Later On

Aaron Wiener in the Washington Independent:

Yesterday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee got to work on the Waxman-Markey energy and climate bill, debating and voting on six amendments to the legislation. That’s modest progress at best — Ranking Member Joe Barton (R-Texas) has promised 450 amendments, and his fellow Republicans could further delay the process by requesting that the 946-page bill be read aloud. The Democrats’ goal of voting the legislation out of committee by the end of the week appears to be in jeopardy.

So the majority party is taking the necessary precautions: it’s hired a speed reader, just in case.

According to The Wall Street Journal, this new assistant can read a page in 34 seconds, and the entire bill would take him about nine hours.

Just another example of the ridiculous parliamentary dance putting your taxpayer dollars to good use.

This you may want to bookmark. I used Evernote to keep a copy. Hilzoy begins:

This is a post compiling the questionable and/or false claims that have been made about the Uighurs. It contains a few things I have not said in any of my earlier posts, but its main purpose is to collect these points in one convenient location. I have tried to be thorough; those of you who are already bored with this topic might want to skip this one.

As before, I’m taking Newt Gingrich’s column as my starting point, since it conveniently collects these false or questionable claims in one piece of irresponsible prose. Here are the claims Gingrich makes; I’ve added numbers to his claims for convenient reference.

"Seventeen of the 241 terrorist detainees currently being held at Guantanamo Bay are Chinese Muslims known as Uighurs. These Uighurs have been allied with and trained by al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist groups. (1) The goal of the Uighurs is to establish a separate sharia state. (2) (…)

At Guantanamo Bay, the Uighurs are known for picking up television sets on which women with bared arms appear and hurling them across the room. (3) (…)

By their own admission, Uighurs being held at Guantanamo Bay are members of or associated with the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) (4), an al Qaeda-affiliated group designated as a terrorist organization under U.S law. (…) (5)
Prior to 9/11, the Uighurs received jihadist training in Tora Bora, Afghanistan, a known al Qaeda and Taliban training ground. (6) What’s more, they were trained, most likely in the weapons, explosives and ideology of mass killing, by Abdul Haq, a member of al Qaeda’s shura , or top advisory council. (7) President Obama’s own interagency review board found that at least some of the Uighurs are dangerous. (8) (…)

Even if you accept the argument made by their defenders that the Uighurs’ true targets are Chinese, not Americans, it does nothing to change the fact that they are trained mass killers instructed by the same terrorists responsible for killing 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001. (9)"

Taking these claims in order:

(1) "These Uighurs have been allied with and trained by al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist groups." The Uighurs deny that they were members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which is the "al Qaeda-affiliated group" the government accuses them of being "affiliated" with. They were present at what is variously described as a camp or a village where Uighurs were trained by the ETIM. From this brief (pdf):

"The village itself was no more than a handful of houses bisected by dirt tracks. Each Petitioner, as well as five Uighurs who would later be determined non-combatants, lived in this village in October, 2001. In return for food and shelter, the Uighur men did odd jobs and manual labor. They helped build houses and a mosque."

The training consisted in being taught to assemble and disassemble a rifle, and (in some cases) firing a few rounds from it. From the same brief:

"In the village there was a single AK-47 Kalashnikov rifle and a pistol. Sixteen of the eighteen Uighurs (including all Petitioners and all five of the Uighurs later determined to be noncombatants) freely admit that they were shown the Kalashnikov, and how to assemble and disassemble the weapon. Some engaged in target practice. (Akhtar Qassim, later determined not to be an enemy combatant, shot three or four rounds.)"

From this CSRT transcript:

"Q. What other activities were going on at the camp?

A. There was no typical training, whoever volunteered, once in a while people would run or exercise. I would carry wood, water came from far away, bring stone to build houses.

Q. I want to make sure that I understand, you only trained on the rifle for two or three days between the time you arrived and the time you left the camp?

A. I don’t remember the exact date, maybe June 10th or the end of June. One day they showed us an old rusty rifle for about a half hour. Then the second day we shot three to five bullets."

(2) "The goal of the Uighurs is to establish a separate sharia state." I have no idea which Uighurs Gingrich is talking about here, but the Uighurs in detention at Guantanamo have consistently denied this. To my knowledge, there is no evidence at all that it is true…

Continue reading.

Interesting report by Mary Kane in the Washington Independent:

The Obama administration is considering stripping the Securities and Exchange Commission of some its oversight powers, and shifting that responsibility to the Federal Reserve, Bloomberg reports.

The proposal, still being drafted, is likely to give the Federal Reserve more authority to supervise financial firms deemed too big to fail. The Fed may inherit some SEC functions, with others going to other agencies, the people said. On the table: giving oversight of mutual funds to a bank regulator or a new agency to police consumer-finance products, two people said.

The 75-year-old SEC, chartered to oversee Wall Street and safeguard investors, has seen its reputation tarnished as some lawmakers blamed it for missing the incipient financial crisis and failing to detect Bernard Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme. Any move to rein in the agency is likely to provoke a battle in Congress, which would need to approve the changes, and draw the ire of union pension funds and other advocates for shareholders.

In addition to the SEC proposal, the Obama administration also is considering creating a regulatory commission with broad authority over consumer financial products such as mortgages and credit cards, according to The Washington Post.

That idea mirrors a proposal of top TARP watchdog Elizabeth Warren, who has long argued for the creation of a Financial Products Safety Commission. The purpose of such a commission would be to provide safeguards so consumers would understand exactly what they were getting into when they signed up for mortgages and credit cards.

As Bloomberg noted, financial regulatory overhaul is likely to spur a tough turf battle, as agencies like the SEC or the Office of Thrift Supervision lose some powers or merge into other agencies.  And as TWI has pointed out, Warren has become a lightning rod for right-wing critics, who see her as too biased on behalf of consumers.

The fact that the Obama administration is seriously considering her pet project provides a glimpse of which way those in power already are leaning. Score one for Warren, in the long financial regulatory turf war to come.

Interesting story by David Weigel in the Washington Independent:

In February, Sens. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) introduced the Free Speech Protection Act, legislation aimed at protecting Americans from libel lawsuits filed in foreign courts. The bill languished, attracting only two co-sponsors in the Senate, but on May 19 Specter was scheduled to promote the bill at a suitable event–a conference on “Libel Lawfare,” sponsored by a coalition of conservative legal groups and watchdogs of Islamic extremism.

At the eleventh hour Specter pulled out and canceled his opening remarks, citing only a “scheduling conflict.” The Council for American-Islamic Relations claimed credit for Specter’s “decision to withdraw from this inaccurate, inflammatory and agenda-driven conference,” in the words of CAIR-Philadelphia Executive Director Justin Peyton. “The senator’s appearance at this event,” said Peyton, “would have legitimized views not shared by the majority of Pennsylvanians of all faiths.”

That news wasn’t received well at the Capital Hilton, where a few dozen of more than 200 eventual conference attendees arrived early for a press conference that got scrapped. Brooke Goldstein, the director of the Legal Project at the Middle East Forum, explained Specter’s decision to the conference, eliciting groans and laughter from the crowd.

“This hasn’t stopped CAIR from issuing a petition,” said Goldstein, “which, ironically, calls for Specter to boycott this conference and refuse to speak out about the issue.” By shutting down its most prominent speaker, CAIR had proved “the point of the conference.”

Despite Specter’s rebuff, the first-of-its-kind conference brought together liberal-leaning and ultra-conservative adherents of a fairly new, and fairly controversial, issue in domestic and international law. In recent years, critics of Islam have accused Muslim activists of waging “legal jihad” against their opponents. In their telling, the activists, often bankrolled by Saudi interests, are using the strict libel laws of European nations to wage expensive lawsuits against people who critique their religion. They are silencing numerous other skeptics–it’s impossible to know how many–by making them afraid to speak out. After years of brewing in the foreign press and obscure corners of the “anti-jihadist” movement, the campaign against this is moving into the open and into the mainstream, at a forum co-sponsored by the Federalist Society and by the Middle East Forum, with input from the most prominent lawyers and pundits who regularly comment on the war on terror.

The push for protection against international libel suits can be traced back to the case of Rachel Ehrenfeld, a journalist who did not attend this conference. In 2003 she published “Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed and How to Stop It,” and accused Saudi bank tycoon Khalid bin Mahfouz of giving “tens of millions of dollars” to terrorist groups. Bin Mahfouz sued Ehrenfeld in England, taking advantage of the country’s libel laws after 29 copies of her book were sold via Amazon.co.uk. Ehrenfeld lost the case and watched her own, American lawsuit against bin Mahfouz get dismissed from a New York court. That led to a campaign for a law that would allow Americans sued for libel in foreign courts to countersue in America. And in May 2008, Gov. David Paterson (D-N.Y.) signed New York’s Libel Terrorism Protection Act.

So far, the increased attention has come with increased worry about exposure. At the May 19 conference, security guards checked attendees’ badges when they entered the main event hall and then when they entered a separate room for lunch. According to Goldstein, this wasn’t a response to any particular threat as much as a “prudent” response to the “potential for some crazy person to come” and disrupt the proceedings. A panel on “Islamist Lawfare in the United States” brought together critics of extremist Islam who have battled CAIR for years, including Middle East Forum Director Daniel Pipes and Center for Security Policy President Frank Gaffney. Pipes, the author of 18 books, won a recess appointment from George W. Bush to the United States Institute of Peace, overcoming a Democratic filibuster; Gaffney, a former assistant Secretary of Defense, signed the 1997 “statement of principles” from the Project for the New American Century. A luncheon panel brought together Joe Kaufman of Americans Against Hate and Hassan Dai of IranLobby.com, both of whom had faced tens of thousands of dollars in legal bills after facing libel lawsuits for statements about Islam.

Kaufman’s struggle didn’t involve international libel law…

Continue reading.

I’m gradually replacing my BPA-containing water bottles and glasses with BPA-free versions. I now have BPA-free bottles for the car and beside the bed, and the glass replacement insulated glasses will soon arrive so that I can discard the BPA-insulated glasses. Now I’m wondering about the Rubbermaid plastic food storage containers.

Interesting post at Obama Foodorama:

Ob Fo has had the pleasure of watching chef Steve Badt in action at Miriam’s Kitchen, the Washington social services agency that’s been in the media spotlight since First Lady Michelle Obama served food on the hot line on March 5. Mr. Badt, 42, is a professionally trained chef who has a grad degree in non-profit management, and he’s brought all his talents to bear in creating a brilliant model of food service at Miriam’s.

Using generous donations as well as a tiny budget, Mr. Badt creates meals that are nutritious and delicious, and he’s been crucial to Miriam’s overall service mission of helping those who might not otherwise seek help–by attracting them with his excellent meals. Mr. Badt is fortunate to have a devoted, experienced volunteer staff who show up at 6 AM every morning to work in his kitchen. Miriam’s served more than 46,000 meals in 2008, and they’ll far exceed this in 2009.

Right now, as the First Lady keeps reminding us with her frequent service visits, soup kitchens are critical across the country, as the wrecked economy, high unemployment and rising food prices have led far more people to seek assistance. All the same, the charges of Arugula Elitism that have dogged President Obama since Campaign Season are now routinely leveled at Mr. Badt and Miriam’s Kitchen, because Mr. Badt (in pic) is very up front about the fact that he believes that certain foods are a bad idea for anyone to eat, even those in most desperate need of sustenance. Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin were the two most high-profile Cons to be disgusted with Mrs. Obama’s visit to Miriam’s Kitchen, especially when it was reported by the mainstream media that Mr. Badt will only use organic and locally sourced foods.

"That was absurd," Mr. Badt told Ob Fo in a recent chat. "We take whatever we can as long as it’s healthy and nutritious. Some of those reporters really exaggerated the organic angle. I’m not turning down healthy food just because it’s not organic."

But the issue hasn’t gone away. In an ass-backward attempt to criticize President Obama’s stimulus package funding for food banks and soup kitchens, the National Review’s Julie Gunlock just made a full-bore attack on Mr. Badt and Miriam’s Kitchen that took issue with the organic approach. In "Let Them Eat Arugula," a masterpiece of overgeneralization, Ms. Gunlock claims that "trendy food snobbery" has led soup kitchens "all across America off course," and she’s afraid that this will lead to the government having to increase expenditures for soup kitchens, because private citizens won’t want to donate food. Ms. Gunlock hones in on Miriam’s and a Palo Alto soup kitchen that both offer healthy food as examples of elitist foodie orgs that discourage donations, and she uses an old quote from the Washington Post in which Mr. Badt said he would not accept donated donuts as evidence of the kind of food snobbery that will cost taxpayers money. Ms. Gunlock writes: …

Continue reading.

Same route as yesterday, but it took a little longer: 30 min 55 sec. It was a little warmer today, so maybe that’s why.

It was a big deal during the campaign, but of course he’s now been elected and the urgency is gone—at least for him, if not for the hundreds of gay military members that are thrown out of the service every year, weakening our ability to fight terrorism among other things. (An enormous number of Arabic-speaking servicemembers have been dismissed under the DADT rule.) Carol Williams has more in the LA Times:

President Obama’s campaign vow to end the ban on gays in the military — and the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that forces thousands of military personnel to stay in the closet — appears to be driven now by a strategy of “don’t rush.”

The recent coming-out by dozens of gay West Point graduates, including Arabic language specialist Lt. Daniel Choi of Tustin, has spotlighted the conflicting policies and put pressure on Congress and the White House to make good on promises to repeal them.

A report issued last week by UC Santa Barbara’s Palm Center research institute said Obama had the power to thwart the discharging of military personnel for their sexual orientation. Under the “stop-loss” provision, Obama can issue executive orders to retain any soldier deemed necessary to the service in a time of national emergency, the report said.

The president also could halt the work of Pentagon review panels that brand troops as gay and thus excluded from service, the report said. And Obama and his Defense secretary could revise discharge procedures, as allowed under the 1993 law banning gays in the military.

Choi, who received a notice of discharge this month for publicly disclosing his homosexuality, doesn’t want Obama to intercede on his behalf. He wants officials to eliminate obstacles to gays serving their country.

“Why would I be comfortable with him making a special case for me when so many others are getting kicked out?” asked Choi, 28, whose Korean immigrant parents have not accepted his homosexuality.

Those who support openly gay troops point to the loss of important skills, such as Choi’s fluency in Arabic and independent study of Persian, as unacceptable costs of an outdated and unfair policy.

But neither Congress nor the White House appears eager to reopen the bitter debate over gays in the military that rocked the early months of the Clinton administration.

“They’re caught in a political double bind. If they move too quickly, they will expend political capital with the military and Congress. Yet if they move too slowly, they will alienate a core constituency and fail to deliver on a very clear campaign promise,” said Aaron Belkin, director of the UC Santa Barbara institute.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said recently that if the ban were lifted, it would be difficult for the military to restructure its units to accommodate homosexuals. National security advisor James L. Jones Jr. also has reacted coolly to the prospect of lifting the ban…

Continue reading. And excuse me? Exactly how would units have to be restructured to “accommodate homosexuals”? Is he thinking of building all-homosexual units to achieve segregation (which certainly hasn’t been necessary to date). That would be enormously stupid—and a regression to the days during WWII in which the military had all-African-American units, until Truman ended segregation.

The Democrats look cowardly. They fear to use their strength in fighting battles. From later in the article:

Since 1994, when “don’t ask, don’t tell” went into effect, more than 12,500 men and women have been discharged from the armed forces for being gay, including nearly 800 “mission-critical specialists” such as Choi.

In the first decade after the ban was imposed, the Pentagon was forced to spend an estimated $364 million to train replacements for those discharged for sexual orientation, a 2005 Government Accountability Office report said.

Pete Hoekstra has made a lot of noise about Pelosi saying that she was misled by the CIA, especially for a guy who’s making the same claim. Zachary Roth in TPM Muckraker:

As they go after Nancy Pelosi over those CIA briefings, Republicans have been putting the burden of proof on the Speaker, suggesting that it’s all but unheard of for the CIA to mislead others in government. But in fact, the agency is currently being probed for doing exactly that on a different issue — and the effort was initiated by one of Pelosi’s fiercest critics on the torture briefings kerfuffle.

Last night, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who chairs the oversight subcommittee of the House intelligence committee, told MSNBC’s Ed Schultz (h/t Democratic Underground):

On our subcommittee we are beginning an inquiry into a situation … initiated by the ranking minority member to look at a situation where the CIA did mislead the Congress … a documented issue of the CIA misleading the Congress.

A Schakowsky spokesman told TPMmuckraker that she was referring to the findings of a CIA inspector general report, portions of which were released last fall, which concluded that the agency had withheld crucial information from Congress and DOJ investigators who were probing whether CIA personnel committed crimes relating to the shooting of a missionary plane in Peru in 2001.

As the New York Times described it last November:

A C.I.A. surveillance aircraft mistakenly identified the plane as a drug-smuggling aircraft, and a Peruvian military jet shot it down, killing an American missionary and her 7-month-old daughter. The Justice Department closed its investigation into the matter in 2005, declining to prosecute agency officers for any actions related to the episode.

But [the inspector general's] report, parts of which were made public on Thursday, said that the Justice Department investigators and Congress were never allowed access to internal C.I.A. reviews that portrayed the downing as one mistake among many in the agency’s counternarcotics program in Peru. The report said the agency routinely authorized interceptions of suspected drug planes “without adequate safeguards to protect against the loss of innocent life.” (our italics)

It continued:

The inspector general’s report said that after the downing of the missionaries’ plane, the C.I.A. had conducted internal reviews “that documented sustained and significant violations of required intercept procedures.” But it said that the agency had denied Congress, the Department of Justice and the National Security Council access to these findings.
…The report … says that C.I.A. lawyers from the office of the general counsel “advised agency managers to avoid written products lest they be subject to legal scrutiny” in connection with the downing of the plane.

Who was it who released portions of the report last fall, and, according to Schakowsky, initiated the current inquiry?

That would be Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the intel committee. At the same time that he released the report’s excerpts, Hoekstra said he was asking DOJ to look into whether the CIA had obstructed justice, and called the incident “about as ugly as it gets.” Schakowsky told Schultz last night that Hoekstra is “furious” about the incident.

That’s the same Pete Hoekstra, of course, who’s been front and center in portraying the agency as the embodiment of transparency and integrity in an effort to vilify Pelosi over the torture briefings. Appearing on CNN yesterday, Hoekstra called Pelosi’s claims that the CIA had misled her “outrageous accusations.”…

Continue reading.

Are you skeptical of the Senate? I sure am. Here’s the story from Barbara Barrett from McClatchy:

U.S. senators began debate Tuesday on historic legislation to allow the Food and Drug Administration to regulate cigarettes – an idea that has the strong backing of public health advocates across the country.

Standing in their way on Tuesday were the two senators from North Carolina.

Republican Richard Burr and Democrat Kay Hagan teamed up for the first significant issue in their short time together in the Senate, offering arguments to weaken the effects of a popular bill that, they fear, could decimate a historic industry in their state.

North Carolina is the nation’s top producer of tobacco, growing $686 million worth of leaf last year on 12,000 farms. The state’s tobacco manufacturers, from the behemoth R.J. Reynolds to tiny boutique companies, put 10,000 people to work.

The economic impact, Hagan told committee members, amounts to $7 billion.

“The bill before us today is going to further devastate the economy in North Carolina and put thousands of people out of work,” she said.

The effort by North Carolina’s senators to protect tobacco came, coincidentally, on the same day that N.C. Gov. Beverly Perdue signed into law a sweeping ban on smoking in most bars and restaurants in the state.

Perdue, a Democrat, signed the bill in the old House chamber in the state Capitol as more than 125 state lawmakers and others cheered.

Perdue called it “an absolutely historic day for this great state that was built initially on the backbone of tobacco.”

The smoking ban takes effect in January and applies to the inside portions of nearly all bars and restaurants. There are narrow exceptions for cigar bars, and private clubs such as country clubs and VFW halls…

Continue reading to get a flavor of the fight that will come.

Perhaps there’s a reason that Jesus came among and spoke to the poor. The Christian religion is unique in having a founder that was not among the elite, but rather among the poor. The Right, which basically hates the poor, tries to ignore this. Frank Greve in McClatchy:

When Jody Richards saw a homeless man begging outside a downtown McDonald’s recently, he bought the man a cheeseburger. There’s nothing unusual about that, except that Richards is homeless, too, and the 99-cent cheeseburger was an outsized chunk of the $9.50 he’d earned that day from panhandling.

The generosity of poor people isn’t so much rare as rarely noticed, however. In fact, America’s poor donate more, in percentage terms, than higher-income groups do, surveys of charitable giving show. What’s more, their generosity declines less in hard times than the generosity of richer givers does.

“The lowest-income fifth (of the population) always give at more than their capacity,” said Virginia Hodgkinson, former vice president for research at Independent Sector, a Washington-based association of major nonprofit agencies. “The next two-fifths give at capacity, and those above that are capable of giving two or three times more than they give.” …

Continue reading.

The GOP owes what strength it has left to blatant fearmongering. One example is the notion that putting terrorists in prison on US mainland is much less secure than keeping terrorists in prison on Guantánamo. Why, is not clear. Glenn Greenwald comments:

The "debate" over all the bad and scary things that will happen if Obama closes Guantánamo and we then incarcerate those detainees in American prisons is so painfully stupid even by the standards of our political discourse that it’s hard to put into words, and it also perfectly illustrates the steps that typically lead to America’s National Security policies:

(1) Right-wing super-tough-guy warriors project some frightened, adolescent, neurotic fantasy onto the world — either because they are really petrified by it or because they want others to be ("Putting Muslim Terrorists in our prisons will make us Unsafe! – Keep them away from me, please!!!");

(2) Rather than scoff at the inane fear-mongering or point out simple facts to reveal its idiocy, Democratic "leaders" such as Harry Reid echo the right-wing fears in order to prove how Serious and Tough they are — in our political debates, the more frightened one is, the more Serious and Tough one is — and/or because they are genuinely frightened of being called mean names by Sean Hannity ("Harry Reid isn’t as scared of this as I am, which shows that he’s weak");

(3) "Journalists" who are capable of nothing other than mindlessly reciting what they hear then write articles depicting the Right’s frightened neurosis as a Serious argument, and then overnight, a consensus emerges:  Democrats are in big trouble politically unless they show that they, too, are as deeply frightened as the Right is.

Until recently, I thought the single most embarrassingly stupid event of the last decade’s national security debates — the kind that will make historians look back with slack-jawed amazement — was the joint dissemination in the run-up to the war by the Bush administration and the American media of playing cards that featured all of the "Most Wanted" Iraqi Villains and their cartoon villain nicknames.  Saddam Hussein was the Ace of Spades; Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash — Mrs. Anthrax — was the Five of Hearts; Ali Hassan al-Majid — Chemical Ali — was the King of Spades; sadly, Dr. Rihab Rashid Taha — the dreaded "Dr. Germ" — didn’t make it to the deck, but she certainly had her day in the American media sun (AP:  "Iraq’s ‘Dr. Germ’ Surrenders to Coalition" — CNN:  "U.S. military holding ‘Dr. Germ,’ ‘Mrs. Anthrax’").

If you weren’t on board with all of that — if you weren’t hiding under your bed shaking when these cartoons were shown on the TV — that meant that you were neither Tough nor Serious.  Just as is true now, the Tough and Serious people were the ones who became frightened by the comic book villains.  All of that led to reports like this from CNN: …

Continue reading.

Just received via email:

I wrote to you last week that I would be testifying before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform because I believe that all employees should be protected from retaliation for reporting waste, fraud, and abuse.  I did not expect that within hours of my testimony I would be subject to additional retaliation. At 6:23 p.m. I was forwarded an email written by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Chief of Staff stating that from now on, all testimony before Congress must be pre-approved by the Army Corps and that all oral testimony must conform to the approved written testimony.

I am shocked by this blatant violation of the First Amendment.  I said nothing improper during my testimony, I simply told the truth.  I was testifying on my own time while I was on unpaid leave.  I appeared at the invitation of Congress, to explain what happened when I reported improprieties surrounding the awarding of contracts to Halliburton-KBR just prior to the invasion of Iraq. The restriction imposed upon my right and the right of other federal employees to testify before Congress in our personal capacity free from restrain and censorship must stop NOW!

The newest attempt to silence me is the kind of retaliation that frightens government employees.  Federal employees have no protection when up against powerful special interests, who can intimidate and prevent federal employees from enforcing the law.  This is why Securities and Exchange Commission employees are afraid to police Wall Street.  This is why Food and Drug Administration employees are afraid to police powerful pharmaceutical companies.  This is why food safety inspectors are afraid to police powerful agri-business.

Its time to fight back when federal employees are forced to submit to censorship and are blocked from exercising their constitutional right to "petition Congress for redress of grievances."

How can we fight? Every American should demand immediate passage of H.R. 1507. This law protects all federal workers who testify to Congress and gives us our day in court.  It is the only way to stop overt and subtle censorship of federal employees.  We need the government to work for us – not powerful special interests.  Congress and the American people deserve to know the truth!  Federal workers do their best to protect the health, safety, and welfare of all Americans and it is time that they are protected when federal employees are retaliated for doing their job.

Take Action now! Send this new letter to Congress and President Obama.  And please pass it on to as many people as possible – your friends, family, co-workers, churches, unions, and civic groups need to know what’s going on and how they can help. Call Rajesh De at the Department of Justice Office of Legal Policy (202-307-3024) and convince him that the administration needs to keep its campaign promises of supporting jury trials for all federal whistleblowers by backing H.R. 1507.  Or Call your Congressperson, visit your Congressperson’s local office, and do whatever else you can to show Congress and the President that we will no longer tolerate censorship.  Please let us know what you are doing to help.

Thank you for you continued support.

Very Truly Yours,

Bunnatine H. Greenhouse
Former Procurement Executive
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

I didn’t think much of the Army Corps of Engineers before this; now I think even less.

Via Cool Tools:

More information in the Cool Tools review.

The military procurement system seems to be pretty much corrupt. Latest revelation in Reuters by Thomas Ferraro:

The U.S. Army paid "tens of millions of dollars in bonuses" to KBR Inc, its biggest contractor in Iraq, even after it concluded the firm’s electrical work had put U.S. soldiers at risk, according to a source close to a U.S. congressional investigation.

The Senate Democratic Policy Committee plans to hold a hearing on Wednesday to examine KBR’s operations in Iraq, and question why the Army rewarded the Houston-based company.

The panel says KBR has been linked to at least two, and as many as five, electrocution deaths of U.S. soldiers and contractors in Iraq due to "shoddy work."

Investigators believe hundreds of other soldiers may have received electrical shocks, the source added. The Army is investigating.

The company denies responsibility for any of the electrocutions, saying it is proud of its work and that its employees make great sacrifices to get the job done.

KBR was part of Halliburton Co until two years ago. Former Vice President Dick Cheney served as Halliburton’s chief executive from 1995 to 2000, when he became George Bush’s running mate.

During the Bush administration, some critics claimed Cheney’s deferred compensation from the company represented a conflict of interest and questioned Halliburton’s winning of lucrative government contracts in Iraq.

Military reports have criticized KBR’s work in Iraq in recent years. Yet afterward, the company received "tens of millions of dollars in bonuses," said the source, who declined to be identified.

"We want to know why," the source said…

Continue reading. Later in the story:

A September 30, 2008, letter to KBR from an officer in the Defense Department’s Defense Contract Management Agency had harsh words for the company.

"We cannot overemphasize the significance of the lack of sustained electrical support services being provided by KBR in Iraq to maintain the minimum life, health and safety standards in support of our warfighters," wrote Captain David Graff, an agency commander.

Josh Gerstein writes in Politico:

A federal judge has rejected aspects of the Obama administration’s definition of who can legally be held as a prisoner in the war on terror.

In a 22-page decision issued Tuesday evening, U.S. District Court Judge John Bates ruled that members in Al Qaeda or the Taliban could be detained, but that mere support for Al Qaeda activities is not a sufficient basis for the government to hold prisoners at Guantanamo Bay or elsewhere.

Bates said he pressed the Justice Department to explain why rendering assistance to Al Qaeda was enough to lock someone up without criminal charges.

"After repeated attempts by the Court to elicit a more definitive justification for the ‘substantial support’ concept in the law of war, it became clear that the government has none," wrote Bates, who was appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush.  "Regardless of the reasonableness of this approach from a policy perspective, a detention authority that sweeps so broadly is simply beyond what the law of war will support. The government’s approach in this respect evidences an importation of principles from the criminal law context," Bates said.

"We’re reviewing the court’s opinion," a Justice Department spokesman, Dean Boyd, said.

Bates’s decision does not mean it would be impossible to hold someone for knowingly giving aid to Al Qaeda. Rather, the government would have to proceed with a criminal indictment or perhaps a military commission or court-martial, all of which would are likely to give Guantanamo prisoner more rights than he currently enjoys.

Bates’s reservation on the support issue put him at odds on that point with one of his colleagues, Judge Reggie Walton, who essentially adopted the Obama definition last month in the first ruling to consider the issue. One or more of the rulings is likely to be appealed to the D.C. Circuit and eventually to the Supreme Court.

A government official noted that Bates rejected an argument by detainee lawyers that the government could only detain individuals who directly participated in hostilities against the U.S. Bates made clear in his ruling that simple membership in Al Qaeda or the Taliban was enough to permit detention.

Bates said some individuals who gave support could still be detained if they were functionally part of the Al Qaeda or the Taliban. "If the evidence demonstrates that an individual did not identify himself as a member, but undertook certain tasks within the command structure or rendered frequent substantive assistance to al Qaeda, whether operational, financial or otherwise, then a court might conclude that he was a ‘part of’ the organization," the judge wrote…

Continue reading.

From the Center for American Progress:

The Los Angeles Times yesterday — in an article titled, "Labor unions find themselves card-checkmated" — made the case that "business groups have outmaneuvered workers groups, jeopardizing key components of a congressional proposal that has been unions’ top priority," the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). "We were outspent, outhustled and outorganized," said one union adviser. However, lost among the doom and gloom was the simple fact that labor reform is still vitally necessary and has a good chance of getting through Congress. And while much of the debate around EFCA has been on the bill’s majority sign-up provision — which would have allowed workers to form a union by signing cards of consent — there are other important measures aimed at ensuring fair contract negotiations and instituting penalties that actually deter labor law violations. Last week, Vice President Biden reaffirmed the White House’s commitment to labor reform, telling union members, "You’ve got to climb up a hill with so many roadblocks on the way to organize that it’s just out of whack. … If a union is what you want, then a union is what you should get." President Obama has also reiterated his support for the principles in the bill, saying, "What I think we have to do is to find ways in which the core idea of the Employee Free Choice Act is preserved."

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Or soda-pop taxes or pop taxes or whatever you call the bottled sugar water. Marion Nestle at Food Politics:

David Leonhardt’s column in the business section of today’s New York Times, takes on soda taxes.  It’s starting point is the New England Journal of Medicine article (see earlier post) by Kelly Brownell at Yale and New York City Health Commissioner Tom Frieden, the newly appointed head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .  Leonhardt notes that such taxes are Pigovian (after the economist Pigou): they discourage unhealthful practices and encourage healthful ones.  As he puts it, “In coldly economic terms, you can make a case that calories are the single best candidate for a Pigovian tax.”

Leonhardt finds arguments for soda taxes compelling.  He tried, but could not get any soda company executive to speak to him about them (why am I not surprised).

I’m intrigued by the accompanying illustration.  In the last ten years, the cost of fruits and vegetables has gone way up.  The cost of sodas is way down.  Isn’t something wrong with this picture?  Isn’t now a good time to try to fix it?

And once more, the omerta observed by the Church, covering up any transgression and keeping pedophile priests active, can be seen. Just because something is done by a church does not guarantee that it’s okay in any way. The story, by the Associated Press:

A fiercely debated, nine-year investigation into Ireland’s Roman Catholic-run institutions says priests and nuns terrorized thousands of boys and girls in workhouse-style schools for decades — and government inspectors failed to stop the chronic beatings, rapes and humiliation.

High Court Justice Sean Ryan on Wednesday unveiled the 2,600-page final report of Ireland’s Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse, which is based on testimony from thousands of former students and officials from more than 250 church-run institutions.

More than 30,000 children deemed to be petty thieves, truants or from dysfunctional families — a category that often included unmarried mothers — were sent to Ireland’s austere network of industrial schools, reformatories, orphanages and hostels from the 1930s until the last church-run facilities shut in the 1990s.

The report found that molestation and rape were "endemic" in boys’ facilities, chiefly run by the Christian Brothers order, and supervisors pursued policies that increased the danger. Girls supervised by orders of nuns, chiefly the Sisters of Mercy, suffered much less sexual abuse but frequent assaults and humiliation designed to make them feel worthless.

"In some schools a high level of ritualized beating was routine. … Girls were struck with implements designed to maximize pain and were struck on all parts of the body," the report said. "Personal and family denigration was widespread."

Victims of the system have long demanded that the truth of their experiences be documented and made public, so that children in Ireland never endure such suffering again.

But most leaders of religious orders have rejected the allegations as exaggerations and lies, and testified to the commission that any abuses were the responsibility of often long-dead individuals.

Wednesday’s five-volume report sides almost completely with the former students’ accounts. It concludes that church officials always shielded their orders’ pedophiles from arrest amid a culture of self-serving secrecy.

"A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys. Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from," the report concluded.

The commission said overwhelming, consistent testimony from still-traumatized men and women, now in their 50s to 80s, had demonstrated beyond a doubt that the entire system treated children more like prison inmates and slaves than people with legal rights and human potential…

Continue reading. If the Church wants respect, it should earn that respect. Note that the Church is still minimizing, denying, and covering up, rather than accepting any responsibility. That’s an indication that the Church will not change and will bear close watching.

Frightening. Thanks to Jack in Amsterdam for the pointer.