Pure Faith

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Following up the last post — Robert Kagan has a column in today’s Washington Post claiming that “the surge” is succeeding. Glenn Greenwald asks the sensible question, “Why would any rational person listen to Robert Kagan?” Glenn reminds of of several things Kagan has declared to be true in the past that, um, weren’t. See also No More Mr. Nice Blog.

Naturally, the usual Kool–Aiders uncritically embrace everything Kagan wrote.

In the last post I talked about “idealists” in Washington cooking up impractical policies for Iraq. Here we see a variation on the same phenomenon — Kagan’s writing from his home — I believe he lives in Brussels — and he knows the surge is working. How? He reads the blog Iraq the Model. He also mentions a report by NBC’s Brian Williams.

At least 42 people were killed by suicide bombers in Iraq today, but who’s counting? Kagan doesn’t mention bombs in his op ed. The new counterinsurgency strategy is having a significant effect, Kagan says. Of course, if 42 Americans were killed by suicide bombers in U.S. cities, Kagan would think it among the greatest atrocities ever to befall mankind. Not to mention reason to start two or three more wars.

The New Aristocrats

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Rajiv Chandrasekaran in today’s Washington Post writes that agencies in the Bush Administration and the U.S. embassy in Baghdad are not playing well with each other.

Instead of collaborating, agencies have often found themselves split by the gulf between idealistic officials in Washington, some of whom have never been to Iraq, and embassy staffers whose ambition to promote change has been attenuated by the violence and dysfunction they witness every day.

The disagreements often center on arcane subjects — such as tariff policy or the rehabilitation of state-owned enterprises — but the impact can be profound, according to people on both sides of the fights. Embassy staffers said they have wasted countless hours squabbling with Washington instead of focusing on more urgent initiatives to stabilize Iraq. In one incident, as the bickering between Commerce and State intensified, the embassy blocked a team of Commerce officials from entering the country.

Most of the article discusses an Iraqi food distribution program that the idealists in Washington want eliminated.

Some background: Last year at a Camp David meeting, President Bush requested that the departments of agriculture, commerce and energy get more involved in Iraq. Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez then asked his staff to draw up a list of Iraq-related projects. Two months later, Commerce sent its list to Baghdad and waited for the embassy to shower them with gratitude.

Instead, the document, “Secretary Gutierrez’s Five Priority Areas for Economic Reform in Iraq,” set off a bureaucratic grenade in Baghdad’s Green Zone. The second item on the list called for the United States to pressure Iraq’s government to cease providing people with monthly food rations, which more than half of Iraq’s population relies on for sustenance.

Embassy officials were incensed. Although the embassy’s economists favored changes to the ration system, they believed that dismantling it as Commerce was proposing could spark riots that might topple the Iraqi government.

“Commerce was stunningly naive,” said a senior State Department official involved in Iraq policy. “They were way out of their lane.”

Part of the problem seems to come from what one means by “help.” When the State Department and the Baghdad embassy say they want help, they seem to mean they want more people and resources. But the Washington idealists think that “helping” in Iraq means thinking up better policies and telling the Baghdad crew what to do.

Some at Commerce regard embassy staffers and their bosses at the State Department as ungrateful and unwilling to embrace others’ ideas — even as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pleads with other federal agencies to send more people to Iraq. “We were willing to help, as the president asked us to do, but the State Department feels that it has control of the situation,” said a senior Commerce official involved in the food-ration policy.

Officials at State contend that they do want other federal departments to assist in Iraq, but they said they are less interested in policies that are developed by those agencies in Washington and imposed on Baghdad.

“The problem stems from this view at the White House that the whole Cabinet has to be involved,” the senior State Department official said.

The result, an embassy official with direct knowledge of the food-ration debate said, is that “there are too many cooks in the kitchen.”

The ration program has been going on since sanctions were imposed on Iraq after the Gulf War. In 2003, when L. Paul Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority was running Iraq, Bremer wanted to dismantle the program because it interfered with the CPA’s plans to promote capitalism. (Bremer, you might recall, is the same genius who dismantled the Iraqi Army.) The U.S. military objected, saying that there was enough social unrest going on as it was.

Then last year the Commerce Department delivered its list of nifty policy ideas to the Baghdad embassy, touching off months of squabbling. Then Susan Hamrock, the director of Commerce’s Iraq task force, and one of her subordinates, Stephen L. Green, asked the embassy for permission to visit Baghdad. Hamrock wanted to bypass the Embassy and talk directly to the Iraqi minister responsible for the food distribution system. The Embassy refused to give Hamrock and Green clearance to visit the Green Zone. Then Hamrock found out the minister would be attending a conference in Brussels.

Hamrock and Green flew to Brussels to see the Iraqis. According to Hamrock’s written summary of the meeting, they discussed changes in the ration system.

Since then, the Commerce official said, Hamrock and other Commerce officials have continued to discuss the ration system with Iraqi officials over the phone and by e-mail.

The minister and other Iraqi officials “fully support our efforts,” the Commerce official said.

The trade minister, Abdul Falah al-Sudani, could not be reached for a comment.

However, it seems that in Iraq, “full support” may not mean full support, exactly. So far, the only reform the Iraqis have been willing to make is to exclude senior government officials from receiving rations.

Commerce isn’t giving up. Hamrock’s boss, Franklin L. Lavin, the undersecretary for international trade, wants “free-market solutions” for the food problem.

Last month, Lavin traveled to Iraq to meet with trade ministry officials. His PowerPoint presentation included an exhortation to revise the ration system by providing handouts only to the needy.

The Iraqi officials present nodded in agreement. But that is about all they have done, embassy officials said.

“No Iraqi politician wants to get rid of free food. It’s political suicide. They’re not going to do it,” said a former embassy official who worked on ration-related issues. “These grand schemes are irrelevant. I can’t tell you how many hundreds of hours everyone has wasted on this issue, when there were all sorts of more productive things they could have been doing with their time.”

What is it with Bushies and Powerpoint presentations? Anyway, I thought this bit was illuminating [emphasis added] —

Commerce was not the embassy economic section’s only concern when it came to rations. Last fall, the embassy’s Joint Strategic Planning and Assessment Office, headed by a Rand Corp. analyst on contract with the embassy, created its own plan to restructure the ration system. It was even more aggressive than Commerce’s. It called for eliminating the rations in 38 weeks …

… The officers convened a working group composed of representatives from the economic section, the planning office, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. military command and the State Department’s Iraq Reconstruction and Management Office. No Iraqis were invited, according to the two embassy officials.

We keep saying we want Iraqis to take charge of their own country, and then we go right ahead and impose our solutions to their problems.

Over the course of several meetings last fall, the participants who were not from the strategic planning office chipped away at the 38-week proposal. They eventually reached a compromise: The ration system would cease by the end of 2008 — in more than 100 weeks.

To the embassy’s economists, saying they wanted to kill the program in two years was an elaborate ploy, the embassy officials said. It would get them on the record as favoring major changes, but the timeframe almost certainly meant it would not happen. “Things in Iraq change every six months,” the first embassy official said. “If you say you plan to do something in two years, it means you’ll never do it.”

There are other programs that the embassy and the agencies are fighting over, and I’m not certain the agencies don’t have a point about some of these programs. But after all that’s happened (and gone wrong), the unflappable hubris of the Bush Administration continues to amaze me. They remind me of Old World aristocrats — the ones in movies, anyway — inbred, vain, spoiled, and privileged. Movie aristocrats are arrogant fops who get shown up by the plain spoken American hero, who (unlike the fops) is skilled and experienced and smart. Now I wonder how many Bush Administration officials it takes to screw in a light bulb. Oh, wait, they have maids for that. Never mind.

Bush’s Consigliere

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Great editorial in today’s New York Times:

During the hearing on his nomination as attorney general, Alberto Gonzales said he understood the difference between the job he held — President Bush’s in-house lawyer — and the job he wanted, which was to represent all Americans as their chief law enforcement officer and a key defender of the Constitution. Two years later, it is obvious Mr. Gonzales does not have a clue about the difference.

He has never stopped being consigliere to Mr. Bush’s imperial presidency. If anyone, outside Mr. Bush’s rapidly shrinking circle of enablers, still had doubts about that, the events of last week should have erased them.

Be sure to read the whole thing. And speaking of abuse of power — Margaret Talev and Marisa Taylor write for McClatchy Newspapers —

Presidential advisor Karl Rove and at least one other member of the White House political team were urged by the New Mexico Republican party chairman to fire the state’s U.S. attorney because of dissatisfaction in part with his failure to indict Democrats in a voter fraud investigation in the battleground election state.

In an interview Saturday with McClatchy Newspapers, Allen Weh, the party chairman, said he complained in 2005 about then-U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to a White House liaison who worked for Rove and asked that he be removed. Weh said he followed up with Rove personally in late 2006 during a visit to the White House.

“Is anything ever going to happen to that guy?” Weh said he asked Rove at a White House holiday event that month.

“He’s gone,” Rove said, according to Weh.

“I probably said something close to ‘Hallelujah,'” said Weh.

If Gonzales is Tom Hagen, is Rove Pete Clemenza? Or Luca Brasi?

Things Fall Apart

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For some reason I’m on a mailing list called “Conservative News.” I have requested a couple of times to be taken off the list, but somebody keeps signing me up again. Anyway, today, “Conservative News” is announcing “The Conservative Exodus Project.”

I am copying and pasting this from the Exodus web page. Make of it what you will.

The Pledge

We, the undersigned, petition the Republican Party to support real conservative candidates for the 2008 presidential nomination.

In the belief that the Republican Party has become too liberal, we pledge, unless a suitable candidate is selected for the GOP 2008 presidential nomination, to stay home or vote third party (e.g. Constitution Party).

Returning to its liberal roots, the GOP has recently become the party of big business, neoliberal globalism, and unwise interventionism – not the party of conservatism.

The following presidential candidates are UNACCEPTABLE: John McCain, Rudolph Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee, Chuck Hagel, Condoleezza Rice, et al. They all support the third-world invasion of the United States.

Unless a candidate is chosen who is tough on immigration (e.g. Ron Paul, Tom Tancredo, Duncan Hunter, or another candidate yet to announce), we shall have no choice but to vote third party.

We would like to stress these five points.

(1) We oppose the third-world invasion of the United States, and reject amnesty and any path to citizenship for illegals. We support deportation, attrition, and massive reductions in legal immigration, especially from the third world.

(2) We oppose free trade, the support of which has become an ideological suicide pact. Free trade is both destroying our economy and undermining our sovereignty. Historically, conservatives have opposed free trade, and they should, but many in the GOP have been “neoconned” on this issue.

(3) We support a moral candidate, critical of secularism, who embodies the virtues of the Christian Western tradition.

(4) We oppose the illegal neocon war in Iraq. The transformation of the Middle East to liberal democracy is Jacobin, not conservative.

(5) We wish to see big government reduced in size – in all three branches – and for many offices and functions to be returned to the states, where they Constitutionally belong.

Unless the above criteria are met, we pledge to stay home or vote third-party in 2008.

Point #4 is especially fascinating — “The transformation of the Middle East to liberal democracy is Jacobin, not conservative.” “Conservative News” needn’t worry; the Middle East is more likely to be transformed into an Islamic theocracy than anything else.

Granted, “Conservative News” may be one old curmudgeon and not a mighty hoard. But this isn’t too far away from the stuff Richard Viguerie has been cranking out lately.

BTW, the elephant art is from a 1911 Puck cover. The fellow in the top hat in the background is President Taft. In 1912 Republicans renominated Taft, after which Theodore Roosevelt cut his ties to the GOP and became the Progressive Party nominee for President. This split Republican votes and enabled the election of the Democrat, Woodrow Wilson.

To Arms

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I wrote yesterday, in a mostly flip way, about the appeals court decision that struck down a DC gun control law. David Nakamura and Robert Barnes write for the Washington Post:

The panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit became the nation’s first federal appeals court to overturn a gun-control law by declaring that the Second Amendment grants a person the right to possess firearms. One other circuit shares that viewpoint on individual rights, but others across the country say the protection that the Second Amendment offers relates to states being able to maintain a militia. Legal experts said the conflict could lead to the first Supreme Court review of the issue in nearly 70 years.

Some time back I researched the history of the individual rights v. collective rights arguments. I don’t have my research findings any more (that was about four computers ago), but I do remember that the bulk of historical documentation and scholarship weighed in on the “individual” side. Yes, the wording of the clause is ambiguous. But if you put the writing of the amendment in a historical context, it seems the amendment was intended to protect an individual right to own firearms so that the federal government could not deprive states of their militias. (Under the Militia Act of 1792, every citizen enrolled in the militia must own and maintain his own firearm.)

As I said, I don’t have the research notes any more and I don’t have time to re-research the question. I do remember that a lot of early American documents and case law seemed to assume the right was individual, not collective.

The District’s law bars all handguns unless they were registered before 1976; it was passed that year to try to curb gun violence, but it has come under attack during the past three decades in Congress and in the courts. Yesterday’s ruling guts key parts of the law but does not address provisions that effectively bar private citizens from carrying guns outside the home. ….

…The suit said the ban on handgun ownership violates the Second Amendment, which states: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan dismissed the suit a year later, saying the amendment was tailored to membership in a militia, which he defined as an organized military body.

The case moved to the appellate court, with the National Rifle Association siding with the pro-gun faction, while the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence joined the District. Reflecting the case’s national importance, various state governments lined up on each side.

In the majority opinion, Silberman wrote that federal and state courts have been divided about the extent of protections covered by the Second Amendment. Some have sided with the District’s position, that a militia means just that. Others have ruled that the amendment is broader, covering the individual rights of people who own guns for hunting or self-defense.

The Supreme Court addressed the Second Amendment in 1939, but it did not hold that the right to bear arms meant specifically that a person could do so.

Yesterday’s majority opinion said that the District has a right to regulate and require the registration of firearms but not to ban them in homes. The ruling also struck down a section of the D.C. law that required owners of registered guns, including shotguns, to disassemble them or use trigger locks, saying that would render the weapons useless.

If this case does go to the Supreme Court, I suspect the SCOTUS will either decline to take it or uphold the appeals court decision.

One of the things “everybody knows” about liberals is that they are opposed to gun ownership. But this perception comes from NRA fundraising letters (the liberals are going to take away your guns!) not reality. For years this has been a great wedge issue for the GOP.

It turns out I wrote about the DC gun ban in September 2004. And in that I linked to this Harold Meyerson column —

Election Day approaches, which means it is time for House Republicans to run fully amok. Today, the House will take up a bill by Indiana Republican Mark Souder to lift the gun controls in the District of Columbia. Souder’s bill legalizes ownership of semiautomatic weapons and armor-piercing ammunition. How this would increase security around the White House and the Capitol is something that Souder and Co. have neglected to explain, but no matter. The House Republican leadership knows the bill won’t pass the Senate. The only reason it was even introduced was to force House Democrats — a number of whom represent gun-loving districts — to vote on this nonsense.

In other words, to vote against possession of armor-piercing ammunition near the White House makes one a “gun grabber.” The appeals court decision deprives the wingnuts of one of their talking points.

So far I’ve found no opposition to the decision on the Left Blogosphere. If the righties were hoping we liberals would be up in arms, so to speak, about this decision, I suspect they are disappointed. Ron Chusid writes:

In reviewing the reaction in the blogosphere it is clear, as anticipated, that intensity of support for the right to own guns is greater on the right. While this is a lower priority on the left, the sentiment is also with the rights of the individual. Even where bloggers have not commented it is noteworthy that there is no outrage over the court’s decision as would be expected if restriction of gun ownership was really a goal of liberals.

Ron links to several liberal bloggers who agree with the decision. These include Taylor Marsh, Matt Yglesias, Jeralyn Merritt, and (naturally) the Gun-Toting Liberal.

Personally, I agree with what Jeralyn Merritt wrote here:

Being for the Second Amendment doesn’t mean defense lawyers are not liberals. It means they won’t give up any constitutional right, even ones they may not exercise personally. Give ’em an inch and…..besides, the Second Amendment is only one away from the Fourth.

In other words, there’s to be no cherry picking of the Bill of Rights. If one amendment is expendable, they all are.

Constitutional Capers

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David Johnston and Eric Lipton write for the New York Times,

The Justice Department’s inspector general has prepared a scathing report criticizing how the F.B.I. uses a form of administrative subpoena to obtain thousands of telephone, business and financial records without prior judicial approval.

The report, expected to be issued on Friday, says that the bureau lacks sufficient controls to make sure the subpoenas, which do not require a judge’s prior approval, are properly issued and that it does not follow even some of the rules it does have.

Under the USA Patriot Act, the bureau each year has issued more than 20,000 of the national security letters, as the demands for information are known. The report is said to conclude that the program lacks effective management, monitoring and reporting procedures, officials who have been briefed on its contents said.

Details of the report emerged on Thursday as Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and other officials struggled to tamp down a Congressional uproar over another issue, the ousters of eight United States attorneys.

For the best analysis of what the FBI has been doing, you must read Glenn Greenwald.

Several Republicans have expressed disapproval of Gonzales and his, um, cavalier reading of the Constitution in recent days, Johnston and Lipton write. But other Republicans have separate constitutional issues.

For example, Congressman John Shadegg has introduced an Enumerated Powers Act. As I understand it, this act would require that every bill passed by Congress cite the specific part of the Constitution that gives Congress authority to do the thing it wants to do in the bill.

Which leads me to a vital question — what part of the Constitution gives Congress the authority to require that every bill passed by Congress cite the specific part of the Constitution that gives Congress authority to do the thing it wants to do in the bill? Hmmm?

If Congress took this seriously and made it retroactive it would mean the end of the Center for Disease Control (nothing about controlling disease in the Constitution), not to mention paper money. Although I’m all in favor of the government sticking to enumerated powers (especially war powers), if they were to start getting anally literal about it, the federal government would be rendered effectively inoperative. We’d have an 18th-century government in the 21st century. And the terrorists will have won. Or something. I suggest Shadegg’s bill amounts to a can of worms. On the other hand, if the President were to have to play by the same rules … let me think about that …

Meanwhile, although the Right Blogosphere has had little to say about the FBI’s unconstitutional abuse of power, they’re gleeful about an appeals court decision that struck down a District of Columbia gun control law. Eugene Volokh seems to think this decision, which upholds an individual rather than a collective right to keep and bear arms, will impact the 2008 elections somehow.

I doubt it. The Democrats have pretty much conceded gun control, especially as it pertains to an individual’s right to keep a firearm in his house, which is (I believe) what the DC law was about. The only gun control laws anyone seems to care about — and even then, not much — are the sort of laws that might prevent a schizophrenic Islamofascist with a felony record from buying a truckload of assault weapons at a gun show without having to submit to a background check. And even that seems like small potatoes compared to what the FBI is doing.

Justice in the Wood Chipper

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Following up the last post, on the politicization of justice — speaking at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service, Karl Rove addressed the recent purge of U.S. attorneys.

“My view is this is unfortunately a very big attempt by some in the Congress to make a political stink about it,” he said. “The question is, did they have the same reaction if they were in the Congress in the ’90s or did they have the same reaction if they were in the ’80s? Every president comes in and appoints U.S. attorneys and then makes changes over the course of their time.”

Funny he should say that. In fact, the Republicans made a big stink when Bill Clinton replaced U.S. attorneys at the beginning of his first term. Shortly after her confirmation, Attorney General Janet Reno asked for the resignations of U.S. attorneys that had been appointed by Reagan and Bush I. As I explained here and here, this is standard practice for a president at the beginning of his first term. I believe Bush II replaced all of Bill Clinton’s appointees, and no one complained.

But in 1993 the GOP Noise Machine made the replacing of U.S. attorneys by Clinton into a big scandal. Wingnuts alleged that Clinton was trying to impede the investigation of Rep. Dan Rostenkowski. (Rostenkowski was indicted the following year; I assume the indictment was brought by a Clinton appointee.)

It is extremely unusual, however, for U.S. attorneys to be replaced in mid-term except for cases of gross misconduct, which doesn’t seem to be the case with the eight who have been purged so far.

As Paul Krugman wrote this morning,

For now, the nation’s focus is on the eight federal prosecutors fired by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. In January, Mr. Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee, under oath, that he “would never, ever make a change in a United States attorney for political reasons.” But it’s already clear that he did indeed dismiss all eight prosecutors for political reasons — some because they wouldn’t use their offices to provide electoral help to the G.O.P., and the others probably because they refused to soft-pedal investigations of corrupt Republicans.

In the last few days we’ve also learned that Republican members of Congress called prosecutors to pressure them on politically charged cases, even though doing so seems unethical and possibly illegal.

See also this editorial in yesterday’s New York Times:

The [congressional] hearings left little doubt that the Bush administration had all eight — an unprecedented number — ousted for political reasons. But it points to even wider abuse; prosecutors suggest that three Republican members of Congress may have tried to pressure the attorneys into doing their political bidding.

… Two of the fired prosecutors testified that they had been dismissed after resisting what they suspected were importunings to use their offices to help Republicans win elections. A third described what may have been a threat of retaliation if he talked publicly about his firing.

David Iglesias, who was removed as the United States attorney in Albuquerque, said that he was first contacted before last fall’s election by Representative Heather Wilson, Republican of New Mexico. Ms. Wilson, who was in a tough re-election fight, asked about sealed indictments — criminal charges that are not public.

Two weeks later, he said, he got a call from Senator Pete Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, asking whether he intended to indict Democrats before the election in a high-profile corruption case. When Mr. Iglesias said no, he said, Mr. Domenici replied that he was very sorry to hear it, and the line went dead. Mr. Iglesias said he’d felt “sick.” Within six weeks, he was fired. Ms. Wilson and Mr. Domenici both deny that they had tried to exert pressure.

John McKay of Seattle testified that the chief of staff for Representative Doc Hastings, Republican of Washington, called to ask whether he intended to investigate the 2004 governor’s race, which a Democrat won after two recounts. Mr. McKay says that when he went to the White House later to discuss a possible judicial nomination (which he did not get), he was told of concerns about how he’d handled the election. H. E. Cummins, a fired prosecutor from Arkansas, said that a Justice Department official, in what appeared to be a warning, said that if he kept talking about his firing, the department would release negative information about him.

At Raw Story you can watch (or read a transcript of) an interview with George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley from Wednesday night’s Countdown. Be sure to watch (or read) this if you haven’t already. Here’s just a bit —

TURLEY: … First of all, it is very uncommon for U.S. attorneys to be fired or asked to resign. To have eight of them put in this position is truly unprecedented. It does send a very chilling message to other U.S. attorneys that, but for the grace of god, go you. These are very successful U.S. attorneys.

And what they‘re reporting about these phone calls is extremely unusual and extremely unsettling.

ALISON STEWART: The attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, told Congress the firings were not political at all. Now, has he backed himself into a corner, if it is proven in some way that they were fired for simply not toeing a political line?

TURLEY: Well, this is not the first time that Attorney General Gonzales has been challenged in terms of sworn testimony. He really had to say they were not fired for political reasons. He can hardly say we really needed to use the spot for some kid Karl Rove likes. That would not have gone over very well. What is really getting to a serious point, are the allegations that some of these U.S. attorneys seem to be threatened or thought they were being threatened about speaking to the media or the public.

Also, these calls from politicians really took me back. I have to tell you, I‘m a criminal defense attorney. I have been around the city in the criminal defense system for a long time. I find it shocking that politicians today would feel comfortable picking up a phone and calling the U.S. attorney about sealed indictments. It is other-worldly. …

… U.S. attorneys are supposed to retain an element of independence. They‘re not supposed to be constantly looking over their shoulder to see if Karl Rove is coming on them with a wood chipper.

One part of the U.S. attorney scandal has allegedly been resolved. Laurie Kellman reports for the Associated Press:

Slapped even by GOP allies, the Bush administration is beating an abrupt retreat on eight federal prosecutors it fired and then publicly pilloried.

Just hours after Attorney General Alberto Gonzales dismissed the hubbub as an “overblown personnel matter,” a Republican senator Thursday mused into a microphone that Gonzales might soon suffer the same fate as the canned U.S. attorneys.

“One day there will be a new attorney general, maybe sooner rather than later,” Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said during a Judiciary Committee meeting.

A short time later, Gonzales and his security detail shuttled to the Capitol for a private meeting on Democratic turf, bearing two offerings:

— President Bush would not stand in the way of a Democratic-sponsored bill that would cancel the attorney general’s power to appoint federal prosecutors without Senate confirmation. Gonzales’ Justice Department had previously dismissed the legislation as unreasonable.

— There would be no need for subpoenas to compel testimony by five of Gonzales’ aides involved in the firings, as the Democrats had threatened. Cloistered in the stately hideaway of Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy, D-Vt., the attorney general assured those present that he would permit the aides to tell their stories.

The Justice Department is shifting from offense to accommodation.

Regarding the item about appointments without Senate confirmation — this refers to a clause in the Patriot Act that allows the Attorney General to appoint “interim” attorneys who can serve indefinitely without Senate confirmation. Jonathan Turley said of this provision:

According to Turley, the provision in the Patriot Act that allowed such firings was no accident. “When you see an administration trying to try to put into legislation something this specific, this tailored, it does not come out of nowhere,” said Turley.

“It did not come out of the head of Zeus,” Turley said. “It came out of the head of someone at the White House who wanted to use it. I think there are serious questions there and this is a scandal that is getting worse by the day.”

Now President Bush will not stand in the way of a Dem bill to revoke this little privilege. Just wait for the signing statement.

Politicization of Justice

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Paul Krugman:

For those of us living in the Garden State, the growing scandal over the firing of federal prosecutors immediately brought to mind the subpoenas that Chris Christie, the former Bush “Pioneer” who is now the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, issued two months before the 2006 election — and the way news of the subpoenas was quickly leaked to local news media.

The subpoenas were issued in connection with allegations of corruption on the part of Senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat who seemed to be facing a close race at the time. Those allegations appeared, on their face, to be convoluted and unconvincing, and Mr. Menendez claimed that both the investigation and the leaks were politically motivated.

You might recall The Narrative about last fall’s Senate race in New Jersey — voters were being forced to choose between a corrupt politician (Menendez) versus a pure and clean Republican who agreed with Bush’s policy on Iraq. This is from an October 2006 Washington Times story:

Political observers say the outcome depends on whether voters here get angrier about Mr. Bush and the Iraq war or about state corruption.

“Is this going to be a national referendum or is it going to be a statewide referendum on state corruption?” said New Jersey Republican political consultant Mark Campbell. “If this is national, Menendez wins; if this is a statewide election on the need for reform … Tom Kean Jr. wins.”

“People deserve to know if their senator is the only senator under federal criminal investigation,” Mr. Kean said as he took a break Oct. 8 from shaking hands with the tailgating crowd at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.

Kean Junior, whose father had been a popular New Jersey governor, ran a one-note campaign on the Menendez corruption charges. Menendez won, 53 percent to 45 percent. Whether there was any substance to the allegations against Menendez I do not know. What I do know is that the news stories about the alleged corruption dried up after the election.

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve written about the U.S. Attorney scandal, and I plan to catch up on the most recent developments later today. But for now I want to focus on Krugman’s point —

The bigger scandal, however, almost surely involves prosecutors still in office. The Gonzales Eight were fired because they wouldn’t go along with the Bush administration’s politicization of justice. But statistical evidence suggests that many other prosecutors decided to protect their jobs or further their careers by doing what the administration wanted them to do: harass Democrats while turning a blind eye to Republican malfeasance.

Donald Shields and John Cragan, two professors of communication, have compiled a database of investigations and/or indictments of candidates and elected officials by U.S. attorneys since the Bush administration came to power. Of the 375 cases they identified, 10 involved independents, 67 involved Republicans, and 298 involved Democrats. The main source of this partisan tilt was a huge disparity in investigations of local politicians, in which Democrats were seven times as likely as Republicans to face Justice Department scrutiny.

Righties will probably argue that Democrats are seven times more likely to be corrupt; to which I say, I doubt that.

And let’s not forget that Karl Rove’s candidates have a history of benefiting from conveniently timed federal investigations. Last year Molly Ivins reminded her readers of a curious pattern during Mr. Rove’s time in Texas: “In election years, there always seemed to be an F.B.I. investigation of some sitting Democrat either announced or leaked to the press. After the election was over, the allegations often vanished.”

It’s not just Democratic candidates. You might remember that at the beginning of 2003, Scott Ritter was trying to warn the world that the Bush Administration was cooking up phony evidence as a pretext for war. Out of the blue, a sealed court record about Scott Ritter was leaked to the press; details here.

“…it’s becoming clear that the politicization of the Justice Department was a key component of the Bush administration’s attempt to create a permanent Republican lock on power,” Krugman writes. Ya think?

Dems: 120 Days?

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This afternoon Dems in the House and the Senate announced an Iraq redeployment plans.

David Stout writes in the New York Times,

House Democratic leaders intensified their debate with President Bush over Iraq today as they announced legislation that would pull American combat troops out of Iraq before the fall of 2008.

“Only then can we refocus our military efforts on Afghanistan to the extent that we must,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. She said the Iraq withdrawal deadline would be attached to legislation providing nearly $100 billion requested by the Bush administration for the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns and money to expand health care for veterans.

Representative David R. Obey of Wisconsin, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said the leadership’s proposal “will essentially redirect more of our resources to the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, fighting the right war in the right place against the people who attacked us and who are giving Al Qaeda sanctuary.”

Sounds good to me, although I suspect the GOP will find some way to make the attachment to the veteran health care appropriation seem unethical, somehow. Watch for it.

Stout goes on to say the provision has little hope of passage, since Republicans are united against it.

Indeed, the Republican minority leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, practically invited his Democratic colleagues to bring the measure to the floor.

“Can you defeat this bill?” Mr. Boehner was asked at a Capitol news conference.

“Oh, we can,” he replied.

Fine. Bring it on, Boehner. I would like the provision enacted. But if there’s no hope, It’s good to see the Dems put forth a tangible, workable plan, even if the Republicans knock it down. Then they can go to the American people and say, look, we have a plan, but the Republicans block it.

Stout writes that Dems are split on the provision, because conservative Dems say it goes too far and liberal Dems say it doesn’t go far enough.

Ms. Pelosi refused to concede that the proposal’s chances are dim, even as a questioner noted that as many as 70 House Democrats want the United States out of Iraq by the end of 2007. “We will come together and find our common ground,” she said.

I firmly believe in not allowing perfect to become the enemy of good. At the moment, it seems more important for the Dems to present as much of a united front as possible.

Now for the Senate — this is from a news release —

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid today joined Assistant Democratic Leader Dick Durbin, Democratic Conference Vice Chairman Charles Schumer, Democratic Conference Secretary Patty Murray, Senator Russ Feingold, and Senator Evan Bayh to announce a new Joint Resolution to revise U.S. policy on Iraq. Iraq has fallen into a bloody civil war, and as conditions on the ground have changed so must U.S. policy change to meet them.

The Reid Joint Resolution builds on the longstanding Democratic position on Iraq and the Levin-Reed Amendment: the current conflict in Iraq requires a political solution, Iraq must take responsibility for its own future, and our troops should not be policing a civil war. It contains binding language to direct the President to transition the mission for U.S. forces in Iraq and begin their phased redeployment within one-hundred twenty days with a goal of redeploying all combat forces by March 31, 2008. A limited number of troops would remain for the purposes of force protection, training and equipping Iraqi troops, and targeted counter-terror options.

Sen. Russ Feingold released this statement:

“Senator Reid has worked hard to rally the caucus in support of binding legislation to reject the President’s failed policies in Iraq and require redeployment of most U.S. troops from Iraq. While the legislation doesn’t go as far as I would like, it is a strong step toward ending our involvement in this misguided war. I will continue to push for Congress to use its power of the purse to end our involvement in this war.”

If Russ can live with it, so can I. Other opinions?