Here’s a graph I made off some Pew data that Paul Rosenberg pulled. On the one hand, you see that the GOP collapse over the past couple of years has been truly dramatic. On the other hand, you see that these party ID numbers are pretty volatile and can change a lot in response to events, so it’s not totally clear what this signifies for the long run. The short-term opportunity for Democrats, however, is hard to miss.
Wall Street Journal: Intel Insufficiently Politicized
Brilliant: “But the ultimate responsibility for this fiasco lies with Mr. Bush. Too often he has appointed, or tolerated, officials who oppose his agenda, and failed to discipline them even when they have worked against his policies.”
Congress In the Know
You’ve probably already read the news that key members of congress — including Jane Harman, Nancy Pelosi, Bob Graham, and Jay Rockefeller — were briefed about the CIA’s “harsh” interrogation methods back in 2002. Harman, who I’ve oft had occasion to criticize, seems to have acquitted herself the best; lodging a letter of protest, albeit a letter whose text it seems that none of us can see in even redacted form. Pelosi, Graham, and Rockefeller don’t seem to have said or done anything.
Andrew’s right to note that there’s something of a pattern here. John Kerry certainly didn’t feel like this was something he wanted to talk about during the 2004 campaign. One question is how much of this is cowardice and how much conviction; would Democrats actually act to roll this stuff back even if they won’t take a stand against it? The evidence from the legislative history suggests mostly cowardice, as Pelosi has certainly helped move anti-torture bills through congress, though how she thought she could keep today’s revelations under wraps indefinitely is a bit beyond me.
Defending Kant
In response to yesterday’s anti-Kant attack ad, John Holbo suggests the following defense of Kant’s ethics:
I’d say, though, that this little ditty recapitulates one of the oft-criticized flaws in Kant’s thinking, namely the surface non-equivalance of different formulations of the key moral principle.
Decline and Fall
The good news about Mike Huckabee is that he no longer believes AIDS patients should be quarantined, as he once did back in 1992. On the other hand, Samhita and Feministing directs my attention to this gem in a GQ interview:
I don’t think the issue’s about being against gay marriage. It’s about being for traditional marriage and articulating the reason that’s important. You have to have a basic family structure. There’s never been a civilization that has rewritten what marriage and family means and survived. So there is a sense in which, you know, it’s one thing to say if people want to live a different way, that’s their business.
So I suppose Blackstone-era family law must still be intact here in the West, because otherwise our civilization would have perished long ago. Or maybe conceptions of marriage and family structure are constantly shifting and this idea that they never change is just a cop-out effort to avoid squarely making the case for discrimination against gays and lesbians. My money’s going on number two.
Photo by Flickr user Rneches used under a Creative Commons license
Rockefeller Gives Contradictory Response For When He Learned Of CIA’s Destruction Of Torture Tapes
On Thursday evening, when the media first reported that the CIA destroyed “torture tapes” documenting the harsh interrogation of al Qaeda leaders, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman John Rockefeller (D-WV) said he had known about the destruction for a year:
And, we did not learn until much later, November 2006 — 2 months after the full committee was briefed on the program — that the tapes had in fact been destroyed in 2005.
But the very next day, Rockefeller issued a statement explaining that he had been misled by the CIA and was simply repeating what they had told him. To clarify, he said that he was not told of the destruction in 2006:
Last night, the CIA informed me that it believes that the leadership of the Senate Intelligence Committee was told of the decision to destroy the tapes in February 2003 but was not told of their actual destruction until a closed committee hearing held in November 2006.
The committee has located no record of either being informed of the 2003 CIA decision or being notified late last year of the tapes having being destroyed. A review of the November 2006 hearing transcript finds no mention of tapes being destroyed.
This morning on CBS’s Face the Nation, Rockefeller had an opportunity to set the record straight but failed. Instead, he offered contradictory explanations, stating that he learned about the destruction in 2006 but also that he first found out about it by reading the newspaper this week:
ROCKEFELLER: And I also don’t know why we didn’t find out about that until 2006.
SCHIEFFER: You found out about it when you read it in the newspaper?
ROCKEFELLER: Yeah, yeah.
Watch it:
Rockefeller was also asked about a Washington Post story today that claims bipartisan leaders of Congress were briefed on waterboarding and raised no objections. He said he couldn’t reveal whether he was briefed or not due to confidentiality rules, but said he was “really disturbed by what I was reading and what we grew to know.”
Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE), also appearing on the program, said there was “no justification” for either carrying out torture practices or destroying the tapes. “Burning tapes, destroying evidence, I don’t know how deep this goes,” Hagel said. “Could there be obstruction of justice? Yes. How far does this go up in the White House, who knew it? I don’t know.”
Admin officials refuse to talk about torture tapes.
On ABC’s This Week, host George Stephanopoulos told his audience, “You should know that I invited the CIA director, the director of national intelligence, and President Bush’s national security adviser to join us today. They all declined.”
Giuliani opposes Congressional fuel economy deal
[I am updating this now that the transcript is available here.]
In a revealing interview on Meet the Press today, GOP Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani said he does not support the mandated increase to 35-mpg that both the House and Senate — and I believe even the President — support. To quote Rudy: “That isn’t the way I think it should be done.”
What is his alternative strategy? Politically, as Climate Progress readers know, only one other alternative strategy exists: “technology, technology, technology, blah, blah, blah.” Yes, Rudy wants to subsidize hybrids and biofuels — a voluntary strategy that has failed to stop the steady decline in average fuel economy — and the steady increase in gasoline consumption — in this country since the mid-1980s.
We’ve already heard some dubious energy/climate policy from the Giuliani camp, but here he himself demonstrated that he just doesn’t get it: In responding to Russert’s question about the fuel economy deal, Rudy said we needed to build more oil refineries. Well, only if the strategy of fuel efficiency and alternative fuels fails — which it certainly will if President Giuliani pushes his voluntary do-nothing technology strategy.
Rudy also said he wanted to push more nuclear and “clean coal” and, weirdly, “expansion of hydroelectric power.” [Note to Rudy's energy advisor -- this means you, former Energy Secretary of Herrington -- we are pretty much tapped out on hydro.] He made no mention of renewables like wind or solar.
The interview is now available here. The energy stuff is at the very end. I don’t think he’ll be the GOP nominee (though he is currently the gambler’s favorite), but if he is, the interview is probably worth watching. Otherwise, not so much.
Kristol: Iran Halting Nuclear Weapons Program Is ‘Another Feather In The Cap For Iraq Invasion’
Today in the Fox News Sunday roundtable, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol claimed that the reason Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in mid-2003 was because of the U.S. invasion of Iraq:
I believe we invaded a neighboring country in 2003 and removed their dictator and that sent shock waves through the region and at the time people were quite worried. Qaddafi gave up his program, he dismantled his. We took it out. Iran didn’t dismantle anything. That’s why they remain a threat. They halted it, maybe they’ve restarted it, maybe not. This is yet another feather in the cap for the invasion of Iraq.
NPR’s Juan Williams responded by calling Kristol the “iron glove,” asking, “So you want us to start invading everybody everywhere? That’ll stop all nuclear proliferation?” Kristol replied that if it works, it’s “a pretty good thing.” Watch it:
Libya did not give up its nuclear weapons program in 2003 because of the Iraq war. As Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Joseph Cirincione noted, negotiations with Libya stretched “over three administrations,” resulting in a deal that “cost little, caused no deaths, and was 100 percent effective.” At the time, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair called the news a “victory for diplomacy.”
Kristol has no proof for his claims. The unclassified key judgments of the NIE never once mention the Iraq invasion. If anything, Iran has been empowered by the Iraq war. As the LA Times noted in 2006:
In the 1980s, Iran spent eight years and thousands of lives waging a war to overthrow Hussein, whose regime buffered the Sunni Muslim-dominated Arab world from Iran. … Now Iraq’s fledgling democracy has placed power in the hands of the nation’s Shiite majority and its Kurdish allies, many of whom lived as exiles in Iran and maintain strong religious, cultural and linguistic ties to it.
Kristol’s remarks mirror those of former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, who also said on Thursday that Iraq was the reason Iran gave up its program. “What big thing happened in 2003?” he asked. “We deposed Saddam Hussein. America showed massive military force in the country right next to Iran called Iraq.”
Transcript: Read more
High Finance
Michael Lewis in Portfolio wonders if the whole world’s gone mad:
One day, someone may look back and ask: At the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, how did so many take up financial careers on Wall Street that were of such little social value? Just now, the markets are roiling, money managers and investment banks are reporting disappointing returns, and people are beginning to wonder if they chose the wrong guy in Greenwich, Connecticut, to take 2 percent of their assets and 20 percent of profits. But what if the problem isn’t the guy in Greenwich but the idea that makes him possible: the belief that the best way to invest capital is to hand it to an expert? As a group, professional money managers control more than 90 percent of the U.S. stock market. By definition, the money they invest yields returns equal to those of the market as a whole, minus whatever fees investors pay them for their services. This simple math, you might think, would lead investors to pay professional money managers less and less. Instead, they pay them more and more. Twenty-five years ago, the most successful among them took home a few million dollars a year; in 2006, more than 100 money managers made more than $100 million, and a handful made more than $1 billion. A vast industry of stockbrokers, financial planners, and investment advisers skims a fortune for themselves off the top in exchange for passing their clients’ money on to people who, as a group, cannot possibly outperform the market.
The whole piece is great. A related issue is what are the barriers to entry here. Sometimes unimpressive-looking NBA players make a ton of money because very, very, very few people could play as well as a middling NBA player. But how hard can it be to do the job of a middling financial manager? You could just flip coins.
