Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 82 Editor's Choice: 1
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Honesty in the froth
[Read the article: Did Bush lie about Rove -- or did Rove lie to him?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Interesting, the way bubbles of unintended honesty will often surface on Dubya's odd stream of consciousness.
"That's why I've instructed this staff of mine to cooperate fully with the investigators -- full disclosure, everything we know the investigators will find out." So in the Bush lexicon, "full disclosure" consists of telling investigators those things they are sure to find out, and withholding everything else. And he wasn't ashamed to say so.
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This is the Clear Skies Act of finance reform.
[Read the article: A self-serving House debate on finance reform]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I am disappointed in Marty Meehan, and in Farhad Manjoo, for treating this bill as if it were primarily about limiting campaign money.
I would very much like to see 527s subject to donor limits. In my lay opinion, the importance of megadonors to the effectiveness of 527s has been overrated anyway.
But the central point of this legislation is the alteration of the rules concerning "coordination" of party funds with candidate funds. Farhad does not comfort me with the observation that contributions to the party would be subject to a $2000 personal limit. Under current law, the contributions of no more than 40 $2000 donors could pass from the party to any one candidate's coffers. This bill would allow an unlimited number of such transfers. What it effectively does is to double the current $2000 limit on hard money contributions to a campaign.
It's a bill designed to gut campaign finance reform, not to tighten it. Democrats may stand on solid principle in standing against it. Only at such time as the GOP deigns to offer a clean bill that deals with 527s alone will it make sense for critics to call Democrats' opposition hypocritical without indulging in bloviation.
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Separable powers
[Read the article: No reason to make nice]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I largely agree with Joe, but let us recall two things.
First, there were many particulars in Pelosi's original minority bill of rights. These particulars are separable, and each should be considered on its own merits. Going through the full committee process takes time, and for simple long-debated propositions like minimum wage, simply wastes it. Permitting amendments always lets the minority wangle for an artfully placed poison pill. Pelosi should certainly keep a minority intent on nothing but mischief under the firm pressure of a stylish stiletto heel, at least for the first hundred days, on that set of particulars.
But second, they are Republicans and we are Democrats. That means, their purpose in legislating is always to sacrifice the interests of ordinary Americans to the fat cats. It is therefore always in their interest to create rules that hinder open debate, hide the content and the authorship of the laws, encourage and cover up for bribery. We suffer no such disadvantages. The more the public knows about our doings, the better off we are.
We should therefore be eager to rescind Republican practices designed to help them hide. Thus: calling votes on bills whose text no one has had time to read; shutting the minority out of conference; inserting clauses and earmarks into reconciliations which were not placed there by either chamber; holding votes open for hours so bribes can be quietly handed around.
Each of those reforms whose desirability does not hinge on Republican bona fides should be introduced, and debated at length, in separate resolutions, each garnering its own news cycle. This process will assist the public in evaluating all the residual whining in which the Republicans are certain to engage.
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Into the porches of his ear did pour the leprous poison
[Read the article: What happened to the Padilla interrogation videos?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It seems a torture session at that particular juncture in Padilla's confinement would have been mighty pointless.
Suppose I were the government. Suppose, like them, I had deliberately tortured some poor sap guilty of nothing more than nasty attitudes for three years, deliberately driven him round the twist. Suppose, as he was about to be turned over to a real (albeit lately vastly corrupted) justice system, it dawned on me that I had made myself subject to at least one sentence of life imprisonment for those crimes.
My principal concern would be to further mess with the man's mind, in such a way as to render him unlikely to give a coherent tale of what I'd done to him.
I'd suspicion that tape disappeared, because they consist in part of strong intimations to Padilla that his defense lawyers will be working for the U.S. government, and anything he says to them will be twisted to secure his conviction.
Pure speculation, of course. All we can know for a moral certainty is that the tape records a major felony conducted at Bush's behest.
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Not so tough
[Read the article: Iran-Britain conflict shows the dangers of our ongoing presence in Iraq]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The new National Review blog is called "The Tank"? Maybe it's not meant to be macho at all. Perhaps it's a bit of unwonted honesty, signalling that NR is in the tank for the Administration.
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Why we can be sure the "scoop" is false
[Read the article: ABC News' bizarre "scoop" on Iran's nuclear program]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]When the Niger yellowcake story had been (behind the scenes) exploded to smithereens, the White House bent heaven and earth to get the sixteen words into the State of the Union address.
If the ABC story has any authentic basis, then Bush has certainly been briefed on the evidence for the accelerated centrifuge program. Bush has every motivation in the world to hype even the most vague, most equivocal evidence of Iranian ill doing. Yet, when asked the direct question, "Have you seen evidence of acceleration?", Bush ducked the question, responding with platitudes of general concern.
So we know that the C.I.A. has told Bush in no uncertain terms that , to adopt George Tenet's phrase, they don't want him to be a "fact witness on this". If there were any facts - heck, if there were any quasi-facts, hemidemisemifacts, or pseudofacts - behind the ABC story, Bush would have gratefully seized on the question rather than ducking it.