In a motion made public Thursday, May 3, city attorneys are demanding that the lawyers representing the 1,800 people who claim they were falsely arrested at the Republican National Convention swear under oath that they didn’t leak confidential police documents — documents that the New York Times obtained to write a March story about the NYPD spying on political groups in the run-up to the 2004 convention.
Meanwhile, May 3’s Wall Street Journal, reporter Judith Miller defends the NYPD after describing the same documents. And now the NYCLU has ripped off a letter to the judge overseeing the RNC-related lawsuits, claiming that the NYPD provided Miller the very documents the city is fighting so hard to keep secret.
NYCLU Associate Legal Director Christopher Dunn asked Judge James C. Francis to deny the city’s motion to keep 600-plus pages of RNC-related documents secret and make the information public immediately.
In Miller’s piece, titled “When Activists are Terrorists” (subscription required), she states that “stung by the criticism” of the spying allegations, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence David Cohen and NYPD chief spokesman Paul Browne “outlined in interviews last week the nature of the police’s concerns, its conduct, and the goals of its intelligence surveillance effort” before and during the convention. Miller writes that she personally reviewed the “still-secret intelligence documents.”
“This reporting,” Dunn writes, “plainly suggests that the NYPD provided Ms. Miller with the very documents the City is insisting to this Court must be kept secret.”
Miller is best known for being jailed for 85 days after refusing to testify before a grand jury that it was Vice President Cheney’s Chief of Staff Scooter Libby who revealed to her the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. When reached by phone today Miller said, “I’m not commenting on sources.” Then she added with a short laugh, “that should be obvious.”
That phrase should be familiar to our CEO President and should be repeated every time the subject of a “war czar” comes up. Is the job of overseeing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan something you’re too busy to do, Mr. President? Do we need to reorganize your priorities so you aren’t distracted by less important things? Perhaps we should hire a “photo-ops with boy scout troops” czar to take some of the Presidential busy-work off your plate. That way you don’t have to waste our time and money trying to hire a middle-man that will only serve as a bottleneck between our troops and their Commander-in-Chief. If you really need someone else to take over some of the responsibilities of you and the Secretary of Defense, then give us a good explanation of why you’re unable to adequately do your job and why adding another layer of bureaucracy will make things better.
Jerry Falwell has died. Tammy Faye, who has suffered from cancer for almost ten years, is doing so poorly that she’s unlikely to live much longer. On her website she wrote “I am down weight wise to 65 pounds, and look like a scarecrow. I need God’s miracle to swallow.” These two giants of televangelism, whose paths have crossed in the past, seemed to have differing interpretations of what it meant to be a “Christian”. From Falwell’s obituary :
Falwell has found himself at the center of several controversies, such as the one sparked by his comments two days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in which he seemed to blame “abortionists,” gays, lesbians, the ACLU and People for American Way for causing the attacks, saying they “helped this happen.”
During the PTL shows, she provided a sentimental touch to stories and loved to sing. In a move that sharply distinguished her from other televangelists, she showed a more tolerant attitude when it came to homosexuals, and she featured people living with AIDS on PTL, urging her viewers to follow Christ and show sympathy and pray for the sick.
Don’t miss the NY Times Magazine cover story by Nir Rosen, aka World’s Bravest Person, on the gigantic Iraq refugee crisis. As the article reports, about four million Iraqis have fled their homes. That’s 15% of Iraq’s population; the equivalent in the US would be 45 million people.
It’s really something to live in a country so powerful we can rip another nation to shreds like this and barely notice. Hey, what time is the Golden State-Jazz game on?
Of course, at the top of the US government it’s not ignorance. It’s total indifference:
“What I find most disturbing,” [Kenneth] Bacon [president of Refugees International] went on to say, “is that there seems to be no recognition of the problem by the president or top White House officials.” But John Bolton, who was undersecretary of state for arms control and international security in the Bush administration, and later ambassador to the United Nations, offers one explanation for this lack of recognition: it is not a crisis, and it was not triggered by American action. The refugees, he said, have “absolutely nothing to do with our overthrow of Saddam.
“Our obligation,” he told me this month at his office in the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, “was to give them new institutions and provide security. We have fulfilled that obligation. I don’t think we have an obligation to compensate for the hardships of war”…
When I read John Bolton’s comments to Paula Dobriansky — the undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs — and her colleague Ellen Sauerbrey, assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, they mainly agreed with him.
Or as George Bush put it in January, “I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude.”
So it seems the House Intelligence Committee may have a little more self-respect than the Senate Intelligence Committee under Jay Rockefeller. Steven Aftergood at the Federation of American Scientists points out this section of the House version of the 2008 Intelligence Authorization Act:
The Committee was dismayed at a recent incident wherein the Intelligence Community failed to inform the Congress of a significant covert action activity. This failure to notify Congress constitutes a violation of the National Security Act of 1947. Despite agency explanations that the failure was inadvertent, the Committee is deeply troubled over the fact that such an oversight could occur, whether intentionally or inadvertently.
The Committee firmly believes that scrupulous transparency between the Intelligence Community and this Committee is an absolute necessity on matters related to covert action. The Committee intends this audit and reporting requirement to act as a further check against the risk of insufficient notification, whether deliberate or inadvertent.
Obviously this likely involves Iran. And given its tremendous importance, we can count on the U.S. media never looking into it.
I’m told there’s an outside shot that House Democrats on the Armed Services Committee will put a restoration of habeas corpus into the Defense Department Authorization Bill being marked up tomorrow and Thursday. Apparently Chairman Skelton has the votes but there are concerns about whether to have this fight now.
Now’s the time to let them know that this is something that we elected them to get done. There’s a bit of fear that this vote could put freshmen members at risk, though I don’t really know why as the data on this isn’t compelling and the attack ads just didn’t work in 2006.
The most important members to contact are Ike Skelton, antiwar freshmen, and members of the Armed Services Committee. Pelosi and Hoyer would be good too. Each link below goes to that member’s email form, and their phone numbers are to the right. I’ve only included Democratic members of the committee since the decision on whether to make a vote will be made within the party - the full list of Armed Service members is here.
Call and ask them to restore habeas corpus and put it in the Defense Department Authorization bill. This is an especially important message to deliver to freshmen members who have the moral credibility of having been in elected in 2006 in the teeth of Republican fear-mongering.
Thank you, but our terrorist is in another castle.
I’ve been saying for years that those Ataris and Nintendos are the cause of violence, but you fools weren’t listening. Now the video game threat has reached our shores :
F-B-I agents say one of the six men accused of planning a shooting spree at Fort Dix conducted surveillance at several military installations.
According to a complaint, nearby Lakehurst Naval Air Station, Dover Air Force Base in Delaware and a Coast Guard building on Delaware Avenue in Philadelphia were cased in August 2006.
The F-B-I says it also tailed the suspect to Fort Monmouth.
Prosecutors say the suspect told an informant he settled on Dix because co-defendant Serdar Tatar delivered pizza to the post for Super Mario’s Pizza Restaurant in New Hanover Township.
From what sources are telling me, the Fort Dix terrorists were dangerously close to getting their hands on advanced flame-throwing technology.
Thank goodness we’ve got a President willing to use cheat codes to keep us safe.
I think that withdrawal from Iraq — it obviously gives al Qaeda a huge victory. Huge victory. On the other hand, if we stay in Iraq, it gives them the opportunity to kill more Americans, which they really like.
One of the things, though, that I think the antiwar crowd has not considered is that, if we’re putting the Americans right within their arms’ reach, they don’t have to come to Wall Street to kill Americans. They don’t have to knock down the trade center. They can do it around the corner, and convenience is a big factor when you’re a terrorist.
A few days ago I wondered whether Christopher Hitchens had accurately described Karl Rove as “not a believer.” The answer seems to be yes. Christopher Schipper sends along this transcript of Wayne Slater on Fresh Air last September, talking about The Architect, his book about Rove:
SLATER: You know, I remember seeing Ralph Reed in Texas when Rove tried to bring him on board back in about 1998…Ralph Reed is an Evangelical Christian who was successful in bringing Evangelical Christians around for political ends. Karl Rove is just the opposite. He is, in fact, an agnostic. He has told–he told a friend in high school that he grew up in a largely a-religious household. He told a friend at the University of Texas, where some years ago he was teaching, that he would like to be a believer but he’s an agnostic and he couldn’t be otherwise. So Rove’s approach has always been not that religion and the values of religion ought to have a place in our public policy, which is the message that he sent. Rove’s approach is that Christians are a marvelously effective voter delivery system that can be rallied, motivated, energized, and delivered for the political candidate of your choice.
GROSS: Are you confident that Karl Rove would still consider himself an agnostic?
SLATER: I know that he felt that way two years ago. I don’t know of any reason to think that he has changed that view. He certainly hasn’t told me that he has. It’s certainly possible. I think the evidence and the history is that he remains something of an agnostic, though he sees the Christians, and not just Christians but also orthodox Jews, to some extent, as a valuable voter source. With Rove, it’s about winning. With Karl Rove, it’s how can you put together a team and a constituency or a cluster of constituencies that delivers you 50 percent plus one of the vote? And that’s what it’s all about.
