Archive for July, 2010
BOSTON — Sen. John Kerry said he always intended to pay taxes in Massachusetts on his $7 million yacht but conceded he mishandled the public furor over his decision to dock the vessel in tax-free Rhode Island.
"I don't think I dealt with it fast enough, effectively enough. There's nobody to blame but myself for that," the Massachusetts Democrat told The Boston Globe for Friday's editions.
Kerry added that he did nothing legally wrong.
Kerry moved to end the controversy this week by saying he would write Massachusetts a check for about $500,000, whether he owed the money or not. He told The Associated Press that he and his wife "have always complied with tax laws." The payment represents $437,500 in one-time sales taxes, plus about $70,000 in annual excise taxes.
The 2004 Democratic presidential nominee had been dogged by charges of tax evasion since the Boston Herald first reported his decision to dock the 76-foot sloop Isabel in Newport, R.I.
Kerry told the Globe it was never his intention to permanently dock the yacht in Rhode Island. He said he had not yet taken final ownership of the boat because changes were still being made by the designer, but that he could take possession within the next few days.
He said there was never any thought to avoiding sales and excise taxes in his home state, but acknowledged that he failed to get that message across to the public.
"I said to people, on day one, we will pay all taxes, all taxes, there's no issue here," he told the newspaper.
The first statement from his office last week made no mention of his intention to dock the boat in Falmouth, Mass., where he told the Globe he will likely permanently berth it. It also suggested reasons for keeping the vessel in Rhode Island, regardless of where he might pay taxes on it.
"The boat was designed by and purchased from a company in Rhode Island, and it's based in Newport at the Newport Shipyard for long-term maintenance, upkeep and charter purposes, not tax reasons," that initial statement said.
The homeport of "Newport" is also painted on the stern, just below the name "Isabel."
Kerry told the Globe he had sailed the yacht a handful of times, including to the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. He and his wife, millionaire philanthropist Theresa Heinz, own a home in Nantucket.
Massachusetts officials had said Kerry was within his rights to base the vessel in Rhode Island, but they also said he would be liable for taxes if he brought the yacht to Massachusetts within six months of taking ownership.
The senator told the Globe he and his wife decided in 2006 to buy a new sailboat and signed a contract for the vessel in November 2007, stressing that it was done a time when the economy was better.
Driver from www.huffingtonpost.com
PHOENIX — The showdown over Arizona's immigration law played out in court and on Phoenix's sun-splashed streets on Thursday, as the state sought to reinstate key parts of the measure and angry protesters chanted that they refused to "live in fear." Dozens were arrested.
A federal judge's decision a day earlier to block the strict law's most controversial elements didn't dampen the raging immigration debate.
The judge has been threatened. Protesters rallied in cities from Los Angeles to New York. The sheriff of the state's most populous county vowed to continue targeting illegal immigrants. Lawmakers or candidates in as many as 18 states say they still want to push similar measures.
Along the U.S.-Mexico border, life continued as before, with officials sending back people who were captured while attempting to cross.
In Phoenix, hundreds of the law's opponents massed at a downtown jail, beating on the metal door and forcing sheriff's deputies to call for backup. Officers in riot gear opened the doors, waded out into the crowd and hauled off those who didn't move. They arrested at least 23 people, and more were detained elsewhere.
Activists focused their rage at Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the 78-year-old ex-federal drug agent known for his immigration sweeps.
Outside his downtown office, marchers chanted "Sheriff Joe, we are here. We will not live in fear." One was dressed in a papier-mache "Sheriff Joe" head and prison garb.
"I'm not going to be intimidated and stopped," he said. "If I have to go out and get in the car, I'll do it."
Sheriff's spokesman Brian Lee said deputies were able to start the sweep Thursday afternoon and arrested four people: two had warrants for suspended licenses, one had a suspended license, and one was illegally carrying a firearm. He did not know if any were illegal immigrants.
Activists, armed with video cameras and aided by others listening to police scanners, roamed the county's neighborhoods, saying they were ready to document any deputies harassing Hispanics.
In Tucson, between 50 and 100 people on both sides of the issue gathered at a street corner. About 200 protesters blocked a busy Los Angeles intersection, with police arrested about a dozen who were linked with plastic pipes and chains.
In New York, about 300 immigrant advocates rallied near the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan.
"It's one step closer for us, but I think the fight is still ahead," said Adelfa Lugo, a 56-year-old Mexican-born Brooklyn resident who joined the protest. "If we don't fight this in Arizona, this anti-immigrant feeling will spread across the country."
Since Wednesday's ruling, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton has received thousands of phone calls and e-mails. Some were positive, but others were "from people venting and who have expressed their displeasure in a perverted way," said David Gonzales, the U.S. Marshal for Arizona.
Gonzales said his agents are taking some of the threats to Bolton seriously. He wouldn't say how many there were or whether any threats were coming from recognized hate groups. He refused to discuss any extra security measures, which U.S. marshals routinely provide federal judges.
The protests came as Gov. Jan Brewer appealed Bolton's ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
Brewer, who hired lawyers to defend the law in court, hopes the court will act quickly, saying illegal immigration remains an ongoing crisis.
Arizona has more than 400,000 illegal immigrants, and its border with Mexico is awash with smugglers who funnel narcotics and immigrants throughout the U.S. The law's supporters say the influx of illegal migrants drains vast sums of money from hospitals, education and other services.
The Obama administration has decided to send National Guard troops to the border states to help federal agents with security.
Along the U.S.-Mexico border in punishing temperatures of more than 100 degrees Thursday, two immigrants climbed a fence and fled on foot, while a third threw rocks in the direction of Border Patrol agents. The officers arrested them. New deportees congregated around Nogales.
The Arizona National Guard officials say they hope to have 524 troops in place by the end of September. Troops are expected to arrive at the border in New Mexico and Texas by mid-August, and California officials have estimated an Oct. 1 deadline to have troops fully deployed there.
In Phoenix, demonstrators had promised nonviolent civil disobedience, and they gathered in front of the sheriff's office by the hundreds, blocking traffic and swarming around several cars caught in the protest.
Police moved in to try to allow the drivers to leave, as the crowd shouted, "We will not comply."
Over the next hour, the crowd surged, chanted, yelled and some protesters forced the arrests. They then moved on the to jail.
As Arpaio held a news conference, he got a telephone call, and he told the caller: "OK, we're going to divert our deputies down in front of the jail ... What you do, anybody that resists, you put 'em in our jail. We're going to lock 'em up."
Then he turned to reporters: "As I said, we're not going to allow our jails to be held hostage by these activists, so they're going to jail.
"And if we have to put 200 in there, that's where they're going," he said, adding that the sweeps would continue.
During the sweeps, deputies usually flood an area of a city – in some cases heavily Latino areas – to seek out traffic violators and arrest other alleged lawbreakers. Sixty percent of the nearly 1,000 people arrested in the sweeps since early 2008 have been illegal immigrants.
Critics say deputies racially profile Hispanics. Arpaio says deputies approach people only when they have probable cause.
The Justice Department launched an investigation of his office nearly 17 months ago over allegations of discrimination and unconstitutional searches and seizures. Although the department has declined to detail its investigation, Arpaio believes it centers on his sweeps.
The agency's civil rights attorneys and investigators were in Phoenix Thursday as part of their probe, DOJ spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa said. She declined to comment on the status of the inquiry or answer any other questions.
In October 2009, when the federal government stripped Arpaio of his power to let 100 deputies make federal immigration arrests, he launched another sweep the next day.
Unable to make arrests under a federal statute, the sheriff instead relied on a nearly 5-year-old state law that prohibits immigrant smuggling.
The elements of the new law that took effect on Thursday will likely aid Arpaio in his immigration efforts.
In her temporary injunction, Bolton delayed the most contentious provisions of the law, including a section that required officers to check a person's immigration status while enforcing other laws.
Bolton indicated the federal government's case has a good chance at succeeding in its argument that federal immigration law trumps state law.
But she allowed police to enforce the law's bans on blocking vehicle traffic when seeking or offering day-labor services and a revision to the smuggling ban that lets officers stop drivers if they suspect motorists have broken traffic laws.
Bolton also let officers enforce a new prohibition on driving or harboring illegal immigrants in furtherance of their illegal presence.
Opponents of the law said the ruling sends a strong message to other states hoping to replicate the law.
But a Republican lawmaker in Utah said the state will likely take up a similar law anyway when their legislative sessions start up again in 2011.
"The ruling ... should not be a reason for Utah to not move forward," Utah state Rep. Carl Wimmer said.
Driver from www.huffingtonpost.com
This story was updated at 11:45 p.m. ET to include mention of a Boston Globe op-ed.
A growing divide has emerged among Republicans over the possible nomination of Elizabeth Warren to head the new agency designed to protect borrowers from predatory lenders.
Leading Senate Republicans like Minority Whip Jon Kyl (Ariz.) and former Banking Committee Chairman Richard Shelby of Alabama oppose the noted consumer advocate and bailout watchdog, raising questions about her tenure atop the Congressional Oversight Panel and her past academic research into bankruptcy. But some of their colleagues have praised Warren for her work and her intelligence, fought efforts to water down the agency she may lead, and even introduced bills to give her more power to protect taxpayers.
And although Shelby and others raise the specter of Warren, a Harvard Law professor, running an agency they say is intent on choking off credit and hurting the economy in the process, two of Warren's Republican colleagues on the bailout panel said Wednesday that while they "do not share many of Professor Warren's views and opposed the creation of the [Consumer Financial Protection Bureau]" they have found her "collegial... professional [and]... quite willing to modify her views if presented with well-reasoned cogent arguments."
The two Republicans, Kenneth Troske and J. Mark McWatters -- one picked by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), the other by House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) -- added in their statement that the panel has been critical of Democrats and Republicans alike, and that "it takes courage to publicly question the decisions made by members of your own party."
In Thursday's Boston Globe, Charles Fried, a Republican and former solicitor general under Ronald Reagan who supported the Supreme Court nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito, writes in an op-ed that Obama should give Warren a recess appointment, according to a version of the piece available online. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) last week told the Huffington Post the same thing, arguing that Obama should simply bypass the Senate.
"Capitalism and markets depend on the morality, honesty, and good faith of those who participate in them. Markets function best and deliver prosperity when they are honest and the law enforces that honesty; dishonesty, fraud, and official corruption are the poisons that keep markets in many parts of the world from delivering the goods," Fried, one of Warren's colleagues at Harvard Law School, writes in the Globe.
"That's where Elizabeth Warren comes in. Those who are lobbying hard against her nomination to head the Consumer Financial Protection [Bureau] are the same people who lobbied against financial reform legislation and lost. They paint her as the enemy of capitalism and free markets. Nothing could be further from the truth: She is the enemy of dishonesty, abuse, and just plain theft," writes Fried.
Republican statements of support for Warren's work aren't yea votes, of course, but they poke some gaping holes in the theory, advanced by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) as recently as Tuesday, that lockstep GOP opposition would inevitably shut down a Senate attempt to appoint her.
"It's not all that clear how Chairman Dodd has been doing his math," said one consumer advocate intimately involved in the effort to get the financial reform bill through Congress.
During a Senate hearing last week with Warren and other bailout watchdogs, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) complimented them on their work, and said they had "brought more transparency and accountability to the activities of [the] Treasury [Department]."
"In short, you have kept Treasury honest, a critical service with so much taxpayer money at stake," Grassley added.
Last Thursday, GOP Sens. John Thune (S.D.) and Bob Corker (Tenn.) cited Warren while arguing against the Obama administration's proposed $30 billion for small banks. The stated purpose of the proposal is to ease credit for small businesses; Warren's panel said the plan "looks uncomfortably similar to TARP."
"Elizabeth Warren is a smart person," Corker said on the Senate floor. "There are things I agree with her on, and there are things I disagree with her on. But on that point, I absolutely agree."
Republicans outside the Senate have also come to Warren's defense.
Bank regulator Sheila Bair, the Republican Chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, told Bloomberg Television earlier this month that Warren "certainly has all the qualifications and credentials for that job."
The statements of support are just the latest in a series of Republican statements praising Warren.
In March of last year, Grassley singled out Warren for her work protecting taxpayers.
"I want to especially mention Professor Warren," the Iowa Republican said last March 31. "So many times over the last decade and a half, you and I have been on opposite sides of a very important issue and we are probably still on opposite sides of that issue, but you're really boring in on this and I want to tell you that I really appreciate your work," he said in reference to her oversight activities. "And I appreciate your opposition on that other issue more because of the hard work you're doing on this."
In April 2009, Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) praised Warren and her panel's "yeoman efforts" on watching over Treasury, and introduced a bill to give her subpoena power because of the panel's difficulties in securing answers from Treasury.
Both Snowe and Grassley also voted against a provision this past May that would have gutted the new consumer agency which President Obama signed into law last week.
But Warren continues to be dogged by questions of confirmability, despite White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs's Monday statement that Warren is "very confirmable."
Some consumer advocates suggest that the source of those questions may be attributable not to Republicans, but to Senate Democrats wary of angering their allies in the financial services industry. Lenders fear a Warren-led agency with the power to regulate consumer credit products like mortgages and credit cards because they worry she could be too aggressive in protecting consumers from dubious lending practices, cutting off key profit sources.
A vote for Warren would be seen as a vote against lenders. A vote against her would be seen as a vote against families. It's a lose-lose, one consumer advocate noted.
READ Troske's and McWatters's full statement:
"Although we do not share many of Professor Warren's views and opposed the creation of the CFPB, we have found our dealings with her to be collegial and professional. We often debate a wide variety of issues with Professor Warren and have found her quite willing to modify her views if presented with well-reasoned cogent arguments.
For example, as the Panel undertook its investigations on the 'investment' of TARP funds in GMAC and AIG, we raised a number of specific concerns with Professor Warren and the other members of the Panel. She was presented with a clear choice -- accept Treasury's tepid analysis or conduct a rigorous de novo review. She -- without hesitation -- chose the latter and the Panel produced what we believe is the definitive analysis of the GMAC and AIG misadventures. Although Treasury has not welcomed the Panel's reports on GMAC and AIG -- not to mention its continuing criticism of the Home Affordable Modification Program -- any lesser undertaking by the Panel would have run contrary to its Congressional mandate and ill-served the taxpayers who stand to lose tens of billions of dollars of TARP funded public resources.
It is important to note that the Panel has been critical of policies and decisions implemented by Democrats and Republicans alike. There is great virtue in that, because, while it is easy to question the decisions made by members of the other political party, it takes courage to publicly question the decisions made by members of your own party."
Driver from www.huffingtonpost.com
TULSA, Okla. — Incumbent Republican Tom Coburn has defeated two challengers from his own party in a primary election for a U.S. Senate seat in Oklahoma.
Coburn defeated perennial candidate Evelyn Rogers of Tulsa and retired teacher Lewis Kelly Spring of Hugo on Tuesday.
Coburn's crusades against government spending and waste in Washington have made him the darling of Oklahoma conservatives. The Muskogee physician also has opposed home-state spending projects known as earmarks. He is seeking a second term and says he will not seek a third if he wins this fall.
Alexis Neiers, the 'Pretty Wild' reality starlet who just served a month for her involvement in the Bling Ring, shared a cell block with Lindsay Lohan for the last three days of her sentence. Now she shares her story with E!, the network that made her a star.
Alexis did not interact with Lindsay since both were in protective custody, but she could hear her crying through the wall.
"Crying. She was crying. I could hear her," Alexis said. "She was crying. She was talking to deputies and, you know, just trying to--I couldn't really like make it out, but from what I saw the first day, I mean, she was lying in there and just trying to like calm down."
One reason for Lindsay not to cry: the special treatment her hair received.
"I mean, she got to keep her extensions in and everything, which most people don't, and the girls were like, 'Ah, they had to take my weave out and cut it all out and,' you know, stuff like that," Alexis said.
Driver from: www.huffingtonpost.com
ABOARD USS GEORGE WASHINGTON — A massive nuclear-powered U.S. supercarrier began maneuvers Sunday with ally South Korea in a potent show of force, four months after the sinking of a South Korean warship. North Korea threatened the exercises could lead to nuclear war.
The military drills, set to run through Wednesday, involve about 8,000 U.S. and South Korean troops, 20 ships and submarines and 200 aircraft. The USS George Washington, with several thousand sailors and dozens of fighter jets aboard, was deployed from Japan.
The exercises will be the first in a series of U.S.-South Korean maneuvers conducted in the East Sea off South Korea's east coast, and in the Yellow Sea closer to China's shores in international waters. The exercises also are the first to employ the F-22 stealth fighter – which can evade North Korean air defenses – in South Korea.
The American and South Korean defense chiefs announced last Tuesday in Seoul they would stage the military drills to send a clear message to North Korea to stop its "aggressive" behavior.
Washington and Seoul blame Pyongyang for the sinking of the 1,200-ton Cheonan warship in late March near the Koreas' maritime border. A five-nation team of investigators concluded a North Korean torpedo sank the Cheonan, considered the worst military attack on the South since the 1950-53 Korean War.
North Korea, which denies any involvement in the sinking, has warned the United States against attempting to punish it. The regime called the drills an "unpardonable military provocation."
"The army and people of the DPRK will legitimately counter with their powerful nuclear deterrence the largest-ever nuclear war exercises to be staged by the U.S. and the South Korean puppet forces," the National Defense Commission said in a statement Saturday. North Korea's official name is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The North's military "will start a retaliatory sacred war of their own style based on nuclear deterrent any time necessary in order to counter the U.S.," said the statement carried by the nation's official news agency.
Its rhetoric regarding using nuclear deterrence was seen by most as bluster, but its angry response to the maneuvers underscores the rising tensions in the region.
The North routinely threatens attacks whenever South Korea and the U.S. hold joint military drills, which Pyongyang sees as a rehearsal for an invasion. The U.S. keeps 28,500 troops in South Korea and another 50,000 in Japan, but says it has no intention of invading the North.
South Korea was closely monitoring North Korea's military but spotted no unusual activity Sunday, the Defense Ministry said.
Though the impoverished North has a large conventional military and the capability to build nuclear weapons, it is not believed to have the technology needed to use nuclear devices as warheads.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced Wednesday, after visiting the Demilitarized Zone dividing the two Koreas, the U.S. would slap new sanctions on the North to stifle its nuclear ambitions and punish it for the Cheonan sinking.
On Friday, the European Union said it, too, would consider new sanctions on North Korea.
In an apparent bow to China, the George Washington will participate in the exercise in the East Sea, but there are no plans for it to enter the Yellow Sea for subsequent exercises.
China, a traditional North Korean ally, has voiced concerns that military drills in the Yellow Sea could inflame tensions on the Korean peninsula and also fears exercises too close to its own shores could breach Chinese security.
The Nimitz-class George Washington had been expected to join in exercises – code-named "Invincible Spirit" – off South Korea sooner, but the Navy delayed those plans as the United Nations Security Council met to deliberate what action it should take over the Cheonan sinking.
The council eventually condemned the incident, but stopped short of naming North Korea as the perpetrator.
The mainstream media have always been easily distracted and beguiled -- but never more than now, when the next diversion is always just one click away.
This makes us particularly fortunate to have a few relentless souls like Tom Engelhardt around, using the Internet not to chase the latest chatter but to tenaciously chronicle, explore and illuminate the unspoken realities that shape our political discourse.
Foremost among those realities is the extraordinary militarization of this nation in the post-9/11 era, and the skewing of public debate such that options that don't involve massive uses of force are essentially disregarded -- actually dismissed as dangerous, when in fact it is war that is dangerous. This goes a long way to explaining so many of the poor decisions made by our leaders that individually, but only briefly, get the attention of the mass media.
Engelhardt, a longtime book editor, is the creator and editor of the Tomdispatch.com website, a project of The Nation Institute. He is the finder and cultivator of important progressive voices, and contributors to his site include Bill McKibben, Mike Davis, Karen Greenberg, Chalmers Johnson, Michael Klare, Adam Hochschild and Elizabeth de la Vega.
But at the heart of Tomdispatch.com is Englehardt's own work and his relentless thesis that America is a modern empire that has become addicted to the wars that are hastening its decline.
His new book, a seamlessly edited collection of his writings for the website, is entitled "The American Way of War; How Bush's Wars Became Obama's" and establishes him as one of the grand chroniclers of the post-9/11 era.
The conclusion I reached after reading Engelhardt's book is that, as much as I hate to admit it, the supposedly discredited neocons have actually prevailed. These cold-blooded warmongers who think the exertion of American power is the answer to every problem have won -- not by winning any wars, mind you, but by setting the terms of the debate.
Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan could possibly be mistaken for successes, and yet the neocons have succeeded in creating a political climate in which, as Engelhardt explains, war and security are somehow seen as being synonymous. As a result, any alternative to war has become tantamount to diminishing our security -- and is therefore politically untenable. Alternatives to war get no serious hearing in modern Washington. And while the mainstream media apparently doesn't find this the least bit strange, Engelhardt does.
He asks good questions about it. "What does it mean," he writes, "when the most military-obsessed administration in our history, which, year after year, submitted ever more bloated Pentagon budgets to Congress, is succeeded by one headed by a president who ran, at least partially, on an antiwar platform, and who then submitted an even larger Pentagon budget?"
Indeed, it would appear that unless things change dramatically, we are condemned to enduring war, in the form of a Global War on Terror (GWOT) that never ends. At least now you know why.
Engelhardt devotes some time to chronicling the nation's massive, insatiable war machine -- and our country's role as arms supplier to the world. (When's the last time you saw anything in the news about that?)
He exposes what he calls the "garrisoning of the planet" by literally countless U.S. military bases around the globe -- bases that drain our treasury while angering our allies and energizing our enemies.
"Basing is generally considered here either a topic not worth writing about or an arcane policy matter best left to the inside pages for the policy wonks and news junkies," Engelhardt writes. "This is in part because we Americans -- and by extension our journalists -- don't imagine us as garrisoning or occupying the world; and certainly not as having anything faintly approaching a military empire."
He chronicles the extraordinary barbarity of the air war and the "collateral damage" it wreaks; an enterprise now made even more soulless as death is unleashed from drones operated by pilots hundreds or thousands of miles away.
Rather than look away as most of us do, Engelhardt faces right up to the greatest, most horrible irony of the post 9/11 period: that we did to ourselves "what al-Qaeda's crew never could have done. Blinding ourselves via the GWOT, we released American hubris and fear upon the world, in the process making almost every situation we touched progressively worse for this country."
And he expresses the appropriate amount of awe at the extraordinary gall of leaders who are keener on bringing good government to Afghanistan than they are to Washington.
He asks: "Why does the military of a country convinced it's becoming ungovernable think itself so capable of making another ungovernable country governable? What's the military's skill set here? What lore, what body of political knowledge, are they drawing on? Who do they think they represent, the Philadelphia of 1776 or the Washington of 2010, and if the latter, why should Americans be considered the globe's leading experts in good government anymore? And while we're at it, fill me in on one other thing: Just what has convinced American officials in Afghanistan and the nation's capital that they have the special ability to teach, prod, wheedle, bribe, or force Afghans to embark on good governance in their country if we can't do it in Washington or Sacramento?"
As the subtitle of Engelhardt's book indicates, the wars continue under Obama, barely even under new management. And the "Age of Terror" continues as well, with the combination of fear and political cowardice as potent a brew as ever. Consider, for instance, Obama's response to the failed underwear bombing attempt on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day.
"It's remarkable that the sharpest president we've had in a while didn't dare get up in front of the American people after Flight 253 landed and tell everyone to calm down," Engelhardt writes. "He didn't, in fact, have a single intelligent thing to say about the event. He certainly didn't remind Americans that, whatever happened to Flight 253, they stood in far more danger heading out of their driveways behind the wheel or pulling into a bar on the way home for a beer or two. Instead, the Obama administration essentially abjectly apologized, insisted it would focus yet more effort and money on making America safe from air terrorism, widened a new front in the Global War on Terror in Yemen (speeding extra money and U.S. advisors that way), and when the din from its critics didn't end, 'pushed back,' as Peter Baker of the New York Times wrote, by claiming 'that they were handling terror suspects much as the previous administration did.' It's striking when a Democratic administration finds safety in the claim that it's acting like a Republican one, that it's following the path to the imperial presidency already cleared by George W. Bush. Fear does that to you, and the fear of terror has been institutionalized at the top as well as the bottom of society."
How is possible that this extraordinary militarization of our politics and our country has taken place, but we haven't read about it in the newspapers? Engelhardt explains this, too.
"Sometimes," he writes in an afterword, "it takes a complete outsider to see that what's in front of us all is a forest, not a random grouping of trees, or, in the case of this book, an identifiable American way of war rather than a set of disparate political and military acts full of sound and fury but signifying little."
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration's Justice Department's actions were inappropriately political, but not criminal, when it fired a U.S. attorney in 2006, prosecutors said Wednesday in closing a two-year investigation without filing charges.
The decision closes the books on one of the lingering political disputes of the Bush administration, one that Democrats said was evidence of GOP politics run amok and that Republicans have always said was a manufactured controversy.
Investigators looked into whether the Bush administration improperly dismissed nine U.S. attorneys, and in particular New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias, as a way to influence criminal cases. The scandal added to mounting criticism that the administration had politicized the Justice Department, a charge that contributed to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
In 2008, the Justice Department assigned Nora Dannehy, a career prosecutor from Connecticut with a history of rooting out government wrongdoing, to investigate the firings.
"Evidence did not demonstrate that any prosecutable criminal offense was committed with regard to the removal of David Iglesias," the Justice Department said in a letter to lawmakers Wednesday. "The investigative team also determined that the evidence did not warrant expanding the scope of the investigation beyond the removal of Iglesias."
Prosecutors also said there was insufficient evidence to charge someone with lying to Congress or investigators.
Iglesias was fired after the head of New Mexico's Republican Party complained to the White House that Iglesias was soft on voter fraud. He asked that Iglesias be replaced so that the state could "make some real progress in cleaning up a state notorious for crooked elections."
Harriet Miers, then White House counsel, told lawmakers that presidential political adviser Karl Rove was "very agitated" over Iglesias "and wanted something done about it." Rove has said he played no role in deciding which U.S. attorneys were fired, that the firings weren't politically motivated and that he never sought to influence prosecutions.
Dannehy faulted the Justice Department for firing Iglesias without even bothering to figure out whether complaints about him were true. That indicated "an undue sensitivity to politics on the part of DOJ officials who should answer not to partisan politics but to principles of fairness and justice," the Justice Department wrote in its letter.
But that was not a crime, and was not an effort to influence prosecutions, the letter said.
Gonzales' lawyer, George Terwilliger, called the conclusion long overdue.
"Those who made unwarranted allegations to the contrary owe him an apology," Terwilliger said. "After having spent months cooperating with inquiries that produced no evidence of his wrongdoing, Judge Gonzales is pleased to be free to resume a career marked to date by service to the public."
Former Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., also became a focus of the investigation because he made three phone calls to the attorney general and one to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty complaining about Iglesias. McNulty didn't mention Domenici's phone calls when questioned by Congress, leading to accusations over a coverup.
Dannehy concluded that Domenici's push to have Iglesias fired was in part politically motivated but did not violate the law.
Iglesias also said Domenici called him and pressured him to bring charges in a public corruption case before Election Day 2006. The Senate Ethics Committee said Domenici created an appearance of impropriety with that phone call, and he apologized.
Dannehy said there was not enough evidence to show that phone call was either an attempt to pressure Iglesias to accelerate the case or a threat that if he didn't, he'd lose his job.
"The Justice Department has now confirmed what I have always said and believed: I never attempted to interfere with any government investigation," Domenici said. "I am glad that this matter has concluded."
House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers of Michigan said Dannehy's decision is not an exoneration of Bush administration officials.
"There is no dispute that these firings were totally improper and that misleading testimony was given to Congress in an effort to cover them up," Conyers said in a statement.
The nine prosecutors who were fired were: Daniel Bogden of Nevada, Paul Charlton of Arizona, Margaret Chiara of Michigan, Bud Cummins of Arkansas, Todd Graves of Missouri, Carol Lam of California, John McKay of Washington, Kevin Ryan of California, and Iglesias.
The Senate voted 60-40 on Tuesday to move forward with reauthorizing unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless, 2.5 million of whom have missed checks since the end of May as Republicans and conservative Democrats filibustered several bills to renew the aid. After a final Senate vote, the bill goes to the House, which will vote on Wednesday.
"It shouldn't take a supermajority to help families afford the bare necessities while unemployment is rising," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) after the vote. "It shouldn't take the slimmest of margins to do what is right."
Defeating the filibuster clears an easy path toward the president's desk this week. People who missed checks will be paid retroactively; people who exhausted all weeks of benefits available before the lapse will not get anything.
The great debate pitting deficit reduction against jobless aid is over -- until November, when it is certain to return. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday that the president will push for an additional extension of benefits when the current one expires shortly after the midterm congressional elections.
"I think it is fair and safe to assume that we are not going to wake up and find ourselves at the end of November at a rate of employment one would not consider to be an emergency," Gibbs said, in one of the most affirmative statements from Democrats about their plans for the next lapse in benefits.
Historically, Congress has never allowed federally-funded extended benefits to lapse when the national unemployment rate has been above 7.2 percent. The current rate is 9.5 percent, and few projections show it coming down any time soon.
Republicans in the Senate, along with Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson, had blocked the bill because its $33 billion cost was not "paid for." For 49 days after the benefits lapsed, Republicans and Nelson complained that deficit spending would worsen the economy, and many wondered whether extended benefits don't actually make people too lazy to look for work -- though the official line from Republicans has been that the cost of the benefits needed to be offset by taking funds from the 2009 stimulus bill.
"Republicans support extending benefits to the unemployed," said Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the Republican leader in the Senate. "As the president himself said yesterday, we've repeatedly voted for similar bills in the past. And we are ready to support one now. What we do not support -- and we make no apologies for -- is borrowing tens of billions of dollars to pass this bill at a time when the national debt is spinning completely out of control."
Maine Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins joined Democrats in breaking the filibuster; Ben Nelson stuck with the GOP. Democrats' previous attempt failed by one vote after the death of Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) in June. His replacement, Carte Goodwin, gave the Democrats the 60 votes they needed.
The lapse caused plenty of anxiety and hardship for people who've been out of work for more than six months. "What a shame that it had to drag on so long, especially in light of the fact that it was only a matter of time before it was passed," said Judy Conti, a lobbyist with the National Employment Law Project. "Even retroactive checks won't make up for the people who have had their cars repossessed in the last month, who have been evicted from their apartments or houses, or who have faced other atrocities because of this unconscionable delay."
Driver from: www.huffingtonpost.com
PENSACOLA, Fla. (AP) -- Call it cloudy with a chance of tar balls.
TV forecasters along the Gulf Coast have been adding a new ritual to their daily weather lineup - predicting the path of oil spewing from the Deepwater Horizon rig. But predicting the oil's movement is proving more difficult than predicting sunshine or showers.
"It's the biggest challenge in forecasting simply because it's all new," said Jason Smith, a meteorologist at the Fox 10 station in Mobile, Ala. "I've tracked a lot of hurricanes, but this is the first oil spill I've had to track."
Forecasters began adding the slick to the outlook soon after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in April, but their initial success was spotty. The oil didn't move as quickly as meteorologists predicted, and residents in some areas like the Florida Panhandle spent days anticipating oil before it appeared.
Even though BP PLC cut off the oil flow for the first time last week, forecasting oil's landfall will remain a challenge for months as the sticky stuff continues to wash up.
One fact that can make oil forecasting more difficult, meteorologists say, is that there are fewer data-collecting instruments out at sea than on land. Buoys and weather instruments attached to oil rigs provide eyes for forecasters, but with enormous ocean expanses to cover, patchy instrument coverage can leave forecasters blind in places.
For help, weathermen have turned to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which has been producing daily 24-, 48- and 72-hour forecasts noting where the spill is likely to be next.
NOAA's maps, made using modeling software and data from daily overflights by helicopters and planes, note the spots where the oil is likely to be most concentrated. But the maps aren't perfect, and forecasters have a particularly hard time predicting the path of tar balls, which are harder to detect than oil sheen.
"One of the things about forecasting oil spills is it's pretty easy to show when you're wrong because there are a lot of people out there looking at it," said Doug Helton, who oversees the map production from NOAA's Seattle office.
With oil, he said, everyone wants to know how much will arrive and where. And when forecasters are wrong, they hear about it.
"If you forecast a rain storm and you know it only rains 5/8ths inches of rain instead of an inch of rain then no one really complains," he said, not so with oil.
That's one reason TV forecasters sometimes add their own analysis, though NOAA's map is indispensable.
The meteorologists scour a NASA satellite picture of the actual slick. They pore over tide tables because tides help push oil into bays and rivers. They study currents, winds and heavy seas that also affect the oil's movement.
"As a meteorologist I look at the winds and I look at the waves," explained Margaret Orr of WDSU in New Orleans.
Many forecasters have improvised, taking standard maps and adapting them as they go to generate their oil spill graphics. Some make their oil blobs green, others red or even a realistic brown.
The Alabama forecaster Smith - who doubles as WALA's fishing and outdoors reporter - has used a NASA satellite image in the past to help predict good fishing spots. Now he uses the same image, enhanced with the computer program Photoshop, to highlight oil sheen for viewers. Producing the oil images means more work each day, but his forecast segments now run a minute longer than pre-spill, about 3 1/2 minutes.
Viewers, meanwhile, have responded to the maps and graphics with additional questions, forecasters said. One frequent question: whether a hurricane could suck up oil and drop it on their homes. The answer is 'no,' because hurricanes only drop evaporated fresh water.
Meteorologists admit that while they are knowledgeable about wind and waves, they are still learning when it comes to the fine points of oil slick forecasting.
Allen Strum, chief meteorologist at the ABC station WEAR in Pensacola, said meteorology school didn't include a class on oil spills, though he recalls taking one on oceanography.
"I never ever anticipated that I would be talking about a forecast of junk on the water and where it was going," Strum said.
Driver from: www.huffingtonpost.com
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PHOENIX — The showdown over Arizona's immigration law played out in court and on Phoenix's sun-splashed streets on Thursday, as the state sought to reinstate key parts of the measure and angry protesters chanted that they refused to "live in fear." Dozens were arrested.
