the face of similar losses, but Mr. Abe, even before all the votes were counted, tried to head off inevitable questions about his leadership.

“I have to repent for what I have to repent,” Mr. Abe, who became prime minister last September, told a Japanese television network hours before final results came in Sunday.

But, he said, “To pursue reforms, to build a new country, I have to fulfill my duties as prime minister from now on as well.”

Hear that, Japan? He's doing it for your own good!

Thankfully, the LDP - for all its faults - isn't typically subject to the cult-like devotion to its nominal leader that we've come to expect from a certain unnamed right-wing political party in the U.S. It's by no means impossible that they'll pressure Abe out sooner rather than later, despite his delusions of necessity - and in the meantime there'll be an independent upper house that can at least try to keep him honest and inclined toward usefulness.

Better than Japan had yesterday.

The great weekend round-up!

What's going on in the world? you might well ask. Some highlights while I dither on other projects in the background:

First of all, it turns out the Iraqi government has no use for most of our reconstruction efforts. Maybe they don't have the resources to hold, protect and conserve them, or maybe the key minister is a Shi'ite radical who wants Maliki discredited so that crazier elements can come to the fore. Either way, you get stories like the following . . .

In one of the most recent cases, a $90 million project to overhaul two giant turbines at the Dora power plant in Baghdad failed after completion because employees at the plant did not know how to operate the turbines properly and the wrong fuel was used. The additional power is critically needed in Baghdad, where residents often have only a few hours of electricity a day.

Because the Iraqi government will not formally accept projects like the refurbished turbines, the United States is “finding someone at the local level to handle the project, handing them the keys and saying, ‘Operate and maintain it,’” another official in the inspector general’s office said.

. . . which seem somewhat less than ideal.

At the same time, the Iraqi cabinet seems set to lose (permanently) its current deputy prime minister for security, ministers of defense, culture, planning and higher education, and minister of state for women's affairs. They're disgruntled Sunnis, you see.

So, yeah, we're seeing lots of political progress.

Meanwhile, back home, we're getting another happy look into the Bush administration's approach to democracy. Come with me now to the thrilling days of yesteryear (i.e., 2004), back when Tim Griffin - Alberto Gonzales's choice for U.S. Attorney in Little Rock, once the prosecutor purge hit - was workin' hard to suppress the votes of minorities.

Previously undisclosed documents detail how Republican operatives, with the knowledge of several White House officials, engaged in an illegal, racially-motivated effort to suppress tens of thousands of votes during the 2004 presidential campaign in a state where George W. Bush was trailing his Democratic challenger, Senator John Kerry.

The documents also contain details describing how Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign officials, and at least one individual who worked for White House political adviser Karl Rove, planned to stop minorities residing in Cuyahoga County from voting on election day.

The efforts to purge voters from registration rolls was spearheaded by Tim Griffin, a former Republican National Committee opposition researcher. Griffin recently resigned from his post as interim US attorney for Little Rock Arkansas. His predecessor, Bud Cummins, was forced out to make way for Griffin.

Another set of documents, 43 pages of emails, provided to Truthout by the PBS news program "NOW," contains blueprints for a massive effort undertaken by RNC operatives in 2004, to challenge the eligibility of voters expected to support Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in states such as Nevada, New Mexico, Florida and Pennsylvania.

One email, dated September 30, 2004, and sent to a dozen or so staffers on the Bush-Cheney campaign and the RNC, under the subject line "voter reg fraud strategy conference call," describes how campaign staffers planned to challenge the veracity of votes in a handful of battleground states in the event of a Democratic victory.

Furthermore, the emails show the Bush-Cheney campaign and RNC staffers compiled voter-challenge lists that targeted probable Democratic voters in at least five states: New Mexico, Ohio, Florida, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Voting rights lawyers have made allegations of so called "vote caging," against Republicans previously. These emails provide more evidence. One Republican operative involved in the planning wrote "we can do this in NV, FL, PA and NM because we have a list to run against the Absentee Ballot requests, and should."

Vote caging is an illegal tactic to suppress minorities from voting by having their names purged from voter rolls when they fail to respond to registered mail sent to their homes. The Republican National Committee signed a consent decree in 1986 stating they would not engage in the practice after they were caught suppressing votes in 1981 and 1986.

On that note, I burn out and walk away `til Monday. Have a good weekend, kids!

And again!

Less than twenty-four hours ago, I tossed up a quick little flag as Alberto Gonzales' testimony started stinking under the big lights; the decay has continued apace in the time since.

The dispute over the truthfulness of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales reached a new intensity today as the F.B.I. Director, Robert S. Mueller 3rd, contradicted Mr. Gonzales’s sworn testimony before a Senate committee.

Mr. Mueller told the House Judiciary Committee that the Bush administration’s secret eavesdropping program was the main topic at an encounter in the hospital room of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft on March 10, 2004, contrary to what Mr. Gonzales told a Senate panel on Tuesday.

At the time, Mr. Gonzales was the White House counsel, and Mr. Ashcroft was recovering from gall bladder surgery. That March night, Mr. Gonzales went to the hospital room with Andrew H. Card Jr., then White House chief of staff.

In his testimony before the Senate panel on Tuesday, Mr. Gonzales said the subject in the hospital room was “intelligence activities” under debate in the administration, but not the secret eavesdropping program.

But Mr. Mueller contradicted that version of events today, several hours after four Senate Democrats called for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate whether Mr. Gonzales perjured himself before Congress.

Mr. Gonzales has been given until the end of next week to correct his errors if he wants to escape some unpleasantness surrounding perjury charges. I suspect he's going to take his chances and trust that his equally crooked (or usefully misguided) colleagues in the executive branch will manage to keep his ass out of the dangerous side of a courtroom - but, man, win or lose, his inability to lie even half-way convincingly really is coming back to bite him in the ass.

Well, his inability to lie half-way convincingly and a growing record of misconduct, incompetence, and general mopery. One does have to give the man his due.

More schadenfreude.

With Mr. Abe’s future as prime minister hanging by a thread, it is not surprising that he has become the target of criticism in campaigns across Japan for Sunday’s election for the upper house of Parliament. But what is surprising is that the attacks are coming from his own Liberal Democratic Party, from politicians like Mr. Tamura, who are distancing themselves from Mr. Abe for their own survival.

News media polls, analysts and even party members themselves are predicting a big defeat for Mr. Abe’s party and a victory for the opposition Democratic Party. Voters in cities and even in Liberal Democratic rural redoubts like Kochi are expected to punish Mr. Abe’s government for mishandling pension records, several scandals and verbal gaffes by his bumbling ministers.

Exxxxcellent.

Just for the record . . .

The latest tapestry of lies from Alberto Gonzales is unraveling.

Documents show that eight congressional leaders were briefed about the Bush administration's terrorist surveillance program on the eve of its expiration in 2004, contradicting sworn Senate testimony this week by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

The documents, obtained by The Associated Press, come as senators consider whether a perjury investigation should be opened into conflicting accounts about the program and a dramatic March 2004 confrontation leading up to its potentially illegal reauthorization.

A Gonzales spokesman maintained Wednesday that the attorney general stands by his testimony.

At a heated Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, Gonzales repeatedly testified that the issue at hand was not about the terrorist surveillance program, which allowed the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on suspects in the United States without receiving court approval.

Instead, Gonzales said, the emergency meetings on March 10, 2004, focused on an intelligence program that he would not describe.

Gonzales, who was then serving as counsel to Bush, testified that the White House Situation Room briefing sought to inform congressional leaders about the pending expiration of the unidentified program and Justice Department objections to renew it. Those objections were led by then-Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey, who questioned the program's legality.

"The dissent related to other intelligence activities," Gonzales testified at Tuesday's hearing. "The dissent was not about the terrorist surveillance program."

"Not the TSP?" responded Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y. "Come on. If you say it's about other, that implies not. Now say it or not."

"It was not," Gonzales answered. "It was about other intelligence activities."

A four-page memo from the national intelligence director's office shows that the White House briefing with the eight lawmakers on March 10, 2004, was about the terror surveillance program, or TSP.

God, wouldn't it be nice if there were actual consequences? Can we maybe get some gorgeous young models to slink up to congressmen and whisper that protecting the Constitution makes them want to be filthy naughty?

Go, Barack!

The general principle that I was laying out is that we should not be afraid as America to meet with anybody.

Now, they may not like what we want to hear -- so if I’m talking to the President of Iran, I’m going to inform him that Israel is our stalwart ally, and we are going to do what's necessary to protect them -- that we will not accept a nuclear bomb in Iran, but that doesn’t mean we can’t say that face to face. And obviously, the diplomatic state work has to be done ahead of time.

The notion that I was somehow going to be inviting them over for tea next week without having initial envoys meet is ridiculous.

But the general principle is one that I think Senator Clinton is wrong on -- and that is if we are laying out preconditions that prevents us from speaking frankly to these folks, then we are continuing with Bush-Cheney policies, and I am not interested in continuing that.

I know that she has said in the past that we have to talk to our enemies -- well that’s what this is about. And if we say that we will not talk to them unless they meet a series of preconditions, then that’s the same position that Bush and Cheney have maintained over the last six years, and it has made us less safe.

Yes.

I haven't commented much on the debate, here or in emails, but . . . well, it's fair to say that I was annoyed to realize that the narrative that seemed to be developing in its aftermath was that Mr. Obama had been naïve in failing to rule out high-level contact with heads of rogue states in the first year of his term. If you define talking to people as a minor form of surrender, then you're basically saying that the Cuban missile crisis should have ended with Florida as a radioactive wasteland. Diplomacy is a tool, not a concession, and pretending otherwise to demonstrate toughness is either misleading the public or a mark of true idiocy.

Mr. Obama did good in sticking to his guns. It's an important point.

I hope you weren't expecting any surprises.

The House Judiciary Committee did its job today, and is looking to get contempt charges filed against Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten. To steal a few valuable words from the Times:

The House Judiciary Committee voted today to seek contempt of Congress citations against a top aide to President Bush and a former presidential aide over their refusal to cooperate in an inquiry about the firing of federal prosecutors.

The 22-to-17 vote along party lines escalates the battle between the administration and Congressional Democrats over the dismissals of nine United States attorneys last year, an episode that Democrats say needs airing but that many Republicans say is much ado about nothing.

“It’s not a step that, as chairman, I take easily or lightly,” the head of the panel, Representative John D. Conyers, Democrat of Michigan, said before the committee voted to cite Joshua B. Bolten, the president’s chief of staff, and Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel.

To take effect, the Judiciary Committee’s recommendation must be voted upon by the full House, where Democrats have a 231-to-201 edge, with 3 vacancies. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has not said whether she would seek House action before the lawmakers recess in early August, or allow the issue to simmer until the House reconvenes after Labor Day.

That party line vote, by the way? Let me be the one who aggregates commentary for you!

The last time a full chamber of Congress voted on a contempt citation was 1983. The House voted 413-0 to cite former Environmental Protection Agency official Rita Lavelle for contempt of Congress for refusing to appear before a House committee. Lavelle was later acquitted in court of the contempt charge, but she was convicted of perjury in a separate trial.

Lavelle was the chief of the EPA’s hazardous waste program in the Reagan administration. The White House withheld documents in the “Sewergate” scandal about hazardous waste enforcement — Reagan’s EPA didn’t believe in it — and Lavelle resisted subpoenas.

An outraged House approved a contempt citation unanimously.

Today, not a single Republican on the House Judiciary Committee was willing to endorse a similar measure. Not one.

In other words, every member of the House GOP in 1983 was willing to take a stand against an official in the administration of Ronald Reagan, the Patron Saint of the Party, but in 2007, the Republican caucus is inclined to stand with Bush.

Ah, but perhaps the Reagan administration simply didn't have as strong a case! Let's let a Texas Republican be paraphrased for the defense: "Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, the ranking Republican on the judiciary panel, argued that the White House had already offered to provide all the information the committee needs, by making presidential aides available for semi-formal, private interviews in which the aides would not be under oath." [Nor subject to transcription. Let's not forget that.]

See? The Democrats are simply being obstinate in refusing to let the White House lie to them behind closed doors and then claim complete transparency! Where's the spirit of compromise, people?

Look, I'm sorry, but I think a bit of targeted hysteria is called for. The White House has now officially declared that the Justice Department will let any contempt citation lie unenforced - and, in the cold light of day, I'm really afraid that they'll get away with it.

Contrary to Republican press releases, the properly functioning members of Congress have put together a compelling case that there's been wrongdoing - potentially criminal in scope - in the executive branch. Given that, there has to be some recourse for unfettered investigation. I mean, it's as basic as that: we can't afford to let the president - any president - determine the extent to which he and his subordinates are subject to oversight. This isn't about a particularly obscure point of constitutional theory: it's just another way of saying the executive is not above the law.

Only, now we may be about to get a precedent set that says he is. And, to return to Steve Benen's theme, not one Republican in Congress has so far demonstrated any kind of problem with that. Not one has indicated any willingness to put country over party.

Not one.

When Justice refuses to move on the contempt charges, and when the case gets tangled up in court, and when the Bush administration finally runs out the time left on the clock and leaves office amid a flurry of pardons, these jackasses are going to do everything in their power to minimize outrage and distract from abuse, and they're going to trivialize and undermine every honest effort made to fix the problems this administration has created and fostered. They've got just enough leverage to do it.

Man, I'm tired of this shit.

Can't get enough?

Christy Hardin Smith liveblogged yesterday morning's Gonzales testimony over on FDL. It's lengthy and it's hurried and it seems really, really useful to the dedicated scumbag-junkie.

It's a five-parter: here, here, here, here, and here.

Quoted with satisfaction.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will review Alberto Gonzales' past statements to determine whether Gonzales lied to the committee in 2006 by saying there had been no internal Justice Department dissent over the legality of the president's Terrorist Surveillance Program (otherwise known as the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program). When confronted by the senators, Gonzales today offered a surprising explanation of his consistency and veracity: he repeatedly suggested there's a different intelligence program, other than the TSP, that Justice Department officials found legally dubious in 2004. If Gonzales is telling the truth, he just disclosed the existence of a previously unknown intelligence program. If not, the embattled attorney general could be in some serious legal jeopardy.

Of course, every time I dare to dream about accountability, the president finds a new way to abuse his powers - hopes shouldn't get too high!

Still, this is necessary and positive, if not sufficient.

In other news, President Bush talks to the head of the country we occupy every other week or so. Apparently, they frequently talk about God - because that worked so well with Vladimir Putin.

If the president were a cannier judge of character, this might actually be productive - he could gain some valuable insights into his reluctant partner in reconstruction and into the society which we've haplessly done so much to destabilize. Maybe build trust based on a shared pragmatic assessment of the situation that's swallowing them both.

As it is, though, one pretty much has to assume he's just getting played so hard he's gonna need to be restrung.

Oh, well. At least it's relatively harmless.

Tests say cancer. Treatment: leeches.

Seriously, even if you ignore the fact that President Bush is almost certainly wildly overstating the extent of Osama bin Laden's connection to al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, I don't get how establishing that the latter organization is a problem is meant to automatically justify the president's approach to dealing with it. In fact, ever since the halcyon days of "Bring `em on!" it's been pretty clear that the president's instincts tend to lead to the situation getting worse.

As far as I can tell, nobody's saying al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia is popular among the Iraqis themselves - it's made up of foreign fanatics who are perfectly content to exploit the locals' pain in order to pursue their collective dream of a modern caliphate in which everyone does what they say, and as such is probably not a group well equipped to gain groundswells of local sympathy. In fact, their main tool for recruitment is basically our hubris in contributing to brutal violence in a country that overwhelmingly wants us gone. Saying that we'll beat them by doing what we're doing for as long as it takes is . . . well, let's be gracious and say that it's a strategy that can fairly be criticized.

The president can't perceive that, of course. He can't even imagine it. He's so locked into seeing what he's doing as a kind of endurance contest that he can't even frame his conveniently declassified talking points to attack the logic of any other position - he just assumes that the natural response to establishing the bad guys are bad is to conclude that he knows what he's doing.

The man is a berk, is what I'm saying.

Anyway, have a link!

I am hit where I live.

Drinking as little as one can of soda per day -- either regular or diet -- is associated with a 48 percent increased risk of "metabolic syndrome," a key predecessor of heart disease and diabetes, according to new results released Monday.

Researchers previously had known that drinking regular sodas contributed to the risk of metabolic syndrome, but this is the first finding implicating diet sodas, according to results published online in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

The researchers were uncertain why diet soda had such a large effect.

Dr. Ramachandran S. Vasan of Boston University School of Medicine, the lead author of the study, said it is unlikely that an ingredient in soda causes the effect. More likely is that consuming sweet sodas changes dietary patterns or that soda is simply a marker for the poor eating habits of the participants.

I'd celebrate the fact that soda may just be a frequent element of self-destructive dietary practice and may not in and of itself represent a health risk - but, yeah, I kinda maintain miserable eating habits too.

This may complicate my plan to live to three hundred.

Because it really should be seen everywhere.

I'm just discovering this now - as I surface from the Sea of Potter long enough to take a breath - but it's been making the rounds of the lefty blogosphere since yesterday.

Which this? This this:


Care of the excellent folks at McClatchy.

The point of it, if the thing resolves poorly on your screen, is that the use of filibusters has risen markedly since the early 1960s - but that the current Republican minority in Congress is using them at a rate which, if sustained, would almost triple that of the Democrats in the previous term.

Let's cut back to the professionals:

Seven months into the current two-year term, the Senate has held 42 "cloture" votes aimed at shutting off extended debate — filibusters, or sometimes only the threat of one — and moving to up-or-down votes on contested legislation. Under Senate rules that protect a minority's right to debate, these votes require a 60-vote supermajority in the 100-member Senate.

Democrats have trouble mustering 60 votes; they've fallen short 22 times so far this year. That's largely why they haven't been able to deliver on their campaign promises.

By sinking a cloture vote this week, Republicans successfully blocked a Democratic bid to withdraw combat troops from Iraq by April, even though a 52-49 Senate majority voted to end debate.

This year Republicans also have blocked votes on immigration legislation, a no-confidence resolution for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and major legislation dealing with energy, labor rights and prescription drugs.

Nearly 1 in 6 roll-call votes in the Senate this year have been cloture votes. If this pace of blocking legislation continues, this 110th Congress will be on track to roughly triple the previous record number of cloture votes — 58 each in the two Congresses from 1999-2002, according to the Senate Historical Office.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., forced an all-night session on the Iraq war this week to draw attention to what Democrats called Republican obstruction.

"The minority party has decided we have to get to 60 votes on almost everything we vote on of substance," said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. "That's not the way this place is supposed to work."

Now, I obviously cherry-picked that quote. If you keep reading, you'll find Republicans complaining that the Democrats are willfully putting up legislation that they have no choice but to block, solely to make them look bad.

The thing is, what they're blocking includes Congressional Ethics Reform (not actually filibustered - it passed in the Senate 96-2 - but blocked in conference), the 9/11 Commission recommendations, funding for renewable energy, and a whole host of measures on Iraq which were broadly popular with the American public. [There's a partial list here.]

I don't think you have to be a Democratic partisan to be unimpressed.

BDiT2.

The results from the aforementioned Turkish elections are in:

The Islamic-inspired governing party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan won a larger-than-expected victory in nationwide parliamentary elections on Sunday, taking close to half the total vote in a stinging rebuke to Turkey’s old guard.

With nearly all the votes counted, the Justice and Development Party led by Mr. Erdogan won 46.6 percent of the vote, according to Turkish election officials, far more than the 34 percent the party garnered in the last election, in 2002.

The secular state establishment had expected that voters would punish Mr. Erdogan’s party for promoting an Islamic agenda. But the main secular party, the Republican People’s Party, received just 20.9 percent, compared with 19 percent in the last election. The Nationalist Action Party, which played on fears of ethnic Kurdish separatism, won 14.3 percent, officials said.

The results were a mandate for Mr. Erdogan’s party, with large numbers of voters sending the message that they did not feel it is a threat to Turkish democracy. It fell short of the two-thirds majority needed to amend the Constitution, a blank check that secular Turks fear. According to the preliminary results, Mr. Erdogan’s party will have at least 340 seats in the 550-seat Parliament. The main secular party will have at least 111; the nationalists at least 71, and independents an unusually large 28 or more.

FYI.

The disgrace resumes.

After months of behind the scenes wrangling, the White House said Friday that it had given the Central Intelligence Agency approval to resume its use of some harsh interrogation methods in questioning terrorism suspects in secret prisons overseas.

With the new authorization, administration officials said the C.I.A. could now proceed with an interrogation program that has been in limbo since the Supreme Court ruled last year that all prisoners in American captivity be treated in accordance with Geneva Convention prohibitions against humiliating and degrading treatment of detainees.

An executive order signed by President Bush allows the C.I.A. to use some interrogation methods banned for military interrogators but that the Justice Department has determined do not violate the Geneva strictures.

Man, wouldn't it be nice if we lived in a world where the U.S. Justice Department's opinion could be presumed to have any legitimacy at all?

Anyway, the full (short) story is up here.

By the way . . .

Russia, too, is still getting worse.

With two new manuals for high school history and social studies teachers, written in part by Kremlin political consultants, Russian authorities are attempting to imbue classroom debate with a nationalist outlook.

The history guide contains a laudatory review of President Vladimir Putin's years in power. "We see that practically every significant deed is connected with the name and activity of President V.V. Putin," declares its last chapter. The social studies guide is marked by intense hostility to the United States.

Both books reflect the themes dominating official political discourse here: that Putin restored Russian strength and built what the Kremlin calls a "sovereign democracy" despite American efforts to isolate the country.

The principal author of the history manual -- "The Newest History of Russia, 1945-2006" -- is Alexander Fillipov, deputy head of the National Laboratory of Foreign Policy, a research institute affiliated with the Kremlin.

Putin, who succeeded the ailing Boris Yeltsin in 2000, demonstrated that "when a healthy and energetic person got this position it became obvious how vast presidential power is," the manual states.

But, I'm sorry, that's not as important as this.

He's finally breaking the country.

For real.

Bush administration officials unveiled a bold new assertion of executive authority yesterday in the dispute over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, saying that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege.

. . .

Under federal law, a statutory contempt citation by the House or Senate must be submitted to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, "whose duty it shall be to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action."

But administration officials argued yesterday that Congress has no power to force a U.S. attorney to pursue contempt charges in cases, such as the prosecutor firings, in which the president has declared that testimony or documents are protected from release by executive privilege. Officials pointed to a Justice Department legal opinion during the Reagan administration, which made the same argument in a case that was never resolved by the courts.

"A U.S. attorney would not be permitted to bring contempt charges or convene a grand jury in an executive privilege case," said a senior official, who said his remarks reflect a consensus within the administration. "And a U.S. attorney wouldn't be permitted to argue against the reasoned legal opinion that the Justice Department provided. No one should expect that to happen."

. . .

But Stanley Brand, who was the Democratic House counsel during the Burford case, said the administration's legal view "turns the constitutional enforcement process on its head. They are saying they will always place a claim of presidential privilege without any judicial determination above a congressional demand for evidence -- without any basis in law." Brand said the position is essentially telling Congress: "Because we control the enforcement process, we are going to thumb our nose at you."

Rozell, the George Mason professor and authority on executive privilege, said the administration's stance "is almost Nixonian in its scope and breadth of interpreting its power. Congress has no recourse at all, in the president's view. . . . It's allowing the executive to define the scope and limits of its own powers."

Let's be very clear on this: what the president is saying is that there are no federal crimes unless he thinks there are federal crimes. His subordinates are exempt from the law if he says they're exempt from the law.

There's no coyness here - George Bush believes he's above the Constitution. It's right there in the open, and if the precedent is allowed to stand, we as a nation officially start bleeding to death.

The only good thing I can say is that it isn't the official position of the executive branch yet. They've no doubt floated it to see how severe the reaction would be; maybe they can be scared into dialing it back.

If not, they have to be impeached - Bush and Cheney both. It may destroy American politics as we've known it; it may destroy one or both parties.

But this is it - this is what America is supposed to be about. The president is not a king. Are we really going to sell our constitutional democracy away for the likes of George Bush?

Big doings in Turkey.

For 84 years, modern Turkey has been defined by a holy trinity — the army, the republic and its founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Each was linked inextricably to the others and all were beyond reproach.

But a deep transformation is under way in this nation of 73 million, and elections this Sunday may prove a watershed: liberal Turks, once supporters of the ruling secular elite and its main backer, the military, are turning their backs on them and pledging votes to religious politicians as well as a new array of independents.

They say that the rigid rules of the last century, which prohibit women from wearing Muslim head scarves in public buildings and forbid ethnic minorities to express their identities, need to be left behind.

“This election is a power struggle between those who want change and those who don’t,” said Zafer Uskul, a prominent constitutional lawyer and human rights advocate who is a candidate from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamic-inspired party. “Religion is just an excuse.”

He and others say the rules served a purpose when Turkey was forging a national identity out of the remains of the Ottoman Empire. But now Turkey has outgrown them.

“In 50 years, people will write that this was the time Turkey started to come to terms with its own people,” said Suat Kiniklioglu, a foreign policy expert who is one of about 20 liberal Turks who recently joined Mr. Erdogan’s party as part of its effort to appeal more broadly to secular Turkish society.

I'd be lying if I said this didn't make me a little bit nervous - most immediately because I'm not familiar enough with the personalities in the AK Party to know how much trouble they're likely to raise - but, ultimately, Turkey's not likely to turn into Saudi Arabia any time soon, and enforcing Atatürk's vision of Turkishness has always involved impinging upon free speech in ways I can't bring myself to endorse (and doing real harm to Turkey's ethnic minorities - i.e., the Kurds - along the way). So, yeah, the shift at hand may well be for the best.

I hope.

What new powers does the executive branch have today?

Hm. Looks like President Bush has decided that his employees can freeze the assets of anyone who buys a cup of coffee for someone whom the government secretly supposes might "pose a significant risk of committing, [sic] an act or acts of violence" meant to screw things up in Iraq.

Now, is that how the executive order is meant to be applied? Almost certainly not. Could it be applied so? At a casual glance, sure - it's written very broadly, to be as versatile as possible.

Does the president have the Constitutional authority to lock up a citizen's finances without review or oversight? Can this administration in particular be trusted with powers like that? I mean, it sure doesn't seem in keeping with the Fourth Amendment, and it's become painfully apparent that these guys don't believe in powers they can't abuse.

Let's drop a quote.

The scope of the order has raised civil-liberties concerns. "Certainly it is highly constitutionally questionable to empower the government to destroy someone economically without giving notice," says Bruce Fein, a Justice Department official in the Reagan administration. "This is so sweeping it's staggering. I've never seen anything so broad that it expands beyond terrorism, beyond seeking to use violence or the threat of violence to cower or intimidate a population. This covers stabilization in Iraq. I suppose you could issue an executive order about stabilization in Afghanistan as well. And it goes beyond even attempting violence, to cover those who pose 'a significant risk' of violence. Suppose Congress passed a law saying you've committed a crime if there's significant risk that you might commit a crime."

Word.

Evil.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency since early 2006 has suppressed warnings from its own field workers about health problems experienced by hurricane victims living in government-provided trailers with levels of a toxic chemical 75 times the recommended maximum for U.S. workers, congressional lawmakers said yesterday.

A trail of e-mails obtained by investigators shows that the agency's lawyers rejected a proposal for systematic testing of the levels of potentially cancer-causing formaldehyde gas in the trailers out of concern that the agency would be legally liable for any hazards or health problems. As many as 120,000 families displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita lived in the suspect trailers, and hundreds have complained of ill effects.

On June 16, 2006, three months after reports of the hazards surfaced and a month after a trailer resident sued the agency, a FEMA logistics expert wrote that the agency's Office of General Counsel "has advised that we do not do testing, which would imply FEMA's ownership of this issue." A FEMA lawyer wrote on June 15: "Do not initiate any testing until we give the OK. . . . Once you get results and should they indicate some problem, the clock is running on our duty to respond to them."

FEMA tested no occupied trailers after March 2006, when it initially discovered formaldehyde levels at 75 times the U.S.-recommended workplace safety threshold and relocated a south Mississippi couple expecting their second child, the documents indicate. Formaldehyde, a common wood preservative used in construction materials such as particle board, can cause vision and respiratory problems; long-term exposure has been linked to cancer and higher rates of asthma, bronchitis and allergies in children.

One man in Slidell, La., was found dead in his trailer on June 27, 2006, after complaining about the formaldehyde fumes. In a conference call about the death, 28 officials from six agencies recommended that the circumstances be investigated and trailer air quality be subjected to independent testing. But FEMA lawyers rejected the suggestions, with one cautioning that further investigation "could seriously undermine the Agency's position" in litigation.

That's enough. That's just enough. It's been clear for years that a disgustingly high percentage of this administration would be facing prosecution or impeachment in a more just world, but now we're looking at crimes that aren't even bloodless. Independent criminal investigations are called for.

Full stop.

What's Russian for "hitman?"

A man thought to be connected with an alleged attempt to assassinate the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky has been arrested and deported back to Russia, police confirmed tonight.

The alleged hitman was detained in central London on June 21 and handed over to immigration officials two days later, Scotland Yard said.

Today it emerged that the attempted assasination had been thwarted by British security services.

Berezovsky, who lives in exile in Britain, said he had been told to leave the country by British police for his own safety between June 27 and July 4.

Tonight he said he was pleased that Scotland Yard had confirmed his story.

"I am happy that Britain is very strong in protecting people in this country," he told BBC News 24.

He said it was "useless" to try to protect himself against such assassination attempts but would rely on the protection of the UK which had offered him asylum.

He added: "It is very strange that British Government protects a Russian citizen in London and to the contrary Russia tries to kill a Russian citizen in London."

The emergence of a second assassination attempt on British soil following the killing of the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, is bound to worsen the already tense atmosphere between London and Moscow.

The operation, run by MI5 and MI6, came less than two weeks before the expulsion from Britain of four Russian diplomats.

It was reported that a man was detained at the Hilton Hotel on Park Lane, London. He was said to have been accompanied by a child, a tactic allegedly used in the Litvinenko murder.

At least this time, the Russians resisted the urge to spread radioactive material all over downtown London. That's progress!

Assuming you take this at face value - and I don't see what the Brits would gain by misrepresenting - I don't get the Russian agenda at all. I never really understood how Litvinenko could represent enough of a political threat to Putin and his allies to be worth the opprobrium that comes with a hit right out of a Bond movie. And then to double down? You'd think that they were going out of their way to present an image of themselves as masters of a criminal nation. Does it make them feel more relevant? Is it just Putin's KGB past getting the better of his good sense?

Weird.

We're our enemies' best friend.

Hey, has anybody been wondering how Moqtada al-Sadr's gang's been doing? Oh, sure, we saw earlier this week that they're "Enemy No. 1 in Western Baghdad," but outside of those ten square miles?

After months of lying low, the anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr has re-emerged with a shrewd strategy that reaches out to Iraqis on the street while distancing himself from the increasingly unpopular government.

Mr. Sadr and his political allies have largely disengaged from government, contributing to the political paralysis noted in a White House report last week. That outsider status has enhanced Mr. Sadr’s appeal to Iraqis, who consider politics less and less relevant to their daily lives.

Mr. Sadr has been working tirelessly to build support at the grass-roots level, opening storefront offices across Baghdad and southern Iraq that dispense services that are not being provided by the government. In this he seems to be following the model established by Hezbollah, the radical Lebanese Shiite group, as well as Hamas in Gaza, with entwined social and military wings that serve as a parallel government.

He has also extended the reach of his militia, the Mahdi Army, one of the armed groups that the White House report acknowledged remain entrenched in Iraq. The militia has effectively taken over vast swaths of the capital and is fighting government troops in several southern provinces. Although the militia sometimes uses brutal tactics, including death squads, many vulnerable Shiites are grateful for the protection it affords.

At the same time, the Mahdi Army is not entirely under Mr. Sadr’s control, and he publicly denounces the most notorious killers fighting in his name. That frees him to extend an olive branch to Sunni Arabs and Christians, while championing the Shiite identity of his political base.

. . .

“Sadr holds the political center in Iraq,” said Joost Hiltermann, the director of the International Crisis Group’s office in Amman, Jordan. “They are nationalist, they want to hold the country together and they are the only political organization that has popular support among the Shias. If you try to exclude him from any alliance, well, it’s a nutty idea, it’s unwise.”

Super.

The really freakish thing is, if he keeps his death squads out of Sunni-serving hospitals, even I might be willing to start telling myself this guy's a relative moderate.

Man, that poor country.

Even bloggers can feel despair.

So, I just saw tonight's Daily Show, much of which was given over to the subject of the Great Congressional Sleepover of 2007. The verdict? Democrats are preening twits, and Republican allegations of "political theater" carry the day! Shit, the impression given was that it was a Democratic filibuster, on top of everything else.

Fuck.

Okay, there's no point in arguing optics with the Daily Show - I may be full of myself, but I'm not Bush-stupid. Jon Stewart and company have recognized some inherent ridiculousness that I'd been willing to overlook, and their instincts on how the public will react are better than mine. Okay.

So, here's what we're left with: we have a crappy system. As long as the Republicans can maintain a filibuster, the Democrats are going to get nothing done, and they're going to get blamed for doing nothing. Stupid showpieces designed to entice the media into studying issues and assigning shame to Republicans will always backfire, because technical issues are complicated and Democratic twits have less convincing soundbites than Republican twits.

Sigh.

I really need to get back into drinking.

Random Potter predictions.

Snape sacrifices himself to save Harry. Harry grows up to be the Defense Against Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts.

Never let it be said I'm afraid to make stupid predictions in public!

Still in the trenches.

Turns out Harry Reid and company haven't given up on turning the proverbial screws.

Ratcheting up the stakes in the wake of the GOP's successful blocking of a vote on Iraq withdrawal just moments ago, Harry Reid just announced on the Senate floor that he won't allow a vote on the entire Defense Authorization bill until the Senate GOP drops its filibustering of votes on Iraq.

It comes only moments after the Republican filibuster succeeded in preventing a vote on the Reed-Levin amendment, which would have mandated withdrawal by April 2008.

Now, there's an update at the bottom of the post from which that quote came that puts this in perspective - the authorization bill isn't the same as the appropriations bill, and any failure to pass it wouldn't shut anything down. So, in that regard, the Democrats are still playing it safe (though I'm sure we can still expect to hear Joe Lieberman questioning their love of country) - but at least they're not washing their hands after this morning's defeat and saying they've done the best they could. Big step up from just three or four months ago.

This just in!

Harriet Miers, President Bush's hand-picked Supreme Court nominee, defies Congressional subpoena again, continues to cling to woefully monarchistic misinterpretation of executive privilege! John Conyers and Henry Waxman to convene meeting of Democratic Secret Super Justice Friends to determine response to lawlessness! Insiders predict stern letter! "I'm not above using two or three exclamation marks at a time!" Representative Conyers tells skeptical reporters!

Meh.

Is the above fair to Rep. Conyers? Of course not - the fact that he's carried the ball this far sets him miles above most of his peers in any honest evaluation of professionalism and fidelity to the American ideal, and I don't see him backing down any time soon.

Still, I'm looking right now at the front (web) pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times - and not one of them makes any mention of Ms. Miers' final refusal to appear before Congress. Hell, the LA Times doesn't even feature a cute graphic with cots and maids by way of a reference to tonight's filibuster-flagging in the Senate!

So, really, what options do the oversight folks in the House have? If they cite Ms. Miers with contempt of Congress and send a sergeant at arms to pick her up - and don't get me wrong; I think they should - there's going to be another loud, extended whine from the right over "the politicization of politics," the American people will have had no serious explanation of why this is important, and - a tangential point, but an important one - my head will probably then explode. If they do anything less, Ms. Miers and her counsel will ride it out - and, again, the American people by and large will be in the dark.

Again, I think Harriet Miers should be looking at an arrest. I think the good members of the House need to pursue the interests of the country and pretend that Fred Hiatt isn't a pillock - or accept that he is, and that our system of government matters more.

But I don't think it's inevitable, and I'm appalled to say that I don't trust the courts to do what's best for the country if it comes to that.

Which leaves me really starved for upbeat ways to close off this post.

Thank God for procedural strong-arming!

Senate Democrats are planning an all-night session Tuesday, daring Republicans to engage in an old-fashioned filibuster over Iraq troop withdrawals rather than just threatening one.

The tactic was unlikely to deliver the 60-vote supermajority that war critics need to bypass procedural hurdles and amend a defense authorization bill so that it would require withdrawing combat troop in four months.

But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Monday that a little late-night drama might focus more public attention on why the new Democratic majority still hadn't enacted binding antiwar legislation as it had campaigned to do.

"If Republicans insist on blocking a change of course in Iraq, Democrats will give them the opportunity to explain this, lots of opportunity to explain this," Reid said. "We are going to have votes during the night. We're not going to let everybody go home and have a good night's rest."

The Republicans more than have it coming.

My understanding is that a big part of why the filibuster has become what it is - a trivially easy-to-activate lock on legislation, rather than the multi-hour harangues of yesteryear - is simply that it permits other work to be done in the Senate, rather than requiring the floor to be locked up by cranky grandfathers on missions, as per Aaron Sorkin. Fair enough.

For that logic to work, though, the Senate actually has to get important things done, and the Republicans haven't been making that easy. When roles were reversed, of course, the players on the other side were calling for "the nuclear option" - the total abolishment of the filibuster - and though I'm still against it, I'm at least beginning to understand the appeal on a really visceral level. What strikes me as a legitimate alternative is . . . well, more of what we're seeing tonight. If there are procedural mechanisms that can be employed to force the filibustering party to stand in the spotlight and coherently defend its actions, particularly on matters of significant national import, I think we'd all come out better for seeing them used.

I also have ideas involving national majorities to be able to demand creative combinations of tasers and legislators' genitals in cases of overly frivolous misconduct, but that's a post for another time.

Ready to dodge another bullet?

The balance in the internal White House debate over Iran has shifted back in favour of military action before President George Bush leaves office in 18 months, the Guardian has learned.

The shift follows an internal review involving the White House, the Pentagon and the state department over the last month. Although the Bush administration is in deep trouble over Iraq, it remains focused on Iran. A well-placed source in Washington said: "Bush is not going to leave office with Iran still in limbo."

. . .

Last year Mr Bush came down in favour of Ms Rice, who along with Britain, France and Germany has been putting a diplomatic squeeze on Iran. But at a meeting of the White House, Pentagon and state department last month, Mr Cheney expressed frustration at the lack of progress and Mr Bush sided with him. "The balance has tilted. There is cause for concern," the source said this week.

Nick Burns, the undersecretary of state responsible for Iran and a career diplomat who is one of the main advocates of negotiation, told the meeting it was likely that diplomatic manoeuvring would still be continuing in January 2009. That assessment went down badly with Mr Cheney and Mr Bush.

"Cheney has limited capital left, but if he wanted to use all his capital on this one issue, he could still have an impact," said Patrick Cronin, the director of studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The Washington source said Mr Bush and Mr Cheney did not trust any potential successors in the White House, Republican or Democratic, to deal with Iran decisively.

Bush still thinks that what the Middle East needs is more of Cheney's brand of "decisiveness?" Still?

Sometimes, I just wish I could go back in time and swat all those Op-Ed writers of yesteryear who cautioned us that we were making a mistake in calling the man stupid.

Short blogging round-up.

Sorry, you lot - I'm not feeling particularly well, and I've got other work I need to be doing, and so my blather will be restricted to low pith and extensive quotation tonight.

First bit that strikes my fancy . . . well, actually, that terrifies me: the state of Georgia is apparently about to execute a man who's probably innocent. The Times ran the story yesterday, and it's spreading around the blogosphere today. I'm gonna go with the mysterious Bean for my lengthy quote-piracy.

Mr. Davis was convicted of shooting a police officer who had come to break up a scuffle outside an Atlanta nightclub. There was no physical evidence tying him to the shooting. He admits to being at the scene but claims that he turned and ran as soon as someone threatened to shoot. At his trial, prosecutors, according to the Times, "relied heavily on the testimony of nine eyewitnesses who took the stand against Mr. Davis." But in the years since his trial, seven of the nine witnesses have recanted or changed their stories, admitting that they were (again, per the Times) "harassed and pressed by investigators to lie under oath."

Mr. Davis has exhausted his appeals. The Supreme Court last week refused to hear his case. And because of a recent (1996) law "intended to streamline the legal process in death penalty cases, courts have ruled it is too late in the appeals process to introduce new evidence and, so far, have refused to hear it." Why streamlining the path to death is a good idea totally escapes me. But beyond that, the existence of a law barring evidence that could exonerate a man less than one week from his execution seems both barbaric and blindingly stupid. Sure, in the absence of such a law, some people who are guilty of the crimes for which they were convicted would abuse the system and seek to submit unimportant evidence up to the last minute. But to me this seems a small price in efficiency to pay in order to ensure we don't put innocent people to death. (As you may have read before, I don't believe in capital punishment to begin with. But within the framework we now have, this law seems particularly cruel.)

Yet Mr. Davis remains on death row, and his death warrant (pdf) has been signed. The only way he will escape execution (to be carried out between July 17 and July 25) is if the Goergia Board of Pardons and Paroles grants clemency. Which - predictably - seems highly unlikely, particularly given that the boar has commuted only 8 sentences since 1973, the last more than three years ago. And this in a state that has less concern than most states about the possibility of executing the innocent: Georgia is one of only two states that does not guarantee that condemned prisoners will have legal representation after they have exhausted direct appeals (e.g. for clemency hearings, etc.).

At root, whether or not Mr. Davis is innocent (which there is ample evidence to suggest he is, including the fact that one of the people to testify against him is the person others have fingered as the shooter), is not important. The fact that our justice system would set any roadblocks in the way of truth-seeking, particularly in the context of capital punishment, is just beyond me. Streamlining should not come at this cost.

Word.

It's worth flagging in no small part because making the story more visible increases the odds that Georgia's parole board will be shamed into erring on the side of decency. They've already taken the pleasantly surprising step of postponing the execution for ninety days while they deliberate further; I'd like to think there's hope for further traction.

Second thing comes from Dover Bitch over at Hullabaloo - long story (and one actually worth reading in its entirety) short: the Senate voted unanimously (barring three absences, anyway) to support Joe Lieberman's effort to give President Bush cover for attacking Iran. It's kind of hard to understand why.

That's it for now!

September's progress report should be light reading.

The White House on Friday appeared resigned to the fact that the Iraqi parliament is going to take August off, even though it has just eight weeks to show progress on military, political and economic benchmarks prescribed by the United States.

"My understanding is at this juncture they're going to take August off, but, you know, they may change their minds," White House press secretary Tony Snow said.

Read the rest here, yo.

Actually, it occurs to me that this may be a deliberate maneuver to weaken Bush's hand so much that he has to begin the pullout. The Iraqi political classes certainly aren't unaware of the state of political play within the U.S., and it wasn't that long ago that a majority of parliamentarians indicated they wanted American forces gone (whereas, as Nick Kristof reminds us, a full sixty-nine percent of Iraq's citizens apparently think we're doing more harm than good).

They may be underestimating the president's unwillingness to admit defeat (or monumental, staggering wrong-headedness, as the case may be), but one still has to admire the style.

I am not reassured.

From Spencer Ackerman:

It's official: President Bush will veto any and all measures put forth by Congressional Dems to halt the Iraq War, according to a little-noticed letter from the White House to Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Not a big surprise. Bad, but not a big surprise.

The letter also says that the White House will veto any measure that would tie its hands on Iran -- including on military action inside that country.

. . .

. . .

. . .

More of a surprise.

Can somebody suggest to George H.W. Bush that maybe his son needs an intervention? A locked-in-a-room-with-people-who-inexplicably-love-him kind of deal? Dick Cheney would have to kept out with tasers and cattle prods, and some lives could be lost, but the alternatives are just getting too scary to contemplate.

I suppose it would be churlish to ask why he didn't resign sooner.

The first U.S. surgeon general appointed by President George W. Bush accused the administration on Tuesday of political interference and muzzling him on key issues like embryonic stem cell research.

"Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried," Dr. Richard Carmona, who served as the nation's top doctor from 2002 until 2006, told a House of Representatives committee.

"The problem with this approach is that in public health, as in a democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring science, or marginalizing the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds. The job of surgeon general is to be the doctor of the nation, not the doctor of a political party," Carmona added.

I suppose an acceptable answer would be that he feared he'd be replaced by an honest-to-God hack.

Either way, that was George W. Bush's former surgeon general, explaining how the administration's prejudices and political agenda kept him from doing his job. Add him to the pile.

Fredo strikes again!

Man, Alberto Gonzales sure is lucky his boss has nothing but contempt for the way the American system of government is supposed to work. He might really be in trouble otherwise!

As he sought to renew the USA Patriot Act two years ago, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales assured lawmakers that the FBI had not abused its potent new terrorism-fighting powers. "There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse," Gonzales told senators on April 27, 2005.

Six days earlier, the FBI sent Gonzales a copy of a report that said its agents had obtained personal information that they were not entitled to have. It was one of at least half a dozen reports of legal or procedural violations that Gonzales received in the three months before he made his statement to the Senate intelligence committee, according to internal FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.

The acts recounted in the FBI reports included unauthorized surveillance, an illegal property search and a case in which an Internet firm improperly turned over a compact disc with data that the FBI was not entitled to collect, the documents show. Gonzales was copied on each report that said administrative rules or laws protecting civil liberties and privacy had been violated.

The reports also alerted Gonzales in 2005 to problems with the FBI's use of an anti-terrorism tool known as a national security letter (NSL), well before the Justice Department's inspector general brought widespread abuse of the letters in 2004 and 2005 to light in a stinging report this past March.

"Fuck you! And sit up straight!"

President Bush, invoking executive privilege for the second time in his clash with lawmakers over the firing of federal prosecutors, said today that he is refusing to comply with Congressional subpoenas for testimony from two top former aides.

In a letter to the chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, Mr. Bush’s counsel, Fred F. Fielding, declared that the legislative and executive branches of government were at an impasse. Mr. Fielding wrote that the president is directing the two aides — Sara M. Taylor, the former White House political director, and Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel — not to testify.

. . .

In his letter today, Mr. Fielding complained about the tone and language the Democrats used, telling them he wanted to convey “a note of concern over your letter’s apparent direction in dealing with a situation of this gravity.”

Why, oh, why can't Congress be as well behaved as the executive branch?

Not a good windmill for tilting.

The following comes from the other side of this link.

Cindy Sheehan, the slain soldier's mother whose attacks on President Bush made her a darling of the anti-war movement, has a new target: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Sheehan, who announced in late May that she was departing the peace movement, said she decided to run against Pelosi unless the congresswoman moves to oust Bush in the next two weeks.

"I think all politicians should be held accountable," Sheehan told The Associated Press on Sunday. "Democrats and Americans feel betrayed by the Democratic leadership. We hired them to bring an end to the war."

Do Bush and Cheney deserve to be impeached? Legally? Yeah, I'm sure they do. Hell, by Madisonian standards (if the left side of the Internet is to be believed), Bush deserves to be tossed out for the Libby pardon alone.

They deserve it for past misdeeds, and - moreover - the country and the world would be hugely better off if they had the ability to do great harm taken away from them sooner rather than later. If we had a system that provided for votes of no confidence . . . well, okay, the Republicans would've tossed out Clinton, despite his popularity and relative competence. Fair enough.

The bad news is, filing articles of impeachment almost certainly wouldn't do any good. I don't think Speaker Pelosi could even get a majority of the House to go along with them, let alone two-thirds of the Senate. Bush and Cheney would survive in office, and I can all but guarantee that the American media would fixate on the spectacle of the trial and the Democrats' failure to win it rather than on the actual case being made. The media's by and large very bad with details and facts and things that aren't vague impressions, the poor dears. Which means, in the end, the Democrats look weakened and the Republicans have a chance to spin out a vindication, or at least a new beginning.

This is not what we want.

If anybody wants to convince me that we actually can ride the bastards out of town, though, I'd love to believe . . . .

Twenty-two hundred years (and one week) late.

There's a massive room hidden in Qin Shi Huang's tomb and I'm only just finding out about it! My archaeology dork credentials are in doubt!

A mysterious underground chamber has been found inside the Chinese imperial tomb guarded by the famous Terracotta Army, Chinese archaeologists say.

Historical records describing the tomb of Qin Shihuang, the first emperor of China's Qin dynasty, do not mention the room which is 30 metres (98 feet) deep.

The unopened chamber was found at the site near the old imperial capital of Xian using remote sensing technology.

One expert says it may have been built for the soul of the emperor.

More than 2,000 years old, the chamber is buried inside a pyramidal earth mound 51m (170 feet) high on top of Qin's tomb.

It is situated near the life-size terracotta warriors and has four stair-like walls, says Duan Qingbo, a researcher with the Shaanxi Institute of Archaeology.

The Chinese authorities have not given permission to excavate the site.

It is believed that they wish to perfect archaeological techniques before probing any further, and archaeologists have had to use the sensing technology at the site since 2002.

Despite his brutal methods, Emperor Qin is remembered as a hero in China for forging a unified state.

That last sentence probably says something about something.

Anyway, I'm delighted to have a hawt new mystery on the page - and, though it pains me to my immediate gratification loving soul, I'm doubly delighted that the Chinese are doing what they can to preserve the site. Given the preservation (or lack thereof) horror stories that've come out of Burma and Cambodia and, yeah, Afghanistan in recent years, I worry that Asia's cultural heritage is in danger of mutilation, if not death, by a thousand cuts. Caution makes me smile.

So, time to speculate! Giant scale model of of the first unified Chinese state with quicksilver rivers and jewels in the ceiling for stars, anybody?

Blast from the past.

Huh.

Okay, I thought the biggest strike against Fred Thompson (relative to the other Republican contenders, anyway) was gonna have something to do with his performance in Law & Order. [Remember Steven Hill? There was a DA you could watch: flawed, political and dignified. Mr. Thompson, on the other hand, gets to play an idealized version of himself - conservative, cunning, and never challenged in any particularly meaningful way - which may be fun for the actor, but it's relatively dull for the viewer. Meh.]

But, no. Instead, we're starting to get stories that date back to the beginning of the modern age of Republican corruption . . .

The day before Senate Watergate Committee minority counsel Fred Thompson made the inquiry that launched him into the national spotlight -- asking an aide to President Nixon whether there was a White House taping system -- he telephoned Nixon's lawyer.

Thompson tipped off the White House that the committee knew about the taping system and would be making the information public. In his all-but-forgotten Watergate memoir, "At That Point in Time," Thompson said he acted with "no authority" in divulging the committee's knowledge of the tapes, which provided the evidence that led to Nixon's resignation. It was one of many Thompson leaks to the Nixon team, according to a former investigator for Democrats on the committee, Scott Armstrong , who remains upset at Thompson's actions.

"Thompson was a mole for the White House," Armstrong said in an interview. "Fred was working hammer and tong to defeat the investigation of finding out what happened to authorize Watergate and find out what the role of the president was."

In all fairness, I'm willing to believe that he honestly didn't accept how bad Dick Nixon was until late in the game; I'm willing to believe that he only bent professional ethics with the understanding that the underlying case wasn't that serious.

On the other hand, saying that a presidential candidate only did inappropriate things in the greatest constitutional crisis in his lifetime because his judgement was impaired by partisan fervor doesn't bring me a whole lot closer to wanting to see the country vote for the guy.

I'm just sayin'.

My idiosyncratic approach to Independence Day.

Apparently, this year, it consists of a quick look at the nation from which we became independent.

[Gordon Brown] has disarmed critics by sharing power, starting with appointments of some key Blair allies to his cabinet. On Tuesday, addressing the House of Commons for the first time as prime minister, Brown proposed a broad transfer of powers from the prime minister to Parliament. Without mentioning the Iraq war, which cost Blair much of his public support, Brown proposed moving the power to send the military to war from his office to Parliament.

He also proposed giving away the prime minister's traditional power to choose Church of England bishops and judges and ratify international treaties. And he proposed U.S.-style confirmation hearings in Parliament for his appointments to important government posts, and a debate about whether to establish a U.S.-style Bill of Rights.

"He's a quiet toughie, a little bit like Teddy Roosevelt -- speak softly and carry a big stick," said Anthony King, professor of government at the University of Essex. "It's been a remarkable performance."

Brown's response to the incidents -- in which a group of foreign-born doctors living in Britain allegedly plotted to detonate car bombs -- has suggested a subtle but important change from the Blair era. After bombings here in July 2005, Blair proposed major changes in terror laws -- notably outlawing speech "glorifying" terrorism -- that many Muslims regarded as a generalized attack on their religion.

Mohammed Shafiq, 28, spokesman for the Ramadhan Foundation, a national Muslim youth organization, said Blair's response to those bombings "demonized Muslims." He said increased powers for police to stop and search people were used largely against young Muslim men. And he said Blair's attempt to change laws to allow terrorism suspects to be held for 90 days without charge was an unfair proposal aimed at Muslims. Parliament eventually agreed to a 28-day limit on such detentions -- a major defeat for Blair.

"Brown's government has not had the knee-jerk reaction like Blair's," Shafiq said. "Brown has been trying to bring people together. The contrast is amazing."

In a low-key BBC interview Sunday, and in other public statements on the failed car bombings, Brown has not used the word "Muslim." A Brown spokesman said that was deliberate, just as Brown intends to avoid the phrase "war on terror," which some Muslims see as a euphemism for targeting Islam. The spokesman said Brown was modifying his language to encourage a "strong consensual approach in relation to all the communities."

Brown described al-Qaeda as "a terrorist cause that is totally unacceptable to mainstream people in every faith in every part of the world." And he has been at pains, analysts said, to frame the problem of extremist violence not as a struggle against Islam, but as a struggle against individual criminals.

"The prime minister has made it clear that those who carry out these attacks are the enemy of all of us, and you can't hold responsible an entire faith group over the actions of a few individuals," Bunglawala said.

When Tony Blair turned the reins over to this guy, I was pessimistic. It's a conditioned trait that comes from decades with American liberalism - when I hear that a relatively non-telegenic technocrat with solid lefty credentials has taken a leadership position, I just automatically assume that he's going to be devoured by the hyenas. It's the curse of Al Gore. [Mr. Blair, while far from perfect, at least had a solid record of defending himself from political rivals who were worse.] Instead, though, Mr. Brown has refused to pander and has - at least in the short term - apparently profited from it. It's like looking at my own society in a funhouse mirror.

A wonderful, wonderful funhouse mirror.

So, kudos to Mr. Brown on a very good week!



And then there's us.

It's hard to be triumphalist about the American experiment a couple days after our crooked president gave an ex-employee who had a hand in selling bogus arguments for an unrighteous war a free pass from the consequences of a criminal conviction for perjury and obstructing justice - but gloating's not a particularly healthy style of patriotism anyway.

What I can sincerely say is that the last few years have made me think hard about what I think the U.S. should be - unafraid, generous, at least moderately wise, and more besides. And, for all the poison the body politic has breathed in (in the Bush era in particular), I think most of us still want to try. I think most of us still have a sense of a better nation, somewhere in our heads and in our souls, and we love it enough to be willing to work for it. The dreams are still good.

So, what is there to say? Happy birthday to those dreams, and - because sometimes it's cool to be trite - God bless America.

[Here's hoping our government doesn't make it any harder than it has to be.]

Robert Mugabe's cure for catastrophic inflation?

Beating the shit out of merchants who won't sell their stock at a massive loss, and printing more money. Or, to get all metaphorical, using gasoline to smother flames.

Is there a brutal rationality underlying it? Is it, say, a way of blackmailing South Africa with the threat of more instability at the border? Or is the old man just out of cards to play?

Either way, here's hoping that sometime soon he needs to leave Zimbabwe for medical reasons, and they don't let him back in. Ever.

Tonight's already-old news.

Around mid-day yesterday, the Scooter Libby update was . . .

Libby loses bid for freedom

In a unanimous order, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has just denied Scooter Libby's request to remain free on bail while he appeals his conviction. The result: The Federal Bureau of Prisons is now awaiting the arrival of Inmate No. 28301-016, and the rest of us should know pretty soon now what George W. Bush is or isn't going to do about it.

By late afternoon, East Coast-style, the rest of us (those who weren't en route to a showing of High and Low, anyway) knew. The president commuted Mr. Libby's prison sentence from thirty months to . . . well, none, while still leaving a guilty verdict, fines, and a period of probation intact. Don't dismiss those last bits as totally hollow - as long as Mr. Libby's appealing them, he's free to invoke the Fifth Amendment when questioned about, say, any links between the White House and the Wilson affair, thereby covering presidential and vice presidential ass.

And, man, what a shocking coincidence that is.

I don't think there's a whole lot more to be said about this. Alberto Gonzales presided over increasingly well documented, extremely improper politicization at the Justice Department; he has his job, and the president's continued support. Karl Rove, intentionally or accidentally, spread classified information about Joe Wilson, and he's still got his security clearance. Screw-ups get Medals of Freedom, pardoned Iran-Contra felons get jobs, and the Republican Party seems by and large to celebrate all of it as a series of triumphs of will over the petty constraints of American legal and political tradition.

And, y'know, I'm sure the origins of it are very human. It probably goes back to when the Democrats ran everything - when FDR won and won and won and won, and built the New Deal and packed the Supreme Court to do it; when JFK smiled and shone and (maybe with the help of lies and mob money) blew past complicated, shadowy Dick Nixon; when civil rights and good music and bad hair got shoved down the throats of everyone who did everything in their political power to keep it from happening - and the Republicans had every reason to nurse resentments and imagine ways to win. I'm convinced the great liberalizing wave was an enormously positive thing, and when you look at the forest for the trees I think most Americans would agree - but if you were on the wrong side of it, then you probably learned to look at brute political force as something that's separate from moral ends. It's understandable.

It ain't good for the republic, though.

In and of itself, the Libby commutation means just next to nothing. The conviction stands (albeit quite likely for self-serving reasons), and in fifty years that's what'll be in the history books - if any of this is. Still, it trivializes the system - worse, it's part of a pattern that corrupts it. God knows we're a flawed country, but the good parts of the late twentieth century taught us that putting party and loyalty over the law should embarrass us. We're stronger when we feel that we can trust our government to be impartial and just; we're more influential when we try to live up to our rhetoric.

As long as the Republican leadership feeds its followers persecution fables and dumbass demonstrations of "strength," though, they're never going to understand it. Too bad for the country.

But, hey, good news for Scooter Libby.