(November 22, 2006 -- 09:36 AM EST // link)

Florida's recount battle is likely to litigate its way into the new year -- and the new Congress. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.

(November 21, 2006 -- 07:49 PM EST // link)

Here's Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) statement before the senate (Oct. 18th, 1989) at the impeachment trial of then-federal Judge Alcee Hastings. (For background on what we're talking about, see this post from earlier today.) Conyers was the head of the House Judiciary subcommittee which invesitgated the Hastings matter and then served as an impeachment manager (i.e., part of a team of prosecutors) at the senate trial ...

Representative Conyers will now conclude the opening argument on the part of the House.

Mr. Manager CONYERS. Mr. President, Mr. Majority Leader, Mr. Minority Leader, Members of this distinguished body, when I came to the Congress 25 years ago, to this body from the civil rights movement, in part, from local activity, I think I was one of four black Members of the House. My agenda focused then, as it does today, on increasing access to political power for African-Americans and members of other minority groups who for so long have been excluded from positions of influence and authority in American life. I have seen some progress in this past quarter of a century and I also know, as you do, that we still have a long way to go.

As a lawyer who occasionally got into courtrooms, I have been before my share of hostile judges, racist judges, in the North and the South. I found nothing more satisfying, in the course of my congressional career, than to help the development of a capable and vigorous bar of African-American lawyers, men and women, and the elevation of some of its more outstanding practitioners to the prestigious position of Federal judge where they can serve, not merely as dispensers of equal justice under the law, but as models for their community and for the Nation.

So, I am saddened to come before you today to urge the removal of one of the handful of black judges who presently occupy the Federal bench. I am not happy to come here to argue that Alcee L. Hastings has forfeited his right to one of the most honored places in this American political system. But we did not wage the civil rights struggle in order to substitute one form of judicial corruption for another.

I do not question that Alcee Hastings is a man of extraordinary accomplishment who once contributed much to his community and to the Nation. But that recognition only saddens me all the more because his conduct of the last 9 years does not diminish his former accomplishments any more than his former accomplishments excuse his more recent misdeeds. It is precisely because he betrayed his trust and betrayed those who looked to him for leadership, the possibility of a fairer, better system, that our obligation to face the truth as we see it in this matter before us is so great.

This man has been a role model for all who want to see justice administered, administered with fairness and compassion, without regard to race or wealth. Instead, we argue that he must be removed from office, so that he may not teach others that justice may be sold and that our system of justice may be beaten by continuous outrageous prevarication; by blaming others and the system for one's own transgressions.

I cannot explain or have any claim to understand what caused the metamorphosis of this man. I can only deal with my impression of the facts, and they lead me to the indisputable conclusion that he has betrayed his office and is no longer fit to wield the power and authority that has been bestowed upon him.

No one could have been more skeptical than I at the start of this process. No one more anxious to ensure that this man be neither penalized for his race or insulated by his race, from the consequences of wrongful conduct. No one was more predisposed to believe the best of Judge Hastings and his case and to doubt his accusers. I said so.

I was also sympathetic to the notion that the jury verdict should have settled the matter. We had a delegate speaking on that with supposedly great authority just yesterday.

As chairman of the subcommittee that held the evidentiary hearings in the Congress, however, I began to reacquaint myself with the law in this matter. I may have had more to do with impeachment proceedings than anybody around here. And I heard some evidence that forced me to reevaluate my position, the evidence presented, not only in my subcommittee but over here as a manger. I have heard this thing twice. And what I have seen and heard and studied and listened to and reread and argued with my staff counsel and back and forth has only matured my conclusion that, measured by any standard, Judge Hastings' guilt has been established and Congress has an obligation to protect the integrity of the judiciary.

Whether, as for me, the conclusion of guilt tears at your soul, and it used to do that for me, should not deter you from making a decision that you will have to make. A few years ago the Congress grappled with the very question of what the standard of proof should be in an impeachment trial. Currently we choose to leave it to the decision of each Member, as it should be. So the House does not ask you to reach your decision lightly or based just on what we did or even just what your committee did.

Each of you have to review this yourself. But what we do ask is that when you weigh the evidence, you take into account the nature of the competing interests, for that is what is reflected in the concept of the standard of truth. It is the balancing of the interests of the public against those of any civil officer facing impeachment charges that is recognized by the standard of proof you adopt. So whether or not the particular catchwords make any real difference in your factfinding, the choice does have constitutional significance. In an impeachment trial, nothing short of our very liberty is at stake. For a free society cannot endure if it permits the corrupt to govern others. And that issue here is the public trust and the confidence in the officials who constitute our Government.

The penalty upon conviction is not a sentence of imprisonment. It is not a criminal adjudication; it is the removal from office. As you all know, it so happens to be the only way you can remove a judge from office. Thus, the public interests are clearly predominant over the interests of the respondent.

In American jurisprudence, the degree of certainty required for a verdict varies according to the weight of the competing interest of the parties. In criminal proceedings, it is one thing; in civil proceedings, it is another. But Judge Hastings has suggested that the strictest standard be applied. That will make it tough to arrive at the conclusions that we already arrived at, and his lawyer's reasoning flies in the face of precedent and logic. It is very interesting. They cite a Supreme Court case, Addington versus Texas, that says no such thing. Look it up.

This case started off complicated. There is no such thing. The facts are garden variety stuff. The law started off complicated. No such thing. We just do not handle impeachment measures that often in the Congress. Once you examine the precedent and the history, it is not that difficult at all by the standards of the work that we discharge every single day of the week.

The purpose, traditionally at least in modern times where officials have been accused of more than one act of misconduct, the House has included, the Senate has accepted, an omnibus article of impeachment. The purpose is not only to permit the Senate to consider whether the acts of misconduct constitute impeachable conduct in combination rather than individually. It is also a recognition of the devastating effect that a pattern of such misconduct has upon the institution, the judiciary, upon which this respondent serves. Accordingly, I urge you to conclude that Judge Hastings be convicted on article 17 as well.

You do have to study the record carefully, and you have. There is an enormous amount of evidence that makes no sense at all unless Judge Hastings conspired with William Borders and lied at the trial. It is the mass of evidence that makes the case, but it may be just one of the undisputed facts that convinces you that Judge Hastings is not to be believed on this and many, many other facts made both in and outside of this legal process.

Can anyone study this document and really believe that the judge was expecting Borders at the Fontainebleau Hotel even though when he was seated at a table for four, he watched the extra place settings removed? Everybody knows that Borders was a fight fan that night and anybody who knew, including the judge, knew exactly where he was.

Is it credible that the judge insisted that the Romano forfeiture order be mailed out immediately on October 6 because he was worried his law clerk was going to leave 4 weeks later? What about the judges' inexplicable behavior in leaving Washington upon learning of Borders' arrest and his gratuitous and discredited tales of telephone calls from L'Enfant Plaza to persuade the jury that some innocent reason, the concern for his mother, compelled his hurried departure?

Does it make sense that on the evening of Borders' arrest, the judge, if he were innocent, would tell Ms. Williams to leave her home and go to a pay phone to call him? Does it ring true that the judge and Borders spent months working on a strategy to help their mutual friend, Hemphill Pride, poor guy, and that their months of talking and writing culminated in absolutely no action at all? Is there any plausible source for Borders' insight or knowledge of the Romano case, other than Judge Hastings himself? Is this tough, difficult fact?

Is it plausible that the judge could draft six pages of handwritten letters while simultaneously trying cases without a single mistake or crossout? Those letters for Hemp are fakes, never shown to the judge's secretary or to his original legal representative, for that matter, written after October 5 to explain the coded telephone conversation that was sure going to get him in a lot of hot water.

What about Borders' choice of imprisonment rather than testify here? One Senator pointed out Borders' explicit assumption that he was being called by the Senate to testify against a friend. That is his assumption; certainly not ours.

The incriminating evidence cannot be ignored, and it is compelling. But the most compelling testimony of all came from his former best friend, quiet, unwilling, reluctant witness who did not want to say what he had to say about Judge Hastings. Yes, Judge Hastings says he was not conspiring with Bill Borders to sell justice. He and Borders were just working out a plan to help their good buddy Hemp. They were always working out details to send letters to the South Carolina bar to get Hemp readmitted.

The only thing was Hemp did not know anything about it. The only thing was that when he found out about it, he said:

Do not do it because in South Carolina they do not like you guys advising us who should be practicing law.

And following the indictment, the judge told Hemp that he needed Hemp's testimony to support his alibi.

And you read what Hemphill Pride told the judge.

And he did this no matter how much he loved and admired or probably used to love and admire Judge Hastings.

Judge Hastings said Pride was wrong when he said that he, the judge, made no calls from L'Enfant Plaza after they learned of Borders' arrest, wrong again when he said that they never discussed Hemphill's letters while driving to the airport in Columbia, SC. Well, who are you going to believe?

Justice and the integrity of our Government depend on the importance of these impeachment proceedings, and they argue that the judge should be removed from the bench.

When he came to my subcommittee, he said:

I'm glad I'm here. Finally, we're going to get a hearing. Let's get it on with, ready to go. You got the right place.

He put on nothing, nobody. I even called the two judges that filed the impeachment action before my committee. I even allowed the judge to make an opening statement without being subject to cross examination. I allowed the judge to cross-examine his Federal colleagues that filed the complaint against him. Read what happened. He said, `Isn't it true we disturbed the collegiality of the bench down there?' Well, you bet we disturbed the collegiality of the bench. Not one remark about racism, which is what is going to be the subtly argued problem around here. `What's a hundred white guys and women doing picking on this black judge. What do you know about it?' And nobody in this country, save maybe Jesse Jackson, has fought harder to integrate this body than me. So he is going to say, `Well, look at the system.' Well, like so many in our system he came to my committee and he wanted a fair hearing and he got one. That was when the trouble started.

And by the way, there are other black judges that have looked at this case. You do not hear much about them. The first black judge in Florida at the circuit level reviewed this matter. A distinguished member of the judiciary here in Washington reviewed this matter at the conference level. The Congressional Black Caucus reviewed this matter. The Hispanic Caucus reviewed this matter.

All of my friends that wanted to talk to me about it in the House of Representatives have discussed this matter with me to any point that they chose and that I could be available.

Circumstantial evidence. Well, there are so many lawyers here. What is wrong with circumstantial evidence?

And so I come to you to argue that this is not another case like Adam Powell. This is not another case like Clarence Mitchell. I happen to know something about those cases. This is not a case about Geronimo Pratt. This is the case of one Judge Alcee Hastings. There have been a lot of problems in our judicial system in which race has been involved. This is not one of them or I would be the first person in the Congress to tell you so.

I am on three committees that do mostly nothing but watch the FBI, and CIA, the Department of Justice, the criminal justice system, the corrections system, the courts. Police injustice, nobody in the Congress handles more cases than me. And so I am not here to downplay the impeachment process. I think it is an important one. It is very significant. So I join you to ask that you do what you have to do. I have done what I had to do. I have done it twice, as a matter of fact, and would do it again because I believe that this system can be made better than it is and that we are making it better than it is. So, ladies and gentlemen, do your duty.

There is, I hasten to point out, an epilogue to this story. In 1997, DOJ IG Michael Bromwich issued a 517-page report on FBI misconduct in a number of different cases. And he noted that the agent in the Hastings case, Michael Malone, had "engaged in very substantial misconduct" and in particular had lied to judges reviewing Hastings case about whether a particular forensic test had been done. Here's a passage from Ed Henry's May 21st, 1997 piece in the Palm Beach Post ...

In a reversal that sets the stage for a racially tinged dispute on the House Judiciary Committee, a Michigan lawmaker is calling for a complete review of the 1989 impeachment proceedings that drove Rep. Alcee Hastings from the federal bench.

Rep. John Conyers, the Democrat who headed the House panel that investigated the bribery charges against then-U.S. District Judge Hastings and voted for his impeachment, said last week he was "very disturbed" by a whistle-blower's contention that an FBI agent lied in order to nail Hastings, D-Miramar.

"So we're pulling up the files and looking at the case - every aspect of it," Conyers said of his staff. Conyers is the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee.

While Conyers, himself the most senior member of the Black Caucus, has previously dismissed suggestions that race played a factor in the impeachment of Hastings, who is black, he suggested otherwise in an interview.

"Maybe there's a Mark Fuhrman-type syndrome inside the FBI," Conyers said, referring to the Los Angeles police officer accused of racism during the O.J. Simpson trial. "I mean, what am I supposed to believe? We caught (the FBI) in this lie."

Misconduct on the part of investigators doesn't necessarily imply innocence on the part of the accused, especially in a case like this where we're not talking about criminal penalties but whether a particular individual is the best choice for a specific, highly-sensitive post.

To the best of my knowledge, the Republicans then leading the Judiciary Committee (circa 1997)refused to reopen the case. So it never happened.

We're going to be looking into this in greater detail to try to discern whether anything that came up in 1997 should in any way throw into question what happened in 1989. My sense is that there was a lot more evidence than that specifically connected to this one FBI agent. But we'll look into it and see.

---

(November 21, 2006 -- 05:26 PM EST // link)

A bit more on Hastings. Back in 1989, when then-Judge Hastings was tried in the senate, one of the impeachment managers was Rep. John Conyers (D-MI). Conyers, of course, is now the incoming Chairman of the Judiciary committee. Then he was the head of the subcommittee that investigated the Hastings case and recommended his impeachment in the House. Conyers went into the thing wanted to find Hastings' innocent, but the facts just said otherwise.

Here's a passage from an article from the Washington Times from October 19th, 1989 ...

House prosecutors also said they had no doubt Judge Hastings lied 14 times to a federal jury to avoid conviction on conspiracy in 1983, and later revealed the confidential content of a federally authorized wiretap to Miami Mayor Steve Clark.

"Justice and the integrity of our government . . . argue the judge should be removed from the bench," said Rep. John Conyers Jr., Michigan Democrat.

Mr. Conyers - a longtime leader in the civil rights movement - said no one had initially wanted more than he to find the judge innocent.

"No one was more predisposed . . . to doubt his accusers" or more "sympathetic to the notion that the [1983] jury verdict should have settled the matter," Mr. Conyers said. But, he said, during the course of impeachment proceedings this summer, "I heard some evidence that forced me to re-evaluate my position."

As I said before, there may not have been enough evidence to convict Hastings in his criminal trial. But Conyers had little doubt that Hastings was a corrupt judge.

A separate note: I've researched this a bit now and found various fragments of Conyers statements before the senate during Hastings trial. But I have not been able to find a complete transcript. Not even at Thomas.gov. If anyone knows where one is available on the web, please let me know.

(November 21, 2006 -- 04:09 PM EST // link)

Marshall Wittman signs on to be Communications Director for Joe Lieberman, the job he used to have with John McCain.

(November 21, 2006 -- 03:20 PM EST // link)

Justin Rood has the background on the impeachment of then-federal judge Alcee Hastings, now a Democratic congressman from Florida and Nancy Pelosi's possible choice to chair the House Intelligence Committee.

---

(November 21, 2006 -- 02:23 PM EST // link)

Pretty amazing stuff. And it seems like it's being treated with a near total media blackout. Stung by the voters' rebuke, the out-going Republican Congress has decided to close its doors without doing it's mandated job, finishing the budget bills for next year. By all rights they should send back their paychecks too.

From the AP ...

Republicans vacating the Capitol are dumping a big spring cleaning job on Democrats moving in. GOP leaders have opted to leave behind almost a half-trillion-dollar clutter of unfinished spending bills.

There's also no guarantee that Republicans will pass a multibillion-dollar measure to prevent a cut in fees to doctors treating Medicare patients.

The bulging workload that a Republican-led Congress was supposed to complete this year but is instead punting to 2007 promises to consume time and energy that Democrats had hoped to devote to their own agenda upon taking control of Congress in January for the first time in a dozen years.

We're their employers. Shouldn't there be some sort of garnishment?

Let me know if you see mentions of this elsewhere in the news media or on the shows.

(November 21, 2006 -- 02:04 PM EST // link)

Let me say a few more words about the House intel committee chair issue. From what I hear Alcee Hastings (D-FL) has done a decent job at the intel committee in the various ways one evaluates committee work. And he seems well-liked by colleagues. I've always had a good impression of him when I've seen him on the chat shows. But there is no ignoring this fact: when he was on a federal bench he was charged with taking bribes. He was acquitted at trial. But a then-Democratic Congress subsequently impeached and convicted him, tossing him off the bench.

I don't know enough yet about the particulars of the case against him. (We're going to have a full run-down of the issues later this afternoon on TPMmuckraker.com.) But the conviction in the senate tells me the charges must at least have been pretty serious, if not enough to win a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt in a criminal trial.

Given the centrality of intelligence work in our national policy debates today, the importance of secrecy in handling classified information and how politicized and contentious intel debates have become, I don't see how you can have the chairman of the intel committee be someone about whom there is any serious question whether or not they accepted bribes as judges to subvert justice.

Yes, I'm going to reserve final judgment until I see Justin's summary of the charges. But can anyone really disagree with this? How can making Hastings chairman of that committee make any sense?

(November 21, 2006 -- 02:02 PM EST // link)

The next big question for the House leadership (i.e., Speaker Pelosi): who gets to be chairman of the House intel committee. Justin Rood has a run-down of the issue.

(November 21, 2006 -- 01:42 PM EST // link)

Since I've been on a semi-leave for the last ten days or so, I've been able to watch and listen to the news a bit more like most people do. From a bit of distance, focused mainly on the headlines and without the time to read too deeply down into the details. From that vantage point, the two legislative agenda items I've heard the most about in the last few days are Charlie Rangel's idea of instituting a draft and Marty Meehan's and Barney Frank's idea of starting off in January with hearing on the military's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy.

Now, we could quickly get into an internecine fight over the priorities of the next Congress. For what it's worth, I think we should ditch the 'don't ask, don't tell'. And I understand that Rangel's proposal is in the manner of a Modest Proposal. If more political and opinion elites had close relatives in uniform we'd probably be a lot less eager to sign on to new wars for frivolous or inane reasons.

On the draft issue, I get the concept behind Rangel's call for a draft. I understand the separate argument for a draft on national service grounds, though I think that's a bit different from where Rangel is coming from. But this isn't the way people hear this proposal on first contact. We've just had a national election that became a massive repudiation of the Iraq War. If you're a casual news consumer who went to polls to say, enough! on Iraq, I think a vote on reinstituting the draft has got to come off to you, at best, really out of the blue. At worst, I imagine it registers with a big 'What the hell are they thinking?'

It would be one thing if a draft would materially change our present options. But it won't. The US military has been all-volunteer for three decades. Whatever is on paper, it would take a really, really long time for a draft to actually start putting real soldiers on the ground anywhere.

But these are both highly divisive issues, ones tailor made for Republicans hoping to trip up the new Democratic congress right out of the gate.

You start with broadly popular and critically needed changes. That allows you to build up the electorate's confidence in your governance and gains you political capital to tackle more difficult problems. This isn't about following a timorous legislative agenda that will offend no one. There is a war going on. Two actually. Our military faces a readiness crisis in the very near future. We are in a soldier-slaughtering drift in Iraq. These are complicated questions requiring bold solutions.

I don't want to make too big a deal about this. We're in a bit of a news lull. And the press jumps on stories like this. But that is the point. What's happening here is that there's a vacuum at the top. The incoming Speaker needs to starting laying out the Democrats out-of-the-box legislative agenda, explaining what it is, who it will help and what it will produce. Nature abhors a vacuum. And if nature abhors it, journalists frigging slash and kill a vacuum. Remain silent and the field goes to every legislative baron's bright idea. And the country has too much to deal with to drift.

(November 21, 2006 -- 12:34 PM EST // link)

The Pentagon's TALON database at work.

(November 21, 2006 -- 12:33 PM EST // link)

I couldn't help but return to yesterday's Washington Post article that had the darkly humorous discussion of whether our new policy on Iraq should be to go long, go short, go big, go wide or perhaps just give it to the running back and have him try to run it up the middle. I don't grab at humor lightly here. It's a grim set of choices we have before us. And the cost in lives is immense, whichever course we take. But what our Iraq policy needs as much as anything is a pull-no-punches injection of candor. And calling mumbojumbo for what it is is part of that.

Consider this passage from the Ricks piece in the Post ...

The purpose of the temporary but notable increase, they said, would be twofold: To do as much as possible to curtail sectarian violence, and also to signal to the Iraqi government and public that the shift to a "Go Long" option that aims to eventually cut the U.S. presence is not a disguised form of withdrawal.

Even so, there is concern that such a radical shift in the U.S. posture in Iraq could further damage the standing of its government, which U.S. officials worry is already shaky. Under the hybrid plan, the short increase in U.S. troop levels would be followed by a long-term plan to radically cut the presence, perhaps to 60,000 troops.

That combination plan, which one defense official called "Go Big but Short While Transitioning to Go Long," could backfire if Iraqis suspect it is really a way for the United States to moonwalk out of Iraq -- that is, to imitate singer Michael Jackson's trademark move of appearing to move forward while actually sliding backward. "If we commit to that concept, we have to accept upfront that it might result in the opposite of what we want," the official said.

Let's start with the first paragraph. And reason one for temporary build-up of forces. To say that we are building up "to do as much as possible to curtail sectarian violence" sounds to me like there is no clear strategic rationale or plan behind the build up. Of course, we want to do as much as possible to curtail sectarian violence. We want to do that with the current numbers. We'd want to do it with half the number of troops there. And the same goes for if we had twenty times the number.

It would be different if they were saying, for instance, that we were going to put in 50,000 more troops to seal the borders with Syria and Iran and that that would measurably change the stituation inside Iraq and allow our current number of troops on the ground to stabilize the situation inside the country. I'm not saying that's a good idea or that I would support it. But at least there would be a strategic rationale, a theory of what a short term deployment of more troops would do and how it would help and change the situaiton. This just sounds like, put in 20,000 or 30,000 more troops and, heck, it can't hurt to have a few more of our guys there since we're already having such a hard time getting a handle on the situation.

Read the rationale closely and rationale one seems like argumentative padding for rationale two: "to signal to the Iraqi government and public that the shift to a "Go Long" option that aims to eventually cut the U.S. presence is not a disguised form of withdrawal."

But cutting the US presence by whatever number is a withdrawal. It doesn't have to be 'defeat' or 'cutting and running' or whatever charged phrased you want to use. But it definitely is a withdrawal. And the whole danger of the policy is that Iraqis might realize that what our policy actually is: i.e., withdrawal from Iraq. Or in this memorably new use of the phrase, that we're 'moonwalking' out of Iraq.

Work it out like ten different ways but what it comes down to is that the policy is largely, perhaps exclusively, an excercise in either fooling ourselves or the Iraqis about what it is we're actually doing. That tells me we haven't grasped the heart of the issue and taken the first step in dealing with this situation -- which is to stop lying to ourselves about what we've gotten ourselves into, how we got ourselves into it and what bad options we can choose to start the long process getting ourselves out of this mess.

(November 21, 2006 -- 12:15 PM EST // link)

Good, good stuff.

(Thanks to TPM Reader SD for the link.)

(November 21, 2006 -- 11:13 AM EST // link)

I don't want to let pass the reinstatement of security clearances for House Intelligence Committee staffer Larry Hanauer without commenting on what an ugly incident this was.

Here you have a mid-level Democratic staffer stripped of his ability to do his job by the committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) as political payback against Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), the ranking member who publicly released a report of an internal committee investigation of whether and how convicted felon Duke Cunningham used his position on the committee to advance his corrupt schemes.

Poor Hanauer was caught in the middle. His security clearances were suspended not because of anything he had to do with the Cunningham report but because in the course of doing his job he had requested and received a copy of the National Intelligence Estimatee on Iraq, another classified report that was later leaked to the New York Times.

There was no evidence that Hanauer was in any way connected to the leak. None. There was only the coincidence of timing. Bear in mind that numerous people inside government had access to the report, and Hanauer was only one of them. But look, Rep. Ray Lahood (R-IL) has admitted that this was payback, a shot across Harman's bow. Walter Pincus walks us through the all details again in a piece today in the WaPo.

Hoekstra's tenure has committee chairman has been one long decline into politicization of intelligence and of the oversight process. He hit rock bottom with the Hanauer incident. He was sitting on the Cunningham report because of its embarrassing findings: his fellow GOP committee member was running amok engaged in criminal conduct right under Hoekstra's nose. He and the Administration had been sitting on the politically explosive NIE on Iraq, which mysteriously didn't get distributed to members of the Intel Committee as it normally would have.

In one last spasm of coverup and denial, Hoekstra--and the rest of the GOP leadership--lashed out at a mid-level staffer. It's a disgrace.

(November 21, 2006 -- 10:43 AM EST // link)

Another Gemayel assassinated in Lebanon, this time the minister of industry Pierre Gemayel.

I don't know why I have such a clear memory of when his uncle, Bashir, was assassinated in 1982 before taking office as Lebanon's newly elected president. Maybe it was because it was the same day Grace Kelly died in Monaco. A strange association. All hell broke loose in Lebanon shortly thereafter, and things are similarly tenuous there now.

(November 21, 2006 -- 08:30 AM EST // link)

House Democrats to serve up ethics reform a la carte. ("I'd like the lobbyist gift ban -- no earmark transparency, thank you.") That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.

(November 20, 2006 -- 11:17 PM EST // link)

Who will replace John Bolton at the UN?

(November 20, 2006 -- 11:13 PM EST // link)

CQ: House Ethics Committee investigation of the Mark Foley matter "may end with a whimper, not a bang"--but not until mid-December.

(November 20, 2006 -- 11:05 PM EST // link)

Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA), man or myth?

(November 20, 2006 -- 09:53 PM EST // link)

Don't feel like the Iraq War proponents who have finally turned against the war are being beat up enough for their hypocrisy? Then go read as Ken Silverstein pounds Ken Adelman into pulp. In a dignified Harper's kind of way, of course.

(November 20, 2006 -- 08:11 PM EST // link)

Been there, done that?

November 2006: "President Bush said Monday that he has made no decisions about altering the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, and he refused to discuss the pros and cons that would accompany such a decision."

August 2005: President Bush said Thursday no decision has been made on increasing or decreasing U.S. troop levels in Iraq, saying that as "Iraqis stand up, we will stand down" and that only conditions on the ground will dictate when it is time for a reduction in U.S. forces.

April 2004: "Gen. John P. Abizaid, the senior commander in the Middle East, has asked for contingency plans for increasing the number of troops in Iraq. No decision has been made to supplement the 134,000 troops now there, and White House officials said it was unclear whether such a move would help the situation."

November 2003: "The President is going to do what is most effective in Iraq, and he gets recommendations from his commanders on troop levels and what is needed. No decisions have been made about future troops levels," said National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice.

(November 20, 2006 -- 04:38 PM EST // link)

This could get rather interesting. The decision on who won the race to represent Florida's 13th Congressional District could wind up in the House itself.

(November 20, 2006 -- 03:11 PM EST // link)

TPM Reader RF on George W. Bush finally showing up in Vietnam ...

Reading the news accounts of Bush's visit to Vietnam--and having studied the conflict and culture my whole life, and speaking the language, two things leaped to mind:

1) The incident is certainly a measure of the nerve or rather stupidity of George W. Bush. To invert historical reality while actually standing on Vietnamese soil is an irony, perhaps an obscenity, but it hardly shows even the minimal respect expected of the rudest guest. I'm sure Bush was oblivious to any reaaction by his hosts--and I'm equally sure their reaction wasn't obvious, either.

It was intended to maintain the always-erroneous claim that Congress "lost" Vietnam by reducing funding, or criticizing the military, or losing it's political will. None of that's true.

2) I wonder just how much the Vietnamese were taking Bush for at the bargaining table. Vietnam is on the cusp of becoming the next Asian "Tiger" (how quickly is the question) and they have much to offer. Bush needs to add to his "Coalition" of Palau, Micronesia, England (all island nations, hmm). While they won't join--I believe they offered 500 tons (lbs?) of rice in response for Bush's appeal for more coalition allies & support (along with snarky public statement)-- they are capable of extracting resources from Bush.

Like I said earlier, we're deep down in the primitive brain stem here.

(November 20, 2006 -- 03:06 PM EST // link)

The jockeying among Iraq's neighbors for control/influence over the deteriorating situation there is on full display now.

(November 20, 2006 -- 02:45 PM EST // link)

Look for congressional hearings in January on the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy and whether gays should be allowed to serve openly in the armed forces.

(November 20, 2006 -- 01:32 PM EST // link)

Commentary in recent days from two retired Army generals, Barry McCaffrey and William Odom, gives an even greater sense of urgency to the need to change course in Iraq.

McCaffrey says the U.S. needs to bring home five brigades from Iraq before Christmas to keep the Army from breaking, a redeployment he concedes is not feasible, according to the Army Times:

“The country is not at war. The United States armed forces and the CIA are at war. So we are asking our military to sustain a level of effort that we have not resourced,” he told Army Times.

“That’s how to break the Army is to keep it deployed above the rate at which it can be sustained,” he said. “There’s no free lunch here. The Army and the Marine Corps and Special Operations Command are too small and badly resourced to carry out this national security strategy.”

Odom is equally gloomy:

Our leaders do not act because their reputations are at stake. The public does not force them to act because it is blinded by the president's conjured set of illusions: that we are reducing terrorism by fighting in Iraq, creating democracy there, preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, making Israel more secure, not allowing our fallen soldiers to have died in vain, and others.

But reality no longer can be avoided. It is beyond U.S. power to prevent sectarian violence in Iraq, the growing influence of Iran throughout the region, the probable spread of Sunni-Shiite strife to neighboring Arab states, the eventual rise to power of the anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr or some other anti-American leader in Baghdad, and the spread of instability beyond Iraq.

These realities get worse every day that our forces remain in Iraq. They can't be wished away by clever diplomacy or by leaving our forces in Iraq for several more years.

Meanwhile the President is focused on mislearning the lessons of Vietnam.

(November 20, 2006 -- 01:28 PM EST // link)

I've been off dealing with new parental responsibilities. And I'm just now easing back into my TPM life. But a few comments on the president's new obsession with the Vietnam War (sort of a sign of how bleak things have gotten in Iraq, on so many levels. Think about it: at this point, it's the president who's arguing that Iraq is another Vietnam).

The argument about the need to maintain 'credibility' when deciding whether to withdraw from an ill-fated engagement is not one that, I think, can be dismissed out of hand. But those who wield this argument ignore another argument that is at least as important. If everyone really is watching, what do our actions tell other countries about how rational our national decision-making is about the use of our own power?

To be more concrete, showing other countries that we're willing to bleed ourselves dry because we don't have the common sense to cut our losses doesn't necessarily serve us well at all. Quite the contrary.

Also, and this is another point that I don't think gets raised often enough, a great power has the luxury to make various course corrections without its international standing or 'credibility' collapsing in upon itself. In fact, those who don't get this seem to be concealing a profound pessimism about the United States' collective national strength. The Bush crowd (and of course Kissinger in his long-standing and twisted way) sees America's position in the world as exquisitely brittle, liable to being destroyed entirely by what happens in Baghdad or what sort of 'mettle' we display in Iraq. (A similar mindset about the 'demonstration effect' of whacking Saddam is, in a sense, what got us into this mess in the first place. But let's leave that to another post. )

To use a crass but I think not totally inapt analogy, say Rupert Murdoch invests a lot of money in a big business deal in South America. And it just doesn't pan out. Which inspires more or less future confidence in Murdoch's reputation as an international media mogul: a willingness to keep pouring money into the failed venture basically forever, or pulling up stakes once it's clear the deal isn't working and moving on to more profitable ventures? Again, a crass analogy given the cost in lives and treasure we're talking about in Iraq. But I think the analogy and its implications are solid. Denial and moral and intellectual cowardice do nothing for ones 'credibility'.

So, now back to Vietnam -- both the metaphor and the country.

Isn't this trip a really odd venue for the president to be arguing that staying the course basically forever is the only acceptable solution? Though it took a tragically long time, the US, for all the moonwalking, eventually decided to pull up stakes in Vietnam. And what was the result? One might make arguments that the Soviets and Soviet proxies were temporarily emboldened in Africa or Latin America, though I think that's debatable. But what of the real effects? The Soviet Union was dismantling itself within little more than a decade of our pull-out. And now we have a Vietnam that is politically repressive at home but proto-capitalist in its economy and, by any measure, incredibly eager for good relations with the United States.

If geo-political standing and international repercussions are really the issue we're discussing, it seems very hard to argue that our decision to pull out of Vietnam had any lasting or meaningful ill-effects. And there's at least a decent argument to the contrary.

And yet here we have President Bush, stepping on to Vietnamese soil to further our rapprochement with Vietnam, and arguing, in so many words, that the lesson of Vietnam is that we should still be there blowing the place up thirty years later.

We're really deep into the primitive brainstem phase of our long national nightmare of presidential denial and mendacity on Iraq. Poetically, politically and intellectually it's appropriate that Henry Kissinger is now along for the ride.

(November 20, 2006 -- 01:03 PM EST // link)

House Intel Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) demoted a Democratic committee staffer just before the elections as political payback. A senior House Republican admitted as much. But if you needed further proof--the staffer has been reinstated.

(November 20, 2006 -- 12:57 PM EST // link)

Sore winner watch? GOP Rep. Jim Walsh won re-election, but is "disappointed" in the voters of his hometown.

(November 20, 2006 -- 12:02 PM EST // link)

Democrat Christine Jennings has filed an official contest of the election results in Florida's 13th Congressional District.

(November 20, 2006 -- 11:37 AM EST // link)

What did the President know specifically about U.S. torture practices and when did he know it?

Democrats in Congress want to know; and, in an interview with Spiegel Online that was largely eclipsed by the frenetic last days of the midterm election campaigns, reporter and author Ron Suskind said the President knew more and knew it earlier than you might think:

The president understands more about the mistakes than he lets on. He knows what the most-skilled interrogators know too. He gets briefed, and he was deeply involved in this process from the beginning. The president loves to talk to operators.

This is a President who I suspect has a hard time with the concept of plausible deniability.

(November 20, 2006 -- 11:33 AM EST // link)

Ohio Coingate felon and one-time GOP player Tom Noe sentenced to 18 years in prison.

The state judge had this to say about Noe's theft of at least $2 million from taxpayers: "a short prison term would demean your conduct."

Apparently he was unmoved by Noe's lawyer's plea that "this was a one-time crime and set of circumstances that I think will never echo at any point in the history of this state again."

(November 20, 2006 -- 07:58 AM EST // link)

Former Rep. Mark Foley is out of rehab! The probe into his scandal, however, is still under wraps. That and other news of the day in today's Daily Muck.

(November 20, 2006 -- 01:11 AM EST // link)

Our three options for Iraq, in Pentagon-speak: "Go Big," "Go Long," and "Go Home."

Late Update: Regular TPM Reader MB registers a complaint of mock-outrage: "How you could post a link to that WaPo article without letting loyal readers know that our defense officials are likening potential war strategies to the dance moves of a boy touching, blanket dangling, plastic surgery disaster is truly beyond me."

Fair enough. Here's the sentence from the WaPo story: "That combination plan, which one defense official called "Go Big but Short While Transitioning to Go Long," could backfire if Iraqis suspect it is really a way for the United States to moonwalk out of Iraq -- that is, to imitate singer Michael Jackson's trademark move of appearing to move forward while actually sliding backward."

(November 20, 2006 -- 12:59 AM EST // link)

President Bush said he would understand if Israel attacks Iran.

(November 20, 2006 -- 12:12 AM EST // link)

There are embittered insiders, and then there is Henry Kissinger, who told the BBC today:

“If you mean, by ‘military victory,’ an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don’t believe that is possible.”

The emphasis is mine. I am not inclined to read this as Kissinger turning on the Administration, so much as it is him once again stating his view that the American people are insufficiently steady and resolved to see war through to victory. If the public would just buck up and if the Democrats had not prevailed in the midterm elections, Kissinger implies, then military victory in Iraq would still be possible.

It is a point, of course, that Kissinger has spent more than thirty years trying to make about Vietnam. What better way to drive that point home than by making Iraq a historical parallel.

An old man chasing ghosts.

(November 19, 2006 -- 11:44 PM EST // link)

Human Rights Watch: The trial of Saddam Hussein was so flawed that its verdict is unsound.

(November 19, 2006 -- 12:59 PM EST // link)

A Nevada man is the Zelig of GOP scandals.

(November 19, 2006 -- 07:36 AM EST // link)

A number of readers have emailed with their outrage over the comments on torture by TPM Reader CH. So let me clarify a couple of things.

As I said, CH was just one of several readers who had emailed to suggest I was living in a bubble. Pointing to the School of the Americas and the dirty wars in Latin America, they noted that U.S.-sanctioned torture has been going on for far longer than I was willing to acknowledge. You might call those the "where have you been?" crowd.

Somewhat related is that most of those same readers stopped short of offering an explanation for how their view that torture has been an accepted part of U.S. policy for a long time affects the way in which we move forward in addressing the abuses committed in the war on terror. What intrigued me about CH's comments was his suggestion that we were in a bubble formed of our own naivete back then and are eager to return to that bubble now, but that it's the bubble itself that may contribute to these misguided policies on our behalf.

It was not my intent to set CH up as an easy strawman to be knocked about.

As for my own view on the difference between then and now, for the most part I subscribe to this take on it, from TPM Reader EK:

What we had before: An official policy against torture, and some shaky evidence that the policy was a lie.

What we have now: An official policy supporting torture, and plenty of
evidence of wrongdoing.

Morally, both situations are reprehensible. But in politics, just like in law enforcement, you can't do much with vague rumors and unproven suspicions. So even though the United States has been doing shameful things for a long time, the new situation is materially different. We've gone from a nation which claimed to uphold the Geneva Conventions, and only violated them in secret, to a nation which has openly rejected the Geneva Conventions, and which has been caught on camera.

I'm sure we'll return to this topic as congressional oversight (I hope) begins to peel back the layers. But for now my thanks especially to the service women and men who emailed their experiences.

(November 18, 2006 -- 09:36 PM EST // link)

DOJ won't investigate Erlich/Steele bamboozling campaign flyers.

(November 18, 2006 -- 09:13 PM EST // link)

A recurring theme to the emails I have been receiving in response to today's posts on torture is that Americans, myself included, are naive to think that the U.S. has not engaged in torture, directly and indirectly, for decades prior to the Bush Administration.

This email from TPM Reader CH, a former interrogator himself, probably best captures that point of view:

We can talk all day about what training the military receives on Geneva Conventions, but at the heart of the matter is how people get around them. That is, in my experience, any set of rules that are established have loopholes and it ends up being the job of some to find those loopholes so that we can exploit them and still retain a level of plausible deniability as to whether or not certain actions are illegal. . . .

It's not as if the US has never had a major role in the darkest circles of military actions knowing full well that these violations would be viewed as a violation of something idealists hold up as an example of 'human dignity', like the Geneva Conventions. In fact, I would argue that we've played in these circles all along and anyone thinking otherwise is only fooling themselves. Abu Ghraib and other events were not anomalies as much as they were unintended glimpses (due to private contractor mistakes) into these darker circles that were then broadcast to the world giving Americans and others a look at what 'we' do.

Essentially, this is a microcosm for what has arguably been going on for decades and for what the Bush Administration has used more 'openly' than their predecessors...but only 'openly' because people are finally coming around to the realism that often governs our geopolitical actions and are being exposed one way or another to certain dark truths. We may not like these truths, and we can act to change them if we want. However, so long as people continue to cite things like the Geneva Conventions and argue in ways that pretend as if we live in an ideal world and that 'we' are virtuous actors in said world, well, we are only going to help in perpetuating the bubble that so many of 'us' have been living in for so long. . . .

Americans are not trained to operate within that world and while naive idealists who want to hold Geneva up as something that is not ambiguous or even out-dated are trying to do good by holding people accountable for their morally ambiguous and/or illegal actions...they are only reinforcing the bubble as we know it. The bubble, with Bush's Administration, has been burst. Why do we want to crawl back inside?

(November 18, 2006 -- 08:08 PM EST // link)

Yesterday I asked for suggestions from readers for which historical figure Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), global warming denier and chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, most closely resembles.

I was looking for comparable historical figures who were not just oblivious in the face of facts but vigorously fought the facts and those who discovered the facts. But the way I phrased the question left some readers thinking I meant who does Inhofe most look like physically. I'll just say that those emails were especially unflattering to the Senator, and leave it at that.

Receiving the most nominations were those associated with the persecution of Galileo, in particular Pope Urban VIII and Caccini.

Tied for second were the Soviet genetics-rejectionist Trofim Lysenko and, my personal favorite, Baghdad Bob.

As your prize for playing, not only is Inhofe out as chairman come January, but word came today that he may not even survive as ranking member of the committee. Thank you for playing.

(November 18, 2006 -- 01:47 PM EST // link)

I've heard back from several readers intimately familiar with U.S. military protocols for training service members to survive capture by the enemy and who, therefore, are familiar with the techniques, like waterboarding, being used now by the U.S. on detainees in its custody. Their accounts and what the experience taught them is compelling.

TPM Reader MN was a Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape instructor:

Since a “voluntary” confession is the standard of the totalitarian regime for conviction and nullification of Geneva Convention rights, we wanted our people inoculated from this danger … hence SERE was created. Survivors like John McCain, Nick Roe and Admiral John Stockdale created and refined the material through their debriefs and visits. Our schools were designed to show how a totalitarian enemy, with a complete disregard for human rights runs a death/prison camp. Your job was to survive and Return with Honor. Torture, we revealed, was a useless and single pointed device which was wholly unreliable – torture was for sadism and the pleasure of the torturer. It had no intelligence value and the information would always be suspect.

The horror of the recent revelations of the use of our school’s techniques in Iraq and Gitmo is disgusting. We are all horrified that we have destroyed the only tool we have to keep our soldiers safe … the disgust of world opinion. Waterboarding is a torture. Period. It is not a simulation, when applied you are, in fact, drowning at a controlled rate … we just determine how much and how long – you’ll break. Everyone breaks. I ran a waterboard team at SERE and administered dozens of students through the process as a tool to show what the worst looks like, short of death. This is why there is a doctor and a psychologist standing right next to the student … to do it safe and to help the student recover. Does it suck? Yes? Would I like to go through it again … never.

That America has gone to the depths of torture hurts my very soul. I know we have damaged our warrior spirit and placed a dark stain on the honor of our military. Not since Mai Lai have we been so dishonored as we have with Abu Ghraib. We have found, though September 11th, the blackest part of our American soul and have embraced in in a fit of false macho. John McCain should be ashamed of himself …

TPM Reader GS is a graduate of survival school:

I, like many of my fellow aviators, am a graduate of survival school, which is a mock-pow camp where we were subject to food, water and sleep deprivation, as well as mild beatings and waterboarding. Surprisingly, this was a very beneficial course, in that it taught us how to parse out information to minimize its relevancy, and recognize our own limitations and breaking points.

Waterboarding is just as your reader described; you are strapped to a board, a washcloth or other article covers your face, and water is continuously poured, depriving you of air, and suffocating you until it is removed, and/or inducing you to ingest water. We were carefully monitored (although how they determined these limits is beyond me), but it was a most unpleasant experience, and its threat alone was sufficient to induce compliance, unless one was so deprived of water that it would be an unintentional means to nourishment.

The problem for us as citizens is we don't know to what limit or frequency the administration's agents are using this technique. In my view, what we experienced as service personnel was an introduction to what interrogators could do to us, in order to at least prepare us for the initial shock of captivity. What is done by professional interrogators whose mission it is to extract information is undoubtedly more unrelenting and severe, and most likely exacerbated by any act of resistance.

Since we consider it immoral when captured US personnel are treated in any manner not humane, there is no moral ground for making waterboarding an instrument of our policy against others. Admittedly this is a tough position for some, but I believe how we live and how we fight shapes the perception of us as a nation, and while we may not discourage actual terrorists, we can influence those whose understanding and support are necessary in this struggle.

(November 18, 2006 -- 10:08 AM EST // link)

As long as we're talking about torture . . .

Incoming Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has asked the Justice Department to release two documents setting forth U.S. policy on how terrorism suspects are detained and interrogated. (h/t Laura Rozen)

(November 18, 2006 -- 10:05 AM EST // link)

Tony Blair agrees with David Frost that Iraq is "a disaster."

(November 18, 2006 -- 09:16 AM EST // link)

I'm not inclined to give a whole lot of credence to the rumors that Karl Rove will leave the White House soon. Does it make sense on some levels? Sure. But part of the rumor involves Harriet Miers plunging a shiv into Rove's back, and I find that so hard to believe, it makes me skeptical that any of the rumor is true.