Things You Should Be Reading

Three things you should be reading:

Two of them are from Daniel Larison. The first is this denouncement of the broad exception that Israel gets regarding international law and wars of aggression. I would advise Israeli hawks to listen to people like Drezner; we Americans know a thing or two about wars of aggression inspired by hyperbolic fears. I agree with his central assertion whole-heartedly though, and have made it somewhere on my blog before; essentially, that we should not concede to the hawks and neocons that the only argument is about the effectiveness of an invasion or assault. We should also be arguing about whether it's right or wrong to go to war. Old-fashioned notions I know.

Speaking of old-fashioned, perhaps you missed the revelation that former British Prime Minister Margeret Thatcher was secretly opposed to German re-unification. This is what Andrew Sullivan refers to as "staggering news", though as Drezner points out it made perfect sense at the time for British realists to be, if not opposed, then at least leery of German reunification. As Drezner explains, Britain had been opposed to the formation of a single strong continental power for centuries, and none of us had any reason to believe in 1989 (or 1991) that things would turn out as peaceful as they have. Of course now we associate Germany with economic progress and stability, but Margeret Thatcher was thinking of World War II. For my part, I was somewhat relieved to read about a nation's leader behaving in a manner that reflect caution and traditional interests. That sort of thing is passe around here these days.

Lastly, there's Glenn Greenwald on Bagram, the new "black hole" for terrorist detainees the world over:

No wonder they want to close Guantanamo: who wants to be bothered with irritating habeas reviews -- 28 out of 33 have resulted in judicial findings that insufficient evidence exists to justify the detention -- when you can just ship them off to the Black Hole of Bagram and imprison them for as long as you want with no court interference? Apparently, what the Bush administration did that was so terrible, the heinous "shredding of the Constitution" they perpetrated, wasn't about the fact that they imprisoned people indefinitely with no charges -- but that they did it in Cuba rather than somewhere else. Who knew that such grave Constitutional transgressions -- such severe denial of fundamental rights -- could be fixed so easily with a little change of scenery?

If I have written about the Obama administration's gradually worsening record on civil liberties and the "war on terror" (you thought it was over, didn't you?) it's only because of a blogging ennui in general, not because I'm giving the Obama administration a pass. As excited as I was about the Obama candidacy, not for one single instant did I believe that the Obama administration would easily surrender powers claimed by the Bush administration. To believe they would do so requires a willful ignorance of Presidential history. No President has ever surrendedered such power without a fight, and so the fight continues.

A Little Bit of Obama Administration Nonsense

Did officials in the Obama administration short-circuit a diplomatic effort on Syria so as to respond to Republican criticisms of their approach on Iran?

Intelligence Revelations

Over the last week we've learned a few interesting things about intelligence programs being run by the NSA and the CIA, and the participation of Bush administration officials in those programs. Last Wednesday it was revealed that the CIA concealed a top secret program from Congress for eight years. Congress became aware of the program only after they were of informed of it by current CIA director Leon Panetta, who himsefl learned of the program only last month. Over the weekend we learned that the CIA withheld information from Congress on the direct orders of Vice President Cheney, according to testimony before Congress by Leon Panetta. Panetta also indicated that the program had been canceled. And yesterday we learned that the program was an effort to assassinate Al Qaeda terrorists wherever they might be found, including in friendly countries. Now officials say that no assassination was ever carried out and due to legal and logistical problems, the program never left the planning stages. Of course, that leads one to wonder just why there was an effort to keep the program away from Congress completely, especially given that we have been assassinating Al Qaeda terrorists in Pakistan (a "friendly" country) for years now. If anything, one would think that Congress and the public in general would approve of targeted killings, which have the benefit of at least not killing dozens of civilians along with the terrorist you're trying to get. I'm almost willing to bet there's still more about the program we don't know yet, but we'll see.

Also, last Friday saw the release of a report compiled by the various agencies Inspectors General regarding the warrantless wiretapping program whose existence was revealed by the New York Times in late 2005. The report doesn't offer an opinion on the program's legality, but it does discuss the program's effectiveness, finding that most leads generated by the program were dead ends and that this was due in part to the extensive secrecy that surrounded the program.

The report also touches on the other intelligence-gathering program maintained by the Bush administration, the "unprecedented" data mining operation that we learned in December was the cause of a now infamous showdown between the Department of Justice and senior Bush administration officials. The report provides little detail about the program though, so though we are well aware that it existed at one time and was canceled when the DOJ officials threatened to resign over it, we still don't know exactly what it did or where all the data it collected has gone off to.

So, an interesting weekend to say the least.

UPDATE: Via Tim F, Philip Giraldi with an informative post on why the CIA assassination program would be so problematic and thus why it likely never came to fruition.

Defeat for Obama administration

And a deserved one, though not at the polls. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has repudiated the incredibly sweeping assertion of "state secrets" that the Obama administration has been peddling in a case concerning the rendition of several terrorist suspects. Glenn Greenwald explains:

Today, in a 26-page ruling the appellate court resoundingly rejected the Bush/Obama position, holding that the "state secrets" privilege -- except in extremely rare circumstances not applicable here -- does not entitle the Government to demand dismissal of an entire lawsuit based on the assertion that the "subject matter" of the lawsuit is a state secret. Instead, the privilege only allows the Government to make specific claims of secrecy with regard to specific documents and other facts -- exactly how the privilege was virtually always used before the Bush and Obama DOJs sought to expand it into a vast weapon of immunity from all lawsuits challenging the legality of any executive branch program relating to national security.

The ruling was by a three-judge panel, so the Obama administration is likely to request an en banc hearing, or appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.

UPDATE: Here's SCOTUSBlog, with an explanation of the split in the Courts of Appeal over the privilege, and how the Supreme Court may be forced to deal with it despite turning down a chance to rule on the privilege a year and a half ago.

Obama Administration to Release More Photos of Detainee Abuse

I'm genuinely surprised by this move:

The Obama administration agreed late Thursday to release dozens of photographs depicting alleged abuse by U.S. personnel during the Bush administration of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At least 44 pictures will be released on May 28 -- making public for the first time images of what the military investigated as abuse that took place at facilities other than the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Defense officials would not say exactly what is contained in the photos, but said they are concerned that the release could incite a backlash in the Middle East.

The photos are apparently not as shocking as the photographs from the Abu Ghraib investigation that became a lasting symbol of U.S. mistakes in Iraq. But some show military service members intimidating or threatening detainees by pointing weapons at them. Military officers have been court-martialed for threatening detainees at gunpoint.

Now as near as I can tell from this article, the release of the photos is prompted by an ACLU lawsuit. But of course, the Obama administration could simply do what the Bush administration did and refuse to disclose the photos, or fight a court order for years, or simply lose or destroy the photos. So the question is, why is Obama agreeing to release these photos now? It's not as if the furor over the most recent torture revelations will have died down in a month. Is he doing it because he feels it's necessary to air our dirty laundry so we can move on after having a full public accounting of our practices in the war on terror? Does he want to fan the ardor those calling for the prosecution of Bush administration officials (albeit in a back-handed way)? Or does he sincerely believe that the right thing for the government to do is release even the most politically inconvenient information when it's required by law? I'm genuinely puzzled; eight years of Bush malfeasance and Democratic ineptitude has conditioned me to expect the worse I suppose.

DOJ on Torture Prosecutions: "Not So Fast White House"

Yesterday we learned that contrary to signals sent out over the weekend, Obama has not foreclosed the possibility of criminal prosecutions for those in the Bush administration who crafted the torture policies. Why the sudden reversal? Scott Horton says that lawyers for the DOJ were "incensed" that the White House was circumventing the criminal justice system for political purposes:

Members of the White House press corps struggled to explain the shift, many of them suggesting that Obama was pandering to his political base. But the winds of change blew in from an address just down Pennsylvania Avenue. The Daily Beast has learned that senior Justice Department lawyers were “incensed” at the Emanuel and Gibbs statements, as one put it—not because they disagreed with Obama’s apparent opposition to an investigation and prosecution, but because the statements violated well-established rules separating political figures in the White House from decisions about active criminal cases. The statements were viewed as a frontal assault on the autonomy and independence of the criminal-justice system. “Emanuel got far ahead of the process and described it in a way that clearly suggested that political judgment was driving the entire process,” one senior Justice official told me. “It was depressing and amateurish.”

Now the White House misstep may in fact be propelling the process in the opposite direction. Another Justice Department official observed, “The department is now in the process of making some very tough decisions about what to do with this extremely complex and difficult matter. Emanuel’s statement was unfortunate, because now if the attorney general decides against appointing a special prosecutor, people are going to believe that this was a politically dictated decision. The only clear way out of this bind may now be to do what the critics suggest and appoint a special prosecutor.” Demands for the appointment of a special prosecutor have been proliferating in recent days following the release of the torture memoranda on April 16.

As Horton notes, the DOJ was widely criticized for overt politicization during the Bush years. Apparently members of the DOJ are eager to avoid that label again, and is my sincerest hope that this displeasure demonstrates an independence that long ago disappeared while Bush was in office.

Olbermann: "It Is Not, However...Enough"

Sometimes, Olbermann's righteous indignation is the only appropriate response:

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Wednesday Evening Links

1. A poignant article about how real life-and cheap-ass taxpayers-can get in the way of students living their dreams. Maybe she wouldn't make it to Juilliard, but why can't she have every opportunity to explore her talent while also getting a useful degree?

2. Randy Cohen, writing about how we should only have so much tolerance for the beliefs and practices of other culture.

3. I can't remember if I linked to this already, but the NY Times had this worrisome piece about Pakistan's instability in last Sunday's magazine. You can be rest assured that if Pakistan falls to pieces, the Taliban in Afghanistan will be the least of our worries.

4. Gun nuts protest even the most minor of tracking measures designed to help law enforcement prevent the flow of weapons to Mexican drug cartels.

5. CIA Intelligence officials bitch and moan about the release of OLC memos related to torture, threaten to hold their breaths and turn blue if the Obama administration follows through on its promise.

6. Via War & Piece, NY Times reveals that NSA has-surprise-exceeded it's Congressional authority in eavesdropping on Americans. I suppose supports the Obama administration's that there should be absolutely no judicial oversight of NSA wiretapping whatsoever.

More Truth

The Obama administration will release three DOJ memos that provide the rationale for "enhanced interrogation" techniques (i.e., torture) utilized in the war on terror.

"Fundamental Question"

Regarding this post yesterday, encouraging signs from the Obama administration:

As part of the same set of decisions, according to senior civilian and military officials familiar with the internal White House debate, Mr. Obama will have to choose from among a range of options for future American commitments to Afghanistan.

His core decision may be whether to scale back American ambitions there to simply assure it does not become a sanctuary for terrorists. “We are taking this back to a fundamental question,” a senior diplomat involved in the discussions said. “Can you ever get a central government in Afghanistan to a point where it can exercise control over the country? That was the problem Bush never really confronted.”

A second option, officials say, is to significantly boost the American commitment to train Afghan troops, with Americans taking on the Taliban with increasing help from the Afghan military. President Bush pursued versions of that strategy, but the training always took longer and proved less successful than plans called for.

A third option would involve devoting full American and NATO resources to a large-scale counterinsurgency effort. But Mr. Obama would be bound to face considerable opposition within NATO, whose leaders he will meet with early next month in Strasbourg, France. At the very time the United States is seeking to expand its presence in Afghanistan, many of the allies are scheduled to leave.

Emphasis mine. Of course this anonymous statement comes in the same article that discusses how administration officials are weighing drone strikes even deeper into Pakistan...but still, at least they're talking a good game.

In The Category of Empty Rationales

I'm trying not to get too entirely caught up in the ranting surrounding the AIG bonus debacle, but this is too amusing/maddening not to mention. From Andrew Sorkin's column in the NY Times yesterday:

Now we can debate why A.I.G. felt it necessary to guarantee seven executives at least $3 million apiece when the economy was clearly on shaky ground. Perhaps we will find out these contracts were a bit of sleight of hand to enrich executives who knew this financial Titanic had hit the iceberg. But another possible explanation is that A.I.G. knew it needed to keep its people.

That is the explanation offered by Edward M. Liddy, who was installed as A.I.G.’s chief executive when the government effectively nationalized the company last fall. (He is being paid $1 a year.)

“We cannot attract and retain the best and brightest talent to lead and staff” the company “if employees believe that their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the U.S. Treasury,” he said.

And in the NY Times this morning:

The bonuses that the American International Group awarded last week were paid to 418 employees and included $33.6 million for 52 people who have left the failed insurance conglomerate, according to the office of the New York attorney general.

Really, there's nothing I can add to that.

UPDATE: I blogged too soon. David Leonhardt asks whether retention bonuses are even necessary to retain talent at firms like AIG. The answer, according to his research, appears to be no. Also, in general, Leonhardt's column is a good kickoff for a conversation we really ought to be having about executive compensation at large corporations. You may recall that we already had a national conversation about this earlier this decade, but the collapse of various individual corporations apparently was not painful enough to prompt serious reform. Of course, things are slightly different this time around.

Leonhardt says something else worth nothing:

The larger question is how to change the rules on corporate pay to reduce the odds of future crises. Throughout this crisis, policy makers, starting with President George Bush and Ben Bernanke and now including President Obama, have been a bit too deferential to Wall Street. That deference has fed populist anger, which threatens the political viability of the necessary continuing bailout of the credit markets.

The bonus scandal offers Mr. Obama and Mr. Bernanke a chance to get ahead of the curve — so long as they come up with changes that extend well beyond A.I.G.

I think Leonhardt is on to something here. This mess with AIG has damaged the credibility of the Obama administration, but it also presents an opportunity for the administration to use the populist anger it's generated to build political momentum for real reforms. The administration's handling of Wall Street thus far hasn't inspired any confidence in me that they'll recognize or seize this opportunity, but it's there for the taking nonetheless.

AIG Bonuses

Do you know what's most infuriating about this AIG bonuses debacle? That much of the anger directed at AIG and the executives and traders who will receive this money will spill over on the Obama administration. And deservedly so, in my opinion, as the Treasure Department "reluctantly" approved the bonuses even before news of them became public, and Obama himself apparently didn't become outraged about them until yesterday even though the Treasury Department has known for months that the bonuses would be an issue. And now Obama has ordered Treasure to "pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses" but the only plan proposed thus appears-ridiculously-to be a plan to "recoup" the bonus payments with future bailout money! It is not possible to overstate how weak it makes the Obama administration look that they cannot prevent the payout of egregious bonuses to the very people who produced the present crisis at AIG, even as the administration is lining up to give AIG another $30 billion. This will damage not only future efforts to contain the credit crisis on Wall Street (though who even knows what those efforts are yet?) but also efforts to get future stimulus legislation through Congress if and when it becomes necessary. What's truly angering is that this all appears to be an entirely self-inflicted wound. Had the Geithner and the Obama administration anticipated this crisis, they could've pressured AIG quietly in advance to ditch the bonus idea or forfeit the possibility of future bailout money. Now, they can only make a half-assed effort to get money back that's already been paid out, and run the risk of looking completely impotent in the face of AIG executives whose company is on the public dole. Unbelievable.

UPDATE: And now members of the Obama administration are trying to throw Sen. Chris Dodd under the bus, blaming him for a provision in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that allowed AIG to hand out bonuses last Friday (via Glenn Greenwald.) Except oops...that's not true. As Jane Hamsher explains, Dodd actually pushed for a provision that would've prevented such bonuses, and was talked back from it by-can you guess?-Geithner and the Treasury Department.  So to recap...the Treasury Dept. approves the bonuses, is caught off guard by popular outrage, then tries to blame Sen. Dodd for the mess (counting on useful idiots in the media and right-wing blogs) then Obama gets "outraged" yesterday, and now in Washington there is much weeping and gnashing of the teeth as Americans go hunting for their pitchforks and torches. All for $165 million, a pittance compared to the vast sums spent so far trying to repair our damaged economy. Well done fellas. Well done. 

More Handwringing

Of Obama's decision to reverse Bush's ban on federal funding for stem cell research, Yuval Levin has this to say:

...legitimate dispute underlies the stem cell debate. But that is not the ground on which the president made his case yesterday. He argued that to deny free rein to stem cell science is to ignore and reject the promise of science as such. In a barely concealed swipe at his predecessor, he pledged that his administration would "make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology."

The executive order Obama signed omits any mention of ethical debate. The entirety of the case it makes for itself is that "advances over the past decade in this promising scientific field have been encouraging, leading to broad agreement in the scientific community that the research should be supported by Federal funds." And while Obama promised that his policy would be bound by ethical guidelines, he left it to the scientists of the National Institutes of Health to define the rules. The issue, he suggested, is a matter of science, not politics.

But science policy is not just a matter of science. Like all policy, it calls for a balancing of priorities and concerns, and it requires a judgment of needs and values that in a democracy we trust to our elected officials. In science policy, science informs, but politics governs, and rightly so.

There are, of course, different ways for politics to exert authority over science. To distort or hide unwelcome facts is surely illegitimate. But to weigh facts against societal priorities -- economic, political and ethical -- in making decisions is the very definition of policymakers' duty. And to govern the practice of scientific techniques that threaten to violate important moral boundaries is not only legitimate but in some cases essential.

Levin focuses on Obama's stem cell announcement, but what he says he's most upset about is this idea that science alone will dictate policy-making in the Obama administration. But where is the evidence for this? That Obama entirely avoids engaging in an ethical debate over the morality of stem cell research; Levin offers us this quote from when Obama was still serving in the Senate: "...the promise that stem cells hold does not come from any particular ideology; it is the judgment of science, and we deserve a president who will put that judgment first." To Levin this is succumbing to the "technocratic temptation", to let scientific experts make decisions that ought properly to be made via the democratic process.

I'm trying not to split hairs too finely here, but it seems to me that Obama has made an ethical determination, as indicated by that prior statement, and with this decision, to drop the ban on stem cell research; the decision being that there is no ethical debate to be had about the morality of funding such research. Levin says: "Science is a glorious thing, but it is no substitute for wisdom, prudence or democracy." But how is it not democratic for Obama to express this opinion prior to his election, be elected, and then enact his expressed opinion into law? Science has not over-ruled that democratic process; science has been affirmed by the democratic process. And I do not see how referring the determination of ethical guidelines for this research to a scientific organization like the National Institutes for Health is a subversion of the democratic process either. Scientists and ethicists draw up research guidelines all of the time, and if people object they may-in the form of Congress-rewrite those guidelines. But society has spoken broadly that this funding is acceptable.

Robert George and Eric Cohen are more direct, if also more disingenuous. They think that stem cell research will result in the deliberate creation and destruction of embryos that are the equivalent of living persons, and they're not happy about it:

First, the Obama policy is itself blatantly political. It is red meat to his Bush-hating base, yet pays no more than lip service to recent scientific breakthroughs that make possible the production of cells that are biologically equivalent to embryonic stem cells without the need to create or kill human embryos. Inexplicably -- apart from political motivations -- Mr. Obama revoked not only the Bush restrictions on embryo destructive research funding, but also the 2007 executive order that encourages the National Institutes of Health to explore non-embryo-destructive sources of stem cells.

At least they give Obama credit for making a "political" and not merely scientific and technocratic decision (at least at first.) That said, the idea that this is "red meat" for the base is absurd. In a Gallup Poll conducted at the end of last month, 52% of respondents said that the government should either ease restrictions on funding for stem cell research, or lift restrictions altogether. 52% of the country is hardly a "base"; rather, it demonstrates that a lifting of the ban has broad support. But following all that, they do attack the decision for being "anti-democratic":

Second and more fundamentally, the claim about taking politics out of science is in the deepest sense antidemocratic. The question of whether to destroy human embryos for research purposes is not fundamentally a scientific question; it is a moral and civic question about the proper uses, ambitions and limits of science. It is a question about how we will treat members of the human family at the very dawn of life; about our willingness to seek alternative paths to medical progress that respect human dignity.

For those who believe in the highest ideals of deliberative democracy, and those who believe we mistreat the most vulnerable human lives at our own moral peril, Mr. Obama's claim of "taking politics out of science" should be lamented, not celebrated.

Now obviously, what Obama was referring to with his desire to take the politics out of science, was the Bush administration's well known penchant for making even scientific decisions political. If federal agencies produced information indicating that global warming was both real and man-made, that information was to be suppressed to one extent or another. Abstinence-only sex education was held paramount, even though research indicates that it is less effective than sex education that teaches about safe sex. This is the sort of thing that Cohen and George seem to favor; the suppression of legitimate scientific inquiry and the politicization of scientific data to meet already agreed upon policy goals. But how is it more democratic to keep Americans ignorant, or unaware, or to hide scientific data that is unfavorable to powerful political interests even if it would be useful to Americans as a whole?

This argument is of course disingenuous and ridiculous. Cohen and George want the blatant politicization of science; they want stem cell research to be unfunded by the federal government even though most people desire it to some extent because they disagree with it, and their moral disapproval should be good enough for you because they're right about embryos and you're not. To offer some token and vacuous appreciation for the "stem-cell debate" at the end of their column, a debate they would continue to short-circuit if they were at all able to do so, is absurd.

Obama has announced a decision that will hopefully lead to scientific advances that will improve the lives of countless millions or billions the world over. He has announced that scientific inquiry will no longer be suppressed or perverted to meet moralistic policy goals. Americans are broadly supportive of this approach. This isn't anti-democratic; it's democracy at work.

Dumb

I'm not entirely sure what the point of this article is:

President Obama’s directive on Monday to “guarantee scientific integrity” in federal policy making could have a far-reaching impact, affecting issues as varied as climate change, national security, protection of endangered species and children’s health.

But it will not divorce science from politics, or strip ideology from presidential decisions.

Mr. Obama delighted many scientists and patients by formally announcing that he was overturning the Bush administration’s limits on embryonic stem cell research. But the president also went one step further, issuing a memorandum that sets forth broad parameters for how his administration would choose expert advisers and use scientific data.

The document orders Mr. Obama’s top science adviser to help draft guidelines that will apply to every federal agency. Agencies will be expected to pick science advisers based on expertise, not political ideology, the memorandum said, and will offer whistle-blower protections to employees who expose the misuse or suppression of scientific information.

The idea, the president said in remarks before an audience of lawmakers, scientists, patients advocates and patients in the East Room, is to ensure that “we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology”: a line that drew more applause than any other. Irv Weissman, who directs an institute at Stanford University devoted to studying stem cells, called the declaration “of even greater importance” than the stem cell announcement itself.

It was also another in a long string of rebukes by Mr. Obama toward his predecessor, President George W. Bush. Mr. Bush was often accused of trying to shade or even suppress the findings of government scientists on climate change, sex education, contraceptives and other issues, as well as stem cells. But Mr. Obama’s announcement does not elevate science to some new and exalted place in his administration.

“Scientists should have no illusions about whether they make policy — they don’t,” said Harold Varmus, president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and co-chairman of a panel that advises Mr. Obama on science matters.

The directive, Dr. Varmus said, was simply intended “to provide the best available scientific information” to those who make policy decisions.

So if you follow that, the fact that the Obama administration has altered standards to ensure that scientific principles are rigorously followed in the hiring of science advisors and in crafting policy is Obama, according to the headline of this article, putting "his own spin on mix of science with politics" and this does not "elevate science to some new and exalted place in his administration." Worse yet, the reporter gives Bush administration officials venue to spout nonsense like this:

But Mr. Bush’s defenders see Mr. Obama as just imposing an ideology of his own. They say Mr. Bush did not ignore scientific facts; rather, he took the counsel of scientists and used it to make a policy determination that reflected his values, just as Mr. Obama is doing in lifting Mr. Bush’s restrictions on stem cell research.

“Those who suggest that the Bush administration did not rigorously apply science are themselves ignoring the facts,” said Karl Rove, the former president’s political strategist.

Mr. Rove called Mr. Obama’s declaration on restoring scientific integrity “simply hyperbole and hyperventilation,” and he disputed Mr. Waxman’s accusation on climate change, saying the Bush White House “put more money into global climate research than any administration in history, by a significant factor.”

Why were any former administration officials even asked their opinion on this change, other than out of some sort of misguided sense of journalistic fairness and "balance" that requires any news that might be somewhat favorable to the present administration to be balanced by critiques, however disingenuous and uninformed, from Republican partisans? It's not as if reporters for the NY Times didn't repeatedly chronicle throughout the Bush administration's tenure one bastard hybridization of science and policy after another. And where does the throwaway line about the "exalted" place of science come from? Are NY Times readers now so stupid that they don't realize that this decision doesn't mean a cabal of scientists will now rule the nation?
What a dumb and useless article.

The Obama "Strategy"

Kevin Drum quotes Ross Douthat, who thinks he sees a grand strategy at work in the Obama administration's spending:

What you see in his budgeting proposals, I think, is the liberal equivalent of the conservative attempt to "starve the beast." In both the Reagan and Bush eras, Republicans passed tax cuts and ran up large deficits while hoping that by starving the federal government of revenue they would curb its long-run growth. Obama's spending proposals would effectively reverse that dynamic — they would create new spending commitments and run up large deficits, in the hopes that the dollars poured into health care and education will create a new baseline for government's obligations, which in turn will create the political space for tax increases on the middle class. Like the starve-the-beast approach, the Obama strategy puts off the hard part till tomorrow: Give them tax cuts today, conservatives said, and they'll swallow spending cuts tomorrow; give them universal health care, universal pre-K, subsidies for green industry and all the rest of it today, liberals seem to be thinking, and they'll be willing to pay for it tomorrow.

Kevin Drum agrees with this assessment, and thinks this explains why Republicans in Congress are utterly opposed to every spending bill. But as I was explaining to Nat-Wu and Adam in an email, I don't think this is a strategy so much as a description of events. To quote myself:

Liberals think these things are good and that people will want to pay for them. We enact them and lo, we are right! It seems more a description of events than a plan for them.

That doesn't meant that Douthat isn't on to something about putting off to the future necessary tax increases. Given a choice I think most people will pay more in taxes rather than see substantial cuts to programs they like. I suppose you can deride this as salesmanship, but it's also out of political necessity. If you tried to enact these programs at the same time that you substantially raise taxes on the wealthy and marginally raise them on the middle class, you're pretty much ensuring the death of your proposal. I suppose that's political strategy, but it's not really a conspiracy to enact vast social safety programs that people don't know they want yet. It just happens to make it very difficult for Republicans to stop these programs from getting enacted, though that's largely because most Americans agree on the need for the programs.

Housing Program Guidelines Out

The Obama administration has unveiled the new housing assistance program. The guidelines (found on the program's official website) are not entirely clear, but the NY Times breaks it down for you in this graph here. Essentially the program is aimed at two classes of borrowers, strong borrowers whose mortgage balances are high in proportion to the value of their home because of a drop in value, and "at-risk" borrowers whose home value has dropped and who are struggling to make payments. But there are losers too; the program will not cover loans over $729, 750, or owners who owe more than 105% of the value of their home. As that article notes, estimates are that the program could save 600,000 to 2.6 million homes from foreclosure, though of course for many it will only stave off the inevitable. 

Obama and the NSA

While the Obama administration has taken a turn in the (somewhat) right direction by choosing to charge al-Marri in the criminal justice system, they are still going to incredible lengths to defend the NSA domestic surveillance program by denying those who have been subject to surveillance even their day in court. And yes, Greenwald is right to call out the boneheaded commentators who were howling with outrage at the overreaching of the Bush administration, but who seem to believe that it's okay if the Obama administration makes exactly the same arguments and exerts exactly the same degree of executive outrage because "there's much we don't know." That is exactly the damn point. 

I am not reassured at all by the Obama administration's approach on the warrantless wiretapping program, and I am stunned that the DOJ-which is now chock full of people who in recent years wrote one op-ed after another opposing these programs-is now suddenly defending the extreme positions of the Bush administration. If anything, the fact that the Obama administration can defend these programs only makes me even more suspicious. What the hell is going on at the NSA, that a liberal President will make every last argument to defend it?

Via ScotusBlog, the ACLU is reporting that the Obama administration is planning to take Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri out of custody at the naval brig in South Carolina where he is being held and try him in the criminal courts (h/t Adam.) The significance of this move lies in the fact that in doing so, the Obama administration would effectively moot the case that Al-Marri has pending before the Supreme Court, which is scheduled to hear arguments at the end of April. Were the Supreme Court to dismiss the matter as a result, this would leave unanswered one of the greatest legal question posed by the Bush administration during the "war on terror": whether the President has the authority to order the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects captured on U.S. soil. Naturally Al-Marri and the ACLU would prefer that this not happen, as this would effectively destroy any opportunity for the Supreme Court to limit the executive authority to detain individuals indefinitely. Although it is not unheard of for the Supreme Court to hear cases that are moot (Roe v. Wade is one example) they are loathe to do so, and I don't think there's a high likelihood that Al-Marri's case will long survive his transfer to the criminal justice system.

Just last week I discussed Jane Mayer's "The Hard Cases", where she wrties at length about the unique difficulties presented by detainees like Al-Marri. In it she explored the possibility of the creation of a special national security court, or the possibility of "preventive" detention. It would seem that if the Obama administration is declining to have Al-Marri's case heard before the Supreme Court, they are also demurring on an opportunity to defend their authority to order indefinite detention, as well as retreating from the possibility of a national security court that could order something like preventive detention. I for one am pleased that Al-Marri will get the criminal trial he should've had after he was arrested in 2001 (even with the difficulties posed by the fact that his original case was dismissed with prejudice.) But what the Obama administration intends to signal about the breadth of executive authority with this move is unclear, at least to me.

Blockade

More on the ridiculous "pasta blockade" that Israel has instituted over Gaza:

For more than seven weeks, the international aid group Mercy Corps has been trying to send 90 tons of macaroni to the isolated Gaza Strip as part of a global campaign to help the 1.4 million Palestinians there rebuild their lives after Israel's recent devastating 22-day military operation.

Israel, which controls most of what goes into and out of Gaza, has said no repeatedly.

At first, Israeli officials said that they wanted to make sure that the macaroni wasn't destined for a Hamas charity. Then they said macaroni was banned because they didn't consider it an essential food item.

On Wednesday, days after American lawmakers raised pointed questions about the macaroni ban, Israeli authorities said that they were preparing to give the pasta a green light.

For the international aid community, the dispute is emblematic of the red tape and political maneuvering that have stymied efforts to rebuild Gaza.

"We're at the end of our rope," said David Holdridge, the head of Middle East emergency relief efforts for Mercy Corps. "This is just ridiculous. It's absolutely absurd."

[...]

The macaroni standoff drew the attention of U.S. lawmakers who made a rare trip last week to the Gaza Strip.

"Is someone going to kill you with a piece of macaroni?" Rep. Brian Baird, a Washington state Democrat who joined Minnesota Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison in visiting Gaza, reportedly said after hearing about the aid restrictions.

Along with macaroni, Israel has prevented aid groups that are helping Gaza from sending in everything from paper and crayons to tomato paste and lentils.

As international donors prepare to meet next week in Egypt to discuss a massive, coordinated global rebuilding initiative, Israel is making it clear that it will block any projects that could help Hamas.

Since that definition could be expanded to include anything that keeps Palestinians alive, it's no wonder spaghetti is blacklisted. One would think that after the recent inauguration of a new President who is expected to scrutinize Israeli actions in Gaza more carefully, the Israeli government would be more careful about public relations. Instead they appear to want to give themselves a black eye over ridiculous, non-consequential food items.

Obama To Propose Tax Increases

We discussed only yesterday David Leonhardt's article for the NY Times, in which it becomes clear that taxes will have to rise if government is to continue providing social services that Americans have become accustomed to. In that vein, the Obama administration will propose reducing the value of itemized deductions for taxpayers in top brackets, raising revenue for the government for things like major health care reform:

The president will also propose, in the 10-year budget he is to release Thursday, to use revenues from the centerpiece of his environmental policy — a plan under which companies must buy permits to exceed pollution emission caps — to pay for an extension of a two-year tax credit that benefits low-wage and middle-income people.

The combined effect of the two revenue-raising proposals, on top of Mr. Obama’s existing plan to roll back the Bush-era income tax reductions on households with income exceeding $250,000 a year, would be a pronounced move to redistribute wealth by reimposing a larger share of the tax burden on corporations and the most affluent taxpayers.

Administration officials said Mr. Obama would propose to reduce the value of itemized tax deductions for everyone in the top income tax bracket, 35 percent, and many of those in the 33 percent bracket — roughly speaking, starting at $250,000 in annual income for a married couple.

Under existing law, the tax benefit of itemizing deductions rises with a taxpayer’s marginal tax bracket (the bracket that applies to the last dollar of income). For example, $10,000 in itemized deductions reduces tax liability by $3,500 for someone in the 35 percent bracket.

This is sort of a backhanded way of raising taxes, but whatever. Of course, Republicans will oppose it:

“Everyone agrees that all Americans deserve access to affordable health care,” Mr. Boehner said in a statement, “but is increasing taxes during an economic recession, especially on small businesses, the right way to accomplish that goal?”

So Republicans will continue to adhere to the "if the economy is good, cut taxes; if the economy is bad, cut taxes" philosophy. That's fine. Increasing taxes is a hard sell, but I think it'll get done. That is, if people can be persuaded that such is the cost of the things they want government to provide.

UPDATE: This Bloomberg article breaks down the costs of health care reform and the revenue produced by tax increases in greater detail. It also makes it clear that these tax increases won't be enough, and that more are certainly on the way if we have any hope of successfully completing a reform program and cutting what is projected to be a $1.75 trillion deficit.

UPDATE II: About that cap-and-trade program, Rep. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, has a different idea; take the revenue from permit and give it back to Americans in the form of a dividend. I seriously doubt this proposal will go anywhere, but interesting nonetheless. Generally though I favor the government using the money in aggregate on social programs, rather than me using a monthly check to go out to dinner somewhere.