And somehow, I'm still surprised. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, the last word in enforcing the laws of the United States, has decided not to enforce the law. Specifically, he will not press criminal charges against former U.S. attorney Monica Goodling and others in the Justice Department who last month were discovered to have used political affiliation as a criterion for hiring. Goodling, et al. appear to be definitely guilty of violating the Hatch Act, which among other things prohibits federal employees from using their federal offices to solicit or discourage activity in a particular political party.

Despite the mountain of evidence against them, Mukasey has decided that the people involved in this scandal have been tortured enough. "The officials most directly implicated in the misconduct left the Department to the accompaniment of substantial negative publicity," he said. Clearly the most brutal punishment possible for committing a crime is being ridiculed in public. "I doubt that anyone in this room would want to trade places with any of those people," said Mukasey.

Poor babies! Goodling and the other former Justice employees who have left have been subjected only to having "[t]heir misconduct [...] laid bare by the Justice Department for all to see." Current Justice employees involved in this scandal have been subjected to "disciplinary referrals."

And what of the crimes they committed? This is not an issue of sexual harrassment in the office. This is not an internal issue. Multiple people, knowingly and repeatedly, violated the laws of the United States. Moreover, these people were employees of the Justice Department and were paid by us, the taxpayers, to uphold those laws.

Mukasey hardly thinks that it's worth his time. It depends on your definition of "crime," which for Mukasey, is quite elastic. Listen to this gem: "Where there is enough evidence to charge someone with a crime, we vigorously prosecute. [...] But not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime." That's odd, because according to Merriam-Webster, it is the very definition of a crime!

Clearly Mukasey, like Alberto Gonzales before him, is a "loyal Bushie." The Justice Department vociferously prosecutes alleged, phantom instances of voter fraud that didn't happen, but when it comes to real crimes committed by Justice employees, a trial is not the answer: public humiliation is good enough!

I think I'm going to be sick.

Posted by Mark at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Barack Obama must be naive and inexperienced indeed if he is seriously suggesting that maintaining proper tire pressure and keeping cars maintained can save as much oil as offshore drilling would create. I mean ...

Wait? What?

Oh, it turns out he was right. While Republicans are making fun of his plan for the sheer novelty of the suggestion, no one has refuted the merits of what he said. Yes, it's true: keeping your tires properly inflated can increase your gas mileage. This means that it can save you money on gas. And it can do so right now.

New offshore drilling, on the other hand, would have an economic impact ... by the year 2030. What about the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR)? Surely it can produce enough oil to bring down those gas prices! Well, maybe someday. Drilling in ANWR "would have its largest impact nearly 20 years from now if Congress voted to open the refuge today," says U.S. News & World Report.

Republicans would like to find more fuel-efficient ways for us to continue consuming (all goods) at our present rate. Democrats would like to find alternatives to consumption. The latter most necessary; our resources are not finite, and rather than try and come up with new fuel substitutes, we need to learn how not to use so much fuel in the first place. The American way of life trumpeted by Rush Limbaugh and others -- the way of life where every American drives a Hummer and has a three-acre lawn with a sprinkler system -- is quickly coming to an end. As it should, for that lifestyle was not sustainable in the long run. It is an historical abnormality unique to a particular time -- a time when the United States had limitless power and resources. Times have changed, and it's time for proponents of limitless consumption to recognize that.

Posted by Mark at 2:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This story about surveillance in China from the Los Angeles Times is nothing new. Sure, the Chinese government is installing 300,000 new surveillance cameras in Beijing in order to spy on foreigners. Big deal. The money quote is here:

The West might have a stronger argument in questioning China's potential for intrusive surveillance if it weren't moving rapidly in the same direction. London is believed to have the largest number of closed-circuit TV cameras of any city in the world. Many countries have seen vast troves of personal data lost or stolen. Financial records and phone calls are now routinely monitored.

Way to lead by example, West! We all thought that the Internet would make China more free and democratic. Turns out that the threat of terrorism has turned formerly democratic countries into less free and less democratic countries. It won't be long before the U.S. government is contracting with Chinese firms to think up ways in which Americans can be covertly monitored.

And what does London's surveillance get it? The cameras don't reduce crime.

Posted by Mark at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's not a myth, really. In the beginning of this year, President Bush, at the advice of Gen. David Patraeus, sent 30,000 more troops into Iraq to try to quell some of the violence there. At the time, Rolling Stone reported that the surge is not what people believe it to be. To be honest, John McCain is right that the surge worked: violence has gone down. But it hasn't gone down because of an increased troop presence:

The U.S. has not only added 30,000 more troops in Iraq -- it has essentially bribed the opposition, arming the very Sunni militants who only months ago were waging deadly assaults on American forces. To engineer a fragile peace, the U.S. military has created and backed dozens of new Sunni militias, which now operate beyond the control of Iraq's central government. The Americans call the units by a variety of euphemisms: Iraqi Security Volunteers (ISVs), neighborhood watch groups, Concerned Local Citizens, Critical Infrastructure Security. The militias prefer a simpler and more dramatic name: They call themselves Sahwa, or "the Awakening."

That's right: the U.S. government is paying Sunni militias to join their side. That's your "surge." Sadly, it's the same strategy the government has used again and again, including when the U.S. backed a group of mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan, which including a younger Osama bin Laden. Back then, they were our best friends because they fought guerilla battles against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Then we promptly abandoned them. And the rest is history.

Posted by Mark at 9:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Because personal data, for some reason, finds its way onto laptops that are then lost or stolen.

The Clear program is not, as it initially appears, a way to skip the security line at the airport. For $100 per year and some intrusive background checks, you get to ... skip ahead in line. But you still have to go through regular security just like everyone else.

Security systems are only as good as the human beings who administrate them. If some fool is able to download personal information onto his laptop -- probably unencrypted -- then the millions and billions of dollars that we've spent on a complex security system means absolutely nothing. It's very simple to implement good computer security: for example, one rule would be under no circumstances is sensitive information ever to leave the office, no matter what your title is.

Posted by Mark at 4:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If the Bush administration is bad at one thing (just one?!), it's using logic and reason. President Bush is, at least in my mind, famous for ignoring the finer points of a person's resume and instead focusing on how a person is "a good dad," or "a coach for his son's football team." To Bush, your qualifications lie in what kind of person you are inside, and while this is great for self-esteem, it's terrible in terms of hiring people who can do their jobs well.

And so it is with refuting allegations of wrong-doing. As has been reported today, Ron Suskind's new book, The Way of the World, comes with an allegation that Bush & Co. fabricated a 2001 letter between Saddam Hussein and Hussein's director of intelligence, Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti. The letter purports to discuss how Mohammed Atta, one of the nineteen September 11 hijackers, trained for the hijacking mission in Iraq. If true, the letter would confirm the White House's previously long-held belief that there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda, which would then provide a rationale for invading Iraq.

Which the letter did. But, according to Suskind, the letter was fabricated at the White House's request. And no operating relationship has ever been found between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Any piece of evidence that has ever been put forward as evidence of a relationship between the two (and thus, a justification for the war) has been refuted as unreliable at best and an outright lie at worst. This letter, if Suskind is right, falls into the latter category.

The White House, true to form, is not using logic and reason to dispel this accusation; rather, it has resorted to name-calling. White House spokesman Tony Fratto called the accusations "absurd" and said that Suskind practiced "gutter journalism."

This is something that the White House still hasn't learned, for all of the whistleblowers that have come from it: Paul O'Neill, Richard Clarke, Scott McClellan, et al. The White House says, through its spokespeople, that these whistleblowers are bad people and calls their motives into question, but never refutes the merits of the arguments beyond calling them something general, like "absurd."

Here in the world of logic and reason, it doesn't matter if a person has an axe to grind or is a gutter journalist; what matters is whether or not the statements are true. Certainly Harriet Miers could have been the nicest, sweetest lady in the country, but that did not make her qualified to sit on the Supreme Court.

Sorry, White House, you'll have to do better than "absurd" if you want to deal with such an alarming charge.

Posted by Mark at 2:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled, in stark and certain language, that President Bush's assertion that all of the people in his employ are protected by executive privilege is baseless. The District Court was ruling specifically on the issue of whether or not Bush could invoke executive privilege to prevent his former counsel Harriet Miers and White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten from testifying before Congress. Bush directed Miers and Bolten not to show up to testify at all and sent a letter to Congress in their place, alerting members of the House Judiciary Committee that they would not be answering their summons as required by law.

Judge John D. Bates, himself appointed by George W. Bush, was unequivocal in his rejection of Bush's assertion of executive privilege:

The Executive cannot identify a single judicial opinion that recognizes absolute immunity for senior presidential advisors in this or any other context. That simple but critical fact bears repeating: the asserted immunity claim here is entirely unsupported by case law. In fact, there is Supreme Court authority that is all but conclusive on this question and that powerfully suggests that such advisors to not enjoy absolute immunity.

The issue of "executive privilege" is murky and is not to be found in either the Constitution or federal statutes. The privilege has been created by case law, under the assumption that the president may not be able to get sound advice from his advisors if that advice cannot be delivered candidly and without fear of it being rebroadcast to the entire world. Executive privilege was slightly curtailed by the U.S. Supreme Court in United States v. Nixon. In that case, the court ruled that executive privilege is not absolute and specifically cannot be used to shield the executive from criminal investigation.

In its opening pages, Judge Bates' decision re-emphasizes -- in case President Bush forgot -- that "[i]t is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is." Bush has asserted that he alone should have the ability to decide certain issues of constitutionality, espeically when it comes to the War on Terr'. Judge Bates, however, quotes from the very recent Boumediene v. Bush when he declares that particular branches of the government may not "switch the Constitution on or off at will." Bush needs to be reminded of this fact frequently, despite the fact that the federal courts have rejected every single one of his assertions of absolute power.

Posted by Mark at 3:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)