Open eyes, open ears, open mind
December 04, 2003
That's all, folks!
For various reasons, I've decided to move on from Blogger and take my blog to a site which requires me to spend some money. For the past few days, I've been double-posting here and at the new site, http://edwardpig.typepad.com/.
This will be my last post at this site, though if any of my legion of fans would like to take over here, let me know, and we can work something out. It seems that it may be possible for me to export the contents of this blog to the new site; I'll try to get that done in the next few days.
Hope to see you over there! Don't forget to reset your bookmarks!
Terrorists? Protestors? What's the Difference?
So, I've had a thread running for the past week or so about official suppression of legitimate opposition speech under the guise of fighting terrorism. So it should come as no surprise that the FBI is tacitly targeting legitimate protests as part of the War on Terror.
But I was surprised anyway.
At first, I didn't think this memo really had anything to do with official abuse of the War on Terror for political ends, until I saw the very last line: "Law enforcement agencies should be alert to these possible indicators of protest activity and report any potentially illegal acts to the nearest FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force."
A Confession . . .
Okay, I admit it. That wasn't a nice thing I did just now. In the previous post, I unfairly characterized the defenders of the Plame leak by intentionally citing their weakest, most surreal arguments, and providing none of their stronger arguments.
They actually do have one moderately strong argument: it seems likely that Aldrich Ames blew Valerie Plame's cover back in 1994, in which case nothing Karl Rove or Bob Novak says about her should matter now. You need to pay to see Nicholas Kristof's original article about this, but as usual, Calpundit gives a good explanation of things.
Ordinarily I would never play such a mean-spirited trick on my opponents, but I do have a reason for stooping to this level: the Bush team is engaging in exactly this sort of puerile behavior. Bush recently started a running a campaign ad in Iowa which states, among other things, that "Some are now attacking the president for attacking the terrorists." There is no doubt that this is true, but most of the folks who are upset with Bush actually have valid reasons, not the stupid one cited in the ad (see rest of blog).
(In case the Aldrich Ames thing has shattered your faith, there are at least two reasons why the Kristof article shouldn't undermine the case against Rove: (1) It seems the CIA only suspects that Ames gave Plame to the Russians; they aren't certain about it, and (2) Publishing an agent's name in the paper is on a whole separate plane of wrongness from simply revealing her to a foreign intelligence agency.)
Principled or Hypocrite? You Decide!
Since people are starting to talk about the Plame thing again, albeit for all the wrong reasons, I thought now would be a good time to continue our comparison of two leaks: the Plame leak, and Katherine Gun's leak. You may recall that I posted a fun game comparing these two stories some time back.
This time, instead of comparing the leakers (Katherine Gun, who has readily admitted that she leaked, and Karl Rove, who is relying on reporters to fulfill their professional obligation not to reveal their sources), let's compare the folks who defend the leakers.
Believe it or not, all of the following are arguments set forth by defenders of the Bush administration, in an attempt to convince us all that the Valerie Plame thing is no big deal:
- The Wilson's [sic] protest too much about being outed.
- Joe Wilson drank tea on his trip to Niger.
- Now that her cover has been blown and it can't possibly matter any more, Ms. Plame is pictured in the upcoming issue of Vanity Fair with her husband.
As for Ms. Gun, well, she herself provides the best reason for defending her: she leaked a secret email because it was The Right Thing To Do. "I will defend the charge against me on the basis that my actions were necessary to prevent an illegal war in which thousands of Iraqi civilians and British soldiers would be killed or maimed."
December 03, 2003
Plamegate
So the media have finally given some more attention to the Valerie Plame story. Unfortunately, the defenders of the Bush administration see this as an excuse to dump the whole investigation.
So I said to Roger Simon:
- "Let me make sure I've got this straight. It seems to me that you wingnuts contend:
1) Some senior administration official outed a covert CIA operative working on WMD. Whether you accept that this was done to intimidate other potential whistleblowers or to punish Wilson, U.S. intelligence operations were compromised.
2) As a consequence, Plame's career is over.
3) She has said that she does not want to appear in or speak to the media.
4) But it seems that she recently changed her mind.
5) And so, the fact that a senior administration official committed a felony and compromised the war on terror (see (1)) is no big deal.
As Glenn Reynolds would say: Interesting."
Unseal Everything
Analysts are starting to see the presidential race as Bush vs. Dean. They are also, interestingly enough, starting to remark on the similarities between them.
One unsettling similarity these two former governors share is a desire to conceal facts about their terms as governor. The Washington Post reports that the GOP is going after Dean because Dean took steps to insure that records of his tenure as governor of Vermont remain sealed for 10 years --- 4 years longer than what is typical for a Vermont governor.
Sure, this is a little suspicious, but the Bush camp is suffering from a severe case of 'Hello, Kettle, this is Pot, you're black' by criticizing Dean here. Three weeks before taking the presidential oath of office, Bush shipped all of his gubernatorial records off to his father's Presidential library, where there was some doubt whether they would be accessible to the public. After a court battle, it appears that the public can now make requests for these records.
Of course, Bush's penchant for secrecy didn't end there. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Bush issued an executive order which allows a sitting President to withhold records from his or any previous administration, an act which experts called 'unprecedented'. And most recently, of course, the Bush team has succeeded in restricting the independent commission investigating 9/11 from viewing most of Bush's daily briefing documents leading up to 9/11.
Until Bush revokes his executive order, and gives the 9/11 commission access to every single document they ask for, I don't want to hear Ed Gillespie or any Republican criticizing Dean on this issue.
November 30, 2003
More From Miami
Today, at least one Florida paper devoted an extensive amount of space to the police abuse at the FTAA meeting in Miami. The St. Petersburg Times corroborates other reports that police use of force was excessive and often arbitrary, and exercised with little accountability.
The Times also mentions the checkered past of Miami police chief John Timoney, who apparently gained his current position by using his ruthlessly effective techniques to suppress protestors' right to free speech at the 2000 Republican National convention.
For this and other reasons mentioned here, I expect that the 2004 RNC convention will feature Bush/Ashcroft/the Republican party using the First Amendment for toilet paper.
Apparently Kevin Phillips thinks the same thing (link via Atrios).
Via Atrios . . .
Bush has some competition for the Republican nomination.
This guy's candidacy is almost certainly going nowhere. But it's fun to fantasize about him distracting Bush from his relentless craven attacks on Democrats' patriotism.
More important, it good to see at least one Republican stand up and acknowledge that Bush is not governing in line with traditional conservative principles.
