Jarrett House North: America

A defining moment: Obama on race

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 18:57:26 GMT

I’ve just read what I hope will be the first speech collected in Barack Obama’s presidential library, the prepared text of his address on race that he is giving right now in Philadelphia (New York Times liveblog). I don’t think I’ve heard any candidate in recent memory speak so cogently about problems with racial perspectives on both sides of the color line, nor put things in perspective quite so eloquently. Bottom line: Obama has taken what his opponents tried to paint as a liability and made of it an opportunity for one of the great statements of challenge to the nation, the first great challenge speech of the 21st century, and the first presidential speech to stand alongside Kennedy’s inaugural address.

Excerpts:

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions -- the good and the bad -- of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.
I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother -- a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe...

But for all those who scratched and clawed their way to get a piece of the American Dream, there were many who didn’t make it -- those who were ultimately defeated, in one way or another, by discrimination. That legacy of defeat was passed on to future generations -- those young men and increasingly young women who we see standing on street corners or languishing in our prisons, without hope or prospects for the future. Even for those blacks who did make it, questions of race, and racism, continue to define their worldview in fundamental ways. For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger may not get expressed in public, in front of white co-workers or white friends. But it does find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table. At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.
And occasionally it finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews. The fact that so many people are surprised to hear that anger in some of Reverend Wright’s sermons simply reminds us of the old truism that the most segregated hour in American life occurs on Sunday morning. That anger is not always productive; indeed, all too often it distracts attention from solving real problems; it keeps us from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition, and prevents the African-American community from forging the alliances it needs to bring about real change. But the anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.
In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience -- as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time....

In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand -- that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle -- as we did in the OJ trial -- or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

Typography is everywhere

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 18:07:52 GMT

I think that at the beginning of the campaign season, I was quite happy to handicap the field of candidates by their typography and logo decisions. Now that we’re down to three, an article on the typography of the 2008 presidential candidates seems a day late and a dollar short—not to mention, didn’t the Boston Globe already do this article? And the New York Times?

In fresher typographic news, a word for what happens to type when it is poorly kerned: keming. You have to be a type geek to get it, unless you look at an example.

Congrats to Josh Marshall

Tim Jarrett — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 17:02:51 GMT

When Talking Points Memo started its investigation of the US Attorney firings, I knew Josh Marshall and his team were onto something big. When readers poured in with local press coverage and TPM started stitching the pieces together to show a pattern of politically motivated gutting of the judiciary, I knew that we were seeing a classic example of crowdsourcing at work. When he asked his readers to help him pore through thousands of pages of government documents to help put the pieces together, I knew that we were looking at the start of something big.

The world seems to agree. Having won a George Polk Award for legal reporting, TPM’s crowdsourced investigatory model now stands as a new high water mark in what lowered transaction costs can do to journalism. No matter how quiet, distributed, and seemingly boring, no matter how voluminous the documentation in which the offense is buried, you can now count on one thing: bloggers will be there to put the pieces together and spell out the uncomfortable truth.

It’s a reminder that we aren’t done with the revolution and promise of the Internet. I don’t think anyone would have predicted that lowered costs of communication would make it easier to expose secret government hijinx, but it is clear now that that is exactly one of the benefits of a free and open Internet, and that it is a bracing alternative to the spin dominated, celebrity focused, Timmy-trapped-in-well-24-hour-coverage that has passed for “broadcast journalism” recently. Well done, Josh and team, for reminding us how it’s supposed to be done.

Summing it up

Tim Jarrett — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 04:34:06 GMT

Heh…

Really not much more to say, honestly. (Though I am kind of tickled over the series of strips that my friend Jen Sorensen is running in Slowpoke right now. Oballary and the current Mr. P’s Civics Reader are current favorites.

Super Tuesday hangover

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 17:19:24 GMT

Super Tuesday has come and gone. While it appears to have done what the parties wanted on the Republican side by narrowing the field down to one presumptive winning candidate (though McCain still has a resurgent Huckabee nipping at his heels in the South), the Democrats appear to be no closer to reaching a decision.

Two interesting things I observed locally. First, turnout: according to the numbers reported by the Globe, 18,027 people voted in Arlington (my home town) in the primary. As of 2006, Arlington had 28,022 registered voters. That’s something like 64% of the registered voters turning out for a primary. People are motivated here.

And they’re motivated to do more than build a horse race between two candidates. The Globe’s numbers included a nontrivial number of people who voted for candidates who had already dropped out of the race, including Edwards and Kucinich. While there’s no doubt that a large number of those were people who voted absentee before the candidate withdrew from the race, I have anecdotal evidence that that isn’t all that is going on.

I spoke to an Edwards supporter last night who said that, while he had voted absentee before Edwards withdrew, he would have voted for him anyway and he knew quite a few other Edwards supporters who were planning to do the same. Their reason: they were indifferent between Obama and Clinton, and wanted the party to consider Edwards’s platform issues at the convention, particularly his stance on poverty.

2008 is shaping up to be a very interesting election indeed.

Edwards out. At least until the convention

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:43:32 GMT

John Edwards bowing out of the race is no surprise after South Carolina, and I guess neither is his refusal to endorse a candidate. I think he’s setting himself up as a kingmaker, and unless either Hillary or Obama are particularly persuasive, he’ll probably hold off on an endorsement as long as possible. But popular also-rans don’t always help sway the party’s decision. I’m pretty sure John Kerry’s selection wasn’t influenced by Howard Dean.

On to New Hampshire

Tim Jarrett — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 17:03:56 GMT

Interesting analysis by Josh Marshall at TPM. Summing up: Obama will have a much easier time replicating his success outside Iowa than Huckabee. Man, I hope so.

Good to see that the writers strike did not, in fact, lift Giuliani by depriving America of hearing endless jokes about his love nest on late night TV.

Iowa ♥s Huckabee

Tim Jarrett — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 05:39:24 GMT

According to the AP, Mike Huckabee, Baptist preacher cum politician, is in the lead in Iowa. And I’m pretty sure I won’t be the first to use that headline, but I might edge out the AP by a few hours with it.

Will Huckabee do well nationally, what with his “shut down the IRS, usage tax, theocracy” platform? I hope not, but then, I thought Bush Jr. would fail nationally too. I can’t see him doing especially well in New Hampshire, though. But I’m nothing but thrilled to see him bloodying Mitt Romney’s nose.

And how about Barack Obama? Rarely has a candidate done so well on a promise to do things differently.

Ding, dong...

Tim Jarrett — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 15:57:50 GMT

...the Turd Blossom is out. And don’t let the door hit you on the way out, pal.

But I can’t help but watch to see where he shows up next. Rove has always seemed to me to be the Zelig of the cynical right... which means that he might serve a cipher of a candidate like Fred Thompson, or even Mitt “dog lover” Romney, well.

Of course, the last time I cheered the departure of a hated administration official, the replacement wasn’t a heck of a lot better, so I need to be careful. But the gray skies seem a little brighter today.

An unwelcome victory

Tim Jarrett — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 16:22:24 GMT

Notes about undemocratic, non-representative findings aside, the victory of Mitt Romney in this weekend’s Iowa straw poll is heartening and troubling. Heartening, because it positions as the Republicans’ leading hope a man with no discernible positions, whose chief political experience is four years spent running away from Massachusetts while running for President. As Talking Points Memo points out, it speaks to a lack of enthusiasm for the field. Half the leading Democratic contenders should be able to make mincemeat of this guy.

The disheartening part is that so many damned people in the straw poll voted for this inflated ball of suit and hair. Hasn’t anyone learned anything from watching his performance in Massachusetts? If there is one lesson to be taken away from the last seven years, it is that electing a weak façade of a politician for president means handing over control to the back-room apparatchiks that have been setting up secret prisons, wiretapping America’s citizens, waging war on moisture, and dismantling checks and balances systematically since Cheney and Bush took office. And nothing about Romney’s track record in Massachusetts suggests that he is prepared to say no to the cabal.

I would really like to see both parties giving us a vision for how the country is going to move away from the Bush/Cheney administration’s lunacies. I don’t think that’s going to happen in 2008.

Back. And so is "None of the above"

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 21:41:29 GMT

Having spent a good 17 hours or so spread across two trips in the few days since I posted last, I have still not recovered from my vacation. I think it will take a few days for the soreness to go away from the drive.

My soreness, however, must pale in comparison to the feelings of the average GOP presidential candidate when he learns that his entire field is trailing “None of the Above” for the 2008 nomination. While I would hate to have to run away from W’s war record as a GOP candidate, surely there must be someone in the party who will go out on a limb and do that. If not, the 2008 election will shape up as a referendum on whether we should be in Iraq, rather than what it should be: a contest of ideas on how to get out of the mess we are in, since our need to get out is for all rational people a foregone conclusion. (Via the slickly-redesigned Talking Points Memo.)

Mixed messages

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 05:25:11 GMT

On this two-hundred-thirty-first Fourth of July, it’s good to know that the president is in favor of clemency.

For his pals.

That the Vice President is willing to declare his own personal branch of government to avoid laws governing the executive branch.

They say every nation gets the government they deserve.

Heaven help us.

Small favors

Tim Jarrett — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 23:00:01 GMT

Well, this week our favorite Washington political operative, our Vice President Dick “Go F*ck Yourself” Cheney, did what seven years of liberal activism could not: he removed himself and his office from the executive branch of government. That he did so to assert privilege to flout oversight rules related to the handling of classified documents seems especially appropriate for our most secretive of politicians.

But turnabout is fair play, and the VP uncharacteristically left himself vulnerable. A courageous Democratic member of Congress obliged with one of the finer statements of the newly bipartisan reality of Washington life that I’ve seen since, well, 2000:

Washington, D.C. House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel issued the following statement regarding his amendment to cut funding for the Office of the Vice President from the bill that funds the executive branch. The legislation -- the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill -- will be considered on the floor of the House of Representatives next week.

"The Vice President has a choice to make. If he believes his legal case, his office has no business being funded as part of the executive branch. However, if he demands executive branch funding he cannot ignore executive branch rules. At the very least, the Vice President should be consistent. This amendment will ensure that the Vice President's funding is consistent with his legal arguments. I have worked closely with my colleagues on this amendment and will continue to pursue this measure in the coming days."

Heh. At any rate, if the VP’s office is no longer part of the executive branch, we should be thanking heaven for small favors.

Wildmon on HR 1592: Taking fearmongering to new heights

Tim Jarrett — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 16:09:09 GMT

Ah, Reverend Don Wildmon. Once known for picketing TV shows and comic strips, now turning his attention to hate crime legislation. The latest American Family Association newsletter hysterically claims that new anti-hate-crime legislation in front of the House (HR 1592) and Senate (S 1105) would make it illegal to preach against homosexuality.

The actual text of the bill, in fact, says that that’s not what the bill trying to do. Section 8 says that nothing in the bill “shall be construed to prohibit any expressive conduct protected from legal prohibition by, or any activities protected by the free speech or free exercise clauses of, the First Amendment to the Constitution.” The whole bill targets violent felonies causing bodily injury that are motivated by prejudice. If the Reverend Wildmon would spend more time reading and less time picketing, he might have picked up on the distinction.

Getting to a six-figure sinecure in one easy step

Tim Jarrett — Sat, 26 May 2007 02:40:27 GMT

Good to know that one can go from a legislative aide position to a federal immigration judgeship on the strength of one’s ability to riot in corridors pretending to be a grassroots protester. Yes, I’m talking about the poster child for the problems at DOJ, Garry Malphrus, whose fast track to success started when he participated in the infamous Brooks Brothers Riot during the Florida recount in 2000. Now it looks like Malphrus was just one of the recipients of the administration’s impressive, and institutionalized, cronyism: according to Monica Goodling, for several years now, “Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) had provided guidance some years earlier indicating that Immigration Judge appointments were not subject to the civil service rules applicable to other career positions.”

In other words, the administration is using one of the most politically hot positions in the justice department as a way to repay political favors. And I do mean repay: an annual salary of $113,904 is nothing to sneeze at.

Is it any wonder that the cries for impeachment of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales are crescendoing?

Fragging the Republican Leadership

Tim Jarrett — Sun, 13 May 2007 04:45:23 GMT

It’s interesting how “open declarations of war” in the blogosphere sometimes have a way of starting something big. From my experience, it took kicking the rhetoric up to the declaration-of-war level to get people talking honestly about the rights of customers not to be treated as criminals.

Now comes this: An Open Declaration of War Against The House Republican Leadership. It’s interesting enough to contemplate voters rebelling against the Republicans who continue to reward corrupt members of their ranks, but this is something else: this is RedState.com, the right-wing blogging site.

And while it’s fun to watch the good old-fashioned fragging going on, I have to wonder how many more of these events it will take before the GOP breaks ranks in a serious way and re-aligns without the dead weight that is currently dragging the party down.

One more thought...

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 17:09:43 GMT

...regarding the Cluetrainfulness of the Blue State Digital folks vs. Salesforce.com’s campaign management toolkit. Does what Blue State Digital enables count as what Doc Searls calls vendor relationship management? After all, it’s about voters taking the process into their own hands and starting to drive the campaign activities of candidates that interest them.

Looked at this way, the contrast between the two approaches becomes clearer. Salesforce sells VRM (Voter Relationship Management), the political analog of customer relationship management), while Blue State Digital provides CRM (Candidate Relationship Management), the political analog of vendor relationship management. Confused yet?

SalesForce: trouble for Blue State Digital? Don't bank on it

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 04:56:34 GMT

CNet: Salesforce.com throws its hat into political ring. Salesforce.com, already a player in the online CRM market, is marketing a custom edition of its application to manage political campaigns.

Web software as a service in the political market? Sounds a lot like the business plan of Blue State Digital, right? Except of course that it’s an entirely different play. Salesforce’s application focuses on tracking donors, managing campaign budgets, and reporting to the FEC. Blue State Digital does campaign strategy and grass roots enablement—and taking online donations.

The difference appears to be that Salesforce is taking a top down approach, assuming that the campaign is in control and driving the get-out-the-vote events and other campaign activities. Blue State Digital’s approach assumes that its job is to get the voters riled up, harness their energy and ideas, and enable them to identify viable candidates for office and organize their own campaign activities around the candidates of their choice. Big difference.

In fact, kind of the difference between traditional marketing and Cluetrain marketing.

Oh, and the other big difference? Salesforce’s product, Campaignforce, is in use by Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate who has made his own governorship of Massachusetts into a punchline and retreated from every position he took to win the state. The products by Blue State Digital are in use by the DNC, Democracy for America, and Harry Reid—you know, the folks that led the way to the Democrats regaining power in both houses of Congress last November.

I do have to give credit where due, though: SalesForce’s integration with Google Maps and YouTube sounds cool.

Isn’t that convenient?

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 05:25:27 GMT

Plan for a cover-up:

Get a job at the White House, on the taxpayers’ dime, doing hard political work for the RNC.
Send over 90% of your work email through RNC servers rather than government servers, thus (apparently) evading government document retention laws and thereby ducking future prosecution for any acts one might commit.
Realize that you screwed up, since emails sent on an RNC email account cannot possibly be covered by claims of executive privilege.
Today, conveniently, White House "loses" sensitive emails sent on illegal RNC server.

Hmm.

Overreaching at the Department of Symbols

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 16:20:36 GMT

You know, when Doonesbury had a character in the 70s become President Carter’s secretary of symbolism (cardigan, thermostat, etc.), I thought it was merely clever hyperbole. I see now I was wrong, though apparently the scope is only the USDA Forest Service’s symbols. Which include, heaven help us, the Junior Snow Rangers.

And Woodsy Owl. Who has been put on a shape-up or ship-out diet, apparently. I mean, seriously. Look at the owl on the left versus the owl on the right. Which one looks less threatening? Which one looks like a child predator? “Give a hoot,” indeed.

Twas a snowy day

Tim Jarrett — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 15:32:01 GMT

Finally, snow in the Northeast. It’s coming down steadily right now but is a little light. I have to fly to Columbus this afternoon, so hopefully it doesn’t get too heavy between now and then.

In the meantime, I’m left pondering the encounter between Senator-elect Webb and Lame Duck — er, I mean President Bush in which the president asked how Webb’s son, who is serving in Iraq, was doing, and Webb responded, “I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President.” Bush’s response? “I didn’t ask that. I asked how your boy was doing.” Tin Man takes a cut at the etiquette of the situation, as does the New York Times, but for me it boils down to this: you’re asking the parent of a soldier who is in a hostile country about his son. What parent isn’t going to say, “I’d like him at home”?

And if Webb’s response counts as uncivil in a time when the other side has been busy jamming phones and inventing controversies about the patriotism of legless veterans who question the war’s execution? Well, God help us then, because it will be a snowy day in Hell before we can have an honest debate about this war with these people. And by these people I mean both the politicians and the press who cover them.

Don’t worry about the government

Tim Jarrett — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 04:09:21 GMT

David Byrne says he was mysteriously left off the voter rolls last Tuesday. He writes, “As someone who doesn’t trust this government one inch I wouldn’t put it past them.” I guess that settles some questions about the interpretation of some of his earlier songs.

Byrne goes on to write about some things that have challenged me about this country recently, the need for checks and balances and the country’s emergent “bully culture.” I have coworkers who shrug about the administration’s endorsement of torture and its dismissal of habeas corpus. I think he’s right that there is a lot of rebuilding to do in the country as a whole.

Meet the new country...

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 17:17:43 GMT

...same as the old country, with a few important differences.

Yes, the Democrats have taken the House and appear to be within reach of the Senate (assuming Jim Webb’s lead survives the recount). Yes, a Democrat (albeit a former NFL quarterback) took a House seat in western North Carolina (sorry, Uncle Forrest). Yes, anger at the President and the Iraq war have unified the country.

But those issues alone don’t mean that the country has gone progressive. Virginia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Wisconsin all passed amendments making gay marriages unconstitutional; the Virginia law even curbed the ability of businesses to recognize domestic partnerships.

If this election was a victory for the Democrats, it was a vindication for Howard Dean, whose 50 state strategy put safe races in play and swung enough house seats to shift the balance of power.

But compare the Democratic house victory yesterday to the Republicans in 1994. As bankrupt as the Contract with America ultimately became, it was based on coherent ideology and gave a clear direction for the country. Where is the Democratic direction for the next two years? I’m a supporter, and I don’t hear anyone articulating a vision of the role of government, the rights of humanity, constitutional limits on the power of the executive, America’s role in the world. We need the party to step up and put those stakes in the ground.

The Democrats have to show they can lead. But right now I’ll settle for our regaining a voice—and power—in the process.

Nothing odder

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 07:31:22 GMT

...than watching election returns from a Las Vegas hotel room.

Someone asked me who I was pulling for in the elections today. I said, “I’m pulling for habeas corpus.”

Maybe we’ll be able to welcome back that old friend in coming months. We hoped for the Senate back but we’ll definitely take the House.

Provided, of course, that the Democrats act decisively to curb the excesses of the administration. My one plea to the party: reverse the mistakes of the last twelve months; strip the administration’s power to suspend habeas corpus and to impose martial law; and return to fiscal discipline. I want to see all of those things happen, as much as I hate to say it, before we witch-hunt through the administration for illegal acts. We desperately need to return checks and balances on our constitutional powers before we spend all our political capital going after the evil slimelords in the executive branch.

Waiting for the votes to come in

Tim Jarrett — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 18:58:56 GMT

I hate that I’m on the road this week, so I won’t be able to watch the election coverage from the comfort of my own home. But I have to believe that there will be somewhere I’ll be able to watch here in Las Vegas. Not that I want to place any bets on the outcome. This year’s race for the Senate is a real nailbiter.

Two links for the morning. One is an eloquent post from Zalm about the challenges of looking at this race from a Christian perspective, especially in light of the Ted Haggard implosion. The other is a reminder that the Electoral Vote Predictor site, which takes nationwide polling data to predict election outcomes, has been retooled to predict the composition of the US Senate. It’ll be interesting to see if this year’s polling data is any more accurate than two years ago, when the site was predicting Kerry/Edwards in a win for the presidency.

Just curious...

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 12:42:49 GMT

When did the scandal about Mark Foley taking advantage of Congressional pages turn from a scandal about pandering and corruption of minors and become a scandal about his sexuality?

Probably about the same time he became a Democrat (thanks, Bill O’Reilly).

Free clue: the issue should be his handling of a public trust and his hypocrisy, not his sexuality. In this country, in our legal system, and even in our morality, I say we punish the act and not the person.

Losing the war on civilization

Tim Jarrett — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 22:22:28 GMT

The legislation that passed the senate yesterday, which legalizes torture, suspends habeas corpus, strips judicial oversight, and includes war crimes immunity in an effort to turn this proud nation into a Potemkin democracy, is in my opinion the saddest moment of our national history post-9/11. My favorite analyses:

New York Times: “ Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.”
Salon: “ The Senate's rush to judgment underscores the dangers of negotiating with the Bush administration once the White House takes an extreme position. The three GOP dealmakers (Graham, John McCain and Senate Armed Service Committee chairman John Warner) succeeded in their effort to get the president to retreat from his deliberate attempt to eviscerate the Geneva Conventions and undermine the Supreme Court decision in the Hamdan case. The Senate Republican troika were aided in their headline-making efforts to outlaw torture by an army of former military lawyers and such high-profile recruits as former Secretary of State Colin Powell. But history may judge this to be a Pyrrhic victory. In exchange, the White House was allowed to blatantly rewrite the pending legislation in regard to habeas corpus and the definition of enemy combatants.”
From the Salmon: “These prisoners will have no legal recourse to challenge their imprisonment, and should the president ever decide to bring them before a military tribunal, they can be convicted using secret evidence and evidence obtained through coercion or hearsay. And since we can’t afford accountability while we’re at war, we’ve also made these changes retroactive, to absolve the executive branch of past criminal acts.”
The Baltimore Chronicle & Tribune: “The Republican senators flinched, and in last week's so-called "compromise" chose Bush over the Constitution. In doing so, they turned their backs on a rule of law that stretches back over nearly eight centuries to an epic moment in 1215 on a meadow by the River Thames in the United Kingdom.”
Alexander Hamilton: “The establishment of the writ of habeas corpus ... are perhaps greater securities to liberty and republicanism than any it [the Constitution] contains. ...[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny. ...To bereave a man of life, ... or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole nation; but confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore A MORE DANGEROUS ENGINE of arbitrary government.”
Thomas Jefferson: “... trial by juries in all cases, no suspensions of the habeas corpus... These are fetters against doing evil, which no honest government should decline.”

Well, we’re now about a month from the accountability moment, as Bush called the 2004 election. I think it’s time that all Americans who care about whether we preserve the principles on which this country was founded stand up and show the Congress what we think of this hollowing out of our democratic heritage.

A rare thing indeed

Tim Jarrett — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 14:54:06 GMT

Boston Globe (yesterday): Panel OK's 2 rival wiretapping bills. Ok, I’m very unhappy of this trend of the senate to roll over for the Administration’s power-mad citizen surveillance schemes. “What, the covert warrantless wiretaps were illegal? Well, let’s just make ’em legal!!”

But here’s the rare thing, at least where Virginia senator John Warner is concerned: I have a small amount of new respect for a few of those senators, namely the senators from the Senate Armed Services Committee (McCain, John Warner, Lindsey Graham) who announced their continued opposition to proposals from the White House that limit an defendant’s access to evidence if it is classified. I can think of no system more ripe for abuse than one in which the Executive Branch collects evidence without notifying the judicial branch through a warrant application; classifies the evidence; then uses it to convict someone with no opportunities for challenge.

Overall the picture out of judiciary as painted by this article looks like total disarray and a complete lack of inclination for the senate to fall in line behind Bush’s police state measures. Thank goodness, democracy is messy.

Five years (and change)

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 12:24:22 GMT

I didn’t post anything yesterday about September 11. It’s not that I didn’t think about it. How could I not? I was in Cambridge, just a few miles from where I live now, when I first saw the news on Yahoo. I am constantly surrounded by reminders of that day, whether the profound (the silent presence of a 9/11 widow in our soprano section, the memory of Doug, the skies over the Charles that were so eerily silent that week) or the mundane (long lines and byzantine security procedures at the airport, five years of online saber rattling by both sides).

But I cannot participate in the sanctification of September 11. And I cannot give the administration a free pass for continuing to drag us into unrelated conflicts in memory of that day. Too much wrong has already been done in the name of this day.

Ironically, I’m flying (on business) for much of this week, so I don’t really have the time or energy to say more. But this column by H. D. S. Greenway in the Globe, calling the administration on their policies, is a good start.

We will not walk in fear, one of another.

Tim Jarrett — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 15:31:13 GMT

Funny what happens when you’re out of the country for a week. I totally missed Donald Rumsfeld going off the deep end and claiming that critics of the Bush administration’s conduct of the war were propping up fascism. Huh?

It’s a type of criticism we’ve heard from this administration and its toadies before: we must live in fear. We must not question the president, regardless of the evidence; to do so is treasonous. It’s the same message that got a pass from the American people for the last five years.

How astonishing, then, that MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann was able to turn Rumsfeld’s syllogism around on him, comparing Bush’s government to Neville Chamberlain’s in their certainty of their command of the situation and impugning the integrity of their chief critic, Winston Churchill. It’s six and a half minutes of some of the finest display of journalistic integrity and courage since Edward R. Murrow, whom Olbermann invokes to good effect:

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.

Indeed. See also Slate’s roundup of reaction from both sides of the blogosphere.

Culture jamming as patriotism

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 05:15:25 GMT

I don’t know that there’s anything more inspirational on the anniversary of the post-Katrina disaster as this prank by the Yes Men, who impersonated HUD officials to tell a crowd of contractors and media in New Orleans that HUD would be refocusing its efforts on getting people back into their homes, rather than knocking the homes down and letting new contracts for mixed-income flats. Read the article. It, combined with the constantly excellent reporting from the New Yorker on the disaster and reconstruction (much of which is missing from the archive link), ought to raise some questions.

Duh: Bloggers "don't pass the maturity test"

Tim Jarrett — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 18:21:06 GMT

Interesting article in the New York Times about the impact of blogs on the Lieberman/Lamont primary: In Race, Bloggers Throw Curves and Spitballs. The title should tell you what’s coming: hand-wringing about the role of blogs in political discourse, combined with laments about the maturity of blog writers and a harkening back to the good old days when the campaign controlled “the message.” In fact, the second page contains what is perhaps the perfect quotation, from a pro-Lieberman blogger:

Mr. Gerstein complained that for all the reasoned arguments by some bloggers, too many resort to crude humor and angry diatribes that “don’t pass the maturity test.”

“Too much of what passes for political commentary in the blogosphere is pretty juvenile and petulant, and that’s not the way you persuade people,” he said. “If the blogging community is going to have a real impact, they’re going to have to have a reckoning soon about their place in the real political world, because in that world there’s a caricature of them as being dominated by crazies.”

You can quote me on this: that’s a bunch of sanctimonious bullshit.

First of all, the quotation shows a profound misunderstanding of the nature of blogging and bloggers. There is no “dominating” the blogosphere, just as there is no controlling its speech. Blogging is free speech. Everyone is free to say whatever they want to say in a blog about any political race. The campaign can wring its hands, but the truth is that people have opinions that aren’t in sync with the message that the campaigns want to project. Really, the last thing that the people who have opinions about politics want is to have those opinions subjugated to the message of the campaign. That has never worked, from the Roman forum through the water cooler, and it won’t work in the blogosphere. If I want to state an opinion in the blogosphere, I’m free to do so.

In fact, let’s state two. First: Joe Lieberman’s argument that questioning the administration’s actions in Iraq is equivalent to acting against the country’s interests isso servile, craven, reprehensible and counter to the interests of democracy that they constitute a dereliction of his duty as a senator. Second. Ned Lamont is coasting pretty well on anti-Lieberman anger among the base and has a long way to go before he can prove to me that a Senator Lamont won’t be the new boss, same as the old boss.

See how easy that is? It’s speech. It’s free. And if you don’t like it, respond in kind. Don’t try to silence me.

Finally, I think the most fundamental misunderstanding here is the conflation of anti-Lieberman blogs with organized opposition. While some of them may well fall into that camp, I’m pretty sure there are a bunch—like me—who are just citizens with opinions and a publishing tool. And when you look at it in that light, it becomes a different argument. Consider:

...for all the reasoned arguments by some voters, too many resort to crude humor and angry diatribes that “don’t pass the maturity test.”

“Too much of what passes for political commentary in the electorate is pretty juvenile and petulant, and that’s not the way you persuade people,” he said. “If the voting community is going to have a real impact, they’re going to have to have a reckoning soon about their place in the real political world, because in that world there’s a caricature of them as being dominated by crazies.” [Emphasized words substituted to prove the point]

Bottom line: the bloggers are citizens. You should respond to them accordingly. In the final analysis, the best thing to do is to respond with persuasive speech, and there hasn’t been anything from either the Lieberman campaign or his independent supporters that persuades me that he’s worth keeping around.

Here comes the science (er, not)

Tim Jarrett — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 19:27:25 GMT

I got a glimpse into the mind of global warming deniers today, as I was waiting for my lunch in a pizza shop near my office. Abutting a story about The ~~Independent~~ Republic of California doing a deal with the UK to create an international market in greenhouse emissions (not itself a bad thing) was a reader reaction that said (effectively) “Carbon dioxide has nothing to do with global warming. The sun has been getting stronger since 1905.”

Um. OMGWTFBBQ?

If anyone doubts that America enjoys a multiplicity of belief systems, look no further. Somewhere in the vast heartland of the country is a guy who believes with all his heart (and with no scientific evidence) that we have nothing to do with the global rise in temperature, melting icebergs, etc. Nope. It’s that pesky sun.

Why?

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 05:34:35 GMT

I’d be really curious to hear someone attempt to explain, without going to Biblical sources and speculations about when life begins, why I should agree with the President’s veto of the stem cell research bill. Because honestly, there seem to be far more articles written from the other side that are a lot more convincing to me.

I find appalling the posturing about the morality of working with cells that were created in petri dishes that would otherwise be discarded. I find it especially appalling when it comes from the mouths of people who think it’s OK to vote on someone else’s marriage or to send our young people to die in Iraq on the basis of trumped up intelligence.

230 years young, and still controversial

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 16:54:03 GMT

In the echo of the Supreme Court’s resounding affirmation last week of the rights of individuals to a fair trial, of the limits of the power of the executive, and of a system of checks and balances—in other words, the principles on which our country was founded, ill-defined war or no—this 230th anniversary of the independence of our country seems especially dear. So I like to turn back to the source of much of that dearness, as well as to look around for some other words of inspiration. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in the last letter of his life, ten days before his death:

May it [the Declaration of Independence] be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.

The emphasis, of course, is mine.

Buffett: Estate tax repeal "counter to democracy"

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 16:09:10 GMT

I find it interesting that one of the wealthiest men in America thinks that the estate tax giveaway currently being debated by Congress is a bad idea. After all, I thought the whole point of the estate tax repeal was to benefit the wealthy. But if the wealthiest Americans think that it’s a bad idea, then who thinks it’s a good idea?

And just how bad an idea does Buffett think the estate tax repeal is? There have been various quotations from him over the past few days that suggest that he thinks it’s a very bad idea indeed:

NY Times, A Gift Between Friends: “As for any thought he might have had in giving the bulk of his billions to his three children, Mr. Buffett was characteristically blunt. ‘I don’t believe in dynastic wealth,’ he said, calling those who grow up in wealthy circumstances ‘members of the lucky sperm club.’”
NY Times, Buffett’s Billions Will Aid in the Fight Against Disease: “Mr. Buffett was scathing yesterday in describing his feelings about estate taxes, which the Bush administration is trying to kill. The ability of rich men to pass on ‘dynastic wealth’ to their grandchildren is offensive to the American tradition of meritocracy, he said. He gets particularly upset at his country club, he said, hearing members complain about welfare mothers getting food stamps ’while they are trying to leave their children a more-than-lifetime-supply of food stamps and are substituting a trust officer for a welfare officer.’”
Boston Globe, Buffett gives billions, hits bid to repeal the estate tax: “‘I can’t think of anything that’s more counter to a democracy that dynastic wealth,’ he said. ‘The idea that you win the lottery the moment you’re born: It just strikes me as outrageous.’”
CommonDreams.org (from 2001), Dozens of the Wealthy Join to Fight Estate Tax: “ Mr. Buffett said repealing the estate tax ‘would be a terrible mistake,’ the equivalent of ‘choosing the 2020 Olympic team by picking the eldest sons of the gold-medal winners in the 2000 Olympics.’”

Fitzmas: presents for bad little boys as well

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 01:36:14 GMT

Looks like we may have to put the institution of Fitzmas as a national holiday on hold: Leak Counsel Won't Charge Rove, Lawyer Announces. The thing about this, after Rove’s five grand jury appearances, is that I’m not sure it changes anyone’s mind about his innocence or guilt; it only shows that Pat Fitzgerald couldn’t prove his involvement sufficiently to send him to trial.

Time to save PBS and NPR again

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 20:52:11 GMT

Looks like the majority Congress is back with a big knife for Elmo again: the House Appropriations subcommittee on health and education funding voted to whack 23% from the PBS and NPR budgets next year. Wish they would have thought of the “economic responsibility” argument when they were handing out tax cuts like candy.

Sign the MoveOn petition if you feel (as I do) that noncommercial broadcasting is still important and relevant, and worth paying for.

The Decider

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 02 May 2006 22:56:02 GMT

Thanks to Isis, formerly Fury, I’m reminded to point to this Boston Globe article about Bush’s signing statements, in which the president pledges to ignore parts of the laws that are inconvenient to him—the same laws that he is sworn to uphold. It makes some astounding points about the scope (number of signing statements issued in Bush’s presidency: 750, or about 150 a year), audacity (Bush’s signing statements nullified concessions that the administration made to Congress to get bills passed and have systematically eliiminated virtually every congressional reporting requirement for the executive branch that has been passed by Congress in the last five years), and far reaching implications (not only is Bush claiming the power to (un)make laws, by doing it under the rubric of “consistency with the law and with his duties as commander in chief,” he usurps the power of the Supreme Court to interpret the law as well).

If there was ever evidence needed of a pattern of behavior by George W. Bush that called for impeachment, I think this is it.

Like sand through the hourglass...

Tim Jarrett — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 21:02:34 GMT

...go the Bush Administration veterans. Last week it was Andy Card, today it’s Scott McClellan. And buried by McClellan’s resignation, a note that Karl Rove is stepping away from his policy coordinator position to return to his core competency of ~~oozing slime~~ political strategy oversight for the upcoming 2006 elections.

I’d love to see what the internal death pool looks like at the White House. It’ll be interesting to see who else steps up to Josh Bolten’s call to get out of the pool.

Great coverage on this issue in Talking Points Memo, of course, including a note that Turd Blossom’s replacement as policy coordinator was involved in the 2000 Recount Riot in Florida, also known as the Brooks Brothers Riot. Also like the observation that if Tony Snow, Fox News radio host, takes over the White House press secretary job, it would be “more like an interdepartmental transfer than a job change.”

Ding, dong, DeLay

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 20:53:47 GMT

New York Times: DeLay Decides to End Career in Congress. That’s one of those “fair and balanced” headlines. The reality is probably closer to the spin in the email today from Howard Dean to the Democratic faithful: “This comes after Friday’s news that a key former DeLay aide pleaded guilty to conspiracy and agreed to cooperate with the ongoing federal investigation of DeLay’s money-for-influence machine.”

Someday someone will write the story of Tom DeLay’s fall from power, from the money laundering indictments and the insane steps that the House Republicans took to keep him in power then (including the passage of the DeLay Rule, which allowed indicted Congressional leaders to continue to hold their posts), and concluding with the Jack Abramoff saga. And they won’t be able to write about it without using the word blog more times than in any political biography ever written—with the possible exception of Trent Lott’s.

My favorite quotation from the article: “‘Our party will continue to succeed, because we are the party of ideas,’ Mr. Bush said” (emphasis added). No comment.

Bush: I'll obey the law if I feel like it

Tim Jarrett — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 17:19:33 GMT

I wonder what it’s like to be in President Bush’s world, a world unconstrained by checks and balances or, apparently, reality. That’s where it seems our president spends his days, anyway, based on this Boston Globe analysis of the President’s “signing statement” for the Patriot Act renewal.

In the signing statement, Bush (or his staff) wrote that “The executive branch shall construe the provisions . . . that call for furnishing information to entities outside the executive branch . . . in a manner consistent with the president’s constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch and to withhold information” (emphasis added). This point was made in response to a requirement in the law that the FBI notify Congress within a certain period of time if they have used the expanded powers under the act.

Of course, on the one hand, the president has to make a statement like this, or else risk compromising his position that he doesn’t have to tell anyone about secret wiretaps. But on the other hand, it makes you wonder what the president believes does constrain his activities, if anything.

Bode Miller style

Tim Jarrett — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 04:30:40 GMT

We are having a great time watching the Winter Olympics here. Unfortunately I slept through Bode Miller’s qualifying rounds this afternoon. Background: when we were in Austria, we told our German hosts that our skiing would be conducted “Bode Miller style,” and they obliged with rounds of jagertee and gluhwein on the slopes. Wonder how Bode is feeling today, and how he’ll be feeling after tonight?

Interesting too, that Google is going Bode Miller style. If you search on Bode’s name, or the name of any other Winter Olympian, you get his biography and the schedule of events in which he competes.

"Poppycock": the administration's wiretapping rationale

Tim Jarrett — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 20:40:30 GMT

Hooblogger Joshua at WaxWorks provides a pointer into the most entertaining quote from constitutional scholar Lawrence Tribe’s response to a request from Rep. John Conyers regarding the legality of the Bush administration’s wiretapping its own citizens. The relevant part of Tribe’s opinion:

If [Supreme Court case] Hamdi [v. Rumsfeld] treated the AUMF as an “explicit congressional authorization” ... for imprisoning an enemy combatant despite AUMF’s failure to mention “detention” or “imprisonment” in so many words, the argument goes, the AUMF must be read to impliedly authorize the far less severe intrusion of merely eavesdropping on our terrorist enemies, and on members of organizations that indirectly support them. ... Surely, then, now that Al Qaeda has launched a war against us, and now that Congress has responded with the functional equivalent of a declaration of war in the AUMF, even the entirely innocent American citizen in Chicago or Cleveland whose phone conversation with a member of an Al Qaeda-supportive organization happens to be ensnared by the eavesdropping being undertaken by the NSA cannot be heard to complain that no statute specifically authorized the Executive to capture her telephone communications and e-mails as such...

The technical legal term for that, I believe, is poppycock.

...The inescapable conclusion is that the AUMF did not implicitly authorize what the FISA expressly prohibited. It follows that the presidential program of surveillance at issue here is a violation of the separation of powers—as grave an abuse of executive authority as I can recall ever having studied.

The further this administration goes into defending the indefensible, the worse the case becomes. I am starting to concur with Tin Man that we may want to start thinking about the appropriate constitutional response for such gross malfeasance.

For the record....

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 17:13:09 GMT

I did not tell Bob Woodward that Valerie Plame was an undercover agent. I figure that, as long as we in the blogosphere all come clean, and further vow that we're not putting ourselves at risk of perjury to do so, we can narrow it down. I like the suspect that Michael Bérubé puts the finger on, but of course there are others. (Just don't tell Pat!)

Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva... oh never mind.

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 21:48:55 GMT

CNN: “Can I quit now?” FEMA chief wrote as Katrina raged. I knew I wouldn’t be the first to jump on the Congressional report of the analysis of the emails sent by Michael “Brownie” Brown during the Katrina crisis, but I couldn’t resist. But the coverage on CNN—“Humor is a stress relief, so we understand”—is pretty damned reprehensible too.

How can one look at the following exchange and not weep in rage:

Marty Bahamonde, FEMA employee on ground in New Orleans: Sir, I know that you know the situation is past critical. Here are some things you might not know. Hotels are kicking people out, thousands gathering in the streets with no food or water. Hundreds still being rescued from homes.

The dying patients at the DMAT tent being medivac. Estimates are many will die within hours. Evacuation in process. Plans developing for dome evacuation but hotel situation adding to problem. We are out of food and running out of water at the dome, plans in works to address the critical need.
FEMA staff is OK and holding own. DMAT staff working in deplorable conditions. The sooner we can get the medical patients out, the sooner we can get them out.

Phone connectivity impossible.

Michael “Brownie” Brown, Presidential-appointed director of FEMA: Thanks for the update. Anything specific I need to do or tweak?

On the Passion of Scooter Libby

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 21:29:02 GMT

I don’t have a lot to say about Scooter’s indictment and subsequent resignation last week, except to note two things.

Number one, Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo had Scooter nailed as being involved in the leak about two years ago, as you can tell if you read my transcript from the first BloggerCon (complete with my rushed misspelling of “Libbey” as livey). That lends some credence to recent complaints, from Salon and elsewhere, that the fact that the indictments are only coming now means that the coverup worked. Maddening.

The good news is that this is only the beginning. With the investigation still open and the Sword of Damocles hanging over Turd Blossom’s head, there’s still plenty of room for this indictment to become a big party. We can only hope.

Well, that was a surprise

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 20:09:19 GMT

For someone (like me) interested in the Bush administration’s ongoing troubles, it was a bad morning to spend in a dress rehearsal. The withdrawal of Harriet Miers’ nomination for the Supreme Court signals more troubles on the horizon and a further diminution of the President’s mojo. Even if the withdrawal came as no surprise.

And it should come as no surprise at all: Salon's War Room points out that columnist Charles Krauthammer practically scripted the withdrawal and the reason for it in a post on Townhall.com last Friday. For a man whose biography brags that he found Stephen Hawking’s popular books on cosmology “entirely incomprehensible,” Krauthammer nailed this one on the head. The adminstration and the Senate, in deadlocking over the release of documentation from Miers’ tenure in the White House, found a way to force the withdrawal of a nominee who was widely seen, on all sides of the political spectrum, as unfit to serve in the nation's highest court. A neat trick: by quibbling over matters of executive privilege, we can still pretend that the emperor has clothes and that he has not shown himself incapable of finding them.

Rosa Parks

Tim Jarrett — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 19:48:37 GMT

Rosa Parks’ world seems a million miles away. It’s hard to believe it was (just) less than fifty years ago that segregation was commonplace, that someone could be arrested for refusing to move to the back of the bus, that we accepted unequal treatment for citizens of our country based on the color of their skin.

Of course, in some ways, it still seems very real.

And it’s more apparent than ever that there is still a lot of work to do. That we have barely addressed the deep social injustices and divides that were reflected in the laws that Ms. Parks helped to erase, much less the economic factors that continue to put the lie to the image of the US as a land of prosperity and opportunity.

But if there is one lesson to be learned from Rosa Parks, it is this: sometimes even causes that have decades of rising social pressure on their side need a single person to stand up—or, in this case, keep her seat. One person doesn’t change the world, but one person can be the pivot on which the world starts to change.

(I decided to finish writing this even though I think David Weinberger has said it better.)

The Wilkerson transcript

Tim Jarrett — Thu, 20 Oct 2005 21:21:38 GMT

Financial Times: Transcript: Colonel Wilkerson on US foreign policy. Don’t let the title throw you—this is one of the most astonishing insider critiques of the administration, and of the execution of US foreign policy generally, that I have read yet—and it’s only a partial transcript. The summary: a “cabal” of insiders led by Cheney and Rumsfeld has been making foreign policy decisions in secret, with disastrous results when the decisions go to the bureaucracy for implementation, and that we are all screwed as a result. But the actual transcript is far more entertaining. As Salon notes, “Wilkerson has a long working relationship with Powell and was often thought to be someone who would say aloud what Powell thought himself but was too cautious to reveal. If that's what was happening Wednesday, the former secretary of state has a lot to get off his chest.” Yep:

And I would say that we have courted disaster, in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran, generally with regard to domestic crises like Katrina, Rita and I could go on back, we haven’t done very well on anything like that in a long time. And if something comes along that is truly serious, truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence. Read it some time again...

Under Secretary of Defense Douglas [Feith], whom most of you probably know Tommy Frank said was stupidest blankety blank man in the world. He was. Let me testify to that. He was. Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man.
And yet, and yet, after the Secretary of State agrees to a $400 billion department, rather than a $30 billion department, having control, at least in the immediate post-war period in Iraq, this man is put in charge. Not only is he put in charge, he is given carte blanche to tell the State Department to go screw themselves in a closet somewhere.

Wrap-up of press coverage at The Washington Note by Steve Clemons, who was instrumental in organizing the talk at the New America Foundation (full video is also posted at that link).