Latin Americanization

When I was a young reporter, one of my first major interviews was with then-Sen. Frank Church, the Idaho Democrat who gained a measure of fame (or infamy, at least in conservative circles) in the 1970s for ripping the lid off the Central Intelligence Agency.

Church not only was chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, he also headed the panel that investigated the CIA's many abuses abroad in the preceding years, particularly in Chile and elsewhere in Latin America, as well as against American citizens here in the USA. He was famous for (accurately) describing the agency as "a rogue elephant out of control" -- though of course, after Sept. 11, conservatives disinterred Church's corpse and thrashed it publicly for being somehow responsible for the decline of American intelligence. (Chris Mooney at American Prospect did a very nice takedown of this charge.)

I wound up interviewing Church several times, and much of what I learned from him has stuck with me over the years. It indeed seems to me relevant today. "Choose your enemies wisely," he counseled, "for you will become like them." He was describing the American government's propensity for imitating in substance and nature the behavior of Soviet communists -- but his warning could just as easily reflect the current "war on terrorism."

One comment in particular, however, stands out in my mind these days. We were talking about America's future, and where the conservative cadre that was then taking over the Republican Party intended to take us. His expression darkened, and it was clear that he had a good deal of foreboding in this regard. "What I fear most," he said, "is the Latin Americanization of America."

He wasn't concerned, of course, with the arrival of Latinos on American soil (or what Pat Buchanan calls "Meximerica") except insofar as that could be manipulated to achieve this end. What he feared was that corporatist conservatives, if given free rein, would turn our standard of living into what you find in Latin America. That working Americans would one day be reduced to the level of near-serfdom that is the common way of life for millions of Latinos.

During the Clinton years, of course, this fear looked farther and farther remote -- everyone's wages were rising, jobs were being created by the millions, and our standard of living was never healthier. I began to think that we had staved off Church's specter, perhaps forever.

But then, I never imagined the Bush years, either.

James Galbraith's recent piece in Salon was devastatingly accurate in describing our gradual descent into that hell (subscription only, but if you must, buy the day pass and read it). Galbraith, of course, details painfully just how many jobs we are losing, and what that means for working people. I was particularly struck by this passage, since it brought back Church's remark like a bell:

What does Bush want? He wants a growth rate high enough to get him through the election. That's obvious. After that, he doesn't care. His clientele -- the military contractors, oil companies, pharmaceutical firms and big media that control this government -- make their money on patents, contracts and the exercise of monopoly power. (Case in point: Bush is pressuring impoverished Central Americans, in trade negotiations, to add 10 years to the length of drug patents.) These people have no interest in full employment. They like unemployment, weak labor, low wages and a government that bullies on their behalf. And after the election, if Bush wins, that is what they will get for four more years.

And I was likewise struck by Galbraith's description of the outcome of Bush's proposed immigration reforms:

This program will permit any employer to admit any worker. From any country. At any time. The only requirement is that it be for a job Americans are not willing to take. But it is easy to create such jobs: Cut wages. Terminate the unions. Lengthen the hours. Speed up the lines. Chicken farmers have known this for years. Bush's plan is a blank check for every bad boss this country has.

... For millions of citizen workers, what would happen? The answer is clear: Bad bosses drive out the good. Good bosses will turn bad under pressure. The terms of our jobs would get worse and worse. Who would want a citizen worker? A bracero will be so much cheaper, more loyal, and under control. And who among us, in our right mind, would want to look for work? Unless, of course, we needed to eat. Or pay the mortgage. I am not exaggerating: This is a threat to us all.

I'm not sure how many people writing in the blogosphere -- or working in journalism, or especially among the pundit class -- have a clear sense of the reality of this existence -- what it is like to be trapped working for a Wal-Mart or a Con-Agra or any of the thousands of faceless bad bosses whose main purpose in life seems to be finding ways to worsen everyday life for their workers: refusing raises, shortening hours, slashing benefits, pitting employees against each other, allowing work conditions to steadily deteriorate. Eventually they may taste it, of course (anyone who works for a midsized or small-town chain newspaper already has), but for now it is mostly an abstraction, and thus not something as important as, say, John Kerry's haircut.

I have, however -- when I was younger, and before I graduated from college. It is nearly impossible to describe: the claustrophobia, the oppressiveness, the complete mindfuck that is life when one is caught up in this machinery. All I can say is that I worked desperately to escape it, and swore I would try never to forget the masses of people out there caught up in it.

I used to like to joke: "A recession is the Republican way of shortening the lift lines at the ski hill." But things are much more serious than that now. Much more.

If the current generation of Democrats does not recognize it, and fails to begin shouting it from the rooftops, then I genuinely fear that Frank Church's darkest premonitions will finally be realized. It simply boggles my mind that, over the past generation, progressives have allowed working-class people to increasingly identify with conservative Republicans. The GOP has mainly achieved this through a combination of demagoguery and jingoism, appealing to people's baser instincts, particularly the desperate selfishness that in fact is forcibly part of life in the sinking classes. In the process, they have convinced working people to slit their own throats -- and ultimately everyone else's too.

This is, I think, the significant part of what Howard Dean was talking about when he discussed gaining votes among "guys with Confederate flags on their pickups." If Democrats fail to make middle- and working-class citizens recognize that conservatism, as practiced by the Bush administration, is directly inimical to their own self-interest, then we are all in serious trouble -- for years to come.

The L. Jean Lewis factor

Needlenose has an interesting take on the recent news that Halliburton is being investigated by the Pentagon Inspector General's office.

As he suggests, this is an investigation that bears close watching. I wouldn't quite leap to the conclusion that the probe is already in the bag, but Needlenose's point -- that this is precisely the kind of thing that L. Jean Lewis, the IG's chief of staff, is likely to cover up. It's always best to wait and see what emerges, but the probability of a whitewash is always imminent when Lewis is involved.

For those needing a quick refresher, my previous posts on Lewis are here, here, here, here and here.

If nothing else, this case underscores my original point: Lewis' hiring has severely undermined any real reason to believe that any investigation of the Bush administration's cronies by the Pentagon will be either thorough or untainted.

Kevin Phillips and the October Surprise

I went down to Elliott Bay Books the other night to hear Kevin Phillips talk about his new book, American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush. It was a surprisingly large crowd packed into the store's little reading space -- at least a hundred, many of them standing. (I went attired in my nattiest headgear, of course.)

I've long been an admirer of Phillips' work on a purely analytic level, in no small part because the guy is right about 95 percent of the time. People probably don't remember that he predicted a Democratic victory in 1992 with The Politics of Rich and Poor., though he was of course already famous for predicting the Republican ascension back in 1969. Wealth and Democracy was an important book, but no one paid it any attention because it didn't fit in with everyone's obsession with the "war on terror." Nonetheless, his assertions that the nation's growing wealth gap would prove a significant political force is proving on the money, since this is precisely the factor which looms, more than any other issue, over next year's election. (Read James K. Galbraith's excellent piece in Salon for the latest on this point.)

People are paying more attention to American Dynasty partly because it fits in with the latest trove of anti-Bush books. (The crowd at Elliott Bay was decidedly partisan Democrats, which has never been his audience, at least not until now.) But Phillips' tome is heads and shoulders above everyone else's, and not just because, as with everything he writes, the information in it is precisely accurate and well balanced.

American Dynasty is one of the most important books produced since Bush's election, largely because it has delved into the forgotten history surrounding the Bush family -- history that not only should never have been buried, but is the key to understanding the mess we're in now.

There has already been some discussion about Phillips' treatment of the Bush family's business connections to the Nazis. While the re-emergence of this story may give the Ed Gillespies of the world an aneurism, Phillips' treatment is thorough, balanced and scrupulously factual. It is also damning. As he said Thursday night, "the connection is real."

Suffice to say that he reaches essentially the same conclusion that I did in "Bush, the Nazis and America" -- namely, that while there is no evidence of ideological or other affinities for Hitler and his fascist regime, there was a notable willingness to evade the moral ramifications of these dealings in the pursuit of business as usual. Phillips goes on to explore in detail the point I suggested, to wit, the consequences of this style of foreign-policy dealings in the form of the American national-security establishment that arose after the war.

This portion of the book is important, of course, because it represents a real revival of this episode of American history. As I have argued previously, the significance of this information extends well beyond the mere purview of historians; it is essential, in fact, to understanding how America came to be embroiled in its current foreign adventures and its "war on terror." Democrats and liberals should not shy away from discussing it, either, out of concern that doing so somehow constitutes a "smear" of the Bush family. As Phillips demonstrates on every page of this book, the reality of this episode is constituted largely of hard fact.

But this is not the only bit of buried history that Phillips successfully resurrects. Even more significant, perhaps, is his treatment of the "October Surprise" story.

Some of you may even recall the story. Its basic outline went like this: In the runup to the 1980 election between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, it became clear that the outcome largely hinged on the release of the 52 Americans who had been held hostage by Iran since November 1979. If Carter was able to obtain their freedom, he was likely to win re-election. If he failed, it was nearly certain Reagan would win. As you may recall, the latter was what happened. The hostages were freed on the day of Reagan's inauguration. Later it emerged that a cadre of Reagan campaign officials -- led by former CIA chief William Casey, who was the campaign manager -- may have actually negotiated with Iran behind the scenes to ensure precisely this outcome. There were even indications they may have been involved in sabotaging the attempted rescue of the hostages.

The story gained real traction in the early 1990s when a former Carter intelligence official named Gary Sick released a book detailing the plot. It was promptly pooh-poohed by articles in Newsweek and The New Republic, and a brief House investigation came up dry. Afterward, anyone who even suggested they thought the scenario had any credibility was dismissed as a loony conspiracy theorist. Even the respected AP reporter Robert Parry found himself a journalistic pariah for his dogged pursuit of the story; you can find the results of much of his work at his marvelous Web site Consortium News.

Phillips not only resurrects the story, he examines the evidence and finds that it is almost certainly substantial, despite the all-too-eager earlier dismissals of its substance. More to the point, he compiles a wealth of subsequent evidence, most of it having emerged since 1992, pointing to his conclusion that "Bill Casey -- a born schemer and true buccaneer -- and his associates probably were involved in machinations akin to those Sick alleged." This evidence includes intelligence material from the French, the Soviet Union, Israel and Iran, as well as material that has been ignored by the House investigators.

All of this ties in with Phillips' theses that the October Surprise was a precursor to Iran-Contra (in fact, he argues, the latter was actually a confirmation that the former had occurred) as well as Iraqgate -- the consequences of which, he ably demonstrates, have come home to roost in the current war in Iraq.

American Dynasty is a book of major significance -- and a riveting read as well. It provides the most comprehensive, and damning, analysis of why George W. Bush's presidency is an unmitigated disaster for American democracy. The question is: Will anyone in the media recognize it before the next election?

I'll be posting more on the October Surprise case over the next week or so. Stay tuned.

Cyanide bombs

A longtime friend and expert on right-wing extremists -- who wishes to remain anonymous, but who, I should explain, was a significant source of information and help in writing In God's Country -- writes in to shed further detail on the the Texas cyanide bomb case:

Krar's sodium cyanide bomb is dangerous because of how lethal this stuff is when dumped into a strong acid such as H2SO4. It releases hydrogen cyanide gas. Very small amounts can kill a lot of people and very quickly. For instance, an average vending machine candy bar weighs about 50 grams, which is 25 times more by weight than the amount needed to kill a 150-pound human in under one minute. It is even more dangerous than Sarin, the organophosphate nerve gas used by Japanese domestic terrorists in the Tokyo subway. [See here for more details.]

If you want to explore this issue further, use this search string in Google:

MSDS LD50 "sodium cyanide"

MSDS stands for "material data safety sheet," which is the occupational health information for chemcials. LD50 stands for the "lethal dose" for 50 percent of any exposed population of test subjects, usually laboratory rats. Lethal dose is expressed as mass of the chemcial in milligrams as a function of the weight of the subject organism in kilograms. Extrapolation to a human weighing 150 pounds is linear.

The Environmental Protection Agency says this about sodium cyanide's lethal characteristics:

"Super toxic; probable oral lethal dose in humans is less than 5 mg/kg (less than 7 drops) for a 70 kg (150 lb.) person (*Gosselin 1976). Sodium cyanide is poisonous and may be fatal if inhaled, swallowed or absorbed through the skin. Contact with sodium cyanide may cause burns to skin and eyes (*DOT 1984)."

You quoted on your blog, and later said on Fox News, that the U.S. attorney said Krar's device would "kill everyone in a 30,000 square foot room." Assuming this is floor area, let's take a look at how small, and portable, thus easy to hide, Krar's weapon is given that figure.

A 30,000 sq ft. floor area building is roughly 174 ft. on a side, which is, interestingly enough, the size of a typical food eatery. In order to avoid associating brand names with this analysis, just look at some of the leaders in the industry to see what I am talking about. On an average noontime there might be 100 people inside of one of these eateries.

So, a terrorist choosing to kill 100 people in a fast-food restaurant with sodium cyanide and acid as a binary weapon, with an M-80 as the detonator, would need the equivalent of just two average size candy bars, in terms of mass, to carry out a horrendous act of mass murder. He'd put the sodium cyanide in one glass bottle and the acid in the other. When the firecracker goes off, the two glass bottles bound together break, the contents mix, the gas is created, and people die horrible deaths. You could hide this inside a lunch sack that held a burger, fries, and a soft drink.

Interestingly enough, Krar's defense attorney is quoted in the news media as saying that Krar's sodium cyanide device was the size of a "pharmacy bottle." If I put a cough syrup bottle and two candy bars next to each other, they look like they are roughly the same volume.

Is it a coincidence that the U.S. Attorney's public estimate of the killing power of Krar's device and Krar's defense attorney's characterization of the device itself are nearly identitical?

Am I glad Krar is behind bars? You bet.

Am I scared because we don't know what Krar planned to do with his arsenal? And how.

It is worth noting, of course, that a bomb like Krar's is only effective inside an enclosed space. Its lethality would be extremely limited in a place like, say, the Super Bowl. But one could expect at least a thousand deaths at a sports facility like a typical NBA arena -- with a bomb no larger than a small paper sack.

Environmentalism and white supremacy

I've noted previously that chief among the progressive organizations being targeted by the far right anti-immigrant crowd for recruitment purposes is the Sierra Club. I mentioned that the attempt to load an anti-immigrant agenda onto the group's back, organized by white supremacist John Tanton, was fortunately repelled a few years ago.

It appears now that the effort was merely dormant. The same forces are now trying to stack anti-immigrant stealth candidates onto the Sierra Club's board. (Read the details here.)

The name most familiar to me in this group is Paul Watson, the leader of the Friday Harbor-based Sea Shepherd Society. I had some direct experience with Watson a few years ago when he was busy tromping all over the Makahs' tribal whaling rights. I've never ancountered any hint that Watson is racist other than that his own agenda obviously trumped the tribes'. However, being anti-immigration and in bed with the Tanton types is obviously a problem.

Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center is now running for the Sierra Club's national board in an attempt to short-circuit this effort. The press release from the SPLC details the extent and nature of this takeover attempt.

Unsurprisingly, the would-be takeover artists are responding with unusual viciousness. (See here and here for some samples. You can also get a taste for the nature of these opponents as well.)

I've been a Sierra Club member for years now, and currently am one of the group's regular monthly donors. Not only will I renounce my membership if this takeover comes to pass, but I'll do my best to organize a nationwide boycott.

It's always the truth that hurts

Judging by all the wailing and gnashing of teeth coming from the RNC over the two Bush/Hitler MoveOn.org ads, you'd never have guessed that "Hitlery" and "feminazis" rolled off Republican tongues with the same ease as "tax cuts."

Many others have already observed the GOP's marvelous hypocrisy on this score, but (via Avedon Carol) this summation by Kathryn Cramer really hit the nail on the head:

Hitler was Hitler for decades before killing millions. If we learned anything from the Nazi era it should be to stop fascism before it gain control. Many of those comparing Bush to Hitler are not simply out to defame him, but rather want to halt America's emergent fascism.

It's clear why the GOP is so intent on killing this meme. They really hate having reality pointed out to the public.

Emboldened bigots

More on the National Alliance targeting Florida lawyers:

Hate mail targets lawyers

It's worth noting that this isn't specifically "hate mail," which is mail intended to intimidate and express hatred toward the recipients. This is recruitment mail.

Indeed, if it were genuine "hate mail," then the Florida bar would have every reason not to allow the National Alliance access to its mailing list, since it would be condoning an actual crime.

On the other hand, this does raise an interesting question: Certainly, as my friend Bernie pointed out on a listserv I subscribe to, there is no shortage of Jewish and other minority lawyers on the Florida. And their receipt of literature rife with anti-Semitic hate speech certainly borders on a mailed threat.

Perhaps that is why the president of the Florida Bar apologized to his members.

Meanwhile, it's worth noting that this is only the latest example of National Alliance brazenness. As I've previously observed, this in fact is a national trend for the group. They also recently raised a ruckus in Omaha, Nebraska. Here is the most recent report on that incident, which spurred a community meeting at which ADL leaders explained the group's agenda to local citizens.

Interestingly, the NA did not perform its usual cockroach imitation and hide under the rocks. Instead, they showed up at the meeting:

Members of the National Alliance rarely make public appearances, but a few members of the group showed up at the meeting. They said they came to the meeting to laugh at Wolfson. One walked through the parking lot, putting fliers on car windows.

The flier had several statements defending the National Alliance. Regional leader Shaun Walker said he attempted to contact the mayor's office several times about debating with Wolfson at the meeting, but no one returned his calls. He said Omaha members attended to take notes about public reaction to alliance activities. He also said it is not a rule for members to remain anonymous, but it is encouraged because of the risk of persecution for openly voicing politically incorrect ideas.

Ah, yes, nothing like being "politically incorrect." No doubt this is what Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter mean when they use the term as well.

Political and personal fascism

Via Crooked Timber (and a tip from Jim Flannery), comes this remarkable and chilling piece from brushstroke.tv about the dangers of festooning one's vehicle with Howard Dean bumper stickers:

Bad dogs

Not long ago, almost as a joke, I stuck a Howard Dean bumper sticker on my brother's 25 year old, buttercup yellow, diesel Mercedes sedan. He's not very political, but didn't object to the sticker. I stuck one on his Republican girlfriend's car too, over the Bush/Cheney sticker already there, but that's another story. Let's just say she didn't appreciate my sense of humor.

Over the Christmas holiday, my brother left Atlanta for Louisiana with his two Catahoula hounds loaded in the back seat of Buttercup. Ordinarily, he could reach the relative civilization of Covington before needing to refuel the diesel, but that's without the dogs. Shortly after entering Alabama, he pulled over at a rest stop and followed the signs for pet owners. As he got out of the car, a redneck trucker parked close by began to heckle him. Less than a minute later, the rest stop attendant zipped up in a golf cart and told him to move. Not wanting a confrontation, he piled the dogs back in the car before they had a chance to "go", and headed down the road.

A few miles further, he pulled over on the side of the road to let the dogs out. As he got out of the car, he noticed a different trucker (but one he'd also seen at the rest stop), pull off the highway, onto the shoulder and head straight for his car. As he tried to pull the dogs away from the car, the trucker veered off at the last millisecond, just before hitting them.

A couple of hours later, while still in Alabama, but close to the Mississippi border, he stopped at a gas station for a drink. As he got out of the car, a team of three crackers approached him and tried to pick a fight. Seeing the large dogs, they backed off, but by this point he'd had enough. Before entering Mississippi, he pulled off the road and ripped the Dean sticker off his bumper. I can't say as I blame him.

I can attest that this is not simply a phenomenon in the South. This is largely the situation in most rural places in America right now.

I travel a lot to rural quarters. I talk to a lot of people there. I gave up some time ago putting any kinds of bumper stickers -- beyond the obligatory Sonics and Vandal fare -- on my vehicles. Even those reveal more than I want sometimes.

But I've been waiting for the liberal-bashing rhetoric to escalate into action for some time now, and have long figured that it will arise in small ways, and more than likely around the defense of George W. Bush's tenuous hold on power. If I had to guess, I'd say that little incidents like these are more than likely occurring with greater frequency and are simply not showing up on the radar because the harassment, threats, and assaults aren't being reported. Yet.

This kind of behavior, obviously, is what Ann Coulter referred to when she extolled the virtues of exploiting the physical intimidation of liberals: "My libertarian friends are probably getting a little upset now but I think that's because they never appreciate the benefits of local fascism."

If any of you hear about incidents like these, please be sure to report them here. I'll at least give them some broadband.

Koufaxed

I'm guessing it would be impolitic to fail to note that I'm a nominee in several categories in this year's (lefty bloggers) Koufax Awards at Wampum. I'm not usually given to paying attention to awards, but they can be fun, and a nice way to honor good writing. There are also a lot of people nominated who really deserve some recognition. And besides, the folks at Wampum are first-rate. So I'm paying attention this time around.

I'm a nominee in the Best Blog, Best Post, Best Series, Best Writing, and Best Single-Issue Blog (!) categories. I'm a little surprised at all this, and humbled, since I'm in some fine company. Thanks to everyone who nominated me.

I won't be voting in those categories, and I'd really urge everyone to go through them and at least try to read most of the nominees' work before voting. There's a lot of great writing there -- in fact, I'm always a little surprised to be up for writing awards, since I consider my writing to be more solid, steady and plodding than really good. I read sites like Pandagon, Tbogg, Digby, and World O'Crap and always come away a little envious.

In any event, I will be voting in the remaining categories: Most Humorous Blog, Best Group Blog, Best Expert Blog, Best Blog Design, Best Conservatve/Non-Liberal Blog, Most Deserving of Wider Recognition, and Best Commentor. There's a lot of tough competition there, and well worth your time casting votes. A lot of these bloggers deserve some recognition for making the blogosphere safe for democracy. Do your part.

Political and personal, again

I've been remiss in pointing out that the Webzine Skreed has picked up my essay, "The Political and the Personal," and published it in lightly edited form, with nice art and in a much more readable format than the original. [This is now the second zine to republish it.]

Many thanks to Editor Bob at Skreed, which is a great read.

They just don't fit in

Speaking of the far right's manipulation of the immigration issue, the most recent WorldNetDaily screed by Patrick Buchanan is worth checking out:

"Who cares where people come from?" comes the retort. "The Melting Pot will make them all Americans, as it did the 18 million who came from Eastern and Southern Europe from 1890 to 1920."

But those were European peoples coming to a country run by descendants of Europeans. They came to a land that enforced assimilation in its schools. They learned and were taught in the same language, read the same books and magazines, went to the same movies, listened to the same radio, went through the Great Depression together and served in the same Army in World War II.

And after the great wave ended in 1920, we had 45 years of low immigration to assimilate and Americanize the children of the immigrants who had come here.

But America's population has doubled since 1945. Instead of the 16 million people of color we had in 1960 -- almost all of whom were black Americans immersed for centuries in American culture -- there are 80 million people of color here now, from 100 nations.

Yes, clearly, all those people of color are a real problem. They can't (or won't) become real Americans.

This cornerstone of Buchanan's anti-immigrant "logic" was in fact a common belief in America in the years 1900-1950, particularly when it came to Asian immigrants, who during that period were forbidden to apply for citizenship. Note that Buchanan conveniently overlooks their existence. Perhaps that is because in the ensuing years, it has become more than apparent that, contrary to the bigotry of the Patrick Buchanans of that era and this, Asian-Americans have proven fully assimilable, Americans to the core, and valued contributors to our cultural melange.

Of course, this bigotry is being purveyed today not only by the Pat Buchanans and Jared Taylors of the world, but by a hundred smaller anti-immigrant groups, each posing as "reasonable" conservatives. I particularly noted the activities in Arizona of a group called "Coalition United for a Secure America," which, according to the Arizona Republic, has been running TV ads connecting Latino immigrants to crime:

In the ad, a narrator cites an increase in homicide and home-invasion rates, then states: "Police say it's caused by illegal immigration."

Note also the members of the sponsoring coalition:

The coalition is made up of several national groups that favor reducing immigration and population growth: Americans for Better Immigration, the Federation for Americans for Immigration Reform, Americans for Immigration Control and Pop.Stop.

It's important to note that police indeed agree that stopping illegal immigration would lower the occurrence of these crimes. But the ads' demonization of Latino immigrants rather nakedly plays on people's fears and deepens the stereotypes that come into play in the immigration debate. Particularly the belief that they will never become good Americans.

Immigration: The Bush dimension

Reader Paul Donnelly writes in:

FWIW, there's a kind of embedded confusion in your post about immigration extremists. It really is difficult to get a handle on the mess without some reference to the facts of the debate, which is why libertarians, lawyers and the ethnic letterheads with foundation grants are so reluctant to talk in terms of the facts. But they have good reason:

Basically, lawyers like complex rules that don't work. A system with more exceptions than rules is one that rewards lawyers. The key to making more exceptions than rules is Congress making more promises than it keeps.

Liberals (and ethnic based organizations) want more promises. They care somewhat less about delivering on those promises, because to do that would require rules that work -- and thus, choices about things like worksite verification and who gets green cards vs. who gets thrown out of the country, or even kept out in the first place. Liberals and advocacy groups are not in the business of forcing Congress to make choices between more of this, and less of that.

Libertarians don't much care what the rules are, so long as they don't work, because in practice that means employers get to hire cheap labor. They make common cause with both lawyers and liberals (contradicting in the first place, their principles, and in the second their ostensible politics) on immigration issues, primarily because on these issues they are bought and paid for lobbyists for employers who want a subsidy.

The constellation of low-immigration groups ranges from the population control folks (Zero Population Growth, etc.) to the environmental crowd (including, almost, the Sierra Club) to the various anti-foreigner know-nothing folks you talk about, chiefly FAIR -- but it also includes the Center for Immigration Studies, which while it is Scaife-funded has scrupulously tried to "wash the stain of FAIR" out of its drawers, as its director said to me once. They're not all white supremacists, and so the dynamic of how bigotry gets into the mainstream isn't quite how you picture it.

The simplest tests, I suppose, are whether a group that opposes current levels of LEGAL immigration also supported the welfare ban, and if their reasons for opposing a guest worker program is that guest workers and illegals are not allowed to vote.

I know of a CIS guy who approached a CATO fellow not long ago, and challenged him: Look, he said, you guys are proposing to bring in literally millions of low-earning 'immigrants', who sooner or later are going to vote for the kinds of high-tax, high government spending government that you oppose. What gives?

To which the CATO guy responded: Just because we let 'em in, makes you think we're going to let 'em vote?

That's the very effective compromise between the groups you describe and the 'mainstream', because it's not news that the know-nothings are being taken for a ride. What OUGHT to be more widely known is that -- so are the 'pro-immigration' folks who actually give a damn about citizenship and family values.

Paul's point is very well taken. Obviously, not all of these groups are white supremacist. Indeed, the very lack of that characteristic is essential to their "reasonable" front.

The far right has become extremely adept at cloaking itself in recent years. It's become very adept at fronting "conservative" organizations that are adept at echoing their own agendas. You can, however, see the far right's influence in the end result of these groups' positions. As with other "transmissions" where extremist beliefs are advocated in the mainstream, the underlying origins of the organizations, or their funding sources, or their open associations with extremists, or any combination of these, reveals the core agendas at work.

After awhile, it becomes clear enough what is happening with a large number of the anti-immigrant groups. White supremacists have been going to great pains to camouflage their activities since the early 1990s, and this is one of the important ways they do it. In the meantime, you have guys like Michael Savage and Jared Taylor getting on the airwaves and reminding everyone what degraded, nasty citizens those brown people are.

Of the examples Paul cites, it is also important to note that though the CIS -- which indeed has taken pains to distance itself from the know-nothings -- nonetheless is the brainchild of the extremist John Tanton, whose activities and advocacy have on several fronts exposed the racism lurking beneath his modus operandi. If the CIS is trying to wash out its "stain," then perhaps it should avoid activities like this:

Patrick McHugh of the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, which purports to be a squeaky clean think tank that rejects racism, was there pressing the flesh along with Barbara Coe, head of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform, who repeatedly referred to Mexicans ? as she has for years ? as "savages."

In any event, it should be clear that anyone who assumes that Bush's plan will actually help Hispanic immigrants become citizens with full rights is being suckered. I didn't really delve into what was wrong with Bush's plan -- if only because it is so reasonable in contrast to the anti-immigrant folks. However, even if we take it on its face as a good-faith effort to resolve the problem, its problems are more than abundant. Other bloggers, including It's a Crock and Nathan Newman [notably here, and here] and Daily Kos have delved those issues admirably.

I can't say I've studied the issue thoroughly enough to know exactly what policies I favor when it comes to immigration, in no small part because the issue is profoundly complex. I have no problem with reasonable reform, and I remain convinced the problem will never change as long as the autocratic forces that are responsible for the economic mess in Mexico remain in power. The obvious solution is to ameliorate the "push" aspect of illegal immigration. Unfortunately, some of those same autocrats -- especially the American contingent -- are the people who are footing the bill for these anti-immigrant groups.

All I know is that I know exclusionism, bigotry and selfishness when I hear it. And the far right's reaction -- even under cover of "reasonable" racists like Jared Taylor and John Tanton -- is, at the end of the day, all of the above. Not even all of the examples Paul cites are free of this taint, either. The Sierra Club's near-descent into anti-immigration policy, in fact, was the product of a covert Tanton campaign.

If nothing else, the Bush plan should give impetus to a serious national debate. If we cede the field to the corporatists and the know-nothings, everyone is going to lose.

Missing the connections

It's been largely speculation, up until now, that domestic terrorism is not a significant component of this administration's "war on terror." But in its handling of the Texas cyanide bomb case, it's becoming especially apparent that this is precisely the case.

Either that, or the nation's intelligence problems related to terrorism have gotten, if anything, worse since Sept. 11.

See, for instance, this recent news piece out of Winchester, Va., in which it emerges that the FBI hasn't even communicated with its own offices in locales where these extremists supposedly met:

Winchester Named as Site For Meeting of Suspects

Documents naming Winchester as one of 10 potential meeting places for suspected domestic terrorist conspirators were found a year ago, but most local law enforcement officials did not know about it until Thursday.

Federal officials first discovered that Winchester could be a meeting place for home-grown terrorists after a Tennessee State Police trooper found documents listing 10 cities along interstates in the eastern part of the United States during a January 2003 traffic stop.

The driver, William Krar, 62, of Noonday, Texas, has since pleaded guilty to a chemical weapon charge and is connected with illegal weapons and white supremacist and anti-government literature - and federal officials believe other conspirators may be at large, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The list in Krar's car included Winchester and Roanoke; Harrisburg and Scranton, Pa.; Chattanooga, Bristol, and Knoxville, Tenn.; Jackson, Miss.; and Shreveport, La.

One year later, local law enforcement officials are in the dark.

"I have received no information from anyone prior to this that Winchester was a designated meeting area for terrorists," city Police Chief Gary W. Reynolds said on Thursday. "This particular incident, if true, certainly needs to be fixed."

No kidding. What's especially disgraceful is that this could occur in the post-9/11 environment. As their own agents even observe:

The FBI office in Dallas led the investigation, said Lawrence Barry, chief division counsel for the Richmond Division of the FBI.

Though his division did not handle the investigation, information-sharing among law enforcement is supposed to have become standard practice since Sept. 11, 2001, Barry said.

It's bad enough that the public is so ill-informed about the case -- even though, as previously noted, we have now officially found more weapons of mass destruction in the hands of fanatical extremists in Texas than we have in Iraq. Maybe now that Bush has quietly abandoned the latter search, he could direct that team to his home state.

But what's really problematic is the kind of intelligence-gathering gap this lack of communication actually represents. Certainly it raises questions about how thoroughly, and with what energy, the current investigation is being pursued. It's especially important to determine whether there are more of these bombs out there, as several of the news reports so far have suggested.

Once again, one can only wonder how this case would have been handled had these been Islamist extremists.

At least the story is receiving wider circulation -- spurred, probably, by the recent Los Angeles Times and New York Times reports. Of particular note was this piece, from the San Antonio Express-News:

Noonday shows danger walks among us

Especially noteworthy was this passage:

Between 1980 and 2000, the FBI recorded 335 incidents or suspected incidents of terrorism in the United States, according to the Congressional testimony in February 2002 of Dale L. Watson, then the assistant director for counterterrorism and counterintelligence for the FBI.

"Of these, 247 were attributed to domestic terrorists, and 88 were determined to be international in nature," Watson said.

Watson's prepared remarks did not provide details, but he noted that right-wing extremism in the 1990s overtook left-wing terrorism "as the most dangerous domestic threat to the country."

Mark Potok suggests in this piece, correctly, that there only needs to be a few of these fanatics to wreak a great deal of havoc, as both Oklahoma City and September 11 demonstrated. The technology available to them, as Robert Wright has observed, guarantees that.

The story has gotten play elsewhere, notably at Working for Change, with a nice summary from Bill Berkowitz:

'Whither America's homegrown terrorists'

And the New Orleans Times-Picayune picked up on the story on its editorial page:

Another Oklahoma City?

The L.A. Times piece is apparently getting a lot of distribution at smaller papers. I even heard from my parents that in ran in their hometown Boise paper. So the case, at least, is slowly gaining in public awareness.

Now if only the same were true of the investigators.

Back in the saddle agin

Many apologies for the past few days' silence. Posting on the road was difficult to begin with, and I wound up too busy to even log on anyway. Finally returned home last night, so I'll be trying to get things back up to speed.

The travels forced me to neglect something here that happened over the weekend: Namely, the debut of The American Street, the group blog in which I am a participant.

The blog is the brainchild of Kevin Hayden of the ReachM High Cowboy Network Noose, which has long been on my blogroll as one of my favorite reads. Just as he did at Open Source Politics (another group site he had a big hand in creating), he's put together a really attractive site that's very effective.

I was reluctant initially to get involved, mostly because (as regular readers here know all too well) I have enough trouble keeping fresh material flowing on my own damned blog. But Kevin's concept -- to bring together a set of talents focused on removing George Bush from office, and to zero in on the electoral politics of swing states -- was quite good, I thought. Moreover, I couldn't resist when I saw the terrific collection of talent he'd brought to the table: Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft, Dave Johnson of Seeing the Forest, the inimitable Digby, Mark A.R. Kleiman, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, Colorado Luis, Angry Bear, and Mary Ratcliff ... well, let's just say that I felt honored to even be invited to join.

And besides, any blog that uses an image of Faulkner in its masthead wins my instant approval.

My first post ran Sunday, and it's titled "Slouching Towards Manzanar". Somewhat predictably, it's long. In fact, it's the first of a four- or five-parter.

The piece is an updated and re-edited version of an article I wrote last spring for Salon, but which they did not use, since it came in at about 10,000 words, much too long for them. Since then, I've tried shopping it around and can't find anyone interested in the topic, which is the relation of the Japanese-American internment camps to the post-9/11 environment -- even though, as you read it, you may find (as I did) that it's extremely relevant.

As you may guess, the article is something of an outgrowth of the work I did in writing Strawberry Days: The Rise and Fall of a Japanese-American Community, about whose publication I hope to make an announcement soon.

I wanted to help get Kevin's blog off to a roaring start, and I thought the best way to do so was to start out with something meaty. But as you can see, my fellow Streeters are already making it a kick-ass blog regardless.

The Immigration Nexus

The uproar over George W. Bush's proposal for immigration reform has revealed a significant rift within the American right -- namely, between its corporatist element, whose primary interest lies in exploiting the low wages that immigrants provide, and its ideological element, which sees immigrants as part of a brown tide on the verge of permanently swamping the majority white culture.

The Bush plan comes down squarely on the side of the corporatists -- unsurprisingly, since those interests throughout his administration have held sway in nearly every aspect of governance. That in turn has spurred the intense anger of the ideological right, who are hotly denouncing Bush's "betrayal of America."

Witness, for instance, the following diatribe from the Federation of American Immigration Reform:

"The White House is pandering to ethnic lobbies in the hope of attracting a few more votes in November, and to an assortment of business interests seeking a massive labor subsidy at the public's expense. The only people whose interests are left out of this proposal are the overwhelming majority of Americans who work hard, obey the law, pay taxes, and seek a quality education for their kids," said Stein.

And then there's this response, from Peter Brimelow's VDare organization, which variously describes Bush's proposals as "treasonous," "idiotic," and the product of "moral arrogance, deceit, disinformation and disregard for the democratic process." VDare also carried this piece by noted racist Samuel Francis, who opined:

It's Mr. Bush who is wrong, of course. America has no responsibility to foreigners, let alone to foreigners who have broken our laws to get here. It has a responsibility to its own people and its own identity and interests.

Note how closely these responses parallel the views of the extremist American Patrol (which, of course, also carries links to the VDare and FAIR material at its Web site). The group's Web site describes the Bush plan thus: "Insane Bush Amnesty will Sacrifice U.S."; "Mexicans Cheer Bush Surrender Plan; Bush Outlines Plan to Surrender Southwest U.S. to Mexico".

None of this should be a great surprise. As the Southern Poverty Law Center reported a couple of years ago, most of these anti-immigration groups are at their core deeply racist, operated and promoted by people who are adept at appearing "reasonable" but whose bigotry lies just beneath the surface. More recent reports from the SPLC have further uncovered the cauldron of racial hatred that underlies groups like Brimelow's VDare and FAIR, which was prominently on display during recent counterdemonstrations involving the pro-immigrant Freedom Ride:

[W]hat really got under JustPiper's skin seemed to be the Freedom Riders, not the neo-Nazis from White Revolution. "[T]hese banditos kept screaming obscenities and threats at us," she claimed. "Lemme tellya, they were just coming with signs like cockroaches!"

D.A. King of the Georgia Coalition for Immigration Reduction — a group that says it does not cater to "persons who believe their race to be superior to others" — had a similar reaction after protesting a Freedom Ride stop outside Atlanta.

"I got the sense that I had left the country of my birth and been transported to some Mexican village, completely taken over by an angry, barely restrained mob," King wrote on the hard-line anti-immigration Web site vdare.com (see Keeping America White). "My first act on a safe return home was to take a shower."

Groups like FAIR, VDare, and American English like to pose as mainstream organizations offering "thoughtful" proposals for reforming U.S. immigration policy, but in reality their core -- ideologically, financially and programmatically -- is the same bigoted, racist Nativism that has plagued the nation since the time of the Know-Nothings. They are, in essence, all about putting pearls on a pig.

The danger, however, is that the ideological element has been rapidly gaining in both influence and numbers within the larger conservative movement -- thereby representing one of the most significant incursions of right-wing extremism into the mainstream since the rise of the Clinton-hate nexus in the 1990s.

This should have been painfully evident a few weeks ago, when MSNBC's Joe Scarborough hosted the leader of one of the nation's most notorious "academic" hate organizations -- Jared Taylor of American Renaissance -- in an hourlong hatefest devoted primarily to bashing immigrants and stoking irrational fears about what Pat Buchanan calls "The Death of the West."

Outrageously enough, Scarborough repeated the performance again recently, hosting Taylor in a discussion of Bush's immigration reforms. [Transcript here.]

What was remarkable about both of these performances, of course, was the utter failure of MSNBC to inform its audience about Taylor's background, or the fact that American Renaissance has an appalling history of advocating the notion that blacks and other minorities are intrinsically inferior to whites in every regard. Instead, Scarborough treated Taylor as though he were some kind of respected authority and a bona fide intellectual. In the first appearance, efforts by the program's token "other side" to point out his naked racism were given the cable chloroform treatment -- at one point, Scarborough even ordered the mikes shut off for the two pro-immigrant spokesmen.

In the most recent appearance, the underlying bigotry of the anti-immigrant position was encapsulated in this response from Taylor:

TAYLOR: We‘re just making it easier and more attractive for people who should stay home to come here. It will have no effect, other than encourage yet others to come and break the law to come in.

They will have the idea they, too, will get an amnesty. We are opening up a door that will result in a flood. Already, look, we have one-fifth of the population of Mexico living here. How much of Mexico do we wish to have, especially given that Mexicans are three times as likely as whites to commit violent crimes? There‘s not a single school district in the country where Mexicans perform at the level of whites and Asians.

There‘s not a single majority Mexican neighborhood that Mr. Griswold would probably want to live in. Why would we want to increase the proportion of Mexicans already here?

And then there was this charming exchange:

GRISWOLD: You need to get out and see this country.

TAYLOR: Hey, then you name one yourself. Name one Mexican neighborhood you‘d like to live in.

This is typical. These are people who say, OK, this is great. I don‘t care if these Mexicans are going to live 20 or 30 in a house, because it‘s not my daughter who's going to look across the back fence and see them urinating in their yard. No, I'm happy to get a guy who can mow the lawn for $2 an hour and that‘s all I care about. This is a much bigger question.

Scarborough's only counter to this vile bigotry was that Taylor was offering "stereotypes that you may not agree with."

This exchange was similar to those on Taylor's previous Scarborough appearance. Buchanan's presence on that program was especially noteworthy, since his most recent book is entirely predicated on arguments from "academic" racists like Taylor and Glayde Whitney, who have been arguing for years that American culture is on the verge of being overwhelmed by nonwhites with no respect for "white America." Indeed, numerous footnotes in The Death of the West cite work by Taylor, Whitney and others of their ilk. And as I noted previously, this was the entire focus of David Duke, the nation's most prominent white supremacist, for most of the 1990s.

But then, this is an act Buchanan has been perfecting for years, transmitting ideas and agendas from the extremist right into the mainstream, ranging from welfare reform to Clinton hatred. Buchanan was even explicit about this once, writing in a 1989 column that, when Duke ran for the Louisiana state legislature and shared a phone with the Klan, national Republican leaders were overreacting to Duke and his Nazi "costume": "Take a hard look at Duke's portfolio of winning issues, and expropriate those not in conflict with GOP principles." Buchanan added that Duke was correct to attack "reverse discrimination against white folks" and crime committed by the "urban underclass." He praised Duke for walking "into the vacuum left when conservative Republicans in the Reagan years were intimidated into shucking off winning social issues." The column concluded: "The GOP is throwing away a winning hand, and David Duke is only the first fellow to pick up the discards."

That is not the case any longer. This strategy is reaching a real, and genuinely dangerous, fruition in the nexus of immigration reform. As the Scarborough episodes suggest, this nexus means a real empowerment of white supremacists, since not only are they gaining real influence within the mainstream, but they are being accorded treatment that makes their radical beliefs out to be ordinary, acceptable and even the best policy for America.

Fortunately, the Bush administration to date continues to align itself with the corporatist element that, for its own reasons, has long resisted the Nativist element in American society. But as the ideological anti-immigrant right gains in power, influence and real numbers, this bulwark -- not particularly great in the first place -- is in real danger of crumbling.

American Terrorists

It's worth noting that while mainstream Republicans like Rep. Porter Goss are in denial about the nature of the anti-abortion radicals who are willing to kill to bring , these activists themselves have now come out in the open about the reality that they are terrorists.

Salon recently carried the text of an article at the extremist anti-abortion group Army of God that not only explicitly admitted that they were engaged in terrorism, but positively celebrated it:

I have heard it said that Christian terrorist Clay Waagner did some things wrong during his 10-month reign of terror and that he does not deserve hero status because he was a bank robber and a car thief. But it should also be noted that this bank-robbing, car-thieving terrorist is directly responsible for saving the lives of 5,000 innocent babies. What great things have brother Clay Waagner's detractors done to qualify them to stand in judgment of his deeds? Prudence would suggest we leave his wartime actions for God to judge and give honor to whom honor is due -- and for those who don't believe a war is going on, it's only because you don't hear their screams. Chalk up another hallelujah and a hip, hip, hooray for the Christian who terrorized the entire nation's abortion industry without firing a shot.

… Most of the time when I leave the killing place my self-esteem diminishes, as I have failed where others have succeeded. Pleading, politics and pandering have done precious little to stop the holocaust against the innocent. But the Christian terrorist is not so inadequate. Dead abortionists don't kill babies, and a fire-bombed death camp can no longer facilitate the holocaust against them.

As cream rises to the top, so the Christian terrorist rises above the huddled masses of churchgoers and the many voices that denounce their violent attempts to defend the innocent from their murderous assailants.

It's just as well to see them coming out of the closet. It seems likely that it is only a matter of time before this crowd starts killing people merely for disagreeing with them as well.

One has to wonder, however, when mainstream conservatives are going to wake up and smell the gunpowder.

Goss is a classic case. As chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, he denied that these people were terrorists during hearings on the Sept. 11 attacks.

"The trouble is, 'terrorism' is a very broad word, and it lends itself to a lot of mischief for people who would abuse common sense," Goss said. He then cited bombings of abortion clinics. "To me, that's not the kind of terrorism I'm talking about."

"That's criminal law enforcement," Goss said. "But it would fit most broad definitions of terrorism because the purpose [of those attacks] is to scare people."

[Thanks to J. Puma in comments for the heads-up.]

The Tyler case

The Texas cyanide bomb case made today's edition of the Los Angeles Times:

Case Yields Chilling Signs of Domestic Terror Plot

You'll note that I was interviewed for this piece, though the reporter only quotes the blog. (A truncated version without my quotes appeared in the Boston Globe.)

A couple of points worth noting: Scott Gold, the reporter, largely credits bloggers with keeping the story alive, and that's probably true. Unfortunately, it still hasn't translated into a larger public awareness of the problem, which is the real goal.

Also worth noting is the predicatably defensive and entirely bureaucratic response from Justice Department officials, who manage to elide the fact that international terrorism has overwhelmingly become the focus of FBI and other investigators, largely because of the massive shift of funding and agency emphasis. They may be able to say, as I've previously noted, that philosophically speaking, the agencies recognize the dual threat; what they can't say is that the emphasis from the top has facilitated that recognition.

Finally, I should mention that I'm really not a "former" journalist; I've simply had to forgo daily reporting and article writing for the sake of pursuing book-writing, blogging, and raising a two-year-old.

Happy blogiversary

Today marks the first birthday of Orcinus, which is remarkable, considering I wasn't sure it would even last a month. But here we are -- who knows how many ridiculously long posts and 380,000 visits later.

Of course, I owe a great deal of thanks to the many bloggers and Webfolk who have linked to the site in the past year, particularly Atrios and Media Whores Online. I'm also extremely grateful for the many friendships I've made, especially among bloggers. You know who you are.

I'd probably post more, but I'm on a road trip right now with sketchy Web access and an unfamiliar computer to work with. (In case you're wondering why I haven't been posting much.) Blogging also usually takes a certain amount of concentration that's really difficult to attain in a hotel room.

In any event, thanks very much to all those readers who have taken the effort to drop by. I'm hoping the next year povides even more blog-worthy material.

Invading the churches

Must-read of the day, from Sid Blumenthal's chip off the old block Max:

Avenging angel of the religious right

It's a profile of Howard Ahmanson, who (as previously noted) is also tied up with the Diebold voting-machine problem. Mostly, Blumenthal lays out the big picture regarding Ahmanson's plans for the right-wing domination of the nation's churches as well as its politics:

The Episcopal Church split is only a small part of Ahmanson's concerted efforts to radically transform not only American religion, but the nation's moral culture and, thereby, the country itself. His money has made possible some of the most pivotal conservative movements in America's recent history, including the 1994 GOP takeover of the California Legislature, a ban on gay marriage and affirmative action in California, and the mounting nationwide campaign to prove Darwin wrong about evolution. His financial influence also helped propel the recent campaign to recall California Gov. Gray Davis. And besides contributing cash to George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign, Ahmanson has played an important role in driving Bush's domestic agenda by financing the career of Marvin Olasky, a conservative intellectual whose ideas inspired the creation of the new White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

Of course, I've discussed this at length previously, particularly the involvement of the Institute of Religion and Democracy, which Blumenthal describes vividly:

The institute is directed by Diane Knippers, an evangelical Episcopalian and syndicated columnist who also happens to be a founding member of the Anglican Council and its acting executive director. She is the chief architect of the institute's Reforming America's Churches Project, which aims to "restructure the permanent governing structure" of "theologically flawed" mainline churches like the Episcopal Church in order to "discredit and diminish the Religious Left's influence." This has translated into a three-pronged assault on mainline Presbyterian, Methodist and Episcopal churches. With a staff of media-savvy research specialists, the institute is able to ply both the religious and mainstream media, exploiting divisive social issues within the churches.

"The larger framework for the challenge to the Episcopal Church is the ongoing right-wing effort to get control of the mainline denominations," says Alfred Ross, president of the Institute for Democratic Studies, a New York think tank that monitors anti-democratic political movements. "As the right looks to consolidate different squares on the chessboard, the mainline churches occupy key positions on that board."

Reportage like this is fundamental to the health of our democratic institutions, because it clearly exposes the thinking and machinations of the people driving the increasingly extremist conservative movement.

Endangered

Pete McCloskey, the kind of Republican I used to vote for, hit the nail on the head recently in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times [free registration required]:

Republicans Are at Risk of Becoming an Endangered Species

What's particularly on-target is that McCloskey calls out the Bush administration's stealth campaign against the Endangered Species Act:

The administration has stopped designating "critical habitat" for listed species except under court order. It has stopped adding to the list of threatened and endangered species unless ordered to do so by a judge. It has moved to exempt the Forest Service from abiding by the law on the pretext of fire prevention. It is working to weaken the requirement that endangered species be protected from pesticides.

And that list barely scratches the surface. The assault on the law is widespread and relentless.

The administration and its comrades in arms argue that the law is ineffective, expensive and in need of drastic overhaul. In truth, they are acting as agents for the timber industry, the mining industry, land developers, big agriculture and other economic interests that sometimes find their profits slightly decreased in the short run by the need to obey this law.

This last point is important to stress, because conservatives and business interests constantly stress the jobs that will be lost to species protection. Yet the ESA was an explicit recognition that the long-term national interest is best served by restraining such short-term demand (and utlimately real shortsightedness).

This is not the only front in which the Bush administration is behaving outrageously on the environmental front, with consequences directly affecting the Pacific Northwest. There is, of course, his "Healthy Forests Initiative," which promises to achieve the spectacularly anti-logical result of making old-growth forests less prone to fires by clearcutting them (you see, they call them "old growth" precisely because they are wet forests that rarely have fires). Or his recent bulldozing of Clinton's roadless-area initiative. Most recently, it's become apparent that the administration is about to reignite the Northwest timber wars, with of course the predictable political calculation thrown in for good measure:

"It's an ugly Christmas and early New Year's list out there that seems to be on the horizon from the Bush administration, and I doubt that I know of everything that's on deck," said Bill Arthur, the Sierra Club's Seattle-based deputy national field director.

"It's our sense that the Bush administration, knowing that 2004 is upon them, is trying to get as many things out the door as they can to weaken the environmental agenda, but buy some distance in time between when they do the deed and Nov. 2," Election Day.

But as I've discussed previously, the real test of the administration's assault on the ESA may come down to a subject obviously dear to my heart: namely, the fate of the Puget Sound's resident orcas.

The recent court ruling slapping down the administration's attempts to prevent the J, K, and L pods from being being listed as a threatened species under the ESA were especially important, if for no other reason than that the government's case was so outrageously flawed.

I attended a community forum about listing the whales three years ago on San Juan Island, organized by local researchers and activists. A biologist from National Marine Fisheries Service was in attendance too and I talked with him for awhile. He seemed very sympathetic to the problem and was reeasonably encouraging, though cautious of course.

That was then, under a different administration. The now, as the Earthjustice lawyers who won the recent ruling described was this:

In response to the dramatic decline of the Southern Residents, the Center for Biological Diversity and 11 co-petitioners filed a petition to list the this orca group under the ESA on May 1, 2001. The Fisheries service reviewed the petition and on July 1, 2002, determined that this population of orcas was indeed a discrete population. NOAA Fisheries also found that they were in danger of extinction. However, the agency determined that the whales didn’t meet a third criterion – that the whales are “significant.”

The plaintiffs argued that this imperiled population of orcas is distinct both genetically and geographically and has been for thousands of years. Yet, NOAA Fisheries claimed that the Southern Residents were insignificant by ignoring this genetic distinctiveness; refusing to consider their unique language, family histories, and foraging patterns; and concluding that other orcas would recolonize Puget Sound if the Southern Residents are extirpated – even though the last time that occurred was after the last Ice Age. This logic flew in the face of 30 years of studies done on the Southern Residents, which now are the most studied and best-known marine mammal population in the world.

In lieu of listing the Southern Resident Community of orcas under the ESA, NOAA Fisheries announced last summer that they would go the route of designating the population as a “depleted stock” under a different statute, the Marine Mammal Protection Act. While this was seen as a step in the right direction, environmentalists argued that the depleted tack taken by the agency short-changed the Southern Residents critical protections, inadequately addressing the threats facing the whales and their habitat.

“The ‘depleted’ designation is only useful to address threats such as unsustainable harvest levels and fishery bycatch. But we know that neither of these threats are impacting the Southern Residents,” said Brent Plater of the Center for Biological Diversity. “NOAA Fisheries was using this as a way to deflect attention from its inaction on salmon declines and the risks of a catastrophic oil spill, which even their own scientists agree is the most immediate threat to the long-term survival of these whales.”

The reality is that, in the big scheme of things, orcas are a true indicator species (unlike, say, the spotted owl) because they reside atop the food chain. They are typically a highly opportunistic species capable of adapting to a broad range of conditions; when they become troubled -- and at this point, it is now an open question whether the Sound's orca population is any longer sustainable genetically speaking -- that is a real warning bell for the health of the entire ecosystem. [For more on the bigger picture of this, I can't recommend enough the P-I's recent award-winning series, Our Troubled Sound.]

The ESA, incidentally, recently turned 30 years old. Unfortunately, it is now itself endangered. Not overtly, of course. That would draw too much negative press. What's happening is that it is being systematically gutted so that it becomes a hollow law.

I wish McCloskey were right about the political ramifications for Republicans -- but hardly anyone in the press is paying any attention to this. Certainly none of the Kewl Kids have noticed. But then, why would they?

[McCloskey link via Kicking Ass.]