The Bush-Nazi connection redux

It’s certainly noteworthy that the connections of the Bush family fortune to the Nazi war machine and the Holocaust are back in the news, as Atrios and Hesiod are duly reporting. (Democrats.com has a good set of links to the various pieces.)

Regular readers will remember that I discussed this story in depth in "Bush, the Nazis and America," but I reached somewhat different conclusions.

The genesis of the story's resurgence appears to be the John Buchanan piece in the New Hampshire Gazette, which actually appeared a week and a half ago. However, the AP's Jonathan Salant picked up on it and confirmed the new documents further establishing the Bush-Union Bank connection, and offered new details about UBC's dealings with Fritz Thyssen, the Nazis' main underwriter from 1928-31 and a significant participant in Nazi activities until 1938.

Of course, as I observed in my earlier essay, that connection was already rather well-established fact. What isn't so clear, as I argued then, is what that connection means.

Salant's piece is short on broader context, but quite accurate, though it does little to advance the underlying issues. Buchanan's is more problematic; it relies heavily on the charges contained in the Larouchite Tarpley/Chaitkin text, and does little to assess the quality of it -- which is, frankly, not very good. And it fails to put Bush's Nazi dealings in their larger historical context, particularly the fact that Union Bank was one of only many American corporations with significant ties to the Nazi regime and the buildup of its war machinery, as well as that of the Holocaust.

A similar problem lies in the way it has been discussed so far in the press -- which is to say, superficially at best. Much of the ensuing discussion has revolved around the suggestion that Bush family has secret Nazi sympathies. But this is mostly nonsense; as I explained in Part 3 of the earlier essay, there is simply no evidence of an ideological connection to the Nazis (though the same cannot be said of, say, a eugenicist like Averell Harriman or an anti-Semite like Henry Ford, not to mention the leadership of the America First Committee, notably Charles Lindbergh).

The only journalist to adequately tackle the topic so far has been Joe Conason, who hits nearly all the right notes in his latest Observer piece, "Bush 'Nazi' Smear Unworthy of Critics." Especially noteworthy is his conclusion:

There are many unflattering terms that can and should be used to describe George W. Bush. He is, among other things, a truly bad President. But neither his offenses, nor the Republican Party’s politics of personal destruction, can justify using such tactics against him. Imputing Nazi sympathies to the President or his family ought to be beneath his adversaries.

Besides noting that something as factually accurate as the Bush-Nazis tie is by definition not a "smear," I only differ with Conason significantly on one point:

Whatever the President’s grandfather did or may have done, how does that reflect on George W. Bush? In 1942, he hadn’t been born yet. If he is nevertheless accountable for Prescott Sr.'s actions, fairness requires that a similar standard be applied to other descendants of politicians and businessmen whose attitude toward Nazism was, at best, ambivalent. Should anyone named Kennedy, Harriman, Dupont or Fish be arraigned for the offenses of their dead ancestors? Should everyone boycott Ford Motors?

Actually, it's a good deal more complicated than that. All these names had different kinds of dealings with the Nazis, all of them with different levels of culpability. If it emerges, for instance, that Prescott Bush had a hands-on role in the use of slave labor from Auschwitz in the Silesian steel operations, for instance, then that makes his involvement of a different order of magnitude. Some Americans provided ideological support, others financial, and others both.

Moreover, both levels of that kind of involvement do have an effect that carries through today. Just how much of the Bush family fortune, for instance, is founded on the Nazis' bloody money? Does the profound ideological support for Nazism that came from the DuPont brothers still exist in the family today? I think these are questions worth asking, because they give us, if nothing else, a better sense of the real morality that is practiced by the wealthy elites who have throughout history assured us that they are our moral betters as well.

In other words, Republicans have made a great deal out of George W. Bush's superior moral character, ostensibly (or so it has been depicted) a product of his upper-crust upbringing. But what kind of character has the Bush family actually practiced through the course of history?

What the evidence irrefutably shows is that there was a substantial business connection between the Bush family fortune and the buildup of the Nazi war machinery (as described in Part 2), as well as a significant tie to the Auschwitz slave labor camps.

However, as I have argued (as does Conason), it is important again to keep this in context: Many Americans made money by investing in the Nazis, and many more made fortunes by taking an active role in arming the country in the 1930s: Ford's activities may have been the most noteworthy (his German engine-building plants, nationalized before the war, were key components of the Blitzkrieg machinery), but other major players included Kodak, Shell, General Motors, and DuPont, the latter pair having an especially noteworthy level of involvement (in which, it must also be noted, Joseph P. Kennedy, the family's patriarch, had no small role).

On the other hand, as I argued in Part 4, the issues raised by the Bush association run even deeper. It must be said first that the context does not by any means exonerate either Prescott Bush or his heirs -- nor, for that matter, any of the other businessmen whose similar contributions formed that context. The connection to Fritz Thyssen, especially, is no small thing, because he played such a significant role in the Nazis' rise to power. Hitler's party was on the ropes in 1927 and probably would have gone under entirely had not Thyssen bailed them out beginning in 1928, actively underwriting their activities for the next several years until they assumed power in 1933.

Thyssen was a classic case of the corporatist conservative who saw the thugs of fascism's far right as a useful bulwark against the left in general and communists in particular, believing all along they could control it. Of course, Hitler proved Thyssen wrong; by 1937, his propensity for devouring his allies (see especially the Night of the Long Knives) had become self-evident, and Thyssen tried fleeing to Switzerland, but eventually was caught and served out the war in prison.

More to the point, it was clear well before the outbreak of war in 1938 just what kind of person these gentlemen were dealing with. Hitler had already commanded the brutal thugs of the SA during his rise to power. He already, beginning in 1933, rounded up political dissidents and opposition leaders -- mostly socialists, Communists and leftists of different varieties -- and placed them in concentration camps (Dachau being the most notorious), where many of them were subsequently "liquidated." He had already, in 1934, imprisoned or summarily executed his former allies in the Night of the Long Knives. And of course, his ardent, screeching anti-Semitism had long been painfully apparent, and the anti-Jewish Nuremburg Laws, passed in 1935, were abundant evidence he meant business. The list is long, but the nature of the man with whom they were blithely doing business -- and thereby deepening his grip on power -- was more than plain.

Prescott Bush's activities in Germany were of a piece with this approach to dealing with the Nazis: If good money is to be made, even thugs and dictators are acceptable business partners. There are three significant moral dimensions to Bush's dealings here, all of which warrant deeper study:

-- To what extent did those dealings enable one of the most monstrous regimes in history in its subsequent mass genocide and warmaking? The evidence so far would suggest it played a significant role, since Thyssen's steelmaking operations were at the heart of so much of the Nazi machine.

-- To what extent did those dealings harm America even before the war? The flow of American capital into Germany played a key role in the so-called "German miracle" of the 1930s, when its economy was booming at a remarkable rate; by contrast, America's own economic recovery was slow to take root. It would be interesting to examine just how much capital was flowing out of the country at a time when it needed to stay home and invest in American jobs, and what its actual effect was.

-- To what extent is the Bush family fortune -- which itself played no small role in the ascension of the current occupant of the White House -- derived from these Nazi dealings? It is worth remembering, perhaps, that Prescott Bush himself later attested that in the early 1930s, the firm for which he worked would have gone under completely were it not for the personal intervention of Averell Harriman, who wrote checks out of his own accounts to keep the business running until it could become prosperous again. The dealings that clearly put the house back in order subsequently were its German investments. This suggests that the Bush family fortune -- like those of many once-wealthy families after Black Friday -- was at Ground Zero in the early '30s and was subsequently rebuilt largely through these dealings.

Indeed, it is clear that this issue has been allowed to fester for well over half a century precisely because there has never been any kind of adequate reckoning of the business dealings that helped make the Nazi nightmare a reality. This is true not only of the German industrialists who gave the Nazis both their political and their warmaking powers, but of the American industrialists and capitalists who contributed substantially to the same.

In this sense, it is worth comparing the German and American postwar response to this legacy, especially when it came time to reckon the moral and legal consequences for the roles of the various participants in the Nazi phenomenon -- especially since the Germans, for obvious reasons, were made to bear the brunt of the culpability. What's noteworthy is to what little extent Americans ever had to do the same.

Yet even in this regard, there is one constant: The financiers, the people who lined the Nazis' pockets with money, and who likewise lined their own pockets with the regime's profits, almost uniformly escaped facing any kind of serious consequences for having done so. As I discussed in Part 4, these men were never held culpable, legally or socially, in part because of the exigencies of the postwar period, when it was widely believed their resources were needed for rebuilding the international economy. However, as Christopher Simpson explored in his 1993 book The Splendid Blond Beast: Money Law and Genocide in the Twentieth Century (a somewhat narrower examination of the issue can be found in John Higham's 1983 text, Trading With the Enemy: The Nazi American Money Plot 1933-1949) a more important factor was the fact that international tribunals were stymied by the same machinations of privilege and power that had wrought the genocide in the first place. The elites whose fortunes were at stake found that the structure of international law was weak and easily manipulated so that they could simply "get on with business."

This fact came back to haunt Germany in the 1990s, when the connection of certain industrialists not only to the Nazi regime but to the Holocaust resurfaced in a controversy with similar features -- namely, the uproar that resulted from the city of Nuremburg's decision to honor Franz Diehl, whose wartime factories used Nazi slave labor.

The most recent edition of The Journal of Modern History contains a fascinating piece by Neil Gregor titled " 'The Illusion of Remembrance': The Karl Diehl Affair and the Memory of National Socialism in Nuremberg, 1945-1999," which deals with precisely this topic. (A piece on History News Network by Daniel Bogler of the Financial Times of London, "Germany comes clean: Companies are putting the past behind them by revealing the truth about their history", discusses with the issue on a broader scale.)

Gregor describes how the Nuremburg city council, which for the first time in years came under control of corporatist conservatives in 1996, decided to make Diehl, a major figure in the town's business life, an honorary citizen. This raised a considerable storm, since Diehl had been a Nazi party member and his plants not only had produced Nazi armaments, but had employed slave labor from various concentration camps. As the controversy progressed, further evidence arose that Diehl had financially supported far-right-wing/neo-fascist organizations in the years immediately following the war, before they had become outlawed in Germany.

The corporatists' response was a familiar one:

Most obviously, what was at stake in the dispute was the relative persuasiveness of competing images of the Nazi past put forward by the various protagonists. Diehl's ability to parry criticism depended not least on his ability to project a compelling narrative of Nazi Germany that cast businesses as the victims of the regime and brutalities as the sole responsibility of their immediate perpetrators. Diehl's mobilization of the imagery of totalitarianism to characterize life under the National Socialist regime drew not only on widely held beliefs within broad sectors of a postwar West German society but also, more specifically, on an exculpatory narrative that had been propagated by West German social elites since the 1950s in an attempt to reconstruct the legitimacy of elite conservative politics after this legitimacy had been called radically into question by this same group's complicity in the crimes of Nazism. [emphasis mine] In seeking to cast the suffering of forced workers as an issue pertaining only to individual managers' direct responsibility for isolated acts of inhumanity on the shop floor, rather than recognizing that organizational interests and institutional cultures for which he bore responsibility were to blame, Diehl was playing upon a problem that had represented a judicial conundrum for decades. While courts in the 1950s and 1960s had generally been able to convict individuals whose crimes and misdeeds in the concentration or extermination camps could be directly proved, it was much harder to legally demonstrate the involvement of those whose function within the system of exploitation and murder had been one or more stages removed from the actual site of brutality itself. The result was that, while socially marginal thugs who had ended up as SS camp guards could be convicted in postwar trials, respected middle-class members of the judiciary, civil service, and business community could return to professional life with their reputations untarnished.

This strategy was extremely successful; the Diehl controversy was muted even within the confines of the opposing mainstream liberal party. Only the local Green successfully brought up the significance of the victims' grievances, particularly in the larger sense of Diehl's moral obligations to the victims and their families, as well as to squarely facing the consequences of his behavior in an honest and forthright fashion (he wound up suppressing an objective historical account he had commissioned to supposedly "exonerate" his prewar behavior).

There were two versions of this postwar narrative: one which cast both German society and the individual citizens "as the victim of a 'normal' war in which the peculiarities of Nazi racial imperialism and barbarism were denied," and a second which "sought to co-opt the city's historical associations with the Nazi regime into a story that represented the city and its inhabitants as having been the terrorized victims of a peculiarly vicious totalitarian regime, against which they had been powerless to resist but in the face of which they had preserved peculiarly local values of decency and humanity," or what Gregor calls "the cozy myth of Nazism as having somehow come from outside of Nuremberg's political life to somehow take such powerful hold that it had been impossible to dislodge."

Gregor concludes that Nuremburg (and by extension, German society) will not adequately confront the peculiar challenges raised by the history of Nazism in their midst until it discards these myths and confronts the truth:

Instead of continuing to construct Nuremberg as a site upon which the events of high politics were played out, and instead of representing Nazism as an anonymous, external force visited on the city and its inhabitants from outside, Nuremberg needs to reframe its memorial politics using an approach that emphasizes the structures of consent, participation, and activism in everyday life and that acknowledges the extent to which local institutions, public and private, became agents of Nazi terror and murder. Rather than representing Nazis as outsiders and the local population as either victims or passive bystanders, local politicians and city agencies would do well to consider the oppositenamely, that local institutions, agencies, and individuals should be recognized as active perpetrators and that it was the multitude of actual outsiders who represented the overwhelming majority of victims. Moreover, those citizens of foreign countries murdered during the Third Reich, both in Germany and abroad, should be acknowledged as the victims of an unprecedented war of racial annihilation that had its roots in the society of which Nuremberg was part. For only when the official history of Nuremberg involves seeking answers to searching questions about the identities of local perpetrators will the city be able to claim that it is confronting the problem of its Nazi past honestly. And only when the city recognizes the extent to which the crimes of the Third Reich relied upon the cooperation, collusion, and collaboration of such local perpetrators will it be spared the embarrassment of being seen to endow an exploiter of concentration camp labor with its highest civic award.

I would like to argue that a similar problem confronts America, which has historically excused itself from complicity in the Nazi phenomenon largely on the basis of the fact that it was American and Allied forces that defeated the German army, a reasonable-seeming position that is directly undermined by such inconvenient histories as that raised by the Prescott Bush, Henry Ford and America First cases.

More to the point, the American postwar narrative resembles the Germans' in that it seems specifically tailored to protect the elites whose culpability in the Nazi regime remains profound from any consequences for that behavior. Like the German mythology, it casts Nazism as almost an alien infestation from outer space, or at least as something specifically confined to Nazi Germany. This elides, of course, the extent to which fascist ideology spread in America before the war and the extent to which it was encouraged and sponsored by American industrialists, as well as, most of all, the extent to which those same capitalists did the same in Germany and, moreover, specifically were involved in numerous business dealings that fueled the Nazi war machine which was to cost so many Americans their lives.

A reckoning is long overdue, and not merely for the sake of clearing our national conscience or coming to terms with some distant history now in our national rear-view mirror. Such legacies as the Prescott Bush case specifically, and the problem of prewar American dealings with Nazi Germany generally, need a thorough examination precisely because they reflect directly on the conduct and behavior of our national leaders today.

As Phil Leggiere put it in his remarkable piece (cited in Part 4, and worth repeating), "The Indiscreet Charm of the Bush Nazi Web Conspiranoids":

What … Aaron-Loftus and Simpson substantiate with more detail and in a far wider historical context, is that the relationships between Harriman Bank and other corporations and Nazi-era Germany need to be understood as part of a larger pattern. There is little evidence that the free-form meta-diplomatic modes of international financial deal making developed by Harriman, Bush and company in the 1920s and '30s signaled pro-Nazi or pro-fascist political ideology. However, it did help form a template for U.S. international finance and politics in which support for dictatorships, (financially in the '30s, financially and politically-militarily during the cold war) would become business as usual in U.S. foreign policy. One of the most interesting aspects of both the Simpson and the Aaron and Loftus books is their examination of how the private sector style of international affairs pioneered by Dulles, Harriman, Lovett and Bush in the '30s gradually metaphorphosed, during and after World War 2, into the official realpolitick of the U.S. government, often under the guidance of these same men. The ruling precepts of anti-communism and free trade that guided the international banking elite in the '30s in their dealings with Hitler would become the official policy through which the U.S. would support a wide variety of corporate-friendly dictators throughout the world, from the '50s to the present.

… This evidence is only partly about the Bushes. More significantly, it traces the origins of the cavalier, amoral relationship between American and global financial elites and genocidal dictatorships that has characterized U.S. policy for decades.

This legacy has two dimensions that that need reckoning: domestic and international.

-- The willingness of elite capitalists to sponsor the activities of the thuggish elements that are intrinsically a major component of fascism as a bulwark against "leftists" has never left us entirely. Indeed, it has been occurring with renewed vigor since the early 1990s, when the conservative-movement dogmatists decided that Bill Clinton was a major threat to their drive for power, and began forming alliances with proto-fascist elements, specifically transmitting their ideas and agendas into mainstream conservatism. (This is, of course, the primary subject of "Rush, Newspeak and Fascism.")

That propensity has been rising to the surface in increasing numbers with the George W. Bush regime, which deployed thuggish elements in the Florida debacle in 2000 and turned them loose against antiwar protesters in 2002-03. The levels of violence and thuggery have remained subdued so far, but a serious challenge to Bush's power in the 2004 elections may well raise it another notch. In any event, the willingness to form these alliances dates can be traced directly back to the behavior of such capitalists as Prescott Bush and George Herbert Walker in the 1930s.

-- The willingness to do business with, and indeed sponsor and arm, brutish thugs, dictators and continues to affect us today. After all, Iraq's Saddam Hussein was precisely the kind of dictator that America has historically armed and backed as an "enemy of our enemies" over the years since World War II, only to have them turn on us as a genuine threat themselves. For that matter, the terrorists who now operate Al Qaeda were originally sponsored by Americans in Afghanistan as part of our effort to undermine the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

Not that we have ever learned anything from this: Today, in the name of defeating Al Qaeda and Saddam in the "war on terror," we have allied ourselves with all kinds of reprehensible thugs and authoritarian regimes, including those in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, China, and Malaysia.

Confronting America's past regarding its dealings with the Nazis is not merely an intellectual exercise or picking old scabs, but is an important step to understanding our role in the world today and the behavior of our politicians today, as well as facing the ramifications of our failure confront it previously. Because by shoving this part of our history into the collective memory hole, we enable the people who perpetrated it to not only escape responsibility, but to keep on behaving the same way -- along with their heirs.

In this regard, there is one other point on which I differ with Joe Conason: It is not only the historians who should be sorting this out. It needs to be everyone. And for that to happen, it needs to happen in the media as well.

Howie and the Right-Wing Meme

Bush apologist Howard Kurtz -- who never met a GOP talking point he didn't mind repeating -- opines on "Bush hatred" in his latest WaPo column:

Mainstream journalism, with its traditional parameters, has somehow failed to connect with the notion that there are lots of Americans who walk around sputtering about Dubya -- despite fairly healthy approval ratings for a third-year incumbent. The press was filled with stories about Clinton-haters, but Bush-hating is either more restrained or more out of control, depending on who's keeping score.

As I've pointed out previously, there is simply no truth to the claim that "the press was filled with stories about Clinton-haters." The only serious appearance of the subject in major mainstream media was the 1994 Time story on 'Clintonophobia.' As Sadly No discovered in a Lexis/Nexis search (I posted about it here), there were a total of 18 stories in American newspapers between 1992 and 2000 that mentioned "Clinton hatred."

In contrast, a veritable cottage industry has sprung up around writing about "Bush hatred." A quick Google search reveals 1,980 hits -- the vast majority of them from conservative pundits and bloggers holding forth on the depredations of irrational liberals.

It's quite clear this is the Republicans' chief hope for blunting the wholly legitimate criticism of the Bush administration -- for its grotesque handling of the Iraq war, its failures in the war on terrorism, its miserable economic and environmental performance ... and yes, its theft of the 2000 election. Simply cast all this anger as the mirror image of the same kind of fevered lunacy that beset conservatives themselves during Clinton's tenure -- behavior that the GOP is well aware was unpopular with voters -- and voila! Serious debate easily dismissed!

In reality, this comparison, as I've pointed out, depends on an equivalency that does not exist -- namely, it contrasts Republicans' irrational and groundless attacks on Clinton (from Mena to Vince Foster to Whitewater to the 'black love child') with serious concerns on legitimate topics, all dealing with policy and ethical conduct, all based on established facts.

Kurtz's comparison also stands reality on its head. People who defended Clinton -- or rather, who questioned his critics -- were quickly labeled "Clinton apologists." People who irrationally attacked him were treated seriously or, at best, tut-tutted as "harsh."

One of the primary progenitors of that double standard? Howard Kurtz, of course.

Blowing Novak's cover

Excellent reading from Eric Alterman:

Abrams and Novak and Rove? Oh My!

Alterman especially takes a hard look at Robert Novak, whose non-official cover as a "journalist" is pretty well shot:

I interviewed Novak not long after this for a too-kind profile I was writing and asked how he felt about being a pawn in Abrams's deception. His answer: He "admired" Abrams for lying to him on national television because the lie was told in the service of fighting Communism. "He had a tough job and there were lots of people out to get him," Novak averred, expressing zero regrets about misinforming his viewers. "Truth" did not even appear to enter into his calculations. There was his side and there were the other guys, period. That the Post and CNN willingly lend space to the man, knowing what they do, is another of the ongoing scandals involving journalistic standards and conservative ideological domination of the elite media.

My own favorite little Bob Novak anecdote -- unrelated to the Plame matter, but certainly revealing of the man's character -- comes from Sept. 12, 1995, when he was filling in as the host of "Larry King Live," and his guest was Sen. Jesse Helms. According to a Cox news report by Arthur Brice filed at the time:

Helms (R-N.C.) seemed somewhat shocked when the caller from Alabama said, "Mr. Helms, I know this might not be politically correct to say these days, but I think you should get a Nobel Peace Prize for everything you’ve done to help keep down the niggers."

"Oh, dear," guest host Robert Novak said.

"Whoops," said Helms. "Well, thank you, I think."

"That was the bad word," Novak said. "That was politically incorrect. We really don’t condone that kind of language, do we?"

"No. No," said Helms, a vocal opponent of affirmative action.

Helms went to say the slur is not part of his lexicon.

"My father didn’t condone it when I was a little boy," the 73-year-old senator said. "One of the worst spankings I ever got was when I used that word, and I don't think I’ve ever used it since."

Of course, Helms was as believable as Elliott Abrams.

What was noteworthy about both Novak's and Helms' responses, of course, was that they were flustered over the use of "the n-word". Neither bothered to even address, let alone repudiate, the content of the man's remarks -- you know, the part about "keeping the niggers down." Indeed, Helms seemed to thank him for them.

Novak is not simply a conservative-movement operative in reporter's clothing. He represents, as Alterman suggests, a much deeper and more systemic problem in modern journalism.

A personal note

I've always had a fond spot in my heart for Jeff Cooper's blog Cooped Up, if for no other reason than that he happens to share the name of one of my oldest and dearest friends. Most of all, I've enjoyed Jeff's clear-headed thinking and common sense, and have often wished we had more like him in the blogosphere.

So it was with real sadness that I read about Jeff's decision to go into blogging hiatus -- not because we're losing his voice (that's bad enough) but for the very human reasons he explains in his post announcing the decision -- namely, his 2-year-old boy has been diagnosed with auditory neuropathy. You should just read the post and let him explain it.

As Jeff says, there are some things more important than blogging.

Jeff's farewell really hit me hard, because the conflict is one I'm dealing with all the time as well. As it happens, I'm also the father of a 2-year-old, a delightful little girl named Fiona.

I'm not sure if any of my readers have picked up on the hints I've dropped from time to time, but being her care provider is actually my full-time job. That's right; your humble correspondent is a stay-at-home daddy.

My wife and I decided long ago that when we had children, we didn't want to do the child-care routine -- we wanted one of us to remain at home and care for them. We reduced our expenses and paid off our debts so that we could live on minimal income, and finally got around to making it happen two years ago. I wound up being in the better position to stay at home, and I was eager to do it, having gotten some child-rearing experience as a teenager, following the birth of my youngest brother.

For about a year before Fiona's birth, I worked at finishing Strawberry Days and building up a freelance writing business. At the time she was born, I was starting to get some real traction, stringing for the Washington Post and writing for Salon. Within a few weeks of her arrival, though, it quickly became clear that reporting and article-writing was just about out of the picture for a couple of years -- that kind of writing requires you to be near a phone and able to conduct interviews at all times, and it simply became impossible. Since that realization, I've settled into work I can do on evenings, weekends and naptimes -- namely, writing books ... and blogging. Neither of which produce much in the way of revenue.

[So for those of you wondering ... when you hit that little donation button for the "Rush, Newspeak and Fascism" essay, you are genuinely contributing rather directly to independent journalism. This summer's extraordinarily generous donations, in fact, made it possible for me to hire a care provider while I finished up Death on the Fourth of July. And of course, continued to blog.]

I've briefly pondered blogging about my adventures as a stay-at-home daddy. But there are already several out there, including such excellent sites as Rebel Dad and Full Time Father. And I have no intention of inflicting upon either my readers or my daughter the exploitative use of my admittedly overprotective love for her to score political points ("Why are conservatives congential liars and miscreants, my little Miss Poopy-Pants? Gosh, I don't know. Let's think about it while I change your butt. I'm sure I can find some worthy analogies inside your diaper.") like certain bloggers who will here go unnamed. Besides, I've always had doubts about how interested people really are in our personal lives. So I try to stick to what I know best -- politics, journalism, right-wing wackos. You know.

And lately, I've been conflicted between getting more posts up on the blog and responding to more of my e-mail ... and spending more and better time with Fiona. It's a balancing act, but I'm gradually working through it. Like all writing, blogging goes in fits and starts, and I imagine it's frustrating for regular readers.

Jeff Cooper's post was a bit of a gut-punch. Every parent carries that dread -- that something significant, something hidden, might be wrong with their child. It's the same dread that they'll tumble down a staircase or walk in front of a moving car. Like every parent, I've run through my head what I would do if something awful were to happen to my little girl, and even now can't get a handle around the despair it would bring.

The misfortune facing Jeff Cooper's little son seems manageable, and the early diagnosis should help them get tools for dealing with it. It seems like such an uncertain future, and all the rest of us can do is stand back and offer our prayers and support and whatever help might be needed -- and take the time to count our own blessings.

As Jeff says, there are some things that are simply more important ...



These thoughts and many others occupied me the evening after I read Jeff's post. Fiona's mommy was out of town on a business trip and I bathed her and put her to bed that night. Then I sat down and watched, for the first time, Grave of the Fireflies, which I had just purchased earlier that day.

The film is one of those on my "always meant to see" list, especially because I'm something of an anime buff (see my Totoro link), and Fireflies is one of the genre's real classics.

It is also, I must say, one of the most heartbreaking films I've ever watched. It is about two young survivors of the firebombing of Kobe in 1945, and how, in the long run, they become its victims too. And one thought stood out as I watched it -- that Americans are doing the same thing all over again, creating hundreds if not thousands of similar stories and similar victims, but this time in Iraq.

I was so stricken watching Grave of the Fireflies that when I finally turned out the light that night, I went in and lay down with Fiona and went to sleep, holding her as close as I could. I finally went in to my own bed sometime after 3.

In the morning, I was still thinking -- not just about Fiona and little Noah, and how we all want to protect our children from awful things, but also about little Setsuko, and the hundreds of Iraqi Setsukos and Seitas now wandering the streets of Baghdad and Tikrit. I tried to put myself in the shoes of their parents -- and just as before with Jeff Cooper's case, found myself unable to get a handle on the depths of the unimaginable pain.

And I thought about the reasons -- or rather, the utter lack thereof -- for this happening.

That, I understood, is why I keep on blogging. I'm sorry Jeff Cooper has to drop out, but he should, because Noah will always be more important. The rest of us will carry on the fight and look forward to the day he rejoins us. And may the wondrous human spirit that lives in our children -- well and unwell, happy and suffering alike -- always be the spark that fires us.

A divider, not a uniter

From the Jackson Clarion-Ledger ...

GOP bigwig (and Mississippi gubernatorial candidate) Haley Barbour, refusing to ask the Council of Conservative Citizens to take down a picture from its Web site showing him gripping and grinning with leaders of the white-supremacist organization:

Barbour said in an interview Thursday that white supremacist and anti-Semitic views on the CCC site are "indefensible," but he does not want to tell any group it cannot use his picture or statements.

"Once you start down the slippery slope of saying 'That person can't be for me,' then where do you stop?" Barbour said. "Old segregationists? Former Ku Klux Klan like (Sen.) Robert Byrd, D-W.Va.? You know?

"Once you get into that, you spend your time doing nothing else," Barbour said. "I don't care who has my picture. My picture's in the public domain. It gets published in newspapers every day."

Barbour sounds more and more like one of those good ol' Southern sheriffs who trots out all kinds of reasons why there was only one guard at the jail when the lynch mob arrived. (And I love how Republicans wave the magical and transparent Robert Byrd wand whenever their own congenital racism comes bubbling to the surface.)

As anyone with a grain of decency knows, the real reason Barbour should ask to have his photo removed is to repudiate any association with the group. Of course Barbour can't choose his supporters -- but he does have a say in whether those supporters can use his image to promote their cause. If, say, the Council of Conservative Pedophiles endorsed him, would he be so blithe?

The problem, as Barbour well knows, is that by allowing his name and image to be associated with an apparent endorsement of this supposedly "indefensible" group, Barbour lends credence to furthering its agenda. His wink-and-nudge response only makes all too clear that none of this bothers him; he is too busy currying the votes of white supremacists -- and by doing so, giving them a level of mainstream credibility they would otherwise not enjoy.

None of this is terribly surprising. Barbour, after all, has been wearing a Confederate flag on his lapel and has otherwise generally been gleefully injecting the issue of the flag into the campaign. (Recall, if you will, the earlier revelations that the Barbour campaign was identifying potential supporters by asking poll respondents how they voted on the flag issue.)

As I've noted previously, the Confederate flag is quickly becoming a symbol of the deeply divisive national cultural war, one with clear elements of racial intimidation and white resentment attached to it.

Barbour is running like his commander-in-chief -- paying lip service to "inclusiveness," and doing everything he can to divide us. Of course, this should come as no surprise either, considering Barbour's well-established track record as a political scam artist.

Generation gap

Georgie Anne Geyer has an interesting piece on the rift between Bush Sr. and his AWOL son, embodied by Bush Sr.'s decision to give the 2003 George Bush Award for Excellence in Public Service to none other than Sen. Edward Kennedy, easily the current president's most voluble critic on the Iraq war:

Bush Sr.'s 'message' to Bush Jr.

Geyer points out the remarkable differences that have emerged between the two presidents' ruling styles:

W has given way to a radical right that abhors international coalitions and manners; he mocks the world and denies any need for its help. He has led the Middle East to the nadir of its hope and possibilities, and he has led the United States to a moment in history in which we face asymmetric warfare from one end of the globe to another.

And above all, he has replaced his father's courtesy and good graces with an almost proud rudeness and scorn for others.

Why? I'll leave the question of "killing the father" to the psychiatric thinkers. Meanwhile, the tension between these two men reveals itself daily.

One also has to wonder what Bush Sr. -- being a former CIA chief himself -- thinks about the current White House's outrageous handling of the outing of Valerie Plame.

[Thanks to Shaw Kenawe at Atrios' comments for the heads-up.]

The right kind of terrorist

Imagine the following scenario:

Federal agents arrest a Muslim man, a member of a radical sect, living in Michigan on gun and drug charges. When they search his home, they discover a bunker containing a cache of weapons and explosives worthy of an army: an anti-aircraft gun capable of firing 550 rounds per minute up to four miles away, machine guns, explosives, thousands of rounds of ammunition, and booby traps. Investigators also find pictures of President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with scope cross-hairs drawn over them.

How do you suppose the media would handle that story?

My guess that if it didn't lead the evening news, it would be reported on it. It would at least be above the fold in many newspapers, and almost certainly would be a hot topic of conversation among the nation's radio talk-show hosts. Michael Savage would have a field day.

But what happens when, instead, the circumstances are identical, and the suspect is a white man associated with a militia unit?

It gets buried in the Grand Rapids Press. And that's about it.

Tribal scapegoats

Here's an editorial worth pondering, from Indian Country:

Beware the anti-Indian media message: A twisted story can become legend

The editorial details the way tribal rights -- and the gradual economic recovery of the tribes, largely through gambling operations -- are becoming the scapegoat for the states' budget troubles. Particularly notable was the way the Schwarzenegger campaign demagogued on the issue of Gray Davis' associations with tribal operations in the recent recall campaign:

California tribes are now "it;" suddenly it's open season on Indians, who are getting accused of getting more than their "fair share." Reality: state governments' budget deficits point to a national short-fall of $22 billion in this budget year and $54 billion in the next. Legislators are salivating over Indian money. Both nationally and state by state (California leads in this), voters and legislators have been excusing their own tax bases. Now, they want the Indian tribes, who are just beginning to grow and prosper under their inherent right of self-government, to pay the penalty for their state’s poor choices and often times, poor management.

Particularly noxious, as the editorial points out, was a recent Wall Street Journal piece by Alan Murray that traded in some of the most appalling stereotypes of Indians, not to mention factual misconceptions:

Murray dismisses all of Arnold’s ideas for reducing California’s deficit, "[b]ut one, [it] is step four: Get our fair share of Indian gaming revenue." (WSJ, October 14, "Schwarzenegger Has One Useful Idea: Tap Casino Money"). Every other Arnold idea turns out to be "vague," "fuzzy," "meaningless," except taxing the Indian revenues from tribal gaming. "The Villain," behind the tree," writes Murray, playing on the title of an early Arnold movie, "turns out to be an Indian."

Why must it be so?

Because, "American Indians don’t pay taxes. They live in autonomous regions."

Actually, of course, as the editorial points out, most Indians do pay taxes of some kind or other, and only a portion of the Native population lives on reservations anyway. It is true that a number of those who do live on reservations pay few taxes -- but that is because they continue to live below the poverty line.

I'm familiar with this argument from many years of reporting on tribal issues from various reservations around the inland Northwest (especially the Shoshone-Bannocks and the Flathead-Salish, as well as a more recent stint with the Makah). Whites with barely concealed racial and economic motives (the two are often intertwined, and have been for most of the past two centuries) make similar -- and similarly false -- claims in the various efforts that have been made over the years to eradicate tribal treaty rights. The courts, fortunately, have been the chief bulwark against these efforts.

In spite of the obviously oppressed state of American Indians, the scapegoating of tribes for all kinds of ills has continued apace -- in the Northwest, for instance, they are often blamed for depleted salmon runs, and white "property rights" activists who live on reservations are notorious for taking the tribes to court in hopes of eliminating the tribes' control of their lands.

It probably should not surprise anyone, then, that when Indians actually began climbing out of their economic hole, that their white neighbors would choose to attack them for their success. (It is somewhat reminiscent of the lynching-era phenomenon in which well-off blacks in particular were targeted as "uppity.")

Finally, the editorial raises an important point:

Murray rounds out the article with a continued attack on the tribes’ relationship with ousted Governor Davis, accusing the tribes of buying Davis with a $1 million campaign contribution. Again, the bogus assertion is of something dishonest being done by the tribes, who in contributing to politicians are in fact working within the system as well as they can, just like everyone else in the country. They get labeled as an interest group but in fact the "so-called" interest group syndrome is basically the country’s political system. What Murray calls a "sweet deal" compacts for the tribes were the result of pretty tough bargaining, from a governor who understood that the tribes come backed up with a federally-recognized jurisdiction and governmental sovereignty based on 200 years of agreements, litigation, legislation and continuous case law. Which is entirely proper, because this is the actual history and the only logical positions of Indian tribal nations in this country.

Indeed, this is a rhetorical trick that appears throughout Republican campaigns: Liberal or nonwhite advocacy is labeled a "special interest," while all those corporate contributions from the likes of Enron are just "politics at work."

This scapegoating of a minority group is part of a disturbing pattern that is starting emerge from the California Republican camp now in control of California -- and, as the Murray piece suggests, elsewhere as well. I'll have more on that in the coming week or two.

Republican Newspeak Zones

Dave Lindorff had a terrific piece in Salon the other day about the so-called "First Amendment zones" that are being deployed wherever President Bush and Vice President Cheney appear these days:

Keeping dissent invisible [Premium story]

What is remarkable about these "zones," however, is that -- in contravention of their name -- they are actually about suppressing citizens' free-speech rights. While most Americans believe the entire country is a "First Amendment zone", the Bush White House is herding its opponents into fenced-off areas well away from anywhere the president might see or hear them, which means there is no interaction between them and Bush for the media to record. Some of them are set up as far as two miles away.

The Newspeakish name given these zones is especially ironic, considering that one of the principal features of the zones is their content orientation. (For those interested, the Supreme Court has consistently ruled against hate-speech laws, for example, because of their "content orientation", which the courts have found violates the First Amendment.) In case after case, it is clear that pro-Bush supporters are given the traditional treatment of being allowed to voice their opinions anywhere they like, and as close to Bush as they choose. Anti-Bush demonstrators, however, are being herded into fenced-off areas.

As Lindorff reports:

At a hearing in county court, Det. John Ianachione, testifying under oath, said that the Secret Service had instructed local police to herd into the enclosed so-called free-speech area "people that were there making a statement pretty much against the president and his views." Explaining further, he added: "If they were exhibiting themselves as a protester, they were to go in that area."

Mind you, this doesn't necessarily appear to be the Secret Service's idea. This is something coming from the White House (and frankly has Karl Rove's fingerprints all over it). Lindorff writes:

Wolf also raises the possibility that White House operatives may be behind the moves to isolate and remove protesters from presidential events. He says that while he cannot recall specifically whether they were present with the Secret Service advance team before last year's presidential Labor Day visit, "I think they are sometimes part of" the planning process. The Secret Service declined to comment on this assertion, saying it would not discuss "security arrangements." The White House declined to comment on what role the White House staff plays in deciding how protesters at presidential events should be handled, referring all calls to the Secret Service.

Asked specifically whether White House officials have been behind requests to have protesters segregated and removed from the vicinity of presidential events, White House spokesman Allen Abney said, "No comment." But he added, "The White House staff and the Secret Service work together on a lot of things." While the Secret Service won't confirm that it is behind the pattern of tight constraints placed on protesters at public appearances by Bush and Cheney, the ACLU claims that mounting evidence suggests that this is exactly what is going on.

It is clear, in fact, that suppression of dissent in this fashion is purely a Republican motif. The Secret Service did not conduct itself in this fashion during Bill Clinton's tenure.

When did "First Amendment zones" first appear? The earliest form of them, unsurprisingly, was at George W. Bush's inauguration.

Though they went largely ignored by media, there were thousands of protesters in Washington that day, making it (fittingly) the largest Inaugural protest since 1973. Indeed, of the 300,000 estimated to be present, well over two-thirds of them were there to protest Bush's illegitimate ascension to the presidency.

My friend Maia Cowan was present, and she recalls that "the protest groups were split among different venues; they weren't allowed to have one big protest in one big place. (My guess was that the president-to-be didn't want anybody seeing how many protesters were there.) There were attempts to keep the protestors away from the parade route, including penning people up so that they couldn't even go back the way they came when they were blocked from going forward toward the parade."

Maia has collected a bunch of links at her Web site, Failure is Impossible, related to the First Amendment zones.

It appears that their first actual use was in Billings, Mont. , at a March 26, 2001, Bush appearance in which Yellowstone County sheriff’s deputies "set aside an area for protesters about 100 feet from the box-office window in front of the building. The area was away from the path of most people entering Metra to hear the president."

The first time the name "First Amendment zone" appears to have been used was in Tampa, Florida, on June 4, 2001, when protesters were fenced in two miles away from Bush's appearance. Three people were arrested for violating police directives to remain behind the fence.

And since then, they have been deployed in nearly every public appearance which Bush has made, including during his fleet fundraising visit here in Seattle two months ago.

Because they are purely a Republican enterprise, the use of these zones should become an issue in the 2004 election, if Democrats are smart about it.

I'm presuming that Democrats will not ask the Secret Service to set up "First Amendment zones" for their appearances or in any way try to separate protesters from supporters. (If they do, they'll deserve to lose.) It is likewise nearly certain that Bush and Cheney will use them.

And every Democratic candidate should point that out at every opportunity they get.

The Confederate flag in the Northwest

From my neck of the woods, so to speak ...

One arrest over alleged racial slur at meeting

BELLINGHAM, Wash. – A 14-year-old girl was arrested Monday and accused of yelling a racial slur and threatening to hang a classmate during a meeting at Meridian High School near Bellingham, Wash., according to Whatcom County Sheriff Bill Elfo.

The meeting was called by school administrators in response to reports that nooses were found hanging from a tree at the school and some students displayed Confederate flags.

The source of the dispute, it seems, is an in-school debate over the Confederate flag. It appears there is a contingent of neo-Confederates at the school who are promoting it as a symbol of white heritage. Some have been sporting it on their cars. But school rules prohibit the flag, a prohibition that has court sanction:

The courts took away students’ choice. Judges said the Confederate flag did not belong at school.

Some said flying the Confederate flag was offensive, but some students believed it was not racist.

Why would the Confederate flag be an issue in northwestern Washington? Because it is a symbol of white supremacism for people well outside the South as well. This is why phony arguments about its meaning are only cover for the stark reality that anyone -- particularly anyone of color -- who is confronted by the flag knows all too well: The Confederate flag is meant to intimidate -- to trumpet the values of white supremacy. The "heritage" which it harkens back to is mostly rife with the charred corpses of lynched innocents.

Whatcom County has a history of right-wing extremism: The Washington State Militia, whose trial In God's Country covered in detail (and which was the subject of Jane Kramer's excellent Lone Patriot: The Short Career of an American Militiaman) was based in rural Whatcom. In recent years there have been cross-burnings aimed at immigrants, and death threats aimed at peace protesters. The Patriots who filled the ranks of the WSM are still very much at large in the county, and their effect keeps bubbling to the surface.

Counterspinning Plame

Everyone, it seems, is starting to get the picture about the nature of the White House response to the outing of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA operative: namely, that it intends to try to spin its way out of any consequences for the matter by claiming that no criminal acts occurred -- flying in the face of the reality that someone on the Bush team leaked an undercover CIA operative's identity to Robert Novak and several other reporters, a crime (with extraordinarily damaging consequences) regardless how you cut it.

So far, Josh Marshall, Mark Kleiman, Atrios, Kevin Drum, Thomas Spencer, Tresy at Corrente and Christian Crumlish have all reached this conclusion.

Christian rather neatly sums up the White House's emerging spin points:

So there you have it, an innocent chance burning of an agent's cover (oopsie!), and then "fair game" to go after an administration critic's family (just politics as usual), capped by the leak to the Washington Post (betrayal!). I can see it now. How long before we hear that's their story and they're sticking to it.

Accompanying the White House spin, of course, is the predictable chorus from his media apologists: Pay no mind, move along, folks. The Plame matter is a mere "partisan" affair that will evaporate when the smoke clears.

If Republicans have proven incredibly incompetent at running the country, they at least have continued to display a knack for ruthless hardball politics and manipulation of the media. That the media more often than not seem all too happy to oblige is another matter.

Facts are to spin like garlic to vampires: effective, but only in well-coordinated bunches. Anyone interested in seeing justice done in the Plame matter -- which is to say, anyone interested in the integrity of national security and the rule of law -- will have to counter the spin of Bush apologists with some talking points of their own.

To that end, the following points strike me as the most significant:

A: The Plame affair matters.

It matters because a significant national security asset in the war on terrorism was badly compromised. Contrary to the conservative spin that Plame's outing didn't matter because "everyone" in the Beltway knew she was CIA (and, in some permutations, that she was only an analyst and not an operative), in fact Plame's status was a closely held secret, for overwhelmingly important reasons, as the New York Times explained:

[W]ithin the C.I.A., the exposure of Ms. Plame is now considered an even greater instance of treachery. Ms. Plame, a specialist in nonconventional weapons who worked overseas, had "nonofficial cover," and was what in C.I.A. parlance is called a Noc, the most difficult kind of false identity for the agency to create. While most undercover agency officers disguise their real profession by pretending to be American embassy diplomats or other United States government employees, Ms. Plame passed herself off as a private energy expert. Intelligence experts said that Nocs have especially dangerous jobs.

"Nocs are the holiest of holies," said Kenneth M. Pollack, a former agency officer who is now director of research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. "This is real James Bond stuff. You're going overseas posing as a businessman, and if the other government finds out about you, they're probably going to shoot you. The United States has basically no way to protect you."

Moreover, her exposure has widespread ramifications for the war on terror, as Warren Strobel reported Friday:

Training agents such as Plame, 40, costs millions of dollars and requires the time-consuming establishment of elaborate fictions, called "legends," including in this case the creation of a CIA front company that helped lend plausibility to her trips overseas.

Compounding the damage, the front company, Brewster-Jennings & Associates, whose name has been reported previously, apparently also was used by other CIA officers whose work now could be at risk, according to Vince Cannistraro, formerly the agency's chief of counterterrorism operations and analysis.

Now, Plame's career as a covert operations officer in the CIA's Directorate of Operations is over. Those she dealt with -- whether on business or not -- may be in danger. The DO is conducting an extensive damage assessment.

And Plame's exposure may make it harder for American spies to convince foreigners to share important secrets with them, U.S. intelligence officials said.

... "This is not just another leak. This is an unprecedented exposing of an agent's identity," said former CIA officer Jim Marcinkowski, who's now a prosecutor in Royal Oak, Mich., and who also did CIA training with Plame.

As Josh Marshall has pointed out, the damage to America's intelligence on weapons of mass destruction may well be massive, and very well could result in the deaths of CIA assets abroad -- not to mention the extent to which it exposes the entire American populace to an increased likelihood of attack by terrorists with weapons of mass destruction.

It matters because the deliberate exposure of an undercover agent's identity in a way that grotesquely compromises national security and the potential deaths of agents abroad constitutes outright treason.

And no, we're not talking about Ann Coulter's nearly hallucinogenic version of treason, but the Aldrich Ames kind of treason. The real thing that earns people prison terms.

It matters because the culpability for the leak goes right to the heart of the Oval Office. The sources of the leak appear to be within the inner circle of the Bush White House, including chief of staff Karl Rove, who has been identified by Jospeh Wilson, Plame's husband, and reporters as one of the administration officials who contacted them after the Novak column's appearance and exacerbated the effects of Plame's original exposure by explicitly encouraging its further spread.

The fact that these matters reach the highest levels of government is underscored by the reports that the White House, according to the Boston Globe, is reserving the option of resorting to "executive privilege" claims to shield some of its documents from the Justice Department investigation:

If the White House asserts a claim of executive privilege, [law professor Thomas] Sargentich said it would be a strong sign that the investigation is heading to the highest levels of the Bush administration, given that the claim can only be used to shield the president's decision-making process.

If the White House indeed resorts to this audacious tactic, it will be a tacit admission of the president's possible involvement.

B: The timing of the phone calls to reporters is irrelevant.

Contrary to the White House's emerging spin point, the difference between calls placed to reporters about the Plame leak before and after the Novak columns is ultimately inconsequential. As Mark Kleiman says: "Information does not stop being classified because someone else improperly reveals it."

Rep. John Conyers, in calling for Rove's resignation last week, made this point clearly:

The law states that even if you lawfully knew of Mr. Wilson's wife's status, you were obliged to come forward and report the press leak to the proper authorities -- not inflame the situation by encouraging further dissemination. 18 U.S.C. § 793(f). Larger than whether any one statute can be read to find criminal responsibility is the issue of whether officials of your stature will be allowed to use their influence to intimidate whistle-blowers.

It must be also noted that the White House's spin point here is severely undermined by other facts -- namely, two separate reports in the Washington Post that show several other reporters besides Novak were actively contacted by the leakers: The first, on Sept. 29, which reported:

Another journalist yesterday confirmed receiving a call from an administration official providing the same information about Wilson's wife before the Novak column appeared on July 14 in The Post and other newspapers.

Sunday's Post story carries the point even further:

That same week, two top White House officials disclosed Plame's identity to least six Washington journalists, an administration official told The Post for an article published Sept. 28. The source elaborated on the conversations last week, saying that officials brought up Plame as part of their broader case against Wilson.

"It was unsolicited," the source said. "They were pushing back. They used everything they had.”

It should be clear that the spread of the leak both before and after the Novak column was substantial.

C: The White House's conduct in responding to the leak so far constitutes at least an abject failure to live up to the responsibilities of its office, and perhaps an actual coverup.

Once the leak occurred -- on July 16 -- President Bush had an obligation to investigate the matter immediately and to find the persons responsible and deal with them appropriately (at the very least, dismissing them, if not turning them over for prosecution). Instead, the White House continued to actively pursue the spread of the leak with even more reporters.

No investigation was ordered until the CIA, in late September, filed a criminal referral in the matter with the FBI. And even then, the White House dragged its feet -- waiting a full day before ordering staff to recover the relevant documents, and then filtering them through White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez. Subsequently, the president himself has made clear that finding the original source of the leak is a low priority, warning that the leakers may never be found.

What is clear instead is that the White House is focused on finding the identity of the "senior administration official" whose information given to the Post has directly undermined the Bush team's emerging claim that "no classified leaks occurred." This in essence is an attempt to intimidate any dissenters within the Oval Office -- and possibly to get them to change their testimony. And that, in turn, may constitute obstruction of justice.

The Bush White House's behavior is rapidly approaching the impeachment stage. But if its spin succeeds, it may in the end escape any accountability for damaging the nation's security and placing us all at greater risk. And that will be the most egregious scandal of all.

Spreading extremism

The progression of extremist ideas and agendas into the mainstream via conservative transmitters happens in small increments, but these are always worth observing. The most recent case comes from Colorado -- home to many a right-wing nutcase -- where the Jefferson County Treasurer is distributing extremist material to taxpayers with the county's official imprimatur. And yes, he's a Republican.

The story surfaced last week in the Denver Post:

Rights group: 'Extremism' behind Jeffco official's guide

Most of the coverage of the story focused on the treasurer, a fellow named Mark Paschall, and the apparent religious taint of his views, particularly the notion that jurors were obligated to follow "God before the law." But as the Post story explained:

Paschall said he paid for 1,000 copies of the "Citizens Rule Book," which have been available at the treasurer's office counter, at a display in the county building and from him "wherever I go."

The pocket-sized guides promote "jury nullification," a concept that politically conservative groups argue means jurors have the right not only to decide guilt or innocence but also whether laws are just and are in keeping with God's law.

Paschall said Jefferson County District Court Chief Judge Thomas Woodford called him Tuesday.

"He was wondering about the jury things" in the booklet, Paschall said. "I asked him if a juror just says, 'I vote not guilty,' is that all they are required to say, because otherwise you get into the thought police."

Woodford declined to comment.

Inside most of the 61-page booklets is the stamp: "This information is provided by Jefferson County Treasurer Mark Paschall."

Paschall is unfazed. "I as a citizen have the right to express my religious beliefs. I don't care if I am in the treasurer's office."

Of course, he's expressing far more than merely his religious views. What is far more significant are the political views contained in the "Citizens Rule Book."

[A side note: It is probably worth observing that Paschall also has a military record resembling that of other prominent Republicans. But, y'know, conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson and Newt Gingrich have been lecturing us about decadent "liberal" morality for years now. Such paragons are they.]

I happen to have had a great deal of experience with the "Citizens Rule Book," because it was one of the most popular items available for sale at militia meetings I attended. It also popped up in two trials I covered: the Montana Freemen, and the Washington State Militia. In both cases, Patriot agitators attending the trial attempted to have the guides distributed among the jurors of those trials and were slapped down.

I described it briefly in Chapter 11 (p. 297) of In God's Country, which is about the 1996 trial of the six members of the Washington State Militia accused of engaging in a bomb- and mischief-making conspiracy (Jane Kramer, incidentally, focused on the case in her terrific Lone Patriot: The Brief Career of an American Militiaman). It made a brief appearance in the courtroom, which was overseen by U.S. District Judge John Coughenour, a blunt jurist with a low tolerance for Patriot courtroom antics. There was nonetheless a good deal of typical Patriot folderol going on among the audience, including attempts to intimidate reporters and distribute anti-Semitic propaganda. But then:

All of the Patriot frolic took a serious turn when William Smith’s attorney, Robert Leen, attempted to have the "Citizen’s Rule Book" made available to the jury, claiming it was part of the defendants' beliefs and should be admitted as evidence. The pamphlet to which he referred is probably the most popular item available at militia meetings, since it only costs $1.25; it claims to prove the concept of "jury nullification," the Patriot notion that jurors are laws unto themselves -- that they can actually sit in judgment on the justness of a law itself and that, moreover, they can ignore the instructions of the judge to the jury. Coughenour, the embodiment of the no-nonsense judge, turned Leen’s request down.

However, this outraged the Patriots in the gallery. Gene Goosman filed a Patriot "Affidavit" against Coughenour, demanding that he uphold his oath of office. Hartford Van Dyke, a Patriot from the southwestern Washington town of Battle Ground, filed a lien of $1.7 billion against Coughenour as well as deputy U.S. attorneys Gene Porter and Susan Dohrmann, who were prosecuting the case.

[Such "affidavits," for those interested, are devoid of any force of law.]

The "Rule Book" also made a brief appearance at the Montana Freemen's trial in Billings. As it happened, Coughenour drew the assignment for that case as well, and having become familiar with the "Citizens Rule Book" in Seattle, managed to ensure that no copies were allowed in the courtroom.

What is "jury nullification" all about?

There is in fact a long history of jury nullification both in American and English law -- cases in which the jurors simply ignored the requirements of the law and set the accused free. However, it has primarily been viewed as a malfunction of the law, not as a positive principle to be practiced.

"Nullification is, by definition, a violation of a juror's oath to apply the law as instructed by the court," according to a 1997 federal ruling, the strongest, most recent court decision on the topic. The opinion by Judge Jose Cabranes said jurors who reject the law should not be allowed to serve; when the ruling was appealed, the courts upheld, but also ordered a new trial after declaring that only "unambiguous evidence" of a juror's disregard of the law can justify his dismissal.

Other jurists have been equally clear about the actual standing of jury nullification:

"It is a recipe for anarchy . . . [when jurors] are allowed to substitute personal whims for the stable and established law." -- Colorado circuit Judge Frederic B. Rodgers

"Jury nullification is indefensible, because, by definition, it amounts to juror perjury -- that is jurors lying under oath by deciding a case contrary to the law and the evidence after they have sworn to decide the case according to the law and the evidence." -- D.C. Superior Court Judge Henry F. Greene

In essence, jury nullification -- by sitting in judgment not just of the facts of the case but of the laws themselves -- arrogates to itself not only the role of the judge but of the legislature, essentially overturning at whim those laws that have been passed through democratic processes. In this sense, jury nullification is a threat not only to the courts, but to the very systems of laws on which the nation rests.

The leading proponent of jury nullification is a Montana-based outfit called the Fully Informed Jury Association. They present a relatively normative, broad-spectrum front, particularly since they have attracted a substantial audience among libertarians and drug-war critics (a small splinter group, also based in Montana, with a similar name in fact was overtly extremist in orientation and was closely associated with the Montana Freemen); this seeming variety on the political spectrum lets it pose as semi-mainstream. As their Web site proclaims:

The American Bar Association (ABA) wrote that FIJA drew its support from "a wide and unusual spectrum of political thought--from the National Rifle Association to gun control advocates, from abortion rights supporters to their opponents, and from backers of marijuana legislation to law-and-order types." The appeal of FIJA crosses the full spectrum of American lifestyle and ideology because the FIJA goals reflect the goals of those who are alert to the fragile liberties of Americans.

In reality, FIJA's origins and orientation are extremist, built (like most Patriot schemes) on long-rejected legal theories and dubious "facts."

Now, there have been exceptional rulings in which jury nullification can be seen ipso facto as beneficial (particularly in some of the recent drug-war cases), and these cases are cited readily by FIJA adherents. However, these cases have no more force of law in modern courts than does the Dred Scot decision (though that ruling too is cited on more than a few occasions by FIJA adherents). That system is predicated upon the admonition that juries must rule on evidence and the law, pure and simple, and they take oaths to uphold that standard. Their failure to do so in fact breaks the law.

The legal powers that nullification proponents would hand to juries violates the careful balance of powers that exists within the system. If juries are deciding the justness of the laws, they are assuming powers traditionally relegated to the judiciary and, in other contexts, to the legislative branch. There is nothing in any body of law that would allow them to do this, other than the pure absence of an outright prohibition -- which actually exists in the form of the jurors’ oaths.

But if nullification was mostly a malfunction -- as in the many black-lynching acquittals recorded in the South from the Civil War onward -- then how did it ever become an organizing principle for social or legal reform? For that answer, turn to the Posse Comitatus.

The Posse was in most respects a kind of far-right tax protest. It built its multitudinous "constitutional" theories out of legalisms touted by John Calhoun and other Dred Scot types. The Posse was a direct descendant of old right-wing elements from the 1930s Silver Shirts organization and the anti-Semitic contingent (like the Minutemen) of the far right which split from the John Birch Society in the late 1950s because it refused to adopt anti-Semitic theories.

The Posse and their followers, who preached that taxes were illegal and that the IRS was an unconstitutional body, became extremely frustrated as their followers, beginning in the early 1970s, were getting so much prison time from their mounting tax convictions. Convinced that the legal system itself was corrupt and would never allow their view of constitutional law to see the light of day, they developed the idea of organized jury nullification: If they couldn’t get the courts to change, all they had to do was get one or two jurors to hang up the process.

The chief proponent of the concept in Posse circles was a Montanan named Red Beckman. He had a long and colorful career as a tax protester and anti-Semite; his book, The Church Deceived, described the Holocaust as God's judgement on "the Anti-Christ Church" for wqorshipping Satan, and was noted for repeating the charge that Jews are Satan worshippers on TV interviews. He also appeared as a keynote speaker at numerous Christian Identity events over the years. Beckman was an early and important influence on LeRoy Schweitzer, the leader of the Montana Freemen.

Beckman's ideas about jury nullification became a cornerstone of his anti-tax strategy, and they quickly gained popularity, not just among the Posse, but among many elements of the far right that were coming into conflict with legal authorities for their many activities. Not only could jury nullification solve problems related to tax cases, but juries could also potentially overturn charges ranging from malicious harassment to firearms violations and bomb building. As the Posse mutated into the Christian Patriots, who then became merely Patriots, the theories became more distilled and more widely distributed.

Because it does have a certain legal history, it has proven to be a powerful recruiting tool within the mainstream. It meshes nicely with the Patriot modus operandi of the 1990s: hiding the agenda by adopting a mainstream pose, offering crackpot theories as legitimate by spouting a blizzard of legalisms, and generally gnawing away at the legal system in the hopes of inducing its collapse. And they’ve been very successful at getting out the jury-nullification Gospel to a broad swath of society (particularly barter-fair types and libertarians), all under the guise of enacting a needed reform of the court system.

It is likely that the bulk of nullification proponents -- including, probably, Mark Paschall, though his notions about placing God's laws before man's are common among both Identity followers and Christian Reconstructionists -- have no idea whose agenda they’re being used for. But then, most people are oblivious to the elements in our society that would like to see it all fall apart, and are doing their damnedest to make it happen.

Diebold and the California vote

Mark Crispin Miller offers an eye-catching post about the California recall election results vis a vis the use of Diebold's voting technology.

One of Miller's correspondents performed some number-crunching of the Diebold counties and concluded:

The probability of scoring twice the expected average county % could charitably be construed as the upper limit of the possible. Some candidates exceed that figure in Diebold counties by a four or five fold margin. If you have done statistics, you know that is so far beyond what might be expected that you would reject it as defective data. If it happened to one candidate in this election, I would be surprised but might accept it. There are a large number of candidates who have this same systematic pattern of receiving skimmed votes.

The California recall shows Diebold trying to affect the election outcome by moving votes from high ranked candidates to low ranked candidates.

By doing this, Diebold keep the total number of votes cast constant but rob some candidate of their votes.

At this remove, it's impossible to assess the accuracy of the analysis, but it certainly appears valid, and moreover bears investigating.

I'm sure the California media will get right on it.

The coverup

The importance of the recent revelation that the Bush administration is focused, in its handling of the Valerie Plame leak, not on the source of that leak, but on the official who confirmed it, seems to have escaped notice so far. So let's explore it a little further.

The recent Newsweek piece by Michael Isikoff -- a fairly clear iteration of White House talking points -- made this shift in the direction of the investigation within the White House explicit. It even laid out the thinking of the Bush team:

[I]t suggested for the first time that there was a big-league dissenter within the upper ranks of the Bush administration, someone who was genuinely appalled at crude White House attempts to discredit a critic. (Novak’s small point was that Wilson was dispatched by the CIA to check out claims that Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy uranium from Niger only because his agency wife recommended him.) It also was the strongest evidence that the disclosure of Plame’s identify was done with malicious intent and not, as Novak has since insisted, a passing reference in the course of a lengthy conversation about a wide range of matters.

Not only do the anonymous official's remarks rebut the White House's emerging claim that there was no "criminal intent" in the release of Plame's identity, but they run smack into the chief operating principle of the Bush team: Loyalty above all.

Whoever talked to the Post was disloyal to the team. And that means they will be ferreted out and punished.

This lays bare the same lack of principle, the same skewed priorities, that were operative in the outing of Plame's CIA identity -- wherein fealty to Bush and the triumph of his politics is of greater significance than anything, even national security. Joseph Wilson and his wife's value as human beings, and as civil servants, was rendered moot under this calculus. They became expendable from a political standpoint.

The same fate almost certainly awaits whoever the "senior administration official" might be. He will be made an example of, as Bush's proof of his desire to root out leakers. The sources of the leak to Novak, however, will be found innocent of "criminal intent."

Most of all, this change in focus means that the Bush team is in full coverup mode -- seeking to punish the dissenters who stray from the team's official story about the leak -- even if, as Atrios points out, that official story is already full of holes.

Well, the Beltway press has not been noted for its ability to take in the big picture. At some point, though -- perhaps when Team Bush files for executive privilege in the case -- they'll understand just how far along this coverup has proceeded already.

America haters

Pat Robertson has finally slipped off the deep end.

In an interview he conducted with author Joel Mowbray on his 700 Club show last week, Robertson said the following:

I read your book. When you get through, you say, "If I could just get a nuclear device inside Foggy Bottom, I think that’s the answer." I mean, you get through this, and you say, "We’ve got to blow that thing up." I mean, is it as bad as you say?

The State Department has filed a protest, saying Robertson's remarks were "despicable," with a "senior administration official" saying "Robertson had been made aware of Secretary of State Colin Powell's extreme outrage at the tone and content of the remarks."

Robertson, of course, has gone off the reservation on previous occasions -- publishing his Protocols-inspired "New World Order" tome, making inflammatory remarks about Muslims after Sept. 11. But this time, both the sentiment and rhetoric are so notably extremist in nature that it's hard to imagine him retaining any credibility.

One wonders when all those pundits and bloggers on the lookout for signs of America-bashing will chime in.

Spinning stupidity

Well, it appears that the White House's investigation indeed is not focusing on the original leaker(s) of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA operative to the press, but instead is attempting to ferret out just who might be the "senior administration official" who fingered two "top White House officials" as the sources of the leak to the Washington Post.

This is made explicit in the recent Newsweek report by Michael Isikoff:

"Criminal or Just Plain Stupid?"

According to Isikoff:

The "senior administration official" is not the original leaker who first told columnist Robert Novak that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA "operative" specializing in weapons of mass destruction. That as-yet-unidentified official remains the target of Justice Department investigators who today are awaiting stacks of White House records -- including phone logs, e-mails and other material relating to the possible dissemination of information about Wilson and his undercover spouse.

Instead, it is another "senior administration official" -- the one quoted in a Sept. 28 Washington Post article as saying that "before Novak’s column ran" two top White House officials "called at least six Washington journalists" and disclosed the identify and occupation of Wilson’s wife. "Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge," that senior administration official told the Post’s Mike Allen and Dana Priest.

The Post story may have been the most eye-popping development in the leak story: it suggested for the first time that there was a big-league dissenter within the upper ranks of the Bush administration, someone who was genuinely appalled at crude White House attempts to discredit a critic. (Novak’s small point was that Wilson was dispatched by the CIA to check out claims that Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy uranium from Niger only because his agency wife recommended him.) It also was the strongest evidence that the disclosure of Plame’s identify was done with malicious intent and not, as Novak has since insisted, a passing reference in the course of a lengthy conversation about a wide range of matters.

But more than 10 days after the story exploded, an alternative theory is emerging among those who are directly involved in the leak case: that the “senior administration official” quoted in the Washington Post piece simply got it wrong. There were indeed White House phone calls to reporters about Wilson’s wife. But most, if not all, of these phone calls, were made after the Novak column appeared, some government officials now believe. They were placed as part of a blundering effort to persuade journalists to concentrate on Wilson’s presumed lack of credentials as a critic of pre-Iraq war intelligence rather than the substance of his critique.

The upshot of this scenario: Novak was the only journalist to whom Plame's identity as a CIA agent was leaked before his column ran. All other White House contacts about the matter only pointed to the Novak column -- which by itself was not against the law.

Isikoff has been a reasonably reliable transmitter of Republican talking points, and the headline of the piece -- and the thrust of its contents -- suggests what will almost certainly become the White House's story about the Plame matter: There were no laws broken. Just "stupid" behavior.

Someone -- the "senior administration official," possibly Andy Card -- will be made a scapegoat, and the sources of the leak will have their hands slapped.

Earlier today, Josh Marshall wondered why press spokesman Scott McClellan answered questions about the complicity of two key suspects -- Lewis Libby and Elliot Abrams -- with carefully worded responses referring to "leaks of classified information".

Isikoff's story explains why this distinction is important to the White House:

One possible translation: whatever they may or may not have said to Novak, nobody passed along anything they knew to be classified at the time.

And that may make all the difference in the world. As former CIA director James Woolsey points out, the 1982 law that makes it a federal crime to disclose the identify of an undercover CIA agent was carefully written to target witting perpetrators. Congress had in mind actors such as ex-CIA agent turned left-wing critic Philip Agee who, for political reasons, wrote a book "outing" many of his former colleagues, leading to considerable and justifiable concern about their safety. The law "was quite narrowly drafted," notes Woolsey, and much will depend on "whether there was criminal intent" by the leaker. If the leaker did not know that Wilson’s wife was undercover at the time of the conversation with Novak, that alone may get him or her off the hook.

Anyone willing to wager that John Ashcroft's Justice Department will find that there was no "criminal intent" on the part of the leaker?

I'm reminded of the time back in the late 1970s when then-Congressman George Hansen -- a Bircher Republican from Idaho -- was convicted of tax evasion, in no small part a product of Hansen's cockamamie Posse-style arguments about the legitimacy of the Internal Revenue Service. (Hansen's congenital "mishandling" of campaign funds was also a problem.)

Hansen was convicted rather readily, despite his courtroom theatrics. But when it came time for sentencing, the judge decided to simply give Hansen a fine and a warning: After all, the judge reasoned, it was clear that Hansen was too "stupid" to have formed any real criminal intent.

Hansen -- whose political career survived the first conviction -- was convicted a few years later of kiting checks. The second time around, the judge was not so easily fooled, and sent him to prison.

Executive Privilege, the Plame Affair and Ted Olson

Lisa English at Ruminate This raises the specter of "executive privilege" as a possible White House tactic in forestalling the Justice Department's investigation of the leaking of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity. English cites a Boston Globe piece headlined, "Executive privilege seen as leak-case option":

The very words "executive privilege" evoke memories of scandal-plagued presidents trying to use the power of their office to hide from public view politically damaging information, and White House press secretary Scott McClellan was careful not to use the term. Still, he would not rule out the use of executive privilege, saying: "I think it's premature to even speculate about such matters."

Presidents can invoke executive privilege to shield from public view some aspects of their internal decision-making process. "It's used to shroud advice that's sometimes inflammatory or has been rejected," said Thomas Sargentich, a law professor at American University in Washington, D.C. "Executive privilege is not supposed to be a shield in criminal investigations."

Particularly disturbing is the news that all of the White House information regarding the investigation is being filtered by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales' office:

Gonzales's office will also have the opportunity to examine what information, if any, should not be turned over because the administration believes it is protected by executive privilege. The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which provides legal opinions on questions with constitutional dimensions, would review any White House claims.

Sargentich, who worked in the Office of Legal Counsel during the Carter and Reagan administrations, said lawyers in that office can make independent judgments, though the attorney general remains their boss and can overrule them.

If the White House asserts a claim of executive privilege, Sargentich said it would be a strong sign that the investigation is heading to the highest levels of the Bush administration, given that the claim can only be used to shield the president's decision-making process.

The news that executive privilege is even being considered in this case is remarkable, considering the constraints built into the law regarding such assertions, especially insofar as they relate to criminal activity. There are other ways it is remarkable as well. As Benedict Spinoza correctly points out in the comments for Lisa's post [edited slightly for minor corrections]:

Executive Privilege simply does not apply in this, at least not at this point. For anyone who remembers when the term was first coined, it was viewed as a formalization of the separation of powers doctrine, a doctrine that applies solely between the branches of government (executive, legislative, and judicial) and not within a single branch. Obviously, the DoJ and the White House are within a single branch, so executive privilege cannot apply.

There is however a parallel to this that does indeed apply in this case: chain of command. Since DoJ reports to the President, he can theoretically simply order DoJ to not ask for certain materials, and, observing the chain of command, DoJ would not. Were this to be the case, the only available solution would be for Congress to file for impeachment. If it chose to (a hypothetical, of course), the President could not then claim Executive Privilege because to do so would be contradictory to the explicitly enumerated Congressional Privilege of impeachment.

As Spinoza's analysis explores further, this only hints at the beginning of the can of worms this potential assertion of "executive privilege" opens. But let me point out that its audaciousness -- built on potentially uncharted areas of the law -- was something we could have predicted from this White House.

This is particularly so considering that its chief legal strategist is none other than Theodore B. Olson, the solicitor general -- the man who almost certainly will be arguing these executive-privilege claims when they go to court, as they almost assuredly will if made.

Olson, you see, has an especially charged history when it comes to claims of executive privilege -- all of which may well play into the lengths to which the Bush White House may try to shield itself from the consequences of its role in a grotesque breach of national-security interests.

Ted Olson is at heart an old Nixonian: he first became involved in Republican politics in the early '70s and the Nixon campaigns, and much of his tenure at the Reagan Justice Department (he was a high-ranking attorney in the Office of Legal Counsel) in the 1980s was devoted to overturning what he saw as the unconstitutional encroachments of congressional powers on executive powers that resulted from the post-Watergate reforms. Chief among these were the limits on asserting "executive privilege."

I reported in detail on this part of Olson's career in a Salon piece that, if you'll excuse the indulgence, I'll quote from at length here:

Ted Olson's career as a battling Republican lawyer really began the day he stood next to James Watt as the interior secretary defiantly declared executive privilege.

That was in October 1981, a few months after President Reagan had named Olson assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel. Watt had been subpoenaed by Michigan Rep. John Dingell, the Democratic chairman of the subcommittee assigned to look into environmental cleanup efforts, to provide Dingell's subcommittee with documents relating to that work. Watt had deemed these papers "enforcement sensitive" -- that is, making them public, he said, would compromise the department's ability to enforce cleanup laws.

However, Watt's privilege assertion and the controversy accompanying it did not last long. Sensing a political fiasco, Reagan's White House counsel, Fred Fielding, negotiated an access agreement with the Dingell subcommittee in early 1982. Olson strongly opposed the terms of the agreement, and he apparently viewed the compromise as a personal defeat.

Another opportunity for Olson to again tackle the executive-privilege question presented itself in short order. In September 1982, another House subcommittee -- chaired by Rep. Elliott Levitas, D-Ga. -- sought access to EPA files involving enforcement of the so-called Superfund hazardous-waste cleanup provisions, particularly focusing on the activities of Rita Lavelle, assistant administrator for solid waste and emergency response. Dingell's subcommittee also asked for documents involving the same matter. EPA staff members were reluctant to disclose some information, again fearing the documents were "enforcement sensitive."

Olson proceeded to lead the Reagan White House to claim executive privilege in spectacularly groundless fashion, with little regard for the requirements of the law:

The biggest flaw in Olson's Oct. 25 memo, however, was the statement that the documents he was seeking to keep from investigators contained no evidence of wrongdoing. In fact, Olson's staff had not even conducted a thorough review of the documents Dingell wanted -- some 51 pieces in all -- and would not do so until Dec. 9, well after executive privilege was asserted. There had been a preliminary review in early October, and even then red flags had been raised; the OLC lawyers forwarded them at that point to Dinkins' attorneys for more detailed review. There is no indication that review was ever completed; Dinkins conducted a cursory check and then apparently let the matter lapse.

Most of all, when Congress finally cited the EPA Administrator, Anne Gorsuch Burford, for contempt in the matter, Olson then led the charge in a remarkable display of contempt for the separation of powers issues that were at the foundation of the executive-privilege laws:

When the full House cited Burford on Dec. 16, he and his team responded with an extraordinary civil suit in federal court contesting the constitutionality of Congress' contempt powers, charging that the invocation of privilege was proper and that the contempt citations should not stand. The suit, however, had a short shelf life; it was dismissed by the court on Feb. 1.

The Olson team's effort was "without a doubt the sloppiest piece of legal work I had seen in 20 years of being a lawyer," Burford later wrote in her memoirs. It only cited in its support nonbinding opinions from a single case -- former President Richard Nixon's suit against the House Judiciary Committee -- and Burford notes that no factual defenses were raised.

Certainly in many other areas -- particularly the aggressive assertion of executive powers in setting up military tribunals and designating citizens "enemy combatants," as well as various surveillance powers under the so-called Patriot Acts -- the Bush White House has displayed all the signs of attempting to reacquire powers lost to the executive branch in the 1970s … a belated "Nixon's revenge," as it were. There is a high likelihood that Ted Olson has been one of the guiding lights in these acquisitions.

"Executive privilege" is especially an area near and dear to Olson's heart. And it is clear, from his record, that Olson believes such privilege should be nearly illimitable -- unless, of course, the president is a Democrat.

What his record especially suggests is that Olson may very well lead the Bush White House on a merry goose chase, attempting to extend executive privilege into areas where it was never intended, and where almost certainly legal mischief could turn up afoot. It has the makings of a real train wreck. As I noted at the end of the Olson piece:

Olson's actual record in that period raises doubts about even this answer. His single-minded effort to assert executive privilege actually overlooked what the law permitted, and it wound up costing President Reagan dearly. One is only left to wonder what dubious legal tangles he has in store for President Bush's agenda.

It is however disturbing to note, as Benedict Spinoza's analysis suggests, that the makeup of the courts is quite different now than it was when Olson first attempted to claim Congress' powers of oversight unconstitutional. Considering that Olson has reason to believe he can succeed at the highest levels of the court, he is almost certain to push the envelope. Who knows? He might be able to prolong any resolution of the scandal, and force it onto the back pages, just by dragging it out through the courts.

In other words, look for the Plame affair to turn into a courtroom and congressional wrangle that is nasty, brutish and … long.

An interesting slip

Josh Marshall yesterday mentioned this comment by President Bush in remarks to reporters:

I mean this town is a -- is a town full of people who like to leak information. And I don't know if we're going to find out the senior administration official.

I thought this was strange, since the original report in the Washington Post cited a "senior administration official" who indicated that there were two "top White House officials" who leaked Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA operative to the press.

In other words, it's beginning to sound as though the White House is less interested in the identity of the two leakers than it is that "senior administration official" who spilled the beans to the Post.

Or did Bush simply misspeak again?