In recent weeks, the administration has gone on a PR offensive claiming they do not seek permanent bases in Iraq, even removing a “security guarantee” from its “Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship.”

Yesterday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote in the Washington Post, “nothing will authorize permanent bases in Iraq (something neither we nor Iraqis want).”

But this rhetoric has not been implemented into action. In January, President Bush issued a signing statement allowing him to disregard a provision in the Defense Authorization Act banning permanent bases in Iraq. This week, the administration agreed to a “pause” in the rate of withdrawal.

Today, White House Press Secretary revealed how misleading the administration’s rhetoric on permanent bases is, arguing the White House does not view any U.S. military installations overseas as being “permanent”:

“The United States, where we are, where we have bases, we are there at the invitation of those countries. I’m not aware of any place in the world — where we have a base — that they are asking us to leave. And if they did, we would probably leave,” said spokeswoman Dana Perino. [...]

Top aides to US President George W. Bush have countered that the strife-torn country’s government could ask US forces to leave at any time, meaning that bases are not technically “permanent.”

The U.S. has roughly 700 overseas bases in about 130 countries, many for decades. For example, U.S. forces have been stationed in Japan, Germany, and South Korea since post-World War II.

The White House’s rhetoric echoes that of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) who frequently lists the presence of U.S. bases abroad to bolster his case for a 10,000 year occupation of Iraq.

Perino’s comments suggest that the White House’s public statements that it opposes “permanent bases” in Iraq is just a game of semantics.

Yesterday, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) responded to conservative radio host Michael Savage’s recent claim that Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), who passed away last Monday, used the Holocaust “as a weapon”:

“Yet again, Mr. Savage has shown why he has no shame and no decency, and his remarks are an affront to all decent people. Tom Lantos was a great public servant, humanitarian and educator. As the only survivor of the Shoah to ever serve in Congress, Tom’s passing is a great loss to our country and the world. He fought hatred and anti-Semitism — like the despicable remarks of Mr. Savage — everywhere.

“The ignorance of Mr. Savage’s remarks makes it clear that Tom’s work is still not done. Every American should commit themselves to the example of Congressman Lantos. I can think of no finer tribute to that great man.”

Earlier this morning, President Bush used his bully pulpit to pressure the House, saying they should “immediately” adopt the overreaching Senate surveillance bill that passed yesterday or “jeopardize the security of our citizens.” On the House floor today, Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) responded, saying the President wants legislation that “regards the ordinary American with suspicion” and that the House already passed legislation that balances security and civil liberties. Watch it:

Both the ACLU and Firedoglake are urging people to contact House members to tell them to keep retroactive immunity for telecoms out of the final bill.

It seems to me that if it’s really true that John Edwards is torn about who he would endorse were he to endorse that the most reasonable course of action is to not endorse. I mean, if he feels torn because there are things he likes about Clinton, but then there are other things he likes about Obama, then he should probably just say that.

I don’t think I buy the argument that the Democratic Party’s superdelegates have some kind of categorical ethical obligation to obey the dictates of the pledged delegate count. Indeed, one of the best things you can say about superdelegates is that it’s fairly easy to imagine scenarios in which giving the nomination to the pledged delegates leader would have a perverse result. For example, suppose Candidate A cleans up in early primaries and jumps out to a big lead. But just when the pundits were ready to declare it “essentially impossible” for Candidate B to catch up, he unveils a very appealing new message and sweeps the remainder of the states. Thanks to the proportional allocation rules, though, it’s not enough to catch Candidate A, who winds up with 52 percent of pledged delegates. But since many of those delegates came from states that voted months ago, and lots of former Candidate A supporters feel buyer’s remorse; national polling shows convincingly that 59 percent of registered Democrats prefer Candidate B, who also has a lead in head-to-head polling matchups with the GOP nominee and a fundraising advantage.

Would it really be so absurd for the superdelegates to overrule the “will of the people” and instead give the people what they tell pollsters they want? I don’t think so. The superdelegates have both an opportunity and an obligation to take seriously their obligation to do the best thing for the party and the country.

But part of taking that obligation seriously is recognizing that an extremely drawn-out primary campaign that’s ultimately decided by superdelegate wrangling probably doesn’t serve the best interests of the party and the country. If, on the morning of March 5, Hillary Clinton did poorly enough the previous day that she’s facing a choice between dropping out of the race and pursuing a strategy that involves two months of vicious campaigning and integrally requires her to secure the support of the superdelegates, then I think it would make sense for the superdelegates (probably represented behind-closed-doors by neutral party leaders like Gore, Pelosi, Reid, etc.) to tell her campaign that it’s not going to happen, and they’re going to endorse Obama and seal the nomination for him.

If he’s clearly winning, it would be preferable for the party to just make him the winner, rather than get into endless mucking around about Michigan and superdelegates. But if the delegate count genuinely just stays super-narrow, that’s another matter, and I don’t see it as intrinsically illegitimate for the SDs to put Clinton over the top if Obama’s beating her by a half-dozen pledged delegates or something. On the other hand, there’s no real reason to think that the bulk of the currently unpledged superdelegates have a secret preference for Hillary. An early Clinton endorsement was an essentially zero cost move for people to make, so non-endorsers are probably either genuinely undecided or else closet Obama fans.

I’d say I’m fundamentally in agreement with William Julius Wilson’s rejoinder to Paul Krugman on the NYT letter page, but of course Professor Wilson is black so he doesn’t count.

The U.S. economy is faltering. Family debt is on the rise, benefits are disappearing, the deficit is skyrocketing, and the mortgage crisis has worsened. Conservatives have attempted to deflect attention from the crisis, by blaming the media’s negative coverage and insisting the United States is not headed toward a recession, despite what economists are predicting.

The Bush administration’s latest move is to simply hide the data. Forbes has awarded EconomicIndicators.gov one of its “Best of the Web” awards. As Forbes explains, the government site provides an invaluable service to the public for accessing U.S. economic data:

This site is maintained by the Economics and Statistics Administration and combines data collected by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, like GDP and net imports and exports, and the Census Bureau, like retail sales and durable goods shipments. The site simply links to the relevant department’s Web site. This might not seem like a big deal, but doing it yourself–say, trying to find retail sales data on the Census Bureau’s site–is such an exercise in futility that it will convince you why this portal is necessary.

Yet the Bush administration has decided to shut down this site because of “budgetary constraints,” effective March 1:

Economic Indicators is particularly useful because people can sign up to receive e-mails as soon as new economic data across government agencies becomes available. While the data will still be available online at various federal websites, it will be less readily accessible to members of the public.

In its e-mail announcement on the closing of Economic Indicators, the Department of Commerce acknowledged the “inconvenience” and offered “a free quarterly subscription to STAT-USA®/Internet„¢” instead. Once this temporary subscription runs out, however, the public will be forced to pay a fee. So not only will economic data be more hidden, it will also cost money.

It’s ironic that the Economic and Statistics Administration is facing “budgetary contraints,” considering Bush recently submitted a record $3.1 trillion budget to Congress for FY ’09.

UPDATE: Steve Benen has compiled other examples of the Bush administration hiding inconvenient data.

UPDATE II: OMB Watch has put together an index to replace Economic Indicators, offering one-stop-shopping for economic data links.

Digg It!

Hillary Clinton’s going on the air in Wisconsin:

The mandates issue has been talked to death, but this ad raises another difference between Clinton and Obama — the fact that her plan includes measures aimed at directly targeting issues in the housing market. Specifically:

Senator Clinton is the only candidate with a comprehensive plan to keep families in their homes and keep the housing crisis from dragging down the economy. More than 2 million foreclosure notices went out last year, devastating families and communities. The foreclosure crisis is also contributing to the decline in home prices which has already cost families an estimated $1.3 trillion. Many experts believe the worst is yet to come. To stem this crisis, Senator Clinton has called for a 90-day moratorium on subprime foreclosures and an automatic rate freeze on subprime mortgages of at least five years or until servicers have converted the unworkable mortgages into loans families can afford. In addition, Senator Clinton proposed to temporarily empower state housing financing agencies to help families refinance unworkable mortgages and temporarily increasing the portfolio caps at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and enabling them to purchase larger loans in high-cost areas. These steps would immediately increase the availability of mortgages for responsible borrowers.

Now one thing to note about this is that a bit contrary to campaign stereotypes, if you take this literally it betrays a certain naiveté about the way Washington works. Were a president to submit a stimulus plan with these kind of provisions in it to congress, it’d be bad news. You’d end up delaying legislative action on the overall package, and delays are a big problem with fiscal stimulus. You’d also open the door to all kinds of not-strictly-stimulus measures that various members of congress want to tack on. What Barack Obama proposed — a much cleaner, more streamlined stimulus package that really just focuses on juicing short-term aggregate demand — is a much better idea.

But that’s if you take it literally. Things being what they are, both campaigns stimulus plans were really just smoke and mirrors, with Obama signaling that he can play grown-up technocrat and Clinton signaling that she’s got a solution for every problem in her swiss army knife-like arsenal of policy measures. And while it’s probably not a good idea to link the foreclosure freeze proposal to a stimulus package per se the underlying idea does seem like a pretty good one. As I wrote in my article on foreclosures there are a lot of neighborhood externalities associated with foreclosures, so it’s really worth taking action to minimize them.

Ana Marie Cox:

In a general, Obama won’t be running against Clinton, he’ll be running against McCain, a politician that has actually taken political risks and endured the wrath of party hacks in order to make progress on real issues: “What has Obama done? Show me a single issue or piece of legislation where Obama has done something politically unpopular in order to move forward toward a greater goal.” I pointed out that this argument hasn’t made much of a difference so far. Ah, replied the adviser, “That’s because Clinton can’t show that she’s done it, either.” What’s more, he said, the press will stop giving Obama a free ride in the general. McCain will be out there, holding court on his bus or his plane, providing unfettered access to both reporters and voters, and journalists will no longer be able to ignore Obama’s lack of access and lack of interaction with real people. In fact, it’ll be the only thing they talk about.

Both Ezra Klein and Ross Douthat seem to me to be unduly impressed by this argument. It’s true that the press corps will jizz all over itself for John McCain, but that kind of thing will only take him so far. In terms of getting things done, what’s John McCain ever accomplished? Beyond a minor, years-old procedural reform to the campaign finance system — nothing. And he’s had much more time in Washington in which to get something done. But in McCain’s past 25 years in congress he’s managed to author not a single piece of legislation that’s been signed into law that helps any real people with any real problems. He’s spent a lot of time posturing on the Sunday shows, and affiliated himself with a few pieces of modestly progressive legislation that didn’t get passed, and then disavowed all those bills.

More broadly, though McCain is a formidable candidate in some respects, “experience” is the time-honored election argument of losers. If voters really valued experience, then veteran senators would be getting elected president all the time. Instead, it almost never happens because normal people don’t think that long duration in congress — an institution that’s invariably incredibly unpopular — is an appealing character trait.