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June
Don’t get caught flat-footed in front of the press! Below is a quick rundown of today’s “must reads.” – John T. Doolittle, House Republican Conference Secretary
The Morning Murmur – Tuesday, June 27, 2006
1. U.S. to Deploy Patriot Missiles in Japan to Counter North Korea - Washington Post
The Pentagon is reportedly speeding up plans to deploy advanced Patriot
interceptor missiles on U.S. bases in Japan for the first time, a
countermeasure seen as a response to the increasing threat of North Korean
missiles.
2. Leaks and the Law - Weekly Standard
The case for prosecuting the New York Times for publishing national security
secrets.
3. That was then - Powerline
In an editorial published September 24, 2001, the New York Times wrote "If
America is going to wage a new kind of war against terrorism, it must act on
all fronts, including the financial one." What has changed since then?
4. Free Speech Victory - Wall Street Journal Op-ed
The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that Vermont's campaign-finance law
violates the First Amendment. This decision demonstrates that, sometime down
the road, there might be a majority among the Justices to reconsider the
Court's previous limits on free political speech.
5. A Conventional Pol's Most Unconventional Primary Challenger - Roll Call
Up until two months ago,
Rep. Blunt's primary challenger, a self-described "transgender social
justice activist," was still legally known as Mitchell Potts, but for the
past few years she has been living life as a woman.
For previous issues of the Morning Murmur, go to www.GOPsecretary.gov
FULL ARTICLES BELOW:
1. U.S. to Deploy Patriot Missiles In
Japan to Counter North Korea - Washington Post
By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, June 27, 2006; A15
TOKYO, June 27 -- The Pentagon is reportedly speeding up plans to deploy
advanced Patriot interceptor missiles on U.S. bases in Japan for the first
time, a countermeasure seen as a response to the increasing threat of North
Korean missiles.
In a May accord signed in Washington, the United States and Japan agreed in
principle to put the interceptor system known as PAC-3 on U.S. bases here.
But Japan's Yomiuri newspaper reported that the Pentagon made a proposal
this month to deploy the system in Okinawa by year's end amid concerns that
Pyongyang may be preparing to test-fire a long-range Taepodong-2 ballistic
missile.
Japan's Defense Agency said the timing of the PAC-3 deployment was still
being negotiated, and a Pentagon spokesman said the missiles have not been
sent to Japan.
The planned PAC-3 deployment underscores concern that Japan is emerging as
the nation most threatened by North Korean missiles. Reports of a possible
test-firing of a Taepodong-2 have spurred Japan and the United States to
take further steps in a joint effort to construct an effective
missile-defense shield.
The U.S. Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles are designed to intercept
ballistic missiles, cruise missiles or aircraft. But experts said it was
unclear whether the PAC-3 system would be capable of shooting down the
Taepodong-2.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/26/AR2006062601256.html
2. Leaks and the Law - Weekly Standard
The case for prosecuting the New York Times.
by Gabriel Schoenfeld
07/03/2006, Volume 011, Issue 40
CAN JOURNALISTS REALLY BE PROSECUTED for publishing national security
secrets? In the wake of a series of New York Times stories revealing highly
sensitive counterterrorism programs, that question is increasingly the talk
of newsrooms across the country, and especially one newsroom located on West
43rd Street in Manhattan.
Last December, in the face of a presidential warning that they would
compromise ongoing investigations of al Qaeda, the Times revealed the
existence of an ultrasecret terrorist surveillance program of the National
Security Agency and provided details of how it operated. Now, once again in
the face of a presidential warning, the Times has published a front-page
article disclosing a highly classified U.S. intelligence program that
successfully penetrated the international bank transactions of al Qaeda
terrorists.
Although the editors of the Times act as if prosecution is not a
possibility, not everyone concurs. One person who is still mulling the
matter over is Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Asked in late May about
the prospect of prosecuting the Times and others who publish classified
information, he by no means ruled it out. "There are some statutes on the
books," he said, "which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to
indicate that that is a possibility."
Unsurprisingly, given what is at stake, even that tentative opinion elicited
a fire and brimstone denunciation from the Times. An editorial on May 24
dismissed as "bizarre" the attorney general's "claim that a century-old
espionage law could be used to muzzle the press." It has long been
understood, added the newspaper, that the "overly broad and little used"
Espionage Act of 1917 applies only to government officials and "not to
journalists."
But this interpretation, even if it were accurate (which it is not), is
entirely beside the point. The attorney general did not mention the 1917
Espionage Act or any other specific law. But if the editors of the paper
were to take a look at the U.S. Criminal Code, they would find that they
have run afoul not of the Espionage Act but of another law entirely: Section
798 of Title 18, the so-called Comint statute.
Unambiguously taking within its reach the publication of the NSA terrorist
surveillance story (though arguably not the Times's more recent terrorist
banking story), Section 798 reads, in part:
Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or
otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses
in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or
for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United
States any classified information . . . concerning the communication
intelligence activities of the United States . . . shall be fined not more
than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both [emphasis
added].
This law, passed by Congress in 1950 as it was considering ways to avert a
second Pearl Harbor during the Cold War, has a history that is highly
germane to the present conduct of the Times. According to the 1949 Senate
report accompanying its passage, the publication in the early 1930s of a
book offering a detailed account of U.S. successes in breaking Japanese
diplomatic codes inflicted "irreparable harm" on our security.
The Japanese responded to the book's revelations by investing heavily in the
construction of more secure codes. Thanks to the ensuing Japanese progress,
the report concludes, the United States was unable to "decode the important
Japanese military communications in the days immediately leading up to Pearl
Harbor." In other words, the aerial armada that devastated our Pacific Fleet
had the skies in effect cleared for it by leaks of classified information.
Leaks of communications intelligence secrets pose an equivalent danger
today. The 9/11 Commission identified the gap between our domestic and
foreign intelligence gathering capabilities as one of the primary weaknesses
that left us open to assault. The NSA terrorist surveillance program aimed
to cover that gap. The program, by the Times's own account of it, was one of
the most closely guarded secrets in the war on terrorism. After it was
exposed, a broad range of government officials privy to the workings of the
program, including Democrats (such as Jane Harman of the House Intelligence
Committee), said that the unauthorized disclosure inflicted severe damage on
our ability to track al Qaeda.
Such leaks cause harm of a more general but no less consequential sort. In
waging the war on terrorism, the United States depends heavily on
cooperation with allied intelligence agencies. But when our own intelligence
services demonstrate that they are unable to keep shared information under
wraps, international cooperation grinds to a halt.
This is a matter not of idle conjecture but of demonstrable fact. During the
run-up to the Iraq war, the United States was urgently attempting to assess
the state of play of Saddam Hussein's program to acquire weapons of mass
destruction. One of the key sources suggesting that an ambitious WMD buildup
was underway was an Iraqi defector, known by the codename of Curveball, who
was talking to German intelligence. But Washington remained in the dark
about Curveball's true identity, and the fact that he was a serial
fabricator.
Why would the Germans not identify Curveball? According to the Silberman-Robb
WMD Commission report, they refused "to share crucial information with the
United States because of fear of leaks." In other words, some of the blame
for our mistaken intelligence about Iraq's WMD program rests with leakers
and those in the media who rush to publish the leaks.
Given the uproar a prosecution of the Times would provoke, the attorney
general's cautious approach is certainly understandable. But what might look
like a prudent exercise of prosecutorial discretion will, in the face of the
Times's increasingly reckless behavior, send a terrible message. The Comint
statute, like numerous other laws on the books limiting speech in such
disparate realms as libel, privacy, and commercial activity, is fully
compatible with the First Amendment. It was passed to deal with
circumstances that are both dangerous and rare; the destruction of the World
Trade Center and the continuing efforts by terrorists to strike again have
thrust just such circumstances upon us.
If the Justice Department chooses not to prosecute the Times, its inaction
will turn this statute into a dead letter. At stake here for Attorney
General Gonzales to contemplate is not just the right to defend ourselves
from another Pearl Harbor. Can it really be the government's position that,
in the middle of a war in which we have been attacked on our own soil, the
power to classify or declassify vital secrets should be taken away from
elected officials acting in accord with laws set by Congress and bestowed on
a private institution accountable to no one?
Gabriel Schoenfeld is senior editor of Commentary. This article is adapted
from his June 6 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/385jqmfk.asp
3. That was then - Powerline
Reader Douglas Rose has drawn our attention to this September 24, 2001 New
York Times editorial ("Finances of Terror") (access limited to TimesSelect):
Organizing the hijacking of the planes that crashed into the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon took significant sums of money. The cost of these
plots suggests that putting Osama bin Laden and other international
terrorists out of business will require more than diplomatic coalitions and
military action. Washington and its allies must also disable the financial
networks used by terrorists.
The Bush administration is preparing new laws to help track terrorists
through their money-laundering activity and is readying an executive order
freezing the assets of known terrorists. Much more is needed, including
stricter regulations, the recruitment of specialized investigators and
greater cooperation with foreign banking authorities. There must also must
be closer coordination among America's law enforcement, national security
and financial regulatory agencies.
Osama bin Laden originally rose to prominence because his inherited fortune
allowed him to bankroll Arab volunteers fighting Soviet forces in
Afghanistan. Since then, he has acquired funds from a panoply of Islamic
charities and illegal and legal businesses, including export-import and
commodity trading firms, and is estimated to have as much as $300 million at
his disposal.
Some of these businesses move funds through major commercial banks that lack
the procedures to monitor such transactions properly. Locally, terrorists
can utilize tiny unregulated storefront financial centers, including what
are known as hawala banks, which people in South Asian immigrant communities
in the United States and other Western countries use to transfer money
abroad. Though some smaller financial transactions are likely to slip
through undetected even after new rules are in place, much of the financing
needed for major attacks could dry up.
Washington should revive international efforts begun during the Clinton
administration to pressure countries with dangerously loose banking
regulations to adopt and enforce stricter rules. These need to be
accompanied by strong sanctions against doing business with financial
institutions based in these nations. The Bush administration initially
opposed such measures. But after the events of Sept. 11, it appears ready to
embrace them.
The Treasury Department also needs new domestic legal weapons to crack down
on money laundering by terrorists. The new laws should mandate the
identification of all account owners, prohibit transactions with "shell
banks" that have no physical premises and require closer monitoring of
accounts coming from countries with lax banking laws. Prosecutors,
meanwhile, should be able to freeze more easily the assets of suspected
terrorists. The Senate Banking Committee plans to hold hearings this week on
a bill providing for such measures. It should be approved and signed into
law by President Bush.
New regulations requiring money service businesses like the hawala banks to
register and imposing criminal penalties on those that do not are scheduled
to come into force late next year. The effective date should be moved up to
this fall, and rules should be strictly enforced the moment they take
effect. If America is going to wage a new kind of war against terrorism, it
must act on all fronts, including the financial one.
---------
If America is going to wage a war against terrorism, it must indeed act on
all fronts. In 2006, it needs to act on the home front and direct its
attention to those whose war on the administration is unconstrained by the
espionage laws of the United States.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/
4. Free Speech Victory - Wall Street
Journal Op-ed
The Supreme Court declines to repeal the First
Amendment--though only by 6-3.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006 12:01 a.m.
The shocking news in yesterday's Supreme Court ruling on Vermont's
campaign-finance law is that three Justices essentially voted to repeal the
First Amendment. The better news is that, sometime down the road, there
might be a majority among the other six Justices to reconsider the Court's
previous limits on free political speech.
The latter hint of optimism comes from yesterday's 6-3 ruling, in Randall v.
Sorrell, to toss out Vermont's onerous limits on political contributions and
expenditures. Befitting a liberal utopia, Vermont had tried to purge all
money from politics in 1997 by passing a law that placed a spending cap of
$300,000 on gubernatorial candidates, with lower limits on other state
office seekers. It also restricted individual campaign contributions to as
low as $200.
The Court said those limits were so low that they unconstitutionally
restricted the ability of candidates to raise money and communicate with
voters. Writing for a fractured majority, Justice Stephen Breyer said
Vermont's limitations "impose burdens upon First Amendment interests that .
. . are disproportionately severe."
This is progress, of a sort. The Court stopped well short of overturning
Buckley v. Valeo, the 1976 ruling that started the confusion over campaign
spending, or McConnell, the 2003 ruling that upheld it. But by rejecting
Vermont's draconian restrictions, a Court majority has at least conceded
that some campaign-finance limits go too far in damaging free-speech
interests. Limits on campaign spending in particular--as opposed to campaign
donations--are increasingly suspect.
That said, the Court more or less spoke in tongues, with six separate
opinions. Justices Anthony Kennedy (in one opinion) and Antonin Scalia and
Clarence Thomas (in another) were the most forthright in repeating their
opposition to Buckley. Justice Kennedy was especially pungent in noting the
contradictions that are building in the Court's campaign-finance
jurisprudence.
He predicted that yesterday's ruling "may cause more problems than it
solves," adding that the Court is now on record in an earlier case as saying
that a limit of $1,500 is no problem but that Vermont's $200 limit offends
the Constitution. "Our own experience gives us little basis to make these
judgments, and certainly no traditional or well-established body of law
exists to offer guidance," he wrote, in notable understatement.
Meanwhile, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito joined
Justice Breyer's opinion, which was narrowly argued on stare decisis
grounds. But in his own concurrence, Justice Alito went out of his way to
note that he did so on precedential grounds since the argument for
overturning Buckley had not been sufficiently joined. That raises the
question of whether he or the Chief Justice might eventually be open to
taking the Court back from its increasingly intrusive and confused
campaign-finance rulings.
As for the three First Amendment opponents, Justices David Souter, John Paul
Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg voted to support Vermont's limits. Justice
Stevens seemed to think it would be great for democracy if candidates were
able to spend nothing to promote their message to voters over the airwaves;
then, he wrote, every campaign might be like the Lincoln-Douglas debates.
We're not sure what century he's living in, but let's hope Randall is the
beginning of the Court's migration back to common sense on money and
political speech.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008573
5. A Conventional Pol's Most
Unconventional Primary Challenger - Roll Call
June 27, 2006
By Bree Hocking,
Roll Call Staff
Meet Midgelle Potts, who's launched a quixotic bid to unseat House Majority
Whip Roy Blunt (R) in Missouri's 7th Congressional district Republican
primary.
She's looking for a few disengaged citizens.
"I want to appeal to apathetic voters," Potts says.
But that's hardly the most unique feature about this neophyte political
candidate.
Up until two months ago, the 37-year-old Potts, a self-described
"transgender social justice activist," was still legally known as Mitchell
Potts, but for the past few years she has been living life as a woman.
She hasn't had a sex change operation yet - "I would like to if I could, but
I don't know if I could ever afford it," she says - but is taking herbal
supplements to make her hormones more female and to block the production of
testosterone.
An eclectic individual, Potts also is a folk singer, a freelance Web
designer, a divorced ex-Navy man with a 6-year-old daughter, a college
dropout and a scavenger of sorts.
She makes campaign yard signs from cardboard rescued from dumpsters, which
she then stencils and waterproofs - an appropriate touch given her slogan:
"Recycle Government and Vote for Change: Potts for Congress."
She's the first to admit she doesn't fit into "some kind of model that the
[Republican National Committee] puts out."
Potts generally supports abortion rights, with the exception of late-term
abortions; she personally favors the legalization of medical marijuana; and
she supports legal rights for partners, whether they be in a "heterosexual
relationship, a homosexual relationship or a platonic relationship."
Her participation in protests against the Bush administration's record on
torture and the Iraq war has gotten her arrested on two occasions.
But Potts, who is not required to register as a Republican to run in
Missouri's GOP primary and admits to splitting her ticket in the past,
insists she feels more Republican than anything. She pegs herself as a
pro-gun rights, pro-national defense, fiscal conservative who is opposed to
Democratic "big government." Her GOP heroes are Abraham Lincoln, Teddy
Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower, all of whom, Potts says, represent a strain
of Republicanism "different from what we have going on right now."
And anyway, Potts, a firm believer in direct democracy, says that in most
cases if two-thirds of her constituents wanted her to vote a certain way,
she would.
"I would try to honor what they wanted while at the same time still making
public statements that I believed otherwise," she says.
Potts was initially motivated to run because she says "anyone could
represent southwestern Missouri better than Roy Blunt."
"He originally ran in '96 on the idea of term limits, and he was going to
introduce legislation for term limits," Potts recalls. "He introduced it one
time ... then he just gave up and turned to the dark side and got under
[then-Rep. Tom] DeLay's (R-Texas) wing."
She has launched a Web site critical of the House Majority Whip,
www.bluntfacts.com, a parody on Blunt's annual newspaper insert of the same
name that details his House votes.
While Potts has been invited to a handful of events for Republican
candidates and plans to attend a few more next month, she isn't expecting
any help from Missouri's GOP powers that be in the Aug. 8 primary. County
and state party officials "are really for Blunt," she says.
But Potts is nothing if not intrepid.
A few years back when she was trying to jump-start interest in her
folk-singing career, she self-produced an album, put her music online, made
up 5,000 handbills, and armed with a list of open-mic nights in Los Angeles,
hitchhiked to California. She spent a week strumming her guitar on the Santa
Monica boardwalk, sleeping on the beach, showering at a nearby homeless
shelter and playing bars and coffeehouses in the evening. She's since
self-produced two additional albums and occasionally boards Amtrak or
Greyhound to "go to different cities and play open mics."
Potts, who believes members of both political parties have allowed
themselves to be corrupted by unpatriotic big business, is shunning
political action committee money.
She's raised $1,100 to date and has only about $180 on hand, she says.
"The little people have been sold out by these professional politicians that
are in the pocket of these global multinational corporations that have no
allegiance to any country," she says.
To generate interest in her bid, Potts, who says she's devoting herself full
time to the campaign, is relying primarily on an official campaign Web site
and on her profile on the online social networking site MySpace.com. Potts
spent time in the Navy during Operation Desert Shield but is not currently
working and lives with her mother on 10 acres just north of Springfield. She
gets by on Social Security disability checks, which she's received since
improper exposure to a mercury spill while serving as a petty officer third
class on the U.S.S. Yosemite led to medical problems and her discharge from
the military.
While Potts says reaction to her unorthodox bid has been largely positive,
not everyone has been so open-minded.
She says a Democratic Missourian sent her a letter asserting that her
candidacy was proof that "all Republicans are mentally ill freaks."
Likewise, a Christian woman was "very upset with me claiming I was a
Christian, which I am," says Potts, whose bio on her campaign Web site
contains a link detailing her Christian values.
"I know I'm not the average person, but what is normal?" Potts asks. "Normal
really is a million different things."
As for Blunt, his office didn't seem too eager to respond to questions
regarding Potts' challenge.
"They have pretty much ignored me," Potts says.
If nothing else, Potts' bid has attracted some media attention. Not only
have The Associated Press and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch written articles
about her, but Dan Byington, an independent documentary filmmaker, is making
a documentary of her campaign, which he hopes to eventually enter in film
festivals and get a distribution deal for.
Byington says he was immediately gripped by Potts' story.
"It seems to have so many contradictions," he says. "A transgendered
Republican definitely doesn't sound right."
But Byington, a former Libertarian candidate who once ran against then-Rep.
Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.), is realistic when it comes to assessing Potts'
political viability.
"We are hoping she gets past the primary, but probably not," he says.
http://www.rollcall.com/issues/51_144/underradar/14014-1.html
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