Read 'em and Weep (literally)

I haven't been able to get these two stories out of my head.

• The leaked memo from the Embassy in Baghdad describing how grim the situation really is there. Read the entire report (pdf) if you have the courage, and


• This Washington Post's "Fatal Inaction" story subtitled The world's most powerful military failed to provide the armor that would have saved scores of American lives. One father would like to know why.

Unbelievable. What a misadventure this war has been from the start. We'll be dealing with the wreckage for decades.

My Email to Senator Barbara Mikulski Regarding Net Neutrality

Dear Senator Mikulski,

The first time I voted for you, I was living on South Montford Avenue
near Patterson Park. At the time I was an employee of what was then
called the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company of Maryland. The
descendent of that company, Verizon, is now one of the two leading
Internet Service Providers in this region.

I am very alarmed by what I read regarding the legislation coming out
of the House that basically allows ISPs to enhance/degrade
connections to selected websites. This is easier to do than you
might think.

Let's say my ISP is VeriZomcast and they obtain a financial stake in
the internet phone company Vonage, what's to stop them from degrading
my connection from their hubs to any Vonage competitors? There are
all kinds of ways VeriZomcast could make it appear that Vonage is
better (and the competitor worse) by routing "competitor traffic"
through older equipment or even introducing the equivalent of
"static" to degrade the performance. The only way customers would
learn of this would be by a VeriZomcast whistleblower. Even then they
could argue that the routing of the "competitor traffic" through
older equipment was not intentional. How would customers be able to
prove otherwise? This is an open invitation for mischief.

It also has implications for the marketplace of ideas. If VeriZomcast
decided it didn't like the website of, say, the Baltimore City Paper,
it wouldn't take a programming genius to figure out how to route that
traffic through slower parts of the network or even to introduce the
Internet equivalent of dropped calls. I suspect your staffers might
know a current Verizon employee or two who can vouch that this is
technically possible. Please, PLEASE, don't just take my word for
it. And please, PLEASE, don't let the ISPs get away with this. Back
when TV's had "rabbit ears" did you watch the channels that had a lot
of snow over the ones that came in clearly? ISP will effectively
have the power to introduce "snow" on links to sites that they want
people to avoid. The result being to drive traffic to sites that are
more favorable to their financial/political interests. If
VeriZomcast enters into a partnership with Sinclair Broadcasting,
which TV website do you think will stream video the fastest?

P.S. I can understand your "trusting your gut" when it came to
General Hayden. I hope you're right.

Does America Have Any Inviolate Principles Anymore?

The United States has often failed to live up to the principles it espouses (see slavery, Japanese internment camps) but these failings have never been portrayed as a problem with the principles themselves. That seems to have changed with the current administration. The blogger known as "Anomymous Liberal" wrote a rather compelling piece called "Defining America Down" which points out...

America has long been a country dedicated to leading by example. It has been a country that tries to hold itself to its own high standards, regardless of how its enemies behave. That's why there have been countless documented examples over the years of enemy soldiers seeking out American troops in order to surrender, knowing that Americans would not mistreat them. That's the idea of America boiled down to its essence. It's a belief that America, for all its arrogance and annoying self-righteousness, is a country that stands for something important. It's a country that very much believes in its own principles and endeavors heroically to live up to them. That kind of reputation did not develop overnight; it was earned, slowly and painstakingly, by the deeds and actions of countless Americans over many decades.

And it's exactly that reputation that the Bush administration has carelessly pissed away over the last four years. Confronted by a particularly brutal and unprincipled enemy, our leaders decided that our principles were the problem. They were just too confining. So almost immediately, the Administration began defining America down. Torture was essentially defined out of existence. Novel legal theories were introduced justifying the circumvention of long-standing prohibitions. International treaty obligations and rules of war were disregarded. The rule of law itself was up-ended--in secret, by executive decree. Many of the most celebrated American principles were hastily cast aside. Just yesterday, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Pentagon has decided to omit the prohibition on "humiliating and degrading treatment" from the Army Field Manual on interrogation. Just add it to the list.

This defining down of American principles has not gone unnoticed by the rest of the world. They see a country famous for its embrace of freedom and individual rights spying upon its own citizens without warrants and locking away its own citizens without due process of law. They see a country famous for its humane treatment of captives building secret torture prisons, engaging in widespread abuse and humiliation of detainees, and using an off-shore prison at Guantanamo Bay as a way of circumventing its own laws and constitutional principles. And worst of all, they see a country that appears to have no more interest in leading by example, a country more concerned with getting itself out of prior commitments and finding ways to exempt itself from the rules. A reputation that took the better part of a century to earn may soon be little more than a memory.

As one of the commentors noted, the protesters in Tiananmen Square chose the Statue of Liberty as their symbol. Obviously to them America stood for something. Unfortunately, now we seem to be becoming just another country.

A nation better than most, no doubt, but not the flawed but generally principled nation we once were.

And now the New York Times

On the same day that the Washington Post published the perversion of journalism described below, the New York Times published this article by Carl Hulse regarding a supposed "grass-roots" campaign to send bricks to Congress organized by "Kirsten Heffron, a Virginian who is helping coordinate the effort."

Advocates of tougher border security have sent thousands of bricks to Senate and House offices in recent weeks to make a none-too-subtle point with lawmakers about where many of their constituents come down on emerging immigration bills.

Leaders of the campaign, which has delivered an estimated 10,000 bricks since it began in April, said they had hit on the idea as a way to emphasize the benefits of a fence along the border with Mexico.

In an age when professionally planned lobbying campaigns have long since overwhelmed spontaneous grass-roots pressure, organizers of the brick brigade said they also saw an opportunity to deliver a missive not easily discarded.

Well... as the Attywood blog pointed out, it didn't take a hell of a lot of Googling to learn some significant aspects of this story that the venerable New York Times seemingly missed.

The truth is out there about Kirsten Heffron, and it's not far out there at all. In fact, when it comes to investigative reporting, we're not talking "All the President's Men" here -- it took this intrepid reporter literally five minutes of Googling to learn the following about the spokeswoman for the Send-a-Brick Project.

-- In the heat of the 2004 presidential campaign, writing as "Kirsten Andersen Heffron" on the JerseyGOP.com Web site, she penned a hate-filled attack on John Kerry -- "'Thank You, John Kerry,' A Dear John Letter" -- that goes way lower than the notorious Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth, calling the former Vietnam Vet "a treasonous scumbag." Her letter suggests -- without any supporting evidence -- that Kerry forged documents and raises "the questionable circumstances surrounding your three Purple Hearts."

-- On the Send-a-Brick Project Web site, Heffron boast of working for conservative GOP presidential candidate Steve Forbes (would that have been hard for the Times to squeeze in the article -- it's only 11 letters!) but adds that she served as "Public Affairs Director for a 2-million-member national grassroots advocacy group."

For some reason, she won't tell you what it is, so we will: It was the anti-union National Right-to-Work Committee. We guess that if it came out that Heffron worked against both unions and illegal immigrants, people might get the idea that maybe she just doesn't like working people.

Here's some more of her writings on the various right-wing cause du jour -- this is her Frist-like diagnosis of Terri Schiavo on Free Republic:

Terri Schiavo is not brain dead. She is not in a coma. She is not on life support. She responds to stimuli, smiles at her mother, and expresses agitation and distress. Yes, she is severely handicapped compared to the vibrant, intelligent young woman she apparently was at 26 years of age. But she is conscious, and aware, and most certainly alive in the truest sense of the word.

OK, Kirsten -- and you're a Virginian.

Like we said up top, none of this means the bricks aren't a story, but why doesn't the Times -- the agenda setter for the national media -- take the five minutes and 20 words to tell readers who these people really are.

Lord help us all if this is the best the journalistic elites can do.

Requiem for the Washington Post

Zachary A. Goldfarb wrote what can only be described as flagrantly one-sided "Special to The Washington Post" article about the new White House domestic policy advisor, Karl Zinsmeister. Zinsmeister was caught redhanded rewriting an article by Justin Park that originally appeared in the Syracuse New Times so that he could then "reprint" it elsewhere. The ethical implications of this are obvious to anyone with any semblence of a moral compass - liberal or conservative.

Goldfard reported (regurgitated?) Zinmeister's side of the story without, it would appear, making any effort to discern if Justin Park might have a different version. Hell, Park reportedly told the New York Sun that he was surprised by Zinmeister's contentions. I'm no friggin' Ben Bradlee but this is downright appalling. Go read the article linked above and draw your own conclusions.

But I blame this on the editor much more than the reporter. My journalism professor (I only have 3 credits so don't jump to any conclusions) told us this kind of journalistic malpractice is what editors are paid to prevent from happening.

Update: This is rather interesting. Mr. Goldfarb's article was posted under the washingtonpost.com > Politics > Federal Page section of washingtonpost.com but if you follow that link you won't find any reference to Mr. Goldfarb's article as of 10:07pm 05/30/06. I'm gonna do screen captures.

Update 2: Glenn Greenwald did a much more thorough job on this issue.

Update 3: Get this from Editor and Publisher:

NEW YORK The top editor of Syracuse (N.Y.) New Times, which saw its profile of President Bush's new chief domestic advisor altered and reposted on his Web site, calls the incident "insulting" and said she plans to consult a lawyer about possible legal action.

"What is getting lost here is that he changed quotes, that is getting lost here," Molly English, who has served as editor-in-chief of the alternative weekly for five years, told E&P today. "I find it insulting and his excuse is awfully lame."

Lame is putting it too kindly. Pathetic and despicable are more like it.

Resolunacy (n.): Fear of 'flip-flopping"

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I one had a boss who would take a position on a policy issue early on and was unwilling to reconsider it no matter what new information came to light. Her initial position usually made sense based on what was known at the time but seemed indefensible in light of the new information. Well, I've decided to coin a term for this: Resolunacy.

I'm no psychologist but I think it's reasonable to conclude that there is a neurosis involved when a person is confronted with clear evidence that their prior beliefs were incorrect and insists on sticking to their position. Fear of being labelled a "flip-flopper" seems to trump their willingness to face the facts.

I fear that we have become so used to "spin" that we no longer trust our own senses and reasoning. This brings us to Gallileo. I suspect when he saw the crescent Venus in his telescope, the logic of a earth centric universe immediately seemed dubious. But rather than try to create some elaborate conspiracy theory as to why this evidence didn't support the conventional wisdom, he faced the facts. Venus (and Earth) revolve around the sun. He'd be branded a "flip-flopper" nowadays.

There seems to be an epidemic of resolunacy here in the States. People deny things like global warming and evolution without even giving the actual data underpining those conepts a second thought. This is a dangerous trend in my humble opinion. I realize to the average citizen "facts" and "spin" are not always easily distinguishable. They aren't. But this is a larger problem. Resolunacy often seems to be portrayed as a positive value of firm convictions. To quote Stephen Colbert's description of President Bush:

The greatest thing about this man is he's steady. You know where he stands. He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened Tuesday. Events can change; this man's beliefs never will.

In my opinion, an unwillingness to ever reconsider ones position should be recognized for the moral vacuity that it implies. We all make mistakes. People who can't reconsider their stance in the face of new information should be called "resolunatics." People who can reconsider thier stance should NOT be called "flip-floppers".

DeFend DeLay DeLusions

If you read my earlier posts, I hope you'll recognize that I really don't want to be perceived as being some sort of liberal whacko. But any sane person has to wonder WHAT WERE THEY THINKING when the Defend DeLay website decided to post a YouTube video capture of a Stephen Colbert interview "criticising" the movie “The Big Buy: Tom DeLay’s Stolen Congress”.

These folks have a serious iron(y) deficiency. Yeah, I know it's satire, not irony, but the line was too good to pass up.

More to follow.....

What the President Pointedly Did Not Address....

...is where the funding for all this new spending is going to come from? I lived in Baltimore when William Donald Schaefer was mayor and one thing I remember was that he was often asked if supported proposal xyz which would be of obvious benefit to the citizenry and his answer woulld often be "Sure, but where is the money going to come from?"

Baltimore, as a result this fiscal bullheadness, kept it's top notch bond rating (which is a gift that keeps on giving if you think about long term municipal bonds). At what point do tax cuts become counterintuitive to all these promises and commitments?

Well....

Karl Rove was talking about fiscal responsibility in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute today and according to Dana Milbank of the Washington Post...

David Corn of the liberal Nation magazine made the obligatory (and fruitless) attempt to draw Rove into a discussion about his role in the Plame affair. "My attorney, Mr. Luskin, made a statement on April 26th," the policymaker said. "I refer you to that statement. I have nothing more to add to it. Nice try, though."

What Rove had much to add to was the Bush economic record. As he described it, the administration has increased the tax burden on the wealthiest Americans and restrained the federal budget through frequent veto threats. These were difficult claims, but Rove was equal to the task.

For example, groups such as the Congressional Budget Office have reported that the Bush tax cuts have shifted the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class. But Rove had another way to look at it: For the top 1 percent, "their share of income tax payments is up by 1.5 percent."

Likewise, federal spending has increased some 40 percent over the past five years, with discretionary spending jumping by more than 55 percent. But, again, Rove had a different view. "The president has reduced the growth of non-security discretionary spending every year in office," he said.

In a similar vein, Bush has not vetoed a single bill since he became president. But Rove said that it was "39 veto threats" that had the effect of "restraining spending to the levels proposed in the president's budget."

Well I guess we're just flush with money, eh? Forgive me for being a fiscal conservative.

Northern (musical) Lights - Carol Noonan

A lot of the independent artists that I particularly enjoy seem toi hail from either New England, Canada, Alaska or the Pacific Northwest. So this is the latest in the series. Since today is Mother's Day here in the U.S., I'm going to point you first to this wonderful musical essay.

Carol Noonan is from Maine. As her bio accurately states, she is "a contemporary singer-song writer, but is also known for her haunting renditions of Irish, English, and American traditionals." I'm a big fan of her original compositions and her incredible voice. She and her husband also have a larger vision that will come to fruition with the opening of the Stone Mountain Arts Center later this year.

You can hear lots of samples of Carol's music at http://www.carolnoonanmusic.com/Listen.htm

Earlier posts:

Irene Jackson

Ann Pence

A Somewhat Late Light-bulb Moment

A month ago Thomas E. Ricks of the Washington Post reported

The U.S. military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to internal military documents and officers familiar with the program. The effort has raised his profile in a way that some military intelligence officials believe may have overstated his importance and helped the Bush administration tie the war to the organization responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

That's a pretty damning indictment in my humble opinion. Actively trying to manufacture a false percption of the connection between Operation Iraqi Freedom and al-Queda implies that our justification for being there is questionable.

If I has a son or daughter in uniform, I'd be... well I can't really describe that combination of fear/dread/anger.

Bill Frist - Presidential TIMMMMMMBERRRRRR

Y'know, sometimes I wonder if I've been laboring under a massive misconception of how representative government is supposed to work. Today's Tennessean has an article entitled Vaccine makers helped write Frist-backed shield law.

It states:

Vaccine industry officials helped shape legislation behind the scenes that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist secretly amended into a bill to shield them from lawsuits, according to e-mails obtained by a public advocacy group.

E-mails and documents written by a trade group for the vaccine-makers show the organization met privately with Frist's staff and the White House about measures that would give the industry protection from lawsuits filed by people hurt by the vaccines.

It may be wishful thinking on my part but I simply refuse to believe that one of only two choices I may have in November 2008 is the inventor of the "Fristian Diagnosis" and this absolutely goofy political and legislative answer to high gasoline prices: $100 rebate checks to every American household!

The Republican House Majority Leader called the proposal "insulting" according to Reuters.

A Senate Republican proposal to offer a $100 check to taxpayers to offset high gas prices is "insulting," House Majority Leader John Boehner said on Tuesday.

"The really insulting part of this whole proposal is the fact that somebody is offering $100 to every American family over this. This is not going to solve the problem," Boehner said at a press conference.

"I don't like the proposal. And over the weekend I heard back from my constituents. They thought it was stupid," said Boehner, an Ohio Republican.

So today in the Washington Post, Dana Millbank reports on the Republican's latest attempt to enact limits on medical malpractice suits. Our illustrious Senate Majority Leader must enjoy going on fools errands, otherwise explain this:

Kicking off what he dubbed "Health Week" in the Senate, Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) admitted from the start that he didn't have the 60 votes he needed to force action on the two malpractice bills. But this is an election year, and limits on jury awards are a favorite of the chamber of commerce set. So Frist and his colleagues dusted off their two-year-old medical malpractice speeches and read them again.

Now that's a really fine example of doing the peoples business. If Frist is the seriously considered Presidential timber, this nation is truly experiencing a leadership crisis.

And I thought MY ideas were half baked...

Dr. Bill Frist, Senate Majority Leader, and inventor of the "Fristian Diagnosis" has decided to drop his "off the scale on the You-Gotta-Be-Kidding guage" tax proposal. Read the New York Times article and then realize that he seriously floated it as a political and legislative answer to high gasoline prices. The $100 [overstrike]bribe[/overstrike] rebate check was something I would have expected from Saturday Night Live for chrissakes.

If he's the leading Republican presidential candidate, Lord help us all.

Now is the Time for All Good Men to Come to the Aid of Their Constitution

I'm old enough to remember Watergate so I hope you'll forgive me for being somewhat nostalgic for the era when Senators like Howard Baker (R-Tenn) would, in the end, put upholding the Constitution ahead of short-term political electioneering. Don't get me wrong, Baker is no personal hero but according to Wikipedia..

He is famous for having asked aloud, "What did the President know and when did he know it?", a question given him to ask by his counsel and former campaign manager, future U.S. Senator Fred Thompson.

A little history. Quoting Watergate Revisited By Richard J. McGowan

The Republican minority was led by Tennessee’s Howard Baker, the ambitious son-in-law of the powerful Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen. Baker, who maintained a close, personal relationship with the president, was the obvious White House plant on the rudderless committee. Baker was a “finalist” in Nixon’s original vice presidential sweepstakes, which went to Spiro Agnew. Later, Baker rejected Nixon’s offer of a seat on the Supreme Court following the rejections of Clement F. Haynsworth Jr. and G. Harrold Carswell.

I'm hoping that if the evidence shows that this administration violated the law, that there will be Republicans who will put their oath of office to the Constitution above the short-term fallout that may befall their political party. Remember that Watergate was not the death knell for the GOP.

I think Glenn Greenwald summed it up well in his recent blog posting.

Whatever else one might want to say about this administration, it is simply indisputable that the theories of executive power it has adopted are radical, extremist and extraordinary; the policies adopted pursuant to those theories -- including the efforts to intimidate the media, stifle dissent, and prevent disclosure of its conduct -- are wholly alien to our most basic political values and traditions; and the entire approach to governing the country is unlike anything we have seen for a very long time, if ever.

Regardless of whether one thinks those theories and policies are justifiable, there is simply no question that allowing them to fester and become legitimized and institutionalized -- and we are well on our way to that destination -- will change our country in fundamental and likely irreversible ways. The changes will be not just to our laws and system of government but to our national character.

The absolute worst and most inexcusable thing is for that to happen without Americans even having a debate about those issues, really without even being aware that these things are occurring. But outside of the blogosphere, we haven't had that discussion -- at all -- because the media, for multiple reasons, just doesn't report it, pundits don't discuss it, very few people with any real public voice outside of the blogosphere have explained and opined about the fact that all of these scandals stem from a common source: the President's expressly stated belief that he has the power to act without restraints and outside of the law, literally.

Well said.

Why Net Neutrality Needs to be the Law of the Land

This is an issue that I just recently became aware of. Let's say my ISP is VeriZomcast and they obtain a financial stake in the internet phone company Vonage, what's to stop them from degrading my connection from their hubs to any Vonage competitors? There are all kinds of ways VeriZomcast could make it appear that Vonage is better (and the competitor worse) by routing "competitor traffic" through older equipment or even introducing the equivalent of "static" to degrade the performance. The only way customers would learn of this would be by a VeriZomcast whistleblower. Even then they could argue that the routing of the "competitor traffic" through older equipment was not intentional. How would customers be able to prove otherwise? This is an open invitation for mischief.

It also has implications for the marketplace of ideas. I'll quote Digby and agree that "If a telco or cable company decides they don't like this blog, for political or any other reasons, they could theoretically slow it down or block it so that their customers cannot see it. In this environment that is a very scary thing."

Take a minute and watch this short video so get a sense of what it all means.


Write you representatives today.

My Message to Harriet Miers

I posted this at the fictitious Harriet Miers blog but I really meant it. Some things are just plain wrong.

Look out for that bus, Harriet!

Rumor has it, you are about to be canned. I hope you can hang on to your job.

Josh Bolton seems to live in a fantasy world where shoving a few people overboard will somehow help the ship of state emerge from the hurricane it has been blindly plowing into full speed ahead.

Another recent example of "just plain wrong" is Michelle Malkin's decision to "sic 'em" on a couple of college lefties who tried to organize a protest against military recruitment on their campus. My daughter is an opinionated college freshman (is there any other kind?). Should national mouthpieces like Malkin behave this way?

I'm actually embarrased for her. She's a grown up (supposedly). I'd love to hear the recruiters say on the record whether they felt threatened in any way.

Northern (musical) Lights - Ann Pence

A lot of the indepentent artists that I particularly like hail from the colder parts of the Northern hemisphere. This is the second post in a series.

Ann Pence is a singer/songwriter from Anchorage, Alaska that writes some compelling music. Take a listen to the bluesy "1968" about a Vietnam veteran and you'll want to hear more. Some additional full length songs are available for streaming (you have to register if you want to download mp3s).
You can visit Ann's personal website at http://www.annpencemusic.com/.

It's not the declassification, its the motive and method.

I think it is pretty much indesputable that the president can declassify anything that was classified by an Executive Branch agency. He has supervisory authority over them all. But from my experience and everything I've read, the agency that classifies a document is normally the agency that DEclassifies a document. The reasoning behind this is fairly obvious if you think about it. That agency is the only one that is likely to know all the reasons (some not too obvious) why the info was classified to begin with and what the repercussions (and unintended consequences) might be.

The Bush Administration has not disputed that the President approved the declassifcation of selected portions of a National Intelligence Estimate to help rebut Ambassador Joseph Wilson's article debunking the myth that Saddam was actively trying to procure yellowcake uranium from Niger.

But...

According to the New York Times, while President Bush ordered the declassification of the selected portions of the NIE, he never specifically authorized Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney or anyone else to feed it to the media.

So, assuming this is true, this raises an interesting question... Why not declassify it the normal way? What am I missing? As I mentioned in the previous post, the Executive Order covering declassification says...

In some exceptional cases, however, the need to protect such information may be outweighed by the public interest in disclosure of the information, and in these cases the information should be declassified. When such questions arise, they shall be referred to the agency head or the senior agency official.

It doesn't say "in these cases the information should be declassified by having the Vice President's Chief of Staff reveal the information (mischaracterized as a "key judgement) to a sympathetic reporter for the New York Times with the proviso that it be attributed to a "former Hill staffer".

All this subterfuge makes one wonder if this so-caled de-facto declassification was motivated by the national interest or by a desire for political damage control. That's why I say it's not the declassification, it's the motive and method that needs to be justified.

According to CNN

President Bush said Monday that he had declassified intelligence documents in 2003 to help explain his administration's reasons for going to war in Iraq.

"I thought it was important for people to get a better sense of what I was saying in my speeches," Bush said, answering a question from an audience member at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. "And I felt I could do so without jeopardizing ongoing intelligence matters."

So again I ask... Why not declassify it the normal way? As Dan Froomkin of washingtonpost.com put it, these folks have got some explaining to do.

Elizabeth de la Vega has written the most concise summary of the President's leaking of classified info that I've found.

Is a President, on the eve of his reelection campaign, legally entitled to ward off political embarrassment and conceal past failures in the exercise of his office by unilaterally and informally declassifying selected -- as well as false and misleading -- portions of a classified National Intelligence Estimate that he has previously refused to declassify, in order to cause such information to be secretly disclosed under false pretenses in the name of a "former Hill staffer" to a single reporter, intending that reporter to publish such false and misleading information in a prominent national newspaper?

Declassifying Info to Get Favorable Press in the New York Times?

Today's article in the New York Sun (not exactly a bastion of liberalism) reveals that Scooter Libby (Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff) told Patrick Fitzgerald (the prosecutor investigating the Valerie Plame outing) that he had been told by Cheney that President Bush (!) had OKed him to reveal portions of the "National Intelligence Estimate" to Times reporter Judith Miller. The secret bits were to be used to rebut the article by Valerie Plame's husband (Joseph Wilson) challenging the administration's claim that Saddam was trying to get yellowcake uranium from Niger for use in building nuclear weapons.

It's been decades since I held any kind of security clearance and I'm no lawyer but this seems like a highly dubious use of declassification authority to me. The law of unintended consequences often rears it's ugly head and revealing one piece of sensitive info can narrow the range of speculation on a host of other sensitive issues. If there is a reason for it to be secret to start with, you should assume there are people out there who are trying to learn what it is. Declassification is a seroius matter is all I'm sayin'. I'm pretty sure it's safe to say that usually the agency that classified it to start with is the agency that gets to decide if it can be declassified because they are the only folks who can potentially see where the dominoes may fall.

So I searched .gov domains for declassifation steps and found this White House Press Release

PART 3 DECLASSIFICATION AND DOWNGRADING

Sec. 3.1. Definitions. For purposes of this order:

(a) "Declassification" means the authorized change in the status of information from classified information to unclassified information.

(b) "Automatic declassification" means the declassification of information based solely upon:

(1) the occurrence of a specific date or event as determined by the original classification authority; or

(2) the expiration of a maximum time frame for duration of classification established under this order.

(c) "Declassification authority" means:

(1) the official who authorized the original classification, if that official is still serving in the same position;

(2) the originator's current successor in function;

(3) a supervisory official of either; or

(4) officials delegated declassification authority in writing by the agency head or the senior agency official.

(d) "Mandatory declassification review" means the review for declassification of classified information in response to a request for declassification that meets the requirements under section 3.6 of this order.

(e) "Systematic declassification review" means the review for declassification of classified information contained in records that have been determined by the Archivist of the United States ("Archivist") to have permanent historical value in accordance with chapter 33 of title 44, United States Code.

(f) "Declassification guide" means written instructions issued by a declassification authority that describes the elements of information regarding a specific subject that maybe declassified and the elements that must remain classified.

(g) "Downgrading" means a determination by a declassification authority that information classified and safeguarded at a specified level shall be classified and safeguarded at a lower level.

(h) "File series" means documentary material, regardless of its physical form or characteristics, that is arranged in accordance with a filing system or maintained as a unit because it pertains to the same function or activity.

I think this gives the President has the authority to declassify anything any Executive department agency classifies since he is a "supervisory official." Fair enough. But...

Sec. 3.2. Authority for Declassification.

(a) Information shall be declassified as soon as it no longer meets the standards for classification under this order.

(b) It is presumed that information that continues to meet the classification requirements under this order requires continued protection. In some exceptional cases, however, the need to protect such information may be outweighed by the public interest in disclosure of the information, and in these cases the information should be declassified. When such questions arise, they shall be referred to the agency head or the senior agency official. That official will determine, as an exercise of discretion, whether the public interest in disclosure outweighs the damage to national security that might reasonably be expected from disclosure. This provision does not:

(1) amplify or modify the substantive criteria or procedures for classification; or

(2) create any substantive or procedural rights subject to judicial review.

(c) If the Director of the Information Security Oversight Office determines that information is classified in violation of this order, the Director may require the information to be declassified by the agency that originated the classification. Any such decision by the Director may be appealed to the President through the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. The information shall remain classified pending a prompt decision on the appeal.

(d) The provisions of this section shall also apply to agencies that, under the terms of this order, do not have original classification authority, but had such authority under predecessor orders.

If I'm reading this right, the information revealed to Judith Miller either
a) no longer met the standards for classification, or
b) the need to protect that information was outweighed by the public interest in disclosure of the information.

But if b) was the reason, didn't it need to be referred to the agency head or the senior agency official before it was declassified? I'm just reading what's there.

It would seem to me that whichever agency is responsible for producing that National Intelligence Estimate would need to approve the declassification. This may seem like legalistic nit picking but these rules were written for a reason.

Well, as I said before, I don't think upholding the laws you are sworn to obey is a "liberal" position but I gotta agree with Anonymous Liberal who writes:

So let's assume, for the moment, that Libby's testimony is accurate. That would mean that the President, instead of following normal declassification procedures and publicly releasing a redacted version of the NIE, authorized an aide to present a cherry-picked and manipulated version of that document to a friendly New York Times reporter on deep background. That aide then passed along the highly misleading information and asked that it be attributed to a "former Hill staffer." That may not be illegal, but it is sure as hell unethical. And that doesn't even take into account the fact that during this same conversation, Libby revealed the identity of an undercover CIA agent.

Meanwhile, National Security Counsel staff, unaware of this secret declassification, continued to go through the steps of formally declassifying portions of the document, and finally succeeded ten days later, on July 18, 2003.

I honestly don't know what to make of all this, but any way you slice it, it seems pretty dodgy. Hopefully our esteemed Washington press corps will now start asking some questions.

"...except to convictions of honor and good sense."

I once had a boss who would stake out a position on an issue early on and who simply would not reconsider it no matter how much new information came to light. Sometime the new info showed that the original presumptions (which were not unreasonable at the time) were either clearly false or highly dubious at best. I consider this trait a form of neurosis but I'm no psychologist.

This came to mind today whan I read an article in the Washington Post about the funeral of Casper Weinberger. It said

Rumsfeld preferred to remember the unyielding Weinberger. "For many years, a quote from Winston Churchill hung in Cap Weinberger's office," he said. "It said: Never give in -- never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in." Rumsfeld left out the rest of Churchill's famous phrase: "except to convictions of honor and good sense."

I suspect that people like my former boss have a fear of being accused of "flip flopping" that is much greater than their fear of being dead wrong. Well, Gallileo flip flopped on his views of astronomy after his observations showed that the earth-centric view of the universe was CLEARLY WRONG (although not unreasonable at the time it was initially posited).

I agree with former CENTCOM commander General Tony Zinni (Ret.) - Rumsfeld should be fired. Watch the video if you want to see what straight talk looks like.

MR. RUSSERT: Should someone resign?

GEN. ZINNI: Absolutely.

MR. RUSSERT: Who?

GEN. ZINNI: Secretary of defense, to begin with.

MR. RUSSERT: Anyone else?

GEN. ZINNI: Well, I think that, that we—that those that have been responsible for the planning, for overriding all the, the efforts that were made in planning before that, that those that stood by and allowed this to happen, that didn’t speak out. And there are appropriate ways within the system you can speak out, at congressional hearings and otherwise. I think they have to be held accountable.

The point is, those that are in power now that have been part of this are finding that their time is spent defending the past. And if they have to defend the past, they’re unable to make the kinds of changes, adjustments, admit the mistakes and move on. And that’s where we are now, trying to rewrite history, defend the past, ridiculous statements that, “Well, wait 20 years and history will tell you how this turns out.” Well, I don’t think anybody wants 20 years to continue like it is now.

MR. RUSSERT: Should the president say to the country, “I was wrong about weapons of mass destruction, wrong about troop levels, wrong about the cost of the war, wrong about the level of insurgency. But we need to put all that behind us and come together as a nation, because this is too important to lose”?

GEN. ZINNI: I, I think the president of the United States ought to certainly say that there were mistakes made at each of those levels. In some cases, these were presented to him. It may not be necessarily the case that he was wrong. He was given bad information. Every president in history has held people accountable and moved on. Look at President Lincoln in the conduct of the war. He went through every general till he found Grant. Senator McCain mentioned Douglas MacArthur. Well, when he screwed up, the president relieved him. You know, you have to make tough choices. You know, integrity and getting on with the mission and doing it right is more important than loyalty. Both are great traits, but integrity, honesty and performance and competence have to outweigh, in this business, loyalty.

Full transcript here.

Northern (musical) Lights - Irene Jackson

I came to realize that a lot of the indepentent artists that I particularly like hail from either New England, Canada, Alaska or the Pacific Northwest. So this is the first post in a series.

Irene Jackson is a singer/songwriter from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada whom I've admired for years.

Take a listen to Let's Make Touble from her Catnip album and if you want to hear more click here. Her rendition of "Summertime" is friggin' awesome.