Democratic presidential candidates decided quite a while ago that there’s no upside to legitimizing the Republicans’ Fox News Channel by participating in one of its debates. The response has been predictably bitter — and consistent — from the right.
Fox News chief Roger Ailes said, “The candidates that can’t face Fox, can’t face Al Qaeda.” Joan Vennochi parroted the line in the Boston Globe, writing, “If you can’t face the bad boys of Fox News, how can you face the bad boys of Iraq or Iran?”
Now, NBC’s Tim Russert is getting in on the game.
COLMES: That’s why — you know, candidates of both parties should come on this show. They don’t. Democrats don’t want to go on with him; some Republicans don’t want to come on with me. I think that’s wrong. And I think Democrats make a mistake not allowing a debate to take place on the FOX News Channel.
RUSSERT: It’s a TV show. If you can’t handle TV questions, how are you going to stand up to Iran, and North Korea, and the rest of the world?
While I’m delighted to see so many media personalities compare Fox News to the world’s most dangerous regimes, the suggestion that Democratic candidates are somehow afraid of a partisan news network is pretty silly.
The point, which I’d hoped was obvious by now, is that Dems (accurately) perceive Fox News as a partisan outlet, with a Republican audience, and with an agenda contrary to Democratic policies. As E. J. Dionne recently put it, “I am an avid reader of conservative magazines such as National Review and the Weekly Standard. But if these two publications teamed up to sponsor a Democratic debate, would anyone accuse Edwards, Obama and Clinton of ‘blacklisting’ if the candidates said, ‘no, thanks’?”
Digby recently summarized the broader point nicely.
What the Democrats are saying is that unlike George W. Bush they aren’t dumb enough to legitimize the enemy’s propaganda…. [I]t’s a waste of time. FOX is a partisan Republican network and the Democrats are trying to get Democratic primary votes (who do not and will not watch FOX for any reason.) They might as well be holding the debate in Dick Cheney’s office. The vast, vast majority of Fox’s audience are older, white, male right-wingers, hard core 28 percenters who would rather stick needles in their eyes than vote for a Democrat. It’s ridiculous to think Democrats have any chance of persuading the audience of a network whose most popular show stars a man who says this:
O’REILLY: OK, I think it’s a small part, but I think it’s there. On the other side, you have people who hate America, and they hate it because it’s run primarily by white, Christian men. Let me repeat that. America is run primarily by white, Christian men, and there is a segment of our population who hates that, despises that power structure. So they, under the guise of being compassionate, want to flood the country with foreign nationals, unlimited, unlimited, to change the complexion — pardon the pun — of America.
Mr. Russert, steering clear of such nonsense has nothing to do with an ability to “stand up to Iran and North Korea.”
What happens when the film industry runs up against the wrong Republican power lobbyist (i.e. Jack Abramoff)?
This week’s local muck all-star: Ed Jew of San Francisco… well, of Burlingame.
Steve Fainaru highlights today one of the most important stories of the war in Iraq that gets a fraction of the attention it deserves: private contractors from companies like Blackwater, which have been engaged in parallel “surges” of their own.
Private security companies, funded by billions of dollars in U.S. military and State Department contracts, are fighting insurgents on a widening scale in Iraq, enduring daily attacks, returning fire and taking hundreds of casualties that have been underreported and sometimes concealed, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials and company representatives.
While the military has built up troops in an ongoing campaign to secure Baghdad, the security companies, out of public view, have been engaged in a parallel surge, boosting manpower, adding expensive armor and stepping up evasive action as attacks increase, the officials and company representatives said. One in seven supply convoys protected by private forces has come under attack this year, according to previously unreleased statistics; one security company reported nearly 300 “hostile actions” in the first four months.
There was one part of Fainaru’s piece that stood out for its anecdotal significance.
Holly vowed he would never again use unarmored vehicles for convoy protection. He went to his primary shipper, Public Warehousing Co. of Kuwait, and ordered a change. PWC hired ArmorGroup, which had armed Ford F-350 pickups with steel-reinforced gun turrets and belt-fed machine guns.
Other companies followed suit, ramping up production of an array of armored and semi-armored trucks of various styles and colors, until Iraq’s supply routes resembled the post-apocalyptic world of the “Mad Max” movies.
Nothing says “progress in Iraq” like comparisons to a post-apocalyptic action film in which a desert area plunges into anarchy, with roving bands of well-armed militias struggling to maintain order.
Tony Snow stuck to the White House line on March 15 when describing the U.S. Attorney purge:
“[W]hat the President has — the Department of Justice has made recommendations, they’ve been approved. And it’s pretty clear that these things are based on performance and not on sort of attempts to do political retaliation, if you will.”
As The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart explained this week, after showing a clip of Snow’s quote, “That was three months ago. Three months later, a dozen subpoenas, six hearings … thousands of released e-mails, it turns out that their performances were actually pretty good. And all signs are now pointing to political motivations. I wonder how the White House is going to reconcile this apparent discrepancy?”
Which leads us to Snow’s spin from this week:
Q: Okay, but at the beginning of this story, the President, you, Dan Bartlett, others said on camera that politics was not involved, this was performance-based.
MR. SNOW: That is something — we have never said that.
Snow does realize that people record these press briefings, right? He understands how easy it is to check when he insists “we have never said that,” doesn’t he?
It’s almost as funny as when White House officials tried to convince reporters that the administration has “never” had “a stay-the-course strategy.”
I can almost understand the Bush gang lying; I just wish they were better at it.
In April, the Office of Special Counsel launched what the LA Times described as a “broad investigation into key elements of the White House political operations that for more than six years have been headed by chief strategist Karl Rove.” The OSC, generally a fairly obscure federal investigative unit that reviews Hatch Act violations and charges of discrimination in the federal workforce, suggested the probe would encompass quite a bit, including the U.S. Attorney purge, missing White House e-mails, and the Bush gang’s efforts to politicize presidential appointees.
“This is a big deal,” Paul C. Light, a New York University expert on the executive branch, said of OSC’s plan. “It is a significant moment for the administration and Karl Rove. It speaks to the growing sense that there is a nexus at the White House that explains what’s going on in these disparate investigations.”
We haven’t heard too much about the investigation since, but ThinkProgress reports that things are moving right along.
Eighteen agencies have been asked by the Office of Special Counsel to preserve electronic information dating back to January 2001 as part of its governmentwide investigation into alleged violations of the law that limits political activity in federal agencies.
The OSC task force investigating the claims has asked agencies, including the General Services Administration, to preserve all e-mail records, calendar information, phone logs and hard drives going back to the beginning of the Bush administration. The task force is headed by deputy OSC special counsel James Byrne.
Why 18 separate federal agencies? Because Karl Rove’s office has been awfully busy. From April:
White House officials conducted 20 private briefings on Republican electoral prospects in the last midterm election for senior officials in at least 15 government agencies covered by federal restrictions on partisan political activity, a White House spokesman and other administration officials said yesterday.
The previously undisclosed briefings were part of what now appears to be a regular effort in which the White House sent senior political officials to brief top appointees in government agencies on which seats Republican candidates might win or lose, and how the election outcomes could affect the success of administration policies, the officials said.
Oddly enough, the day before that report was published, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) delivered a sweeping indictment of the White House’s political tactics in a speech at the Brookings Institution. “Instead of promoting solutions to our nation’s broad challenges, the Bush Administration used all the levers of power to promote their party and its narrow interests,” Emanuel explained. He added that the Bush gang lives by a “guiding principle… insinuating partisan politics into every aspect of government.”
A White House spokesperson responded that Emanuel’s conclusions sounded like something from “the National Enquirer,” and accused Emanuel of “creating grand conspiracy theories that have no basis in fact.”
Funny, the Bush gang isn’t saying that anymore.
Joe Lieberman has decided to join the GOP Smear Machine, which kicked into high gear this week when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid offered some fairly mild criticism of outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Peter Pace during a conference call. From a radio show in Connecticut:
Q. There was a big flap yesterday about some comments made by Harry Reid concerning Gen. Petraeus, and the outgoing Peter Pace, saying they were incompetent, basically. Is that useful, and do you know that to be true or not… It’s generally being reported in a lot of places.
LIEBERMAN: I don’t know what Harry Reid is up to. I was very upset, even offended, by what he said about General Pace and General Petraeus. Look, you call General Pace incompetent? That’s abs – this is a man who has devoted his entire life to the Marine corps, the service of our country, defense of our country.
Hmm, the president fired Gen. Pace, after he devoted his entire life to the Marine corps, the service of our country, defense of our country. Did Lieberman find that offensive? Put it another way — which is more “upsetting” to Lieberman, a senator’s mild, one-sentence criticism of a general’s judgment, or the president firing that general in the midst of a war?
Lieberman wasn’t quite through:
Q. Why is he doing this? Why is Reid doing this?
LIEBERMAN: I have no idea. Then to say that Petraeus is out of touch? I mean, Harry Reid in Washington says David Petraeus, who’s in Baghdad, away from his family, heroically trying to rally our forces and succeed over in Iraq… that he’s out of touch? I mean, it’s just – the danger here – my colleagues who have been opposed to the war have said “we’re opposed to the war, but we support our troops.” But when you start to attack the top two generals, you know, that’s… that’s wrong.
That’s been the standard right-wing line for a couple of days now — if you disapprove of a general, then you’re necessarily anti-military and deserve to have your patriotism questioned. Yesterday, the Republican National Committee issued a statement saying that Reid “attack[ed] our military.” Conservatives online are following along, insisting without reason that Reid made “anti-military slurs.”
Since when is it heresy to question the competence of military leaders? Pace’s tenure has, at times, been rocky. His relationship with congressional leaders has, at times, been awkward. For that matter, Petraeus’ judgment has come under question of late. There need not be a rule that military leaders must remain criticism-free at all times.
Indeed, if generals must be exempted from criticism, and those who spend their lives in military service should not be questioned, why is it that John McCain offered some harsh words, in public, for the last general to command U.S. troops in Iraq? Opposing Gen. George Casey’s confirmation as the Army’s chief of staff, McCain cited the general’s “unrealistically rosy” assessments and “failed leadership” and told him: “I question seriously the judgment that was employed in your execution of your responsibilities in Iraq. And we have paid a very, very heavy price in American blood and treasure because of what is now agreed to by literally everyone as a failed policy.”
Was this outrageous, too? Did conservatives condemn McCain for levying a personal attack on a general in a time of war?
Or is it more likely the case that Republicans and Lieberman are desperate to manufacture scandals, whether the facts support them or not?
Just two weeks ago, Condi Rice insisted that the entire Bush administration is absolutely united behind a single policy when it comes to Iran. Never mind all those rumors about Cheney’s team actively circumventing the president’s team in order to instigate a U.S. conflict with Iran, Rice said, everyone is on the same team: “The president of the United States has made it clear that we are on a course that is a diplomatic course. That policy is supported by all of the members of the cabinet, and by the vice president of the United States.”
Two weeks later, Rice’s comment almost appears quaint.
A year after President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced a new strategy toward Iran, a behind-the-scenes debate has broken out within the administration over whether the approach has any hope of reining in Iran’s nuclear program, according to senior administration officials.
The debate has pitted Ms. Rice and her deputies, who appear to be winning so far, against the few remaining hawks inside the administration, especially those in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office who, according to some people familiar with the discussions, are pressing for greater consideration of military strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities.
Steve Clemons’ report from late May about the “race currently underway between different flanks of the administration to determine the future course of US-Iran policy” appears more and more accurate all the time.
And while the administration’s factions continue to maneuver for position, Iranian officials are in the midst of the most intense crackdown on its people in a generation.
The recent detentions of Iranian American dual nationals are only a small part of a campaign that includes arrests, interrogations, intimidation and harassment of thousands of Iranians as well as purges of academics and new censorship codes for the media. Hundreds of Iranians have been detained and interrogated, including a top Iranian official, according to Iranian and international human rights groups. […]
“The current crackdown is a way to instill fear in the population in order to discourage them from future political agitation as the economic situation begins to deteriorate,” said Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “You’re going to think twice about taking to the streets to protest the hike in gasoline prices if you know the regime’s paramilitary forces have been on a head-cracking spree the last few weeks.”
Cheney and Lieberman want a war, Rice and Europe want diplomacy, and Ahmadinejad wants to crush any hints of dissent, while ensuring that Iranians don’t hear a peep about any diplomatic discussions between Iran and the West.
Stay tuned.
In many ways, it was the scandal that got away. In March, we learned that Bush Justice Department, more specifically the FBI, was engaged in widespread, illegal misuse of “national security letters” (NSLs).
Using NSLs, the FBI has the power to obtain secret information about Americans — including phone calls, internet visits, even credit ratings — whether they’re suspected of wrongdoing or not. Officials can probe personal information without the consent, or even knowledge, of a judge.
There are, however, some laws and internal Justice Department regulations to regulate how the NSLs are obtained by law enforcement officials. As it turns out, the FBI violated these laws. What’s more, while DoJ officials claimed they didn’t realize the agency was ignoring the NSL safeguards, the truth was that their own lawyers had been warning them about abuse, but officials ignored the concerns.
This week, however, the Washington Post ran a front-page piece explaining that the illegal abuse at the FBI is bigger, more widespread, and more scandalous than anyone outside the DoJ realized — an internal audit found more than 1,000 abuses while reviewing 10% of NSL investigations since 2002. If the statistical sample is representative, weâre looking 10,000 instances of FBI agents obtaining information about Americans that they could not legally receive.
When this controversy first emerged in March, the problem drew bi-partisan criticism, but was quickly forgotten. Even after FBI Director Robert Mueller conceded that the bureau had been breaking the law, there was far more interest in the scandal surrounding purged U.S. Attorneys, and the FBI mess was quickly brushed off the front page (and the political world’s radar).
But in light of a little-noticed court ruling the day after the Post article, we’ll likely learn quite a bit more about this controversy, too. (thanks to reader R.S.)
Just one day after a news that an internal audit found that FBI agents abused a Patriot Act power more than 1,000 times, a federal judge ordered the agency Friday to begin turning over thousands of pages of documents related to the agency’s use of a powerful, but extremely secretive investigative tool that can pry into telephone and internet records.
The order for monthly document releases commencing July 5 came in response to a government sunshine request by [the Electronic Frontier Foundation], which sued in April over the FBI’s foot-dragging on its broad request.
Something to keep an eye on.
In case you missed it, Trent Lott had one of the classic lines of the immigration debate this week.
Comments by Republican senators on Thursday suggested that they were feeling the heat from conservative critics of the bill, who object to provisions offering legal status. The Republican whip, Trent Lott of Mississippi, who supports the bill, said: “Talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem.”
I see. A far-right senator believes the “problem” with the policy discourse is far-right radio for a far-right audience.
Keep in mind, this wasn’t a stray comment for Lott, who seems to have been thinking about this. The other day, the Washington Post quoted Lott saying, “I’m sure senators on both sides of the aisle are being pounded by these talk-radio people who don’t even know what’s in the bill.”
You mean right-wing blowhards like Limbaugh can rile up a large audience based on nothing but demagoguery? And that conservative audience will bombard Hill offices with whatever they last heard on the radio?
Welcome to our world, Trent.