White House Needs More Transparency, Not Less

Glenn Greenwald rips into an absurd Washington Post Op-Ed:

Matt Miller, a Senior Fellow with the Center for American Progress (CAP) and former official in the Clinton OMB, has an Op-Ed in The Washington Post decrying the "kiss-and-tell" books written by top presidential aides once they leave the White House, and he singles out as examples the "tell-all" books written by George Stephanopoulos and Scott McClellan (whose name is repeatedly misspelled throughout the Op-Ed). Miller doesn't merely want former officials who write such books to be stigmatized and scorned, though he does want that. Far beyond mere disapproval, he actually wants to vest presidents -- or at least the new President -- with the formal legal power to block publication of these books in the first place:

Just as mergers and marriages that flourished on handshakes and vows had to turn to coarser arrangements once the stakes of break-up became high, the politician-aide relationship now needs its contract. In other words, it is time for the political prenuptial. Barack Obama should simply require key advisers and officials to sign a binding contract of confidentiality as a condition of employment. Aides should pledge not to disclose anything they see until, say, five years after their boss leaves office.

That is an atrocious idea. For one thing, it's hard to see how enforcement of these silencing contracts could be permitted in light of the First Amendment. And I doubt that Obama, for appearance reasons if nothing else, would take this proposal seriously. But those matters aside, the thinking behind this proposal is common among Beltway insiders and reveals much about the ways of Washington.

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A Disappointing Resumption Of Identity Politics

Some heralded Barack Obama's election as the 44th President of the United States as a death knell for racial/ethnic identity politics in the country--and that has turned out to be quite naive.

Talking heads in the mainstream media are already complaining about the skin tone and ancestry of Obama's cabinet nominees. Writing for CNN, Ruben Navarrette Jr. whines:

This week, President-elect Barack Obama unveiled his national security team and continued the sorry tradition of presidents overlooking Latinos as they fill the top-tier of the Cabinet appointments. The four big posts have been filled, and there is not a Latino anywhere in the mix.

Even liberals who like to think of the Gonzales appointment as a kind of failed social experiment because it lets them off the hook for future stabs at diversity would be hard-pressed to suggest that they couldn't do better and that Obama couldn't find a single Latino to name, oh I don't know, secretary of state.

You would have thought Bill Richardson was a shoo-in for that job, with his gold-plated resume: Seven-term member of Congress; special envoy to North Korea, Iraq, Cuba and Sudan; U.N. ambassador; energy secretary; New Mexico governor and five-time nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize for brokering cease-fires and negotiating the release of hostages. What a slacker. I'm surprised Richardson never got around to securing peace in the Middle East.

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This is nothing short of ridiculous. I care far more about executive appointees' knowledge and experience than I do any physical characteristics about them--and so should everyone else. Diversity in top-level officials is important because it is evidence of decreasing problems with all kinds of discrimination; however, criticizing Obama for not following some sort of absurd quota system annoys me immensely.

Speaking as a gay man, I honestly don't care whether any top administration officials are gay. I just want to live in a world where an individual's sexual orientation has no effect on his or her chances of obtaining any sort of job. There's a big difference. Anyone who thinks token appointments made for the purpose of placating minorities necessarily represent a solution to the problem of unfair discrimination in American society is not particularly intellectually sophisticated.

But I guess all this nonsense is just one more reason I'm not a Democrat.

Many Congressional Democrats Are Part Of The Problem

Glenn Greenwald reminds everyone that merely electing Barack Obama president has done nothing to change the contemptible status quo in Congress:

Though it hasn't happened yet, it is appearing increasingly likely that Senate Democrats -- led by Barack Obama (who seems to be playing a much more active role in all of this than his spokesperson yesterday suggested) -- are going to choose Joe Lieberman to serve as their Chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in the next Congress. If that happens, there will be one important silver lining: it will remind many people, who have understandably forgotten due to the euphoria last week, exactly what most Beltway Democrats are, what their priorities and beliefs are, and to whose opinions and concerns they do and do not pay attention.

It is worth remembering that the Democrats who are going to exert dominant political control are the same ones who have provoked so much scorn -- rightfully so -- over the last several years, and particularly since 2006. This is the same Democratic Party leadership which funded the Iraq War without conditions (and voted to authorize it in the first place); massively expanded the President's warrantless eavesdropping powers; immunized lawbreaking telecoms; enacted the Patriot Act and then renewed it with virtually no changes; didn't even bother to mount a filibuster to stop the Military Commissions Act; refrained from pursuing any meaningful investigations of Bush lawbreaking; confirmed every last extremist Bush nominee, from Michael McConnell to Michael Mukasey; acquiesced to even the worst and most lawless Bush policies when they were briefed on them; and on and on and on. None of that has changed. That is still who they are.

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Schweitzer 2016

The more I learn about Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, the more I like him.

Iowa Independent interviewed him at Tom Harkin's steak fry recently. I recommend reading the whole article, but his comments on immigration were particularly good:

In Montana we have about 7 percent of the people that have been there for 400 generations. Their immigration policy would be a lot different if they could have it over again. When people talk about westward expansion they call it an eastern invasion. Immigration policy is not a debate that just happened this year. We’ve been debating it for 150 years.

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I want to repeat the principle: families who want to come to America, work in America, raise families in America, ought to be welcome because that’s the thread that has made this blanket so warm in this country. We need to have a system that allows people a path to citizenship.

Note to Hillary Haters

See, she knows how to be classy:



(Via Sullivan.)

Bill was pretty forcefully supportive as well.

I fully admit I got a little carried away in my criticism of the Clintons during the primary. We should all use this as a lesson in keeping calm even in the heat of a contentious political contest--including the upcoming election.

Demonizing one's political opponents can be counterproductive because it can make one look fanatical to undecided voters thus rub them the wrong way. It's entirely possible to attack people's ideas forcefully without becoming obnoxious. Preaching to the choir can be fun, but it doesn't accomplish much. Remember: aim for the undecided.

Meanwhile in Denver

Unfortunately, no one from the Daily Iowan is in Denver to cover the Democratic convention and the antics surrounding it. But plenty of other journalists are--and the Internet allows me to direct you to their work, so that's what I'll do throughout the week.

Continuing its involvement with political coverage this election season, Google provides a number of ways to check up on events in Denver this week and in Minneapolis later on. Check out the numerous interesting political links on Google's corporate blog if you want in on the action.

For some insightful criticism of the protesters outside the convention, check out this post by Eli Sanders:

It occurred to me during a cold shower yesterday—a nice way to cool off when it’s in the 90s here in Denver, and a good place to hide out and think when you’re crashing in a tiny apartment that’s quickly becoming a journalist tenement—that the DNC protesters must not have been watching the Democratic primaries.

The entire protest movement here is organized under the rubric of “Recreate ‘68,” no doubt meant to evoke a certain nostalgia for a time when hippies and other anti-war protesters famously confronted the Democratic party establishment in Chicago over the Vietnam War and the lack of openness in the convention process at the time. On the plane here I was reading an old photocopied magazine clipping from 1968 that Annie Wagner pulled out of a drawer at her Seattle apartment the other night. It’s Esquire magazine’s take on the 1968 protests and police violence, written by Jean Genet, William Burroughs, Terry Southern, and John Sack. It’s an amazing collection of work, and it’s quite possible that a lot of the younger “Recreate ‘68”-ers here in Denver have no idea who most of those writers are—which is part of the point they’re missing.

Also via Slog, here's an entertaining clip of protesters interacting with a Fox News reporter (warning: profanity abounds):



Unsurprisingly, both the protesters and Fox News reporter come across as jerks. But the reporter's assertion that the protesters don't believe in free speech is pretty stupid. Of course they do--that's why they're so happy to suggest that some unspecified person or group of people have intercourse with the Fox network.

Not all free speech is intelligent speech, as both Fox News and wacky leftist protesters demonstrate on a regular basis.

Congressional Democrats and Torture, Illegal Spying

Glenn Greenwald delves into Democratic lawmakers' motivations for blocking investigations into Bush administration lawbreaking:

As we witness not just Republicans, but also Democrats in Congress, acting repeatedly to immunize executive branch lawbreaking and to obstruct investigations, it's vital to keep that fact in mind. With regard to illegal Bush programs of torture and eavesdropping, key Congressional Democrats were contemporaneously briefed on what the administration was doing (albeit, in fairness, often in unspecific ways). The fact that they did nothing to stop that illegality, and often explicitly approved of it, obviously incentivizes them to block any investigations or judicial proceedings into those illegal programs.

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So, of course key Congressional Democrats who were made aware of these illegal torture and surveillance programs are going to protect the Bush administration and other lawbreakers. If you were Jay Rockfeller or Nancy Pelosi, would you want there to be investigations and prosecutions for torture programs that, to one degree or another, you knew about? If you were Jane Harman, wouldn't you be extremely eager to put a stop to judicial proceedings that were likely to result in a finding that surveillance programs that you knew about, approved of, and helped to conceal were illegal and unconstitutional?

He also links to an excellent interview of Jane Mayer in Harper's Magazine:

In a new book, The Dark Side, Mayer puts together the major conclusions from her articles and fills in a number of important gaps. Most significantly, we learn the details on the torture techniques and the drama behind the fierce and lingering struggle within the administration over torture, and we learn that many within the administration recognized the potential criminal accountability they faced over these torture tactics and moved frantically to protect themselves from possible future prosecution.

Remember, these aren't just ideologically driven accusations. At this point it's difficult to find a serious legal scholar who hasn't worked for the Bush administration who thinks either the warrant-less wiretapping or "enhanced interrogation techniques" were legal. And paying a few lawyers to tell you something is okay isn't a legitimate defense in court.