Judge blocks most controversial parts of Arizona immigration law

By Eric Zimmermann - 07/28/10 08:42 PM ET

A federal judge on Wednesday struck down key provisions of a controversial Arizona immigration law, stoking a divisive debate that hangs over this November’s congressional elections.

Democrats hailed the preliminary injunction by U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton as protecting a federal responsibility, while Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and other Republicans seized on it as an intrusion into states’ rights.

The Obama administration brought the lawsuit against Arizona’s law this summer despite polls that show the measure is popular nationwide. 

Nevertheless, Democrats hope the suit will benefit them by attracting Hispanic voters who think the law would lead to racial profiling by police.
One of the provisions struck down on Wednesday would have required police who stop individuals for other reasons to verify their citizenship if there’s a “reasonable suspicion” that the person stopped is an illegal immigrant.
The ruling also granted an injunction against a provision of the law that would force immigrants to carry proof of immigration status and make it a crime for illegal immigrants to seek employment in the state.
In explaining her preliminary injunction, Bolton wrote that the law probably pre-empted federal law, the basis for the Justice Department’s argument.
“Preserving the status quo through a preliminary injunction is less harmful than allowing state laws that are likely pre-empted by federal law to be enforced,” Bolton wrote.
“There is a substantial likelihood that officers will wrongfully arrest legal resident aliens under the new [law]. By enforcing this statute, Arizona would impose a ‘distinct, unusual and extraordinary’ burden on legal resident aliens that only the federal government has the authority to impose,” her decision read.
Republicans argue the administration’s decision to challenge the popular law will only intensify voters’ anger at the party in power.
A key part of the GOP argument is that the Obama administration and congressional Democrats have expanded the reach of the federal government with legislation on healthcare and financial reform that intrudes on state governments and private businesses. The suit against Arizona’s law plays into that argument.
“Instead of wasting taxpayer resources filing a lawsuit against Arizona and complaining that the law would be burdensome, the Obama administration should have focused its efforts on working with Congress to provide the necessary resources to support the state in its efforts to act where the federal government has failed to take responsibility,” McCain and fellow Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl said in a statement.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, predicted that her state would prevail in the fight with the government and vowed to appeal the ruling, which could land the matter in the Supreme Court.
Latino groups, many of which had urged boycotts against Arizona, rejoiced at news of the injunction.
“Not only did the judge side with the Latino community, she sided with the Constitution,” said Janet Murguia, president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza. “This is an unequivocal victory. The ruling enjoins the crux of the law that would have legitimized racial profiling.”
Hispanics were a key segment of Obama’s winning coalition in 2008, but the president’s support among that group of voters has fallen significantly since he has taken office, according to polls. If Hispanics do not turn out to the polls this fall, it could hurt candidates in states such as California, Colorado and Nevada, where Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) faces a tough reelection fight.
Advocates for Hispanic-Americans and key members of Congress such as Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) have voiced frustration with Obama for not doing more to push comprehensive immigration reform that would include a pathway to citizenship for the country’s illegal immigrants.
“I’m glad to see the judge did enjoin what clearly is a federal responsibility, and I think it was important to do,” Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said on MSNBC shortly after the ruling. “I wish that the governor of Arizona and others would talk to their United States senators and say that we need that kind of comprehensive reform.”
Immigration is an issue that divides the Democratic Party, however, and some members were in no mood to celebrate the ruling.
“There are no winners here — no matter what the courts ultimately decide, we will still have wasted millions of dollars and our borders will still not be secure,” said Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-Ariz.), who opposed the law.
She said the administration should focus on immigration reform instead of the Arizona law.
“The administration needs to stop pursuing this distraction and start working with us to get the border region under control and develop a national immigration strategy,” she said.
This story was originally posted at 6:13 p.m. and updated at 8:42 p.m.

Dem senators want congressional approval for Afghan engagement

By Jordan Fabian - 07/28/10 11:22 AM ET

Two Democratic senators wrote President Obama on Wednesday requesting that future agreements between the U.S. and Afghan governments be subject to Senate approval. 

Sens. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), a staunch critic of the Afghan war, and Jim Webb (D-Va.), a former Republican Secretary of the Navy, requested that any bilateral agreement between the U.S. and Afghanistan with regard to “our long-term relationship and military operations in that country” be approved by the Senate in the form of a treaty. 

”We do not believe that a long-term, open-ended presence of U.S. military forces in Afghanistan serves our national interest,” they wrote. “Most importantly, we believe that any consideration of such a prospect must be taken with the full advice and consent of the Senate.”

If such an agreement were put into the form of a treaty, two-thirds of the Senate would have approve it to have it go into effect. 

The senators’ letter came one day after the House signed off on a $59 billion supplemental spending bill that included $33 billion in additional funding for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, sending it to Obama for his signature.

Skepticism of the Afghanistan war has heightened among some lawmakers since the release of 92,000 secret government documents by the organization WikiLeaks.  

The documents say that Pakistani intelligence agents have assisted Islamic extremists operating in Afghanistan despite the fact their government receives anti-terror aid from the United States. 

The doubts have created a divide most noticeably among Democrats. On Tuesday, 102 House Democrats voted against war funding, as opposed to 32 who voted against it last year.

Webb and Feingold noted that, as a senator, Obama supported legislation during the Bush administration that would have applied similar congressional approval to agreements between the U.S. and Iraq. 

They wrote that the “failure to submit the [majority security agreement with Iraq] as a treaty ... entailed significant risks implicating our nation as a whole including operational constraints on one hand and a failure to specify an end-point for our security commitments on the other.” 

Feingold voted against the supplemental funding for the troops, arguing that a hard deadline of troop withdrawal is needed. 

Read the full letter here. 

Reid moves closer to ending secret holds in Senate

By Michael O'Brien - 07/28/10 09:58 AM ET

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) added a bill to eliminate the practice of secret holds on nominees to the Senate calendar on Wednesday.

Reid added Sen. Ron Wyden's (D-Ore.) legislation to do away with the longstanding Senate tradition of being able to anonymously halt a president's nominees in the Senate.

Adding the legislation to the calendar has the effect of moving the legislation closer to the point where Reid could bring it up for a vote.

If Reid does bring it up, it appears that he may have the votes to do away with the practice after Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) lobbied Senate colleagues to end it. Sixty-seven votes are needed to change Senate rules, and McCaskill, as of late June, had said she'd gathered 68.

The Wyden bill wouldn't do away with the practice of holds entirely; rather, it would require that senators publicly disclose when they have put a hold on a nominee.

Republicans have used the practice to some effect while doing their work as an opposition party. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) notoriously placed a blanket hold on 70 of President Obama's nominees, until relenting under public pressure. Democrats also used the policy aggressively against many of President George W. Bush's nominees during the past decade, as well.

America's Top Mediator Heads to the Gulf

Kenneth Feinberg tackled executive pay and 9/11. Now for BP spill compensation.

By Kate Sheppard | Wed Jul. 28, 2010 3:00 AM PDT

---

Somewhere along the line, Kenneth Feinberg became the go-to mediator for the country. Most recently, he took a turn as executive pay czar [1], tapped by the Obama administration to oversee the compensation of executives at companies which received federal bailout money. He's officially done with that job at the end of this month. Then, he'll move into the job of Gulf oil fund czar full time, a role in which he'll be charged with making sure those hurt by the spill are properly compensated.
Add these two roles to an already lengthy list of high-profile mediations. After serving as special master of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, dispensing $7 billion to the more than 5,000 survivors and relatives of those lost in those attacks, Feinberg administrated the fund established in the wake of the April 2007 Virginia Tech shootings. In June, he was called in to help mediate disputes with Maricopa County, Ariz.'s infamous Sheriff Joe Arpaio [2]. All of this leads to an obvious question: Why him?

"I think there are millions of Americans that, if asked, could do just what I'm doing," Feinberg told an audience at Public Citizen on Tuesday, in one of his first public appearances since he was tapped as spill czar. He acknowledged that tackling touchy issues is a tough job. "I have experience. I think that's what people look to: Experience dealing with mass claims involving not only substance, but the emotion of people you're dealing with," he said.
He'll be handling claims with plenty of both when he moves his focus to the Gulf spill on August 1. BP has yet to make the first payment into what will be a $20 billion escrow fund that Feinberg is tasked with doling out. The company is supposed to set aside $5 billion a year for the next four years for the fund. Getting that up and running can't happen fast enough, as BP is already facing allegations [3] of cutting spill victims off from much-needed funds.
Feinberg has already been busy making stops around the Gulf region [4] in hopes of winning over residents who worry that the fund might yield less compensation than lawsuits against BP. He acknowledges that the job ahead of him is difficult, and possibly more complicated than other cases he's mediated where the liability has been more clear. In the Gulf, he'll have to deal with a litany of unknown environmental and health harms, most of which aren't going to be immediately apparent.
"One of the challenges I will have, as I did with 9/11, is calculating with a murky crystal ball what is a future claim worth," said Feinberg, citing health concerns that might manifest years later, or difficult-to-determine damages to the Gulf ecosystem. He offered a fishing example: If they determine fisherman will be out of work for a year and offer a $180,000 compensation, what happens when the fisherman argues that he might in fact be out of work for two years? "That individual will be offered $180,000, and if he or she doesn't want it, don't take it," he says.
Other challenges lie ahead. First, there's the question of what constitutes an eligible claim. "It's easy if there's a motel on the beach and no customers or no clients or guests because there's oil there. Or you're a fisherman who can't fish because of the oil," said Feinberg. "But what if you're a motel 40 miles from beach and say business is down a third because of perception of the spill, even though the oil never got to the beach? Is that a valid claim?"
The other major problem will be documentation, especially in a region where many work in an underground economy with little or no documentation of their wages. To deal with that, he said he expects to have to take "much less documentation than would otherwise be required," like letters certifying employment from ship captains rather than official tax forms or pay stubs.
He was also optimistic about holding BP accountable for reimbursing all injured parties with the $20 billion escrow fund. And, "if it's insufficient," he says, "BP has promised to honor any additional final obligations."
Even with BP footing the bill, Feinberg will have his work cut out for him in assessing short- and long-term damages.
"I'm trying to get the money out to these people," said Feinberg. "I'm the fiduciary for the people in the Gulf."

Fear Factor: What's Keeping the President From Picking the Best Person to Protect Consumers?

Arianna Huffington

Posted: July 27, 2010 05:27 PM

On Monday, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs lauded Elizabeth Warren as "a terrific candidate" to lead the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: "I don't think any criticism in any way by anybody would disqualify her."
So why isn't the White House rushing to nominate her for the position? In a word: fear.
The same fear-based approach that caused the administration to throw Shirley Sherrod under the bus before her name had even been uttered on Fox News is once again rearing its head in the decision-making process over Warren.
This time, it's not the ire of Glenn Beck that has Team Obama's backbone turning to mush -- it's the fear of angering the bankers by appointing a consumer advocate who might actually advocate for consumers (the same consumers who, in their role as taxpayers, have spent hundreds of billions bailing the bankers out).
According to the National Journal, the banking industry "privately grumbles that Warren would be their least favorite candidate to head the agency." Or, as Floyd Norris put it in the New York Times, "whether or not she is named to run the bureau may depend on how willing the president is to anger the banks."
Warren is far and away the best person for the position. Picking her is a no-brainer. For many high-level positions, such as a Supreme Court justice, a president will often say he's looking for the "best candidate" when, in fact, there isn't one "best candidate." But this is that rare occasion when there truly is a single best candidate. When it comes to heading the Consumer Bureau, there is Elizabeth Warren -- and there is everybody else.
Not only is she one of the country's foremost experts on bankruptcy law and the multiple ways in which banks trick and trap consumers, she's been the leading advocate for the creation of the agency, which the banking industry worked night and day to kill. In fact, it was Warren who came up with the idea for the agency in the first place, in a paper she wrote in 2007. Her entire career has been devoted to the issues the agency is being created to address.
So obvious is the choice of Warren as the inaugural head of the Consumer Bureau that nearly a dozen senators and over 60 members of the House have already publicly come out in her favor. And over 200,000 people -- i.e. consumers -- have signed a petition urging her nomination.
Here are a few examples of the support she's getting:

• Sen. Al Franken: "In my consideration, I think Elizabeth would be the best."
• Rep. Barney Frank (chair of the House committee that drafted the financial reform bill): "She's far and away the best candidate."
• Sen. Bernie Sanders: "No one in our nation could do a better job."
• Rep. Rosa DeLauro: "In my living room with many members of congress, she predicted what was going to happen several years ago. As she put it in 2007, consumers cannot buy a toaster that has a one in five chance of bursting into flames but they can enter into a mortgage that has the same one in five chance of putting them out onto the street...Professor Warren we cannot, Ma'am, do it without you."
• Sen. Jeff Merkley: "I support Elizabeth Warren...She has both the clarity of the need for an agency that has as its top mission protecting citizens against tricks, traps and scams, and she has the ability to articulate that vision. She has the leadership skills and the knowledge of the financial world. She has the full set of requirements to be an effective leader."
• Sen. Tom Udall: "Should [the president] decide to nominate her to lead the Bureau, it will be a clear sign that the Bureau will be a champion for the American consumer, will stand up to unscrupulous actors and will not shrink from...fulfilling its mission under pressure."

Then there was this argument in her favor:

She is an enormously effective advocate for reform. Probably the most effective advocate for consumer protection in the country. She has huge credibility and she played a decisive role in helping make the public case for reform and she was early on this, way ahead of everybody else.

That, as it happens, was Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, speaking Sunday on ABC's This Week. So why has Geithner stopped short of endorsing Warren (and, indeed, privately argued against her)? And why, as HuffPost's Jason Linkins put it, is the White House still "hesitating, looking for all the world like it is going to veer away from tapping Warren for the sort of job she was born to do?"
Fear. You know what they say: give a man some fear, and you make him fearful for a day -- teach a man to scare himself, and you make him fearful for life. The administration has taken the lesson to heart.
And the courage-killing virus isn't confined just to one end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Sen. Chris Dodd told NPR's Diane Rehm, "The question is, 'is she confirmable?' And there's a serious question about it." And today he challenged Robert Gibbs' assertion that Warren is "very confirmable": "How does he know that?" Dodd said to TPM.
Nothing fortifies your opponents like signaling your willingness to surrender. A different approach would be to do the right thing, welcome the fight, and make your case to the American people. "Are the Republicans, when we bring her name up, going to argue that she shouldn't be confirmed because she's too tough on the big banks and too tough on the financial industry?" asked Sen. Tom Harkin. "Boy, that'll get them a lot of votes in November!"
And if Senate Democrats don't have the stomach for the fight, there is a provision in the financial reform bill the president signed into law last week that allows the Treasury Secretary to name someone to head the Consumer Bureau until the Senate confirms a presidential nominee. And there is no clear deadline on how long the Secretary's appointee may serve. "The statute gives the Treasury Secretary the obligation to get it done, but doesn't tell him how to get it done," says Gail Hillebrand of the Consumers Union. "Consumers have been waiting a long time. The sooner we can get it off the ground the better."
So the administration has no excuses left for not nominating Warren -- including the threat of a Republican filibuster.
And given that her opponents, shameless though they are, can't just come out and say, "We're against her just because we're doing the banks' biding," what argument can they make? One currently being test-marketed is that because Warren is such a zealous advocate for consumers she would somehow be bad for "innovation." You know, the kind of innovation that brought us credit default swaps, teaser rates, 600 percent payday loan rates, and that led to widespread foreclosures and bankruptcies. This line of reasoning is akin to saying that we don't want our police force to be very vigilant, lest it diminish criminal innovation. Warren herself addressed this ludicrous claim in a paper in 2008:

Thanks to effective regulation, innovation in the market for physical products has led to greater safety and more consumer-friendly features. By comparison, innovation in financial products has produced incomprehensible terms and sharp practices that have left families at the mercy of those who write the contracts.

Which, of course, is exactly why the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created in the first place. If someone with Warren's skill set and perspective isn't named to head it, why even bother creating it? Just so another banking industry shill has a place to cool his heels before adding a few zeros to his salary when he quits and joins the companies he was ostensibly regulating? Given that this is the usual M.O. of how regulatory agencies in Washington work, it's all the more important to name Warren so she can start the Consumer Bureau off on the right foot -- as a true voice for the people.
So which way will Obama go? If he makes his decision on the merits, Elizabeth Warren will be the first head of the Consumer Bureau. If he makes his decision out of fear, she won't be. For guidance, he should listen carefully to these words:

All too often -- our government made decisions based upon fear rather than foresight, and all too often trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions. Instead of strategically applying our power and our principles, we too often set those principles aside as luxuries that we could no longer afford. And in this season of fear, too many of us -- Democrats and Republicans; politicians, journalists and citizens -- fell silent... if we continue to make decisions from within a climate of fear, we will make more mistakes.

That was Barack Obama in May of last year, talking about the Bush administration's approach to national security in the wake of 9/11. As he finds himself in a different kind of "season of fear," will he use his insights as a guide to his decision?
Appointing Elizabeth Warren will demonstrate that the detour his administration took to Feartown with Shirley Sherrod was a lesson learned.

P.S. Check out this post by HuffPost's Social News editor Adam Clark Estes, to learn all about our new pairing with Meetup that, as Adam puts it, aims "to turn the conversations about the news on our site into face-to-face encounters."

Deal or no deal with Rep. Charlie Rangel

Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) is caught between a rock and a hard place. He’s scrambling to strike a deal with the House Ethics Committee over allegations that he violated some pretty basic rules. Meanwhile, whether he settles or not, the case against him will be made public tomorrow at a 1:00 p.m. hearing that will be the precursor to a September trial. Sure, Rangel would get to defend his tattered honor. But that could come at a higher price. The faint calls for him to resign his seat altogether, which haven’t gained any traction, would almost assuredly take off once a trial began.
Rangel’s fellow Democrats are already returning campaign cash he’s given them. And with the clock ticking to disclosure, some are being more blunt about what he should do. Laurie Kellman of the Associated Press does a great job deciphering House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s (D-Md.) comments on the Rangel matter. Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), a close ally of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), told the New York Post, "I think it's best that he settle." With a trial set to run concurrently with the fall campaign and the Democrats poised to lose a ton of seats (and perhaps control of the House), I bet he does.
Like I’ve said before, Rangel has the uncanny ability to make a walk over hot coals seem like a stroll on the Mall. His bluster and defiance over the last week is a cover for the intense negotiations going on behind the scenes. Reports say Rangel is worried about his legacy. Well, it’s already tainted. Foregoing a deal the Democrats desperately want him to take runs the risk of a bad situation potentially getting worse for him.

By Jonathan Capehart  |  July 28, 2010; 11:08 AM ET

Pakistan’s Double Game

July 26, 2010

There is a lot to be disturbed by in the battlefield reports from Afghanistan released Sunday by WikiLeaks. The close-up details of war are always unsettling, even more so with this war, which was so badly neglected and bungled by President George W. Bush.
But the most alarming of the reports were the ones that described the cynical collusion between Pakistan’s military intelligence service and the Taliban. Despite the billions of dollars the United States has sent in aid to Pakistan since Sept. 11, they offer powerful new evidence that crucial elements of Islamabad’s power structure have been actively helping to direct and support the forces attacking the American-led military coalition.
The time line of the documents from WikiLeaks, an organization devoted to exposing secrets, stops before President Obama put his own military and political strategy into effect last December. Administration officials say they have made progress with Pakistan since, but it is hard to see much evidence of that so far.
Most of the WikiLeaks documents, which were the subject of in-depth coverage in The Times on Monday, cannot be verified. However, they confirm a picture of Pakistani double-dealing that has been building for years.
On a trip to Pakistan last October, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton suggested that officials in the Pakistani government knew where Al Qaeda leaders were hiding. Gen. David Petraeus, the new top military commander in Afghanistan, recently acknowledged longstanding ties between Pakistan’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, known as the ISI, and the “bad guys.”
The Times’s report of the new documents suggests the collusion goes even deeper, that representatives of the ISI have worked with the Taliban to organize networks of militants to fight American soldiers in Afghanistan and hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders.
The article painted a chilling picture of the activities of Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul of Pakistan, who ran the ISI from 1987 to 1989, when the agency and the C.I.A. were together arming the Afghan militias fighting Soviet troops. General Gul kept working with those forces, which eventually formed the Taliban.
Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States said the reports were unsubstantiated and “do not reflect the current on-ground realities.” But at this point, denials about links with the militants are simply not credible.
Why would Pakistan play this dangerous game? The ISI has long seen the Afghan Taliban as a proxy force, a way to ensure its influence on the other side of the border and keep India’s influence at bay.
Pakistani officials also privately insist that they have little choice but to hedge their bets given their suspicions that Washington will once again lose interest as it did after the Soviets were ousted from Afghanistan in 1989. And until last year, when the Pakistani Taliban came within 60 miles of Islamabad, the country’s military and intelligence establishment continued to believe it could control the extremists when it needed to.
In recent months, the Obama administration has said and done many of the right things toward building a long-term relationship with Pakistan. It has committed to long-term economic aid. It is encouraging better relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is constantly reminding Pakistani leaders that the extremists, on both sides of the border, pose a mortal threat to Pakistan’s fragile democracy — and their own survival. We don’t know if they’re getting through. We know they have to.
It has been only seven months since Mr. Obama announced his new strategy for Afghanistan, and a few weeks since General Petraeus took command. But Americans are increasingly weary of this costly war. If Mr. Obama cannot persuade Islamabad to cut its ties to, and then aggressively fight, the extremists in Pakistan, there is no hope of defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Getting Lost in the Fog of War

By ANDREW EXUM

Washington
ANYONE who has spent the past two days reading through the 92,000 military field reports and other documents made public by the whistle-blower site WikiLeaks may be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss is about. I’m a researcher who studies Afghanistan and have no regular access to classified information, yet I have seen nothing in the documents that has either surprised me or told me anything of significance. I suspect that’s the case even for someone who reads only a third of the articles on Afghanistan in his local newspaper.
Let us review, though, what have been viewed as the major revelations in the documents (which were published in part by The Times, The Guardian of London and the German magazine Der Spiegel):
First, there are allegations made by American intelligence officers that elements within Pakistan’s spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, have been conspiring with Taliban factions and other insurgents. Those charges are nothing new. This newspaper and others have been reporting on those accusations — often supported by anonymous sources within the American military and intelligence services — for years.
Second, the site provides documentation of Afghan civilian casualties caused by United States and allied military operations. It is true that civilians inevitably suffer in war. But researchers in Kabul with the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict have been compiling evidence of these casualties, and their effect in Afghanistan, for some time now. Their reports, to which they add background on the context of the events, contributed to the decision by the former top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, to put in place controversially stringent new measures intended to reduce such casualties last year.
Third, the site asserts that the Pentagon employs a secret task force of highly trained commandos charged with capturing or killing insurgent leaders. I suspect that in the eyes of most Americans, using special operations teams to kill terrorists is one of the least controversial ways in which the government spends their tax dollars.
The documents do reveal some specific information about United States and NATO tactics, techniques, procedures and equipment that is sensitive, and will cause much consternation within the military. It may even result in some people dying. Thus the White House is right to voice its displeasure with WikiLeaks.
Yet most of the major revelations that have been trumpeted by WikiLeaks’s founder, Julian Assange, are not revelations at all — they are merely additional examples of what we already knew.
Mr. Assange has said that the publication of these documents is analogous to the publication of the Pentagon Papers, only more significant. This is ridiculous. The Pentagon Papers offered the public a coherent internal narrative of the conflict in Vietnam that was at odds with the one that had been given by the elected and uniformed leadership.
The publication of these documents, by contrast, dumps 92,000 new primary source documents into the laps of the world’s public with no context, no explanation as to why some accounts may contradict others, no sense of what is important or unusual as opposed to the normal march of war.
Many experts on the war, both in the military and the press, have long been struggling to come to grips with the conflict’s complexity and nuances. What is the public going to make of this haphazard cache of documents, many written during combat by officers with little sense of how their observations fit into the fuller scope of the war?
I myself first went to Afghanistan as a young Army officer in 2002 and returned two years later after having led a small special operations unit — what Mr. Assange calls an “assassination squad.” (I also worked briefly as a civilian adviser to General McChrystal last year.) I can confirm that the situation in Afghanistan is complex, and defies any attempt to graft it onto easy-to-discern lessons or policy conclusions. Yet the release of the documents has led to a stampede of commentators and politicians doing exactly that. It’s all too easy for them to find field reports to reaffirm their preconceived opinions about the war.
The Guardian editorialized on Sunday that the documents released reveal “a very different landscape ... from the one with which we have become familiar.” But whoever wrote that has not been reading the reports of his own newspaper’s reporters in Afghanistan.
The news media have done a good job of showing the public that the Afghan war is a highly complex environment stretching beyond the borders of the fractured country. Often what appears to be a two-way conflict between the government and an insurgency is better described as intertribal rivalry. And often that intertribal rivalry is worsened or overshadowed by the violent trade in drugs.
The Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel did nothing wrong in looking over the WikiLeaks documents and excerpting them. Despite the occasional protest from the right wing, most of the press in the United States and in allied nations takes care not to publish information that might result in soldiers’ deaths.
But WikiLeaks itself is another matter. Mr. Assange says he is a journalist, but he is not. He is an activist, and to what end it is not clear. This week — as when he released a video in April showing American helicopter gunships killing Iraqi civilians in 2007 — he has been throwing around the term “war crimes,” but offers no context for the events he is judging. It seems that the death of any civilian in war, an unavoidable occurrence, is a “crime.”
If his desire is to promote peace, Mr. Assange and his brand of activism are not as helpful as he imagines. By muddying the waters between journalism and activism, and by throwing his organization into the debate on Afghanistan with little apparent regard for the hard moral choices and dearth of good policy options facing decision-makers, he is being as reckless and destructive as the contemptible soldier or soldiers who leaked the documents in the first place.

Andrew Exum is a fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

We're Still at War:

Photo of the Day for July 26, 2010

Mon Jul. 26, 2010 2:00 AM PDT

 

US Army Soldiers from Charlie Company, 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, provide security during a mission in the Zirat Mountain Area, Waza Kwah District, Paktika province, Afghanistan, on July 7. The purpose of the mission is to disrupt anti-Afghan forces and find enemy caches. Photo via the US Army.

A Renewable Energy Hail Mary?

 

 By Kate Sheppard

| Mon Jul. 26, 2010 11:14 AM PDT

Climate legislation is now officially dead in the Senate, but does that mean that we can't accomplish anything on clean energy this year? With Majority Leader Harry Reid set to bring what's left of the energy package to the floor this week, environmental and labor groups, along with a number of clean technology companies, are making a last-ditch effort to get a renewable electricity standard attached to the bill.
Reid said Saturday that he doesn't think he can pass even a bare-minimum renewable electricity standard, or RES, which would mandate that every state draw a specific portion of their power from renewable resources. "Right now, I don't think I have 60 votes to get that done," Reid told a crowd at the Netroots Nation conference Saturday.
But advocates of the RES say he's mistaken. "I certainly know that finding 60 votes in the Senate on the verge of an important election is no easy task," said Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. "But the votes are there for an RES."
A Senate Democratic aide told me that leadership is concerned about including the RES now that the other climate provisions have been axed, because the RES "would replace the cap in terms of scare tactics from the right."
But some Senate Democrats are pushing back on the idea that the votes aren't there, including some moderate Midwestern Dems who were considered "no" votes on a carbon cap like Byron Dorgan (N.D.). Dorgan, Mark Udall (Colo.) and Tom Udall (N.M.) took the lead on a letter to Reid on the issue, which at least 17 other Democrats have reportedly signed as well so far.
The sad thing is, an RES really shouldn't be a tough measure to pass. Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia already have one in place. Most importantly, both the House and the Senate have passed an RES multiple times in the past decade, though it still has not made it into law.
The Senate actually passed a renewable energy standard calling for 10 percent of power to come from renewables by 2020 for the first time back in 2002, and passed it again in both the 108th and 109th Congresses. Then the House got its act together and, during the prolonged debate over the 2007 energy bill, the twice passed versions of the bill that included an RES. But then the Senate couldn't muster enough votes and it didn't make it into the conference bill, either, after the Bush White House pledged to veto the measure.
The House managed to pass an even more ambitious RES last June as part of the American Clean Energy and Security Act, one that requires 20 percent of electricity to come from renewables by 2020 (though it gave states an out if they couldn't meet the target). But now the Senate can't seem to muster support for even a minimal RES right now, like the 15 percent by 2021 RES that the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee passed last June with bipartisan support.
Solar and wind advocates say that even the House-passed standard is actually less ambitious than the path that the industry is already on, and have advocated for a 25 perecent standard by 2025. But at this point, they'll take anything to put the US government on record in support of a renewables mandate. "Getting a signal in place that we're open for business is going to be critical to build the base in the US and attract manufacturing," said Denise Bode, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) in a call with reporters Monday. "In this political climate we have to do what we can do."
AWEA, United Steelworkers, Sierra Club, Xcel Energy, and 11 other groups representing labor, environmental, and green business interests sent a letter to Reid asking him to include an RES in the package. "Without immediate passage, hundreds of thousands of future jobs in the clean energy sector could be lost and surrendered to other countries forever," the groups wrote to the leader.
Governors are also joining the drumbeat for an RES, including Iowa's Chet Culver (D), who extolled the value the state portfolio rule has had for Iowa, bringing the state to 20 percent renewables from just 5 percent four years ago. "Our energy future in this country depends on it," said Culver.
For environmental groups, the RES has become the last best hope for anything resembling a clean energy requirement in a bill this year. "While we are deeply disappointed that the Senate is not moving a comprehensive clean energy and climate bill at this time, we think it would be a huge missed opportunity if this package did not include a strong renewable electricity standard, which creates jobs and has bipartisan support," said Sara Chieffo, deputy legislative director at the League of Conservation Voters.
It's still anybody's guess whether the RES stands a chance of making it into the package this year. The RES could be the last hope for calling the Senate energy bill meaningful movement forward, or it could go down in flames along with the idea of mandatory carbon reductions this year.

On the death of the climate bill

"With all dead there’s usually only one thing you can do." ’What’s that?’ "Go through its clothes and look for loose change."  

 

by David Roberts

22 Jul 2010 5:28 PM

As Jon noted, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has officially announced that there will be no climate bill this year. But Jon's post doesn't fully convey the extent of the capitulation. What's happened is total and complete surrender. There's no silver lining in this cloud.
Not only will the bill not contain any restrictions on greenhouse gases -- not even a watered-down utility-only cap -- it won't even contain the two other key policies that would have moved clean energy forward: the Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) and the energy efficiency standards.
Basically, Reid canvassed his caucus and figured out what they could pay for (without a carbon price for funding) and what already had 60 votes. This is it:

• Some response to the Gulf oil spill, in the form of tighter restrictions on offshore drilling.
• Some pork for natural gas vehicles. (T-Boone gets his money.)
• Home Star.
• Some money for land and water conservation. (Baucus demanded $5 billion for this, leaving other, much more worthy clean energy programs begging.)

Home Star is good, but as an energy bill? This is f*cking pathetic. It's little better than what the Republican Congress produced under George Bush.
I'm running around at Netroots Nation right now, so I don't have a lot of time, but just a few quick notes.
Blame where it is due: I'm frustrated with Obama's passivity on this issue. I'm frustrated with Reid. I'm frustrated with the environmental movement. But we should be clear about where the bulk of the responsibility for this farce ultimately lies: the Republican Party and a handful of "centrist" Democrats in the Senate. They are the ones who refused to vote for a bill, no matter how many compromises were made, no matter how clear the urgency of the problem. They are moral cowards, condemning their own children and grandchildren to suffering to serve their own narrow electoral interests. There isn't enough contempt in the world for them. So when the anger and recrimination get going -- as they already are -- let's at least try to keep the focus on the real malefactors.
The cap is dead this year, but the RES & efficiency don't have to be: I've heard that some environmental groups are loath to push for an RES this year, because they think it's a kind of sweetener that will help the cap go down next year. That is dangerously short-sighted and wrong-headed. We know that the RES and efficiency have bipartisan support, and with a little bit of pressure, they could be strengthened. Green groups (and progressive senators) should rally around these two policies, and only these two policies, for the next few weeks.
Big Coal will be back begging for cap-and-trade: No, really. Right now there are EPA rules in the pipeline that are going to shut down a third or more of the existing coal fleet. No new coal plants are going to get built -- they're not cost-competitive with natural gas or wind, and every one runs into a buzzsaw of grassroots opposition. In other words, carbon caps or no carbon caps, Big Coal is in trouble. Sooner or later, the industry will realize that the funding it can get from cap-and-trade, to support carbon capture and sequestration, is its only path to survival. Robert Byrd tried to tell the industry the truth before he died. Byron Dorgan tried to tell it the truth just the other day. By 2012, certainly by 2015 when many of the rules kick in, the industry will be forced to acknowledge this basic truth. And they'll come begging Congress for cap-and-trade.
Protecting the EPA is now job one for progressives: Murkowski already tried to block EPA on carbon. Rockefeller's going to try again shortly, and his bid is going to be even trickier to block than hers. The EPA's ability to act must be protected. It won't be as comprehensive, as economically efficient, or as socially cooperative as smart climate legislation would have been, but it will reduce carbon. And you know what? Senators from coal-heavy states have poorly served their constituents, so as far as I'm concerned, they deserve a big ol' EPA boot to the ass. They made this bed, they can sleep in it.
"We don't have 60 votes" is bull: Every cowardly senator repeats it like a talisman to ward off the terrible threat of having to act: "We don't have the votes." Two things to say about that. First, of course you don't have votes for something this controversial before you go to the floor and force the issue. Pelosi didn't have the votes before she took the House bill to the floor. She got the votes by twisting arms and making deals. She forced the issue. That was the only way the Senate vote could ever work -- if the bill was put on the floor, the issue was forced, and Dems united in daring the GOP to vote against addressing the oil spill. There's no guarantee that would have worked, but at least it would have been a political rallying point. It would have put senators on record. And it's not like the wimpy avoidance strategy is producing better results.
Second, senators need to stop talking about "60 votes" as though it's in the Constitution that the U.S. Senate -- unlike every other legislative body on the planet -- has a supermajority requirement. It's not in the Constitution. It's an accident, an informal rule that Republicans have taken to relentlessly abusing, not to extend debate but simply to degrade the Senate's ability to act. The filibuster is anti-democratic and it is thwarting the country's will. The American people need to be told this and senators who still want their institution to be minimally functional need to start getting angry about it.
It's a sad, corrupt state of affairs this country finds itself in. I wish I had some hopeful words to offer. But at this point, American government appears to be broken. And our children and grandchildren will suffer for it.

Obama slams GOP on Disclose Act

By Eric Zimmermann - 07/26/10 03:06 PM ET

President Obama called out Senate Republicans on Monday for holding up a vote on a contentious piece of campaign finance legislation.
Senate Democrats plan to vote on cloture for the Disclose Act on Tuesday, though it remains unclear whether they have the 60 votes necessary to end debate.

Democrats need at least one Republican vote, which they so far lack.

“You’d think that making these reforms would be a matter of common sense,” Obama said in brief remarks from the Rose Garden. “But of course this is Washington in 2010, and the Republican leadership in the Senate is once again using every tactic and manuever they can to prevent the Disclose Act from even coming up for a vote.”

The legislation was crafted in response to a Supreme Court decision that opened the door to unlimited corporate and union spending in elections. The bill would require such groups to disclose their role in campaign spending, namely advertisements.

“A vote to oppose these reforms is nothing less than to allow a corporate and special interest takeover of our elections,” Obama said.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said a campaign finance bill should not be a priority with the economy still struggling.

“The mere suggestion that a bill designed to save politicians’ jobs should take precedent over helping millions of Americans find work is an embarrassing indictment of Democrats’ priorities,” McConnell said in a statement.

The legislation exempts nonprofits with memberships of above 500,000 from the disclosure requirements. Republicans have argued the exemptions aid Democratic-friendly groups. (The NRA, which mainly supports Republicans, was one of the exempted groups.)

“The Disclose Act seeks to protect unpopular Democrat politicians by silencing their critics and exempting their campaign supporters from an all out attack on the First Amendment,” McConnell said.

The legislation passed the House last month by a vote of 219-206. Two House Republicans supported the legislation.

Senate GOPers block vote on campaign finance reform

by Joe Sudbay (DC) on 7/27/2010 03:51:00 PM

First, a win for corporate interests in the Supreme Court with the Citizens United decision. Now, a follow-up victory in the U.S. Senate.

The Senate Republicans, voting as a bloc, just sustained their filibuster of campaign finance reform. The vote was 57 - 41. All the Democrats present, even Ben Nelson, voted to end the filibuster. (Reid voted no for procedural reasons.) Remember when John McCain used to be an advocate for campaign finance reform, before he flipped on that issue like every other? What a fraud. And, Maine has a Clean Elections law, which passed as a citizen initiative back in 1996. So, this should have been an easy vote for Snowe and Collins, but they must show fealty to Mitch McConnell and the GOP funders, not Mainers.

During the floor debate, Chuck Schumer, who is the sponsor of the DISCLOSE Act, said:

This is a sad day for our democracy. Not only does the Supreme Court give those special interests a huge advantage, but this body says they should do it all in secret without any disclosure. That, my colleagues, transcends this election, transcends Democrat or Republican. It eats at the very fabric of our democracy. It makes our people feel powerless and angry.

It is another sad day for our democracy. And, while Schumer thinks this might transcend Democrat or Republican, the GOPers sure benefit from it.