Republican Newspeak Zones

Dave Lindorff had a terrific piece in Salon the other day about the so-called "First Amendment zones" that are being deployed wherever President Bush and Vice President Cheney appear these days:

Keeping dissent invisible [Premium story]

What is remarkable about these "zones," however, is that -- in contravention of their name -- they are actually about suppressing citizens' free-speech rights. While most Americans believe the entire country is a "First Amendment zone", the Bush White House is herding its opponents into fenced-off areas well away from anywhere the president might see or hear them, which means there is no interaction between them and Bush for the media to record. Some of them are set up as far as two miles away.

The Newspeakish name given these zones is especially ironic, considering that one of the principal features of the zones is their content orientation. (For those interested, the Supreme Court has consistently ruled against hate-speech laws, for example, because of their "content orientation", which the courts have found violates the First Amendment.) In case after case, it is clear that pro-Bush supporters are given the traditional treatment of being allowed to voice their opinions anywhere they like, and as close to Bush as they choose. Anti-Bush demonstrators, however, are being herded into fenced-off areas.

As Lindorff reports:

At a hearing in county court, Det. John Ianachione, testifying under oath, said that the Secret Service had instructed local police to herd into the enclosed so-called free-speech area "people that were there making a statement pretty much against the president and his views." Explaining further, he added: "If they were exhibiting themselves as a protester, they were to go in that area."

Mind you, this doesn't necessarily appear to be the Secret Service's idea. This is something coming from the White House (and frankly has Karl Rove's fingerprints all over it). Lindorff writes:

Wolf also raises the possibility that White House operatives may be behind the moves to isolate and remove protesters from presidential events. He says that while he cannot recall specifically whether they were present with the Secret Service advance team before last year's presidential Labor Day visit, "I think they are sometimes part of" the planning process. The Secret Service declined to comment on this assertion, saying it would not discuss "security arrangements." The White House declined to comment on what role the White House staff plays in deciding how protesters at presidential events should be handled, referring all calls to the Secret Service.

Asked specifically whether White House officials have been behind requests to have protesters segregated and removed from the vicinity of presidential events, White House spokesman Allen Abney said, "No comment." But he added, "The White House staff and the Secret Service work together on a lot of things." While the Secret Service won't confirm that it is behind the pattern of tight constraints placed on protesters at public appearances by Bush and Cheney, the ACLU claims that mounting evidence suggests that this is exactly what is going on.

It is clear, in fact, that suppression of dissent in this fashion is purely a Republican motif. The Secret Service did not conduct itself in this fashion during Bill Clinton's tenure.

When did "First Amendment zones" first appear? The earliest form of them, unsurprisingly, was at George W. Bush's inauguration.

Though they went largely ignored by media, there were thousands of protesters in Washington that day, making it (fittingly) the largest Inaugural protest since 1973. Indeed, of the 300,000 estimated to be present, well over two-thirds of them were there to protest Bush's illegitimate ascension to the presidency.

My friend Maia Cowan was present, and she recalls that "the protest groups were split among different venues; they weren't allowed to have one big protest in one big place. (My guess was that the president-to-be didn't want anybody seeing how many protesters were there.) There were attempts to keep the protestors away from the parade route, including penning people up so that they couldn't even go back the way they came when they were blocked from going forward toward the parade."

Maia has collected a bunch of links at her Web site, Failure is Impossible, related to the First Amendment zones.

It appears that their first actual use was in Billings, Mont. , at a March 26, 2001, Bush appearance in which Yellowstone County sheriff’s deputies "set aside an area for protesters about 100 feet from the box-office window in front of the building. The area was away from the path of most people entering Metra to hear the president."

The first time the name "First Amendment zone" appears to have been used was in Tampa, Florida, on June 4, 2001, when protesters were fenced in two miles away from Bush's appearance. Three people were arrested for violating police directives to remain behind the fence.

And since then, they have been deployed in nearly every public appearance which Bush has made, including during his fleet fundraising visit here in Seattle two months ago.

Because they are purely a Republican enterprise, the use of these zones should become an issue in the 2004 election, if Democrats are smart about it.

I'm presuming that Democrats will not ask the Secret Service to set up "First Amendment zones" for their appearances or in any way try to separate protesters from supporters. (If they do, they'll deserve to lose.) It is likewise nearly certain that Bush and Cheney will use them.

And every Democratic candidate should point that out at every opportunity they get.

The Confederate flag in the Northwest

From my neck of the woods, so to speak ...

One arrest over alleged racial slur at meeting

BELLINGHAM, Wash. – A 14-year-old girl was arrested Monday and accused of yelling a racial slur and threatening to hang a classmate during a meeting at Meridian High School near Bellingham, Wash., according to Whatcom County Sheriff Bill Elfo.

The meeting was called by school administrators in response to reports that nooses were found hanging from a tree at the school and some students displayed Confederate flags.

The source of the dispute, it seems, is an in-school debate over the Confederate flag. It appears there is a contingent of neo-Confederates at the school who are promoting it as a symbol of white heritage. Some have been sporting it on their cars. But school rules prohibit the flag, a prohibition that has court sanction:

The courts took away students’ choice. Judges said the Confederate flag did not belong at school.

Some said flying the Confederate flag was offensive, but some students believed it was not racist.

Why would the Confederate flag be an issue in northwestern Washington? Because it is a symbol of white supremacism for people well outside the South as well. This is why phony arguments about its meaning are only cover for the stark reality that anyone -- particularly anyone of color -- who is confronted by the flag knows all too well: The Confederate flag is meant to intimidate -- to trumpet the values of white supremacy. The "heritage" which it harkens back to is mostly rife with the charred corpses of lynched innocents.

Whatcom County has a history of right-wing extremism: The Washington State Militia, whose trial In God's Country covered in detail (and which was the subject of Jane Kramer's excellent Lone Patriot: The Short Career of an American Militiaman) was based in rural Whatcom. In recent years there have been cross-burnings aimed at immigrants, and death threats aimed at peace protesters. The Patriots who filled the ranks of the WSM are still very much at large in the county, and their effect keeps bubbling to the surface.

Counterspinning Plame

Everyone, it seems, is starting to get the picture about the nature of the White House response to the outing of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA operative: namely, that it intends to try to spin its way out of any consequences for the matter by claiming that no criminal acts occurred -- flying in the face of the reality that someone on the Bush team leaked an undercover CIA operative's identity to Robert Novak and several other reporters, a crime (with extraordinarily damaging consequences) regardless how you cut it.

So far, Josh Marshall, Mark Kleiman, Atrios, Kevin Drum, Thomas Spencer, Tresy at Corrente and Christian Crumlish have all reached this conclusion.

Christian rather neatly sums up the White House's emerging spin points:

So there you have it, an innocent chance burning of an agent's cover (oopsie!), and then "fair game" to go after an administration critic's family (just politics as usual), capped by the leak to the Washington Post (betrayal!). I can see it now. How long before we hear that's their story and they're sticking to it.

Accompanying the White House spin, of course, is the predictable chorus from his media apologists: Pay no mind, move along, folks. The Plame matter is a mere "partisan" affair that will evaporate when the smoke clears.

If Republicans have proven incredibly incompetent at running the country, they at least have continued to display a knack for ruthless hardball politics and manipulation of the media. That the media more often than not seem all too happy to oblige is another matter.

Facts are to spin like garlic to vampires: effective, but only in well-coordinated bunches. Anyone interested in seeing justice done in the Plame matter -- which is to say, anyone interested in the integrity of national security and the rule of law -- will have to counter the spin of Bush apologists with some talking points of their own.

To that end, the following points strike me as the most significant:

A: The Plame affair matters.

It matters because a significant national security asset in the war on terrorism was badly compromised. Contrary to the conservative spin that Plame's outing didn't matter because "everyone" in the Beltway knew she was CIA (and, in some permutations, that she was only an analyst and not an operative), in fact Plame's status was a closely held secret, for overwhelmingly important reasons, as the New York Times explained:

[W]ithin the C.I.A., the exposure of Ms. Plame is now considered an even greater instance of treachery. Ms. Plame, a specialist in nonconventional weapons who worked overseas, had "nonofficial cover," and was what in C.I.A. parlance is called a Noc, the most difficult kind of false identity for the agency to create. While most undercover agency officers disguise their real profession by pretending to be American embassy diplomats or other United States government employees, Ms. Plame passed herself off as a private energy expert. Intelligence experts said that Nocs have especially dangerous jobs.

"Nocs are the holiest of holies," said Kenneth M. Pollack, a former agency officer who is now director of research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. "This is real James Bond stuff. You're going overseas posing as a businessman, and if the other government finds out about you, they're probably going to shoot you. The United States has basically no way to protect you."

Moreover, her exposure has widespread ramifications for the war on terror, as Warren Strobel reported Friday:

Training agents such as Plame, 40, costs millions of dollars and requires the time-consuming establishment of elaborate fictions, called "legends," including in this case the creation of a CIA front company that helped lend plausibility to her trips overseas.

Compounding the damage, the front company, Brewster-Jennings & Associates, whose name has been reported previously, apparently also was used by other CIA officers whose work now could be at risk, according to Vince Cannistraro, formerly the agency's chief of counterterrorism operations and analysis.

Now, Plame's career as a covert operations officer in the CIA's Directorate of Operations is over. Those she dealt with -- whether on business or not -- may be in danger. The DO is conducting an extensive damage assessment.

And Plame's exposure may make it harder for American spies to convince foreigners to share important secrets with them, U.S. intelligence officials said.

... "This is not just another leak. This is an unprecedented exposing of an agent's identity," said former CIA officer Jim Marcinkowski, who's now a prosecutor in Royal Oak, Mich., and who also did CIA training with Plame.

As Josh Marshall has pointed out, the damage to America's intelligence on weapons of mass destruction may well be massive, and very well could result in the deaths of CIA assets abroad -- not to mention the extent to which it exposes the entire American populace to an increased likelihood of attack by terrorists with weapons of mass destruction.

It matters because the deliberate exposure of an undercover agent's identity in a way that grotesquely compromises national security and the potential deaths of agents abroad constitutes outright treason.

And no, we're not talking about Ann Coulter's nearly hallucinogenic version of treason, but the Aldrich Ames kind of treason. The real thing that earns people prison terms.

It matters because the culpability for the leak goes right to the heart of the Oval Office. The sources of the leak appear to be within the inner circle of the Bush White House, including chief of staff Karl Rove, who has been identified by Jospeh Wilson, Plame's husband, and reporters as one of the administration officials who contacted them after the Novak column's appearance and exacerbated the effects of Plame's original exposure by explicitly encouraging its further spread.

The fact that these matters reach the highest levels of government is underscored by the reports that the White House, according to the Boston Globe, is reserving the option of resorting to "executive privilege" claims to shield some of its documents from the Justice Department investigation:

If the White House asserts a claim of executive privilege, [law professor Thomas] Sargentich said it would be a strong sign that the investigation is heading to the highest levels of the Bush administration, given that the claim can only be used to shield the president's decision-making process.

If the White House indeed resorts to this audacious tactic, it will be a tacit admission of the president's possible involvement.

B: The timing of the phone calls to reporters is irrelevant.

Contrary to the White House's emerging spin point, the difference between calls placed to reporters about the Plame leak before and after the Novak columns is ultimately inconsequential. As Mark Kleiman says: "Information does not stop being classified because someone else improperly reveals it."

Rep. John Conyers, in calling for Rove's resignation last week, made this point clearly:

The law states that even if you lawfully knew of Mr. Wilson's wife's status, you were obliged to come forward and report the press leak to the proper authorities -- not inflame the situation by encouraging further dissemination. 18 U.S.C. § 793(f). Larger than whether any one statute can be read to find criminal responsibility is the issue of whether officials of your stature will be allowed to use their influence to intimidate whistle-blowers.

It must be also noted that the White House's spin point here is severely undermined by other facts -- namely, two separate reports in the Washington Post that show several other reporters besides Novak were actively contacted by the leakers: The first, on Sept. 29, which reported:

Another journalist yesterday confirmed receiving a call from an administration official providing the same information about Wilson's wife before the Novak column appeared on July 14 in The Post and other newspapers.

Sunday's Post story carries the point even further:

That same week, two top White House officials disclosed Plame's identity to least six Washington journalists, an administration official told The Post for an article published Sept. 28. The source elaborated on the conversations last week, saying that officials brought up Plame as part of their broader case against Wilson.

"It was unsolicited," the source said. "They were pushing back. They used everything they had.”

It should be clear that the spread of the leak both before and after the Novak column was substantial.

C: The White House's conduct in responding to the leak so far constitutes at least an abject failure to live up to the responsibilities of its office, and perhaps an actual coverup.

Once the leak occurred -- on July 16 -- President Bush had an obligation to investigate the matter immediately and to find the persons responsible and deal with them appropriately (at the very least, dismissing them, if not turning them over for prosecution). Instead, the White House continued to actively pursue the spread of the leak with even more reporters.

No investigation was ordered until the CIA, in late September, filed a criminal referral in the matter with the FBI. And even then, the White House dragged its feet -- waiting a full day before ordering staff to recover the relevant documents, and then filtering them through White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez. Subsequently, the president himself has made clear that finding the original source of the leak is a low priority, warning that the leakers may never be found.

What is clear instead is that the White House is focused on finding the identity of the "senior administration official" whose information given to the Post has directly undermined the Bush team's emerging claim that "no classified leaks occurred." This in essence is an attempt to intimidate any dissenters within the Oval Office -- and possibly to get them to change their testimony. And that, in turn, may constitute obstruction of justice.

The Bush White House's behavior is rapidly approaching the impeachment stage. But if its spin succeeds, it may in the end escape any accountability for damaging the nation's security and placing us all at greater risk. And that will be the most egregious scandal of all.

Spreading extremism

The progression of extremist ideas and agendas into the mainstream via conservative transmitters happens in small increments, but these are always worth observing. The most recent case comes from Colorado -- home to many a right-wing nutcase -- where the Jefferson County Treasurer is distributing extremist material to taxpayers with the county's official imprimatur. And yes, he's a Republican.

The story surfaced last week in the Denver Post:

Rights group: 'Extremism' behind Jeffco official's guide

Most of the coverage of the story focused on the treasurer, a fellow named Mark Paschall, and the apparent religious taint of his views, particularly the notion that jurors were obligated to follow "God before the law." But as the Post story explained:

Paschall said he paid for 1,000 copies of the "Citizens Rule Book," which have been available at the treasurer's office counter, at a display in the county building and from him "wherever I go."

The pocket-sized guides promote "jury nullification," a concept that politically conservative groups argue means jurors have the right not only to decide guilt or innocence but also whether laws are just and are in keeping with God's law.

Paschall said Jefferson County District Court Chief Judge Thomas Woodford called him Tuesday.

"He was wondering about the jury things" in the booklet, Paschall said. "I asked him if a juror just says, 'I vote not guilty,' is that all they are required to say, because otherwise you get into the thought police."

Woodford declined to comment.

Inside most of the 61-page booklets is the stamp: "This information is provided by Jefferson County Treasurer Mark Paschall."

Paschall is unfazed. "I as a citizen have the right to express my religious beliefs. I don't care if I am in the treasurer's office."

Of course, he's expressing far more than merely his religious views. What is far more significant are the political views contained in the "Citizens Rule Book."

[A side note: It is probably worth observing that Paschall also has a military record resembling that of other prominent Republicans. But, y'know, conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson and Newt Gingrich have been lecturing us about decadent "liberal" morality for years now. Such paragons are they.]

I happen to have had a great deal of experience with the "Citizens Rule Book," because it was one of the most popular items available for sale at militia meetings I attended. It also popped up in two trials I covered: the Montana Freemen, and the Washington State Militia. In both cases, Patriot agitators attending the trial attempted to have the guides distributed among the jurors of those trials and were slapped down.

I described it briefly in Chapter 11 (p. 297) of In God's Country, which is about the 1996 trial of the six members of the Washington State Militia accused of engaging in a bomb- and mischief-making conspiracy (Jane Kramer, incidentally, focused on the case in her terrific Lone Patriot: The Brief Career of an American Militiaman). It made a brief appearance in the courtroom, which was overseen by U.S. District Judge John Coughenour, a blunt jurist with a low tolerance for Patriot courtroom antics. There was nonetheless a good deal of typical Patriot folderol going on among the audience, including attempts to intimidate reporters and distribute anti-Semitic propaganda. But then:

All of the Patriot frolic took a serious turn when William Smith’s attorney, Robert Leen, attempted to have the "Citizen’s Rule Book" made available to the jury, claiming it was part of the defendants' beliefs and should be admitted as evidence. The pamphlet to which he referred is probably the most popular item available at militia meetings, since it only costs $1.25; it claims to prove the concept of "jury nullification," the Patriot notion that jurors are laws unto themselves -- that they can actually sit in judgment on the justness of a law itself and that, moreover, they can ignore the instructions of the judge to the jury. Coughenour, the embodiment of the no-nonsense judge, turned Leen’s request down.

However, this outraged the Patriots in the gallery. Gene Goosman filed a Patriot "Affidavit" against Coughenour, demanding that he uphold his oath of office. Hartford Van Dyke, a Patriot from the southwestern Washington town of Battle Ground, filed a lien of $1.7 billion against Coughenour as well as deputy U.S. attorneys Gene Porter and Susan Dohrmann, who were prosecuting the case.

[Such "affidavits," for those interested, are devoid of any force of law.]

The "Rule Book" also made a brief appearance at the Montana Freemen's trial in Billings. As it happened, Coughenour drew the assignment for that case as well, and having become familiar with the "Citizens Rule Book" in Seattle, managed to ensure that no copies were allowed in the courtroom.

What is "jury nullification" all about?

There is in fact a long history of jury nullification both in American and English law -- cases in which the jurors simply ignored the requirements of the law and set the accused free. However, it has primarily been viewed as a malfunction of the law, not as a positive principle to be practiced.

"Nullification is, by definition, a violation of a juror's oath to apply the law as instructed by the court," according to a 1997 federal ruling, the strongest, most recent court decision on the topic. The opinion by Judge Jose Cabranes said jurors who reject the law should not be allowed to serve; when the ruling was appealed, the courts upheld, but also ordered a new trial after declaring that only "unambiguous evidence" of a juror's disregard of the law can justify his dismissal.

Other jurists have been equally clear about the actual standing of jury nullification:

"It is a recipe for anarchy . . . [when jurors] are allowed to substitute personal whims for the stable and established law." -- Colorado circuit Judge Frederic B. Rodgers

"Jury nullification is indefensible, because, by definition, it amounts to juror perjury -- that is jurors lying under oath by deciding a case contrary to the law and the evidence after they have sworn to decide the case according to the law and the evidence." -- D.C. Superior Court Judge Henry F. Greene

In essence, jury nullification -- by sitting in judgment not just of the facts of the case but of the laws themselves -- arrogates to itself not only the role of the judge but of the legislature, essentially overturning at whim those laws that have been passed through democratic processes. In this sense, jury nullification is a threat not only to the courts, but to the very systems of laws on which the nation rests.

The leading proponent of jury nullification is a Montana-based outfit called the Fully Informed Jury Association. They present a relatively normative, broad-spectrum front, particularly since they have attracted a substantial audience among libertarians and drug-war critics (a small splinter group, also based in Montana, with a similar name in fact was overtly extremist in orientation and was closely associated with the Montana Freemen); this seeming variety on the political spectrum lets it pose as semi-mainstream. As their Web site proclaims:

The American Bar Association (ABA) wrote that FIJA drew its support from "a wide and unusual spectrum of political thought--from the National Rifle Association to gun control advocates, from abortion rights supporters to their opponents, and from backers of marijuana legislation to law-and-order types." The appeal of FIJA crosses the full spectrum of American lifestyle and ideology because the FIJA goals reflect the goals of those who are alert to the fragile liberties of Americans.

In reality, FIJA's origins and orientation are extremist, built (like most Patriot schemes) on long-rejected legal theories and dubious "facts."

Now, there have been exceptional rulings in which jury nullification can be seen ipso facto as beneficial (particularly in some of the recent drug-war cases), and these cases are cited readily by FIJA adherents. However, these cases have no more force of law in modern courts than does the Dred Scot decision (though that ruling too is cited on more than a few occasions by FIJA adherents). That system is predicated upon the admonition that juries must rule on evidence and the law, pure and simple, and they take oaths to uphold that standard. Their failure to do so in fact breaks the law.

The legal powers that nullification proponents would hand to juries violates the careful balance of powers that exists within the system. If juries are deciding the justness of the laws, they are assuming powers traditionally relegated to the judiciary and, in other contexts, to the legislative branch. There is nothing in any body of law that would allow them to do this, other than the pure absence of an outright prohibition -- which actually exists in the form of the jurors’ oaths.

But if nullification was mostly a malfunction -- as in the many black-lynching acquittals recorded in the South from the Civil War onward -- then how did it ever become an organizing principle for social or legal reform? For that answer, turn to the Posse Comitatus.

The Posse was in most respects a kind of far-right tax protest. It built its multitudinous "constitutional" theories out of legalisms touted by John Calhoun and other Dred Scot types. The Posse was a direct descendant of old right-wing elements from the 1930s Silver Shirts organization and the anti-Semitic contingent (like the Minutemen) of the far right which split from the John Birch Society in the late 1950s because it refused to adopt anti-Semitic theories.

The Posse and their followers, who preached that taxes were illegal and that the IRS was an unconstitutional body, became extremely frustrated as their followers, beginning in the early 1970s, were getting so much prison time from their mounting tax convictions. Convinced that the legal system itself was corrupt and would never allow their view of constitutional law to see the light of day, they developed the idea of organized jury nullification: If they couldn’t get the courts to change, all they had to do was get one or two jurors to hang up the process.

The chief proponent of the concept in Posse circles was a Montanan named Red Beckman. He had a long and colorful career as a tax protester and anti-Semite; his book, The Church Deceived, described the Holocaust as God's judgement on "the Anti-Christ Church" for wqorshipping Satan, and was noted for repeating the charge that Jews are Satan worshippers on TV interviews. He also appeared as a keynote speaker at numerous Christian Identity events over the years. Beckman was an early and important influence on LeRoy Schweitzer, the leader of the Montana Freemen.

Beckman's ideas about jury nullification became a cornerstone of his anti-tax strategy, and they quickly gained popularity, not just among the Posse, but among many elements of the far right that were coming into conflict with legal authorities for their many activities. Not only could jury nullification solve problems related to tax cases, but juries could also potentially overturn charges ranging from malicious harassment to firearms violations and bomb building. As the Posse mutated into the Christian Patriots, who then became merely Patriots, the theories became more distilled and more widely distributed.

Because it does have a certain legal history, it has proven to be a powerful recruiting tool within the mainstream. It meshes nicely with the Patriot modus operandi of the 1990s: hiding the agenda by adopting a mainstream pose, offering crackpot theories as legitimate by spouting a blizzard of legalisms, and generally gnawing away at the legal system in the hopes of inducing its collapse. And they’ve been very successful at getting out the jury-nullification Gospel to a broad swath of society (particularly barter-fair types and libertarians), all under the guise of enacting a needed reform of the court system.

It is likely that the bulk of nullification proponents -- including, probably, Mark Paschall, though his notions about placing God's laws before man's are common among both Identity followers and Christian Reconstructionists -- have no idea whose agenda they’re being used for. But then, most people are oblivious to the elements in our society that would like to see it all fall apart, and are doing their damnedest to make it happen.

Diebold and the California vote

Mark Crispin Miller offers an eye-catching post about the California recall election results vis a vis the use of Diebold's voting technology.

One of Miller's correspondents performed some number-crunching of the Diebold counties and concluded:

The probability of scoring twice the expected average county % could charitably be construed as the upper limit of the possible. Some candidates exceed that figure in Diebold counties by a four or five fold margin. If you have done statistics, you know that is so far beyond what might be expected that you would reject it as defective data. If it happened to one candidate in this election, I would be surprised but might accept it. There are a large number of candidates who have this same systematic pattern of receiving skimmed votes.

The California recall shows Diebold trying to affect the election outcome by moving votes from high ranked candidates to low ranked candidates.

By doing this, Diebold keep the total number of votes cast constant but rob some candidate of their votes.

At this remove, it's impossible to assess the accuracy of the analysis, but it certainly appears valid, and moreover bears investigating.

I'm sure the California media will get right on it.

The coverup

The importance of the recent revelation that the Bush administration is focused, in its handling of the Valerie Plame leak, not on the source of that leak, but on the official who confirmed it, seems to have escaped notice so far. So let's explore it a little further.

The recent Newsweek piece by Michael Isikoff -- a fairly clear iteration of White House talking points -- made this shift in the direction of the investigation within the White House explicit. It even laid out the thinking of the Bush team:

[I]t suggested for the first time that there was a big-league dissenter within the upper ranks of the Bush administration, someone who was genuinely appalled at crude White House attempts to discredit a critic. (Novak’s small point was that Wilson was dispatched by the CIA to check out claims that Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy uranium from Niger only because his agency wife recommended him.) It also was the strongest evidence that the disclosure of Plame’s identify was done with malicious intent and not, as Novak has since insisted, a passing reference in the course of a lengthy conversation about a wide range of matters.

Not only do the anonymous official's remarks rebut the White House's emerging claim that there was no "criminal intent" in the release of Plame's identity, but they run smack into the chief operating principle of the Bush team: Loyalty above all.

Whoever talked to the Post was disloyal to the team. And that means they will be ferreted out and punished.

This lays bare the same lack of principle, the same skewed priorities, that were operative in the outing of Plame's CIA identity -- wherein fealty to Bush and the triumph of his politics is of greater significance than anything, even national security. Joseph Wilson and his wife's value as human beings, and as civil servants, was rendered moot under this calculus. They became expendable from a political standpoint.

The same fate almost certainly awaits whoever the "senior administration official" might be. He will be made an example of, as Bush's proof of his desire to root out leakers. The sources of the leak to Novak, however, will be found innocent of "criminal intent."

Most of all, this change in focus means that the Bush team is in full coverup mode -- seeking to punish the dissenters who stray from the team's official story about the leak -- even if, as Atrios points out, that official story is already full of holes.

Well, the Beltway press has not been noted for its ability to take in the big picture. At some point, though -- perhaps when Team Bush files for executive privilege in the case -- they'll understand just how far along this coverup has proceeded already.

America haters

Pat Robertson has finally slipped off the deep end.

In an interview he conducted with author Joel Mowbray on his 700 Club show last week, Robertson said the following:

I read your book. When you get through, you say, "If I could just get a nuclear device inside Foggy Bottom, I think that’s the answer." I mean, you get through this, and you say, "We’ve got to blow that thing up." I mean, is it as bad as you say?

The State Department has filed a protest, saying Robertson's remarks were "despicable," with a "senior administration official" saying "Robertson had been made aware of Secretary of State Colin Powell's extreme outrage at the tone and content of the remarks."

Robertson, of course, has gone off the reservation on previous occasions -- publishing his Protocols-inspired "New World Order" tome, making inflammatory remarks about Muslims after Sept. 11. But this time, both the sentiment and rhetoric are so notably extremist in nature that it's hard to imagine him retaining any credibility.

One wonders when all those pundits and bloggers on the lookout for signs of America-bashing will chime in.

Spinning stupidity

Well, it appears that the White House's investigation indeed is not focusing on the original leaker(s) of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA operative to the press, but instead is attempting to ferret out just who might be the "senior administration official" who fingered two "top White House officials" as the sources of the leak to the Washington Post.

This is made explicit in the recent Newsweek report by Michael Isikoff:

"Criminal or Just Plain Stupid?"

According to Isikoff:

The "senior administration official" is not the original leaker who first told columnist Robert Novak that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA "operative" specializing in weapons of mass destruction. That as-yet-unidentified official remains the target of Justice Department investigators who today are awaiting stacks of White House records -- including phone logs, e-mails and other material relating to the possible dissemination of information about Wilson and his undercover spouse.

Instead, it is another "senior administration official" -- the one quoted in a Sept. 28 Washington Post article as saying that "before Novak’s column ran" two top White House officials "called at least six Washington journalists" and disclosed the identify and occupation of Wilson’s wife. "Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge," that senior administration official told the Post’s Mike Allen and Dana Priest.

The Post story may have been the most eye-popping development in the leak story: it suggested for the first time that there was a big-league dissenter within the upper ranks of the Bush administration, someone who was genuinely appalled at crude White House attempts to discredit a critic. (Novak’s small point was that Wilson was dispatched by the CIA to check out claims that Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy uranium from Niger only because his agency wife recommended him.) It also was the strongest evidence that the disclosure of Plame’s identify was done with malicious intent and not, as Novak has since insisted, a passing reference in the course of a lengthy conversation about a wide range of matters.

But more than 10 days after the story exploded, an alternative theory is emerging among those who are directly involved in the leak case: that the “senior administration official” quoted in the Washington Post piece simply got it wrong. There were indeed White House phone calls to reporters about Wilson’s wife. But most, if not all, of these phone calls, were made after the Novak column appeared, some government officials now believe. They were placed as part of a blundering effort to persuade journalists to concentrate on Wilson’s presumed lack of credentials as a critic of pre-Iraq war intelligence rather than the substance of his critique.

The upshot of this scenario: Novak was the only journalist to whom Plame's identity as a CIA agent was leaked before his column ran. All other White House contacts about the matter only pointed to the Novak column -- which by itself was not against the law.

Isikoff has been a reasonably reliable transmitter of Republican talking points, and the headline of the piece -- and the thrust of its contents -- suggests what will almost certainly become the White House's story about the Plame matter: There were no laws broken. Just "stupid" behavior.

Someone -- the "senior administration official," possibly Andy Card -- will be made a scapegoat, and the sources of the leak will have their hands slapped.

Earlier today, Josh Marshall wondered why press spokesman Scott McClellan answered questions about the complicity of two key suspects -- Lewis Libby and Elliot Abrams -- with carefully worded responses referring to "leaks of classified information".

Isikoff's story explains why this distinction is important to the White House:

One possible translation: whatever they may or may not have said to Novak, nobody passed along anything they knew to be classified at the time.

And that may make all the difference in the world. As former CIA director James Woolsey points out, the 1982 law that makes it a federal crime to disclose the identify of an undercover CIA agent was carefully written to target witting perpetrators. Congress had in mind actors such as ex-CIA agent turned left-wing critic Philip Agee who, for political reasons, wrote a book "outing" many of his former colleagues, leading to considerable and justifiable concern about their safety. The law "was quite narrowly drafted," notes Woolsey, and much will depend on "whether there was criminal intent" by the leaker. If the leaker did not know that Wilson’s wife was undercover at the time of the conversation with Novak, that alone may get him or her off the hook.

Anyone willing to wager that John Ashcroft's Justice Department will find that there was no "criminal intent" on the part of the leaker?

I'm reminded of the time back in the late 1970s when then-Congressman George Hansen -- a Bircher Republican from Idaho -- was convicted of tax evasion, in no small part a product of Hansen's cockamamie Posse-style arguments about the legitimacy of the Internal Revenue Service. (Hansen's congenital "mishandling" of campaign funds was also a problem.)

Hansen was convicted rather readily, despite his courtroom theatrics. But when it came time for sentencing, the judge decided to simply give Hansen a fine and a warning: After all, the judge reasoned, it was clear that Hansen was too "stupid" to have formed any real criminal intent.

Hansen -- whose political career survived the first conviction -- was convicted a few years later of kiting checks. The second time around, the judge was not so easily fooled, and sent him to prison.

Executive Privilege, the Plame Affair and Ted Olson

Lisa English at Ruminate This raises the specter of "executive privilege" as a possible White House tactic in forestalling the Justice Department's investigation of the leaking of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity. English cites a Boston Globe piece headlined, "Executive privilege seen as leak-case option":

The very words "executive privilege" evoke memories of scandal-plagued presidents trying to use the power of their office to hide from public view politically damaging information, and White House press secretary Scott McClellan was careful not to use the term. Still, he would not rule out the use of executive privilege, saying: "I think it's premature to even speculate about such matters."

Presidents can invoke executive privilege to shield from public view some aspects of their internal decision-making process. "It's used to shroud advice that's sometimes inflammatory or has been rejected," said Thomas Sargentich, a law professor at American University in Washington, D.C. "Executive privilege is not supposed to be a shield in criminal investigations."

Particularly disturbing is the news that all of the White House information regarding the investigation is being filtered by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales' office:

Gonzales's office will also have the opportunity to examine what information, if any, should not be turned over because the administration believes it is protected by executive privilege. The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which provides legal opinions on questions with constitutional dimensions, would review any White House claims.

Sargentich, who worked in the Office of Legal Counsel during the Carter and Reagan administrations, said lawyers in that office can make independent judgments, though the attorney general remains their boss and can overrule them.

If the White House asserts a claim of executive privilege, Sargentich said it would be a strong sign that the investigation is heading to the highest levels of the Bush administration, given that the claim can only be used to shield the president's decision-making process.

The news that executive privilege is even being considered in this case is remarkable, considering the constraints built into the law regarding such assertions, especially insofar as they relate to criminal activity. There are other ways it is remarkable as well. As Benedict Spinoza correctly points out in the comments for Lisa's post [edited slightly for minor corrections]:

Executive Privilege simply does not apply in this, at least not at this point. For anyone who remembers when the term was first coined, it was viewed as a formalization of the separation of powers doctrine, a doctrine that applies solely between the branches of government (executive, legislative, and judicial) and not within a single branch. Obviously, the DoJ and the White House are within a single branch, so executive privilege cannot apply.

There is however a parallel to this that does indeed apply in this case: chain of command. Since DoJ reports to the President, he can theoretically simply order DoJ to not ask for certain materials, and, observing the chain of command, DoJ would not. Were this to be the case, the only available solution would be for Congress to file for impeachment. If it chose to (a hypothetical, of course), the President could not then claim Executive Privilege because to do so would be contradictory to the explicitly enumerated Congressional Privilege of impeachment.

As Spinoza's analysis explores further, this only hints at the beginning of the can of worms this potential assertion of "executive privilege" opens. But let me point out that its audaciousness -- built on potentially uncharted areas of the law -- was something we could have predicted from this White House.

This is particularly so considering that its chief legal strategist is none other than Theodore B. Olson, the solicitor general -- the man who almost certainly will be arguing these executive-privilege claims when they go to court, as they almost assuredly will if made.

Olson, you see, has an especially charged history when it comes to claims of executive privilege -- all of which may well play into the lengths to which the Bush White House may try to shield itself from the consequences of its role in a grotesque breach of national-security interests.

Ted Olson is at heart an old Nixonian: he first became involved in Republican politics in the early '70s and the Nixon campaigns, and much of his tenure at the Reagan Justice Department (he was a high-ranking attorney in the Office of Legal Counsel) in the 1980s was devoted to overturning what he saw as the unconstitutional encroachments of congressional powers on executive powers that resulted from the post-Watergate reforms. Chief among these were the limits on asserting "executive privilege."

I reported in detail on this part of Olson's career in a Salon piece that, if you'll excuse the indulgence, I'll quote from at length here:

Ted Olson's career as a battling Republican lawyer really began the day he stood next to James Watt as the interior secretary defiantly declared executive privilege.

That was in October 1981, a few months after President Reagan had named Olson assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel. Watt had been subpoenaed by Michigan Rep. John Dingell, the Democratic chairman of the subcommittee assigned to look into environmental cleanup efforts, to provide Dingell's subcommittee with documents relating to that work. Watt had deemed these papers "enforcement sensitive" -- that is, making them public, he said, would compromise the department's ability to enforce cleanup laws.

However, Watt's privilege assertion and the controversy accompanying it did not last long. Sensing a political fiasco, Reagan's White House counsel, Fred Fielding, negotiated an access agreement with the Dingell subcommittee in early 1982. Olson strongly opposed the terms of the agreement, and he apparently viewed the compromise as a personal defeat.

Another opportunity for Olson to again tackle the executive-privilege question presented itself in short order. In September 1982, another House subcommittee -- chaired by Rep. Elliott Levitas, D-Ga. -- sought access to EPA files involving enforcement of the so-called Superfund hazardous-waste cleanup provisions, particularly focusing on the activities of Rita Lavelle, assistant administrator for solid waste and emergency response. Dingell's subcommittee also asked for documents involving the same matter. EPA staff members were reluctant to disclose some information, again fearing the documents were "enforcement sensitive."

Olson proceeded to lead the Reagan White House to claim executive privilege in spectacularly groundless fashion, with little regard for the requirements of the law:

The biggest flaw in Olson's Oct. 25 memo, however, was the statement that the documents he was seeking to keep from investigators contained no evidence of wrongdoing. In fact, Olson's staff had not even conducted a thorough review of the documents Dingell wanted -- some 51 pieces in all -- and would not do so until Dec. 9, well after executive privilege was asserted. There had been a preliminary review in early October, and even then red flags had been raised; the OLC lawyers forwarded them at that point to Dinkins' attorneys for more detailed review. There is no indication that review was ever completed; Dinkins conducted a cursory check and then apparently let the matter lapse.

Most of all, when Congress finally cited the EPA Administrator, Anne Gorsuch Burford, for contempt in the matter, Olson then led the charge in a remarkable display of contempt for the separation of powers issues that were at the foundation of the executive-privilege laws:

When the full House cited Burford on Dec. 16, he and his team responded with an extraordinary civil suit in federal court contesting the constitutionality of Congress' contempt powers, charging that the invocation of privilege was proper and that the contempt citations should not stand. The suit, however, had a short shelf life; it was dismissed by the court on Feb. 1.

The Olson team's effort was "without a doubt the sloppiest piece of legal work I had seen in 20 years of being a lawyer," Burford later wrote in her memoirs. It only cited in its support nonbinding opinions from a single case -- former President Richard Nixon's suit against the House Judiciary Committee -- and Burford notes that no factual defenses were raised.

Certainly in many other areas -- particularly the aggressive assertion of executive powers in setting up military tribunals and designating citizens "enemy combatants," as well as various surveillance powers under the so-called Patriot Acts -- the Bush White House has displayed all the signs of attempting to reacquire powers lost to the executive branch in the 1970s … a belated "Nixon's revenge," as it were. There is a high likelihood that Ted Olson has been one of the guiding lights in these acquisitions.

"Executive privilege" is especially an area near and dear to Olson's heart. And it is clear, from his record, that Olson believes such privilege should be nearly illimitable -- unless, of course, the president is a Democrat.

What his record especially suggests is that Olson may very well lead the Bush White House on a merry goose chase, attempting to extend executive privilege into areas where it was never intended, and where almost certainly legal mischief could turn up afoot. It has the makings of a real train wreck. As I noted at the end of the Olson piece:

Olson's actual record in that period raises doubts about even this answer. His single-minded effort to assert executive privilege actually overlooked what the law permitted, and it wound up costing President Reagan dearly. One is only left to wonder what dubious legal tangles he has in store for President Bush's agenda.

It is however disturbing to note, as Benedict Spinoza's analysis suggests, that the makeup of the courts is quite different now than it was when Olson first attempted to claim Congress' powers of oversight unconstitutional. Considering that Olson has reason to believe he can succeed at the highest levels of the court, he is almost certain to push the envelope. Who knows? He might be able to prolong any resolution of the scandal, and force it onto the back pages, just by dragging it out through the courts.

In other words, look for the Plame affair to turn into a courtroom and congressional wrangle that is nasty, brutish and … long.

An interesting slip

Josh Marshall yesterday mentioned this comment by President Bush in remarks to reporters:

I mean this town is a -- is a town full of people who like to leak information. And I don't know if we're going to find out the senior administration official.

I thought this was strange, since the original report in the Washington Post cited a "senior administration official" who indicated that there were two "top White House officials" who leaked Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA operative to the press.

In other words, it's beginning to sound as though the White House is less interested in the identity of the two leakers than it is that "senior administration official" who spilled the beans to the Post.

Or did Bush simply misspeak again?

Mini-break

I'm off to the Olympics for a brief visit to the real world. I'll be completely unplugged, but plan to be back Monday sometime.

Rush Limbaugh's identity politics

It should surprise no one that, instead of recognizing that he was out to lunch and apologizing for it, Rush Limbaugh has chosen to make himself a martyr on the cross of political correctness in the wake of the flap over his Donovan McNabb remarks.

After all, being conservative means never having to admit you were wrong.

But what's most interesting about the flap is what it reveals about Limbaugh's political commentary as well.

Here are the remarks that caused the furor:

"I think what we’ve had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn’t deserve. The defense carried this team."

After nearly all of the NFL and the rest of the sports media reacted with understandable revulsion, Limbaugh tried backtracking:

"Liberal sportswriters have pushed the notion that it's unfair that there haven't been more black quarterbacks, and I agree with that. I simply said that their desire for McNabb to do well caused them to rate him a little higher than perhaps he actually is."

Never mind that "liberal sportswriters" is a term that belongs with "radical pro golfers" in the laugh-test rankings. I'd like to find evidence that anyone was hoping McNabb would do well because he was black.

Limbaugh continued defending himself on his radio show:

"All this must have become the tempest that it is because I must have been right about something. If I wasn't right, there wouldn't be this cacophony of outrage that has sprung up in the sportswriter community."

By this kind of logic, of course, then Al Campanis and Jimmy the Greek were right, too. For that matter, Adolph Rupp was right when he said, "You'll never see me let a black player wear Kentucky blue." Because whatever those liberal sportswriters say, it must be wrong -- and therefore their victims are right.

In truth, of course, the outrage is almost entirely because Limbaugh is wrong -- grotesquely, laughably, how-stupid-can-you-really-be wrong. It's true that sportswriters are in the fore of saying this, because they know it better than anyone else. And suffice to say that even the most politically conservative of them are saying that Limbaugh's remarks were ridiculous.

There's one main reason for this: In Limbaugh's world, people are capable of advancing to superstar levels on the tide of pure hype. Indeed, one could not find a better description of Limbaugh's own career, so it is a syndrome he knows well.

But while the athletic world has its many flaws, its one great virtue is that for the most part, people succeed or fail almost purely on the basis of what they actually achieve on the field of play. The Anna Kournikovas are the exceptions. Donovan McNabb achieved the reputation he has almost entirely on his game-day performances. If Limbaugh were a serious NFL fan, he would know about McNabb's reputation for grit and sacrifice and toughness, and he need only have seen a few Eagles games to know it was true.

None of this mattered, though, because Limbaugh had a political point to score on the NFL broadcast. What this says about Limbaugh's politics is something else altogether.

In reality, there was for years a marked slowness on the part of the NFL to overcome one of the real vestiges of racism in football: namely, the myth that whites are "better equipped" (as Campanis might have put it) to play quarterback. It is a myth that in fact continues to have many adherents among sports fans, particularly its white ones.

The myth has only been torn down by the reality of black quarterbacks emerging over the past decade on a broad scale and putting the lie to the old coaches' tale. The overwhelming drive to win that is the essence of sports has effectively buried the racial profiling of quarterbacks,

However, that has never stopped the more ignorant contingent of sports fans. Everybody who is a sports fan -- particularly if they are white -- knows this species: The guy who, inevitably during the course of watching a basketball game, remarks on the racial composition of the teams on the screen. "Jeez, that team is all black." "Man, those guys play smart! They have a lot white guys."

These are the same guys with an "inexplicable" animus toward Tiger Woods. The same guys with an automatic ability to spot the "laziness" of Hispanic baseball players, and the "stupidity" and "overratedness" of black quarterbacks.

What is also true about these people is that they tend to view the rest of the world through this primitive racial prism. You'll often hear them whining about how white people can't get jobs anymore because of "political correctness." And they're likely to think skits comparing "welfare recipients" to apes are just hilarious.

Well, the networks have from time to time tried using broadcasters in the sports booths who have no real expertise in the subject -- they are neither the sports journalists who have attended hundreds (if not thousands) of games and practices, nor former players and coaches, but instead are hired to be a sort of "fan's voice" for the broadcasts.

Invariably, these guys -- like Dennis Miller -- just fall flat because they really haven't much of interest or value to add to the conversation. And in Limbaugh's case, it's simply a disaster. Because Limbaugh represents the racially idiotic contingent of fandom. Inviting him onto ESPN's broadcasts is little different than inviting the bellicose know-nothings who always keep track of every athlete's race and even their relative whiteness.

A lot of people have wondered why ESPN hired Limbaugh in the first place, given his previous record for, er, racial sensitivity. The answer always was that they wanted to add a little provocation to their broadcasts, which seems reasonable enough. But the more serious question was why he was invited to join the on-air team, not because of his racial views, but for his manifest lack of qualifications. Limbaugh has never played sports. He has never coached. His exposure as a sportscaster is limited -- particularly at the level of the NFL.

Above all, Limbaugh revealed himself on Sunday night to be an utter and profound ignoramus on something as basic as race in sports -- little better than that moronic loudmouth who offers the same level of profound judgment over his beer at the bar. And that ignorance, as much as the racial insensitivity that accompanies it, was the clearest reason Limbaugh did not belong on a national sports broadcast.

Finally, Limbaugh stepped down from his ESPN job last night -- though without, of course, anything resembling gracefulness. He did not apologize for the remarks, and even suggested that his former colleagues' thin skins were the reasons for his departure:

"My comments this past Sunday were directed at the media and were not racially motivated. I offered an opinion. This opinion has caused discomfort to the crew, which I regret. I love 'NFL Sunday Countdown' and do not want to be a distraction to the great work done by all who work on it. Therefore, I have decided to resign. I appreciate the opportunity to be a part of the show and wish all the best to those who make it happen."

Limbaugh continued the same "woe-is-me" line today at the National Association of Broadcasters Convention in Philadelphia:

"In my opinion, it wasn’t a racial opinion, it was a media opinion. We live in a country where, supposedly, by right of the First Amendment you offer opinions but you can’t in certain places and certain times."

All right, suppose we take him at his word: that he didn't intend to suggest that McNabb was overrated because he was black, that there was no "racist" intent, but rather, his purpose was to criticize the media.

Well then, what he is saying about the media is this: That it "hypes" black athletes at the expense of whites because of "political correctness" -- the same "thought police" who are now silencing him for simply voicing an "opinion."

I don't know about the rest of you, but this has the distinct sound of "identity politics" to my ears: Whites whining that they're being victimized by the real gains of other racial groups -- especially those who whites historically have oppressed.

(Will Mickey Kaus be issuing a denunciation for Limbaugh's "discarded and discredited" worldview?)

This argument indeed suggests what is, at root, wrong with Limbaugh, not merely as a sportscaster, but providing commentary on any aspect of our national discourse: He is an ignoramus. He is not merely ignorant about the realities of sports, he is ignorant about the state of race and culture in America. Like the buffoon at the bar, his opinions on politics are as profound as those about sports.

One has to be amused, however, at the way Republicans who keep insisting that Democrats represent the "real racist" party in America keep guys like Limbaugh up on stage as their chief national spokesmen. And then they wonder why 90 percent of blacks vote Democratic.

The advances of blacks at the quarterbacking position in college and pro football have not come about because of the attitudes of "liberal" sportswriters but, more truthfully, in spite of the entrenched attitudes of conservatives in the coaching and sportswriting ranks. Blacks are now regularly taking on quarterbacking roles because they have proven the old attitudes flat wrong -- they are every bit as intellectually capable of the job as whites. And they have proven that time and again on the field. Any coach who wants to win knows this now.

The example of black quarterbacks reveals the larger bankruptcy of Limbaugh's argument about "political correctness" and race -- not just as it pertains to sports, but to the rest of American culture. It also is quite revealing about the nature of Limbaugh's logic and the people who believe in it. The truth is that a black quarterback is no longer a novel thing to any kind of knowledgeable sports fan or reporter -- though, as we all know too well, the perception that they are not as well "equipped" lingers among certain ranks of people. And that these people are all too eager to leap upon a stumbling black quarterback as proof of their beliefs.

It is no accident that the cry of "identity politics" and "political correctness" is the first to escape the lips of these same folks. But then, hypocrisy is in no short supply on their parts, either.

Maybe it's just the OxyContin talking.

Facing the music

A paragraph in David Brooks' most recent New York Times column stands out as emblematic of everything wrong with his thesis:

The fundamental argument in the presidency wars is not that the president is wrong, or is driven by a misguided ideology. That's so 1980's. The fundamental argument now is that he is illegitimate. He is so ruthless, dishonest and corrupt, he undermines the very rules of civilized society. Many conservatives believed this about Clinton. Teddy Kennedy obviously believes it about Bush. Howard Dean declares, "What's at stake in this election is democracy itself."

Parsing this let's first examine the initial assertion:

The fundamental argument in the presidency wars is not that the president is wrong, or is driven by a misguided ideology.

This in truth depends on who's doing the arguing. For most people opposed to Bush, these considerations are at least of nearly equal if not paramount importance. Indeed, their concerns about his legitimacy are rather deeply confirmed by both the wrongheadedness of his actions and the grotesque failures of the neoconservative ideology now driving foreign policy, not to mention his breathtaking incompetence, mendacity and corruption.

The fundamental argument now is that he is illegitimate. He is so ruthless, dishonest and corrupt, he undermines the very rules of civilized society.

And Bush's opponents have every reason to believe this. The evidence that he stole the election only mounted after the dust had settled. To this day, no adequate defense of Bush v. Gore has ever been mounted. The episode, as I have remarked previously, is the kind to anger not just liberals but centrists for whom the principles of fair play and respecting the rules are paramount.

Brooks dismisses this worldview without ever explaining why it may be wrong. Instead, he simply equates it with the rabid conservatives who rejected Bill Clinton's legitimacy:

Many conservatives believed this about Clinton. Teddy Kennedy obviously believes it about Bush. Howard Dean declares, "What's at stake in this election is democracy itself."

This is a false equivalency. The conservatives who rejected Bill Clinton's presidency as illegitimate did so because he only won by a plurality of votes. And yet, after the 2000 election, they couldn't exactly make that argument any longer, could they? Their grotesque hypocrisy was never more apparent.

So Howard Dean is right that democracy itself is at stake in this next election. The Bush team, in tandem with the Supreme Court and their sycophants in the Mighty Wurlitzer right-wing media, severely damaged key democratic institutions -- the sacredness of the right to vote; the respect for established law; states' rights; respect for the Supreme Court and its inherent fairness -- in the 2000 election. And Democrats, to their credit, have not responded in kind by trying to undermine Bush's presidency by raising phantom scandals and prying into his private life. They have in fact made a great show of rallying behind him during the national crisis of Sept. 11. Instead of trying to negate the results of the election forced upon them by the Scalia five, they have waited.

2004 is about reclaiming our democracy from the people who have stolen it from us -- not just in Florida in 2000, but in Texas and California too. And, yes, about punishing them politically for the deed. This isn't hate, Mr. Brooks. This is justice.

Conservatives may not relish facing the music. But they better prepare for it.

Onward Christian Soldiers

Via Atrios, I see that Tom McClintock's senior advisor has been outed as a writer for Chalcedon.

The LA Times story is quite vivid in describing John Stoos' belief system, particularly:

"I dream of the day when a strong Christian majority is elected to a city council somewhere in America. This council could then pass a resolution declaring that abortion is now illegal in their city."

---

"If these sinners who desperately need the great gift of salvation in Jesus Christ can do so much in the power of the flesh to defend practices that the general public finds repulsive, then what should we as Christians be doing to advance the kingdom of Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit?

"The critical question is whether we as Christians are prepared to show the same resolve and discipline and do the kind of hard work that the homosexuals have done over the past fifteen years promoting their ungodly agenda. Lord willing, in the power of the Holy Spirit, we can!"

---

"Christians are the only people who can restore the proper biblical understanding of government to our modern system."

What's missing about this piece, however, is the larger context: Chalcedon is the leading publishing arm and fundraising foundation of the Christian Reconstructionist movement. Indeed, everything that Stoos is quoted as having said is perfectly in line with their beliefs.

Many of you may already be familiar with what Christian Reconstructionism is about, but here's the short version: They believe the vote should only belong to Christians, and that the American government and laws should be explicitly governed by their fundamentalist interpretation of Scripture.

Chalcedon's publisher for most of its existence was the late R.J. Rushdoony, one of the leading lights of Christian Reconstructionism.

Here's the longer version:

Christian Reconstructionism: Theocratic Dominionism Gains Influence, by Frederick Clarkson

The original and defining text of Reconstructionism is Institutes of Biblical Law, published in 1973 by Rousas John Rushdoony--an 800-page explanation of the Ten Commandments, the Biblical "case law" that derives from them, and their application today. "The only true order," writes Rushdoony, "is founded on Biblical Law.

All law is religious in nature, and every non-Biblical law-order represents an anti-Christian religion." In brief, he continues, "Every law-order is a state of war against the enemies of that order, and all law is a form of warfare."

Gary North, Rushdoony's son-in-law, wrote an appendix to Institutes on the subject of "Christian economics." It is a polemic which serves as a model for the application of "Biblical Principles."

Of course, also worth remembering:

One of the other leading lights at Chalcedon is none other than Howard Ahamanson ... who also has been appearing in the news recently connected with the brouhaha over computerized voting technology. Seems Ahmanson is one of the chief owners of American Information Systems -- which is co-owned by Diebold's president and vice-president.

Oh what a tangled web we weave. But regardless of how Tom McClintock chooses to spin things now, his political identity should be understood now as unmistakably interwoven with the Christian Reconstructionist agenda -- and his campaign an attempt to mainstream it.

The Conserva-Traitors' Hall of Shame

The ongoing Valerie Plame affair is more than sufficient to remind us all of a certain fact: Conservatives have a long history in America of resorting to traitorous acts to further their own private agendas, which typically revolve around matters of power and greed.

Thus, in addition to "Manifestly Unfit," another ongoing Orcinus series this fall will be sporadic entries detailing the ways conservatives have, over the years, engaged in various acts that are either identifiably treasonous or have involved dealing with the nation's enemies in ways that enabled them to later commit violence that cost Americans their lives.

I briefly considered giving the series the highly original title Treason: Conservative Treachery From World War II to the War on Terrorism, but my ace legal team (who just got done advising Fox News on a major lawsuit) tells me it might unfairly violate the rights and tender feelings of lying, sociopathic blond Republican bimbettes everywhere. So I'll refrain.

Instead, I'll be posting entries periodically detailing the careers of a variety of right-wing traitors, focusing on the years since about 1920 (when the foundations for the Second World War were being laid) to the present.

And unlike certain other extremist and deranged attempts to cast, Newspeak-like, liberals as historically prone to treason (which will here go unnamed), these accounts will be entirely factual, based solely upon published and substantiated fact.

As regular readers will recall, I've already examined in detail the activities of two such noted conservatives who contributed substantially to the rise of the Nazi regime in the 1930s: Prescott Bush and Henry Ford. You may, if you wish, consider these posts the first installments in the series.


Episode 57: The America First Committee


[Brochure cover, Friends of Democracy]

Regular readers of Orcinus know that I've written at length previously about the "Transmission Belt" by which extremist ideas and agendas make their way into mainstream political discourse and policy. A few readers have asked if the concept is my own; as you can see by the cartoon above, it actually has been with us for quite awhile and was in fact a generally recognized, if not often acknowledged, phenomenon in the early 1940s, when the presence of incipient fascism was a very real threat. (I did base my idea of "transmitters" on this concept.)

In the early 1940s, there were numerous transmitters of fascist ideas -- William Dudley Pelley's Silver Shirts and the German-American Bund being the most notable examples. But these were themselves nearly fringe figures; though Pelley did run for president in 1936, he only managed to garner some 1,598 votes nationwide, or 0.23 percent of the vote. However, his campaign was noteworthy for the way it tried to mainstream its message, namely, by overt identification with Christianity. He called his party the Christian Party, and his campaign featured the slogans "Christ or Chaos!" and "For Christ and Constitution." He also managed to make headlines when called FDR the "lowest form of human worm -- according to Gentile standards." (Pelley, it must be remembered, was obsessed with the grand Jewish conspiracy to control mankind.)

Even though it only existed for a little over a year and a half, unquestionably the transmitter with the greatest impact in this period was the America First Committee -- precisely because of its image as an essentially mainstream organization. Indeed, this image persists, as evidenced by its current-day apologists, particularly the libertarian set.

The AFC had its origins in 1940, when a Yale law student named R. Douglas Stuart Jr. organized a petition on campus to build opposition to intervention in the European wars then reaching a high pitch. He found a sponsor in Robert E. Wood, chairman of the board at Sears, Roebuck -- then and now the quintessentially middle-American company. Wood and a group of fellow Chicago businessmen (including former diplomat William R. Castle, who had been a high-ranking Hoover Administration official, and whose work appeared in Japanese and German propaganda publications; and William Regnery, founder of Regnery Publishing … yes, that Regnery Publishing …) helped Stuart form plans for a large-scale organization, which led to the naming and formation of the America First Committee in August of that year.

The chief point of agitation for the America Firsters was FDR's loosening of the arms embargo to Europe -- particularly for Britain and France -- shortly after Hitler's invasion of Poland in September 1939 and the subsequent outbreak of war. In retrospect, of course, this not only helped pull the United States inexorably to war, it was the morally courageous -- and right -- thing to do. To have utterly abandoned Britain especially to the tender mercies of the Nazis would have been cowardice, and almost certainly would have wrought an unimaginable nightmare: complete and uncontested Nazi hegemony in Europe, a reign that may well have continued even to the present day. The idea that America First was in hindsight somehow "right" is both laughable and truly contemptible. Defenders of America First (including Patrick Buchanan) like to argue that Hitler's regime eventually would have collapsed under its own weight -- but the evidence they present for this is thin and quite unconvincing.

Nonetheless, in its origins at least, America First was in truth largely a mainstream response that was mostly isolationist, and not fascist, in nature. It charter even specifically announced that Nazis, fascists and communists were not welcome.

But even in the beginning, there were warning signs: Among the first members of the committee's were Henry Ford, who, as the publisher of the Protocols hoax-promoting text, The International Jew, was not only one of the foremost progenitors of anti-Semitism in America, but had an open and celebrated business and ideological connection with Hitler's war machine.

Also on that original national committee:

-- Avery Brundage, former Chairman of the American Olympic Games Committee when in Berlin 1936. Brundage's behavior in that episode had already earned its place in history as one of the low watermarks of cowardice and complicity in the Nazis' consolidation of their power.

-- Charles A. Lindbergh, the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic and a household name even still, was to become the leading spokesman for the America First Committee -- as well as a notable anti-Semite.

The arc of Lindbergh's career in this period mirrored that of the America First Committee itself -- beginning, to all appearances, as mainstream isolationists and pacifists, but then rapidly devolving into something more sinister. The first real warning sign came at a May 29, 1941 rally in Philadelphia with 16,000 in attendance, when many audience members gave a Nazi salute. Lindbergh, while demanding the overthrow of the FDR regime, asked the audience: "Are we going to let Jews run this country?"

However, that remark received relatively little play, especially compared to the national firestorm that erupted after Lindbergh, on Sept. 11, 1941, gave a speech in Des Moines that blamed Jews for dragging the nation toward war:

It is not difficult to understand why Jewish people desire the overthrow of Nazi Germany. The persecution they suffered in Germany would be sufficient to make bitter enemies of any race.

No person with a sense of the dignity of mankind can condone the persecution of the Jewish race in Germany. But no person of honesty and vision can look on their pro-war policy here today without seeing the dangers involved in such a policy both for us and for them. Instead of agitating for war, the Jewish groups in this country should be opposing it in every possible way for they will be among the first to feel its consequences.

Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength. History shows that it cannot survive war and devastations. A few far-sighted Jewish people realize this and stand opposed to intervention. But the majority still do not.

Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.

I am not attacking either the Jewish or the British people. Both races, I admire. But I am saying that the leaders of both the British and the Jewish races, for reasons which are as understandable from their viewpoint as they are inadvisable from ours, for reasons which are not American, wish to involve us in the war.

We cannot blame them for looking out for what they believe to be their own interests, but we also must look out for ours. We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction.

Of course, in retrospect, it is clear that on the basis of Hitler's plans for the Jews alone, America would have been justified in entering in a war against Germany on purely moral grounds. Not that this actually happened; if anything, American officials were in reality congenitally slow on the uptake about what was happening to the Jews in Europe.

In any event, Lindbergh's Des Moines speech created a national uproar, because its rather naked anti-Semitism -- especially the suggestion that American Jews were unpatriotic -- made plain for the first time what the underpinnings of America First were in reality about. Lindbergh had already raised eyebrows by accepting in October 1938 the Service Cross of the German Eagle from Herman Goering for his service in advancing the cause of aviation; Lindbergh had in fact helped advise the Germans on organizing the Luftwaffe. After the Des Moines speech, however, Lindbergh's reputation was so tarnished that even his hometown of Little Falls, Minnesota, removed his name from its water tower.

The connection to the Nazi agenda had indeed been gradually revealing itself for some time. On Jan. 22, 1941, Dr. Joseph Paul Goebbels, Propaganda Minister for the Third Reich, made a short-wave radio broadcast that promoted the group, proclaiming: "The America First Committee is truly American and truly patriotic!"

Other America First spokesmen were likewise nakedly anti-Semitic. The most notorious of these was Father Charles Coughlin, the Protocols-promoting radio ranter with a weekly audience of millions, who continued to insist that Jews were trying to pull Americans into a war against "their own kind." In his magazine Social Justice, he wrote: "Stalin's idea to create world revolution and Hitler's so-called threat to seek world domination are not half as dangerous combined as is the proposal of the current British and American administrations to seize all raw materials in the world. Many people are beginning to wonder who they should fear most -- the Roosevelt-Churchill combination or the Hitler-Mussolini combination."

Another famous aviator -- Laura Ingalls, the first woman to fly solo across the American continent -- was also a noted America First figure. She was also a raving anti-Semite who, it turned out later, was fully in the pay of the Germans. Ingalls received funds from Baron Ulrich von Gienanth, head of the Gestapo in the U.S. (his title was Second Secretary of the German Embassy in Washington). She also worked with Hans Thomson, German Charge' d'Affaires and Fritz Weidemann, the German Consul in San Francisco. In 1942, Ingalls was arrested by the FBI for failing to register as an agent of the Nazis and was sentenced to two years in prison.

While all this was going on at the top, the troops of the America First movement were also becoming increasingly Nazified. Members of the German-American Bund -- which received large amounts of funding from the Nazi regime -- moved quietly into the chapters of the America First Committee. Other proto-fascists likewise swelled the ranks of America First: William Pelley’s Silver Shirts, Coughlin's Christian Front, the KKK, White Russian Fascists. All this infiltration by mid-1941 led the American Legion in California to declare that the entire fifth column in the U.S. had joined the America First movement.

Smaller opposition groups tried to counter their propaganda by drawing public attention to the underlying agenda. The most notable of these was "Friends of Democracy," which produced the "Nazi Transmission Belt" cartoon was well as a pamphlet examining Lindbergh's Nazi ties. It also produced a flier that pointed out:

1) A large part of the audiences of many America First meetings are members of pro-Nazi organizations.

2) Nazi propaganda is distributed at many of these meetings.

3) Nazi organizations not only distribute the literature of the America First Committee but recruit members and raise money for the committee.

4) The Nazi press in the United States has stamped the program of America First with its approval.

5) The propaganda ministries of the democracy-hating Nazi and Fascist governments endorse the policies of the committee.

Another group, calling itself the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies (CDAAA), published an article in May 1941 that observed:

The point is that un-American organizations have made appeals for contributions of money to America First. Un-American element crowd America First rallies. They applaud America First speakers. They boo the President of the United States. They do not boo Hitler or Mussolini or Stalin. . . Some of them belong to the Nazi Bund which is pro-Hitler. . . What Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin and their friends in this country Applaud cannot be good for America.

All this came to a screeching halt on Dec. 7, 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and America's entry into the war was cemented. America First's officials met on Dec. 8 and announced the organization was disbanding. At least publicly.

In secret, however, the leaders -- who were convinced America would lose the war -- kept the organization going, planning for the day when the Nazis took over. As Russ Bellant reported in Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party: Domestic Fascist Networks and Their Effect on U.S. Cold War Politics:

After Pearl Harbor and Germany's declaration of war on the United States, the America First Committee didn't go out of business as it officially declared on December 12, 1941. Five days later, a secret meeting of certain key leaders of America First took place in New York to plan for what they assumed (and hoped) would be the Axis victory in Europe and the Far East. "[T]he Committee has in reality gone underground," FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover reported to the White House. It began planning for the day when they would be the Americans with whom the victorious Nazis would negotiate a surrender. Finally, when the defeat of the Nazis by Allied powers was a foregone conclusion, the America First Committee secretly dissolved itself in 1944.

(Bellant's primary source, for those interested, was a Feb. 13, 1942 memo from J. Edgar Hoover to Major General Edwin M. Watson, Secretary to the President, which declared that America First had "gone underground.")

The meeting was held in the home of Edwin Sibley Webster, a wealthy Wall Street broker with Kidder, Peabody, and it featured a number of key American First members, including Lindbergh. The group reformed under a new name, Americans for Peace. One of the attendees, Horace Haase, left no doubt about the future activities of the gathering:

"It is obviously necessary for the leaders of the America First like Wood and Webster to keep quiet. But the organization should not be destroyed. I have never been in the limelight and have nothing to lose. I can remain active in a quiet way. I should like to offer to keep the files. We must get ready for the next attack which must be made upon this communistic administration."

The America Firsters' fantasies of serving as a future Vichy government in America gradually crumbled, of course, as the tide of the war turned. Americans for Peace quietly disbanded in late 1944.

The Fresno case

Seems the Free Republic's complaint about being labeled a "hate group" has created a big dustup at Fresno City Hall, with Republicans coming out of the woodwork to demand the removal of the Human Relations Commission chair who issued the press release.

You'll notice, of course, that the conservatives who are so solicitous of the feelings of the Free Republic are the same folks who excused the Fresno city councilman who said he wanted to kill every liberal in Fresno with a "dirty bomb" (notably including the object of their wrath in this case).

It's hard to work up a lot of sympathy for the Free Republic. They are, as I have reported previously, one of the nation's foremost transmitters of extremist memes into mainstream conservative discourse.

Their record on this is fairly extensive, but one notable recent instance of this was its heavy promotion of the extremist meme that "MEChA is racist."

Anyone notice how easily the Freepers' feelings get hurt when someone flings the "racist" accusation their way? And might there be any signs of self-awareness on this point when using it themselves?

Naaaah.

Well, as I have noted previously, the accusation of being a "hate" group or "racist" is indeed an extremely serious one, and any serious person or organization that uses it must do so with due criteria. I prefer the SPLC's criteria:

All hate groups have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.

I also prefer to add that these attacks are characterized by exclusionism, eliminationism and bigoted discrimination, as well as a propensity for violence.

Does the Free Republic fit? Well, the site does transmit all kinds of extremist memes, and the site's posers frequently trade in eliminationist rhetoric aimed at liberals, as well as various kinds of bigotry, particularly anti-immigrant and anti-gay rhetoric. None of these accumulatively, and certainly not individually, amount to what could reasonably be called a "hate group", however. They're on the borderline, however, and an outbreak of violent rhetoric followed up by real-world action (which has been a phenomenon associated with Freeper activism for some years now anyway) could well tip them over.

So I was awaiting the evidence provided by the Fresno Human Relations Commission with some interest. Had the Freepers indeed threatened violence against counterprotesters? And had the HRC found evidence that the Free Republic was engaging in hate rhetoric?

Today's update in the Bee reports:

Free Republic founder Jim Robinson said Reyes has no proof that his members wrote the offending posts. And whether members did, Robinson said: "They were just joking. There were no threats made."

The posts displayed Monday by Reyes were apparent responses to a Web forum discussion of disrupting the Free Republic events. One post said members of Free Republic are anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-peace and justice, and anti-environment. "You forgot pro-gun. FR members are PRO-Gun. You guys need to remember that," the post said.

Another posting regarding the group's picnic at Woodward Park last Saturday said: "Lets see ... I got the sodas, the watermelon, fresh batteries for the stun guns, softball bats, pepper spray, my steel toed boots, arm bars, knee bars, chokes, neck cranks, wrist locks, shoulder locks ... this should be a fun picnic ... I almost hope that these uninvited guests show up."

Reyes, DeGraff and Rhodes admitted that their proof isn't solid: The postings, found on the San Francisco Indymedia Web site, are attributed to people who use monikers. In some cases, these people have written offensive words and pretended to be DeGraff, Rhodes and other community activists.

In other words, the core of Peace Fresno's claim that Free Republic was a "hate" group was that (a) it engaged in anti-immigrant and anti-gay rhetoric and (b) some frequent participants in Free Republic forums -- and likely attendees of the Freeper picnic -- made comments suggestive of violence should counterprotesters appear.

Well, as I noted already (a) is inoperative because neither of these traits, while accurate in describing Free Republic, is sufficient evidence of racism beyond the obvious exclusionism inherent in them. In other words, they contain warning signs, but not proof of racism. And (b) simply is not evidence of racism -- rather, it clearly suggests the basic thuggery that lurks behind so much of Freeper politics, and one of the reasons they are a problem. But there is nothing in this to qualify Free Republic as a "hate group."

I think the Fresno HRC was wrong to designate the Free Republic a "hate group" on these criteria. I think they owe the Free Republic an apology.

And I think they ought to deliver it the same day Jim Robinson apologizes to MEChA for the same thing.

Conservative media bias

That damned conservative media.

Everyone else (especially Atrios) is tracking the Valerie Plame matter better than I could, so I'll say little about it here.

But has anyone else noticed how slow the so-called "liberal" media have been to pick up on the story? You only have a major criminal referral against the White House itself -- the story broke on Friday night -- and it takes three days for everyone to notice?

As of Sunday night, the New York Times had no reportage about the case on its Web site. (It's making up for it today, leading the front page.)

In my local papers -- the Seattle Times and the Post-Intelligencer -- the story has been buried. The Times has carried it on its interior pages Sunday and today (in the latter case, on A6).

The P-I -- reputedly the more liberal of the two -- not only failed to give it front-page play, it has had no reportage on the story at all. (If you go to their Web site even now, you can only find a wire story by digging through the national-news section.)

I've tried calling the National Desk at the P-I to inquire how such a decision could be made. So far I haven't been able to get through, nor have I received a callback. I'll keep trying.

Of course, the letters in the Sunday P-I responding to an Al Franken op-ed were sneering retorts all reassuring us that media indeed has a liberal bias.

One could only imagine how this would have been handled were any Democratic White House -- particularly Bill Clinton's or Al Gore's -- accused of such behavior.