Obama Adviser Calls for Retroactive Immunity

Please make this stop. Think Progress reports the bad news:

One of Obama’s advisers on intelligence and foreign policy advisers, however, is someone who “strongly” supports telecomm immunity. John Brennan is a former CIA official and the current chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance. In a new National Journal interview, Brennan makes it clear that he agrees with the Bush administration on the issue of immunity:

There is this great debate over whether or not the telecom companies should in fact be given immunity for their agreement to provide support and cooperate with the government after 9/11. I do believe strongly that they should be granted that immunity, because they were told to do so by the appropriate authorities that were operating in a legal context, and so I think that’s important. And I know people are concerned about that, but I do believe that’s the right thing to do. I do believe the Senate version of the FISA bill addresses the issues appropriately.

This is much, much more offensive than an ad hominem attack on a candidate. Anti-American, anti-Constitution policy positions like this do not belong in the Democratic Party, let alone associated with one of our presidential candidates.

Think Progress notes that this is not where Obama is on retroactive immunity and Obama’s stance is strengthened by receiving the endorsement of Chris Dodd, who has lead the fight against retroactive immunity. It’s safe to say that Obama disagrees with Brennan. But please, can we not find advisers to Democratic leaders that understand the rule of law? And who won’t casually assert that the telecoms “were told to do so by the appropriate authorities that were operating in a legal context” when it’s just not true?

Plaintiff Speaks on Immunity

Hugh D’Andrade of EFF’s Deeplinks Blog pulls a great quote from Tash Hepting, a plaintiff in a case against AT&T that would be quashed if retroactive immunity becomes law.

In an interview on NPR this morning, he objected to the President’s portrayal of the suits as being led by “trial lawyers” out to hop on some sort of “financial gravy train”.

Frankly I was more than a little insulted by that. I have a very principled stand on this, and a very strong belief about it. It’s not about the money, it’s about wrong and right, it’s about obeying the rule of law and it’s about repercussions when you break the law.

At some point, you would think the President and his anti-Constitution cohort would recognize that people like Hepting care about the outcome of these cases against the big telecoms because we want to see the rule of law upheld in America. This is not a radical notion.

New McCain Ad

Well, that’s a bit different than the usual from John W. McCain’s campaign. The ad makes fairly predictable parallels between McCain and Winston Churchill and Teddy Roosevelt. What’s more odd is that the general feel of the ad is a mix between Carl Sagan shots of the universe and Koyanniqatsi. That leads me to naturally wonder, what sort of hallucinogens does the McCain campaign think we should be taking when we watch this ad?

Here’s a preview of the next McCain ad, featuring “Little Fluffy Clouds” by The Orb, which would be great since McCain is from Arizona.

Interviewer: “What were the skies like when you were young?”
Rickie Lee Jones: “They went on forever – They – When I w- We lived in Arizona, and the skies always had little fluffy clouds in ’em, and, uh… they were long… and clear and… there were lots of stars at night. And, uh, when it would rain, it would all turn – it- They were beautiful, the most beautiful skies as a matter of fact. Um, the sunsets were purple and red and yellow and on fire, and the clouds would catch the colors everywhere. That’s uh, neat cause I used to look at them all the time, when I was little. You don’t see that. You might still see them in the desert.”

Seriously, McCain’s ad people might be high. Someone should check.

More on a Super Majority

The New York Times has a piece on the possibility that Democrats win a super majority in the Senate.

I don’t think we can expect to get there in this election, but if we gain 4-6 seats, we will be able to get to 60 seats in 2010.  Additionally, repeated 4-6 seat gains will likely result in turning the Republicans into a southern regional party with few meaningful footholds in other parts of the country.

New Details of KBR’s War Profiteering at Tax Payer Expense

This Boston Globe story came out yesterday, but I don’t think it’s news to too many people. Kellogg Brown & Root and Halliburton are systemically avoiding paying proper taxes on their employees to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars of money lost to the US. They’re doing this by using shell companies in the Cayman Islands to hire American workers who work in Iraq, thus reducing their tax, workers compensation, and social security liabilities.

Kellogg Brown & Root, the nation’s top Iraq war contractor and until last year a subsidiary of Halliburton Corp., has avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies based in this tropical tax haven.

More than 21,000 people working for KBR in Iraq – including about 10,500 Americans – are listed as employees of two companies that exist in a computer file on the fourth floor of a building on a palm-studded boulevard here in the Caribbean. Neither company has an office or phone number in the Cayman Islands.

The Defense Department has known since at least 2004 that KBR was avoiding taxes by declaring its American workers as employees of Cayman Islands shell companies, and officials said the move allowed KBR to perform the work more cheaply, saving Defense dollars.

But the use of the loophole results in a significantly greater loss of revenue to the government as a whole, particularly to the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. And the creation of shell companies in places such as the Cayman Islands to avoid taxes has long been attacked by members of Congress.

A Globe survey found that the practice is unusual enough that only one other major contractor in Iraq said it does something similar.

“Failing to contribute to Social Security and Medicare thousands of times over isn’t shielding the taxpayers they claim to protect, it’s costing our citizens in the name of short-term corporate greed,” said Senator John F. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee who has introduced legislation to close loopholes for companies registering overseas.

With an estimated $16 billion in contracts, KBR is by far the largest contractor in Iraq, with eight times the work of its nearest competitor.

…

KBR declined to release salary information. But workers interviewed by the Globe who served in a range of jobs said they earned between $48,000 and $85,000 per year. If KBR’s American workers averaged even as much as $63,000 per year, they and KBR would have owed more than $100 million per year in Social Security and Medicare taxes, split evenly between them. Over the course of the five-year war, their tax bill would have been more than $500 million.

The whole story goes into much further detail on how KBR and Halliburton established their profiteering operation. Recall that Halliburton recently moved their headquarters to Dubai. Companies like Halliburton and KBR are anti-American war profiteers, milking the American tax payer of hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars they’ve received in sweetheart, no-bid deals. They’re denying their American workers wages and protections that they deserve and they’re forcing those liabilities back onto the American tax payer.

Over at Balloon Juice, John Cole quotes one of his commenters response to this story:

 This is fucking ridiculous. You literally cannot go one fucking day without hearing about someone tied to the Bush administration doing something patently fucking evil, borderline illegal, or screwing the public. You’d think they’d need to at least go on vacation at some point after the last 7 years of this. It’s got to be hard work finding something reprehensible to be part of every single day.

The Globe piece cites an angry John Kerry. I’d hope that Kerry and other congressional Democrats investigate these abuses, pass laws banning this kind of off-shore avoidance of obligations to American workers, and punish those who are profiteering in the Iraq war.

Calls on Clinton Beginning…

I’m sure it’s happened elsewhere before this, but my RSS reader has produced two  calls for Hillary Clinton to drop out, in the interest of her inability to surpass Obama’s pledged delegate lead, likely inability to pass Obama with super delegates, and a desire to focus on defeating John W. McSame.

Bob Cesca is a big Obama supporter, but he makes passing recognition that Clinton won’t be the nominee.

Jesus’ General is a free agent, having endorsed Dodd during the primary, but since been critical of both candidates. He makes a thoughtful, passionate plea for moving forward on a unified front to defeat McCain. Gen. JC Christian writes:

I think Obama should offer Clinton whatever it takes to accept the vice presidential nomination. If she wants health care, give it to her.

And Clinton needs to to take it and strike her deal soon. Her bargaining power is strong now. She can demand concessions that will give her tremendous advantages in 2016. More importantly, she does not want to become the person whose blind ambition gave the White House to McCain. That’s how she will be perceived if she continues to push the superdelegate strategy.

I think we’re going to see more neutral bloggers write posts like this in coming days and weeks, as it becomes clear that the contest is becoming more of a knife fight than a thoughtful discussion of the future of the country. I also think the idea of a unity ticket will be seen as a bandage to heal the wounds inflicted in this primary. I don’t know whether or not that’s necessary – I don’t see either candidates’ supporters bolting in wide numbers at the end of a prolonged nominating process – but I think the unity ticket will continue to get play.

While I would love to see this primary resolved, I think it’s continuation (for now) is fine if (1) it does not continue to devolve into the nastiness that has defined it the last few weeks and (2) both Clinton and Obama regularly focus their attacks on John McCain. I don’t know how likely these scenarios are and the extend to which they’re not realized, I’ll change my willingness to support a long primary.

Off the Record

The Scotsman:

“She is a monster, too – that is off the record – she is stooping to anything,” Ms Power said, hastily trying to withdraw her remark.

“Interestingly, the people in her innermost circle seem to not mind her; I think they really love her.”

But she added: “There is this middle circle – they are really on the warpath. But the truth is she has proved herself really willing to stoop.”

I don’t see why a journalist has an obligation to grant a source the ability to go off the record after the source has said something they don’t want to see in print. Journalists and sources have to negotiate things ahead of time and they should seek to reach agreement on how a conversation progresses. Attribution is often something that is negotiated during the course of an interview as well – as Power did here. But I don’t see an obligation that ex post facto requests be honored. Power messed up and a journalist decided not to do her a favor by letting her sweep the comment off the record.

What’s clear from the following two paragraphs is that Power was talking specifically about Hillary Clinton and how the Clinton campaign is operating. This interview clearly covered ground where Power was taking shots at Clinton. One of them went too far in what Power, an important Obama surrogate on foreign policy issues, should have been discussing with a journalist.

Lastly, it doesn’t really bother me that an Obama surrogate and advisor thinks ill of Clinton. In my experience, it’s entirely common for campaign staffers to develop very powerful, passionate opinions about their opponents. There have been plenty of reports of Obama and Clinton staffers, in private, holding very negative opinions of the others. I know that I had my moments on the Dodd campaign where I ripped other members of the Democratic field with  negative descriptions and the use of hyperbole. But I did this behind closed doors, not in an interview with a reporter. Obviously Power immediately recognized her mistake and tried to get it corrected with the help of the journalist. As I said in the beginning, though, I don’t think the journalist had any obligation to grant Power retroactive off the record status.

Answers Needed

Scarecrow at FireDogLake wants Obama and Clinton to answer some important questions before they take office.

1. Given that the Bush/Cheney regime has been the most lawless and destructive of Constitutional safeguards in our lifetimes, what do you intend to do to bring those who flouted the law to justice? If nothing, how do you expect to restore respect for the Constitution and the rule of law and restore confidence in the Department of Justice?

2. On repeated occasions, far too many Democrats have voted in Congress to enable or immunize lawless actions by the Bush/Cheney regime. What would you do as President to restore respect for the Constitution within your own party?

…

6. How do you intend to pay for the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions and prepare the country to fund the public investments you think vital to our economic interests?

7. How do you propose to change the attitudes and mindset that led us into aggressive wars?

I think the first two questions are likely the most important for the health of our country.  I do not want to have a Democratic administration continue to use the powers the Bush administration has illegally seized simply because Congress has failed to repudiate Bush’s actions. Bush may not have succeeded in expanding the powers of the executive branch to the point of complete dictatorship, but he has undoubtedly moved our country away from the rule of law and from the checks and balances set forth in our Constitution. We need Clinton and Obama to confront these issues before either takes office. Not only would it serve assuage fears I have about the health of our democracy, it would provide a marked contrast with anti-Constitution John W. McCain, who offers only a third term for the Bush administration.

The questions Scarecrow poses on war policy play into the health of our nation as well. War and terrorism was the excuse that has shielded most of the Bush administrations expansions of executive power. The shadow of future aggressive wars still hangs over this country, as we’re seeing with the treatment of Admiral Fallon. Beyond timid promises to end the war in Iraq, Clinton and Obama need to speak directly to how they change conventional wisdom on the US of American power. In Obama’s case, this should stem from an explanation as to how he had the judgment to oppose the war in Iraq and what structural similarities he sees in the country’s attitudes in 2002 and now. In Clinton’s case, she would have to frame an explanation around what she has learned since voting for war in Iraq.

I do not expect answers to these questions to be forthcoming, which is a sad statement on the health of our democracy, our democratic process, and our capacity for thoughtful engagement of challenging, if unpleasant, questions.

Wow: Texas Will Be in Play

Burnt Orange Report brings the good news – Texas will be in play in the general election.

Survey USA has just completed massive nationwide, state-by-state polling of match-ups in the presidential race. While both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama would rack up winning scenarios nationally, what is most stunning is that Texas, yes-Texas, is a swing state.

Crosstabs– 600 Registered voters, MoE 4.1%McCain +1 Over Obama
47% John McCain (R)
46% Barack Obama (D)
07% Undecided

McCain +7 Over Clinton
49% John McCain (R)
42% Hillary Clinton (D)
09% Undecided

This is stunning and I believe a large result of us seeing a presidential campaign here in Texas for the first time.

There is a real benefit to having a contested primary go to places where Democrats don’t traditionally have a say in picking the nominee. Texas got to see two candidates up close and evaluate what they were offering. Obviously enough Texans liked what they saw in both candidates to give either a legitimate chance to beat McCain in the general. As I said earlier this week, the large Texas turnout is a great indication that Democrats will force McCain to spend his limited resources on a traditionally very Republican state.

NYC Bombing Linked to Threats Against Democrats

Politico reports that this morning’s bombing in Times Square has been linked to letters sent to 8 Democrats from New York City’s congressional delegation.

Eight House Democrats were mailed a letter and photo of a Times Square recruiting station in Manhattan before it was bombed this morning, according to House insiders.

The letter did not contain any specific threats against the lawmakers or the site, but the U.S. Capitol Police and FBI are now investigating the matter.

It was unclear which lawmakers received the letters or when, but House aides confirmed they were all Democrats.

The implication, it seems, is that the bombing was meant to threaten New York Democrats. Anyone care to speculate on whether the perpetrator turns out to be Al Qaeda or a right wing fanatic? Remember, when it comes to terrorism in the US, Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph don’t count for some reason.

Update: More details coming out, connecting the photos sent to the NYC delegation with opposition to the Iraq. war.