writing to the radio

Most broadcast programs have done a less than spectacular job covering the Bush Administration’s illegal domestic surveillance programs or the ongoing fight over FISA revisions. Sadly, WNYC’s Brian Lehrer has been part of the poorly informed pack. I am hoping that the appearance today, in the 10am EDT hour, of Glenn Greenwald will help improve matters some, but with a vote on final passage of a terrible bill possible at any hour, it is most certainly too little too late.

With all that in mind, though, I was still inspired to shoot off this e-mail to Mr. Lehrer (much) earlier this morning:

In listening to the late night broadcast of the Tuesday show, I was quite surprised by Brain's remark that it was news to him to hear that the illegal domestic surveillance program was initiated by the Bush Administration prior to the attacks of 9/11. This was suspected for some time, and was confirmed during the trial last year of Qwest head Joseph Nacchio. Such information has previously been reported in the Rocky Mountain News and the New York Times, and discussed on To The Point (which WNYC aired daily prior to last week).

I, myself, have been writing about this for much of the last year (I humbly ask that you read a few of these posts, listed here. In those posts, I link to more reports about pre-9/11 domestic surveillance and some of its possible targets.), and I am sure that one as expert as your guest Glenn Greenwald would be happy to shed more light on the subject if asked.

Believe me, I hate even sounding vaguely like a conspiracy theorist, but I am well within the mainstream with my belief that the Bush Administration’s illegal domestic surveillance program is not and has never been primarily about keeping us safe from foreign terrorists. Senators Russ Feingold, Chris Dodd, Ron Wyden, and Ted Kennedy have expressed similar doubts. So have NYT reporters Risen and Lichtblau. Mr. Greenwald and many other very prominent bloggers have plumbed the depths of this subject, as has Wired magazine and Editor and Publisher.

The ACLU’s legislative director, Caroline Fredrickson, protested the speciousness of administration arguments for expanded spy capabilities with minimal oversight back when it became apparent that the NSA started domestic spying early in 2001, “How then will that keep us safer if 9/11 followed the expanded capability?”

There are many, many problems with this FISA "fix"--not just retroactive immunity for the telcos and the Bush Administration--but the fact that it codifies a program that was started, illegally, mind you, before 9/11/01 proves this to be a capitulation, and not a compromise. We already had a working FISA law when the Bush team took over, with provisions for surveillance in advance of a hearing, and a super-secret court that almost always approved executive branch requests. Yet, the White House still went outside the system, and did so when it had demonstrably little interest in the likes of al Qaeda. It makes you want to ask: what then is all this spying for? That a Democratic Congress--and now, the Democratic Party's presumptive standard bearer--would choose political convenience over asking this one tough question is both disheartening and disturbing.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

exposure of warrantless wiretap program by NYT did not damage national security, says McClellan.

I know what you’re thinking: You are certain that in the 29 gazillion press availabilities that you have watched, you have heard everything that former White House press flack Scott McClellan has to say about George W. Bush’s great American truth killing machine. But there he is, on the radio, on the TV, up in the sky. . . and you find yourself looking and listening again.

OK, I didn’t see him up in the sky, but I did see and/or hear three additional interviews with Scotty Mac on Monday, and there are the odd interesting moments that are differently interesting enough to keep you coming back. For instance, McClellan’s appearances on both Fresh Air and The Daily Show each had moments where he was challenged more than he was during any of what I heard or saw last week.

Also interesting was McClellan’s appearance Monday afternoon on WNYC’s The Leonard Lopate Show (and no, I’m not talking about the two times that Leonard tried to out Scott). Lopate asked McClellan about White House attempts to silence what it saw as bad or inopportune publicity (just after the 24 minute mark on the audio):

Lopate: Didn’t the administration forcefully threaten the press, especially when the New York Times revealed the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program?

McClellan: Well there were certainly some strong words there that if you do this you’re going to expose some national security secrets; I can’t find any that would be harmful to our national security. I can’t find any evidence that it has been with its exposure. And in fact those investigative reporters did a great job and their article was delayed for about a year because of the pressure that the president and other top people put on the editors of the New York Times.

With Congress gearing up for another go at new FISA legislation (or, more like, Republican fear mongers and their BushDog enablers gearing up for another attempt to force retroactive immunity through the House), it would be good to add Scotty’s words to the overwhelming consensus of opinion (and the overwhelming lack of countervailing arguments that can site, you know, facts) that revelations about the administration’s illegal wiretaps did not harm our national security, and that warrantless surveillance does nothing to make us safer.

And now you don’t have to take the word of former intelligence officials, first amendment lawyers, federal judges, and scores of freedom-loving activists for it, you have the testimony of the guy that was fully briefed on the program the night before he had to go out and defend it.

(Which, of course, means that several folks at the Times knew about this program a year before the Press Secretary did. . . but that’s a whole other issue.)


(cross-posted on The Seminal)

let’s go to the videotape! (aka I told you this asshole would say anything to get elected)

As I wrote yesterday, I wasn’t particularly impressed with the complex rationalizations and simplified psychoanalysis that went into Matt Bai’s Sunday NYT Magazine piece about what might have shaped John McCain’s worldview—most notably what could inspire a man to embrace Bush’s failed and dangerous course in Iraq. It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate the attempt at understanding the Asshole from Arizona, it was just that the highfalutin’ explanations provided in the article give McCain too much credit for thinking this through—and, more importantly, Bai’s “analysis” crowds out what to me is the most obvious and likely reason behind McCain’s ever-shifting positions: John McCain will say whatever he thinks he must to get elected president.

Think I’m oversimplifying? Then I ask you to take a look at the latest Real McCain video from Brave New Films.



And don’t just take my word for it (or McCain’s—again, watch the video), former Rhode Island Senator (and, now, former Republican) Lincoln Chafee agrees. Appearing Tuesday on WNYC’s The Leonard Lopate Show, Chafee said of his one-time friend and Senate colleague that his political shifts were clearly born of an overriding desire to grab the presidency (just before the 13 minute mark on the audio, or at about 1:30 on the YouTube):

Lopate: [McCain’s] gone back on any number of things. Do you think he’s done it because it’s the only way he sees to win, or do you think he’s had a change of heart?

Chaffee: I think the former—that he’s just looking at it politically—which is unfortunate from my perspective. I am also surprised that once locking up the nomination he hasn’t tacked toward the middle more. He’s still kowtowing to that rightwing base.

So, there you have it. No complex worldview. No nuanced shifts. Just naked ambition.

John McCain: Empty. Cynical. Hypocritical. Ruthless. Pandering to the extremist right. It’s really not that hard to understand, and really not that hard to recognize, either. In fact, we are all painfully familiar with the type.


Update: Oh, yeah, here’s what Barack Obama had to say on the matter last night in Iowa:

We face an opponent, John McCain, who arrived in Washington nearly three decades ago as a Vietnam War hero, and earned an admirable reputation for straight talk and occasional independence from his party.

But this year's Republican primary was a contest to see which candidate could out-Bush the other, and that is the contest John McCain won. . . .

I will leave it up to Senator McCain to explain to the American people whether his policies and positions represent long-held convictions or Washington calculations, but the one thing they don't represent is change.

(cross-posted on capitoilette and The Seminal)

John McCain on net neutrality: splunge!

In an effort to keep net neutrality a hot topic through this election cycle, Representatives Ed Markey (D-MA) and Chip Pickering (R-MS) introduced the “Internet Freedom Preservation Act” last week. Though weaker than some of Markey’s initiatives from previous sessions, the 2008 act makes it explicit that an open internet is Federal policy, and requires that the FCC to hold hearings on net neutrality.

So where does Republican frontrunner John McCain stand on this issue? McCain was interviewed late last year by Brian Lehrer for WNYC, New York Public Radio; the interview was replayed as part of a Presidents’ Day segment about the remaining candidates in the ’08 race. The Senator from Arizona was asked where he stood on net neutrality. In what was less than a concise answer, McCain first says that it’s important that one big money player doesn’t crowd out everyone, and then states that it’s a hard subject and we must take a look at it. He then changes subject to internet taxes (he believes that a tax moratorium should be extended, by the way).

After a few minutes, interviewer Lehrer circles back to net neutrality and says that he had read that McCain was opposed to it, to which the Senator replies: “Look, I go back and forth on the issue, it’s a very hard issue, and I continue to take a look at it.”

The entire interview is a case study in less-than-straight talk—an exercise in pandering that I expect McCain thought would not be heard outside the New York City area—but the answers to questions about net neutrality are especially pathetic. . . and are an especially good example of what the Asshole from Arizona does on most issues.

(It seems that pretending to be all things to all people while toeing the George W. Bush line 99% of the time is all that it takes to be a “maverick” these days. If you break it down, I guess there is a difference—the difference between saying one thing and doing another, and saying nothing and doing the same thing as the dishonest Republican President that came before.)

Save the Internet is looking to get 100 US Representatives to cosponsor the IFPA (HR 5353). The three Senators still seeking the presidency are “spared” this moment of truth (for the record, both Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have stated that they support giving the FCC the power to enforce net neutrality), but what about your Representative? Save the Internet has a tool to help you ask (h/t mcjoan).



(cross-posted on The Seminal and Daily Kos)

George Packer: "Hillary Clinton will hedge her bets on Iraq"

(I was going to work this into a bigger piece on JRE and Iraq, but, well, events got ahead of me, so I’ll just report on this point that seems to have, like so many substantive points in this race, gone underreported.)

Appearing on WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show last week, George Packer, New Yorker writer and author of The Assassins' Gate, got to comparing the (then) three major Democrats left in the race. He had these two things to say (transcribed from the audio):

If a Democratic primary voter is concerned with getting out of Iraq as quickly as possible, then there is only one clear choice, and that is John Edwards.

. . . .

If you want to get out of Iraq as quickly as possible and you are trying to choose between Obama and Clinton—there is no way to choose.

I should note that Packer was not explaining his take on Edwards as a way of promoting him—quite the contrary. Indeed, Packer (a semi-repentant advocate of the 2003 invasion) believes US troops should not leave, as best I can tell, any time soon.

Instead, the man who just completed a multi-thousand word piece on Hillary Clinton sought to pay an odd compliment to the New York Senator by saying this: “Hillary Clinton will hedge her bets on Iraq.”

After reading that New Yorker piece (which focuses on Clinton, but also devotes a good amount of space to her now one remaining rival), I get the sense that he expects Obama to also “wake up” to what Packer sees as the necessity of an extended military commitment. Apparently, as he explained on the radio, because the US has enlisted so many collaborators that our government will not now—to any meaningful extent—allow to immigrate here, Packer thinks that we need to stay and protect them there. (I’m all for aiding the people who have risked so much in service to the US, but I question how much we are helping anyone by maintaining our current posture.)

Alas, after listening to him on WNYC, and reading his New Yorker article “The Choice,” Packer has made the choice now thrust upon me very much harder.

As if it weren’t hard enough.

new york’s worst

WNYC, New York Public Radio, will be airing a segment on New York’s worst buildings during next Tuesday’s Leonard Lopate Show. Christopher Gray, who writes the “Streetscapes” column for the New York Times, will evaluate photos submitted by the listening audience.

I have added my two cents. . . or, actually, five buildings to the discussion, including the banal 60 Thompson (pictured above) and the dystopic new 7 World Trade Center. You can take a look at my photos by clicking on the Flickr badge above (that didn't work, so just click here to see my photo set), see a slideshow of more ugly buildings here, or take a look at all of the “nominees” submitted by the community by clicking here (requires a free Flickr account).