Rachel Maddow: "Indefinite detention? Shame on you... President Obama" (video)

firedoglake, video (07:42).

Barack Obama

"Obama's reality-show presidency"

Ari Melber

We are now living through the first reality-show presidency.

The trends began in the early 1990s, with 24-hour cable news and reality programming, and intensified in the past few years, with the rise of celebrity culture and micro-broadcasting technology.

This is the first administration, however, to fuse iterative, real-time lifestyle coverage with the star power of a true celebrity politician. The White House is deftly serving the huge public and media interest in President Barack Obama, not only as a leader and celebrity but also as a character in a fascinating story far beyond politics.

So far, it is working.

Historically, the most favorably viewed figure in any administration is the first lady, regardless of her husband’s popularity. That is largely because first ladies avoid the political fray and are ritualistically presented as a warm, human presence in the White House. Take Laura Bush. She left the White House with a 67 percent favorable rating, according to a January CNN poll, more than double the ratings of her husband and his top officials.

So far, Obama is garnering the kind of coverage more traditionally associated with first ladies, partly because he is covered not only as a president immersed in policy but also as the star of an exciting reality show.

Sometimes the press takes the lead on the set.

This week, for example, while many wonks debated Obama’s health care objectives, the media had other goals in mind. “It’s the Weekend, So Obama Becomes a Soccer Dad,” blared an AP headline, detailing Obama’s cameo as soccer fan at his daughter’s games. “At one point, after [his daughter’s] team scored, the president shouted excitedly, ‘Go ... go ... go ... goal,’” the article recounted. Television news programs also picked up the scene, playing loops of Obama, clad in a White Sox jacket, cheering on the sidelines.

Before soccer weekends, the press salivated over plot twists like the new vegetable garden at 1600 Pennsylvania and the arrival of Bo, the first family’s puppy. Those lifestyle stories drew tons of attention. Bo netted over 3,200 hits on Google News in a single week, besting coverage for several members of Obama’s Cabinet (including Tom Vilsack, Hilda Solis, Gary Locke and Ray LaHood). The Washington Post even sought an exclusive scoop on the puppy, though the paparazzi site TMZ.com got there first.

And the first family’s vegetable garden was one of the biggest Obama-related stories of the week in March, according to Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, which measures topics in the national “newshole.”

Then, from the other direction, White House aides provide a steady stream of apolitical scenes from Obama’s life to the press and the public.

As the Los Angeles Times reported last month, both Obama staffers and celebrity news executives agree that celebrity-driven media coverage has reached a “new level” at the White House. To generate “personality-driven coverage,” the article explained, White House press aides now give coveted access to celebrity outlets like E! and Us Weekly. (Imagine the photo spread: “They balance a budget, just like us!”)

Beyond the media filter, the White House website has more reality-style scenes than ever before. Sports fans can find Obama’s handwritten NCAA bracket picks, along with over 400 pictures of the president’s daily routine on the official Flickr page. And the White House recently shifted those snapshots’ copyright status to “public domain,” to its credit, so anyone can download and use them.

This show would not be effective, of course, without a good subject. Obama won the presidency by running the first integrated three-screen campaign — reaching people directly via Internet, cell phones and TV — with an authentic, complex style that resonated for voters sick of dark, deceitful and divisive politics.

Michael Hirschorn, the pioneering reality television producer and Atlantic commentator, notes that candidate Obama won over people, especially young voters, by using the media to communicate with a contemporary “linguistic approach” that was “post-political in a traditional way.” Hirschorn told me that Obama has continued to apply that style effectively in office, using the shifting media environment to share his “humanness.”

It clearly isn’t hurting.

Obama’s approval ratings hold strong at about 65 percent, despite the bad economy and a series of tough issues in the spotlight, from bailouts to torture to health care. As a recent Gallup analysis concluded, Obama is not only “maintaining his ‘honeymoon’ approval ratings, but he seems to be improving on them.”

numbers would not be possible, obviously, unless people already backed Obama’s leadership and agenda. For Americans who don’t follow every policy address, however, the scenes of puppies and sports and gardening cast Obama in a positive quotidian light. After all, depressing news makes people want to change the channel. And that may be one more reason the media are working with the White House to change the news.

Barack Obama

"Cheney Lost to Bush"

David Brooks:

President Obama and Dick Cheney conspired on Thursday to propagate a myth. The myth is that we lived through an eight-year period of Bush-Cheney anti-terror policy and now we have entered a very different period called the Obama-Biden anti-terror policy.

As both Obama and Cheney understand, this is a completely bogus distortion of history.

The reality is that after Sept. 11, we entered a two- or three-year period of what you might call Bush-Cheney policy. The country was blindsided. Intelligence officials knew next to nothing about the threats arrayed against them. The Bush administration tried just about everything to discover and prevent threats. The Bush people believed they were operating within the law but they did things most of us now find morally offensive and counterproductive.

The Bush-Cheney period lasted maybe three years. For Dick Cheney those might be the golden years. For Democrats, it is surely the period they want to forever hang around the necks of the Republican Party. But that period ended long ago.

By 2005, what you might call the Bush-Rice-Hadley era had begun. Gradually, in fits and starts, a series of Bush administration officials — including Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Hadley, Jack Goldsmith and John Bellinger — tried to rein in the excesses of the Bush-Cheney period. They didn’t win every fight, and they were prodded by court decisions and public outrage, but the gradual evolution of policy was clear.

From 2003 onward, people like Bellinger and Goldsmith were fighting against legal judgments that allowed enhanced interrogation techniques. By 2006, Rice and Hadley brought Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in from a secret foreign prison to regularize detainee procedures. In 2007, Rice refused to support an executive order reviving the interrogation program. Throughout the second Bush term, officials were trying to close Guantánamo, pleading with foreign governments to take some prisoners, begging senators to allow the transfer of prisoners onto American soil. (It didn’t occur to them that they could announce the closure of Gitmo first, then figure out what to do with prisoners.)

Cheney and Obama might pretend otherwise, but it wasn’t the Obama administration that halted the practice of waterboarding. It was a succession of C.I.A. directors starting in March 2003, even before a devastating report by the C.I.A. inspector general in 2004.

When Cheney lambastes the change in security policy, he’s not really attacking the Obama administration. He’s attacking the Bush administration. In his speech on Thursday, he repeated in public a lot of the same arguments he had been making within the Bush White House as the policy decisions went more and more the other way.

The inauguration of Barack Obama has simply not marked a dramatic shift in the substance of American anti-terror policy. It has marked a shift in the public credibility of that policy.

In the first place, it is absurd to say this administration doesn’t take terrorism seriously. Obama has embraced the Afghan surge, a strategy that was brewing at the end of the Bush years. He has stepped up drone activity in Pakistan. He has promoted aggressive counterinsurgency fighters and racked up domestic anti-terror accomplishments.

As for the treatment of terror suspects, Jack Goldsmith has a definitive piece called “The Cheney Fallacy” online at The New Republic. He lists a broad range of policies — Guantánamo, habeas corpus, military commissions, rendition, interrogation and so on. He shows how, in most cases, the Obama policy represents a continuation of or a gradual evolution from the final Bush policy.

What Obama gets, and what President Bush never got, is that other people’s opinions matter. Goldsmith puts it well: “The main difference between the Obama and Bush administrations concerns not the substance of terrorism policy, but rather its packaging. The Bush administration shot itself in the foot time and time again, to the detriment of the legitimacy and efficacy of its policies, by indifference to process and presentation. The Obama administration, by contrast, is intensely focused on these issues.”

Obama has taken many of the same policies Bush ended up with, and he has made them credible to the country and the world. In his speech, Obama explained his decisions in a subtle and coherent way. He admitted that some problems are tough and allow no easy solution. He treated Americans as adults, and will have won their respect.

Do I wish he had been more gracious with and honest about the Bush administration officials whose policies he is benefiting from? Yes. But the bottom line is that Obama has taken a series of moderate and time-tested policy compromises. He has preserved and reformed them intelligently. He has fit them into a persuasive framework. By doing that, he has not made us less safe. He has made us more secure.

Barack Obama

"Eyes Forward on Intelligence"

Bob Graham:

Since President Obama released the "torture memos" -- the legal analysis of the Bush Justice Department on which the CIA predicated its enhanced interrogation techniques -- a familiar pattern regarding U.S. intelligence has recurred: We have become fixated on the rear-view mirror to the exclusion of what is coming toward us. While much discussion has focused on what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was told seven years ago, the more important issue is the reform urgently needed in the relationship between the intelligence community, the executive branch and Congress.

For more than a year, I have chaired a congressional commission reviewing U.S. vulnerability to a weapon of mass destruction. The unanimous conclusion of our nine members, Republicans and Democrats, was that it is more likely than not that such a weapon will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere before year-end 2013. The commission made 13 recommendations to reduce this probability, many of which rely on intelligence as the first line of defense.

Avoiding a potentially catastrophic attack using weapons of mass destruction starts at the top, with reform of the interaction between the intelligence community and the executive and legislative branches. Congressional intelligence committees were created in the 1970s to ensure accountability. If the committees were fully informed of the intelligence community's anticipated activities, the thinking went, a level of accountability would be provided before specific programs were implemented. Brought in early, the committees would share a sense of responsibility and might be less inclined to point fingers in the event of an intelligence failure. The controversy over "enhanced interrogation techniques" demonstrates that this relationship of mutual respect and sharing of consequences has shattered. Indeed, the CIA's calendar of legislative briefings indicates that even the appearance of congressional notification occurred after waterboarding and other extraordinary methods of interrogation had been in use for weeks.

The president and leaders in Congress should immediately begin the consultations that will build mutual confidence and help take us back to the original ideal. While that is most important, other work must also be done if we are to sustain a relationship of shared responsibility.

The CIA needs to improve its records management system. The imbroglio over dates of interrogation briefings is not the first instance in which CIA assertions of certitude were contravened by my own records. I learned from my father to keep a detailed daily log of my activities. From my collection of spiral notebooks and my schedule for the dates in question, I confirmed, and the CIA concurred, that three of the four briefings I supposedly attended never occurred. An individual member of Congress should not have better records than the nation's premier intelligence agency. Congress and the CIA might start by establishing a practice similar to that required of publicly traded companies: keeping a transcript or at least detailed minutes of every classified briefing, with the documentation materials contemporaneously circulated among all participants and signed as having been agreed to or specifically dissented from. This would help prevent incidents of conflicting memories of an unrecorded briefing years earlier.

The exception for covert action should be reexamined. Covert actions are activities intended to influence political, economic or military conditions abroad in which the U.S. role will not be apparent or publicly acknowledged. When the president declares an action covert, saying that it affects U.S. vital interests, he may limit notification to the congressional and intelligence committee leadership, known as the "Gang of Eight."

As we learned with warrantless wiretaps and enhanced interrogation, both of which appear to have been treated as covert actions by President Bush, activities subject to the least congressional oversight have the greatest potential to sully our national honor and international reputation. The president should use this authority infrequently and cautiously. I do not believe that gathering intelligence, electronically or from detained human beings, meets the definition of covert action.

When the exemption for covert action is invoked, congressional leaders, who are then the only remaining form of oversight, should have their own version of a bill of rights, holding that:

-- No briefing will be held without adequate notice and without the subject matter of the classified briefing being disclosed. (Current practice is notification on an urgent basis with no indication of the topic, denying the opportunity for even minimal preparation.)

-- No briefing shall be held without a majority of the Gang of Eight present. (The CIA calendar of briefings on enhanced interrogations indicates that of 18 briefings of members of the Gang of Eight, none included a majority and thus provided the critical mass required for collegial consideration.)

-- At the earliest date possible, the full committees should be briefed. This is the law, honored mostly in the breach. (According to the CIA calendar, the first briefing of the full Senate and House intelligence committees took place Sept. 6, 2006, more than four years after enhanced interrogations commenced.)

Balancing the values of an open society with the need to gather, analyze and occasionally act on clandestine information is one of the great challenges a democracy faces. The "who said what, when" public catfight is not the forum to confront such challenges. The United States can and must do better if our intelligence agencies, the president and Congress are to play their crucial roles in slowing the ticking clock of when the worst people are likely to possess and deploy the worst weapons.

The writer, a former Democratic senator from Florida, was chairman of the Senate intelligence committee from 2001 to 2003. He is the author, most recently, of "America: The Owner's Manual."

The Six Senators Who Voted For Gitmo Closure $ Today

NY Times:

Jack Reed D RI
Carl Levin D MI
Patrick Leahy D VT
Tom Harkin D IA
Richard Durbin D IL
Sheldon Whitehouse D RI

"History of Weed" (video)

SHOWTIME, video (02:00):

From 2727 B.C. to the present, Weeds presents a brief history of cannabis. New episodes Monday at 10PM ET/PT beginning June 8th only on Showtime.

"CIA Lied to Colin Powell"

Bob Fertig:

Republicans and the Corporate Media are trying to destroy Speaker Pelosi because she dared to accuse the CIA of misleading her during her (only) torture briefing on September 4, 2002.

Of course Pelosi isn't the only one who was misled by the CIA during the march to war in 2002-2003. We were all misled - the Media, Congress, the American people, and the entire world.

As Bush's CIA even misled members of the Bush Administration, including Secretary of State Colin Powell! Powell's CoS Larry Wilkerson shared more details with CIA veteran Ray McGovern:

“Powell and I had a one-on-one — no one else even in the room — about his angst over what was a rather dull recounting of several old stories about Al Qa’ida-Baghdad ties [in the draft speech],” Wilkerson said. “I agreed with him that what we had was bull___t, and Powell decided to eliminate all mention of terrorist contacts between AQ and Baghdad.

“Within an hour, [CIA Director George] Tenet and [CIA Deputy Director John] McLaughlin dropped a bombshell on the table in the [CIA] director’s Conference Room: a high-level AQ detainee had just revealed under interrogation substantive contacts between AQ and Baghdad, including Iraqis training AQ operatives in the use of chemical and biological weapons.”

Though Tenet and McLaughlin wouldn’t give Powell the identity of the al-Qaeda source, Wilkerson said he now understands that it was Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, an al-Qaeda operative who later claimed he gave the CIA false information in the face of actual and threatened torture.

Not realizing that the new intelligence was tainted, “Powell changed his mind and this information was included in his UNSC presentation, along with some more general information from the previous text about Baghdad's terrorist tendencies,” Wilkerson said...

“As you can see, nowhere were we told that the high-level AQ operative had a name, or that he had been interrogated [in Egypt] with no US personnel present or much earlier rather than just recently (the clear implication of Tenet's breathtaking delivery),” Wilkerson said.

“And not a single dissent was mentioned (later we learned of the DIA dissent) … All of this was hidden from us – the specific identity, we were informed, due to the desire to protect sources and methods as well as a cooperative foreign intelligence service. …

“As for me in particular, I learned the identity of al-Libi only in 2004 and of the DIA dissent about the same time, of al-Libi's recanting slightly later, and of the entire affair's probably being a Tenet-McLaughlin fabrication – to at least a certain extent – only after I began to put some things together and to receive reinforcement of the ‘fabrication’ theme from other examples.”

So the CIA lied to Colin Powell and Larry Wilkerson, just as they did to Nancy Pelosi, Jay Rockefeller, Bob Graham, and everyone else who wasn't a card-carrying Neocon.

Why isn't the Corporate Media outraged at Bush's CIA and its overlord Dick Cheney, rather than Pelosi and all the other victims of their lies?

Andy Worthington has much more.

McGovern was interviewed by The Real News.

"torture prosecutions - it's not just for hippies any more"

Lanny Davis:

I have written many times in this space that I oppose any criminal prosecution of prior-administration officials on torture or other issues relating to the Iraq War and the war on terrorism, especially those CIA interrogators who relied in good faith on the instructions of policymakers and the legal opinions issued by Justice Department senior officials.

I have agreed with President Obama on the need to look forward, not backward.

But … I have changed my mind about the need to indict former Vice President Dick Cheney for complicity in illegal torture.
.

His insistence on putting himself on multiple TV programs and conservative radio talk shows, not only defending torture but offering the defense that it worked, has changed my mind. Not only that — he went on to attack Mr. Obama as weakening the United States in the war on terrorism because Mr. Obama immediately announced that torture would no longer be allowed.

Dem's fighting words. They are also, in my view, reckless and irresponsible. They seem to be laying down a marker that in case, God forbid, there is a terrorist attack, Mr. Cheney can be the first to blame it on Mr. Obama's policies and say, "I told you so."

Even more, they seem to be an in-your-face dare by Mr. Cheney to the U.S. criminal justice system: "I am Dick Cheney, I approved violations of the law in the name of the war on terror, and what are you going to do about it?"

It reminds me of Gary Hart's reaction in the early days of his 1988 presidential campaign to the rumors of his womanizing. Mr. Hart denied the charge — and then dared the media to catch him. Well, they took him up on his dare (specifically, the Miami Herald did). And they caught him — at least in a compromising situation that led to his withdrawal from the campaign.

So as to Mr. Cheney: I think it is time to take him up on his implicit dare and indict him for violating the 1994 federal law against torture.

Not to do so, in light of Mr. Cheney's arrogant public challenges, may reinforce the notion that Mr. Cheney can get away with lawbreaking, and be proud of it, because he is a former vice president, and because he is the tough, intimidating Dick Cheney who everyone (at least many) in the Bush administration feared.

So I think it's important to take Mr. Cheney up on his challenge, despite all the disadvantages that had led me to oppose prosecutions of the former administration.

Here is what the indictment of Mr. Cheney would look like; it's not that complicated.

First, as to the law: The 1994 federal law making torture illegal defines torture as "any act that causes severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, intentionally inflicted on a person for such purpose as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession."

The two top officials at the Office of Legal Counsel — Jay S. Bybee (who is now a judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals) and John Yoo, now a professor at the University of California at Berkeley Law School — tried in 2002 to "reinterpret" the term "severe pain" out of existence by requiring a torture victim to feel pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."

But their colleagues at Justice — not only at the OLC, but also the Criminal Division — repudiated their legal gymnastics and restated the definition of torture plainly set forth in the 1994 federal law and the Convention Against Torture. For this and other reasons, both Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee should at the very least be investigated for ethical violations and possible disbarment.

Second, as to the facts — here is what we know or have good reason to believe:

• We know that waterboarding was intentionally used against detainees to obtain information.

• We know that waterboarding causes "severe pain or suffering." It involves strapping a man to an inclined board with his head below his feet, wrapping a cloth across his face, and pouring water into his nostrils and mouth, which convinces the victim that he faces imminent death by drowning. It has been used as torture from the Inquisition to Nazi Germany, and was prosecuted as a war crime after World War II.

• Finally, there is strong circumstantial evidence that Mr. Cheney knew waterboarding was being used against detainees, that he expressly approved its use, or that he actually directed interrogators to use it. If any of these are true, then Mr. Cheney could be guilty under U.S. laws of being a co-conspirator or an accessory to a crime.

An indictment, of course, is only an accusation of criminal conduct. Mr. Cheney must be presumed innocent until a jury of his peers finds him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Many people still think, and I was among them until recently, that it would be better not to put the country through the divisive and backward-looking experience of seeing a former vice president on trial for crimes committed while in office. But given Mr. Cheney's decision to publicly attack the president on the subject, perhaps we have no choice but to take Mr. Cheney up on his challenge.

I am hoping that in the final analysis, the case of the People vs. Dick Cheney will provide all Americans with an opportunity to answer the vital question as to whether a democratic society based on moral values should defend the use of torture, even if at times it successfully obtains important information from a terrorist.

I am hoping our answer as a nation will be similar to the eloquent one provided by Israeli Supreme Court President Aharon Barak regarding the use of torture by the Israeli Security Services:

"This is the destiny of democracy, as not all means are acceptable to it, and not all practices employed by its enemies are open before it. Although a democracy must often fight with one hand tied behind its back, it nonetheless has the upper hand. Preserving the Rule of Law and recognition of an individual's liberty constitutes an important component in its understanding of security. At the end of the day, they strengthen its spirit and its strength and allow it to overcome its difficulties."

"Reading More Closely"

Josh Marshall:

From deep in The Politico beast, we find that Josh Gerstein's close reading acumen has not at all been impaired. Here's Gerstein looking closely this afternoon at that Leon Panetta statement from last Friday ...

Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta didn't reject or deny House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's allegations that she was falsely briefed by the CIA about interrogations.

Look carefully at Panetta's statement from Friday, especially the verb tense used. "Let me be clear: It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress." First, "let me be clear" always precedes an ambiguous statement. Without fail. Panetta isn't opining on past acts. He's referring to the current policy. He's also not saying it never happens or happened that someone lied to or misled Congress. He's saying the agency as a whole doesn't intend to.

Panetta was at his Monterey, Calif. think tank when this all happened in 2002 and 2003. He doesn't know if Pelosi was lied to. He also doesn't say he talked to the briefers and is convinced they're telling the truth. He just says the paper records say she was briefed about the techniques. We knew that already from agency statements. So he's adding his voice to the mix and sending a signal that he'll stand by his agency, but to say he sided with the briefers on the specifics is just wrong.Again, I'm not saying Pelosi was lied to or even misled. It would seem rather brazen to do that. But Panetta's statement says less than people are claiming.

This is just right. This was certainly Panetta standing up for his Agency after Pelosi, the second person in line to the presidency, had taken a swipe. But to get the full significance of a document, even a simple memo, you need to look past the toplines to what the text actually says. And if you read Panetta closely he didn't take any position at all on the key question of whether Pelosi was right or not. It was a point lost on virtually everyone in town.

"Why I Criticized Code Pink"

Jeff Norman:

On Wednesday I admonished a Code Pink protester for her melodramatic "attempt" to arrest Donald Rumsfeld. My post (published here, here and here) was not a rebuke so much as a practical call for more advanced operations. Nonetheless, so-called progressives -- including David Swanson, whose After Downing Street website is largely dedicated to the torture scandal -- told me I had crossed some line.

As he explained in an email, Swanson refused to run what I had written because he thinks "self-critique from our own side" is so deleterious it must be silenced. He said he would "promote" my point of view only if I express it "without criticizing...the few people who are doing something."

To comply with Swanson's unwarranted rule would be to perpetuate the very problem I want to address, which is that many activists are more concerned with feeling good about themselves than being effective.

The incident which prompted my previous commentary occurred on May 9 at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington, DC. As Rumsfeld arrived at the event, he was harangued by Medea Benjamin and Desiree Fairooz of Code Pink. I wrote that Fairooz seemed "a bit crazed" as she screamed at Rumsfeld and unconvincingly claimed she would apprehend him for war crimes right then and there if only she were in possession of handcuffs.

Although I approvingly noted her desire "to hold our leaders accountable," I also questioned whether Fairooz's outburst would influence public opinion as presumably intended. My emphasis on the latter consideration is what caused Swanson to deem the post too incendiary for publication.

I pointed out in my rejected piece that allegations of unlawful conduct tend to be more persuasive when the accuser bothers to mention what crime the accused is believed to have committed. The closest either muckraker came to mentioning a cause for arrest was when Benjamin said of Rumsfeld: "He killed people in Iraq."

It should be obvious to everybody that the basis for apprehending Rumsfeld needs to be something more than feeling the former Defense Secretary did something illegal. Nonetheless, those who lately have been professing certainty about war crimes, typically fail to identify the laws they "know" were violated. Trying to be helpful, I recommended "focusing on conspiracy to commit torture, which is a felony under Section 2340A of the U.S. Code." Unfortunately, Swanson has so far prevented that suggestion from entering the After Downing Street echo chamber.

Citing applicable statutes is no small factor when it comes to arresting lawbreakers. Moreover, recruiting people to make citizen arrests is ostensibly a key aspect of Swanson's mission. Indeed, his website includes a page that's headlined "How to Make a Citizen's Arrest of a War Criminal," on which he purports to be in search of "[arrest] teams in California, Texas, New York, and Washington, D.C., among other places." As I told him in an email, my proposed strategy and tactics are more consistent with his stated objectives than Code Pink's theatrics are. So it's very strange that Swanson squelched constructive criticism of fictional arrests, and turned his back on an offer to initiate real ones.

Ironically, my history with Swanson and Code Pink reflects a kinship concerning the very issues which lie at the heart of our current disagreements. In 2005 I joined forces with Code Pink activists at one of Rumsfeld's speaking engagements. After I asked an unwelcome question that day, I was forcibly removed from the premises, just as Benjamin and Fairooz were ejected a week ago. And in 2006 I hosted a forum on media censorship televised by C-SPAN that Swanson had organized. So it's especially disappointing to now be required to pass a purity test in order to participate in "his" discussion.

Swanson's fluctuating principles represent a blind spot which surfaces frequently on "our own side." (For the record, I'm not actually on any "side.") The tendency to embrace tolerance and such virtues only intermittently has dealt a virtual death blow to the concept of free expression. A generation ago it was common to find self-identifying liberals who understand the importance of defending ugly or unpopular speech. Two well-known examples are the support the American Nazi Party received when its members sought to march in the streets of Skokie, Illinois, and Larry Flynt's widely recognized right to publish an intentionally hurtful cartoon depicting a public figure (Jerry Falwell) engaged in a bogus act of indecency. But nowadays the people "on our own side" who detect and reject thought control in all its insidious forms are few and far between.

It was mostly "progressives" who insisted on punishment for Don Imus even though the irreverent radio announcer had violated no rule when he referenced racial characteristics while ridiculing the physical appearance of basketball players. After copies of an O.J. Simpson book had been shipped by one of Rupert Murdoch's imprints, an uproar ensued which caused Murdoch to pull the title out of circulation. Nary a liberal seemed concerned that a lynch mob had robbed everyone of the option to buy that book. And then there's war correspondent Dahr Jamail, lionized by peaceniks as the antithesis of a censor and bigot, who endorsed an effort to thwart development of a film project simply because he doesn't "trust Hollywood."

The common thread here is a mindset which impels unwitting acts of censorship by individuals who believe they stand for free speech and open debate. When confronted with the reality of their oppressive behavior, the oblivious morality czars either retreat or rely on convoluted logic and semantics (i.e., quibble over the definition of "censorship") to deny the charge. In the world of activism, as elsewhere, such shenanigans are extremely counterproductive, and the consequences include inertia, drastically low standards and loss of credibility.

Imagine if fire department officers were to indulge in the sort of pointless diversions Swanson and his ilk see as noble behavior. Buildings would burn to the ground because commanders would have already purged the ranks of skilled individuals whose opinions are offensive, leaving too few to get the job done. Luckily, most communities are actually served by a diverse, amply-staffed contingent of firefighters, some of whom are occasionally critical of one another, all of whom focus exclusively on putting out destructive fires when called upon to do so.

Swanson spends what must be huge chunks of his time sounding alarms about torture and the need to punish war criminals. But where the rubber meets the road, his paltry emergency response team, devoid of disciplined actors and independent thinkers, is busy being fitted for costumes and enjoying a group hug.

UPDATE 5.18.09: Swanson emailed me over the weekend to say he is "eager and delighted" to assist me, and today has begun to do so.

"As President, Obama Is Unafraid to Disappoint His Allies"

Dan Balz (WaPo):

Through much of last year's campaign, Barack Obama enjoyed the acclaim of a politician who seemed adept at making himself all things to almost all people. Liberals, moderates, even some conservatives, Democrats, independents and even some Republicans all found in Obama change they could believe in.

That was the mark of a skillful candidate who leaves enough unsaid to attract the maximum support possible. But it isn't possible to maintain that posture once presidential decision making begins and choices have to be made. President Obama has found himself under fire from across the political spectrum as he has worked his way through contentious and complex issues, from turning around the economy and bailing out banks to escalating the war in Afghanistan and trying to close the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Typecasting Obama has also proved difficult. His ambitious domestic policies lean decidedly left (unless he turns out to be the deficit hawk he says he wants to be). Taken as a whole, his national security policies do not, as they represent the triumph of pragmatism over ideology. His surprise selection yesterday of Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. of Utah as U.S. ambassador to China only underscored that in his foreign policies, Obama is looking to hew to the center.

For most of his early months in office, criticism of Obama has come mainly from the right. Conservatives have described his stimulus package and budget as a blueprint for fiscal and economic calamity. They have opposed his decisions to close Guantanamo, to ban the harsh interrogation techniques employed by the Bush administration and to release Justice Department memos providing legal justification for those techniques. Former vice president Richard B. Cheney has led that charge, accusing Obama of making the country less safe than it was under President George W. Bush.

Those attacks were expected. What has been more surprising is that Obama has gotten himself into a scrap with the left as he has begun to refine those very national security policies that seemed to signal such a sharp break with the Bush administration. The eruption of anger on the left suggests a new phase of Obama's presidency that represents a significant step in his transition from candidate to commander in chief.

Obama owes his victory last year in part to the enthusiastic support of an energized left. His opposition to the Iraq war and his condemnation of Bush's treatment of terrorism suspects and enemy combatants signaled a new path in foreign policy that the left wholeheartedly applauded. By announcing in his first days as president his determination to close Guantanamo and ban torture, Obama symbolically made good on those campaign promises.

Then the hard work began. Closing Guantanamo is one thing; figuring out what to do with the detainees is another. The administration still has no clear plan, and there is restiveness on Capitol Hill. Bringing an end to the contentious debate over the interrogation tactics also has left Obama in the crossfire between two sides determined to have a more public airing of all those Bush policies. Obama has tried to steer carefully through this minefield, but it's not clear how long he will be able to do so.

But it was two decisions last week that touched off a controversy with the left. The first was a reversal by the president. After saying he favored the release of damaging photographs showing prisoners being abused while in U.S. custody, he announced that he would not seek their release. Public disclosure, he said, would threaten the safety of U.S. military personnel abroad and could inflame the rest of the world as he is trying to win new respect for the United States.

Then on Friday came the decision to resume, with some modifications, the military tribunals used by the Bush administration since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. This was not a total reversal, and administration officials insisted that prisoners would be given more rights. But human rights and civil liberties groups condemned the decision. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was left to complain that after starting the week under fire for breaking with the Bush administration on anti-terrorism policy, the administration was being criticized for embracing Bush-era policies.

The decisions underscored an important facet of Obama's decision making, which is his capacity to rethink positions and to change his mind as he learns more or conditions change. And he tends whenever possible to seek consensus. Those on the left and right often overlook this aspect of his governing style, though it was one of the factors that drew many people during the campaign.

The other reality that last week's decisions highlighted is Obama's willingness to disappoint his allies, which suggests that he feels he owes no group or groups unduly for his victory. He has sent the same message to organized labor by refusing to push hard for its top priority, the employee free choice act.

In the health-care debate, he is disappointing those on the left who say a single-payer plan should at least be part of the debate, and he may anger some liberal allies if he succumbs to pressure in Congress not to include a government-run insurance plan as an option in a reform package. He upset those bent on changing Washington's ways when he ducked a confrontation with Congress over earmarks he had criticized as a candidate.

A politician who got to know him well over the past few years was ruminating recently about Obama in the context of whom he chooses to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by the announced retirement of Justice David H. Souter. Would Obama name a Hispanic to the court to satisfy demands of Latino groups? This politician said he is skeptical, and noted that the president often seems oblivious to the political considerations that one assumes influence such decisions. "He's so confident -- in a healthy way -- in his ability that he's doing the right thing that these political considerations aren't terribly big with him," this elected official said.

The backlash on the left may be a temporary breach without great consequence for Obama. In polls, he continues to enjoy overwhelming support from those who identify themselves as liberals. But there are signs of tension with liberal constituency groups and with some liberal lawmakers. When the House approved a $96.7 billion funding bill for Iraq and Afghanistan last week, 51 Democrats voted no. Some of them expressed concern that Obama has embarked on a highly risky strategy without clear goals or an exit strategy.

Like his opponents, Obama's allies are learning that the president is willing to chart his own course and risk the political consequences.

Barack Obama

"Pelosi’s Claims Getting Much More Media Scrutiny Than CIA’s Assertions"

Greg Sargent:

Whichever side of the torture debate you’re on, it’s a simple matter of fact that Nancy Pelosi’s claims about what she was told and when about torture are getting far more intense media scrutiny than the CIA’s claims are.

Simple fairness demands that both side’s claims get treated with a similar level of skepticism. And they’re not.

Multiple news accounts this morning report that Pelosi’s credibility is in question after yesterday’s press conference, in which she accused the CIA of lying about what they told members of Congress about the agency’s use of torture. This theme was sounded by MSNBC, WaPo’s Dan Balz, the New York Times write-up, and many others.

That’s as it should be. But I challenge you to find a news account that stated with equal prominence that the CIA’s credibility is also in question.

Let’s briefly recap. Three senior Democrats — Pelosi, Bob Graham, and Jay Rockefeller — have all publicly claimed that the CIA didn’t brief them about the use of torture in the manner the agency has claimed. Meanwhile, the CIA itself has conceded that its own accounting may not be accurate.

Yet key facts that cast doubt on the CIA’s claims have been buried or completely omitted from multiple news reports. The Times’s first mention of Graham’s claims came today, five days after he first made them, and they were buried in the 22nd paragraph of the paper’s write-up. Neither The Time nor The Post have even mentioned Rockefeller’s claims once. The networks have refused across the board to mention the CIA’s own unwillingness to vouch for the accuracy of its information.

There are notable exceptions. McClatchy’s Jonathan Landay, for instance, has talked up the importance of the CIA’s caveats. And to its credit, The Politico has shined a spotlight on the dissents of Graham and Rockefeller and on some of the contradictions in the GOP’s criticism of Pelosi.

This is not only about Pelosi. It is a dispute. One side is claiming one thing, and the other is claiming the opposite. Simple fairness demands that equal levels of skepticism are applied to people on both sides of this argument. And that isn’t happening. There’s no way around it.

Blogger down... but not for the count

Forced R&R taking an inside look at healthcare (while healthcare takes a look at my insides) Taking enforced R&R ... email me @ http://bit.ly/n4OzP ( room 868 ) 1 day ago... email me @ http://bit.ly/n4OzP ( room 868 )

"ObamaCare opponents scramble to build a winning coalition"

Dana Blankenhorn (ZDNet):

Yesterday’s photo op of business and insurance leaders meeting on the President’s health reform proposal set off a panic among reform opponents.

With big business and the insurance industry now seemingly on the other side, conservatives must hope a public campaign aimed at doctors and patients can be a game-changer.

They are also looking to gaffes by proponents for traction. Anything said in negotiation can be turned into a daily outrage, and it’s this outrage that killed the 1993 Clinton plan. The simplest statements, like y’all need to lose weight, can be seized upon.

The worst news for opponents, however, may be that liberal publishers and interest groups are not acting like they’ve won. They’re acting more like they got an early touchdown but remain underdogs.

And the grassroots anger reform opponents are trying to generate seems tame compared with the real anger of single payer advocates, who feel shut out of the discussion. (Maybe Canada can answer for them.)

There are also additional cards the Obama people can play to further reduce the opponents’ numbers. Malpractice reform, for instance.

The key question in the debate remains the one I identified in March, whether there will be a public option.

The present coalition behind Obama is based on the self-interest of major players in the health care game — insurers, suppliers and big customers. Allowing consumers to buy into something like Medicare will change the game by creating public-private competition.

Howard Dean identified this again on the TV last night. Reform without a public option “is not real reform,” he said, just a new arrangement of the Titanic’s deck chairs. Only a public option will create real competition with the private sector needed to achieve cost containment goals, he feels.

The key to whether “real” reform happens then may lie in the efforts of Sen. Chuck Schumer to allow creation of a public plan without allowing it to roll private industry. If both Dean and insurance carriers agree on what he comes up with, it could be game over.

Otherwise we’ll see you here again in 2023.

Barack Obama

Spitzer on Maddow: "Not enough systemic change" and his "regrets"(video)

MSNBC-Rachel Maddow, video (09:23). In part Two, video (04:09) "Spitzer reveals regrets."

"Progressive Caucus Report on Afghanistan"

Today, the Congressional Progressive Caucus will release a set of recommendations based on its series of forums on Afghanistan--the sixth and last of which will be held tomorrow. It's releasing the report today so its membership may consider it in deciding how to vote on the $96 billion War Supplemental this week.

Here is a preview of just a few of the valuable recommendations in the report:

"Require an 80-20 ratio (political-military) with all future US funding, with a special inspector general to monitor the implementation of this ratio"

Even Gen. Petraeus calls for this 80-20 ratio in his counterinsurgency strategy, but a panelist on the Afghanistan Forum, Gen. Paul Eaton, former commander of Iraq's security forces,pointed out that funding in Afghanistan is 90 percent military.

"Require the immediate cessation of drone attacks

Many of the panelists, including Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson--Colin Powell's former Chief of Staff -- pointed out that the high number of civilian deaths from drone attacks creates more enemies and fuels the insurgency rather than undermining it.

"Require UN involvement in overseeing and mandating the role of US and international military operations.... Require any increase in US troop presence is oriented to training and support roles for Afghan security forces...not for US-led counterinsurgency efforts."

The report reads, "17,000 additional troops are neither sufficient to manage the conflict nor a useful contribution because the already deployed US/international forces are not being presently utilized." It is worth noting that the Petraeus counterinsurgency strategy calls for upwards of 400,000 troops. Col. Wilkerson recommended the support/training role of any additional troops.

"Require the initiative of a dialogue process, with Saudi Arabia--who initiated previous talks between Afghan government and ethnic/tribal leaders--taking the lead, or with other international organization taking the lead."

It's clear that the insurgency will not be defeated and security not achieved until ethnic and tribal leaders are brought into the fold.

While I personally would like to see a call for immediate withdrawal of US troops, and a sharp and smart focus on diplomatic and political solutions to the conflict, these recommendations would improve the current strategy of escalation that destabilizes the region and threatens President Obama's domestic and international agenda. Kudos to the Progressive Caucus for setting up these forums, listening to people with a deep understanding of the issues, and putting forth recommendations in a timely manner.

Barack Obama

"Zelikow advocates independent investigation into torture policies"

Foreign Policy:

When Philip Zelikow, the former counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, testifies before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee Wednesday about controversial legal opinions issued by the Bush-era Justice Department, he'll be wading into a political maelstrom. Former Bush administration and CIA officials have accused Congressional Democrats of hypocrisy for calling for investigations of the interrogations policies, saying that some, including now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, were briefed on the techniques employed and approved them.

Zelikow, who revealed last month on ForeignPolicy.com that the Bush White House tried to destroy all copies of a 2006 memo he wrote opposing the policies, has generally sought to avoid the political spectacle, but describes the program as a collective failure. He is calling for an independent commission to investigate what happened.

"I think the record will show as CIA wants it to be known that quite a number of people from both parties were aware of this program, and endorsed it over a period of years," Zelikow told The Cable on the eve of his still-embargoed testimony Tuesday. "Goodness knows, this was a problem for the people inside" like himself "who objected to the program. We were constantly told, we briefed XYZ and they had no problem with that."

But Zelikow said he is not trying to point fingers. "My point of view on this is fairly straightforward," he said. "This is now a historical problem. Our country quit doing this some time ago. I think that a lot of people agree with me in judging that this program was a mistake - a pretty big mistake. It was a collective failure. A lot of people in both parties of this country convinced themselves for years that we needed a program like this to protect America.

"And so one of the reasons I support some kind of inquiry is to comprehend why so many people believed that a program like this was a good idea - since we now believe it was a mistake," he continued. "So we can learn from the mistake. When there is this kind of collective failure, we need to learn from what happened."

Zelikow supports the kind of outside commission being championed by Senate Judiciary committee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT), one similar to the independent 9/11 commission that Zelikow directed.

"It would be so much easier if it had been a cabal of six people who did this," Zelikow continued. "But when you realize it had broader consensus, all the more reason to comprehend what happened to inoculate ourselves for the next time. Because there will be a next time."

"That way you don't have a situation where [former ranking Senate Intelligence committee member] Jay Rockefeller and Nancy Pelosi are seen as being hypocrites. Turn over the inquiry to others. That is the way they can neatly address this argument, because they won't be the ones conducting the inquiry."

"That is why in my testimony, I say that the reason I thought a lot of otherwise well-meaning people endorsed a program like this [is that] they were told in the atmosphere that prevailed after 9/11 that there were no alternatives. They were told the program is legal."

Asked if the program of enhanced interrogation techniques came more from the CIA or the White House, Zelikow said the CIA, but Bush White House officials played an enabling role.

Regarding his 2006 memo, Zelikow says, "I tried to raise consciousness that there was a massive potential problem here," Zelikow said. "Maybe we should do something. And the answer to that was silence. ‘We don't want to discus this. We don't want to reassure you. We prefer to ignore you raised this.' I worked hard on this memo. I wish people had answered to tell me why we [dissenters] were so wrong.' But their preference was, ‘Your intervention is so frivolous and out of school that it doesn't deserve a response.' That's too bad."

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who chairs the subcommittee presiding over Wednesday's hearing, has sought to obtain a copy of Zelikow's memo from the State Department. More than one copy of the February 2006 memo has apparently been located; one is in the process of being declassified, a committee source said on condition of anonymity.

"I hope what America will learn [from the hearing] is that the facts that were alleged in the torture memos are very likely not true," Whitehouse told MSNBC Tuesday. "The legal theories were contested even by Bush Administration lawyers who weren't in on the fix, and a little bit about what the consequences are for lawyers who commit professional malfeasance."

Asked why Whitehouse had sought to take a leading role and hold hearings on the issue, an aide noted that the Rhode Island senator grew up the son of a Foreign Service officer family in Laos and Cambodia around the time of the Vietnam war, and has thought a lot from those experiences about America's role in the world and how it's perceived.

"They're Shutting Detroit Down Featuring Mickey Rourke and Kris Kristofferson" (video)

Heavens Gates, video (05:46).

H/t to Bob Vermeers.

Countdown: "Hearings begin on Bush admin torture" (video)

MSNBC-Countdown, video (04:14).

Howie P.S.: Olbermann talks with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who sets the stage for tomorrow's hearing of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight. Rachel Maddow talks with former Colin Powell staffer Lawrence Wilkerson about "Cheney's magical media tour, video (12:11)."

"Is The Most Forceful Advocate For Probing Torture ... Dick Cheney?"

Zachary Roth:

This goes way beyond strange bedfellows. But it looks like Dick Cheney has emerged as the single most forceful proponent of a full investigation of the Bush administration's torture policies.

In an interview on CBS's Face The Nation yesterday, the ex-veep claimed, as he has before, that the Obama administration's rejection of torture has made us less safe. But he also went further ever in repeatedly arguing -- contra congressional Republicans -- that we need to look back at the details of the torture program before moving forward.

Here's what Cheney told Bob Schieffer:

When you get rid of enhanced interrogation techniques, for example, or the terrorist surveillance program, you reduce the intelligence flow to the intelligence community upon which we based those policies that were so successful.

So I think before they do that sort of thing, it's important to sit down and find out what did we learn?

Cheney also reminded Schieffer that last month he had requested that the National Archives release several CIA memos which, he has said, will show that torture was effective.

"Release the memos," he said yesterday. "And we can look and see for yourself what was produced." He continued: "If we're going to have this debate, it ought to be a complete debate, and those memos ought to be out there for people to look at and journalists like yourself to evaluate in terms of what we were able to accomplish with these policies."

Cheney even told Schieffer that he'd "talk to" congressional investigators about the program, adding: " I wouldn't be out here today if I didn't feel comfortable talking about what we're doing publicly."

Of course, the investigation Cheney appears to want to see would have a very different focus from the one that, say, Jonathan Turley is looking for. While torture opponents want a probe to look at exactly who ordered and approved the harsh techniques, with a view to possible prosecutions, the former VP instead seems to want concentrate on the question of torture's effectiveness -- and seems interested only in evidence that would bolster his case that has helped save lives.

Still, it's hard to look at either question without getting into the other. Which is why the clear consequence of Cheney's position is to lend support to those calling for a full accounting of what happened.

So how about this for a head-turning new slogan for torture opponents? "Listen To Dick Cheney: Investigate Torture."

Howie P.S.: Eugene Robinson and Liz Cheney discuss her father's arguments, video (14:36), and agree that on only one thing, more information should be released and examined. Liz is as resolute (stubborn) as her father. Andrea Mitchell follows their debate and attempts to sort out the facts.