The ADL’s Abe Foxman thinks Mitchell may be too even-handed …
From The Jewish Week …
Some Jewish leaders say the very qualities that may appeal to the Obama administration — Mitchell’s reputation as an honest broker — could spark unhappiness, if not outright opposition, from some pro-Israel groups.
“Sen. Mitchell is fair. He’s been meticulously even-handed,” said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. “But the fact is, American policy in the Middle East hasn’t been ‘even handed’ — it has been supportive of Israel when it felt Israel needed critical U.S. support.
“So I’m concerned,” Foxman continued. “I’m not sure the situation requires that kind of approach in the Middle East.”
Unstated here is that Mitchell is half Lebanese Christian by ancestry. And I think there’s little way that isn’t playing into this in the background. Roger Cohen had a good column a couple weeks ago in which he began …
The Obama team is tight with information, but I’ve got the scoop on the senior advisers he’s gathered to push a new Middle East policy as the Gaza war rages: Shibley Telhami, Vali Nasr, Fawaz Gerges, Fouad Moughrabi and James Zogby.
Needless to say this is not Obama’s Middle East team. And as Cohen went on to note, Obama’s team is made up of five Jewish men. Now, I’m Jewish. Got no beef with Jews. And I’m sure this post will generate a bunch of nonsensical emails claiming I’m saying that Jews can’t be trusted to deal with Middle East policy, which is too nonsensical even to discuss. But if there’s reflexive opposition to a distinguished former senator who happens to be half Arab by lineage because of the stated reason that he may be too even-handed, that’s really a problem.
As we told you earlier, David Iglesias, the fired US Attorney from New Mexico, has a new assignment: prosecuting detainees at Gitmo. Given that the news came out today, it sort of sounded like this was the Obama team clearing the decks, putting a very different kind of person in charge. But it’s a bit different. He’s actually been on the job for a while. And the person who approved him for the position was Susan Crawford, who runs the Office of Military Commissions. That makes sense in terms of who in the system would make the choice. But Crawford, you’ll remember, is also the one who just unambiguously used the word ‘torture‘ to describe at least some treatment of detainees in US custody.
The fact that Crawford only used that term (or allowed the words to be published) as Bush and Cheney were days from leaving office showed pretty clearly that people in the military bureaucracy were already starting to shift in expectation of the changing of the guard. And Iglesias’s appointment would seem to fall into the same category.
I want to point out one particular section of Obama’s remarks this morning:
Going forward, anytime the American people want to know something that I or a former President wants to withhold, we will have to consult with the Attorney General and the White House Counsel, whose business it is to ensure compliance with the rule of law. Information will not be withheld just because I say so. It will be withheld because a separate authority believes my request is well grounded in the Constitution.
A reader writes in: “As you know, I work for the Department of Justice. That highlighted phrase has signaled a significant discussion around these parts.”
It caught our eye, too. But it has me wondering about whether Obama can apply that retroactively to constrain now former President Bush.
As David notes below, in his remarks today, President Obama hinted at an issue a lot of us having been thinking about: that is, the fact that as the new President, Obama now speaks for President Bush in terms of a lot of things that President Bush was trying to keep secret during his tenure in office.
I spoke to a lawyer friend yesterday. And there seemed to be a little unclarity on which of these privileges are now in Obama’s hands as president and which President Bush can still independently assert in his own capacity. But it reminded me of something that happened not long after the last presidential handover in 2001.
This was during the investigation of the Marc Rich pardon. And the Bush White House turned out to be uncharacteristically generous releasing transcripts of a phone conversation between Clinton and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in which the Rich pardon had come up. If you think about, to think that the Bush White House ever would have released the transcript of one of President Bush’s private conversations with a foreign leader in order to help out with a congressional investigation is laughable on its face.
It was never completely clear to me whether the Bush folks completely blindsided the Clinton folks or just muscled them by putting them in an impossible position. (I remember one reporting call at the time that gave me the impression that the Clinton folks felt cordially screwed.) But it’s an example that ex-Presidents become extremely vulnerable to their successors.
Of course, every president has a successor, including this one. So that tends to keep them all maintaining the privileges of the office.
TPM Reader GR’s tale …
We were at the Mall yesterday but our son was getting cold and shivering so we had decided to give up and go home. As we left the Mall walking up 18th Street we saw that DAR Constitution Hall was open, with a huge screen on stage (and two smaller screens on each side)–a warm place to sit, with real bathrooms.
As we sat among a mostly African-American crowd watching Aretha Franklin begin, “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee”, an 80-year circle came together–Marion Anderson singing that song at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939, after not being allowed to perform in the very hall were were sitting in–Martin Luther King, Jr., on the same Memorial steps, speaking the lyrics of that song and calling for freedom to ring from Stone Mountain in Georgia and Lookout Mountain in Tennessee–and now the daughter of Martin’s friend C.L. Franklin singing, at the other end of the Mall, “from every mountainside, let freedom ring”, just before Barack Hussein Obama was to become President of the United States of America. It was incredible.
The Inauguration Committee has issued a statement apologizing to those who were stuck in the Purple Tunnel of Doom yesterday.
Late Update: Late this evening, Sen, Dianne Feinstein, who chaired the Inauguration Commission, issued the following statement:
“I have just spoken with Mark Sullivan, Director of the Secret Service, and I have asked him to convene along with the U.S. Capitol Police, all law enforcement and other parties involved in planning for this Inaugural to conduct a prompt investigation into two serious incidents that have been reported. These reports have prompted great concern by members of the Inaugural Committee, including Senator Bob Bennett, and by Congress in general.
The specific incidents include the report that a decision was made to cut off access to Purple and Blue standing areas, which meant that a large number of ticketholders could not reach their designated areas.
I am also aware of the incident involving the 3rd Street Tunnel, where thousands of people were stuck for several hours and apparently without any law enforcement presence.
There may have also been other irregularities, but I have heard enough to know that something went wrong and we need to find out what happened. Mr. Sullivan has indicated that he will provide a full report.
I would encourage people who have direct information about these incidents to contact the Secret Service, in addition to contacting the Joint Congressional Committee for Inaugural Ceremonies at feedback@jccic.senate.gov.”
Just this morning Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) declared himself a ‘freedom fighter’ in the long twilight struggle against Obama-ism. Now he’s struck his first blow for freedom by joining Sen. Vitter in being one of the two senators to vote against Sen. Clinton’s nomination as Secretary of State.
Biden had some fun with the Roberts oath gaffe today, but Obama doesn’t look amused, does he?