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.

Markey voices reservations about incoming BP CEO

By Michael O'Brien - 07/26/10 09:38 AM ET

A top Democrat expressed reservations on Monday toward BP's choice to replace outgoing CEO Tony Hayward with Managing Director Bob Dudley.

Rep. Edward Markey (Mass.), a leading Democrat on energy and environmental issues who helms several committees on those topics, said he was hopeful that Dudley could change the culture at BP, but held out some skepticism.

"Well, Bob Dudley was part of the team all along. And in fact, he's the one who announced that they would have the relief well completed by July 27, which also happened to be the day when the quarterly financial reports of BP are due," Markey said on "The Early Show" on CBS. "That was too much of a coincidence, in terms of limiting liability, increasing the share value of BP."
Reports emerged over the weekend that the gaffe-prone Hayward had finally negotiated a deal to leave as the top official at BP. Those same reports suggested that BP was likely to name Dudley, a Mississippi native, as its next chief executive.

Markey said that Hayward "had to go" because of his work at the company, which the Massachusetts Democrat said was too focused on BP's bottom line, and not enough on the relief and cleanup efforts in the Gulf of Mexico.

It was that culture that caused Markey some pause in fully endorsing Dudley.

"So I'm hopeful that Mr. Dudley will be more responsible, but a total change in culture of this company is necessary," he said on CBS.

"Ultimately, I think that many people in the Gulf of Mexico — and the United States — believe that BP has been much too interested in its own liability, and not the livability of the Gulf of Mexico," Markey said on ABC's "Good Morning America."

"Mr. Dudley now has to turn the page and move beyond the era that Mr. Hayward presided over," he added.

See the video of the CBS interview

Who Cooked the Planet?

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: July 25, 2010

Never say that the gods lack a sense of humor. I bet they’re still chuckling on Olympus over the decision to make the first half of 2010 — the year in which all hope of action to limit climate change died — the hottest such stretch on record.
Of course, you can’t infer trends in global temperatures from one year’s experience. But ignoring that fact has long been one of the favorite tricks of climate-change deniers: they point to an unusually warm year in the past, and say “See, the planet has been cooling, not warming, since 1998!” Actually, 2005, not 1998, was the warmest year to date — but the point is that the record-breaking temperatures we’re currently experiencing have made a nonsense argument even more nonsensical; at this point it doesn’t work even on its own terms.
But will any of the deniers say “O.K., I guess I was wrong,” and support climate action? No. And the planet will continue to cook.
So why didn’t climate-change legislation get through the Senate? Let’s talk first about what didn’t cause the failure, because there have been many attempts to blame the wrong people.
First of all, we didn’t fail to act because of legitimate doubts about the science. Every piece of valid evidence — long-term temperature averages that smooth out year-to-year fluctuations, Arctic sea ice volume, melting of glaciers, the ratio of record highs to record lows — points to a continuing, and quite possibly accelerating, rise in global temperatures.
Nor is this evidence tainted by scientific misbehavior. You’ve probably heard about the accusations leveled against climate researchers — allegations of fabricated data, the supposedly damning e-mail messages of “Climategate,” and so on. What you may not have heard, because it has received much less publicity, is that every one of these supposed scandals was eventually unmasked as a fraud concocted by opponents of climate action, then bought into by many in the news media. You don’t believe such things can happen? Think Shirley Sherrod.
Did reasonable concerns about the economic impact of climate legislation block action? No. It has always been funny, in a gallows humor sort of way, to watch conservatives who laud the limitless power and flexibility of markets turn around and insist that the economy would collapse if we were to put a price on carbon. All serious estimates suggest that we could phase in limits on greenhouse gas emissions with at most a small impact on the economy’s growth rate.
So it wasn’t the science, the scientists, or the economics that killed action on climate change. What was it?
The answer is, the usual suspects: greed and cowardice.
If you want to understand opposition to climate action, follow the money. The economy as a whole wouldn’t be significantly hurt if we put a price on carbon, but certain industries — above all, the coal and oil industries — would. And those industries have mounted a huge disinformation campaign to protect their bottom lines.
Look at the scientists who question the consensus on climate change; look at the organizations pushing fake scandals; look at the think tanks claiming that any effort to limit emissions would cripple the economy. Again and again, you’ll find that they’re on the receiving end of a pipeline of funding that starts with big energy companies, like Exxon Mobil, which has spent tens of millions of dollars promoting climate-change denial, or Koch Industries, which has been sponsoring anti-environmental organizations for two decades.
Or look at the politicians who have been most vociferously opposed to climate action. Where do they get much of their campaign money? You already know the answer.
By itself, however, greed wouldn’t have triumphed. It needed the aid of cowardice — above all, the cowardice of politicians who know how big a threat global warming poses, who supported action in the past, but who deserted their posts at the crucial moment.
There are a number of such climate cowards, but let me single out one in particular: Senator John McCain.
There was a time when Mr. McCain was considered a friend of the environment. Back in 2003 he burnished his maverick image by co-sponsoring legislation that would have created a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gas emissions. He reaffirmed support for such a system during his presidential campaign, and things might look very different now if he had continued to back climate action once his opponent was in the White House. But he didn’t — and it’s hard to see his switch as anything other than the act of a man willing to sacrifice his principles, and humanity’s future, for the sake of a few years added to his political career.
Alas, Mr. McCain wasn’t alone; and there will be no climate bill. Greed, aided by cowardice, has triumphed. And the whole world will pay the price.

Why are there 435 in the House?

"The Constitution states that the number of representatives is one for every 30,000 people. How is it now limited to 435?" — Randall Woodman, Dallas, Texas


You're right. The Constitution states that "the Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty thousand, but each state shall have at least one representative."
The key here is that the founders set a maximum number, not a minimum.
With a current U.S. population of over 300 million, that would work out to about 10,000 representatives — not to mention the chiefs of staff, legislative analysts and spokesmen for each of them.
Until the 20th century, the size of the House increased after each census to reflect the growth in the country's population.
Over time, the growth in new states and the country's population threatened to make the House too large to be a workable legislative body in the views of many in D.C.
After the 1910 census, Congress fixed the size of the House at 435, where it remains today. Congress later made the cap official when it passed the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929, which also established a procedure for automatically reapportioning seats after every census.
The cap on the House's size has made battles over how they are distributed inevitable.
A new complication arose after the 1920 census showed that for the first time there were more Americans living in cities than in rural areas.
Rural representatives fought a reapportionment that would have granted more representation to urban states while cutting House seats in rural states, arguing that people who lived on farms and in small towns were the heart and soul of America.
The battle between the rural and urban factions caused the House to fail to reapportion itself throughout the 1920s. When reapportionment finally did take place after the 1930 census, 21 states lost at least one House seat, while California nearly doubled its delegation.
That trend continued over the course of the 20th century due to population growth, migration and immigration. Ohio, for instance, has gone from a high of 24 representatives to 18, while Pennsylvania has dropped from 36 to 19.
California's delegation, on the other hand, has grown from 11 members in the 1920s to 53 today. Florida, Texas and Arizona have also seen similar exponential jumps.
The cap on the House's size also affects small states in unusual ways.
In 1950, Congress adopted "the method of equal proportions" which allocates House seats according to a complicated mathematical formula designed to minimize population variation among districts.
But the variance in size of congressional districts is still a source of controversy.
Seven states have only one member, but the population of those states is widely varying. Montana, which has only one at-large representative in the House, has a population of nearly a million, while Wyoming's at-large member represents roughly half as many constituents.
— Frances Symes, Congress.org

Schumer promises flurry of votes on Disclose Act until passage

By Jordan Fabian and Michael O'Brien - 07/27/10 03:18 PM ET

Sen. Charles Schumer, the sponsor of the stalled campaign finance bill, promised Tuesday that Democrats would hold round-after-round of votes on it until it passes.
Schumer (D-N.Y.) spoke to reporters following the weekly caucus luncheons, slamming Republicans for holding up the response to the Citizens United Supreme Court case, which allowed unlimited political spending by corporations and unions.
"And we will go back at this bill again and again and again until we pass it," he said. "It's that vital, not to Democrats, not to Republicans, but to the future of people's faith in the functioning of this government."
Schumer made his comments just before the Senate was scheduled to vote to invoke cloture on the measure. The vote was expected to fail.
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) was absent heading into the vote, while centrist GOP Sen. Olympia Snowe (Maine), whose vote was closely watched on the issue, said the bill wasn't in a position yet where she could support it.
The Senate's 59 Democrats need at least one Republican to advance the bill and avoid a filibuster. Unless a Republican comes onboard, Democrats will almost certainly need to make changes to the legislation to win a GOP backer.
Schumer said that the legislation's failure would do harm to the health of U.S. democracy.
"It's the amount of money, not who you are, that is affected. And so we've seen a campaign of desperation, of full muscle, to try to do everything they can to stop this bill because they realize, as already in some campaigns we have seen, how this will fundamentally change the balance of American politics," he said. "It will make the average citizen feel more and more remote from his or her government. It will hurt the fabric of our democracy."

Take a Break: Behind-the-Scenes Video with the Jonas Brothers

Posted by Kori Schulman on July 27, 2010 at 03:00 PM EDT

Last month, President Obama awarded Paul McCartney  the annual Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. Artists from all the genres and backgrounds paid tribute to the music legend with a concert hosted by the President and First Lady at the White House. Take a break and go behind-the-scenes with the Jonas Brothers as they prepare for and perform the Beatles classic “Drive My Car” for President Obama and Sir Paul.



Don’t miss the “In Performance at the White House" music special with performances by McCartney himself, Jonas Brothers, Stevie Wonder, Elvis Costello, Herbie Hancock, Corinne Bailey Rae, Dave Grohl, Faith Hill, Emmylou Harris, Lang Lang and Jack White, with remarks by Jerry Seinfeld on Wednesday, July 28, 2010 at 8:00 PM EDT on PBS stations nationwide. Check your local listings here.

Antiwar groups mobilize

They are protesting Tuesday's vote to fund more troops in Afghanistan.

Antiwar groups prepared for a major vote on war spending expected Tuesday.
As the House decides whether to fund additional troops in Afghanistan, activists called lawmakers and planned an evening protest.
"If you vote yes, plan on getting a different job in January," activists with the War Is a Crime coalition said in an e-mail urging supporters to call Congress about H.R. 4899.
The group also backed Reps. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and Ron Paul (R-Texas) on the resolution they planned to introduce demanding that all U.S. troops leave Pakistan.
The activists acknowledged that the funding is likely to go through anyway, but they urged voters to treat the votes as a litmus test.
"We will now be able to identify clearly and unambiguously the war supporters and war opponents," they said. "They will need to be punished and rewarded while they're home for August and at the polls in November."
Antiwar activists also plan to gather for a protest Tuesday evening as the vote approaches. Code Pink, a group known for its brightly colored attire and theatrical approach to protest, is leading the effort.
-- Ambreen Ali, Congress.org