Author: The Walrus

Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) has proposed that the Senate should censure President Bush “for approving an ‘illegal program to spy on American citizens on American soil,'” reports the Washington Post. This seems to be a no brainer to me, in that Bush clearly did violate the FISA law. All the Republican arguments defending the President attempt to retroactively justify his actions, but they never argue that they were legal given the current laws.

In any event, the Washington Post story has a few curious sections that I thought I’d point out:

GOP leaders who had been reeling from the impact of Republican political scandals, an unpopular war and Bush’s mishandling of the port-security issue sensed that Feingold overplayed his hand and denounced the censure resolution as a political stunt by an ambitious lawmaker positioning himself to run for president in 2008. Many Democrats, while sympathetic to Feingold’s maneuver, appeared to be distancing themselves from his resolution yesterday, wary of polls showing that a majority of Americans side with the president on wiretapping tactics.

This paragraph features some of those unacknowledged questions I blogged about a few days ago. The reporter here repeats the tactical decisions of both sides without engaging in any way the actual truth or plausibility of Feingold’s proposal. It is useless to report that Republicans think he “overplayed his hand,” but to ignore the question at the heart of the matter, i.e. did President Bush break the law?

Feingold, 53, says he is convinced that Bush broke the law in ordering National Security Agency wiretaps of overseas telephone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens that involved people suspected of terrorist activities without first obtaining special court approval, and that his party must take a firm stand in protest.

Once again, it is nice to know what Feingold thinks happened, but what about the facts of the case? This paraphrase is full of factual claims that could be proven or disproven, if the reporter cared to take the time. Instead, we spend time with reporting like this:

Republicans seized on Feingold’s presidential ambitions as the motivation behind his bid. Feingold “should be ashamed of this political ploy,” said Frist, who also has presidential ambitions.

Democratic views were mixed . Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) dismissed the proposed censure as “getting way down the road on this issue.” When asked on NBC’s “Today” show yesterday morning whether Feingold was “grandstanding for 2008,” Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), himself a 2008 prospect and a leading Democratic voice on foreign policy, replied: “No, I think it’s more of an intense frustration. Do any of you in the news media or any of us have any idea what the president is doing?”

These carefully balanced sentences create the impression that there is no right or wrong answer. While I suppose there might be debate in some circles over the legality of Bush’s wiretapping program, at least let’s hear about that debate, instead of wasting time and space rehashing what politicians say about Feingold’s motion. If Bush broke the law, then the censure motion is worthy, no matter the motivation or political climate. If he did not, then the censure motion should not pass. In either case, I would think that Feingold deserved praise for bringing the question to everyone’s attention.

This opening paragraph of a Washington Post story says so much about the state of affairs the Bush administration has created:

Prominent activists inside Iran say President Bush’s plan to spend tens of millions of dollars to promote democracy here is the kind of help they don’t need, warning that mere announcement of the U.S. program endangers human rights advocates by tainting them as American agents.

We all know that the United States is toxic in Iran, so this announcement is not surprising. The challenge in Iran is to find ways to help the people reclaim power from the theocrats without getting them killed in the process. The article centers on the story of three Iranians who went to a conference in Dubai about human rights, and then, months later, were jailed after President Bush announced the plans. However, these events serve as a point of entry into the challenges of working in Iran:

“Unfortunately, I’ve got to say it has a negative effect, not a positive one,” said Abdolfattah Soltani, a human rights lawyer recently released from seven months in prison. After writing in a newspaper that his clients were beaten while in jail, Soltani was charged with offenses that included spying for the United States.

If US involvement can be dangerous for human rights groups within the country, creative solutions are needed. The President, unfortunately, has decided to adopt a strategy that involves threatening the current regime. He threatens them if they don’t stop pursuing nuclear research. He threatens them by trying to inspire revolt among their people.

“Our society is very complicated,” said Vahid Pourostad, editor of National Trust, a new newspaper aligned with Iran’s struggling reform movement. “Generally speaking, it is impossible to impose something from outside. Whatever happens will happen from inside.

“It seems to me the United States is not studying the history of Iran very carefully,” Pourostad said. “Whenever they came and supported an idea publicly, the public has done the opposite.”

Iran, of course, is ruled by some pretty terrible people. Reform is desperately needed in that country, and the United States would like to help that reform take place. But creative solutions are needed. Solutions like cutting down our fuel consumption so that Iran will have to generate a more people-centered economy, which will bring civil rights with it, for example. Simply calling them evil and then threatening to invade if they don’t do what we say is not foreign policy worthy of our stature.

This Washington Post column describes the inconsistency of military prayer with our country’s freedom of religion. In doing so, it also hints at the much broader problem of narrowing individual freedom of religion to accommodate the majority’s desire to celebrate its particular beliefs. Scott Poppleton, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, first says

In my 26 years in the Air Force, I listened to lunch prayers as an exchange cadet in Bancroft Hall at the Naval Academy, and every month I read the chaplain’s Bible quotations next to our commander’s comments in the base paper. I have often asked myself as I listened to the “official prayers”: What essential military need for good order and discipline does this religious program fulfill that outweighs my individual beliefs? What gives the U.S. military the right or the wisdom to preach in uniform?

Excellent questions. The assumption that faith, or prayer, always benefits people has echoes in the story I blogged about a few days ago, wherein President Bush declared that faith based charities deserve more federal funding because they get results, or the story of the Domino’s Pizza founder who decided to create a Catholic town–a plan which drew praise from Jeb Bush. In all these cases, the freedom of religion of the individual is constrained by the institutionalization of one particular religion by the government. While some argue that Presidents, Governors, and military chaplains have their own freedom of religion, Poppleton deftly shows why that is irrelevant to the question:

The First Amendment states, “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The First Amendment wasn’t meant to allow a military officer or a government institution the free exercise of religion; on the contrary, it was designed to allow the individual to be free of the government — military — established religion. President James Madison thought that paying congressional chaplains out of the public treasury was “a palpable violation of equal rights as well as of constitutional principles.” He went on to say, “Even military chaplains are a mistake, mixing as they do political, military and ecclesiastical authority.”

The founding fathers had a much broader religious freedom in mind, a right that would protect the individual from any interference by the state. To replace this broad ideal with a narrow, technical definition, wherein you are free to believe what you will, but you must listen as we proclaim the majority belief, eviscerates one of the greatest qualities of our nation. It also threatens the religious freedom of all.

This is one instance of a larger trend towards centralization. The theory of the unitary executive is another. In both cases power is being taken from the hands of the people and placed in the hands of the government. Compare the current discourse with this:

Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life: if it has been honest and dutiful to society the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.

Who was that? Why, Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States.

A troubling logical fallacy grows more and more pervasive in our national media. When we speak of the balance myth, or of inaccurate reporting in the newspapers, or of lazy journalism, the fallacy of which I speak is present in almost every case.

The fallacy involves presenting empty facts in the place of real news. When I say empty facts, I refer to:

1. the presentation of politicians’ statements or
2. the presentation of tactical analysis of political actions

as newsworthy facts in and of themselves. We have all read newspaper article sections like this:

Mr. Egglesworth (D-US) said, ‘The Republican plan is dangerous and deceptive, and should be stopped.’

Mr. Foppershire (R-US) responded ‘Our plan is excellent and will surely enhance prosperity.’

Followed by the next section of the article. This is not news, or, to put it more clearly, this is not news that performs any meaningful function. The reader has no way of examinig the disparate claims in a meaningful context. Examples of the second type draw the problem into clearer relief. Sections like this:

The Democrats’ attempt to ban all widgets is a bold political move, given their minority status. Republicans, who have pledged to support the widget manufacturers in this dispute, have claimed that widgets are perfectly safe, and have accused Democrats of partisan politics. A victory, though, could lead to enhanced Democratic success in the upcoming elections.

In news of this nature, there is no meaningful analysis or research. Are widgets safe or not? The question lurks behind the reporting, never acknowledged or answered. Instead the reporter analyzes the possible electoral consequences.

While the above examples are fictional, these two types of fallacious journalism are happening all the time, and they represent a colossal failure of the news media. It is not news that Republicans and Democrats do not agree, nor is it news that passing popular legislation enhances electoral performance. It is the unacknowledged questions that represent the path to real, beneficial journalism.

To solve this problem, we must understand its causes. It seems to be conventional wisdom in circles on both the left and the right that the media is covertly committed to the opposite movement’s causes. To Liberals, the media’s behavior almost always appears to support the Republicans, while to the Republicans, apparently, the media seems to be unforgiveably liberal. I submit that neither of these is true. Rather, the media is a business in a competitive market. Newspapers must sell advertisements and copies, or they will not exist any more. Same for TV, internet, and radio.

From this point of view, the fallacy can be explained as an unwillingness to alienate readers, or an unwillingness to expend the resources necessary to investigate claims thoroughly, and to publish lengthy and, to many consumers, boring articles. This is the problem. Thus, while the unvarnished truth might benefit Americans in the long term, presenting it would injure media companies in the short one. So they do not.

A newspaper that fact-checked and reported on the unacknowledged questions over which they gloss every day would quickly be attacked as partisan and would lose circulation as a result. The media can only report things that are obviously true, or else things that reflect already received wisdom. Gone are the stories that once shook the foundations of tyrannical power. They have been replaced by pleasing and small stories that will sell copies and attract advertisements.

How do we convince these large companies that the truth still matters? That the unacknowledged questions represent the best hope for enlivened and accurate public debate? I do not know. I personally favor government financial support of the media. That’s why the BBC is often superior to the United States press. It would be important to make it very clear that this support did not in any way entail editorial control. Only by removing the profit motive can we change the behavior of these institutions.

In this Washington Post story, we learn that the usually less-partisan Senate intelligence committee is growing more divided along party lines. The code word here is partisanship, and it adumbrates the assumption that both parties are equally guilty. It implies that Republicans and Democrats alike are refusing to compromise with one another.

Absent from the piece are any investigation or reporting on who is right in these matters. Some examples of this:

Their anger has focused mainly on the committee’s chairman, Republican Pat Roberts of Kansas. A staunch defender of Bush administration policies, he recently said some of the panel’s Democrats “believe the gravest threat we face is not Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, but rather the president of the United States.”

When Roberts adjourned a committee meeting last month rather than allow a vote on the proposed wiretap inquiry, Vice Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) declared the panel “basically under the control of the White House, through its chairman.”

There are some assertions here that could bee fact-checked. Do Democrats believe that the President is a graver threat than Osama Bin Laden? Is he? Why, if Osama is such a threat, did we not focus all our efforts on capturing him, instead choosing to invade Iraq? No reporting on these factual questions is contained in the article. Republican says this. Democrat says that. Next point.

Insiders say nothing angered Roberts more than last November’s parliamentary tactic in which Democrats, without warning, briefly forced the Senate into an unusual closed session. Democrats were protesting the intelligence committee’s delay in completing the second phase of its promised inquiry into how intelligence was used before the invasion of Iraq.

In an interview last week, Roberts cited the 2003 leaked memo and the Senate shutdown as evidence that Democrats are at least as culpable as Republicans for the partisan bickering. Democrats, meanwhile, note that the committee still has not completed the inquiry’s long-promised second phase.

Take a moment to decode all of this. Some relevant reporting might have included:

• Whether or not the second phase of the inquiry had been completed as agreed.
• If not, what reasons were given for the failure, and are those reasons understandable.
• If the closed session really warranted the use of the word “shutdown,” particularly given that the Senate continued to function throughout the closed session.
• If the use of this parliamentary tactic represents a comparable level of partisanship to the Republicans of the committee deciding to retroactively make illegal acts legal.

Lots to think about. It’s a pity that the Washington Post didn’t think its readers deserved answers to these questions. Let me also note that this is a problem for anyone who believes a well-informed electorate is a necessary component of our government. In these terms, partisanship serves to equate all the actions of either side, thus dulling any actual policy differences between them.

As a thought experiment, imagine each side compromising by allowing the other to get its way in some instances. If the Democrats compromise, the President may break the law when he feels like it, with the assurance that the law will be changed to suit him. If Republicans compromise, we get an investigation of the President’s choice to break the law, and we can make an informed decision. Which outcome seems better to you? We can all agree that, “partisanship” blather aside, they are not the same thing.

As if Gale Norton, Rove, Cheney, and Scooter weren’t enough, we now hear from the Washington Post that a former Bush aide has been arrested for shoplifting:

Claude A. Allen, who resigned last month as President Bush’s top domestic policy adviser, was arrested this week in Montgomery County for allegedly swindling Target and Hecht’s stores out of more than $5,000 in a refund scheme, police said.

Not only was this man a high level aide, but, as my fellow Conservative Amnestigator Evil Bobby points out

Bush was gonna use him as one of his conservative judiciary packers. If this is the kind of guy Bush is nominating to the courts, we should all be afraid.

But why take the word of a mere progressive blogger, when you can have the word of the President himself?

In a statement that day, Bush said: “Claude is a good and compassionate man, and he has my deep respect and gratitude. I thank him for his many years of principled and dedicated service to our country.”

Again, Claude is charged with two counts, “felony theft scheme and felony theft over $500.” I guess it makes it even clearer the kind of worker Bush prefers to have in his White House.

A cake this good would require some decent icing, and look at this:

Before that, Allen worked for the Virginia state attorney general’s office and as state health and human resources secretary. In that job, he earned a reputation as a staunch conservative; once he kept Medicaid funds from an impoverished rape victim who wanted an abortion.

Great guy!

Just want to let you all know that, via the Washinton Post,

Record spending in February pushed the federal deficit to the highest level ever for a single month.

. . .

In the first five months of the budget year that began on Oct. 1, the deficit totals $217.6 billion, an improvement of 2.6 percent over the deficit of $223.4 billion run up during the first five months of the 2005 budget year. The total deficit last year was $319 billion, the third largest on record.

Spending this year is expected to be pushed higher by the costs of fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and rebuilding along the hurricane-devastated Gulf Coast.

Terrible news. I suppose when you and your vice president are pretty well off, and have been for your whole lives, it’s understandable that you think the money will come from somewhere. In the real world, debts have to be paid off, and the current fiscal management of this nation is leading us to ruin.

And I don’t buy the numbers game the article plays, by comparing the yearly deficits and depicting some sort of improvement. A little better than “completely horrendous” is still “not good.”

This article at the Nation hits the nail on the head. I often call Bush the faith-based President, but this columnist seems to have discovered a context in which his actions are perfectly rational:

It occurred to me, as the seminar participants sifted through racial and political history for precedent, that the Bush Administration has been quite straightforward about its lack of commitment to civic responsibility: Bush always promised he would run the country like a corporation, and so he has . . . In business ethics good corporate leaders are beholden first and foremost to their investors and trustees, not to the public at large.

Looking at the President’s behavior this way renders Bush’s actions comprehensible. He views the dollar, not the person, as the unit of citizenship. Or, to put it another way, he fully believes that the free market will sort everything out, and that unbridled arrogance is the appropriate stance of a good American. If you are poor, you are so for lack of ambition or effort. If you get fired, or get sick, or live on a flood plain–well, those were no one’s choices but your own.

Thus those with money become those who deserve greater say over our government. Those without, well, they can do the best they can to stay alive.

Conservatives, of course, will argue that they do care about every person’s wellbeing, but their actions betray those words. They chose to pass the insane Bankruptcy bill which has recently been shown to be pointless. They chose to ignore the frequent and thorough warnings before Katrina hit, and then to allow American citizens to die in the ruins of New Orleans for days before they organized an effective response. The cold truth is that they do not care about people. They care about money.

They do need to get people to vote for them, though, so they have a strategy whereby they inflame people’s religious zeal or passionate emotions, and then, once elected, discard them. Yet look carefully at what the Republicans sacrifice for this purpose:

• Women’s Rights: The rich can always get an abortion, or contraception, if they need to
• Scientific Research: The problems our lack of funding and/or legality for certain scientific pursuits will be felt years down the road, not right now. These people are all about earnings in the next quarter, or, at best, the next year
• Moral Standing: These disciples of raw power could care less how the world feels about us. The same metric of worth applies: countries with enough money and power, we will make deals with. The rest, do what we say or else.

These thoughts do point to a strategy that could neutralize Rove’s tactics: Draw attention to the inherent dignity of all citizens. Democrats are the party of all Americans, rich and poor, male and female, of any ethnicity. If we press the Republican candidates on their short-term, money-driven policies, it will crack their facade.

As the days pass, conservatives, so your amnesty opportunity is passing. Look inside your heart, and admit the truth: George W. Bush is not the man you thought he was. He is not taking care of Americans. From the needless wasting of American lives in Iraq, to the negligent response to Katrina, the President has shown that he will not protect American lives. We all know this.

Maybe you are thinking that you agree, but that you can’t bring yourself to vote Democrat. Let’s talk it over. Conservative Amnesty Month is all about coming together in a spirit of forgiveness to put our country on a better path. So leave some comments, and we’ll talk it over. Let’s make 2006 a turning point for all Americans.

Visit these other progressive bloggers who are offering Amnesty as well:

• Evil Bobby
• Gray Does Matter
• The Mad Prophet

Not that this is terribly surprising, but I do think it’s important to pay attention to what’s going on here. From the Washington Post:

President Bush today urged large American corporations and foundations to step up contributions to religious charities, noting his administration has been doing exactly that.

Federal grants to religious charities totaled $2.1 billion in the budget year that ended Sept. 30, an increase of 7 percent over the previous year, Bush said at the second White House National Conference on Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

We all, more or less, knew this was going on. The President frequently advocates faith-based charities. What interests me about this news has to do with Bush’s rationale for his approach:

“Our job in government is to set goals and to focus on results,” Bush told an often-cheering audience of 1,500 at the Washington Hilton Hotel. “If you’re addicted to alcohol, if a faith program is able to get you off alcohol, we ought to say, ‘Hallelujah’ and ‘Thanks’ at the federal level.”

. . .

Many charities “were nervous about applying for grants,” Bush said. “I can understand that, you know? They say, ‘Why in the world would I want to interface with the federal government? They may try to run my business.’ “We’ve done a good job, I think, through these different faith-based offices, through-out our government, of [telling] people in the government . . . ‘Look, just don’t tell people how to run their business. Accept the way they are. And focus on results.’ “

A few particularly disingenuous points are worth pointing out.

First, I don’t see any reason why we should accept the implicit contention that faith-based programs get results more successfully than other types of programs. Indeed, the only “evidence” Bush cites in these areas has to do with a hypothetical anecdote about a recovering alcoholic. He does not even attempt to make a coherent case that faith-based charities, by their nature, would get better results, nor does he introduce a framework in which to compare the results obtained by various other charities.

Second, the concept of these charities as businesses is troubling, particularly in the context of Bush’s typical remarks about keeping the federal government out of people’s business management decisions. In a case where the federal government is providing funding, there could be good reasons for the government to question management decisions, or to suggest alternate approaches. Not to mention that these charities are different from for-profit businesses in that they are supposed to serve people who need assistance, not to make a profit.

These minor points indicate a much larger problem. Let me draw your attention to a counterexample that is relevant. Bush’s first act as President was to sign the Global Gag Rule, which forbids any organization that receives funding from the US government from offering or discussing abortions. In that case, rather than looking at the “results,” the President, guided by his religious beliefs, took action that, it has turned out, was harmful to the welfare of many women in the developing world.

Thus we see the truth of the situation. President Bush wishes to promote religion whether or not the results are desirable. Whereas I, and many others, believe that each person has inherent dignity, and that it is society’s obligation to provide for the most basic needs of all whenever possible, no matter their religious beliefs, President Bush apparently places religion above the wellbeing of his people.