Court sides with ACLU, strikes down Patriot Act gag provisionA federal appeals court ruling late Monday is the cause célèbre of the American Civil Liberties Union, as another provision of the Bush administration's Patriot Act falls to the judicial system.
Until the ruling, recipients of so-called "national security letters" were legally forbidden from speaking out. The letters, usually a demand for documents, or a notice that private records had been searched by government authorities, were criticized as a cover-all for FBI abuses.
"The appeals court invalidated parts of the statute that wrongly placed the burden on NSL recipients to initiate judicial review of gag orders, holding that the government has the burden to go to court and justify silencing NSL recipients," said the ACLU in a release. "The appeals court also invalidated parts of the statute that narrowly limited judicial review of the gag orders – provisions that required the courts to treat the government's claims about the need for secrecy as conclusive and required the courts to defer entirely to the executive branch."
Because of the ruling, the government will now be forced to justify individual gag orders before a court, instead of casually wielding the power of a blanket gag as the Bush administration has done since the blindingly fast passage of the Patriot Act in Oct. 2001.
In Sept. 2007, a federal judge ruled unconstitutional provisions within the Patriot Act which allowed the government to obtain search warrants without probable cause.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Slowly But, Maybe, Surely
Oh! The Bravery of The Outgoing!
Since at least June of 2007, Coulter has been calling the then-candidate as "B. Hussein Obama," a practice which she still continues. When Fox host Neil Cavuto asked her in February, "Why do you keep saying the 'B. Hussein Obama'?" Coulter replied, "Well, that's his name. ... He's probably going to be our next president, President Hussein."
"Not only do you owe me an apology," Coulter insisted to Colmes, "but Michelle Obama owes me an apology for calling it was a 'fear-bomb' we were dropping by calling him Hussein."
"I would like my apology now," she smirked, folding her arms and tossing her head pertly. "I'm ready."
"Not an apology," responded Colmes sternly. "He is following tradition in terms of how a president is sworn in. You purposely underscored his middle name, diminishing his first name, to point out that he had the name of a terrorist!"
Coulter, who had previously noted that Obama "also said that this was to 'reboot' our relations with the Muslim world," insisted in response, "It can not simultaneously be a hate crime to use a man's middle name and ... for him to say 'this is going to change our relations with the Muslim world.'"
"Ann," Colmes finally said in frustration, "I think you are a hate crime."
Milestone
Milorad “Rod” R. Blagojevich (born December 10, 1956) is a politician, currently clinging to one last toehold as chief executive of Illinois, and a dick. The subject of no fewer than a dozen separate federal investigations, Blagojevich is a disgrace to all Serbian-American governors everywhere—that means you, George Voinovich of Ohio. He is also just the kind of a-hole who threatens to screw the whole thing up for Barack Obama before he even takes office.
'Tis The Season
How about Bruce, the E-Streeters and Conan's Band?
Monday, December 15, 2008
From CBS News
Arne Duncan Obama's Pick for Education Secretary
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/12/15/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry4670681.shtml
Not Just A Victory ...
The Obama team reports that 4,252 "Change is Coming" house parties were held in all 50 states -- plus Guam and Puerto Rico. At least 1,950 cities had house parties, and Los Angeles had the largest single party, with 400 people in attendance.
The goal suggested for the meetings was for supporters to "reflect on this monumental journey and plan on how they can bring change to both Washington and their own communities."
The dialogue during the house parties was completely open.
Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt says the parties are the "next step in determining our supporters' vision for how the organization develops."This weekend's turnout is one sign of how beneficial the extensive email network the Obama campaign acquired during the campaign could be -– leaving the Obama transition team with a potentially powerful grassroots tool at its fingertips. There is much debate -– and more than healthy dose of secrecy -– from the Obama Transition Team as what exactly to do with this consortium.
The house parties this weekend are just one of the first steps demonstrating how the list could potentially be useful at the grassroots level.
Not Hiding Anything
"At the direction of the President-elect, a review of Transition staff contacts with Governor Blagojevich and his office has been conducted and completed and is ready for release. That review affirmed the public statements of the President-elect that he had no contact with the governor or his staff, and that the President-elect's staff was not involved in inappropriate discussions with the governor or his staff over the selection of his successor as US Senator."Also at the President-elect's direction, Gregory Craig, counsel to the Transition, has kept the US Attorney's office informed of this fact-gathering process in order to ensure our full cooperation with the investigation.
"In the course of those discussions, the US Attorney's office requested the public release of the Transition review be deferred until the week of December 22, in order not to impede their investigation of the governor. The Transition has agreed to this revised timetable for release," said Obama Transition Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer.
So, Not The Reason That We Suspected
The Wall Street Journal Does...
Conventional wisdom holds that U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald ordered the FBI to arrest Rod Blagojevich before sunrise Tuesday in order to stop a crime from being committed. That would have been the sale of the Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.
But the opposite is true: Members of Fitzgerald’s team are livid the scheme didn’t advance, at least for a little longer, according to some people close to Fitzgerald’s office. Why? Because had the plot unfolded, they might have had an opportunity most feds can only dream of: A chance to catch the sale of a Senate seat on tape, including the sellers and the buyers.
The precise timing of Tuesday’s dramatic, pre-dawn arrest was not dictated by Fitzgerald, nor was it dictated by the pace of Blagojevich’s alleged “crime spree.” It was dictated by the Chicago Tribune, according to people close to the investigation and a careful reading of the FBI’s affidavit in the case.
At Fitzgerald’s request, the paper had been holding back a story since October detailing how a confidante of Blagojevich was cooperating with his office.
Gerould Kern, the Tribune’s editor, said in a statement last week that these requests are granted in what he called isolated instances. “In each case, we strive to make the right decision as reporters and as citizens,” he said.
But editors decided to publish the story on Friday, Dec. 5, ending the Tribune’s own cooperation deal with the prosecutor.
Twit Alert
What a few days it's been. First I sang Happy Birthday to my dear, dear friend Nelson Mandela - I like to think I'm one of the few people privileged enough to call him Madiba - at a party specially organised to provide white celebrities with a chance to be photographed cuddling him, wearing that patronisingly awestruck smile they all have. It says: "I love you, you adorable, apartheid-fighting teddy bear."
The next night I welcomed the exact same crowd to my place for my annual White Tie & Tiaras ball. Lulu, Kelly Osbourne, Agyness Deyn, Richard Desmond, Liz Hurley, Bill Clinton - I met most of them 10 minutes ago, but we have something very special and magical in common: we're all members of the entertainment industry. You can't manufacture a connection like that.Naturally, everyone could afford just to hand over the money if they gave that much of a toss about Aids research - as could the sponsors. But we like to give guests a preposterously lavish evening, because they're the kind of people who wouldn't turn up for anything less. They fork out small fortunes for new dresses and so on, the sponsors blow hundreds of thousands on creating what convention demands we call a "magical world", and everyone wears immensely smug "My diamonds are by Chopard" grins in the newspapers and OK!. Once we've subtracted all these costs, the leftovers go to my foundation. I call this care-o-nomics.
He Lost.
What a twit.
Now, can I sue him for Crocodile Rock? If any song was less rock ... uh ... oh never mind. He's been a twit for like forever and, worse, a fucking weenie. A walking condemnation of the concept of Balls and Manhood.
meh.
Good
US Supreme Court orders review of Guantanamo torture caseThe US Supreme Court on Monday revived a lawsuit by four former British detainees at the Guantanamo Bay military prison, ordering a lower court to reconsider their claims of torture and religious bias.
The justices ordered a Washington DC appeals court to review its January 2008 ruling quashing the lawsuit against former Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and 10 senior US military officers.
The high court said the case should be reconsidered in light of its June 12 ruling that prisoners held at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba had a right to challenge their detention in civilian courts.
In their suit, the Britons claimed they were protected against torture by a US constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. They also argued that their rights to practice their religion under the US Religious Freedom Restoration Act were violated at Guantanamo.
This Seems Like A Done Deal
Caroline Kennedy to Seek Clinton’s Senate Seat
Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of an American political dynasty, has decided she will pursue the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, a person told of her decision said Monday.
The decision came after a series of deeply personal and political conversations, in which Ms. Kennedy, who friends describe as unflashy but determined, wrestled with whether to give up what has been a lifetime of avoiding the spotlight.
Ms. Kennedy will ask that Gov. David A. Paterson consider her for the appointment. The governor was traveling to Utica today could not immediately be reached for comment.
If appointed, Ms. Kennedy would fill the seat once held by her uncle, the late Robert F. Kennedy.
WTF?
Tipping Point
Watch Obama takeover the Democratic Party.
(it's 20 minutes long, but it is also history ... watch!)
'Tis The Season
Official: Iraq reporter detained by PM's security
BAGHDAD - Thousands of Iraqis took to the streets Monday to demand the release of a reporter who threw his shoes at President George W. Bush, as Arabs across the Middle East hailed the journalist as a hero and praised his insult as a proper send-off to the unpopular U.S. president.
The protests came as a suicide truck bomber killed at least five police officers Monday at a checkpoint west of Baghdad, said Iraqi police.
By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA Associated Press Writer
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Analysis: Bush's Iraq trip highlights war unwon
BAGHDAD - President George W. Bush's whirlwind visit to Iraq was his ostensible victory lap for what often looked like a personal crusade.
The president leaves behind a war that even he and his own generals acknowledge is not yet over - and a devastated country whose divisions are far from healed.
Certainly, Baghdad is safer than it was a year ago. Bush visited the Green Zone on Sunday without being hustled for cover from the rockets and mortars that rained down on the area only six months ago.
But the country is far from safe by any normal standard. Nearly six years after the U.S. invasion, Iraq is a country of daily bombings, kidnappings and ambushes.
"There is still more work to be done," Bush said after his meeting with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. "The war is not over."
Prospects for stability are as uncertain as the fleeting stare of the heavily armed security guards who scour the streets for threats when they escort U.S. officials who foray outside their Green Zone enclave.
Suspicion among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds - which fueled the war that erupted after Saddam Hussein's ouster - still run deep.
Nearly 150,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq - more than when Bush ordered the "troop surge" largely credited with curbing violence and arresting the country's slide toward full scale civil war.
"There is still more work to be done," Bush said after his meeting with al-Maliki. "The war is not over."
The architect of the surge, Gen. David Petraeus, didn't even like to use the word "victory" in connection with the Iraq war.
Petraeus left in September to take a new post as the U.S. military's regional commander for the Middle East. Before his departure, Petraeus said "this is not the sort of struggle where you take a hill, plant the flag and go home to a victory parade."
"It's not a war with a simple slogan," he told the British Broadcasting Corp.
It has taken more than 4,200 U.S. deaths to learn that simple truth.
The U.S. presence in Iraq was riven by mistakes for years, starting with what Bush called the "intelligence failure" that led him to believe Saddam Hussein held weapons of mass destruction.
Bush then dispatched enough troops to defeat Saddam's army - but not enough the maintain law and order. The 2003 decision to disband the Iraqi army and purge members of Saddam's party drove thousands of Sunni Arabs to the insurgency.
U.S. officials were slow to respond to the insurgents. Dismissing them as "dead enders" from the Saddam regime, the Bush Pentagon failed to anticipate the Sunni-Shiite fighting that plunged the country to the brink of civil war in 2006.
The U.S. was also too quick to hand over responsibility to Iraq's fresh-minted security forces - a blunder that was reversed by the troop surge.
As the American public turned against the war, Bush remained resolute, even as his popularity dropped to historic lows.
He ordered the surge in 2006 after the Republicans lost control of Congress and against the advice of some of his party's most experienced foreign policy veterans.
Experts will debate for years whether it was the troop surge, or a Sunni revolt against al-Qaida, or the Shiite government's decision to confront Shiite militias that turned the tide.
Nor is in clear that the downturn in violence will last.
Nearly 100,000 Sunni insurgents turned against al-Qaida and joined forces with the Americans, who paid them. But they could switch sides again if the Shiite-led government fails to honor its promises of jobs for them.
Al-Qaida in Iraq and at least a dozen other Sunni groups remain active, especially in the north. Although U.S. and Iraqi forces crushed the Shiite militias last spring, U.S. commanders acknowledge privately that many of the fighters eluded them and could regroup.
With so much uncertainty, U.S. commanders are cautious.
"We are in no hurry to race away and have things crumble on us," said Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin, the No. 2 commander. "This is hard work" because Iraq "is so very complex."
The future is in the hands of Bush's successor, President-elect Barack Obama, and the Iraqis themselves.
Obama campaigned on a promise to end the war, which he consistently opposed. The newly ratified U.S.-Iraqi security agreement sets a timetable for a U.S. withdrawal by 2012 - something the president resisted for years.
The challenge is now to manage the end of the war better than the beginning. Obama is keeping Bush's defense secretary, Robert Gates, to oversee it.
"It's important that we maintain enough presence here that we can help them get through this year of transition," Petraeus' successor, Gen. Raymond Odierno said this weekend. "We don't want to take a step backward because we've made so much progress here."
--
Robert H. Reid is AP's chief of bureau in Baghdad and has reported from Iraq since 2003.
By ROBERT H. REID Associated Press Writer
Ill. officials issue fresh calls for resignation
CHICAGO - A handful of Illinois' top politicians called disgraced Gov. Rod Blagojevich incapacitated Sunday, issuing fresh calls for his resignation as lawmakers gear up for a session that could lead to his impeachment.
Fellow Democrats Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Lt. Gov. Patrick Quinn, both likely candidates in the 2010 gubernatorial campaign, criticized the governor anew during appearances on NBC's "Meet the Press" and CBS's "Face the Nation."
By DEANNA BELLANDI Associated Press Writer
Turnout in presidential elections hit 40-year high
WASHINGTON - Enthusiasm among blacks and Democrats for Barack Obama's candidacy pushed voter turnout in this year's elections to the highest level in 40 years.
Final figures from nearly every state and the District of Columbia showed that more than 131 million people voted, the most ever for a presidential election. A little more than 122 million voted in 2004.
The Associated Press
