Buck Naked Politics

Walter Cronkite

2009-07-18T10:07:26-04:00

by Bill Kavanagh: The death of Walter Cronkite at 92 leaves Americans contemplating the changes in our media since his heyday as the preeminent television news anchor. It is hard to imagine that we once looked to a network news broadcast as a digest of the nation’s daily experience, that one voice was ever regarded as, “the way it is.” We have so many ways to get our news now, but none are so central to the American experience as the CBS Evening News was in Cronkite’s day.

The first distinct remembrances I have of Cronkite are from the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, where he commented on Mayor Richard Daley’s security tactics against reporters by calling them “thugs” on the air and where he threatened to “pack up our cameras and go home.” I also remember his coverage of the Apollo landing on the Moon, which was informatively detailed and yet still inspirational. And finally, when the Watergate scandal began to wane because the facts seemed too arcane for most Americans to follow, Cronkite demanded, and got, a 22-minute, two-segment report on the nightly news to illustrate the money trail that led from Cuban burglars invading the Democratic National Committee headquarters directly to the White House and the Presidency of Richard Nixon.

One of the ways to understand the profound difference that good television journalism made in Cronkite’s era is to reflect on his coverage of the war in Vietnam. Cronkite was initially a proponent of the American escalation there, and his coverage of the war reflected his orthodoxy for a while. But as his reporters began to bring back stories that contradicted the military and White House perspective on the conflict, Cronkite decided to go see Vietnam for himself. After the 1968 Tet Offensive, Cronkite journeyed to the war zone and saw the protracted civil war for what it was, a stalemate that couldn’t be won by intervening American forces.

As a respected combat journalist, not only did Cronkite’s on-air assessment strike a chord with a broad swath of the American public, but his reportage was apparently pivotal to President Lyndon Johnson, who decided shortly thereafter not to seek re-election in 1968. Johnson told his press secretary, Bill Moyers, that if he had lost Cronkite, he had lost Middle America. Negotiations with the North Vietnamese began shortly thereafter.

It’s hard to imagine Americans, high and low, responding to a media figure today the way the country listened to Cronkite during the 1960’s. The firewall between news and entertainment had not yet fallen at the networks— and there was a sense of pride among the CBS news staff that they were carrying a public trust— to present the events of the day to the nation fairly. Cronkite was the voice of that organization and it was trusted to put journalistic standards largely above selling soap.

Another part of the work Cronkite and his colleagues did was to unpack more investigative stories in long-form documentary shows, aired in prime time. Pieces like “The Selling of the Pentagon,” which detailed some of the scandalous ways that military contractors used political connections and former military officers to get incredibly lucrative contracts out of the Defense Department drew huge audiences of American viewers and caused changes to be made in government policies. One can’t remember Cronkite without keeping in mind the organization he had behind him at CBS.

It would be worth thinking long and hard as we remember Cronkite about how we bring stories today to the public that the powers-that-be would still rather relegate to the backwaters of our media. It won’t be through an organization at the major networks. That day is over, as is Walter’s. But it’s a legacy that should and must live on. As we miss Cronkite, we should also remember that his standards should be his legacy to his country.

(Bill Kavanagh cross-posts at Bill's Big Diamond.)

CIA Program to Assassinate Al Qaeda Leaders On Point of Activation When Panetta Pulled It; Pressure for Investigation Increases

2009-07-16T11:55:00-04:00

by Bartleby the Scrivener | The allegedly toothless CIA program for assassinating Al Qaeda leaders wherever they could be found was apparently on the point of growing fangs at the time Panetta pulled it, according to this Washington Post article.

The plan to kill top al-Qaeda leaders, which had been on the agency's back burner for much of the past eight years, was suddenly thrust into the spotlight because of proposals to initiate what one intelligence official called a "somewhat more operational phase." Shortly after learning of the plan, Panetta terminated the program and then went to Capitol Hill to brief lawmakers, who had been kept in the dark since 2001....

The plan to deploy small teams of assassins grew out of the CIA's early efforts to battle al-Qaeda after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. A secret document known as a "presidential finding" was signed by President George W. Bush that same month, granting the agency broad authority to use deadly force against bin Laden as well as other senior members of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

The finding imposed no geographical limitations on the agency's actions, and intelligence officials have said that they were not obliged to notify Congress of each operation envisaged under the directive....Two U.S. officials with detailed knowledge of current CIA operations said the agency presented Panetta last month with new plans for moving forward with training for potential members of the assassination teams -- activities that would have involved "crossing international boundaries," in the words of a former counterterrorism official briefed on the matter. (WaPo)

At TPM, Zachary Roth comments:

"No geographical limitations" presumably means that operations could potentially be carried out in countries, friendly or unfriendly, that are far from any war zone -- including even the US itself. And it seems likely that they would be carried out without notifying the foreign country in question.

Of course, we've frequently, and quite openly, used the military to carry out attacks on specific Qaeda leaders -- even before 9/11. But using the CIA to do so, and with such broad authority to operate anywhere in the world, as this program seems to have given the agency, would appear to take things into a different realm.

No kidding. As Robert Baer points out in Time, setting up assassination squads for any purpose is taking things into a different realm: " "In the CIA, that was the closest thing we had to the Ten Commandments.""

So now what happens? The Raw Story suggests that a full investigation into the program may be imminent and that the mood of the public is ripe for it.

Citing a "significant shift in the mood" of the electorate and elected officials, US Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) told the Newark Star-Ledger that there is now momentum for a full investigation into the CIA's unreported assassination program.

"Holt said he believes the investigation, which he also called a review, should be as intense and comprehensive as the probe conducted more than 30 years ago -- in the wake of the Watergate scandal -- by a special committee headed by U.S. Sen. Frank Church, an Idaho Democrat," the New Jersey newspaper reported. (The Raw Story)

Kevin Drum says:

If the news reports are right about this program, it deserves a full-scale investigation by Congress. Everybody knows we're trying to kill al-Qaeda operatives one way or another, so it's not as if we'd be revealing any dark secrets of national security. And if the whole thing really was just a "PowerPoint presentation," it might exonerate the CIA and remove the cloud currently surrounding them. What's the argument against doing this?

Oh, by the way. The Obama administration apparently is contending that the program was legal.

Greg Sargent:

Check out what Obama’s director of national intelligence, Dennis Blair, told the Post…

Blair broke with some Democrats in Congress by asserting that the CIA did not violate the law when it failed to inform lawmakers about the secret program until last month. Blair said agency officials may not have been required to notify Congress about the program, though he believes they should have done so.

“It was a judgment call,” Blair said in an interview. “We believe in erring on the side of working with the Hill as a partner.” (emphasis in original)

For Blair to defend the CIA’s legal right to keep Congress in the dark is important because Dems such as Rep Jan Schakowsky and Senator Russ Feingold charge that the CIA program did break the law, with House Dems mulling a probe.

But the Obama administration now seems to be sending a message to Dems, defending the Bush-era program: Cool it; the program was not illegal; we’re voluntarily resetting the agency’s relations with Congress.

Bush Lite strikes again?

Memeorandum has more....

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Of Course the Economy is Still Bad

2009-07-15T11:26:54-04:00

by Deb Cupples | A New York Times editorial states: "Unemployment is rising. Foreclosures are surging. Lending is still constrained."

Duhhh! How could the scenario be otherwise? The $700 billion boondoggle (TARP) that George Bush and Henry Paulson sold to Congress (and us taxpayers) last year didn't require banks that took our tax dollars to actually unfreeze credit.

The TARP legislation didn't even require banks to spend the money wisely or in a way that benefited our nation's economy -- which resulted, in some cases, in our tax dollars funding huge personal pay packages for executives who spent the past few years casting doubt on their own competence.

The economic stimulus bill that passed earlier this year was too small to be effective: numerous economists -- including Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman -- publicly and repeatedly warned Congress and President Obama about that months ago (see examples here and here).

Why was it too small? In part, because congressional Republicans and so-called "Centrist" Democrats screamed about deficit spending and socialism -- even after having full-speed supported spending upwards of $2 trillion (adding to our deficit) in order to (socialistically) bail out some of the same people who personally made millions while driving our nation's financial system (and economy) into a ditch.

The NY Times editorial asks the question: "So, why exactly is the Obama Administration waiting to act?" Then, the author, goes on to give some answers that are worth reading.

Memeorandum has commentary.

Other Buck Naked Politics Posts:

* Cutting Executive Pay Would Save Jobs

* Execs Made Millions While Driving Companies into Ditch

* Are Bailout Funds Being Misused?

* Banks Might Give Back TARP $ if The Can't Keep Bonuses

* Shareholding Senator Helped Bank Get TARP Funds

Sotomayor Confirmation Hearings: Some GOP Members Still Out of Touch

2009-07-15T11:02:46-04:00

by Deb Cupples | The Washington Post has a partial transcript and video of the Sotomayor confirmation hearings.

Constitutional law scholar Erwin Chemerinski (who wrote a much-used con-law textbook) thinks Sotomayor will be confirmed, despite troll-like behavior on the part of certain senators:

"At times, Republican senators such as Lindsay Graham (S.C.) and Jeff Sessions (Ala.) used their time to rail against liberal activism, such as with Graham's diatribe against the positions taken by the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund."

Congressional Quarterly's Craig Crawford thinks Sen. Graham and a few other Republican senators are shooting their own political feet while trying to showboat at the hearings:

"Watching Lindsey Graham's gotcha grin as he needled Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor with disingenuous and rhetorical questions you had to wonder what was so funny.

"Does the Republican senator think it is amusing that he and his party's condescending tone toward the Hispanic woman was costing them ethnic votes with each passing hour of Tuesday's Judiciary Committee hearing?

"It is not that the Republican inquiries were out of bounds in legal terms. But a confirmation hearing like this is a political forum."

Why is it so hard for so many Republican politicians to get it right?

Apparently, controlling the White House, U.S. House, and U.S. Senate for most of the new millennium's first decade -- followed by two years of legislative hijacking via filibuster -- made some Republican politicians seem ridiculously out of touch with many millions of American voters.

That and for a few years after the 9/11 attacks, the White House and Republican Congress could get away with saying pretty much any ridiculously reality-bucking thing that came to mind -- and they repeatedly did.

That seems to be how our nation got into a so-called "preemptive" war in Iraq, how our Bill of Rights got partially destroyed, how so many private contractors have been allowed to rob us taxpayers, how our entire financial ultimately came to near collapse....

Unfortunately for most Republican politicians, the nation ultimately woke up and looked around and saw some pretty horrifying results.

Even after Hurricane Katrina (which marked the beginning of the plummeting credibility of then-President Bush and the party he controlled) many Republican politicians continued indulging in ridiculous posturing and BS-ing -- habits that seem to be as hard to break as cigarettes.

Is it any wonder that the national Republican Party has lost so much credibility?

Memeorandum has commentary

Other Buck Naked Politics Posts:

* Media Should Leave Palin Alone

* Why Media Should NOT Leave Palin Alone

* Tapping our Economic Potential

* AG Considers Investigating Bush Admin over Torture

* Public Option Needed, because Insurance Execs are Robbing Us

CIA Had Program to Assassinate Al Qaeda Leaders

2009-07-14T10:23:35-04:00

by Bartleby the Scrivener | Seymour Hersh spoke back in March of an "executive assassination ring" that reported directly to Cheney, though he seemed to think that the program was actually being implemented. I assume he was talking about the same program that Director Leon Panetta just cancelled and which the CIA says it never got round to implementing(NYT) -- though "some officials" told WaPo that "some elements" were operational, so maybe everybody's right.

The New York Times deadpans:

Officials at the spy agency over the years ran into myriad logistical, legal and diplomatic obstacles. How could the role of the United States be masked? Should allies be informed and might they block the access of the C.I.A. teams to their targets? What if American officers or their foreign surrogates were caught in the midst of an operation? Would such activities violate international law or American restrictions on assassinations overseas? (NYT)

Following 9-11, see, Bush apparently signed a secret order "authorizing the C.I.A. to capture or kill operatives of Al Qaeda around the world. To be able to kill Osama bin Laden or his top deputies wherever they might be — even in cities or countries far from a war zone — struck top agency officials as an urgent goal, according to people involved in the discussions." (NYT) As one former agent said, that sort of thing works great in the movies. (NYT)

In his turn, Steve Benen deadpans:

For the same reason the U.S. government would be displeased with foreign paramilitary teams carrying out assassinations on American soil, the prospects of sending small, surgical U.S. assassination squads around the world, including into allied countries, proved problematic.

WaPo puts the case a little differently.

The CIA ran a secret program for nearly eight years that aspired to kill top al-Qaeda leaders with specially trained assassins, but the agency declined to tell Congress because the initiative never came close to bringing Osama bin Laden and his deputies into U.S. cross hairs, U.S. intelligence and congressional officials said yesterday.

At any rate, Bush -- and Obama -- found an alternative in the missile strikes with armed Predator drones -- which are working really well, if you don't mind a huge number of civilian deaths. (NYT) The assassination ring, say "current and former officials" would have been more "surgical." (NYT)

“The Predator strikes have been successful, and I was pleased to see the Obama administration continue them,” said Senator Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “This was another effort that was trying to accomplish the same objective.”(NYT)

About Panetta's cancellation of the program, Bond also said:

Why would you cancel it?...If the CIA weren't trying to do something like this, we'd be asking 'Why not?' " (WaPo)

Democrats are, of course, extremely annoyed that Congress wasn't sufficiently briefed. The officials who said that some elements of the program were operational said they should have been disclosed because -- in the words of one intelligence official -- they "involved "significant resources and high risk." (WaPo) (Other officials say the program never got beyond the feasibility studies stage.) One counterterrorism official says that everything the CIA did was within "legal guidelines." (WaPo) Yes, we've heard that one before.

But what about Cheney's role in all this? Still unclear.

One official recalled that the vice president ordered only a temporary delay in notifying Congress, until the planning for an al-Qaeda hit crossed certain thresholds -- for example, a planned movement of operatives across international boundaries. "What is being labeled now as covert action never reached that point," said the official, who is familiar with intelligence committee briefings on the matter. (WaPo)

HuffPost has more on the allegations about Cheney's role here.

More blogger reaction at Memeorandum.

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Multi-Tasking Mess: Texting Teen Falls into Sewer

2009-07-13T11:08:10-04:00

We've all seen people texting while driving cars (which, in my humble opinion, should be illegal). We've all seen people fall into manholes -- at least in cartoons or shows like Monty Python or Benny Hill.

Apparently, New York's Department of Environmental Protection had failed to post warnings and to secure the manhole area while preparing to flush the sewer (whatever that means). A teenager engaged in text-messaging while walking on the sidewalk failed to notice the manhole and its removed cover. The result: she fell into the manhole and spent some time in five-feet-deep raw sewage -- something I wouldn't wish on an enemy, let alone on an unfocused child.

The teenager, who talks kind of like some personal-injury lawyers I've known, stated:

"Regardless of whether I'm texting or not if there was a cone there I'm going to see a big orange cone,' she said. 'I walk that sidewalk every day, I don't expect a big hole there.'" (WCBSTV)

True, an orange cone would have provided visual contrast against the pale-gray sidewalk cement.

Then again, wouldn't the black-ish manhole have provided solid visual contrast against pale-gray cement?

I suspect that this case will be settled out of court. Memeorandum has commentary.

Other Buck Naked Politics Posts:

* North Korean Leader May Have Cancer

* GOP Splits (further) Over Palin

* AG Considers Investigating Bush Admin over Torture

* Public Option Needed, because Insurance Execs Are Robbing Us

North Korean Leader May Have Cancer

2009-07-13T08:46:59-04:00

Reuters reports:

"North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has pancreatic cancer and the illness is life-threatening, South Korean broadcaster YTN said on Monday based on information gathered by Chinese and South Korean intelligence sources.

"Kim's health is one of the most closely guarded secrets in the reclusive communist state. Kim, 67, was widely thought to have suffered a stroke last year, but there has never been official confirmation."

Kim Jong-il is about as dictatorial and guarded as they come. I'm wondering how any foreign intelligence source would get close enough to learn about Kim's health -- or about anything else that Kim didn't want known. Memeorandum has commentary.

GOP Splits (further) Over Palin

2009-07-13T08:29:32-04:00

by Deb Cupples | The LA Times tells us:

"Since announcing her resignation, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has been pummeled by critics who have called her incoherent, a quitter, a joke and a "political train wreck."

And those were fellow Republicans talking....

"'I can't tell you one thing she brought to the ticket," said Stuart K. Spencer, who has been advising GOP candidates for more than 40 years. "McCain wanted to shock and surprise people, and he did -- in a bad way.'

That's a typical type of reaction from some of the elite members of the Republican party. Many ordinary Republican voters seem to see it differently:

"Consider a USA Today/Gallup poll released last week. About 7 in 10 Republicans said they would be likely to vote for Palin if she ran for president....

"'People at the grass roots see a charismatic personality who is popular with other people at the grass roots. But their horizon only goes so far as people who think like them," said Mike Murphy. The veteran GOP ad man eviscerated Palin -- a "political train wreck," "an awful choice" for vice president, her resignation an "astonishing self-immolation" -- in a column published Thursday in the New York Daily News.'" (LA Times)

In other words, the party elites see Ms. Palin one way, and the voting base (which is needed to win elections) sees her another way.

According to the LA Times article, Ms. Palin said that she would write a book and go around the country campaigning for congressional candidates. Embarrassingly enough, said (generally Republican) do not seem to want Ms. Palin's help -- as though preferring to distance themselves from a stench.

Of course, GOP elites are largely to blame for the party's opinion split. Last year, they hard-sold and defended Ms. Palin (i.e., helped convince ordinary GOP voters that she was a solid candidate worthy of admiration and respect). Those elites who weren't fans of Palin largely kept quiet, which only made it easier for the party to cram Ms. Palin down the throats of ordinary voters.

Now, some of those GOP elites want ordinary GOP voters to change their already made-up minds about Ms. Palin? Good luck with that one. Memeorandum has commentary.

Other Buck Naked Politics Posts:

* Media Should Leave Palin Alone

* Why Media Should NOT Leave Palin Alone

* Tapping our Economic Potential

* AG Considers Investigating Bush Admin over Torture

* Public Option Needed, because Insurance Execs Have Been Robbing Us

Tapping Our Economic Potential

2009-07-13T07:57:16-04:00

by Bill Kavanagh: Sometimes it’s hard to say you were wrong. That seems to be the case for President Barack Obama when it comes to fixing the economic meltdown. Understandably, his Administration misjudged the size of the financial catastrophe during the depths of the freefall. Then, he presumed that making a compromise deal with the conservatives in his own party and with the Right Wing in the Republican Party on a stimulus bill would unify them, be enough to put Americans back to work—and more importantly, to pull the American economy back from the brink of extinction this winter. It seems he was only one-third right.

Yes, we are no longer in free fall. That’s a blessing. But the tax-cut-ridden stimulus and relatively small measures taken to address the foreclosure tsunami at the beginning of the Obama Administration’s tenure have not restored our marketplace to anything resembling health and don’t look to be on the brink of doing so soon. We could be in for continued months—or years— of crippling unemployment in an economy that continues to run in low gear, since the huge destruction of wealth that occurred during the real estate and banking meltdown will not be soon replaced.

So what to do? The Obama Administration, and now the President himself in a Washington Post Op-Ed piece on Sunday, seem to think we should simply wait and try to enact his long-term proposals as envisioned prior to the meltdown. We reform health care, enact education reforms to train the workers of the future, and we green the energy grid in the hopes that it will provide new employment and make for a healthier investment climate.

Well, I’m for these planks in the Obama platform, but there’s a disconnect in the Administration’s thinking. It seems that the President believes we can make the economy healthy again without first putting Americans back to work. The President doesn’t address the wasted energy and drag on our recovery represented by allowing tens of millions of us to remain unemployed and underemployed. Meanwhile, multinational business continues to look for the cheapest and most desperate labor forces on the planet to cut its costs. This means that the U.S. could continue in a stagnant way, with jobs declining over the long-term, while capital moves to other regions where infrastructure is building up and where labor is still cheap.

One possible solution would be to put Americans to work while at the same time rebuilding our infrastructure for the long term. It’s an idea that has been around for some time and has many backers among economists and in the business community. For years, banker Felix Rohatyn and former Senator Warren Rudman have backed the creation of an Infrastructure Bank and the Obama Administration recently backed its creation in its 2009 budget proposal.

But the kind of capital that a totally new infrastructure concept needs and which would make an enormous difference to the economy at this moment has not yet been put forward by the Administration (It has been supported by Senators Dodd and Hagel). If the Administration were to back a program to rebuild America’s infrastructure with the capital and the vigor that the Eisenhower Administration put behind the Federal highway system or that the Kennedy Administration put behind the space program, we could transform the country quickly. America’s aging and increasingly dangerous system of bridges, mass transportation, roadways, water projects, flood control systems, and waste treatment plants would be upgraded to meet the needs of the twenty-first century, employing millions in the process.

What’s more interesting, an Infrastructure Bank would be authorized to multiply government funding by loaning money, or helping states and municipalities sell the bonds that raise money for appropriate projects. This is a critical part of the concept, that the bank would be capable of leveraging federal funds, without resorting to enormously complex derivatives, to help government raise capital and spread the investments out over time. It would help maximize the impact of federal funds.

An Infrastructure Bank would also help the Administration to meet the important challenge any huge spending project must contend with— oversight. Presently, the hodgepodge of spending projects between cities, states, interstate entities, and the federal government on infrastructure projects lead inevitably to porkbarrel spending and to competing projects getting funding when only one project should go forward. Having an Infrastructure Bank that would have to approve projects and would have a mandate to cut waste and duplication would help endure that federal money was well spent. No Bridges to Nowhere!

While an Infrastructure Bank was starting up, the Obama Administration would be well advised to begin immediately preparing legislation to send funding to the states to help them overcome budget deficits and continue their infrastructure projects, while meeting their obligations to taxpayers in the midst of this Great Recession. It will take some time to get the Infrastructure Bank set up and for it to begin taking the lead on projects around the country, but that’s no reason to let the economy founder until it is complete. We can put America again at the forefront of the world economy, but we can only do it if we are willing to keep making an investment in our future and in the welfare of our people, not just in our mightiest financial institutions.

Perhaps the Administration doesn’t need to say it was wrong in order to make things right. But it does need to adjust and to do so quickly. Supporting new infrastructure efforts while aiding the states will show the Administration’s seriousness and account for our need to address the future— and the present.

(Bill Kavanagh cross-posts at Bill's Big Diamond.)

Attorney General Eric Holder Considering Investigation of Bush Administration's Use of Torture

2009-07-12T09:46:48-04:00

by bartleby the scrivener | Attorney General Eric Holder is prepared to "run counter" to Obama's forward lookingness by appointing a special prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration's use of torture. (WaPo)

Holder's decision could come within weeks, around the same time the Justice Department releases an ethics report about Bush lawyers who drafted memos supporting harsh interrogation practices, the sources said. The legal documents spell out in sometimes painstaking detail how interrogators were allowed to subject detainees to simulated drowning, sleep deprivation, wall slamming and confinement in small, dark spaces....

The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing process, said Holder has been open to naming a prosecutor to investigate the allegations since he took office in February. The sources said the inspector general report has advanced his thinking in the direction of doing so....

Holder has secured support for the idea from at least some key players, one of the sources said. If he does name a prosecutor to conduct an investigation, he will probably select a career prosecutor from inside the Justice Department rather than a lawyer from outside, the sources said. (More)

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Did Cheney Order the CIA to Conceal Existence of "Sensitive" Counterterrorism Program? And Will the Bush Administration Finally be Called to Account?

2009-07-12T09:32:48-04:00

by bartleby the scrivener | Leo Panetta, Director of the CIA, has told the Senate and the House Intelligence Committees that the CIA withheld information concerning a secret counterterrorism program on direct orders of none other than Dick Cheney. (NYT) Christ knows what they were getting up to.

Mr. Panetta, who ended the program when he first learned of its existence from subordinates on June 23, briefed the two intelligence committees about it in separate closed sessions the next day. (NYT)

Whatever it was, Cheney seems to have been behind the decision to conceal its existence from Congress. (NYT) Hey, but at least all those secret programs kept us safe, eh? Well, maybe not.

The disclosure about Mr. Cheney’s role in the unidentified C.I.A. program comes a day after an inspector general’s report underscored the central role of the former vice president’s office in restricting to a small circle of officials knowledge of the National Security Agency’s program of eavesdropping without warrants, a degree of secrecy that the report concluded had hurt the effectiveness of the counterterrorism surveillance effort. (NYT)

How secret was this mystery program?

Intelligence and Congressional officials have said the unidentified program did not involve the C.I.A. interrogation program and did not involve domestic intelligence activities. They have said the program was started by the counterterrorism center at the C.I.A. shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but never became fully operational, involving planning and some training that took place off and on from 2001 until this year.

In the tense months after Sept. 11, when Bush administration officials believed new Qaeda attacks could occur at any moment, intelligence officials brainstormed about radical countermeasures. It was in that atmosphere that the unidentified program was devised and deliberately concealed from Congress, officials said.

Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House intelligence committee, said last week that he believed Congress would have approved of the program only in the angry and panicky days after 9/11, on 9/12, he said, but not later, after fears and tempers had begun to cool.

Mr. Hoekstra, the intelligence committee’s ranking Republican, said he would not judge the agency harshly in the case of the unidentified program, because it was not fully operational. But he said that in general, the agency had not been as forthcoming as the law required.

“We have to pull the information out of them to get what we need,” Mr. Hoekstra said.(NYT)

Who knows -- unless it's Seymour Hersh -- what those guys were getting up to? I wonder how long before we find out for sure?

Two former agency officials who were familiar with the program said it involved a series of proposals over several years for providing the intelligence agencies with a "needed capability," one of the officials said (WaPo).

In the meantime, angry Dems are pushing for more and better briefing of intelligence committees. Guess who's threatening to veto legislation if the CHANGES go further than the executive branch likes?

Democrats in Congress, who contend that the Bush administration improperly limited Congressional briefings on intelligence, are seeking to change the National Security Act to permit the full intelligence committees to be briefed on more matters. President Obama, however, has threatened to veto the intelligence authorization bill if the changes go too far, and the proposal is now being negotiated by the White House and the intelligence committees.(NYT)

Meanwhile Dems are considering an investigation. (WaPo)

Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.), chairman of the intelligence committee, has said the panel was "affirmatively lied to" regarding this program's existence. Reyes had not had a formal discussion with Rep. Peter Hoekstra (Mich.), the ranking Republican on the committee, about opening a formal investigation. But lawmakers and aides said such a step was a formality and that a formal investigation probably would take place.

Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-Calif.), a senior member of the intelligence panel, said she was calling for the committee to hire an outside counsel to investigate the issue. "We have to know who gave the order for this, who gave the order to conceal this, where did they draw the money for this," she said.

Eshoo said the committee may have to use its subpoena power to interview some of the top officials who oversaw intelligence issues during the Bush administration. (WaPo) .

Republicans aren't bothered.

After listening to Panetta's June 24 presentation, some Republican committee members said they wanted to know more about the program but were not overly alarmed. "I didn't walk out of there saying this is some horrible thing," Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said. (WaPo)

More reactions to this article at Memeorandum.

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IG's Report Spotlights Bush's (Likely Illegal) Warrantless Wiretapping Program

2009-07-11T12:39:45-04:00

by Deb Cupples | Based on a recent inspectors general report, the Washington Post reports that the Bush Administration was likely too secretive with Congress about the (likely illegal) domestic surveillance program.

The Washington Independent reports:

"The Bush administration called its warrantless surveillance efforts “very, very important to protect the national security of this country,” in the words of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in 2005. Today’s inspectors general report on the President’s Surveillance Program doesn’t really substantiate that assessment. “[M]ost PSP leads were determined not to have any connection to terrorism,” according to the Justice Department’s inspector general."

You can see a copy of the 43-page report here, which was a group effort by inspectors general from the Justice Department, Defense Department, Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, and Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Memeorandum has commentary.

Sen. Ensign's Family So Very Generously Paid $96,000 to Senator's Mistress

2009-07-10T08:39:14-04:00

by bartleby the scrivener | ...and it was strictly out of concern for her and her family's welfare, it seems. (The New York Times) Sadly -- as David Stout writes at The New York Times -- this generous gift is "sure to provide grist for political detractors," of whom I am one.

A statement by [Ensign's] lawyer, Paul Coggins, on behalf of the Mr. Ensign, a Republican from Nevada, said that in April 2008 the senator’s parents each gave $12,000 apiece to Cindy Hampton, her husband, Doug, and two of their children in the form of a single check for $96,000.

“The payments were made as gifts, accepted as gifts and complied with tax rules governing gifts,” the statement read. Under federal tax regulations, $12,000 is the most that a person can receive as a gift from any one person without having to declare or pay taxes on it. (NYT)

Politico speculates that this revelation "seemed intended to head off growing questions about whether Ensign violated federal law by failing to report what Doug Hampton called a severance package worth more than $25,000 to his wife Cynthia, who left Ensign's campaign staff on April 30, 2008." (Politico)

Apparently not.

The Hamptons were simply fortunate in having the sort of family friends that you and I can only dream about. And there's no way that Tom Coburn (R-Okla) -- who is "a physician and an ordained deacon"! -- advised any sort of payoff, whatever Doug Hampton might have said to the press. (Politico)

Jon Ralston, a Las Vegas Sun columnist who interviewed Hampton, asked: "Tom Coburn, a U.S. Senator, told John Ensign, 'Listen, you've got to deal with this. Make these folks whole. Let them get out of your life. And, let's move on. Isn't that exactly what happened?"

Hampton responded: "Absolutely."....

Thursday morning, Coburn responded fiercely to Hampton, saying the former aide had misled the press and the public - and he said that any advice that he gave Ensign at the time of the affair was privileged because of his occupation as a physician and an ordained deacon.

"I'm not going to go into that - that's privileged communications. I'm never going to talk about that with anybody. . . I never will, not to a court of law, not to an Ethics Committee, not to anybody - because that is privileged communication that I will never reveal to anybody." (More)

As The Politico notes, legal experts allow that Coburn's privilege under these circumstances is "murky" --- but murky or not, it's hard for me to imagine a doctor/deacon advising Ensign to pay off anyone. So I won't try.

Instead, I'll just refer you to TBogg, who says: "Remember when they used to smirk and mock the expression "It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is"?"

Meanwhile, check out the letter that Ensign -- under pressure from Hampton -- wrote to his lover, Hampton's wife. "Hampton...claims that Ensign later repudiated the letter and told him "I'm in love with your wife." (HuffPost)

RECENT BUCK NAKED POLITICS POSTINGS

Krugman Told Us So -- Too Small Stimulus Package Proving Inadequate to Turn Economy Around

Robert McNamara

Get Your Pitchforks Ready: Corporate Welfare Recipient Economy-Buster AIG Wants Federal "Compensation Czar" Kenneth Feinberg to Give His Blessing to Another Round of Giant Executive Bonuses

Headline Round-up

Vanity Fair on AIG's Collapse

Whatever Happened to Those Banks' Toxic Assets?

Are Some Elite GOP Members "Rooting Against" America?

Congratulations Senator-elect Franken (and How the GOP Lost so Much Credibility)

Public Option Needed, Because Private Insurance Execs Have Been Robbing Us

Robert McNamara Dead at 93

Krugman Told Us So -- Too Small Stimulus Package Proving Inadequate to Turn Economy Around

2009-07-10T08:04:38-04:00

by Bartleby | Back when the stimulus bill was still being debated, Paul Krugman worried that Obama's plan would prove inadequate to get the economy moving, and that Obama would eventually find himself in the untenable position of having to ask for another stimulus. [See: Swift, Bold Action Required: Krugman; The Economic "Stimulus" Package; Krugman on the Stimulus Package: It's Too Little. Will Obama Realize This Too Late?] Once again, it looks as if Paul Krugman has been right all along and Obama's advisors, wrong.

Today Krugman writes:

"As soon as the Obama administration-in-waiting announced its stimulus plan — this was before Inauguration Day — some of us worried that the plan would prove inadequate. And we also worried that it might be hard, as a political matter, to come back for another round.

"Unfortunately, those worries have proved justified. The bad employment report for June made it clear that the stimulus was, indeed, too small. But it also damaged the credibility of the administration’s economic stewardship. There’s now a real risk that President Obama will find himself caught in a political-economic trap....

"As I said, I was afraid this would happen. But that’s water under the bridge. The question is what the president and his economic team should do now....

"[T]here’s a difference between defending what you’ve done so far and being defensive. It was disturbing when President Obama walked back Mr. Biden’s admission that the administration “misread” the economy, declaring that “there’s nothing we would have done differently.” There was a whiff of the Bush infallibility complex in that remark, a hint that the current administration might share some of its predecessor’s inability to admit mistakes. And that’s an attitude neither Mr. Obama nor the country can afford.

"What Mr. Obama needs to do is level with the American people. He needs to admit that he may not have done enough on the first try. He needs to remind the country that he’s trying to steer the country through a severe economic storm, and that some course adjustments — including, quite possibly, another round of stimulus — may be necessary." (NYT)

It remains to be seen whether Obama and his team will take Krugman's suggestion and talk to the American people like adults.

Recent Buck Naked Politics Postings

Robert McNamara

2009-07-10T07:52:37-04:00

by Bill Kavanagh: Robert McNamara’s death this week at age 93 brings up a host of emotions that haunt most Americans of a certain age. His role as the primary architect of American involvement in the Vietnam conflict during the 1960’s will be, despite all his other work, McNamara’s historical legacy. Reflecting on that role also appears to have been the ethical shadow that preoccupied the latter half of McNamara’s life.

The decision to send half a million American boys to Vietnam in 1965 to fight a major Cold War conflict over a continuing civil war had consequences far beyond that country’s borders over the intervening decades. The fierce resistance of the Vietnamese, a growing American domestic disillusionment with our involvement, and an increased press scrutiny of the escalation led to a decision by Lyndon Johnson not to stand for re-election in 1968, to the rise of an American political insurgency, to a questioning of an Imperial Presidency, and to the fall of many another American icon.

The continued war effort after McNamara and Johnson, fought over years of drawn-out peace negotiations by President Nixon and his Vietnam guru, Henry Kissinger, brought forth myriad additional moral questions. Their ‘larger’ goal— to put an American defeat at a ‘decent interval’ from a drawdown of U.S. troops—finally ended with 58,000 American and two million Vietnamese dead by time the war was over in 1975. Many of those casualties were taken for peace terms that were already on the table in negotiations begun in 1968.

But despite the compounding crimes of the Nixon years, the Vietnam experience is forever stamped with the brilliant, but calculating mind of Robert McNamara, a young business leader with a background in military strategy and targeting during World War II. McNamara was a rational numbers man—and everything about America in Vietnam was done by the numbers: casualty counts, troop strengths measured, tons of armaments dropped, dollars spent, lives diverted. The problem was that the war wasn’t about numbers for the Vietnamese. For them, it was about fighting for their country.

No amount of rational calculation would have helped McNamara arrive at the simple conclusion he finally saw by the time history had been written about the conflict: that no war can be understood solely as a mathematical and ideological enterprise. The Americans had only been the last great power to realize that the Vietnamese would not stop fighting for their independence until they had won; Ho Chi Minh’s troops weren’t mainly a faction of a global ideological movement, but primarily a nationalist movement with an ideological and strategic connection to our global opponents.

McNamara’s War, as it became known, was unwinnable by a foreign power and to make matters worse, America’s chosen Vietnamese allies were the most corrupt and least connected to the people of all the forces at play there. No amount of propping up the likes of Diem, Ky, and Thieu was going to change their distance from Vietnam’s peasants, who were doing most of the dying out in the rice paddies of the country. But to McNamara, the war was seen as part of a global war against Communism, a beachhead in a greater battle for freedom. His frame of reference was almost totally at odds with the reality of the situation on the ground in Southeast Asia.

There is evidence that even McNamara had private doubts about the whole adventure. He claimed to have expressed them to President Johnson in a prelude to the escalation decision in 1965, asking the President to think twice about committing American troops to a jungle war a world away. But in the end, McNamara fell prey to professional loyalty to the Presidency and the to the institutional belief that he could make a flawed policy work with overwhelming force. In so doing, he became another of the many American leaders who put their Vietnam qualms aside to achieve a “larger goal.”

The two most important lessons to be learned from the McNamara experience in Vietnam are that war is to be waged only when it is forced upon us, not when it is optional, and that rational calculation is a sad second to a moral compass where matters of life, death, and country are concerned. Anyone forgetting these lessons is likely bound to repeat the mistakes McNamara made in thinking that Vietnam could be won with numbers and that the Vietnamese would see their best interests in rational compliance with the wishes of a superior force.

Errol Morris, the documentarian whose important film on McNamara, “The Fog of War,” should be required viewing for foreign policy and government students, quoted a 1966 speech McNamara gave in Montreal in his obituary blog on the former Defense Secretary. The way that McNamara chose to honor rationality and yet to implicitly acknowledge the massive failure men make when placing their larger aims ahead of the means used to achieve them is sadly evident in Morris’ chosen McNamara quotation:

“… All the evidence of history suggests that man is indeed a rational animal but with a near infinite capacity for folly. His history seems largely a halting, but persistent, effort to raise his reason above his animality. He draws blueprints for utopia, but never quite gets it built. In the end he plugs away obstinately with the only building material really ever at hand: his own part-comic, part-tragic, part-cussed, but part-glorious nature.”
(Bill Kavanagh cross-posts at Bill's Big Diamond.)

Get Your Pitchforks Ready: Corporate Welfare Recipient Economy-Buster AIG Wants Federal "Compensation Czar" Kenneth Feinberg to Give His Blessing to Another Round of Giant Executive Bonuses

2009-07-10T07:46:28-04:00

by bartleby the scrivener| AIG wants to give giant bonuses to its executives -- because there's just no way its executives are getting as much out of showing up for work as they expected (or deserve). The Washington Post reports:

American International Group is preparing to pay millions of dollars more in bonuses to several dozen top corporate executives after an earlier round of payments four months ago set off a national furor.

The troubled insurance giant has been pressing the federal government to bless the payments in hopes of shielding itself from renewed public outrage.... The request puts the administration's new compensation czar on the spot by seeking his opinion about bonuses that were promised long before he took his post. (WaPo)

As Truthdig observes: "The closest we’ve come to a pitchfork moment in this whole economic crisis was the last time AIG tried to shower its employees with bonuses. You may recall that the financial giant was rewarded with $180 billion in federal funds after losing more money than any company ever did before and helping to ruin the world economy. "

AIG doesn't need Feinberg's approval and can give out bonuses without it. It just wants to be able to whine this time around that the government agreed that it is legally entitled to absorb billions in taxpayer dollars to keep it from going under and then hand out huge compensation payments to its top executives. As WaPo reports:

No development in the government's bailout of financial firms has angered lawmakers and ordinary Americans more than the disclosure in mid-March that the global insurer was paying more than $165 million in retention bonuses. They were aimed at retaining 400 employees at AIG Financial Products, the troubled unit whose complex derivative contracts nearly wrecked the global insurance giant.

Next week, AIG is due to distribute "only" $2.4 million in bonuses to about 40 "high-ranking" executives (WaPo) --- mere pennies compared to the last time! What will Feinberg say?

The Treasury declined to comment specifically on the bonuses due this month. In a statement, a department spokesman said, "Companies will need to convince Mr. Feinberg that they have struck the right balance to discourage excessive risk taking and reward performance for their top executives. . . . We are not going to provide a running commentary on that process, but it's clear that Mr. Feinberg has broad authority to make sure that compensation at those firms strikes an appropriate balance."... Of course from a struggling taxpayer's standpoint, the legality of distributing huge amounts of money to executives isn't really the issue.

BN-Pol, and especially Deb Cupples, have extensively covered the issue of executive compensation in many past publications, including (but not limited to) giant bonuses going to recipients of taxpayer funds such as AIG. Here's a small sampling. Read and feel the fury. Then grab your pitchfork and follow me.

Vanity Fair on AIG's Collapse

The Daily Show: AIG Buys a Vowel & Obama Drops a Cap on Executive Compensation's Ass by Dropping the Cap on Executive Compensation

Laughing Them Out of the Bank: Citigroup Wants to Give Bonuses?

If Govt. Can Reduce Auto Execs' s Pay, Why not Bank Execs' Pay?

Krugman: Will Executive Compensation at Investment Banks Soar Back to 2007 Levels?

Sweeping Oversight Proposed re: Executive Pay & Other Things

Update: AIG to Give Bonuses and the Resulting Political Theatre

Citigroup Downgrades Wal-Mart Stocks over Possible Workers' Gains, but Ignores Executive Looting

AIG Gets Another $30 Billion: the Real Scandal

Obama's Executive-Pay Caps Don't Address the Root Problem

Richest Got Richer and Faced Lower Tax Rates

AIG Scraps Bonuses but Gives Retention Pay (Which Looks Like a Bonus)

Waxman Wants Executive Pay Data from Banks Receiving Bailout Funds

Save Jobs by Cutting Executive Pay

Congressman Alan Grayson on Why AIG Went Broke ; Questioning Change to Valuation Rules ("Let's Make Inches Larger While We're at It")

"What's the Big Deal? It's a 10th of 1% of the Money We Gave Them for Sucking": Jon Stewart Tracks "The Enragening" (A Twofer)

Headline Round-up

2009-07-09T11:18:27-04:00

by Deb Cupples | Today's New York Times has a story entitled, "Democrats Say CIA Deceived Congress for Years." Duhhhhh. On that note, The Washington Independent tells us:

On June 26, six seven Democrats on the committee — Anna Eshoo (Calif.), John Tierney (Mass.), Rush Holt (N.J.), Mike Thompson (Calif.), Alcee Hastings (Fla.) and Jan Schakowsky (Ill.) [Update: I received an early version of the letter. Rep. Adam Smith (Wash.) also signed it] — wrote to Panetta, “Recently you testified that you have determined that top CIA officials have concealed significant actions from all Members of Congress, and misled Members for a number of years from 2001 to this week.”

The letter — which doesn’t explain what those “significant actions” concerned* — asks that Panetta “publicly correct” his May 15 statement that it isn’t CIA “policy or practice to mislead Congress.” TWI acquired a copy of the letter, which comes after CQ reported that committee chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) also nebulously stated that CIA “affirmatively lied” to the committee.

Meanwhile, The Politico focused on matters of far greater national importance -- reporting that Sen. Tom Coburn knew, about a year ago, that his Republican colleague Sen. John Ensign was having an extra-marital affair with a staffer.

The BBC tells us that dozens were killed in bombings in Iraq.

In the U.K., one of Rupert Murcoch's newspapers reportedly paid $1.6 million to settle cases alleging that Murdoch's reporters had worked with private investigators to hack into public officials' cell phones. Say it ain't so: Mr. Murdoch's minions don't actually play fair?

The Washington Post commented on Judge Sonia Sotomayor's record, stating that it --

"show support for the rights of criminal defendants and suspects, skepticism of corporations, and sympathy for plaintiffs alleging discrimination."

I can understand why guys like Dick Cheney -- -- and the slew of corporate executives who were behind the robbing of us taxpayers (contractor fraud), the crashing of our nation's financial system (other kinds of fraud), and the damaging of our nation's economy -- would cringe at the thought of a judge like Sotomayor, who actually seems to care about the rights of us ordinary citizens, shareholders, and taxpayers.

And what would the day's news be without some mention of ex-VP candidate and soon-to-be-ex Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin. The Plum Line reports that the key reason Mrs. Palin gave for resigning as governor might be false. You mean Mrs. Palin might have told a half-truth, twisted truth or untruth?

I'll end this post the way I started it: with a big, long duhhhhhhh!

Vanity Fair on AIG's Collapse

2009-07-08T13:25:06-04:00

Via Memeorandum, Vanity Fair has an interesting piece on AIG's collapse. Here's a small taste:

"[T]he public explanation of A.I.G.’s failure focused on the credit-default swaps sold by traders at A.I.G. F.P., when A.I.G.’s problems were clearly broader. There was the mortgage-insurance unit in North Carolina, United Guaranty, that had taken on all sorts of silly risks in the past two years, lost several billion dollars, and replaced their C.E.O. There were the fund managers at A.I.G., the parent company, who had blown nearly $50 billion on trades in subprime mortgages—that is, they had lost more than A.I.G. F.P., whose losses stood around $45 billion.

"And there was a pattern: all of this stuff had happened since 2005, after an accounting scandal forced C.E.O. Maurice “Hank” Greenberg to resign. Greenberg, who had headed A.I.G. since 1968, was a bullying, omnipotent ruler—one of those bosses who did not so much build a company as tailor it to his character and render it incapable of being run by anyone else. After he was forced out, Greenberg said, 'The new management wanted to prove that they could continue to grow without former management” and so turned a blind eye to all sorts of risks.

"So how come most of the senior management at A.I.G. was left in place by the U.S. Treasury after the bailout? Why were officials, both public and private, so intent on leading others to believe all the losses at A.I.G. had been caused by a few dozen traders in this fringe unit in London and Connecticut?"

See the rest of the story here.

Whatever Happened to Those Banks' Toxic Assets?

2009-07-08T13:09:30-04:00

by Deb Cupples | McClatchy tells us:

"In March, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner unveiled a Public-Private Investment Program in which the government and private firms would bid together to purchase toxic assets from banks, freeing them to increase lending and help revive the economy.

"The program's still not operating."

As I recall, the program some high-powered experts viewed the PPIP as a win-win for banks and big investors -- but a major downer for us taxpayers (see here and here) -- as it represented a funneling of undeserved money to the very folks who drove our nation's financial institutions (and economy) into a deep ditch.

John Cole from Baloon Juice has some suggestions regarding the PPIP:

"Why can’t they just do with the bad assets what they did with everything else the past couple decades? Just splice ‘em up a bunch, sell and re-sell them so many times that no one knows what the hell is what, bundle them up, have the ratings agencies slap a AAA rating on them, and sell them to small towns in Georgia and Norwegian pension funds. Voila! Problem solved!

"Then have AIG insure them, and Goldman can make another ten billion in default swaps and hand out some bigger bonuses. Also, rename them- they are not bad assets, they are “Under-Priced Yields Offering Untold Riches For Offshore Overseas Longterm Speculators (UPYOURsFOOLS).” Screw you Kenny Lay! Let’s get rich, bitches! What could go wrong?" (Balloon Juice)

I just love the way John Cole makes his points. Memeorandum has commentary.

Other Buck Naked Politics Posts:

* New FASB Rules: Is the Got. Encouraging Accounting Fraud?

* Real Executive Bonuses Based on Fake Profits

* More Right Wing False Analogies: this Time re: Executive Pay Caps

* Bank Execs Might Give Back TARP $ if They Can't Keep Bonuses

* Wall Street Execs Got Billions While Driving Economy Toward Cliff

* Executives Skate out of Economic Disaster with Millions

Are Some Elite GOP Members "Rooting Against" America?

2009-07-08T11:10:22-04:00

by Deb Cupples | I'll never forget those first few years after 9/11 (and before Hurricane Katrina), when the Bush Administration, congressional Republicans, and some major media outlets convinced millions of Americans that if they opposed any policy of then-President Bush, they opposed America itself.

By thunderously pronouncing dissenters as "terrorist lovers" or "traitors," the Bush Administration managed to silence many people who disagreed with Bush's policies.

Less than two weeks ago, Glenn Beck (the GOP-friendly pundit on Fox) chatted with ex-CIA official Michael Scheuer -- who basically said that America needs Osama bin Laden to launch another violent attack against our homeland in order to get America back on track. Even worse, the self-styled patriots at Fox actually allowed the segment to air. (See video clip below).

With that in mind, I suspect that some elite members of the Republican Party will have severely ugly (and rather hypocritical) reactions to what The Politico reported that House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Henry Waxman recently said:

"Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), who has had an eventful couple of weeks to say the least, believes House Republican opposition to climate change legislation and the stimulus indicates they’re cheering against the good ol’ US of A.

“It appears that the Republican Party leadership

in the Congress has made a decision that they want to deny President Obama success, which means, in my mind, they are rooting against the country, as well,” the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman told WAMU radio host Diane Rehm on Tuesday morning, promoting his new book, “The Waxman Report.”

One response has already been reported:

"A spokesperson for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) called Waxman's comment 'outrageous,' adding, '[O]bviously Chairman Waxman owes the American people an apology.'" (Washington Monthly)

I suspect that this is only the beginning of the indignant GOP shrieks about cheap, divisive political tactics -- likely sans any reference to the GOP's own multi-year reliance on cheap, divisive political tactics.

I can't help thinking about pots and kettles. Given their addiction to double standards and hypocrisy, is it any wonder that some elite members of the Republican party have managed to all-but destroy the party's credibility -- while severely embarrassing their own rank-and-file voters?

Memeorandum has commentary.

Other Buck Naked Politics Posts:

* Congrats Sen. Franken (and How the GOP Lost Credibility)

* Public Option Needed, Because Insurance Execs Are Robbing Us

* Palin Lawyer Tells Media to NOT Question Criminal Probe?

* Floridians: Please Support Fair Redistricting