Good Luck With That

Last Friday, the House Judiciary Committee, by a vote of 18-12, approved a bill entitled The State Secret Protection Act of 2009, which, if enacted, would be the first law ever to regulate and limit the President's ability to use the "state secrets privilege" to compel the dismissal of lawsuits that allege lawbreaking by executive branch officials. The bill was first introduced in 2007 in response to the Bush administration's radical abuse and expansion of the privilege, and was re-introduced earlier this year in response to the Obama administration's identical abuses.

[...]

NADLER: [The Bush Administration] invented the use of saying, you can't have a lawsuit [...] the very consideration of the lawsuit, the very consideration of the case, will endanger state secrets.

[...]

GREENWALD: the [And you’re saying the] Obama administration has been using this privilege in exactly the same way, meaning in this way that's reinvented, by saying not just these specific documents are subject to the state secrets privilege, but the subject matter itself is.

[...]

NADLER: One of the basic problems is that I have to think that the administration is not going to support the bill, and it's going to be very difficult to pass it.

[...]

If nothing else, it's refreshing to see Democratic members of the House fulfilling their duty to act independently of the executive branch and try to impose limits to curb presidential abuses of power, even when the President is a member of their political party.

  Glenn Greenwald

Oooh, Surprise, Surprise

Tonight, after months of conferences with top advisors, President Obama has settled on a new strategy for Afghanistan. CBS News correspondent David Martin reports that the president will send a lot more troops and plans to keep a large force there, long term.

The president still has more meetings scheduled on Afghanistan, but informed sources tell CBS News he intends to give Gen. Stanley McChrystal most, if not all, the additional troops he is asking for.

  CBS

Didn’t see that coming, didya? No, me either.

Seriously, do you think people actually believed he might not? I mean, people other than rabid right-wing nuts?

"He's got to take concrete steps to eliminate corruption," Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said last week. "That means you have to rid yourself of those who are corrupt. You have to actually arrest and prosecute them."

Like that’s gonna happen. He blessed the corrupt election already.

The president is not expected to announce his decision until after he returns from China the week before Thanksgiving.

Because?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE!

Islamo-realism

You knew this was coming:

American Family Association has called for a ban on Muslims in the military. Mother Jones reports that the conservative Christian group has posted an article on its website by the group's Director of Issues Analysis, Bryan Fischer, who argues that the tragedy at Ft. Hood is the sign to start the ban.

[...]

FISCHER: Of course, most U.S. Muslims don't shoot up their fellow soldiers. Fine. As soon as Muslims give us a foolproof way to identify their jihadis from their moderates, we'll go back to allowing them to serve. You tell us who the ones are that we have to worry about, prove you're right, and Muslims can once again serve. Until that day comes, we simply cannot afford the risk. You invent a jihadi-detector that works every time it's used, and we'll welcome you back with open arms.

This is not Islamophobia, it is Islamo-realism.

  TPM

And the perfect response is from a commenter on this article, Don S:

Of course, most conservatives don't shoot up fellow Americans. Fine. As soon as right-wingers give us a foolproof way to identify their wacko element from their moderates, we'll go back to allowing them to be armed. You tell us who the ones are that we have to worry about, prove you're right, & conservatives can once again own weapons. Until that day comes, we simply cannot afford the risk. You invent a nutcase-detector that works every time it's used, and we'll gladly allow you to own weapons.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Fuel to the Fire

The man accused of killing 13 people and wounding 29 at Fort Hood is able to talk, a hospital spokesman said Monday, but it's unknown when investigators might take advantage of his improving health to press forward with their probe into the shooting spree.

[...]

The personal Web site for a radical American imam living in Yemen who had contact with two 9/11 hijackers praised Hasan as a hero.

The posting Monday on the Web site for Anwar al Awlaki, who was a spiritual leader at two mosques where three 9/11 hijackers worshipped, said American Muslims who condemned the Fort Hood attack are hypocrites who have committed treason against their religion.

Awlaki said the only way a Muslim can justify serving in the U.S. military is if he intends to "follow in the footsteps of men like Nidal."

[...]

Hasan's family attended the Dar al Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Va., where Awlaki was preaching in 2001.

[...]

The Falls Church mosque is one of the largest on the East Coast, and thousands of worshippers attend prayers and services there every week.

[...]

Awlaki is a native-born U.S. citizen who left the United States in 2002, eventually traveling to Yemen. He was released from a Yemeni jail last year and has since gone missing.

[...]

Classmates who participated in a 2007-2008 master's program at a military college told The Associated Press that they complained to faculty during the program about what they considered to be Hasan's anti-American views, which included his giving a presentation that justified suicide bombing and telling classmates that Islamic law trumped the U.S. Constitution.

[...]

Sen. Joe Lieberman said Sunday he wants Congress to determine whether the shootings constitute a terrorist attack and whether warning signs that Hasan was embracing an increasingly extremist view of Islamic ideology were missed.

  Yahoo

Ft. Hood Killings

Whether he was or not, Maj. Hassan is going to be connected to the terrorists before we're through. And he could well be. There sure was some strangeness in the whole deal.

Perhaps more likely is that the connection is there, but it will be covered up in an attempt to pretend that the government and the military are not still unable to "keep American safe".

In 2001, before his transfer to Ft. Hood, Hasan attended the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Va., where Anwar al-Awlaki – recently banned from Britain due to his open advocacy of attacks on British troops in Afghanistan and his support for organizations deemed terrorist – preached and held sway. Two of Hasan’s fellow congregants were Nawaf al-Hamzi and Hani Hanjour, both among the 9/11 hijackers.

[...]

The nut-job known as "Azzam the American," a Muslim convert from a Southern California Jewish family, issued a statement not long ago calling on Muslim Americans – specifically Muslim members of the armed services, of which there are thousands – to rise up and strike the infidels on the home front.

  Justin Raimondo

Kamran Pasha, the author of Mother of the Believers, a new novel relating the story of Islam from the perspective of Aisha, Prophet Mohammed's wife, was told of the al-Awlaki connection from a Muslim friend who is also an officer at Fort Hood. Using the name Richard, the recent convert to Islam described how he frequently prayed with Hasan at the town mosque after Hasan was deployed to Fort Hood in July. They last worshipped together at predawn prayers on the day of the massacre when Hasan "appeared relaxed and not in any way troubled or nervous".

But Richard had previously argued with Hasan when he said that he felt the "war on terror" was really a war against Islam, expressed anti-Jewish sentiments and defended suicide bombings.

"I asked Richard whether he believed that Hasan was motivated by religious radicalism in his murderous actions," Mr Pasha said.

"Richard, with great sadness, said that he believed this was true.

  UK Telegraph

Sadly, I may have been inadvertently on the money when I said in my first post on this subject that "I thought we were supposed to be fighting them over there so we didn't have to fight them over here."

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Nice Work If You Can Get It

Three of the largest Wall Street firms -- which together received $45,000,000,000 in taxpayer bailouts -- are on track to hand out $29,700,000,000 in bonuses this year.

That's only the three largest firms. JP Morgan Chase took $25 billion in government aid; Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, $10 billion each. All three have paid back the government bailout money they've received, but the liquidity and "cheap money" offered by the Fed have kindled record profits at their investment and trading arms.

[...]

If divided equally among the firms' collective 119,000 employees, the sum total per worker comes to $250,400 each (which Bloomberg notes is almost five times the median US household income of $50,000).

  Raw Story

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Now We're Talkin'

Decrying Barack Obama as "white power in black face," hundreds of African-Americans marched on the White House Saturday to protest policies of the first black US president, and demand that he bring US troops home.

[...]

"We're not satisfied with him, and... this hope and change rap has not been a reality for black people," [Charles] Baron told AFP during the demonstration.

[...]

"We are glad that Barack Obama broke up the white male monopoly on the White House, but we were not looking for a change in the occupant of the White House from white to black, we were looking for change in foreign policies and domestic policies," he added.

[...]

Protesters also called for Obama to order troops out of Iraq and to scrap Africom, the controversial year-old United States Africa Command, and demanded "hands off" Venezuela and ends to the Cuba embargo and the Zimbabwe blockade.

  Raw Story

Can We Haul Up KBR/Halliburton for Treason Yet?

Let's see, aside for overcharging for services, taking money for services not rendered, failing to provide needed water, human trafficking, and bribe-taking, KBR also burned hazardous waste and exposed tens of thousands of people, including troops.

Defense contractor KBR may have exposed as many as 100,000 people, including US troops, to cancer-causing toxins by burning waste in open-air pits in Iraq, says a series of class-action lawsuits filed against the company.

[...]

KBR burned "tires, lithium batteries ... biohazard materials (including human corpses), medical supplies (including those used during smallpox inoculations), paints, solvents, asbestos insulation, items containing pesticides, polyvinyl chloride pipes, animal carcasses, dangerous chemicals, and hundreds of thousands of plastic water bottles."

And they did so within plain sight of US troops operating in Iraq, the lawsuit states. "In some instances, the burn pit smoke was so bad that it interfered with the military mission," the Nashville lawsuit states. "For example, the military located at Camp Bucca, a detention facility, had difficulty guarding the facility as a result of the smoke."

[...]

At a hearing of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee on Friday, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) said that KBR continues to use burn pits at the US's largest base in Iraq [Balad Airbase].

  Raw Story

At least a class action lawsuit has been filed for that. But why aren't these things acts of treason?

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

It's Sunday

A little reverence, if you please.

Number 85 Broad Street, a dull, rust-coloured office block in lower Manhattan, doesn’t look like a place to stop and stare, and that’s just the way the people who work there like it. [...] There’s no name plate on the building, no sign on the front desk and the armed policeman stationed outside isn’t saying who works there.

[...]

The people who work behind the brass-trim glass doors make more money than some countries do. They are the rainmakers’ rainmakers, the biggest swinging dicks in the financial jungle. Their assets total $1 trillion, their annual revenues run into the tens of billions, and their profits are in the billions, which they distribute liberally among themselves. Average pay this recessionary year for the 30,000 staff is expected to be a record $700,000. Top earners will get tens of millions, several hundred thousand times more than a cleaner at the firm. When they have finished getting "filthy rich by 40", as the company saying goes, these alpha dogs don’t put their feet up. They parachute into some of the most senior political posts in the US and beyond, prompting accusations that they "rule the world". Number 85 Broad Street is the home of Goldman Sachs.

[...]

Goldman played its part in the meltdown that almost destroyed the global financial system. It, like most other banks, lent too much money, made its first quarterly loss for more than a decade last year and ended up taking bail-out cash from Washington.

[...]

What’s more, at the height of the crisis, the Federal Reserve broke with an 80-year-old tradition and let Goldman turn itself from a pure investment bank into a bank holding company. This meant it could borrow funds at the same cheap rate as commercial banks for as long as it wanted. [Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman’s chairman and chief executive,] says Goldman changed status not for the money, but because it had become clear, following the collapse of Bear Stearns and Lehman, that the market had lost faith in the ability of the US Securities and Exchange Commission to regulate investment banks. Being regulated by the central bank, the Federal Reserve, would help to restore confidence in the financial system as a whole.

[...]

The list of former Goldman executives who have held key posts in the US administration and vital global institutions in New York and Washington alone is mind-boggling. It includes: the treasury secretary under Bill Clinton (Robert Rubin); the treasury secretary under George Bush (Hank Paulson); the current president and former chairman of the New York Federal Reserve (William Dudley and Stephen Friedman); the chief of staff to the treasury secretary Timothy Geithner (Mark Patterson); the chief of staff under President Bush (Joshua Bolten); the economic adviser to the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton (Robert Hormats); the chairman of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (Gary Gensler); the under-secretary of state for economic, business, and agricultural affairs under President Bush (Reuben Jeffery); the past and current heads of the New York Stock Exchange (John Thain and Duncan Niederauer); the chief operating officer of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement division (Adam Storch). Moreover, Goldman’s new top lobbyist in Washington, Michael Paese, used to work for Barney Frank, the congressman who chairs the House Financial Services Committee.

[...]

"We’re very important," [says Blankfein]. "We help companies to grow by helping them to raise capital. Companies that grow create wealth. This, in turn, allows people to have jobs that create more growth and more wealth. It’s a virtuous cycle." To drive home his point, he makes a remarkably bold claim. "We have a social purpose."

[...]

He insists we should be celebrating his bank’s success, not condemning it. "Everybody should be, frankly, happy," he says.

[...]

Even though he proudly pays himself more in a year than most of us could ever dream of — $68m in 2007 alone, a record for any Wall Street CEO, to add to the more than $500m of Goldman stock he owns — he insists he’s still "a blue-collar guy".

[...]

He is, he says, just a banker "doing God’s work"

  UK Times

Indeed.

....and hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

"A Crime Against Our Nation"

President Obama spoke today:

“It is an act of violence that would have been heartbreaking had it occurred anyplace in America,” Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address. “It is a crime that would have horrified us had its victims been Americans of any background. But it’s all the more heartbreaking and all the more despicable because of the place where it occurred and the patriots who were its victims.”

[...]

"The SRP is where our men and women in uniform go before getting deployed," Obama said. "It’s where they get their teeth checked and their medical records updated and make sure everything is in order before getting shipped out. It was in this place, on a base where our soldiers ought to feel most safe, where those brave Americans who are preparing to risk their lives in defense of our nation, lost their lives in a crime against our nation."

  Politico

Are other incidents of soldier killing soldier on bases also crimes against our nation?

That strikes me a a singularly unwise statement to make at this time. Unless the objective is to add fuel to the fire of anti-Muslim sentiment and encouragement to the Christians vs. Muslims America is a Christian Nation crowd.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Clarification

Remember, people. The United States is not at war with Islam. All we want is to have control of the oil.

And furthermore, God wants us to have it.

Mission Totally Accomplished

Not only have we turned Iraq into a hell hole and are forcing slaughter and chaos over the Afghan border into Pakistan, but we’re quickly knocking out the last hope of Palestine while we’re at it.

Aljazeera English points out that the stance of Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration, that the Palestinians had to negotiate with the Israelis while the Israelis were stealing their land, [have led President] Abbas to step down.

[...]

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas says he wants to stand down and he declines to run in the upcoming Palestine Authority elections. The decision came in the wake of the US failure to convince the Israelis to halt colonization of the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem. It also followed a series of embarrassing flip-flops by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who praised hard line right wing PM Netanyahu for his efforts in favor of the peace process. Even for a diplomatic statement, this tack is is a little embarrassing in its obsequiousness toward Netanyahu, who has undermined the peace process at every turn and rejects out of hand the US demand that he freeze settlements.

[...]

Aljazeera English reports on Israeli confiscation of Palestinians' homes. The evictions are carried out with the full cooperation and encouragement of the Israeli government.

  Juan Cole

The Democrats should be proud. It took Barack and Hillary to finish what Dubya started.

It is morally and ethically unconscionable to leave millions of Palestinians in a condition of statelessness, in which they have no rights (Warren Burger defined citizenship as the 'right to have rights' as my colleague Margaret "Peggy" Sommers pointed out in her new book). Therefore, if there isn't going to be a 2-state solution, there will have to be a one-state solution, in which Israel gives citizenship to the Palestinians. (As it is, 20% of Israelis are Palestinian Arabs and that proportion will grow to 33% by 2030 if they are not expelled by sometime Moldavian night club bouncer and now foreign minister of Israel, Avigdor Lieberman.)

  Juan Cole

My guess is that the next step will be to expel all Palestinians (or perhaps, if that fails, build ovens for them).

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.