Buff U is pointing to all manner of irregularities in Churchill’s scholarship, asserting that he was fired for plagiarism. Ward’s attorneys have another theory:

His lawyer, David Lane, has sought to portray him as the victim of a “howling mob” of university administrators, conservative media and politicians who were “falling over themselves” to have him fired.

You’ll recall that in the aftermath of 9/11, Churchill penned a screed that referred to the victims in the Twin Towers as “little Eichmanns” for their role in propping up an unjust political and economic system. Trust me when I say that “howling mob” is, if anything, a charitable characterization of the group that sought Churchill’s dismissal.

Before I go further, let me note that I’m not an attorney, so my take isn’t something that’s going to find its way into the case studies mentioned earlier. Further, I have a strong investment in what happens at CU since that’s where I earned my PhD. I know the place and I love it dearly, despite the fact that it can’t seem to go more than a few days at a time without shooting itself in the foot. So if my general lack of lawyering knowledge seems infused by a bit conflictedness and/or frustration, you’ll now know why. Back to the case.

CU lawyers will be asking the jury to pay attention to the technical minutiae attending academic integrity. Churchill’s lawyers will be asking the jury to pay attention to the politics that drove the inquisition. Who’s right?

From my humble perspective, it seems clear that both are right, and that more broadly, everyone was wrong.

• There is zero doubt about the pressure brought by the “howling mob,” which comprises a barely educated pack of slobbering wingnuts and the “leaders” who follow them everywhere. The political right in Colorado knows little and cares less about academic integrity, and I’ve remarked about the state’s “war on education” for a reason. CU’s current president is an anti-academic freedom global warning denier who’s unparalleled in his unfitness for leadership among America’s major universities, and former president Betsy Hoffman’s testimony that she’s endured an “all-out assault” by conservative politicians not only seems plausible, it would have been remarkable had it happened any other way.
• Multiple faculty committes found serious fault with Churchill’s scholarship. Churchill’s various claims are unconvincing, at best. The practices of cultures with oral traditions notwithstanding, when you’re a prof in a research one institution you know the rules and you follow them. You don’t like them, you go after them, but you do not simply ignore them.
• While I have not learned, through the years, to trust uncritically the actions or motivations of university administrators, the final faculty committee report is compelling. It did not recommend that Churchill be fired – two members called for dismissal, but the majority recommended suspension and demotion. However, that means that they were unanimous in their opinion that he was guilty of academic dishonesty. This is a critical piece of evidence. I have some small understanding of the CU/Boulder culture, and can tell you that tenured profs are going to be incredibly sensitive to political encroachments on academic freedom. Their decision in the Churchill case could potentially widen the door to future partisan attacks on unpopular (or misunderstood) scholarship, so my assumption is that Churchill received (as one committee member testified) “the great big benefit of the doubt.”

But wait, you say. They don’t hand out tenure like they would coupons for 10% off a burrito at Illegal Pete’s. How did Ward go from tenure-worthy scholar to dirty cheating whore overnight?

Right. And when all is said and done, I expect the jury to be sitting there convinced of two things. One, Churchill broke the rules and by that standard deserved to be turfed. Two, the process that brought the breach to light was the result of a politically motivated witch-hunt that violated every tenet of the academic freedom upon which our entire university system rests. (If you don’t believe the second part of this equation, let’s talk. I have some prime waterfront property in south-central Florida that’s ripe for development, and you may be just the slack-jawed hillbilly shrewd investor I’ve been looking for.) “Fruit of a poisoned tree” is a term you may have heard if you watch the average courtroom drama. Yes, the perp had the half-eaten remains of 12 murdered prostitutes hanging from hooks in his dayroom, but the cops didn’t have a warrant. So we have to find some way of getting him, and if that means a workaround or two, so be it. Light that torch and hand me my pitchfork, would you?

In sum, it’s a fascinating case that will ask the jurors to focus on the details of the law despite the overpowering stench of politics and, frankly, the fact that the plaintiff isn’t terribly cuddly. Let’s be honest – Ward Churchill is a jackass, although you and I probably think so for different reasons. Here’s mine. He had an opportunity to make an intelligent and altogether valid scholarly argument about the character of our system – and I’m not asking you to agree with the proposition, but merely to understand that such a thing would have been perfectly legitimate within the context of his job; however, instead of behaving like a tenured scholar at a flagship research one university he started lobbing firebombs. Fine. This was a calculated choice and he should have been prepared to deal with the inevitable consequences.

I can’t help thinking that you’d play hell trying to seat a jury that’s a) intellectually capable of tracking the arcane nuances surrounding the tenure and academic research processes, and b) remaining unbiased by the controversial things that Churchill has written and said. This isn’t necessarily a slam at the jury pool, either, because I imagine the case would be extremely difficult for me, as well.

My guess is that both sides have already drafted their respective notices of appeal.

The response? The USA PATRIOT Act. It authorized expanded powers for US intelligence and law enforcement agencies including surveillance capabilities, broadened the definition of “terrorism”, increased border security and gave the Treasury the ability to stop money laundering the world over.

But its authority is so broad that it can lend itself to abuse. It gives power to wiretap and spy on law-abiding American citizens including monitoring what they read at the library, “sneak and peek”  without a warrant, and access to medical and financial records. Plus, this large bill was being quickly pushed through Congress without giving it full consideration or even being read by those voting on it.

Now imagine if almost every Democratic member of Congress voted against the Act based on those reasons. Or perhaps they didn’t trust this new, untested administration to do what is right. Or maybe they did it to just make a point about party unity. Would there be a public outcry? Would the pundits say that the opposition party did not grasp the enormity of the situation and that in this moment of peril it is better to “shoot first and ask questions later”? With the great danger the country is in, would it be better to err on the side of giving too much power to the government to deal with the crisis than too little?

Remember your mental answers to those questions as I change the circumstances slightly.

Let’s zoom back to the present day. The national and world economies have never been in as bad shape since the Great Depression. We have been losing a half a million jobs a month since the election and now 4.81 million people collect unemployment benefits, the highest number in at least 40 years. Consumer confidence is at a 29-year low. The Dow has lost a quarter of its value since September. The financial sector has $1.17 trillion in defaulted loans on its books which lead to a 12.4% reduction in housing prices. 1 in 9 US homes are now vacant.

The response? The $787 billion economic recovery package. It offers the largest tax cut in US history,  $272 billion for the working class. $58 billion to jump-start green energy infrastructure and another $90 billion to shore up traditional infrastructure – from bridges to roads to levees and transit. There’s $100 billion to boost welfare and unemployment, $112 billion for health care in Medicare, electronic medial records and preventative care. And then there’s billions for school reconstruction, greening federal buildings, Head Start, buying foreclosed homes, and laying down broadband for the entire country.

But this is a big bill. At a heft of over 1000 pages it has the biggest price tag of any stimulus bill ever debated in Congress. And that debate didn’t include many Republicans; only the very moderate got to influence the bill significantly while the more conservative members got their ideas heard out but never implemented. But this bill is so large it would fundamentally change the size and scope of the government’s influence in American lives. And like the PATRIOT Act, this thing blazed through Congress and no one had a chance to read it all.

Now the Republicans had their equivalent of the PATRIOT Act sitting in front of them. So what would they do? What if almost every Republican member of Congress voted against the Act based on the above reasons? Or perhaps they didn’t trust this new, untested administration to do what is right. Or maybe they did it to just make a point about party unity. Would there be a public outcry? Would the pundits say that the opposition party did not grasp the enormity of the situation and that in this moment of peril it is better to “shoot first and ask questions later”? With the great danger the country is in, would it be better to err on the side of giving too much power to the government to deal with the crisis than too little?

Some might balk at equating 9/11 with the current economic crisis. But its impact and reach are very similar. There was a lot of talk about going into the depths of another Great Depression, but the institutions and foundations laid down after the Great Depression would prevent that great of a collapse. Just like there was a lot of talk about 9/11 being another Pearl Harbor, but we were then facing a coalition of highly militarized, fascist countries actively attacking America and invading its allies.   Now we are facing a small number of fanatics with light arms. You can compare the two by type but not size.

Let me put it in an SAT equation:

Pearl Harbor : 9/11 :: Great Depression : today’s major recession

Our country has faced worse in the past and it is entirely within our capabilities to deal with our present crises. And while the Democrats were willing to take on 9/11 on the Republicans’ terms, the Republicans aren’t willing to tackle this economic crisis with the Democrats holding the reins. Every single House Republican voted against this bill along with all but three Senators. This is either because the Republicans don’t appreciate the dire straits that we are in, they had issues about the substance of the bill and way that it was pushed through, or they are more concerned with with their party than their country. My guess that it is a little of all three.

There’s little doubt that Matt Taibbi is one of the foremost journalists and commentators working today. In part, that’s either despite or because of the righteous outrage he shows few qualms in expressing. Others who write about politics or policy may fear that revealing their feelings exposes them to criticism that they’re compromising their objectivity. Taibbi’s talents, however, are prodigious enough to override such concerns.

Aside from Sarah Palin and what she says about us (see “Mad Dog Palin” at Rolling Stone) nothing seems to aggravate Taibbi more than the 9/11 Truth movement. This is shown to full effect in “The Ultimate 9/11 ‘Truth’ Showdown,” which had its origins in an invitation by AlterNet to engage in a months-long email debate with David Ray Griffin, one of the godfathers of the 9/11 Truth movement.

In his haste to jump at the chance to accept the challenge, Taibbi may have overestimated his ability to meet it. Griffin has been living and breathing this stuff for seven years while Taibbi only seems to have sampled it enough to have his sensibilities offended. Also, acting as the interrogator, Taibbi not only jumps around from one outrage to another as it captures his fancy, he looks like a bully teeing off on the gentlemanly Griffin, a former theology professor who’s the soul of equanimity.

For instance, Taibbi writes, “Captivated by the comic possibilities of Truther literature. … I even spent a lot of time pulling what’s left of my hair out over your answers to questions that even I admit now go beyond inane. … All the same, some of the stuff you came up with, Professor, sheesh! And I thought I was loony!”

In response to another question, he writes, “I was greatly saddened when I read this answer, because it forced me to rewrite the entire first chapter of my next book, The 10 Most Retarded Things I Have Read This Year.” Also, “The ‘theory’ you provide isn’t even your own, just something you scared up while digging through the steadily-expanding mega-landfill of Truther lore — and recently, it seems to me, perhaps even in response to my questions. This is the very definition of half-assed thinking, half-assed research.”

What’s Taibbi’s central objection?

“All of this 9/11 Truther stuff, it’s a silly distraction. A country whose economy is [on] the brink of depression. . . just can’t afford to be wasting its time arguing about thermite reactions and ‘morphing technology’.” [The latter refers to telephone simulations of an individual's voice.]

Taibbi’s objection proves all too easy for Griffin to refute:

“The official account of 9/11 has been used to justify a new doctrine of preemption. . . to ram the. . . PATRIOT Act through Congress; and to justify torture. . . and other practices that violate our Constitution. If the official account of 9/11 is false, the effort to expose this fact, in order to put an end to the policies that have been justified by this account, cannot reasonably be called a distraction from real problems. It is instead an attempt to strike at the root of most of our new problems.”

Taibbi does, however, succeed in taking chunks out of the soft white underbelly of Griffin’s argument. Those include the aforementioned morphing technology, remote control of the planes, and supposed foreknowledge of the event on the part of Rudolph Giuliani. Anyone serious about convincing the public at large about 9/11 Truth needs to steer clear of those issues. If he did though, Griffin might lose his reputation for being on the leading edge of 9/11 –- and his readers.

Even though 9/11 occurred seven years ago, explanations, however tempting, are premature. After all, we’re just now figuring out that dropping atomic bombs on Japan didn’t end the war in the Pacific. In other words, start with, and stick with, the facts until enough are accumulated to construct a story.

As Griffin himself advises, a good place to start is with Professor Steven Jones, whose peer-reviewed scientific studies, such as “Environmental anomalies at the World Trade Center: evidence for energetic materials” –- for “energetic” read “explosive” — appear in magazines like Environmentalist.

His work can also be found at the site of the group with which he’s affiliated, Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice, as well as its sister site, Journal of 9/11 Studies. You can then read “Steven E. Jones Thermite/Thermate Claims,” a rebuttal by Mark Roberts, who’s been called the “Obi-wan Kenobi of debunkers” or the “Yoda of 9/11 reality.”

When individuals refuse to listen to an alternative history of 9/11 — or even to consider that one could exist –- they’re not revealing their view of the event, but of themselves. They fear squandering their precious store of credibility, which they think could result in not only the marginalization of their voices, but of their place in society itself.

Out of deference to forensics, then, this author ventures no opinion. Okay, cowardice plays a role — the last thing he wants is to be canned by Scholars & Rogues, as sure as Christopher Buckley was at National Review.

Still, we’d be remiss if we failed to mention that a critical mistake made when drawing up an alternative history to 9/11 is laying the blame squarely at the feet of Dick Cheney. Some who dismiss that narrative, in this case Taibbi, reject the idea that Cheney needs a pretext to impose his agenda since the country wouldn’t have objected anyway. Others think about all the people such a plot would entail and can’t believe none would leak the truth. Still others suffer from the opposite of empathy — an inability to imagine evil on that scale.

Those attributing the plot to Cheney, as well those objecting on the grounds noted above, overlook the possibility that the executive office could have been bypassed. Imagine an alternative to the alternative: A rogue element within an intelligence organization reads a signal from a superior as he sees fit. For comparison, think of a capo interpreting the look in the eye of a mob boss as giving him license to kill.

Whatever one thinks of alternative histories of 9/11, it’s a disgraceful commentary on the government when the first instinct of a significant number of Americans is to default to the worst-case scenario. If, by some chance, it turns out that the administration staged 9/11, those reluctant to compromise their credibility by considering alternative histories may find their credibility as devalued as their IRAs.

(Plea to readers: This post is not about 9/11 per se but the difficulties many experience in accepting the existence of alternate histories. Kindly refrain from turning the comments section into yet another battlefield between Truthers and those who consider them a menace to society.)

Also, see Mike Sheehan’s interview with Matt Taibbi, “The horror is getting to Mike Taibbi.”

Link of the Week (as opposed to the Weakest Link):

Stop the presses: John McCain tells the truth. Laurence Vance at LewRockwell.com explains: “In an interview with 60 Minutes in 1997, McCain mentioned the confession his North Vietnamese captors forced him to write: ‘I was guilty of war crimes against the Vietnamese people. I intentionally bombed women and children.’ The truth, of course, is that what McCain wrote under duress is actually an accurate statement.”

Juan Cole in his post this 9/11: “Convincing the Pushtun population generally to put up with 70,000 US and NATO troops and with air strikes that kill civilian villagers is a fool’s errand.”

At Esquire, Ron Suskind writes about President Bush’s decision to issue tax-rebate checks: “He was convinced, he told Bush, that the president’s position would soon enough be seen as ‘bad policy.’ This, it seems, was the wrong thing to say to the president. … President Bush looked at the man. ‘I don’t ever want to hear you use those words in my presence again,’ he said. ‘What words, Mr. President?’ ‘Bad policy,’ President Bush said. ‘If I decide to do it, by definition it’s good policy. I thought you got that.” There’s no chance he was being facetious, is there?

Mark Leibovich of the New York Times on Joe Biden’s poorly covered campaigning. When both Biden and McCain “were at Columbia University last week on the Sept. 11 anniversary, Mr. Biden had a staff member try to arrange a dressing-room visit with Mr. McCain. But Mr. Biden was told not to come. … ‘I walked down anyway,’ Mr. Biden said. ‘And who the hell is going to stop me?’ Mr. McCain looked up and was ‘like, what is this about?’ Mr. Biden said. Mr. McCain hugged Mr. Biden’s wife, Jill, and the two senators shared a quick handshake, but there was no time for any discussion.”

At Daily Kos, Devils Tower writes about the small town values that John McCain and Sarah Palin evoke: “It’s not an appeal to the ideals of people who generally make less and have less than their urban relatives. It’s not a call to equality regardless of social position or geographic location. What McCain and Palin offer is a chance to indulge in the ugliest aspects of small town culture. It’s a heady opportunity to sneer at the achievements of those who have excelled. … It’s an exciting enticement to wallow in public hate flavored with the forbidden spice of racism.”

Fred Kaplan of Slate: “There are several appropriate responses to watching Sarah Palin answer Charlie Gibson’s questions on foreign policy and national security — sorrow, pity, incredulity, fear.”

Roger Simon of Politico interviews Donna Brazile, Al Gore’s campaign manager in 2000: ‘Obama’s voice is strong and articulate, but people don’t feel attached to him, and they have got to feel attached to him. That would answer some racial aspects that simmer below the radar and sometimes percolate over the top. … but I still think he can pull this off.’ And if he doesn’t? ‘If he doesn’t, then Obama didn’t lose. … The country just wasn’t ready.”

At Huffington Post, Lincoln Mitchell writes on why the economy might not swing the election in Obama’s favor: “While economic times certainly were better during the Clinton years than during the Bush years, many middle class Americans were still worried about their economic futures, paying off debts, lack of good healthcare, etc. … Accordingly, many Americans. . . no longer see the economy as something which a president can fix. Therefore it becomes less salient in their vote choice.”

Paul Krugman: “When Bear went under, many people talked about the need for a mechanism for ‘orderly liquidation’ of failing investment banks. Well, that was six months ago. Where’s the mechanism?”

Harold Meyerson writes in the Washington Post: “At the risk of speaking ill of the dead, what good was Lehman Brothers, anyway? And if Merrill Lynch was so bullish on America, why is it that, despite the torrent of foreign investment that flowed in to Lehman, Merrill and their Wall Street peers over the past half-decade, so few jobs were created in America during that period of ‘recovery’?”

Thomas Friedman: “Why would Republicans, the party of business, want to focus our country on breathing life into a 19th-century technology — fossil fuels — rather than giving birth to a 21st-century technology — renewable energy? [It] reminds me of someone who, on the eve of the I.T. revolution — on the eve of PCs and the Internet — is pounding the table for America to make more I.B.M. typewriters and carbon paper. ‘Typewriters, baby, typewriters.’”

Michael Lewis in “Let the Heads Roll” from the Big Money: “Even if they were to be somehow dragged out into the square for a shaming, no one would understand what they did. It’s impossible to publicly humiliate a derivative.”

Sports

After intercepting a pass, the New York Giants outstanding defensive end Justin Tuck said: “I looked at the Jumbotron and saw I had enough room to slow down. … I don’t need to sprint into the end zone. I like to act like I’ve been there.”

Peter King at Si.com: “I really have to be careful not to go overboard on Justin Tuck. He’s one of the five best defensive players in football right now, and he’s just scratching the surface.”

Manny Being Manny Department

Curt Schilling on Manny Ramirez: “He was very kind, and well-mannered, but there were spurts and times when you didn’t know who he was. … he’d show up. . . and say, I’m through with this team, I want out now.’”

Haven’t we seen this before? Oh yeah. Remember how we used to drag Nazi war criminals out of the dens of their houses in towns like Ypsilanti, where they were working at jobs like church custodian. Even though it’s imperative that criminals of the magnitude of Nazis and bin Laden be caught, capturing an individual of advanced age who’s been harmless for decades doesn’t make for a lot of p.r. bang for the buck.

This is exemplified by Juan Cole’s 9/11 post at Informed Comment, in which he declares the original al-Qaeda is dead. “I conclude,” he writes, “that Bin Laden, if he is alive, is so injured or disfigured that his appearance on videotape would only discourage any followers he has left.”

Nevertheless, the administration would like to present him to the American public as an Election Day gift for which we only need reciprocate by voting for John McCain. Of course, that’s unlikely, especially with our now strained relationship with Pakistan. However, an article in the new Foreign Policy titled “How to Catch Osama” (unlike most of their articles, available online) offers some helpful suggestions from four analysts.

Lt. Gen. Talat Masood (Ret.) of the Pakistani Army reminds us of what we all know: “Today, bin Laden is a source of inspiration for Islamist radicals, not an operational commander. Thus, although his capture may be an important symbolic victory, it will not be a strategic defeat for al Qaeda or the Taliban.” His suggestion is also obvious: “The Taliban and al Qaeda’s second- and third-tier leadership under detention is [a] valuable source of intelligence. Capturing pro al-Qaeda warlords can help, as they have considerable knowledge about the location and movement of top leaders.”

A Peshawar newspaper editor, Rahimullah Yusufzai, also states the obvious: The “United States will above all need to win friends and allies in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Unfortunately, U.S. policies are doing precisely the opposite.” Nor is his suggestion original: The “United States has promised just $750 million over five years for Pakistan’s tribal areas, peanuts compared with what it is spending in Afghanistan. Substantial, targeted development funds by the United States and its allies are needed to bring the tribal areas up to par with the rest of Pakistan.”

We’re also familiar with Islamabad physics professor Pervez Hoodbhoy’s observation: “Extremist organizations feed off ignorance, cruelty, misery, poverty, pain, and injustice. Their ranks are being swelled by those wrongfully or mistakenly targeted—the innocent victims of U.S., NATO, and Pakistani artillery and air power.” But he provides a helpful reminder that al-Qaeda and the Taliban are already subverting themselves: “A people’s resistance is developing against atrocities targeting Shiites, massacres of tribal elders, destruction of girls’ schools and colleges, and the virtual elimination of revenues from areas dependent on tourism.”

The most concrete suggestions though are offered by author Shuja Nawaz, who warms to the subject in a big way. Here he speaks of his belief that, whatever the state of his health, bin Laden remains on the move: “Bin Laden is not likely to settle in the more open, vegetation-free zone further south. Inventory the hujras or meeting houses that have been hired by foreigners [presumably Pakistani] through local Taliban and other sympathizers (bribes will get you everywhere in the tribal areas, so use cash to find out what you need to know).”

Here’s Nawaz’s most intriguing advice: “The United States and Pakistan must operate independently to prevent leaks. [Link] carefully screened Afghan and frontier experts from Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Military Intelligence. … to a small team of commandos tasked solely with ferreting out the al Qaeda and Taliban leadership. Locate the team inside Pakistani Army headquarters to avoid any leaks from ISI.” In other words, the commandos must operate without pressure from either the United States of the ISI. Sign this guy up!

Whether or not capturing bin Laden takes the wind out of those he inspires, it still needs to be done for the sake of justice. Heretofore, the administration has been too soft on the Pakistani government and failed to pressure it into coughing him up. On the other hand, its destructiveness elsewhere in the Middle East has alienated its people to the extent that HUMINT has become impossible and SIGINT limited by the wildness of the Pakistani-Afghan border country.

Our failure to apprehend Bin Laden is not only an example of the administration’s deep-seated disrespect for justice, but an insult to the country that was grievously harmed by bin Laden. Most troubling of all, though, has been the lack of an outcry on the part of Americans that he hasn’t been caught.

With the bailout of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the Reagan revolution has at last realized the robber barons’ dream: privatize the profits and socialize the debt. Nicely done, fellas.

— a letter to the editor of The New York Times from Candida Pugh of Oakland, Calif.; Sept. 10; emphasis added.

We now see the compensation wasn’t deserved. I don’t think taxpayers want their money to go to the C.E.O.’s of these very large institutions.

— Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on the exit pay packages of Daniel H. Mudd of Fannie Mae and Richard F. Syron of Freddie Mac who, The Times’ Eric Dash reports, are eligible for as much as $24 million in severance, retirement benefits and deferred compensation; Sept. 10.

The report says that eight officials in the royalty program accepted gifts from energy companies whose value exceeded limits set by ethics rules — including golf, ski and paintball outings; meals and drinks; and tickets to a Toby Keith concert, a Houston Texans football game and a Colorado Rockies baseball game.

The investigation also concluded that several of the officials “frequently consumed alcohol at industry functions, had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives.”

— from a Times story by Charlie Savage on reports filed with Congress by Earl E. Devaney, the Interior Department’s inspector general, on “wrongdoing by a dozen current and former employees of the Minerals Management Service, which collects about $10 billion in royalties annually and is one of the government’s largest sources of revenue other than taxes”; Sept. 10.

Education is obviously not the issue Senator McCain spends the most time on. He’s been a quiet and consistent supporter of parents and educators who he thinks are making a difference.

— Lisa Graham Keegan, a McCain adviser and former Arizona education commissioner, explaining the brevity of presidential candidate John McCain’s education plan but suggesting that it should not be interpreted as a lack of commitment to education; Sept. 9.

I’m really frightened. I’ve been in blizzards and tornadoes, but never a hurricane. It’s frightening, but if the Lord’s going to take you, he’s going to find you wherever you are.

— Ginger Saracco of Galveston, Texas, after watching a storm surge from Hurricane Ike slam into a seawall; Sept. 12.

That project is moving right ahead. The money for that project was not diverted anywhere else. … So (for her) to say she said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks….’ I would say she said, ‘Thanks!’

— Tony Knowles, who served as governor of Alaska from 1994 to 2002; an Anchorage Daily News story by George Bryson says Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin “still supports spending $400 million to $600 million on ‘the other Bridge to Nowhere,’ the Knik Arm Crossing, which would provide residents in Palin’s hometown of Wasilla faster access to Anchorage” according to Gov. Knowles; Sept. 11.

[Gov. Sarah Palin] strikes me as a target-rich environment.

— Saturday Night Live writer James Downey; Sept. 12.

He was on the wrong side of the rope line. It is a decision that is hard to comprehend.

— Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, D-N.J., about former Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman’s visibility as Republican pitchman for Sen. John McCain; Sept. 9.

YouTube was being used by Islamist terrorist organizations to recruit and train followers via the Internet and to incite terrorist attacks around the world, including right here in the United States. I expect these stronger community guidelines to decrease the number of videos on YouTube produced by al-Qaeda and affiliated Islamist terrorist organizations.

— from a statement by Sen. Joseph Lieberman exhorting YouTube to ban videos that “incite” violence; YouTube agreed to ban some content in response; Sept. 12.

Your prayers reached where they were meant to reach. The truth prevailed.

— Jacob Zuma, president of the African National Congress, as his theme song, “Bring Me My Machine Gun” played, after a South African judge threw out “racketeering, corruption, money laundering and fraud [charges] related to a multibillion rand government arms deal in the late 1990s”; a New York Times story says “A court in Durban convicted Mr. Zuma’s business adviser of funneling about $170,000 to Mr. Zuma in exchange for help in winning contracts”; Sept. 12; emphasis added.

[I will not] respond to the garbage from the American empire.

— Tarek El Aissami, appointed Venezuela’s interior minister on Monday, responding to a report by The Times‘ Alexei Barrioneuvo that “[a] conspiracy to cover up the intended recipient of a suitcase filled with $800,000 in cash found in Argentina last year reached the highest levels of Venezuela’s government, with President Hugo Chávez ordering the head of his intelligence service to handle the situation” according to court testimony; Sept. 9.

These settlements are a major step forward in cleaning up an industry where false and misleading advertising practices have been all too rampant. It is unconscionable for lenders to entice students into loans that are not best for them.

— Andrew M. Cuomo, New York’s attorney general, on a settlement with seven student loan companies that outlined a code of conduct and required that “a total of $1.4 million [be placed] into a fund to help educate students and their families about financial aid,” reported The Times‘ Johnathan D. Glater; Sept. 9.

That statute is unconstitutionally overbroad on its face because it prohibits the anonymous transmission of all unsolicited bulk e-mails including those containing political, religious or other speech protected by the First Amendment to the United State Constitution.

— from a ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court today striking down the commonwealth’s “anti-spam” law after reconsidering the conviction of Jeremy Jaynes of Raleigh, N.C., the first person tried under the law, convicted of sending tens of thousands of e-mails through America Online servers, and sentenced to nine years in prison; Sept. 12.

Q: With another anniversary of 9/11 upon us, how does the President feel about the failure to find Osama bin Laden?
MS. PERINO: President Bush has been working and directing thousands of men and women across our intelligence community to help us find Osama bin Laden, his deputies, and to disrupt plans to attack America again, wherever they might be plotted. He has not let up on that, and that fight and that hunt will continue to go on until he is brought to justice.

— exchange between reporter and press secretary Dana Perino at a White House briefing; Sept. 10.

The Republicans talk a lot about experience. When you’re the author, architect and enabler of eight years of devastating foreign policy mistakes, that’s not experience. It’s very bad judgment.

— Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., arguing that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., lacks the temperament and judgment to be president; Sen. Reid said, “Our dangerous world calls for leaders with sound judgment, not those with a temperament prone to recklessness. Our country deserves more than token shifts and lip service to change. We need to take decisive action to reverse eight years of foreign policy mistakes”; Sept. 12.

Now let me review some of the descriptive phrases that have been used by some of you that have made my own personal interfaces with the Press Corps difficult: “dictatorial and somewhat dense,” “a liar,” “a torturer” “does not get it.” In — In some cases I have never even met those that use those comments. Yet they felt qualified to make character judgments that are communicated to the world. My experience is not unique and we can find other such examples as the treatment of Secretary Brown during Katrina. In my opinion, this is the worst display of journalism imaginable by those of us that are bound by a strict value system of selfless service, honor, and integrity.

— from an address to the Military Reporters and Editors Forum Luncheon by Lieutenant General (Ret.) Ricardo S. Sanchez; Oct. 12, 2007.

Q: Is Osama bin Laden as important now as he was seven years ago?
MS. PERINO: I think that what we have tried to do is disrupt any area from becoming a safe haven where terrorists could plot and plan attacks. The leadership of al Qaeda has largely been replaced over the years, but they have more people that keep coming up through the ranks and are trained to plot and plan against us. I think — the President believes it’s important for us to hunt and track down and bring to justice Osama bin Laden. And it would be important for Americans, but it’s important for justice most of all.

— exchange between reporter and press secretary Dana Perino at a White House briefing; Sept. 10.

The rise of a free and self-governing Iraq will deny terrorists a base of operation, discredit their narrow ideology, and give momentum to reformers across the region. This will be a decisive blow to terrorism at the heart of its power, and a victory for the security of America and the civilized world.

— from an address by President Bush at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa.; May 24, 2004.

I’m sitting at Eros, a Greek diner on Seventh Avenue, loving my omelette as I seek shelter from the rain, when I see a busboy remove a container of dirty dishes — with a copy of my review in today’s paper on top. Get it while it’s hot, I guess.

— from the “On The Runway” blog of New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn; Sept. 9.

photo credits:

• Hurricane Ike hits Galveston: Associated Press
• Sen. Joseph Lieberman leaving stage: Damon Winter, The New York Times
• Sen. Lieberman mug: Alex Wong, Getty Images
• Steve Jobs: Daniel Acker, Bloomberg News
• Gap models: Marcio Madeira, Style.com

Quotabull is a weekly feature of Scholars & Rogues.

Today, during the Yahoo!News/Denver Post/Politico breakfast, Sen. Salzar said something quite a bit different. He said he made a mistake with Gonzales. He said that Gonzales had given him written assurances that Gonzales would uphold the constitution and not be a puppet of the Bush administration. And then Gonzales became that very puppet.

Salazar admitted he made a mistake supporting Gonzales. It’s not enough – we really need him to apologize and admit he’s made multiple other mistakes too – but it’s a good start.

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

— from the Declaration of Independence; July 4, 1776.

The executive branch shall construe the provisions of H.R. 3199 that call for furnishing information to entities outside the executive branch, such as sections 106A and 119, in a manner consistent with the President’s constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch and to withhold information the disclosure of which could impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative processes of the Executive, or the performance of the Executive’s constitutional duties.

— from a March 13, 2006, signing statement by President Bush explaining how he will interpret the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005; despite oversight provisions in the law that directed he inform Congress regarding the FBI’s use of the act’s expanded police powers, President Bush, in effect, told Congress he felt no obligation to do so; emphasis added.

In the annals of the human race, the separation of one people into two, is an event of no uncommon occurrence. The successful resistance of a people against oppression, to the downfall of the tyrant and of tyranny itself, is the lesson of many an age, and of almost every clime. It lives in the venerable records of Holy Writ. It beams in the brightest pages of profane history.

— from “An address, delivered at the request of the committee of arrangements for celebrating the anniversary of Independence, at the City of Washington on the Fourth of July 1821 upon the occasion of reading The Declaration of Independence” by John Quincy Adams.

Provisions of the Act, such as sections 2104 and 6024, purport to require congressional committee approval prior to certain obligations or expenditures of funds appropriated by the Act. The executive branch shall construe such provisions to require only prior notification to congressional committees, as any other construction would be contrary to the constitutional principles set forth by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1983 in INS v. Chadha.

— from an Aug. 2, 2005, signing statement by President Bush attached to the Department of Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2006; emphasis added.

Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us — the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of “anything goes.” Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.

The pundits, the pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an “awesome God” in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

— from the keynote address by Sen. Barack Obama to the 2004 Democratic Convention; July 27, 2004.

I cannot give you that list.

— response of Michelle Boardman, deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice, after Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., asked her during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to provide a list of laws that President Bush has decided, through signing statements, not to enforce; June 28, 2006.

I am proud that we worked together with such bipartisan spirit in the weeks following the despicable attacks on our Nation. My Administration will work together with the Congress to address additional needs as they become known during the second session of the 107th Congress.

— from a Jan. 10, 2002, signing statement by President Bush attached to the Department of Defense and Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Recovery from and Response to Terrorist Attacks on the United States Act of 2002; emphasis added.

A realistic president recognizes that he is president within the Constitution and that the Constitution provides the framework in which he can exert considerable power. But the power depends on persuasion, and it depends on consent. And our great presidents have, on the whole, exerted that power within the Constitution.

— from a 1980s clip of Arthur M. Schlesinger, author of “The Imperial Presidency,” aired on PBS; March 1, 2007; emphasis added.

The executive branch shall construe as calling solely for notification the provisions of the Act that purport to require congressional committee approval for the execution of a law. … Section 513 of the Act purports to direct the conduct of security and suitability investigations. To the extent that section 513 relates to access to classified national security information, the executive branch shall construe this provision in a manner consistent with the President’s exclusive constitutional authority, as head of the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief, to classify and control access to national security information and to determine whether an individual is suitable to occupy a position in the executive branch with access to such information.

— from an Oct. 9, 2006, signing statement by President Bush attached to the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2007 in which he tells Congress he has the power to edit DHS reports regarding whether it obeys privacy rules while handling background checks, ID cards and watchlists; emphasis added.

Section 503(c) of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, as amended by section 611 of the Act, provides for the appointment and certain duties of the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Section 503(c)(2) vests in the President authority to appoint the Administrator, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, but purports to limit the qualifications of the pool of persons from whom the President may select the appointee in a manner that rules out a large portion of those persons best qualified by experience and knowledge to fill the office. The executive branch shall construe section 503(c)(2) in a manner consistent with the Appointments Clause of the Constitution.

— from an Oct. 9, 2006, signing statement by President Bush attached to the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2007; according to The Boston Globe’s Charlie Savage, “To shield FEMA from cronyism, Congress established new job qualifications for the agency’s director in last week’s homeland security bill. The law says the president must nominate a candidate who has ‘a demonstrated ability in and knowledge of emergency management’ and ‘not less than five years of executive leadership”; Oct. 6, 2006; emphasis added.

The president hasn’t vetoed any bills, but basically he has done a personal veto. He has said which laws he will not follow and … put himself above the law, even the same law he has signed.

— Sen. Patrick Leahy during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing; June 28, 2006.

Provisions of the Act, including sections 841, 846, 1079, and 1222, purport to impose requirements that could inhibit the President’s ability to carry out his constitutional obligations to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, to protect national security, to supervise the executive branch, and to execute his authority as Commander in Chief. The executive branch shall construe such provisions in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President.

— from a Jan. 28 signing statement by President Bush attached to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008; emphasis added.

Congress is Republican-controlled. Polling shows that a large majority of Americans are willing to give up their civil liberties to prevent another terror attack. The USA Patriot Act passed with overwhelming support. So why didn’t the President simply ask Congress for the authority he thought he needed?

The answer seems to be, quite simply, that Vice President Dick Cheney has never recovered from being President Ford’s chief of staff when Congress placed checks on the presidency. And Cheney wanted to make the point that he thought it was within a president’s power to ignore Congress’ laws relating to the exercise of executive power. Bush has gone along with all such Cheney plans.

No president before Bush has taken as aggressive a posture — the position that his powers as commander-in-chief, under Article II of the Constitution, license any action he may take in the name of national security — although Richard Nixon, my former boss, took a similar position.

— excerpt from FindLaw column by John W. Dean, former counselor to President Richard M. Nixon; Dec. 30, 2005; emphasis added.

Sections 8007, 8011, and 8093 of the Act prohibit the use of funds to initiate a special access program, a new overseas installation, or a new start program, unless the congressional defense committees receive advance notice. The Supreme Court of the United States has stated that the President’s authority to classify and control access to information bearing on the national security flows from the Constitution and does not depend upon a legislative grant of authority. Although the advance notice contemplated by sections 8007, 8011, and 8093 can be provided in most situations as a matter of comity, situations may arise, especially in wartime, in which the President must act promptly under his constitutional grants of executive power and authority as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces while protecting certain extraordinarily sensitive national security information. The executive branch shall construe these sections in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President.

— from a Jan. 2, 2006, signing statement by President Bush attached to the Department of Defense, Emergency Supplemental Appropriations to Address Hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, and Pandemic Influenza Act, 2006; emphasis added.

As the letter from the Acting Attorney General explained in considerable detail, the assertion of Executive Privilege here is intended to protect a fundamental interest of the Presidency: the necessity that a President receive candid advice from his advisors and that those advisors be able to communicate freely and openly with the President, with each other, and with others inside and outside the Executive Branch. In the present setting, where the President’s authority to appoint and remove U.S. Attorneys is at stake, the institutional interest of the Executive Branch is very strong. The Acting Attorney General’s letter clearly identifies the subject matter of the deliberations and communications at issue and provides an extensive treatment of the issues implicated by the subpoenas and the legal basis for the President’s assertion of Executive Privilege.

— from a July 7, 2007, letter from Fred F. Fielding, counsel to President Bush, to Sen. Patrick J. Leahy and Rep. John Conyers Jr. asserting executive privilege “with respect to the testimony sought from Sara M. Taylor and Harriet E. Miers covering White House consideration, deliberations or communications, whether internal or external, relating to possible dismissal or appointment of United States Attorneys”; emphasis added.

I have to wonder if the White House’s refusal to provide a detailed basis for this executive privilege claim has more to do with its inability to craft an effective one.

— comment of Sen. Patrick J. Leahy following receipt of Mr. Fielding’s letter; July 11, 2007.

The clear message of these decisions taken together is that the Court is willing to allow Congress some leeway in putting limitations on executive power but that it is wholly unwilling to permit Congress to participate in administering the laws itself or through its agents.

— Alan B. Morrison, a Washington lawyer who filed a brief as a friend of the Court supporting a special prosecutor law adopted by Congress in the wake of investigations of Reagan Administration officials and former officials; the law provided for judges to appoint special prosecutors in such cases, insulated from presidential control. The Reagan Administration argued that this was an unconstitutional encroachment on the president’s power; the Court ruled 7-1 against the administration; June 30, 1988.

The executive branch shall construe section 11(c) of the Act, relating to executive branch reports to the Congress concerning investigations of alleged criminal and fraudulent activities in connection with a specified project, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authorities of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and to withhold information the disclosure of which could impair the performance of the Executive’s constitutional duties, including the conduct of investigations and prosecutions to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

— from a Dec. 25, 2006, signing statement by President Bush attached to the National Transportation Safety Board Reauthorization Act of 2006; emphasis added.

In late 1947 Clark Clifford and James Rowe instructed Harry Truman, “The worse matters get, up to a fairly certain point—real danger of imminent war—the more is there a sense of crisis. In times of crisis the American citizen tends to back up his President.” The result was the famed war scare of 1948, in which that accidental President started trumpeting “the critical nature of the situation in Europe,” the necessity for “speedy action,” the “great urgency” of the problem of the Soviet threat. He did this even though, as State Department counselor Charles Bohlen explained in a confidential January 1948 memo, the government considered its position “vis-à-vis the Soviet better now than at any time since the end of the war.”

— excerpt from a commentary in The Nation. by Eric Alterman; Feb. 7, 2002.

RUSH LIMBAUGH: Is this really part of an effort by some in the Senate to try to convince the American people we don’t face a threat anymore, and there’s no reason to run the risk of violating people’s civil liberties, blah, blah, blah?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, it’s been focused especially on the Democrats in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Pat Leahy, chairman of the committee, has opposed parts of the statute that we think are essential in terms of going forward, including specifically this retroactive liability provision. But I don’t like to question people’s motives. I assume he’s got reasons why he believes the way he does, but the fact is it’s their inability to resolve that issue that’s delayed passage on this legislation.

I think there are people out there, frankly, Rush, that don’t like what we’ve done, that are opposed to the bold action and tough decisions the President has made since 9/11. I think there were a lot of people who were panicky in the aftermath of 9/11, but now that we’ve demonstrated our ability to defend the country for the last six-and-a-half years, they want to act as though there’s no threat and we don’t need to take these important measures.

But the fact of the matter is, the threat is still there, it still exists. I look at it every day in our intelligence brief. We need to perpetuate and protect our capabilities here, as well as in terms of our ability to interrogate prisoners.

— excerpt from radio interview of Vice President Dick Cheney, conducted by Rush Limbaugh; Jan. 30; emphasis added.

Debates about the extent of presidential constitutional powers are as old as the republic itself, as the debates between James Madison and Alexander Hamilton illustrated. There is, however, general agreement that the past wartime presidents, including Lincoln, Wilson and F.D.R., have exerted their constitutional powers to the utmost. At the same time, any president should endeavor to work cooperatively with Congress as much as possible.

— from a written statement from the presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain, quoted in a New York Times analysis by James Risen; June 22.

photo credits:

• Declaration of Independence: Library of Congress
• Agenda for America poster: 4president.org
• Michael Brown, former head of FEMA: Allen Fredrickson, Reuters
• President Nixon leaving the White House, Aug. 9, 1974: Nixon Presidential Library & Museum
• President Bush: Joyce N. Boghosian, The White House
• President Harry S. Truman with pistols: Harry S. Truman Library and Museum
• Vice President Cheney: David Bohrer, The White House

Quotabull is a weekly feature of Scholars & Rogues.

Exxon Mobil is acting like a dinosaur now, not adopting to a changing environment.

— Stephen Viederman, a New York shareholder, after “Exxon Mobil’s chairman and chief executive, Rex W. Tillerson, defeated a shareholder effort … to take away one of his jobs at an annual meeting punctuated by a debate of the company’s policy toward renewable energy and global warming”; May 28.

Despite significant challenges in the U.S. market, we continue to reshape our business for long-term success. This attrition program gives us an opportunity to restructure our U.S. work force through the entry-level wage and benefit structure for new hourly employees.

— from a statement by Troy A. Clarke, the president of G.M.’s North American operations, announcing that “19,000 hourly workers — a quarter of a unionized work force that already has been drastically pared down — have accepted buyouts“; up to 16,000 of these $28-an-hour workers may be replaced by “entry-level” non-assembly workers making $14 an hour; May 30; emphasis added.

The years of keeping Saddam in a box were coming to a close. The international consensus that he be kept isolated and unarmed had eroded to the point that many critics of military action had decided the time had come again to do business with Saddam, despite his near daily attacks on our pilots, and his refusal, until his last day in power, to allow the unrestricted inspection of his arsenal. Our choice wasn’t between a benign status quo and the bloodshed of war. It was between war and a graver threat.

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Not — Not our political opponents. Certainly not a disingenuous filmmaker who would — who would have us believe, my friends, who would have us believe that Saddam’s Iraq was an oasis of peace when in fact — when in fact it was a place of indescribable cruelty, torture chambers, mass graves, and prisons that destroyed the lives of the small children inside their walls.

— presidential candidate John McCain, from his address at the 2004 Republican National Convention.

World leaders are in a state of denial but their failure to act has a high cost. As Iraq and Afghanistan show, human rights problems are not isolated tragedies, but are like viruses that can infect and spread rapidly, endangering all of us.

— Irene Khan, the secretary general of Amnesty International, in a statement accompanying a report that “singled out for criticism China, the United States, and Russia and accused the European Union of complicity in the rendition of terrorism suspects”; May 28.

We cannot have a fair prosperity in isolation from a fair society. So I will continue to stand for a national health insurance. We must — We must not surrender — We must not surrender to the relentless medical inflation that can bankrupt almost anyone and that may soon break the budgets of government at every level. Let us insist on real controls over what doctors and hospitals can charge, and let us resolve that the state of a family’s health shall never depend on the size of a family’s wealth.

— Sen. Ted Kennedy, addressing the 1980 Democratic National Convention.

The economy has been taken hostage by people that took some very bad decisions. The answer is to pay as little ransom as possible to the least ill-deserving people we can find.

— Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chair of the House Financial Services Committee, whose “housing rescue plan, which has passed the House and is being massaged by the Senate Banking Committee, would let the Federal Housing Administration refinance distressed borrowers into government-guaranteed loans worth up to $300 billion”; May 19.

What we want to achieve in the health system is a higher individual responsibility, making the consumers more responsible for what they consume.

— Peter Pazitny, executive director and one of the founding partners at the Health Policy Institute in Bratislava, Slovakia, and formerly the principal adviser to the minister of health, defending the government’s decision to charge modest health-care fees; other Central European nations may follow suit; May 27.

We also said we shared the pain of the Chinese people and earthquake victims in Sichuan.

— a spokesman for Dior in Paris, who asked not to be identified because of company policy, on a Dior announcement that it would stop using actor Sharon Stone in its advertising in China after Ms. Stone’s comment that recent earthquakes in Sichuan Province were karmic retribution for Beijing’s treatment of Tibet; May 29.

[T]he public enemy of all mankind.

— description of Sharon Stone in an editorial by Xinhua, the state-run Chinese news agency; May 29.

Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House. For those of us who fully supported him, before, during and after he was press secretary, we are puzzled. It is sad. This is not the Scott we knew.

— White House press secretary Dana Perino, commenting on former press secretary Scott McClellan’s claims, about to be published in a book, that President Bush engaged in “self-deception,” and committed a “serious strategic blunder” in invading Iraq and decided to “to turn away from candor and honesty when those qualities were most needed”; May 28; emphasis added.

This does not sound like Scott; it really doesn’t.

— former White House aide Karl Rove on Scott McClellan’s new book; May 29; emphasis added.

You’ve heard the way Scott briefed — it doesn’t sound like him.

It would be an inglorious conclusion to something that has survived wars and man’s other follies. But that is the scenario we are facing: the end of guano.

— biologist Uriel de la Torre on news that the “worldwide boom in commodities … is shifting attention to guano, an organic fertilizer once found in abundance on this island and more than 20 others off the coast of Peru”; “Guano in Peru sells for about $250 a ton while fetching $500 a ton when exported to France, Israel and the United States”; May 30.

We demand that the government severely punish the killers who caused the collapse of the school building. Please, everyone sign the petition so we can find out the truth.

— Liu Lifu, a quarry worker in in Dujiangyan, China, after he grabbed the microphone at an informal gathering of parents at Juyuan Middle School and began calling for justice; his 15-year-old daughter, Liu Li, was killed along with her entire class during a biology lesson in the earthquake in Sichuan Province; May 28.

If I could just get a warm room. I could take it from there.

— Ronald Gardner, 54, an H.I.V.-positive man who said he had never before slept on the streets until Hurricane Katrina; “a survey by advocacy groups in February showed that 86 percent were from the New Orleans area. Sixty percent said they were homeless because of Hurricane Katrina, and about 30 percent said they had received rental assistance at one time from the Federal Emergency Management Agency”; May 28.

People don’t seem to realize that political committees are big businesses that are raising significant sums of money without traditional accounting and business oversight. In politics, no one wants to be a bean counter.

— Jan Baran, an election expert at the law firm Wiley Rein in Washington, in a story about a $1 million forensic audit of the National Republican Congressional Committee following the disclosure that hundreds of thousands of dollars were missing and presumed stolen by its treasurer; May 27.

One has to assume anyone buried there had some good credentials.

— Dr. Parker Pearson, a British archeologist, on research that says Stonehenge was used as a cemetery from 3,000 B. C. well into its zenith around 2,500 B.C. with up to 240 people buried there; May 29.

This is the message of the Beatles, the Dylans of the world. [Ron Paul’s message of freedom and peace is] an ancient message — it inspired people in the 60s and 70s. I want to bring back that era of magic.

— Marc Scibilia, a 21-year-old songwriter from Buffalo, N.Y., who posted a video of his Ron Paul-themed song, “Hope Anthem,” on YouTube, and this summer will lead a 28-city “Freedom Tour” featuring other musicians; May 27.

Rwanda’s economy has risen up from the genocide and prospered greatly on the backs of our women. Bringing women out of the home and fields has been essential to our rebuilding. In that process, Rwanda has changed forever. … We are becoming a nation that understands that there are huge financial benefits to equality.

— Agnes Matilda Kalibata, minister of state in charge of agriculture in Rwanda, on the revival of the nation’s economy since the genocide of 14 years ago, when 800,000 people were killed in three months; May 16.

After two days I woke up. Birds were eating my dead children. This was too much for me. I wanted to be killed. … I felt as if I was dead, too. I did not want to go on.

— Jeanette Nyirabaganwa, 39, a minority Tutsi in Rwanda; she is now “employing eight laborers, she is growing three times as much coffee as her father and husband did. They sold their poorer-quality beans for local consumption. Her finer grade is largely for export, roasted overseas and sold in coffee shops and specialty stores in cities including London, New York, Chicago and New Orleans”; May 16.

No one likes to hear that people are using their mobile phone records. It gives one the sense that Big Brother can watch you and hear you.

— Lutz Hachmeister, director of the Institute for Media Policy in Berlin, “after an admission by Deutsche Telekom that it had surreptitiously tracked thousands of phone calls to identify the source of leaks to the news media about its internal affairs”; May 27.

Presidential candidate Obama’s speech may be formulated as follows: hunger for the nation, remittances as charitable handouts and visits to Cuba as propaganda for consumerism and the unsustainable way of life behind it. I am not questioning Obama’s great intelligence, his debating skills or his work ethic. [But] I am obliged to raise a number of delicate questions.

— former president of Cuba Fidel Castro, 81, in a column he wrote for Cuban newspapers; May 26.

I really want to know how my guests view their lives, their jobs, their friends. Are they content? What are their dreams?

— Natascha Kampusch, who spent 8 1/2 years trapped in an underground cell in the home of Austrian kidnapper Wolfgang Priklopil, on her new career as a talk-show host; May 29.

I created this site as a thank you, to you, for sharing the journey with me and to invite you to continue to explore what the future will bring.

— a message from actor Tom Cruise on his newly created Web site celebrating the 25th anniversary of the film “Risky Business”; May 29.

Really, a T-shirt with your name on it? Is it so you remember or we never forget? Maybe it should be spelled backwards because we suspect that every time she looks in the mirror there’s a split second when she wonders, “Wait, who’s Sirap?”

— Elizabeth Spiridakis in her “Very” fashion column for The New York Times; May 22.

photo credits:
• Sharon Stone: The Guardian
• Patrick Pugh and Clara Gomez outside their tent at a homeless encampment under a highway overpass in New Orleans: Lee Celano, The New York Times
• Stonehenge: Ken Geiger, National Geographic
• Paris Hilton: Beretta/Sims/Karius/RexUSA

Quotabull is a weekly feature of Scholars & Rogues.

[P]erhaps the most compelling evidence against the existence of a boys’ crisis is that men continue to outearn women in the workplace.

— from a report by the American Association of University Women, “whose 1992 report on how girls are shortchanged in the classroom caused a national debate over gender equity,” that debunks the notion of a “boys’ crisis,” saying, “Girls’ gains have not come at boys’ expense”; May 20.

I would say the president really has a choice here to show how much he values military service.

— Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., who has led the Senate’s efforts to expand education benefits for veterans, on President Bush’s threat “to veto a bill that would pay tuition and other expenses at a four-year public university for anyone who has served in the military for at least three years since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001″; May 22.

What’s this administration done? Nothing except to increase energy taxes.

— Sen. Don Nickles of Oklahoma, the assistant Republican leader, on March 12, 2000, as Senate Republicans blamed the Clinton-Gore administration for recent gasoline price increases; during the 2000 election season, reported The New York Times, “The average price of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline, which was about $1.25 at Christmas, is now more than $1.35. This week, the Energy Department warned that the price would rise to an average of $1.80 and as high as $2 a gallon in some places by the time people go on summer vacations.”

The fact that the U.S. gasoline demand can be down and that the U.S. gasoline consumer is no longer driving world oil prices is a monumental event.

— Arjun N. Murti, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, who met disdain in the summer of 2006 when he predicted a “super spike” of oil prices at $100 a barrel from $40; he now predicts oil will hit $200 a barrel and remain above $100 until 2011; May 21.

We used to have a grain economy and a fuel economy. But now they’re beginning to fuse.

— Lester Brown, president of Earth Policy Institute, a Washington research group, in a Washington Post story reporting that “the grain required to fill a 25-gallon sport-utility vehicle tank with ethanol could feed one person for a year’”; about a quarter of the American corn harvest is diverted to ethanol; April 30.

We are seeing a flicker of light after long darkness. We never imagined coal would actually make a comeback.

— Michio Sakurai, the mayor of Bibai, on Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido, where coal mining has been revived as oil hit $135 a barrel; The New York Times reported that “fears of future energy shortages … have been an unanticipated boon to the coal producing regions of countries like Japan that had written off coal mining as a relic of the Industrial Revolution”; May 22.

They came at night, trying to kill us, with people pointing out, ‘this one is a foreigner and this one is not.’ It was a very cruel and ugly hatred.

— Charles Mannyike, 28, an immigrant from Mozambique to South Africa, describing what a news report called “a spasm of xenophobia, with poor South Africans taking out their rage on the poor foreigners living in their midst. At least 22 people had been killed by Monday in the unrelenting mayhem …”; May 21.

The campaign has put a very strict policy in place and every member of the campaign is expected to be compliant with it. There may be perfectly good people that have situations that are not reconcilable. They will not be compliant with the policy.

— Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for presidential candidate John McCain, on reports that Sen. McCain’s chief foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, lobbied on behalf of foreign governments over the past seven years and met several times with Sen. McCain to discuss his clients’ interests; May 21.

[I]n both parties, the very extreme elements control the nomination process. And a tiny number of people in a few states make these decisions, and we’re left with these options that are increasingly not attractive to the American people. If you had found the right candidate in 2000 or 2004, and you could have put that man or woman, given them ballot access in September of the election year, they could have won the election. There was broad dissatisfaction with the choices that the American people have.

— Hamilton Jordan, chief of staff for President Carter, in a May 31, 2006, PBS interview; Mr. Jordan died this week at age 63; May 20.

As I watch Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s continuing campaign for her party’s nomination, I see a self-focused politician who, despite the reality of the situation, continues to stubbornly pour money that the campaign doesn’t have into a battle that it can’t win. And over these last several years, I have learned that these are the specific qualities that I do not want in our nation’s next president.

— a letter to the editor of The New York Times by J. Maynard of New York City; May 22.

Although age is not a determining factor in whether or not we detain an individual under the law of armed conflict, we go to great lengths to attend to the special needs of juveniles while they are in detention.

— from a periodic report by the United States on its compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child that “as of April 2008, the United States held about 500 juveniles in Iraq”; May 21.

Administrator Johnson was presented with and reviewed a wide range of options and made his decisions based on the facts and the law. Distraction-oriented political tactics of the committee will not keep E.P.A. from moving forward, tackling tough issues and putting into place the most health-protective standards ever.

— Jonathan Shradar, Environmental Protection Agency spokesman, on a congressional report that the administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, had “initially supported giving California full or partial permission to limit tailpipe emissions, but reversed himself after hearing from the White House”; May 21.

To those who attacked them we say, you will not find a safe harbor. We will find you and justice will prevail. America will not stop standing guard for peace or freedom or stability in the Middle East and around the world.

— President Bill Clinton, speaking at an Oct. 18, 2000, memorial ceremony at Virginia’s Norfolk Naval Base, home port of the USS Cole; The Washington Post reports that “[a]lmost eight years after al-Qaeda nearly sank the USS Cole with an explosives-stuffed motorboat, killing 17 sailors, all the defendants convicted in the attack have escaped from prison or been freed by Yemeni officials”; May 4.

We’re already seeing a hurricane premium on gas of about five to 10 cents per gallon. Especially since Katrina, we’ve seen traders build that into prices.

— energy analyst Phil Flynn in a CNN story predicting that if “a Katrina-like hurricane were to hit in July, gas prices could go as high as $5 or even $6″; May 22.

Simply by chance, a pair of new cars fell into my hands last weekend that perfectly demonstrated the yin and yang of today’s auto industry. The Pontiac G8 was powerful, exciting, fun to drive — and as obsolete as the buggy whip. The Nissan Cube was homely, utilitarian and slow — and we all ought to get used to it, because that’s what most of us are going to be driving in the future.

— Alex Taylor III, senior editor of Fortune magazine, explaining that “an era of personal indulgence in automobiles — when prosperity and cheap gasoline made big and fast available to everyone — is rapidly being replaced by an age of limits“; May 20.

When the government attempts to intrude upon the personal and private lives of homosexuals, the government must advance an important governmental interest … and the intrusion must be necessary to further that interest.

— Judge Ronald M. Gould 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, writing for the majority in a decision that ruled the military cannot automatically discharge people because they’re gay; May 22.

There are few things that provide greater health benefits than quitting smoking. When considering the use of Chantix for their patients, health care providers should discuss the risks of smoking, the health benefits of quitting smoking, and the product’s efficacy and safety profile.

— from a statement issued by Francisco Gebauer, spokesman for Pfizer, maker of the anti-smoking drug Chantix (which had $883 million in sales last year), after the Federal Aviation Administration banned pilots and air traffic controllers from taking the drug — after the “Food and Drug Administration issued a public health advisory in February, saying that some Chantix users had developed a variety of serious psychiatric symptoms, and that some had committed suicide”; May 22.

I welcome your response to this letter, and hope it is one that reassures your broadcast network’s viewers that blatantly partisan talk show hosts like Christopher Matthews and Keith Olbermann at MSNBC don’t hold editorial sway over the NBC network news division.

— from a letter to NBC president Steve Capus from presidential counselor Ed Gillespie complaining about the editing of an NBC interview with President Bush; May 19; here are the edited and full interviews.

It is routine for them to write memos and scream and yell, it’s all part of the game. But when it goes public, it reflects a broader strategy to get something else done. Maybe it’s to put everyone on notice that we’re still here, or to put everyone on notice that you’d better be careful, we’ll embarrass you publicly if you get the story wrong. Or maybe it’s a political strategy to help McCain and help gin up the base. Or it could be all three. But it wasn’t a random act.

— Joe Lockhart, President Clinton’s press secretary, on the White House’s publicized complaint by Ed Gillespie, counselor to the president, accusing NBC of “deceitful editing” of an interview with the president; May 23.

Patrick J. Durkin, of Connecticut, to be a Member of the Board of Directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation for a term expiring December 17, 2009 …

— from a May 22 nomination announcement by President Bush; Patrick J. Durkin, a managing director of Credit Suisse First Boston, was a two-time Bush Pioneer fundraising “bundler” of at least $100,000; Patrick Durkin is listed as a “Trailblazer” (bundlers of at least $100,000) for presidential candidate John McCain.

Q: Farm bill — where are we with the farm bill?
MS. PERINO: You tell me — or the Democrats tell me.
Q: What did he veto?
MS. PERINO: He vetoed — the President vetoed the bill that the Democrats sent us. And, look, I understand there’s a technical error and we’ll have to see what the Congress decides to do, but maybe it gives them one more chance to take a look and think about how much they’re asking the taxpayers to spend at a time of record farm income. The Congress had an opportunity to put forward — I’m sorry — to implement reforms, much needed reforms, and they decided not to. And I think with this move it shows that they can even up screw up spending the taxpayers’ money unwisely.
Q: What was that —
MS. PERINO: Said they can — they’ve proved that they can even screw up spending the taxpayers’ money unwisely. (Laughter.) Laughter by reporters. (Laughter.)

— exchange between reporter and press secretary Dana Perino at a White House press briefing; May 22.

This younger generation, it’s not that they’re more relaxed about grooming — they still spend time at the salon — but the grooming rules are different.

— Kerry Diamond, a vice president for public relations at Lancôme, on a trend described by New York Times style writer Melena Ryzik as “Over the last few years — since the era of the skull print scarf, let’s say, or the (metaphorical) rise of the Olsen twins — having streaked, chipped or just plain grotty nail polish no longer suggests drug addiction, manual labor or pure laziness. Like untied high-tops, thread-worn jeans and bedhead, it’s now part of a deliberate look“; May 22; emphasis added.

photo credits:
corn and tractor: Michael Williamson, The Washington Post
Hamilton Jordan: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
forecast graphic: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency
chipped nails: Robert Stolarik, The New York Times

Quotabull is a weekly feature of Scholars & Rogues.

It’s a pleasure to watch Obama’s mastery of the technique. And Clinton — and I didn’t say “even Clinton” — uses it much better than McCain does. And just about everybody does it better than the capering loon who does soft-shoe in the White House while young Americans are dismembered and splattered in Iraq. Sometimes when he speaks I can forget who he is momentarily and find myself actually pulling for him; probably from misplaced performer empathy. His speechifying has a strong odor of remedial reading about it, combined with an apparent fear that there might be some hard words ahead.

— from a New York Times commentary by Dick Cavett discussing President Bush’s public speaking skills; March 28.

The president views the Olympics as a sporting event and an important opportunity to support America’s athletes. He has also made it very clear that the Olympics will shine a bright light on China regarding a variety of issues.

— White House spokesman Tony Fratto, responding to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s urging that President Bush skip the opening Olympics ceremony to protest China’s actions in Tibet and its human rights record and trade policies; April 2.

The drums of war are sounding, a decisive battle is at hand. For the sake of the Chinese nation’s image and for the honor of the People’s Armed Police, let us never forget our duty.

— from an article in The People’s Armed Police News in China, regarding what it called a “political mobilization order” to security forces telling them to prepare for an arduous time ensuring order and control before and during the Olympic Games; April 2.

Since our acquisition of DoubleClick closed on March 11, we have been working to match and align DoubleClick employees in the U.S. with our organizational plan for the business. As with many mergers, this review has resulted in a reduction in headcount at the acquired company.

— a statement from Google on press reports it planned to cut about 300 jobs from the American operations of DoubleClick; April 3.

This report is telling us that the recession started awhile back, in December. It is not like we are starting this month. We’re in it; we’ve been in it.

— Nigel Gault, the chief United States economist at Global Insight, a research firm, on the April 4 Labor Department jobs report that said the economy lost 80,000 jobs in March, the third consecutive month of rising unemployment.

Ben Bernanke, the Fed chief, with photographers before testifying to the Joint Economic Committee.

Clearly, we’re looking at asset quality and capital. We’re looking at liquidity. We’re trying to make judgments about risk management, earnings quality — a variety of things that we look at to try to ascertain whether a financial institution is sound or not. And if not, you know, we need to push them to improve their processes, to raise capital, improve their liquidity.

— testimony of Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke at a hearing of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress; April 3.

Hope Now is a failure. It’s industry-dominated.

— Michael Shea, the executive director of the Acorn Housing Corporation, a large counseling agency that is part of the Hope Now alliance designed to assign homeowners with mortgage problems, on reports that “the financial powers behind Hope Now — mortgage lenders, loan servicers and big investors — are reluctant to change loan terms substantially if doing so hurts them“; “Home Now,” reports The New York Times, “is run out of the Housing Policy Council, which in turn is part of the Financial Services Roundtable, the influential financial services lobby“; April 2; emphasis added.

Today, the New York Times criticized President Bush for failing to generate headlines for his visit to Novadebt counseling center in Freehold, N.J. to meet with mortgage counselors and discuss the housing market, asserting “the papers were awash with the news that Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania had endorsed Senator Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination for president.” The “newspaper of record” further claims “Mr. Bush has sometimes seemed invisible during the housing and credit crunch.” … The New York Times neglects to mention that it failed to send a reporter to cover the President’s housing event in Freehold, N.J. – a town inside its own circulation area.

— from an April 3 White House press release titled “Setting the Record Straight: The New York Times Mistakes Its Own Blindness for Presidential ‘Invisibility’”; emphasis added.

In this case, we have an employee, Mr. Skilling, acting in pursuit of Enron’s interests at all times. Skilling urged risky transactions that were unwise but violated no rules.

— Daniel M. Petrocelli, lawyer for former Enron chief Jeffrey Skilling, in asking the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to overturn Mr. Skilling’s conviction “on 19 counts of fraud, conspiracy, insider trading and lying to auditors for his role in the collapse of Enron, once the nation’s seventh-largest company”; April 3; emphasis added.

I told him that the American forces are withdrawing from Iraq and that George Bush is going to apologize to the Iraqi people for causing destruction and he will pay one million Iraqi dinars to every Iraqi for compensation within two days. My friend didn’t believe me.

— Ahmed Ali, the owner of a Baghdad shoe store, on the April Fools Day joke he tried to play on a friend; April 2.

We value the need for public input on any potential impact of our border infrastructure plans on the environment, and we will continue to solicit it.

— Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff after using, for the fourth time, his waiver authority to bypass environmental regulations to meet a December deadline to construction nearly 700 miles of fencing on the U.S.-Mexico border; April 2.

If you fail to stop the Germans getting our oil, you will be shot. And when we have thrown the invader out, if we cannot restart production, we will shoot you again.

— Joseph Stalin, as remembered by Nikolai K. Baibakov, “who oversaw Russian oil production during World War II and went on to become one of the Soviet Union’s top economic officials“; Baibakov died Monday in Moscow at age 97; April 2.

Q: Did the President — our President — speak at all during this meeting?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: He did. He did.
Q: And what did he say?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: It was positive, informal, as you’d expect from our President. He welcomed President Putin, thanked him for coming, indicated he was going to Sochi; said, you know, we’re too old warhorses and we’re both getting ready to step down from our positions; that he emphasized some themes he’s made before, of course, that the Cold War is over and Russia is not the enemy, and that he believes that NATO is a force for good and building democracies is a good thing because democracies and strong democratic states are really the only way to deal with the challenges we have today. And he hopes that these efforts to build democracies of course will continue into the future.

— exchange from a press briefing aboard Air Force One en route to Zagreb, Croatia; April 4.

Some of these people still believe the woman should be home taking care of the baby, and they are not going to vote for a black. That’s just what they believe. There’s prejudice in this country that’s never going to go away completely. My stepdaughter’s with a black man and went and had a baby by him. I’m okay with it, but that’s me. I was raised around black people. If they vote Obama in, I won’t lose a wink of sleep because of his color or his policies, but I’m voting for Hillary.

— Gary Lampke, 53, sitting at the bar of American Legion Post 420 in Harrisburg, Pa., discussing race in presidential politics; March 23.

It’s not a blitz to close this chapter. If we find the [al-Qaeda] leadership, then we’ll go after it. But nothing can be done to put al-Qaeda away in the next nine or 10 months. In the long haul, it’s an issue that extends beyond this administration.

— a senior Bush administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of ongoing operations, discussing the likelihood of unilateral strikes inside Pakistan; April 1.

We have always said that as for strikes, that is for Pakistani forces to do and for the Pakistani government to decide. … We do not envision a situation in which foreigners will enter Pakistan and chase targets. This war on terror is our war.

— Farhatullah Babar, a top spokesman for the Pakistan People’s Party, whose leader, Yousaf Raza Gillani, is the new prime minister of Pakistan; April 1; emphasis added.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — North Carolina Republican Sen. Jesse Helms said Tuesday that the United States would soon release some $582 million to the United Nations, as the U.S. moves to incrementally make good on nearly $1 billion in back dues to the world body.

— from a Jan. 9, 2001, story on CNN.com; emphasis added.

U.N. administrative costs have more than doubled, to about $2.5 billion a year, since Bush took office, while peacekeeping expenses have increased threefold, with nearly 110,000 peacekeepers in 20 overseas missions at a 2008 cost of about $7 billion.

— from a March 21 Washington Post story reporting that “[d]espite long-standing efforts by successive U.S. administrations to rein in U.N. spending, the United Nations this month presented its top donors with a request for nearly $1.1 billion in additional funds over the next two years — boosting current U.N. expenses by 25 percent and marking the global body’s highest-ever administrative budget”; emphasis added.

MS. PERINO: I’m sorry; I made the mistake of not actually saying that you wanted to be on background.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: On background.
MS. [DANA] PERINO: It was a private meeting, it was on background.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Ever since “hello.”
Q: Senior admin official?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Senior admin official.
MS. PERINO: Sorry, guys.
Q: It’s okay.

— exchange from a press briefing aboard Air Force One en route to Zagreb, Croatia; April 4.

There seemed to be two of me. One, onstage, undressing. The other saying, ‘What are you doing, taking your clothes off for those morons?’

— Sherry Britton, “whose hour-glass figure, jet-black hair and rambunctious presence made her one of the queens of the burlesque stage in the 1930s and ’40s” on her internal monologue while stripping; she died April 1 at 89; April 3.

photo credits:
President Bush: Shealah Craighead, The White House
Ben Bernanke: Brendan Smialowski, The New York Times
Sherry Britton: Movie Star News

Quotabull is a weekly feature of Scholars & Rogues.

If it was the Marlins, you wouldn’t see people in Florida getting up at 5 a.m. And if it was the Yankees — well, their fans aren’t real. They just buy the hat.

— Helio Rocha, a restaurant manager who stayed up all night in anticipation of watching the Red Sox’ Major League Baseball opener (played in Toyko) at 5:30 a.m. in famed Boston watering hole Cask ’n’ Flagon; March 26.

Adam Smith’s invisible hand has a puppeteer: the Federal Reserve. In case there is any confusion about who was pulling the strings behind the scenes of JPMorgan Chase’s acquisition of Bear Stearns, the curtain was lifted Monday. By raising its bid — with the grudging approval of the Fed — to $10 a share, from $2, JPMorgan exposed what had long been whispered about but no one dared to say aloud: the Fed is officially in the deal-making business.

— from Andrew Ross Sorkin’s “Dealbook” column in The New York Times; March 25; emphasis added.

Largely due to the aging of the baby boomers and rising health care costs, the United States faces decades of red ink. … If the United States continues as it has, policymakers will eventually have to raise taxes or slash government services that U.S. citizens depend on and take for granted. … Over time, the U.S. government could be reduced to doing little more than mailing out Social Security checks to retirees and paying interest on the massive national debt.

— from a March 15 speech at Brown University by David M. Walker, who resigned as comptroller general of the United States earlier this month; emphasis added.

I’ve never seen a government be able to circumvent the business cycle in a capitalist economy, but at the same time, the government is going to pull out all the stops to minimize the instability. The grim reality is that recessions are a part of life. It’s like surgery. You don’t feel good as you get out of the operating room, but inevitably there’s a healing process and things get better.

— David A. Rosenberg, chief economist at Merrill Lynch; March 14.

Arguing about whether we can or cannot already see the effects is like sitting in a house soaked in gasoline, having just dropped a lit match, and arguing about whether we can actually see the flames yet, while waiting to see if maybe it might go out on its own.

— Ross A. Alford, a tropical biologist at James Cook University in Townsville, Australia, saying “scientific tussles” regarding the impacts of climate change can be distracting; March 25.

The next president of the United States seems sure to be more committed to environmental policy than the current president is, and a carbon tax is high on everyone’s list of options. Indeed, a carbon tax has been promoted almost as a panacea — just pop in the economic incentives and watch them work their magic. But unless steps are taken to lock the tax revenue away from policymakers and invest in substitutes, a carbon tax could lead to more revenue rather than to less pollution.

— Monica Prasad, an assistant professor of sociology and a faculty fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University and the author of “The Politics of Free Markets,” in a New York Times commentary; March 25.

Karima Tung, 12, one of three girls home-schooled by their mother, reading the Koran.

I don’t want the behavior. Little girls are walking around dressing like hoochies, cursing and swearing and showing disrespect toward their elders. In Islam we believe in respect and dignity and honor.

— Aya Ismael, a Muslim mother home-schooling four children near San Jose, Calif., one of many parents of many faiths “who … are often inspired by a belief that public schools are havens for social ills like drugs and that they can do better with their children at home; March 25.

The Speaker believes it would do great harm to the Democratic Party if superdelegates are perceived to overturn the will of the voters.

— Brendan Daly, spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., repeating the speaker’s position that “superdelegates should not ‘overturn the will of the voters’ in the face of criticism from top donors to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton,” D-N.Y.; March 27.

As to our right to vote, and have that vote count, there can be no debate. The goal is simple: One person, one vote.

— Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., on his intent to propose legislation that would create six rotating, regional primaries to select presidential candidates, while the Electoral College would be abolished by a constitutional amendment; March 27.

I had a very simple formula: If it affected the life of a U.S. citizen, you woke the president. At 3 o’clock in the morning, unless there is a nuclear holocaust coming, there is not much the president has to decide. What you are doing is starting to put into gear the response of the U.S. government on behalf of the president, not necessarily by the president.

— Kenneth M. Duberstein, President Reagan’s last chief of staff, noting that presidents rarely make snap decisions at 3 a.m.; March 16; emphasis added.

Mark Halperin of Time magazine in the cargo bay of an Obama bus recently in Ohio.

I’m not sure too much is lost. There used to be a self-defined cadre of campaign reporters. Now the news comes from everywhere — from bloggers, maybe some guy with a video camera. Anyone can generate news and everyone can generate news. What’s the advantage of being the 50th guy on the bus?

— S. Robert Lichter, director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, arguing that the decision by major news organizations to cut back on “campaign bus” coverage of presidential candidates is long overdue; March 26.

In relying on documents that I now believe were fake, I failed to do my job. I’m sorry.

— Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Chuck Philips of the Los Angeles Times after the Times “acknowledged that it unwittingly relied on fabricated FBI documents, created by a con man, for a report that implicated associates of rap mogul Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs in the 1994 shooting of rapper Tupac Shakur”; March 27.

We landed a few hours before daybreak and as soon as I got off the helicopter my night vision broke, I was surrounded by the sound of artillery rounds, people screaming in Arabic, automatic weapons, and the terrain didn’t look anything like what we were briefed. I knew it was going to be a bad day and a half.

— a March 7, 2007, journal entry of Jerry Ryen King of Georgia about air-assault sniper mission in a known al-Qaida stronghold just north of Baghdad; he died in Iraq April 23, 2007, along with eight other soldiers after suicide bombers blew up two dump trucks outside a school building they were in; March 25.

People think I have to justify this war just because my son died in it. That’s not the case. I think we must secure that area of the world and make it stable, otherwise my grandson is going to be over there. … You have to do what you’re called to do. My son stood for the honor and the dignity that should have been given him in his death. I would never stop anyone from going, because down deep inside I know my son did the right thing.

— Peggy Buryj, whose son, Pfc. Jesse Buryj, died in Iraq on May 5, 2004; March 19.

Listen to the words of Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister: “Last year was the year of security,” he said. “This year is the year of reconstruction, it is the year of services, and it’s the year of combating corruption.” We’re going to help them meet those goals.

— from a speech by President Bush at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio; March 27.

This isn’t like World War II. There’s no VJ Day, no sailor kissing a girl when he comes home. This is somebody saying that trend lines indicate a sustainable level of violence. That’s not a great feeling.

— Army Capt. Derek Bennett of the 1st Armored Division, who entered Iraq in April 2003 on a 90-day deployment that military planners stretched to 15 months; March 19.

If you read the foreign media, the only message you can get is that China is very heavy-handed, and they are doing a lot of bad things in Tibet, and they are totally out of their minds. And they talk about the Dalai Lama as if he’s God.

— Gao Zhikai, a former Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs official, claiming foreign media about Chinese actions in Tibet have been biased; March 25.

Q: On troop levels in Iraq, The New York Times is reporting that General Petraeus recommended to President Bush putting off any decisions on further troop reductions until about a month or two, perhaps after July. And they also say that it now appears likely any decision on major reduction of American troops for Iraq will be left to the next President. Do you take issue with that characterization?

MS. PERINO: Well, a couple of things. One, the President gave a speech Wednesday, March 19th, in which many headlines were similar to the ones that you read about today. So the President is in a process of getting briefed by his senior advisors, both those that are on the ground and here at the White House, at the Defense Department and at the State Department. So, across-the-board, the President is getting all of this input, taking it into account before he makes a decision. And those decisions aren’t going to be made public until he’s ready to make them public.

And I think it’s prudent for him to allow Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus to come back and provide information to Capitol Hill. He’ll continue to consult with Capitol Hill before he makes a decision on the way forward. But he’s made — he’s not been shy about saying that we will have to make sure that the gains that have been achieved over this past year not be erased by acting too quickly in bringing troops home. Remember, all of this is conditions-based. So from the very beginning, if I go back to January 2005, President Bush at that point thought that we would be able to start announcing troops coming home. That didn’t happen because of the Samarra mosque bombing and the violence that ensued. So then in late December 2006 and January 2007, the President made another decision based on conditions on the ground, and that was to send more troops in.

Nine months later, in September of 2007, the President makes yet another decision based on conditions on the ground, and that was that because of the success we’ve had some troops would be allowed to start coming home. And I would just point to you there’s a pattern here, that the President listens to the commanders on the ground and makes decisions based on that regard.

— exchange between reporter and press secretary Dana Perino at a March 25 White House press briefing [emphasis added].

CNN: Do you see yourself as an elder statesman now?
DAVIES: Aw, no. When I get up on stage I’m just another punk trying to make contact with the world. Yes, I’m older, but I’m not that much wiser. I still make the same mistakes I would have made years ago. … I know people look to me to have all the answers [as an elder statesman] but remember, I don’t have all the answers. Maybe that’s why I’m still doing it.

— interview exchange between CNN’s Todd Leopold and Kinks frontman Ray Davies; March 27; emphasis added.

Ever wanted your own floating estate? The perfect toy for those in the billionaires club, the newest design from Monaco based Wally Yachts is in a class of it’s own- the newly termed ‘gigayacht’. For roughly £100 million the lucky buyer will surpass the league of the mere megayacht to become the exclusive owner of the largest private vessel known to man. At 59ft across and 2,730 tons at half load, the aptly named WallyIsland will have everything the super-rich could ever dream of (a tennis court, pool and five accommodation decks including a main saloon, dining room, library, cinema, spa and fitness area) and even a growing garden with shrubbery and flower beds that will be fed by an irrigation system. With fuel tanks big enough to enable five years of cruising, and space for 40 crew and 24 guests, two 45ft motor yachts, two 27ft sailing yachts, two cars and water-toys including six jetskis, the design company expect it to fulfil the dream of someone who wants to “live comfortably on board fulltime, like on their own estate”.

— description of a Wally Yachts “gigayacht”; [emphasis added]

photo credits:
Muslim child: David Kadlubowski, The New York Times
Campaign bus: Damon Winter, The New York Times

Quotabull is a weekly feature of Scholars & Rogues.

Talk, as they say, is cheap.

House leaders spent the week floating their specific proposals for how they intend to comply in full, and yesterday, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes went on CNN with Wolf Blitzer, refused to criticize the President or the Senate FISA bill, and repeatedly and meekly expressed his willingness “this week” to give what he called full “blanket immunity” to telecoms (C&L has the video of Reyes’ astoundingly weak and incoherent answers in response to Blitzer’s Bush-mimicking questions). (More here.)

It’s like a bad courtroom drama – they must have gotten to Reyes. I don’t know – maybe some of the info Bush showed him made clear that the only way to safeguard democracy is to empower corporations to plunder our civil rights with impunity. If so, I trust him. I mean, he’s never lied to us before.

*Ahem*

So that’s one theory. There are others, and we’d do well to keep an eye on Silvestre’s bank account over the coming months, I suspect.

In any case we’re on the verge of a “compromise,” but the only things I see being compromised are our freedoms and the Democratic Party’s alleged integrity.

Remind me again why I was so happy about that Democratic sweep back in November?

Liability protection is critical to securing the private sector’s cooperation with our intelligence efforts. … The Senate has passed a good bill and it has shown that protecting our nation is not a partisan issue.

— President Bush, Feb. 13.

In a presidency of hypocrisy — an administration of exploitation — a labyrinth of leadership — in which every vital fact is a puzzle inside a riddle wrapped in an enigma hidden under a claim of executive privilege supervised by an idiot — this one … is surprisingly easy. President Bush has put protecting the telecom giants from the laws … ahead of protecting you from the terrorists. He has demanded an extension of the FISA law — the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act — but only an extension that includes retroactive immunity for the telecoms who helped him spy on you.

— MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann, Jan. 31.

The order cannot properly be sustained as an exercise of the President’s military power as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. . . .

Nor can the seizure order be sustained because of the several constitutional provisions that grant executive power to the President. . . . The Constitution limits his functions in the lawmaking process to the recommending of laws he thinks wise and the vetoing of laws he thinks bad. And the Constitution is neither silent nor equivocal about who shall make laws which the President is to execute. . . .

The Founders of this Nation entrusted the lawmaking power to the Congress alone in both good and bad times.

— from the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Youngstown Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952); the decision involved President Truman’s attempt to seize control of steel mills that were gripped by strikes.

Some people around here get cold feet when threatened by the administration.

— Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who sought a “a much more restrictive set of surveillance measures”; Feb. 13.

Congress’s overriding goal here is to further hamstring our intelligence war-fighters with legal rigidity and complexity, but to do so in a way that dodges its own oversight duties by passing the buck to FISA judges. White House lawyers know this is unconstitutional, but intelligence officials say it’s more important to have Congress’s blessing for these wiretaps. And because the telecom companies won’t cooperate without immunity, Mr. Bush is being bullied into trading away some of his own power to get that immunity.

— Wall Street Journal editorial, Feb. 11.

“Just trust us” is not an acceptable substitute for the rule of law in this democracy.

— San Francisco Chronicle editorial, Oct. 23.

In addition to providing a get-out-of-court-free card for companies such as AT&T and Verizon, the bill also largely legalizes Bush’s secret wiretapping program, by letting the NSA spy inside American telecom and internet infrastructure without getting court approval or having particular targets in mind.

— Wired’s Threat Level; Feb. 13.

The fact that the Supreme Court has never found a commander-in-chief function that could not be regulated by Congress does not mean, of course, that there are no limits on Congress’ power. If Congress sought to micromanage the war by assigning authority to lead the troops to someone outside the president’s chain of command and subject to congressional removal, for example, its actions would likely be unconstitutional. But the notion that Congress cannot protect the privacy of Americans during wartime by requiring the president to obtain a warrant before spying on Americans is entirely unprecedented—unless, that is, you consider the bare assertions of Richard Nixon a precedent.

— from “The Nixon Doctrine” by David Cole of Slate; Feb. 13, 2006.

The House’s failure to pass the bipartisan Senate bill would jeopardize the security of our citizens. As Director McConnell has told me, without this law, our ability to prevent new attacks will be weakened. And it will become harder for us to uncover terrorist plots. We must not allow this to happen.

— President Bush, Feb. 13.

Simply put, it was wrong for the president to suggest that warrants issued in compliance with FISA would suddenly evaporate with congressional inaction. Instead — even though Congress extended the Protect America Act by two weeks — he is using the existence of the sunset provision to cast his political opponents in a negative light. For this president, fear is an easier political tactic than compromise. With FISA, he is attempting to rattle Congress into hastily expanding his own executive powers at the expense of civil liberties and constitutional protections.

— commentary by Richard A. Clarke, former head of counterterrorism at the National Security Council, Feb. 1; emphasis added.

Mr. Bush and his team say they have safeguards to protect civil liberties, meaning surveillance will be reviewed by the attorney general, the director of national intelligence and the inspectors general of the Justice Department and the Central Intelligence Agency. There are two enormous flaws in that. The Constitution is based on the rule of law, not individuals; giving such power to any president would be un-American. And this one long ago showed he cannot be trusted.

— New York Times editorial, Oct. 14.

Today we watched dozens of senators, including many Democrats, capitulate to a lawless, weakened, lame duck President by passing a dangerous and unconstitutional FISA bill that allows warrantless government eavesdropping on Americans.

— ACLU Blog, Feb. 12.

Q: They don’t have to have warrants to wiretap?
MS. PERINO: That’s not what this is about, Helen. Anyone in America who would require a wiretap that — you have to go through the process of getting a warrant. This was about dealing through the FISA court to make sure that our intelligence gaps remain closed when dealing with phone calls overseas.
Q: But were the telephone companies told that it was legal to wiretap six months before 9/11?
MS. PERINO: The telephone companies that were alleged to have helped their country after 9/11 did so because they are patriotic and they certainly helped us and they helped us save lives.

— exchange between correspondent Helen Thomas and press secretary Dana Perino at a Feb. 12 press briefing.

Let’s start with a little reality check here. Much of what the NSA and the intelligence community does is in violation of some law somewhere. Indeed, much of what the military does is as well. When the NSA intercepts a communication from France to Afghanistan, it probably violates the privacy and electronic surveillance laws in both countries. When it installs alligator clips on a phone in Turkmenistan, it probably violates some local burglary or trespass law. Espionage — the staple of the CIA — is a felony in almost every nation, and a capitol offense in the U.S. In fact, it is part of the intelligence community’s job to try to get people to commit treason. So we are hardly shocked or offended that our government or any government is violating the law. What the so-called NSA domestic spying scandal addresses is whether the process violates U.S. law.

— Mark Rasch, columnist for Security Focus, Jan. 11, 2006.

Our runner-up, conservative water carrier Laura Ingraham, who just flat-out lied about The New York Times. She told Fox Noise that a Times editorial about the FISA law had included that, quote, “We should not update the surveillance law to meet current advances in technology. We are now in a blackout with some of this intelligence because of what The New York Times and what the Democrats have done.” Except that’s not what the Times editorial said. It said, in fact, the exact opposite. It insisted on updating the law to meet current advances in technology. The Times wrote, quote, “Instead of asking Congress to address this anachronism, as it should, the White House sought to use it to destroy the 1978 spying law.” This just in, conservatives don’t know how to read. They merely skim.

— MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann, awarding Laura Ingraham runner-up as “Worst Person in the World“; Aug. 6; emphasis added.

Telecom immunity should have never taken this long to approve. The immunity covers companies who received assurances from the Department of Justice that their cooperation broke no laws, and they cooperated to help defend the US from attack. Their reward for trust and assistance should not be billion-dollar class-action lawsuits, which would have been nothing more than a back-door attempt to kneecap intelligence operations that kept this nation safe for more than six years after 9/11.

— Ed Morrissey at Captain’s Quarters blog, Feb. 12.

Congress insists still on micromanaging the president — and he, by failing to assert his authority early on, is now reduced to bargaining with Congress over minutia that will soon be as obsolete and dangerous as the underlying act is today. John Locke, no sometime civil libertarian, put it well when he observed that the foreign affairs power “is much less capable to be directed by antecedent, standing, positive Laws, than [by] the Executive.” The Federalist’s authors, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, all agreed. The remedy for executive incompetence or recklessness in foreign affairs is political — not legislative, much less legal. Congress, to say nothing of the courts, can no more manage such affairs than it can the economy. What better evidence than these surveillance fits and starts?

— from a Jan. 28 commentary in the Wall Street Journal by Roger Pilon, founder and director of Cato’s Center for Constitutional Studies.

Quotabull is a weekly feature of Scholars & Rogues.

Case in point–Sandeep Kaushik, campaign consultant for Darcy Burner:

According to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission, liberal bloggers responded by raising some $123,000 over that weekend for Reichert’s opponent, Darcy Burner. Burner, a former Microsoft manager, attempted to unseat Reichert in 2006 but lost with 48.5 percent of the vote to Reichert’s 51.5 percent.

The last-minute fundraising effort in August for Burner was titled “Burn Bush for Burner” and drew about 3,200 individual donors from around the country, said Burner’s campaign consultant Sandeep Kaushik. It was coordinated and organized by some of the nation’s most popular liberal blogs, including DailyKos.com and firedoglake.com.

“They tend to be partisans, no question about that,” said Kaushik, a former writer for Seattle’s alternative weekly newspaper The Stranger. “At the same time, they’re not part of the party structure.”

Their role in the public discourse is still largely undefined. “They kind of play this weird role that has this superficial semblance to journalism,” Kaushik said.

But for all their potential, it’s easy to get carried away by bloggers’ self-perpetuating hype. “There are a lot of overblown statements about the ‘power of the blogosphere,’” he said.

This would be the same Darcy Burner who benefited from an astonishing amount of fundraising channeled through some of the top-shelf progressive/liberal blogs, in case you didn’t know. What I find so jaw-droppingly absurd about this is that Kaushik, who has a rather eclectic resume for being a campaign consultant, who once famously castigated Nader for running again in 2004, and who has advanced a theory of populism and infrastructure very similar to a lot of the things we say in Left Blogistan, would go out of his way to take such a deliberate shot at the very people who gave Burner the funds and support she needed to fight on.

Because, really, what we need are more of these undoubtedly well-paid consultants following the examples of brilliant leading lights like Bob Shrum and Mark Penn and teaching us exactly how Democrats snatch defeat from the jaws of victory time and again.

I’m certainly less inclined to donate money to Burner now–either she endorses what Kaushik says, which is a huge slap in the face, or she doesn’t vet her consultants well enough before hiring them, which speaks to bad leadership. So, thanks for that, Sandeep. Heckuva job.

Or, as Kagro X put it to me succinctly, “F. you. You’re stupid. That’ll be a thousand dollars, please!”

“The Universe hates me you know. I don’t know why; I’ve never done anything to the Universe to… Well, alright. A few things, but after a while you’d think it would be enough. ‘Yes, we’ve had our fun with Londo Mollari for now. Perhaps it is time to move on and find someone else to play with.’” — Londo Mollari, Babylon 5

Hey, wasn’t someone else dropping out of the 2008 campaign again? Who was it? Fred Thompson?

Oh, yeah, right–this guy:

Giuliani’s unconventional strategy of largely bypassing the early voting states and focusing on more populous, delegate-rich states produced just one delegate, a bunch of sixth-place finishes and made him the odd man out. His best showing was Florida, where he had staked his candidacy. He finished a distant third. It was a remarkable defeat for the ex-mayor who entered the race more than a year ago with an aura of invincibility, leading national polls and earning a reputation for toughness after his stewardship of New York as terrorists struck on Sept. 11, 2001.

Of course, anyone who actually paid any real attention to Giuliani beyond his near-constant references to 9/11 found that just as he overembellished and fabricated much of his role in dealing with that terrible day, once you got past that, there wasn’t really much of anything to Giuliani’s campaign–or the man in general.

One of the few times Giuliani ventured into any discussion of domestic policy was on his health care plan, which pretty much sucked. Once that tanked, it was right back to “a noun, a verb, and 9/11,” all the way. Rudy has invoked the specter of that day nearly as much as Hillary Clinton touts her fabled experience, pushing that as his key selling point–”I WILL PROTECT YOU FROM EVIL TERRORISTS AND BROWN PEOPLE,” essentially.

Never mind that he spent taxpayer dollars on his mistress and didn’t even try to deny it or show any accountability for it. Never mind that his foreign policy advisers, experts, and role models, are basically neocon lunatics of the first order. Never mind that his constant self-aggrandizement, disdain for the average American, insanely hawkish foreign policy stances, and embrace of authoritarianism made him everything we hate about Bush, and worse. Never mind any one of the million little scandals that tarnished and dogged his campaign from Day One. No, as long as he could pound the pulpit and invoke 9/11 as his holy sword and shield, he’d be fine.

Except he wasn’t. He flopped in every primary contest, in some cases placing well behind Ron Paul, the supposed “fringe candidate.” Was it the accumulated effect of all the scandals and dirt encrusting his sweaty bald pate? Was it the disgust at his cynical embrace of a horrible day as his primary campaign plank? Or was it simply voters realizing that this egotistical blowhard just was not the right guy to lead the country?

We may never know. And it doesn’t matter. Giuliani, like Fred Thompson, was anointed the undefeatable Goliath of the GOP campaign, waving his “ownership of 9/11″ like a billy club, yet using his supposed “moderate” credibility to peel away independent and undecided voters. But at his core, Rudy is about nothing but himself. Not 9/11, not America, not his harridan of a wife, or anything else, but Rudy himself. And after eight years of a president who has taken obtuse self-involvement to levels unimaginable in our cultural consciousness, I think the American public just wasn’t having any more of that on their plate.

So Rudy will go back to his million-dollar speeches and jet-setting lifestyle, demanding that we bomb Iran and Iraq into black glass, and that’s fine. Because he won’t be able to do anything about it but speechify, bleat, rant–oh, and endorse the one guy left in the campaign who’s even remotely as hawkish as he is, but is somewhat less of a self-involved dickhead.

So, see ya, Ghouliani. Hopefully not any time soon, though. Good riddance to Rudy rubbish.

Until now, the government’s efforts to protect itself from cyber-attacks — which run the gamut from hackers to organized crime to foreign governments trying to steal sensitive data — have been piecemeal. Under the new initiative, a task force headed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) will coordinate efforts to identify the source of cyber-attacks against government computer systems. As part of that effort, the Department of Homeland Security will work to protect the systems and the Pentagon will devise strategies for counterattacks against the intruders.

As Brian has said recently, the U.S. is absolutely not ready to handle cyberwar on almost any front. I’m all in favor of redirecting tax money towards protecting and strengthening our Internet infrastructure against any one of the millions of crippling threats it can face, rather than expensive, crappy weapons systems that have little measurable effect except fattening defense contractors’ coffers.

But in an expansive profile of Mike McConnell, the New Yorker’s Lawrence Wright touches on the myriad obstacles our intelligence community faces towards handling a real threat, and why they get it wrong so often:

To call the disparate intelligence bureaucracies a community suggests that they share a collegial spirit, but throughout their history these organizations have been brutally competitive, undermining one another and even hoarding vital information. Since the establishment of the C.I.A., in 1947, the fractious intelligence community has botched many of the major tasks assigned to it. Its failures include the Bay of Pigs invasion, the unforeseen collapse of the Soviet Union, the inability to prevent the September 11th attacks, and the catastrophic assessment that Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, possessed weapons of mass destruction.

The intelligence culture, like any other corporatized, hierarchical, top-down system, is hobbled by its own evolution. Territorial turf wars, emphasis on CYA over doing the job, antiquated technology and lack of resources to pay for it, and a thick blanket of paranoia and mistrust that suffuses the field at every level not only prevents agencies from being able to do their jobs effectively, but often redirects them into much more malignant and sinister ends–like the NSA’s illegal wiretapping program. From Wright’s article:

The changes to FISA that McConnell proposed were minor, in his view. “Three things we wanted,” he told me, in characteristic bulletin language. “First, we had to have a situation where it doesn’t require us to get a warrant for a foreign person in a foreign country. Second point, we need the coöperation of the private sector. The private sector is being sued for allegedly coöperating with the government.” He was referring to reports that, even before 9/11, many of America’s major telecommunications companies had diverted virtually all records of telephone and e-mail traffic from their routers into N.S.A. data banks, where it could be stored and examined. McConnell wanted liability protection not only for the companies’ future coöperation but for their past actions as well; however, he agreed to take the issue of retroactive immunity off the table if Congress would reconsider the matter after its recess.

Of course, this didn’t happen, and we’re now in a brutal Congressional stalemate between the White House, who wants permanent immunity for the telecoms and expansive new surveillance powers, and the Dems in Congress who refuse to let lawbreaking companies get away with it.

McConnell, as I’ve said before, is a big fan of private-sector cooperation on surveillance matters. He acknowledges in Wright’s article that the massive, bureaucratic intelligence community can’t move or innovate fast enough to perform the kind of vast tracking he wants for the Internet. So, how will he accomplish this?

Here’s a hint.

The battle over telecom immunity isn’t just important for what these companies and their pals in government have done, but for what they will do. No matter how vital the need for a stronger policing of the Internet against cyberterrorism is–and it is vital–that can’t come at the hands of an Administration and its operatives who have repeatedly and willfully disregarded the law and civil rights to achieve their objectives, and rapacious private interests who want to use these technologies as stepping stones to their goal of a much more controlled Internet–with their hands on the dial.

That’s why nothing like this can happen under Bush’s reign without the most stringent accountability and strong oversight. He simply cannot be trusted, and those who work for him and want to enact these goals have to be viewed with extreme skepticism. Otherwise we may find that our innocuous e-mails and blog posts are getting swept up in a vast vacuum of data mining, while real terrorist threats go unnoticed until it’s too late.

(Special thanks to Ars Technica.)

In a rare and welcome example of showing steel in the collective spine, Senate Democrats have voted down an attempt to shut off debate and block amendments on the FISA reauthorization bill. By refusing cloture, the bill will continue to be debated, with the next step being discussion of a 30-day authorization of the odious “Protect America Act.” If that vote fails, the Act will expire on Friday (February 1st), and (despite what you may have heard), the current FISA law will revert to being the de facto standard for surveillance guidance.

Here’s how twisted and ludicrous the Bush position on this is–everyone from Mitch (and Mike) McConnell to Dick Cheney has come out loudly braying that failure to permanently pass this law and grant telecom amnesty would instantly result in terrorists being able act without fear of being spied upon. Yet Bush has promised to veto any extension of the bill. If Bush doesn’t get what he wants–permanent and full authorization of PAA, including immunity from prosecution for lawbreaking telecoms–he’d rather expose us to risk of terrorist activity. It is to laugh.

When you factor in how many of these oh-so-precious wiretaps and surveillance gambits have ended because the Feds didn’t pay their bills on time, it really makes you wonder if the deadly earnestness of the White House push for this bill to become law is grounded in anything more than ensuring that those stalwart allies of theirs–AT&T and Verizon–don’t end up on the hook for spying on Americans illegally.

But you can prevent that. Do your part to contact your Senator and Representatives, and tell them to stand up for the rights of the American people to live in a world free of constant, illegal surveillance, and to not let rapacious, lawbreaking corporations off the hook.

UPDATE: The vote did indeed fail–OH NOES! We’re at the mercy of The Terrorists IN LESS THAN FIVE DAYS!!!!! ZOMG!!11111

This represents yet another example of this administration’s expansive view of Presidential power, and it needs to be the one that breaks Congress’, and the public’s, back.

President Bush is a True Believer™ in the imperial presidency, a perspective that the Constitution of the United States grants the President almost unchecked power with regard to pretty much everything. First popularized by historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, the imperial presidency dates back to FDR, if not further, and supposedly reached its zenith under Richard Nixon. In the post-Watergate days and months, Congress forced new restrictions on the Presidency that presidents have been pushing back on ever since – the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA), limitations on information sharing between the FBI, IRS, CIA, et al, and restrictions on the CIA’s ability to operate on U.S. soil.

But in many ways it wasn’t until President Bush that supporters of the imperial presidency, aka expansive Presidential powers, made significant headway. And most of that so-called progress has been made as a direct result of the September 11 attacks.

On September 18, 2001, Congress approved the “Authorization for Use of Military Force”, Public Law 107-40 [S. J. RES. 23], and in so doing granted President Bush the Congressional authority he needed to prosecute the so-called “war on terror.” Specifically, the President was:

…authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

Based on the authority of this not-quite-a-declaration-of-war, President Bush invaded Afghanistan and overthrew the Taliban who were, then, harboring the organization responsible for 9/11 – Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

But this authorization of force has been used to justify extraordinary rendition, the process of sending accused terrorists to foreign nations where they can be tortured for information in direct contravention of U.S. law. President Bush and former Attorney General John Ashcroft have acted directly against FISA by ordering warrantless NSA wiretaps, claiming that the Authorization for Use of Military Force, combined with his Constitutional authority as President, granted him all the authority he required to ignore prior federal laws and spy on U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. Similarly, President Bush and his various underlings have claimed that waterboarding is not torture and that only by threatening death or causing severe organ damage may an “interrogation technique” be called torture. Similarly, President Bush authorized secret CIA prisons abroad specifically to bypass U.S. law and developed the entire concept of illegal or unlawful combatants in order to avoid granting international POW status to suspected Al Qaeda members.

In the name of the “War on Terror,” our very own President implemented policies that amount to human right abuses that the U.S. doesn’t tolerate in other nations – like Russia and China.

But it hasn’t stopped there. Following the successful invasion of Afghanistan (and thus far unsuccessful reconstruction), President Bush sought to make a case for invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam Hussein, something that his father and former President, George H. W. Bush had wisely refused to do in 1991 (or possibly, in President Bush’s mind, failed to accomplish). In the process, he, Vice President Dick Cheney, and many of his highest advisors chose to lie repeatedly to Congress, the American people, and our international allies. The result was the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (aka the Iraq War Resolution) and, ultimately, the invasion and subsequent ongoing occupation of Iraq.

President Bush wasn’t happy with everything that the Iraq War Resolution had in it, and as a True Believer™ in “expansive” Presidential power, he issued a signing statement that said, in part:

[M]y signing this resolution does not, constitute any change in the long-standing positions of the executive branch on either the President’s constitutional authority to use force to deter, prevent, or respond to aggression or other threats to U.S. interests or on the constitutionality of the War Powers Resolution.

Which basically meant that President Bush refused to acknowledge that Congress had any authority to limit his military activities as Commander in Chief.

Since then, President Bush has ignored repeated calls by Congress to limit the scope and duration of the ongoing occupation of Iraq. For example, he’s rejected, again through the use of a signing statement, restrictions on his ability to move money around within the Executive Branch, especially between the Department of Defense and the CIA, and even within the DoD itself. His argument is essentially that the President gets to run the Executive as he sees fit, but if this is true, then Congress’ only recourse (as defined by their Constitutional authority to control government funding) is to defund the entire Executive branch. And President Bush’ wide use of signing statements has thrown the entire Executive branch into a legal limbo regarding which laws, and which parts of laws, they have to follow. If you believe President Bush, though, neither he nor his underlings face any restrictions on their activities as imposed by federal law. In essence, the entire Administration is an extralegal and unaccountable entity. In other words, President Bush isn’t a President accountable to Congress and the judiciary – he’s a dictator.

And now President Bush is trying to do an end-run around Congress’ treaty ratification authority while at the same time trying to bypass three separate federal laws that limit his ability to construct permanent military bases in Iraq. All in the name of the very “status of forces” agreement that Guy Raz reported on. According to Mr. Raz, there are legal (if unethical) ways around those annoying federal laws, like using “adjectives like ‘enduring’ or ‘continuing’ instead of the word ‘permanent’”. Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East analyst for the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, goes so far as to wonder whether “keeping the elected Iraqi government in power against internal threats” qualifies legally as a treaty or not. I wonder if the agreement will go so far as to define the Iraqi Parliament, of which nearly half have voted to have the U.S. end their occupation within two years, as an organization that could qualify as an “internal threat.”

Ultimately I agree with Mr. Raz’s conclusion – if the imperial presidency of George W. Bush ignores all these laws, as well as a new one that the Senate is considering, this issue will rapidly come before the Supreme Court. And then we’ll see if the President is allowed to ignore the very Constitution he’s sworn, and utterly failed, to serve and protect.