Thursday’s Mini-Report

December 20, 2007

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* In a pleasant surprise, after a promised stonewall, the CIA and the Justice Department agreed yesterday to start sharing documents with Congress regarding the destruction of the torture tapes. The CIA also agreed to let the agency’s top lawyer, John Rizzo, testify about the matter before the House Intelligence Committee.

* In related news, the Intelligence Committee heard from former CIA Assistant General Counsel John Radsan today, who said the stated defense — the tapes had to be destroyed to protect the identities of the U.S. torturers — doesn’t make any sense: “There was no indication that they wanted to share this with anybody. If they are worried about a leak, the CIA protects a lot of classified information. If you have tapes in an overseas location, then have the tapes moved back to headquarters as Ms. Jackson-Lee said, put it in a safe in the Director’s office. If a tape is not safe in the CIA, in the office of the Director of the CIA, we’re in trouble.”

* And speaking of torture: “A blood-spattered ‘torture complex’ used by Iraqi insurgents, and the remains of 26 people buried nearby, were found in the province of Diyala on Thursday, the US military announced…. The torture chamber was housed in an area containing three detention facilities, the military said. ‘It had chains on the walls and ceilings, a bed still hooked up to an electrical system and several blood-stained items,’ a statement said.” I remember a time when we had the moral authority to denounce such horrors without looking like hypocrites.

* And speaking of Iraq: “A suicide bombing northeast of the capital and a car bombing in Baghdad on Thursday shattered the calm of an otherwise unusually peaceful holiday period in Iraq. Authorities said 19 people were killed in the two attacks, including a U.S. soldier.”

* California has been waiting for quite a while for a waiver from the Bush administration to implement its own regulations to cut greenhouse-gas emissions from vehicles. Yesterday, Bush’s EPA finally responded: “No.”

* Time magazine’s person of the year: Vladimir Putin. (Al Gore was a runner-up.)

* Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) is facing some heat for defending Trent Lott’s racism. Good.

* Mukasey got this one absolutely right: “Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey issued new restrictions yesterday on contacts between Justice Department and White House officials regarding ongoing criminal or civil investigations, implementing his first major policy revision since taking office on Nov. 9.” During the Clinton years, there were seven people at the White House and the Justice Department who were authorized to initiate discussions about pending cases. Under Ashcroft, that number swelled to 40. Under Alberto Gonzales, it grew to more than 900. Mukasey is adding some welcome sanity to this part of the Justice Department.

* Aw-kward: “It’s true that in Washington, adversaries often wind up drinking together after hours. But when insiders at the FBI saw that Sen. Ted Stevens had RSVP’d ‘yes’ to last Friday’s annual director’s holiday bash, the hunters couldn’t quite conceive of partying with the prey. FBI agents raided the Alaska Republican’s home less than five months ago as part of a sprawling corruption probe.” Stevens agreed to attend, but didn’t show up.

* Time magazine is about to get better: “Two conservative Time magazine columnists are on their way out the door: Neither William Kristol nor longtime contributor Charles Krauthammer will be on contract with the magazine starting next month. Mr. Krauthammer confirmed the news to Off the Record, and a spokeswoman for Time said Mr. Kristol’s contract would not be renewed.”

* If his presidential campaign doesn’t work out, might Chris Dodd be considered as a Senate Majority Leader? There’s quite a bit of talk about the subject.

* Remember, CNN, you’re paying good money to keep this clown on the air: “Glenn Beck guest host Joe Pagliarulo described an Australian professor’s proposal as ‘a baby tax to help save the planet,’ about which Beck said: ‘[A] lot of these environmentalists absolutely hate people.’ Beck also claimed that ‘it’s these same kind of environmentalists that took the wolves out of Yellowstone Park.’ In fact, the gray wolf population in Yellowstone National Park was eradicated in the late 1800s and early 1900s by federally funded predator-elimination programs.”

* And finally, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas told students at Chapman University that he doesn’t much care for his job: “There’s not much that entices about the job,” Thomas said. “There’s no money in it, no privacy, no big houses, and from an ego standpoint, it does nothing for me.” If he wanted to quit in, say, 2009, that’d be just fine.

Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.

“In a pleasant surprise, after a promised stonewall, the CIA and the Justice Department agreed yesterday to start sharing documents with Congress regarding the destruction of the torture tapes. The CIA also agreed to let the agency’s top lawyer, John Rizzo, testify about the matter before the House Intelligence Committee.”

I guess that fire in Cheney’s office dealt with the relevant documents.

  • And speaking of torture: “A blood-spattered ‘torture complex’ used by Iraqi insurgents, and the remains of 26 people buried nearby, were found in the province of Diyala on Thursday, the US military announced…. The torture chamber was housed in an area containing three detention facilities, the military said. ‘It had chains on the walls and ceilings, a bed still hooked up to an electrical system and several blood-stained items,’ a statement said.” I remember a time when we had the moral authority to denounce such horrors without looking like hypocrites.

    Well, there has always been torture in war, so it’s not surprising that Iraqi insurgents would be torturing people, even if it is horrible.

    My mom was watching Fox News yesterday (she’s an old woman with a stroke and doesn’t know what she’s doing) and interestingly, Fox News called this an Al Qaeda torture chamber. But the articles you linked to- while finding lots of opportunities to mention Al Qaeda- doesn’t attribute the torture chamber to them at all. So I guess the torture chamber could have belonged to anybody, as far as we know.

  • * California has been waiting for quite a while for a waiver from the Bush administration to implement its own regulations to cut greenhouse-gas emissions from vehicles. Yesterday, Bush’s EPA finally responded: “No.”

    What an anti-environment bastard.

    * Time magazine’s person of the year: Vladimir Putin. (Al Gore was a runner-up.)

    These awards to badguys or people portrayed as such by the media are dumb.

    They just foster the rightwing narrative that the mainstream media is an insanely liberal tool that doesn’t know what it’s doing. Every time they trot an award like this to some bastard for being a newsmaker (instead of to, say, Al Gore) it tends to send more people to Fox News and unhinged rightwing commentators. We have to trot out the explanation about how it’s an award for being ‘notable’ and a ‘newsmaker’ and then Fox News (or whoever) can, in a slimy attempt to make itself not look so partisan to us, say “Time said the award goes to a notable newsmaker. They’re not saying Putin is a good person; they’re not saying he’s a bad person” – even if Time wasn’t the one who said “We’re not saying he’s bad,” rather it was only the Fox News writers/commenters. To a dumb liberal, that looks like a fair statement, but to a rank and file Republican who just watched the anti-Putin-propaganda-special on CNN, they see it and say “Oh my God! They’re not saying he’s a bad person???” and Fox News (or whoever) knows exactly how it sounds to a person like that.

  • Chris Dodd would be an EXCELLENT leader of the Senate. How can we help make this happen?

    My thoughts exactly! We need more Senators like Dodd and his ascension to the leadership position would be a great change.

  • Er, Swan #3 – I understand your point, but in this case if Time had selected Al Gore, which they should have, the right would have gone off the wall apoplectic. Nobody, but nobody, is more evil than Al Gore, not counting the Clintons, of course.

    Hey, maybe that’s why they selected Putin. Not as controversial as Gore.

  • I have been wondering for some time how they select the Senate leader. How in the world did a wimp like Reid get the job? For that matter, how did Pelosi in the House?

    How do we lobby for Dodd? He’d be terrific.

    How about a post on this, CB? What a difference it would have made with Dodd in there over the last year. He’s a fighter, a class act, a great orator on his feet, the works. He’d make a great president. Next best, Senate majority leader.

  • I disagree, Hark, I think it would have been better + more normal if Time had selected Gore. It would get more moderates, almost-moderates, and people who aren’t very politicized or informed closer to seeing reality for what it is.

  • I was really hoping Larry “Wide Stance” Craig would win man-of-the-year. Oh well.

    On a more serious note, I would love to see Senator Dodd as majority leader. Or President. Or Vice President.

  • “There’s not much that entices about the job,” Thomas said. “There’s no money in it, no privacy, no big houses, and from an ego standpoint, it does nothing for me.”

    What a putz!

  • Perhaps Thomas doesn’t care for it, but nevertheless needs the job for the health insurance, like millions of other Americans.

  • re: torture in Iraq. “I remember a time when we had the moral authority to denounce such horrors without looking like hypocrites.” — CB

    To be sure… Our walls tend to be more watter-stained than blood-spattered but, otherwise…

    * Time magazine is about to get better: “Two conservative Time magazine columnists are on their way out the door” — CB

    “The New York Observer reports, however, that Time is “in negotiations with National Review editor Ramesh Ponnuru to sign him to a contributor contract.” — Think Progress (yesterday)

    Two steps forward, one step back.

  • Bush—the Deciderer; the Commander-Guy—I say we take this Unitary Executive thing to its logical conclusion—and make Dodd GOD. Reskunklicans would hurl themselves into the Chesapeake in droves. The Babbling Tower of Murdoch would tremble, burst into flame, and collapse. The religious Right would do one of those self-rapture koolaid thingies like Jim Jones (remember that wingnut?).

    It could be…interesting….

  • Swan #9 – I said that, and last night, too. Gore was the correct choice. This man has dedicated decades to fighting what could be the most important “war” facing the world in the 21st century. It’s a travesty that Time selected Putin. The point I was making was that the people on the right would have reacted more negatively to a Gore choice, than a Putin. That is, it would have reinforced the “liberal media” myth more so with Gore.

  • i’d rather have dodd as president.

    having said that, he would also make a great majority leader.

    a lot better than the person warming that seat right now.

  • Completely agree on Dodd as Majority Leader. I’d trust him, as I wouldn’t necessarily trust Reid, to stand up for the Constitution whether it’s a Democrat or Republican in power starting in 2009.

    And using the Open Thread prerogative, here’s a cautionary note about Hillary Clinton’s “experience.” Yes, it’s by George Will, and he’s a dick. But the facts are what they are:

    Hillary Clinton attacks Barack Obama by recycling a slogan Nixon used in 1960 against John Kennedy: “Experience Counts.” But is it prudent of her to invite remembrances of things past?

    She had two experiences of wielding power regarding important matters for her husband’s administration. One concerned the selection of his first, second and third choices to be attorney general — all in just 50 days. The decisive criterion would be chromosomes: The attorney general had to be a woman. The first selection, Zoe Baird, crashed because a slipshod selection process did not discover that she and her husband had employed two illegal immigrants as domestic help and had not paid Social Security taxes. Then Kimba Wood failed because she once hired an illegal immigrant before such hiring was itself illegal, a nonoffense magnified by the Baird debacle.

    The third choice was Janet Reno, whose eight-year tenure was notable for three things. One was the botched assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, in which 86 people died, 17 of them children the assault was supposed to rescue. Another was seizing, at gunpoint, 6-year-old Elian Gonzales from his Miami relatives and deporting him to Castro’s Cuba, from which he and his mother had fled in an escape in which she drowned. The third was the optional appointment of an independent counsel to investigate the Whitewater land deal, an investigation that led to Paula Jones. When Hillary Clinton adamantly opposed a financial settlement with her, the investigation meandered to Monica Lewinsky and impeachment.

    The second of Hillary Clinton’s important experiences was the drafting, in secret, of a national health care plan. It was so dauntingly baroque and ominously statist that a Congress controlled by her party would not bring it to a vote.

    Her experiences that should matter most to primary voters reveal consistently bad judgment. Her campaign’s behavior radiates bad character.

  • Here’s a gem: Barack Obama was pressed to name the Republicans he would consider for positions in the Cabinet, and he named three: Chuck Hagel, Dick Lugar and…Arnold Schwarzenegger.

    It isn’t that I think no Republican should be offered a position in the Cabinet of a Dem president – it’s more that I think it comes off like he doesn’t think he could find the right kind of talent in his own party. And I know Edwards has thrown out the possibility of doing this, too – and I don’t like it when he does it either.

    Is there now something wrong with expecting to appoint members of the president’s own party to his Cabinet? Is this supposed to be an effort to be inclusive? Is there some thought that a Cabinet with Republican members gives a Democratic president more leverage with the Republicans in Congress?

    Yes, I know it’s all about the qualifications, and it should be those that are considered above party affiliation, but if there is a Dem who is qualified and a Republican who is qualified, why pick the Republican to serve in a Democratic administration?

    I don’t get it – maybe someone can enlighten me.

  • Sorry – the link to the story is here: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2007/12/obama-says-hed.html

    And here’s a snip:

    ABC’s Sunlen Miller Reports: Barack Obama has often said he’d consider putting Repbulicans in his cabinet and even bandied about names like Sens. Dick Lugar and Chuck Hagel. He’s a added a new name to the list of possible Republicans cabinet members – Arnold Schwarzenegger.

    Obama regularly says he would look to Republicans to fill out his cabinet if he was elected, but at a town hall event in Manchester, N.H., he was pushed to name names.

    “It’s premature for me to start announcing my cabinet. I mean, I’m pretty confident. but I’m not all that confident. We still got a long way to go,” Obama said.

    But then the GOP names started to flow.

    Sen. Dick Lugar: “He’s a Republicans who I worked with on issues of arms control, wonderful guy. He is somebody I think embodies the tradition of a bipartisan foreign policy that is sensible, that is not ideological, that is based on the idea that we have to have some humility and restraint in terms of our ability to project power around the world,” Obama said about his Senate colleague.

    Sen. Chuck Hagel: “A Vietnam vet, similar approach and somebody I respect in a similar fashion,” Obama added.

    Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger: “What (he’s) doing on climate change in California is very important and significant. There are things I don’t agree with him on, but he’s taken leadership on a very difficult issue and we haven’t seen that kind of leadership in Washington,” Obama said of the California governor.

    I’m sorry, but Arnold makes my skin crawl.

  • I can recall a time when the U.S. military had the credibility to make the claim that they “discovered an insurgent torture site” believable, rather than provoking an immediate scoffing. Somewhere back about 1968, I think.

  • Two things:

    One, Chris Dodd would make an excellent Majority Leader. I’m all about that noise; it would probably help with a future presidential run as well.

    Two, Glenn Beck is a no-talent assclown. Not that it’s news, but I just felt like using the word “assclown” in a sentence. Why anyone pays him to talk is utterly beyond me. I think I’d rather risk head cancer by listening to O’Reilly.

  • Anne, I can understand your reluctance to include any of the bastards in the cabinet but for both Edwards and Obama, who have stressed working together, to select one or two Republicans would be consistent with their rhetoric. Clinton had a Republican in his cabinet.

    I for one would love to send Arnold to Washington. The state would then elect a Democratic governor. So if O or E decide to select Republicans, who would replace them should be a factor in the decision making process.

    As for Thomas, I can understand the irritation of not feeling that his degree was equal to someone who entered Harvard without affirmative action. He should just compare it to the legacy admissions. I doubt he is capable of being a happy man.

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