This Man IS Torture

Mikaela says:
Talk about a steady drip driving you mad...

Our drip of a President is the water torture that just won't end.

In his latest pontificating to the Pope (couldn't resist), he HAD to have been talking about himself, right???

Courtesy White House Watch, who got it from Dana Milbank:

This is Your President, both what he actually said (in red) and what he meant to say [but couldn't quite work up the moral courage]:

• In a world where some [i.e. me] invoke the name of God to justify acts of terror and murder and hate, we need your message that God is love. [Except in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Guantanamo, or the extraordinary rendition countries that we let do our dirty work for us, or Israel, who like us can do whatever they want and claim the moral high ground, or -- coming soon -- Iran]
  
• In a world where some [read: me] treat life as something to be debased and discarded, we need your message that all human life is sacred. . . . [Except minority prisoners, or people in Iraq, or people in New Orleans, or in countries whose need is more expensive than the good PR we'd get out of helping]
  
• In a world where some [okay, okay, me again...] no longer believe that we can distinguish between simple right and wrong, we need your message to reject this dictatorship of relativism. . . . [For example, when I say we can torture but no one else can; we can have nuclear capabilities but no one else can; we can manipulate the capitalist market but no one else can; we can give government handouts to corporations but not to families; we can make sure government policies benefit the rich not the poor... I could go on, but I know your time is more precious than mine.]
  
• In a world where some [this time, just my most intimate advisors -- the only people I let talk to me] see freedom as simply the right to do as they wish, we need your message that true liberty requires us to live our freedom not just for ourselves, but in a spirit of mutual support. [This would really help me to stop invading other countries for America's gain. The neocons are really putting the screws to me on this one.]

Holy cow. What a hypocritical idiot. I'm glad all those people are praying for him and his family. They need it.

I hope they're also praying for all of us who have to put up with this asshole, and those who will have to clean up his mess for generations to come.

Not that I'm bitter. It's just that I'm out of "other cheeks." I'd rather turn over a new leaf.

Robert Reich for Obama!

Maggie says:
I'm thrilled that Robert Reich just announced he's endorsing Barack Obama for president.

Reich is someone I greatly admire, both for his work in The American Prospect, his reputation as Bill Clinton's first Secretary of Labor (despite?), and his advocacy work, teaching, and political thinking since. Reich's memoir of his Clinton years, Locked in the Cabinet, remains for me one of my favorite cabinet reads (I'm a sucker for those). In that book, Reich opens up about how painful it was for his values - and the values, he thought, of the new president - to be sacrificed to Republican wolves in the name of "welfare reform" during the first administration. Reich is a true believer, and couldn't stomach what politics was doing to his life's work, especially since his name was stamped on it. The behind-the-scenes tales are riveting.

I also have a personal connection to Reich. My former employer in Boston, the boundless Barry Bluestone (the nicest labor economist you'll ever meet), was best friends with Reich and Robert Kuttner, Reich's co-founder of The American Prospect. Reich was in and out of Barry's Cambridge living room and our offices spreading endless charm everywhere he went. His famous 4'11 frame gives off twice the energy you'd think it could, and his compassion and core values are equally endless. Reich's great politics and charm were on full display in his run for Massachusetts governor before I left Boston. Although Reich lost the primary, his candidacy was full of classic Reich-isms.

I bring up the personal here to add value to this endorsement as I see it. Reich is a really great American, someone who's true to his heart in his work, who wouldn't reprise his tenure as Secretary of Labor because he didn't believe in what he was being made to do. That same core has led him to endorse Obama today, and that means a lot to me.

Notes Reich: "We have three terrible traditions that we've developed in American campaigns. One is outright meanness and negativity. The second is taking out of context something your opponent said, maybe inartfully, and blowing it up into something your opponent doesn't possibly believe and doesn't possibly represent. And third is a kind of tradition of distraction, of getting off the big subject with sideshows that have nothing to do with what matters. And these three aspects of the old politics I've seen growing in Hillary's campaign."

And also: "[Obama] offers the best hope of transcending the boundaries of class, race, and nationality that have divided us. His life history exemplifies this, as do his writings and his record of public service. For these same reasons, he offers the best possibility of restoring America's moral authority in the world."

What innocent men look like

Maggie says:
Once again, I'm connecting newsreels with faces. When I think of girls forced into marriage, I can now picture Najoud. And when I hear of wrongly convicted prisoners finally exonerated through DNA evidence, I can now picture Thomas McGowan, along with James C. Giles, James Waller, and Charles Chatman. These three other men were also wrongfully convicted in Dallas County and have all been exonerated within the last two years. They came out to the courtroom yesterday to greet McGowan as free men.

From left to right: James C. Giles, Thomas McGowan, James Waller, Charles Catman

Thank goodness for the Innocence Project of Texas, who is behind so many of these exonerations. Their work is beyond incredible. Kudos to Unfair Park for keeping the story in the news. Unfair Park's photo essay - of McGowan's first meal as a free man in 23 years (chicken-fried steak!), of fellow free man James Giles giving McGowan a $100 bill to get started on the right foot, and of McGowan with his attorney, made me tear up over here.

How do we ever repay these men?

Monahan's ethics contest winning entry

marjorie says...

Joe Monahan launched a student contest a couple of months ago regarding ethics legislation. To refresh your memory, on Monday, February 25, Joe wrote:

We'll award a $500.00 first place prize and a $150.00 second place prize to the students who submit the best lobbying/PR plan to win legislative approval to limit campaign contributions in NM. A panel of esteemed Alligators will be our judges. We'll share the winning plan on this blog and with the state's political leadership.

Joe announced the winner last week but didn't share the results on his website. Instead, Common Cause followed-up with the student who agreed to let his winning essay be posted on the internet. You be the judge.

The main recommendation I take away from the essay is that the legislature is already ethical, that we have nothing to worry about, and that at the most the State legislature should spend next year examining what "ethics" means. So, in other words, no lobbying/PR plan is necessary. Nor was one provided. Since Joe awarded this essay the prize, should we infer that this is what Joe believes as well? And could that be the reason he publicly urged donors of Common Cause to rethink who they give money to?

Remember the 2006 corruption case that brought down both the current and former State Treasurer? The former treasurer, Michael Montoya said he took the bribes because he needed the money:

Montoya said in the plea agreement that when he took office, he was using his entire salary to repay large campaign debts. Soon after, he said he began taking bribes to cover his living expenses. He said he found it was easy to get bribes from people who wanted to keep or obtain business with the state treasurer's office.

And to bring it full circle, here's a blog post by M.G. Bralley about one of those people who may have given the bribes. Be sure to look at the other activities he's been involved with over the years.

I just thought I'd offer up those tidbits as a refresher about what "ethics reform" attempts to address...

While you're at the Common Cause website, check out the matching grant they received for their work to expand public financing of electoral campaigns throughout the state. This means that between now and the end of the year Common Cause will get one dollar for every dollar donated.


**I have been taken to task by M.G. Bralley for misrepresenting what he said above. He has a good point--no bribery has been proven against that individual, and no charges brought, despite Montoya's statement. Thanks for checking me MGB. (By the way, m-pyre readers, the photo essays on Bralley's blogs are always interesting--you should all check them out).

Three things

Maggie asks:
Is this troubling to anyone else? All in a day's news cycle in Texas:

1. DNA evidence frees the 16th Dallas County inmate since 2001 (that's one county, folks... Texas has 254)

2. Texas wants permission to execute prisoners convicted of child rape (incidentally, yesterday's freed man, Thomas Clifford McGowan Jr., was convicted on rape and burglary charges 23 years ago)

3. BREAKING: The Supreme Court just upheld Kentucky's use of lethal injections. Kentucky is the case that has temporarily blocked Texas' bloodthirsty use of the same... until now.

Gender and consent, from Yemen to West Texas

Maggie says:
Since we're talking gender, marriage, and consent thanks to the lovely "Yearning for Zion" case, I thought it appropriate to add a face and a personality to our abstract discussions.

Meet Nojoud Muhammed Nasser, who is without a doubt one of the cutest 8-year-olds I've ever seen. But don't let Nojoud's innocent face fool you - this girl is as tough and strong as they come. Here's Nojoud's story: She lives in Yemen, where females are not especially celebrated (Yemen ranks 138 out of 140 on the list of "Best Places to be a Mother"). Despite this egregious ranking, Yemen has actually made some progress on the child marriage front: the average marrying age of girls has climbed from ten to fourteen over two generations. Given this progress, Yemen hasn't seen fit to issue a minimum age to marry as long as there is parental consent, although in 1999 they determined that marriage "contracts" could not be legally consummated until the female was "mature."

None of this helped Nojoud two months ago when her father, a mentally unstable panhandler, sold her to a 30-year-old man for marriage. Nojoud described her father's actions this way: "He beat me and told me that I must marry this man, and if I did not, I would be raped and no law and no sheikh in this country would help me." Well, the marriage happened, and shockingly, Nojoud's "husband" did not follow the law and wait until his "bride" was mature enough for sex. He raped Nojoud, repeatedly. She is eight, which is a fact that hits home when you read childlike quotes like this one: "Whenever I wanted to play in the yard, he beat me and asked me to go to the bedroom with him."

I bring Najoud up because she is, in fact, an enormous success story. Actually, she's a heroine for all of us. See, eight-year-old Najoud took herself to court - the first minor to do so in Yemini history - and sued her father and her husband for divorce, charging sexual and domestic abuse. Both men were arrested, although her father has since been released.

“I asked and begged my mother, father, and aunt to help me to get divorced," Najoud told the Yemen Times. "They answered, ‘We can do nothing. If you want you can go to court by yourself.’ So this is what I have done.”

Najoud won her case in that she is being protected and will not have to return to her husband, but it is unclear how or if the husband will be prosecuted. Charmingly, he had this to say from jail, where he is still being held: "It is not a matter of loving her, I don’t, but it’s just a challenge to her and her uncle who think that they can put me in jail and also the judge has no right to bring me here. How did she dare to complain about me?"

Najoud's case helped spur a push for additional marriage protections at the national level, but that attempt failed. In other words, nothing will prevent Najoud's little sister, all of six years old, from experiencing the same horror Najoud did.

Coming back full-circle to "Yearning for Zion," I wonder this: how different might things be if the abuse call that was placed to authorities could be authenticated? The ability to judge the sect by U.S. laws (when they do pay taxes and don't maintain their marriages are legal) would be stronger if one of their own was asking for it, just like Najoud did in Yemen. Until we get that verification, I'm afraid this feels far too much like a witch hunt, even if most of us hope those children never see the inside of that compound again. On the other hand, is waiting for one of those girls to overcome extraordinary pressures and reach out to the authorities the opposite of Big Brother - is it shamelessly negligent?

I'm really not sure. But I know that Najoud is an amazing little girl. And I hope the girls of "Yearning for Zion" have a chance to one day feel her power, too.

ps: Kudos to Jezebel for bringing my attention to Najoud's case.

Polygamy, and social responsibility to children

marjorie says...

The video segment in this ABC interview with polygamous women inside the Zion ranch is pretty fascinating. This case really brings into stark relief the question of parental rights versus those of children, and to what extent society should act to protect children.

Let's face it, this group of people is being judged based on a larger group's social norms regarding marriage and sexuality. What is and isn't abuse is debatable for many. Personally, I think it's tragic that young girls are being raised in this manner. It's pretty telling in the video clip when one woman won't answer the question asked: are 14, 15, 16 girls being married to older men? She refused to answer, at least in the clip shown. And it makes me cringe. I have a gut reaction to think that no child should be indoctrinated in the manner pursued by this group.

But is a young woman who freely chooses this lifestyle being abused simply because these values were inculcated in her from infancy? Given an answer of yes, if she never left the group over the course of her life would she ever recognize the abuse? In the face of the seeming happiness of the women shown in the video clip, I can see that my attitude is subjective, reflective perhaps of an impulse toward cultural hegemony that in theory I reject.

This particular instance is a hard one...and there are going to be some very tough legal questions for the Texas courts to deal with. It's clear to me that this group has to reject the imposition of marriage on young teenage girls in order for it to continue to exist. It's an adjustment they have to make if for no other reason than that they live under the rule of law of the United States. The teenage years are a time of growth and change, and young people need the space in which to make their own decision about what their future will look like. One of the ways that our society has decided to provide this opportunity to young women is to prevent them from being forced into marriage. And at 14, 15, 0r 16, force is what it is.

Obama and the working classes

marjorie says...

Here's a clip of Obama on the Charlie Rose Show in 2004, courtesy of Talking Points Memo, in which he addresses why the working classes vote based on single issues, such as guns and religious values, rather than their economic interests. This is the same topic he addressed at the fundraiser in San Francisco, which is causing him so much grief at the moment.





In this clip, Obama gets closer to saying what Democrats should cop to, which is that when it comes to the elimination of high-paying manufacturing jobs in this country the Democrats share responsibility with the Republicans. They might not be as bad, but that doesn't change the fact that Bill Clinton ushered in the NAFTA/IMF/WTO era and continues to be one of it's biggest champions. Not to mention, while labor solidly sticks hell or highwater with the Democrats, the Democrats themselves haven't done much to improve the ability of Labor to organize, to collectively bargain successfully, or to go out on strike. In truth, and Obama says it here, the Democrats haven't offered much on the jobs front lately and working people are smart enough to know it. Instead, the D's are simply better at mitigating the pain of job loss.

As to whether or not Obama's comments show he is an elitist, I think this is a ridiculous line of attack. He isn't from rural America so he approaches the topic of describing how rural, working class Americans feel about politics from an outsider's vantage point. Doing that is always like walking into a potential minefield: the tone isn't just right, this particular word is all wrong, etc. We always like to pounce, don't we? Difference is not a bad thing, and particularly in this case we should welcome it. The ease with which George II and Bill Clinton, two white men with accents, can assume an "everyman" persona when they need to relate to the white working class should give us a clue. If anything, we should be pleased that Obama isn't an opportunist in a similar vein.

As for Hillary Clinton, she doesn't quite have the rural, gun-toting good 'ole gal role down if you ask me. Of course, she's actually an urban, high-powered attorney who has always had the best of life, including eight years living in the White House. She's also a multi-millionaire. So her current shtick in Pennsylvania is way over the top. Not to mention, she's not doing the Democratic party as a whole any favors. A big part of me really wants Hillary to recognize that Obama is the likely winner of this nominating contest. I don't blame her for continuing to try for it, but given the close nature of the race and the fact that she's the underdog, she probably ought to ditch the negative attacks on Obama. But instead, she's taken a nose-dive into the gutter. For more on this, check out Barb's commentary on DfNM.

Mikaela's Book(s)...Yes, you heard me right!

marjorie says...

While I'm at it, I also want to give a huge Shout Out to Mikaela who just this year became officially found on Amazon.com. Not once, but twice. Working with an impressive group of collaborators, Mikaela has edited two books published by UNM Press that show-case some of the fabulous writers in Albuquerque.

¿de Veras? Young Voices from the National Hispanic Cultural Center comes out of the summer creative writing class Mikaela has taught and mentored for many years at the National Hispanic Cultural Center. The class combines a couple of Mikaela's loves: teaching and young people. And this book highlights some of the incredible youth voices that have come out of the program. Here's how it's described on the UNM Press page:

"For one month each year, the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque brings together New Mexico teens for a creative writing program that immerses them in a process of reflection and creativity while encouraging them to explore their identity as people, as a culture, as a region, and as a society. These students unite their varied experiences, backgrounds, and beliefs to form a supportive community of respect through conversation and writing. ¿de Veras? features a collection of poems, essays, and stories written in the Voces program between 2002 and 2006 that represent the diversity of perspectives and individuality of voices of the young creators. These writings reflect the authors' courage to examine their lives, their neighborhoods, their families, and their cultures. What emerges is their amazingly perceptive, sometimes damning, yet always-honest insights."


A Bigger Boat: The Unlikely Success of the Albuquerque Poetry Slam Scene stems from the vibrant Slam community here, which hosted the national slam tournament in 2005 (and our team won the title that year while they were at it). As we've noted before, while she doesn't slam, Mikaela writes beautiful poetry. On occasion she shares it with us here on m-pyre. She's one of the people who work hard behind the scenes on behalf of Albuquerque poets (This is one of the reasons I don't really think the scene here is an unlikely success. All of these folks really love poetry and it shows). From the UNM Press page:

"A Bigger Boat chronicles the Albuquerque Slam Poetry scene's growth and success at the 2005 National Poetry Slam competition, which it hosted and won. This collection of poems and personal memories explores Slam from the voices of the poets who began developing the Albuquerque scene in 1990 to poets who witnessed and celebrated the 2005 hometown victory.

"Despite Slam's big city origins and arguments that smaller urban areas could not garner enough community interest to host national events, the Albuquerque event proved skeptics wrong. The swell of excitement so exceeded expectations that Danny Solis urged fellow organizers, "We need a bigger boat!"

"The editors of A Bigger Boat gathered the works of well-known local and national poets to provide a window into the world of competitive poetry, where verse meets performance."

Congratulations Mikaela...your work is always inspiring!

¿de Veras? is in hand on Forrester Street, and there's a reception planned for May 4th. At the NHCC, Mikaela?

A Bigger Boat is due late April, and a reception is planned at the Harwood Art Center on April 27, 11:30-1:00.

Congratulations Dr. Erik

marjorie says...

Time for an "inside m-pyre" commercial break.

Congratulations DR. Loomis. !

Yes, by night he's our Alterdestiny blogosphere buddy, where he by turns amuses us endlessly or really makes us think. By day he's the history professor who won't let his students swallow hook, line and sinker the status quo spoon fed mythology of American history. And as of yesterday, he gets to flaunt his smarty-pants letters. And he did it with "distinction." You go Erik!

We love you! And congratulations!

Smoking Gun

Mikaela says:
From Democracy Now headlines:

Report: Top Admin Officials Approved Assault, Waterboarding of CIA Prisoners

ABC News is reporting senior Bush administration officials personally discussed and approved how top al-Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the CIA. The group agreed on controversial interrogation techniques including physical assault, sleep deprivation, and waterboarding. The officials were all members of the Principals Committee on the National Security Council. They included:

• Vice President Cheney,
  
• former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice,
  
• Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and
  
• Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as
  
• CIA Director George Tenet and
  
• Attorney General John Ashcroft.
  

It’s the first time senior White House officials have been linked to an explicit group authorization of the CIA interrogation program.

One top official recounted Ashcroft was the lone cabinet member to raise doubts. The official quoted Ashcroft as saying,

“Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly.”

In the summer of 2004, amidst the controversy over the Abu Ghraib photos and the withdrawal of a controversial memo approving harsh interrogations, the Principals Committee again approved new techniques on a CIA prisoner captured in Asia. Condoleezza Rice is said to have provided decisive support, reportedly telling CIA officials,

“This is your baby. Go do it.”

Will anything come of this? A deliberate, calculated decision by the White House to controvert international law, leaving our military and operatives vulnerable to retaliatory action by every country in the world -- especially the ones that already hate us.

Now is the time to take this administration down. And out. Powerless as they deserve. Preferably in jail.

Your-Thursday-is-my-Friday Frivolity

Maggie says:
There is no way that I can be a deep thinker right now, but thanks to Marjorie and Mikaela, everyone can skip right over this post to some really yummy, brainy writing instead. Why can't I be serious, you ask? Well, the impending Adams sibling takeover of Dallas, of course!!!

American Airlines tried and failed to thwart our birthday celebration plans. We conquered. So here's a little of what you can expect from our crew the next four days:

• Mavs game mischief (throwing pretzels at Jessica and Tony, perhaps?)
• A little Southfork action for a certain "Dallas"-obsessed brother-in-law
• An extravagant sushi birthday dinner, followed by drinks at the best people-watching spot in town
• Encouraging my sister's loves for gambling and horses, all in one place
• Shopping for the girls
• Beers on the patio for the boys
  
• Taking the crew to my favorite brunch spot with perfect, spicy Bloody Marys
  
• More dinners. More drinks. A whole lot of laughing.
  
• Celebrating the fact that my brother will actually be crossing the North Carolina border for a weekend (this is huge! In my five years in New Mexico he never visited.), and that his baby momma is actually leaving the Eastern Time Zone! (Yes, we really need to get them out of state more, if only because Grandma Babysitter would be thrilled.)
  
• Having four extra people on hand to try and get Couch #2 up our stairs into the living room

And I mean, really... who wouldn't want to cheer on their 30th birthday in these?

Good Question

Mikaela reposts, courtesy Dan Froomkin's White House Watch:

Senator Kennedy (D-Mass.): "A year ago, the president said we couldn't withdraw because there was too much violence. Now he says we can't afford to withdraw because violence is down."

Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.): "Where do we go from here?"

Blind White Feminism

Mikaela says:
I've had great discussions with Marjorie and others in the past about what the most meaningful divisions among us really are. Is it race? Is it class? Is it gender?

On a macro level, it's the identity politics debate that Obama and Clinton candidacies have surfaced lately.

On a micro level, it's a debate that's been playing out in fits and starts over a people of color yoga class at Out ch'Yonda.

The hubbub began when a Saturday morning yoga class went from being open to all to being explicitly for women of color. I'm pretty sure men were "excluded," too. White women who had been going were angry, upset, and rather petulant about the switch. Other white women wrote shaming emails saying that the petulant white women should pull it together and see themselves and their privilege. Women of color deserved a space where they could be themselves without being constantly in that dichotomizing space of difference. Others took up every other position on the left's spectrum.

An article posted Friday on Alternet is also written by a white woman who takes her fellow white feminists to task for consistently refusing to acknowledge and learn from their blind spots. It made for thoughtful reading, and I'm sharing it in that spirit here. I appreciated the sense of openness to new perspectives and important issues to the layers of identity possible for women, particularly in the areas of prisons, borders, and safety.

I think this is a complicated issue, and I go back and forth from feeling to rationalizing to sensing to understanding and back again. Most of all, I value that continuous journey. So like a woman!

Still, I appreciate the moments when I'm called again to re-examine my standard operating procedure, look around to see how my perspective might differ from those I consider my allies, and consider how I might adjust strategy accordingly.

The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo

marjorie says...



Today is one of those times when I wish I had HBO. Tonight's HBO documentary by Lisa Jackson, herself a survivor of a brutal gang rape, will be hard to watch I'm sure, but rape as a weapon of war is something more people need to understand. From the HBO website :

As many of the interviewees attest, systematic rape is an effective way to destroy the fabric of society. Yet those in power, as well as powerful nations like the U.S., are doing little to prevent this outrage. "Is there something about sexual violence that makes us all turn away?" asks Jackson. "In what inhuman context does rape become intentional, programmatic, a weapon of choice? Where are the voices of the women themselves? If they tell their stories, will others listen?"

Husbands=Housework?

Mikaela says:
Courtesy Slate, a new study says that having a husband means more hours of housework, whereas for men, having a wife means saving an hour of housework a week.

Note, however, that things are better now than they were 30 years ago in terms of the balance of work between wives and husbands. My inner Virgo kind of loves that everyone (except single men -- ahem) is spending at least 10 hours doing housework, despite all our "advances" in cleaning technology. Hear that, Swiffer??? I shake my fist at you, holding your amazing duster in my other hand!

Anecdotally, does the graph below hold true for you all?

Ho Hum Generation

Mikaela says:
I'm guilty of the apathy the media accuses our generation of having.

I heard about the most recent memo to come out that Bush's Justice Department wrote to outline what kind of torture would legally be allowed in Iraq, thereby shielding those who authorized it. I didn't follow the story. It was just one more outrage, one more example of what our White House, our government, our military was willing to unleash on another country because it is not "First World," not "Free" like we supposedly are, not Democratic enough to escape the torture of its citizens by our hands.

If we look back at the Holocaust and blame the German people for not standing up for the wholesale slaughter of its fellow Jewish citizens -- and we blame Americans at the time for not doing more to save a people we knew were dying by the thousands every day -- should we not blame ourselves right now for not doing more to insist that our government, and our military, 1) stop torturing Iraqi citizens and imprisoning innocent people and 2) investigate and prosecute the military and government officials who okayed what can only be illegal activity by our soldiers?

It is not enough to blame our relative comfort for our blindness and complacency. This human travesty is being conducted in our names by those we allow to represent us. It must end. Waiting for a new President will not be soon enough.

From Dan Froomkin's White House Watch:

The Abu Ghraib Memo

More fallout from what I'm calling the Abu Ghraib Memo.

The New York Times editorial board writes: "It is must reading for anyone who still doubts whether the abuse of prisoners were rogue acts rather than calculated policy. . . .

"When the abuses at Abu Ghraib became public, we were told these were the depraved actions of a few soldiers. The Yoo memo makes it chillingly apparent that senior officials authorized unspeakable acts and went to great lengths to shield themselves from prosecution."

Tom Dickinson blogs for Rolling Stone: "The administration wanted to give itself the permission to commit felonies and war crimes. And it listed them. . . .

"This is premeditation of high crimes . . . forget misdemeanors."

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann had law professor Jonathan Turley talk about the memo on his show last night.

Olbermann: "It was written for the Pentagon the month the U.S. invaded Iraq. A year after, the kind of torture that the memo authorizes comes to light in Iraq. Does that chain of sequence blow the administration's 'it was a few bad apples at Abu Ghraib' argument out of the water?"

Turley: "It does. . . . It destroys the idea that these were just hicks with sticks . . . What they were doing is strangely similar to what is laid out carefully in these memos."

Olbermann mentions the new Vanity Fair story suggesting that White House lawyers, including David S. Addington, gave interrogators at Guantanamo a "green light" for torture.

Turley: "Right. It is really amazing, because Congress, including the Democrats, have avoided any type of investigation into torture, because they do not want to deal with the fact that the president ordered war crimes. But evidence keeps on coming out. The only thing we don't have is a group picture with a detainee attached to electrical wires. Every time we see more evidence; we have more and more high ranking people at the scene of this crime.

"What you get from this is that this was a premeditated and carefully orchestrated torture program. Not torture, but a torture program."

Tom Teepen writes in his Austin American-Statesman opinion column: "In another era -- Nixon's, not so distant to those of us in Generation Ex -- a memo declassified just the other day would have been accounted a 'smoking gun' and the nation would have been abuzz with speculation about whose heads would roll and how far.

"Nowadays, ho hum."

Why Was It Classified?

Steven Aftergood of the Project on Government Secrecy wrote on Wednesday that the government's ability to keep the memo secret for five years "exemplifies the political abuse of classification authority."

Now, Aftergood writes that J. William Leonard, the nation's top classification oversight official from 2002-2007, agrees with him.

"'The disappointment I feel with respect to the abuse of the classification system in this instance is profound,' said Mr. Leonard, who recently retired as director of the Information Security Oversight Office, which reports to the President on classification and declassification policy.

"'The document in question is purely a legal analysis,' he said, and it contains 'nothing which would justify classification.' . . .

"'There is no information contained in this document which gives an advantage to the enemy,' he said. 'The only possible rationale for making it secret was to keep it from the American people.'"

The Other Memo

Dan Eggen and Josh White write in The Washington Post with more about a still-secret memo mentioned in a footnote of the Abu Ghraib memo: "The Justice Department concluded in October 2001 that military operations combating terrorism inside the United States are not limited by Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. . . .

"Administration officials declined to detail what domestic military operations were being contemplated at the time, and the legal status of the secret memo is now unclear. Although the memo has not been formally withdrawn, the Justice Department yesterday repudiated the idea that there are no constitutional limits to military searches and seizures in a time of war, saying it depends on 'the particular context and circumstances of the search,' according to a statement."

False Platitudes & Dirty Words

marjorie says...

Happy Monday. But let's back up a few days first. There's some excellent blogging about the Rick Davis speech here in Albuquerque last Friday. Rick Davis, in case you were wondering, is John McCain's campaign manager, and he was here to speak to the Republican National Committee gathering at Santa Ana Pueblo (John McCain was at the commemoration of MLK's assassination in Memphis Friday, apologizing for being against the creation of an official holiday for MLK. Rightly so, he was roundly boo'ed during his speech).

Ali at Clearly New Mexico, who was actually present during the Davis speech, goes deep in her brilliant nugget of a blog, reflecting on the serious contradictions that often occur when privileged interest groups target outsiders. A lack of self-awareness combined with plenty of self-interest creates a lot of false platitudes and rampant tokenism. Sadly, what she describes is true from left to right…but I figure the Republican National Committee is at the top of the heap given the obvious demographics of that party.

Barb over at DfNM gives us a run-down of who we’re really dealing with here: Rick Davis…the ultra big-money lobbyist running the campaign of the supposed “money out of politics” maverick politician. Now there's a contradiction. Or, maybe just a clarification.

Barb has a great picture of a chart used during the Davis presentation. It purports to show that the American public increasingly views Obama and Clinton as pesky (here comes the dirty word) “liberals,” and states that this makes them well-left of center. By Republican logic, does this make “conservatives” well-right of center? That aside, Barb gives a great breakdown of the liberal values we know are pervasive in our society:

Davis might be surprised to learn that polling continually shows that the majority of Americans agree with the core values held by LIBERALS. They're strongly for ending the quagmire in Iraq. They're demanding universal health care in no uncertain terms, and schools that turn out well-rounded, articulate human beings rather than test automatons. They want greedy, bottom-line obsessed financial institutions and corporations reined in to serve humans instead of the other way around. They want to be paid a living wage. They want to switch to renewable energy and clean up the environment. They want unrigged justice and a level playing field for all. And they want to keep the lobbyists like Davis as far from the political process as possible.

In his speech, Davis identified five groups of voters that the R’s need to target: youth, Face-book independents, Latinos/Hispanics, Wal-Mart Mom’s, and something called a “Rehab Republican.” Are these the voters that the Republicans think are most likely to forget about our economy in crisis, the one that is losing jobs by the minute while hemorrhaging billions to Iraq? I don’t buy it—all five of those demographics, in fact, probably get it better than most. Youth and “Face-book independents” are pretty savvy free-thinkers, Latinos/Hispanics have long demonstrated they have solid liberal values, Rehab Republicans are disaffected for a reason, and those Wal-Mart moms are generally part of a group most impacted by the serious problems we’re having with the economy.

You know, I heard Jim Scarantino say on New Mexico InFocus last Friday that he believes New Mexico will go for John McCain (did I hear that right?). Well, if there was ever a moment when an election was the Democrats to lose, this would be the one.

Outta here

Maggie says:
Thanks to a fabulously attentive significant other, my need to escape the Big D and return to my natural element - sandy and freckled - has been noted. I'm so lucky that way. I'm unlucky, however, in that I lost my passport and am currently confined to our borders, making early spring spontaneous getaways a little tougher. But the fabulously attentive significant other has a plan!

Beach + US border + Quick, short getaway + Rain in Florida = South Padre Island, TX

Have a good weekend, everyone!

Harvesting Sunshine, Creating Jobs

marjorie says...



This is pretty killer! Recognize anyone?

From New Mexico Youth Organized:

April 4 marks the 40th Anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. To commemorate the event, staff and volunteers from New Mexico Youth Organized (NMYO) will travel to Memphis, TN this weekend for the Dream Reborn conference. Dream Reborn is an effort to honor the legacy of Dr. King by simultaneously addressing the issues of climate change, job creation and civil rights.

NMYO Executive Director Keegan King explained, "Green jobs-blue collar jobs in green sectors of the economy-can create pathways out of poverty for young people. This goes to the core of Dr. King's teachings about equality for all. By providing job training for such things as solar panel installation, manufacturing, water treatment, recycling and sustainable agriculture, we can develop promising career paths right here in Albuquerque." Over the weekend, NMYO and thousands of others will delve deeper into the concepts behind green jobs and their connection to civil rights, as well as how to get training programs started in cities across the country.

For more information about New Mexico Youth Organized and their campaign to promote green jobs, check out their video at http://clearlynewmexico.com/page/community/post/jd/Vj5 or go to 1skynewmexico.org.

Fun Things to Look Forward to

Mikaela says:
Now that I have my tickets, I'll let everyone else know!

May 1: 6 pm (MST)
This American Life is doing a live show via satellite to movie theaters around the country, and Cottonwood is participating!

You can read more about it here and buy tickets here.

April 5,6 and 12,13
As far as this weekend goes, Q Staff is debuting its expanded theatre space with an inaugural run of Snake Oil for the Lovelorn. Not only do they have a great new space pre-show for drinks and snacks (bathrooms, anyone?), they also have a new home on the web! Find out more about the show, the staff, and the space here.

Tonight and Tomorrow ONLY!
UNM's own slammers are hosting the College Union Poetry Slam Invitational (CUPSI) that started earlier this week. Semi-finals are tonight, 5 p.m. at the NHCC; finals are tomorrow 6 p.m. at the El Rey, followed by a rockin' after-party w/ your favorite Burque slammers.


And the last thing on my mind today is just how robbed our beloved Sophie Martin was in "losing" the Alibi's readers choice to a "blogger" who's only been blogging since February (when did ballots go out? March, wasn't it?), not that anyone's actually been to his site. What's up with checking those ballot entries, Alibi? Kind of undermines the validity of the entire competition.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

TGIF random Republican nightmares

marjorie says...

Since when is the U.S. as flimsy as a flag?, asks the Journal's Jim Belshaw. That's the best Journal headline I've seen in a good while. I recommend you all to read Belshaw's commentary about what he calls "Outragefest" over the misdemeanor conviction of Peter Lynch for destroying the Mexican flag on UNM campus last year. It's predictable that the outrage-fest found a home at KKOB, isn't it? According to Belshaw, one caller said UNM was a "Democrat-controlled communist place." Ha! Belshaw reminds us in his commentary that "...the responsibilities of a jury demand more of us than talk radio does"...thank you!


From the NYT this morning comes this headline: 81% in Poll Say Nation is Headed on the Wrong Track. The NYT tells us this number sets a record for this question since they started asking it in the early 1990s. Someone should ask lobbyist/McCain campaign manage Rick Davis about that today up at the Tamaya resort, where he's speaking to the Republican National Committee. Ask them all, actually: Why should any person in their right mind vote for a Republican this year, considering more than 4000 U.S. troops are dead, many more are permanently disabled or psychologically traumatized, 1000s upon 1000s of Americans are losing their homes, gasoline is pushing $4 a gallon, and working people in this country are teetering on the edge of security? Not that Bush seems all that interested in our problems...


Remember New Orleans? You know, the city that was almost wiped out by Hurricane Katrina, that has pretty much disappeared from the front pages? The residents still want to return home there. Makes me think Congress should enact a "right of return" policy for the United States. Thanks to the Center for Media Justice's new series, "Media Penalties," for the link to the NYT article, plus the link to the Lou Dobb's clip in which he calls Condi Rice and Barack Obama "Cotton..."pickers. Yes, he really did. El Molestoso has a great commentary about it at SWOPblogger. Despite how awful Lou Dobbs is, El Molestoso's headline, "Lou Dobbs v. Condi Rice on Race in America!!!" is pretty good.

MSM Hard at Work

Maggie says:
Kudos to Erik for pointing out this absolutely ridiculous piece of "journalism." I mean seriously - the White House Press Corps sleeps on the job for eight years and all we get are exposés on whether or not Obama really quit smoking and endless strategy pieces about Clinton "crying"?

Ugh.

PS: I highly recommend inviting the Loomis brothers over for dinner.

Bill Richardson & the Clintons, plus an Ethics Aside

marjorie says...

The Clinton onslaught on Bill Richardson over his endorsement hasn’t let up, and I think it makes the Clintons look pretty desperate. Let’s think about what they’re saying for a second. We have two basic premises for why Bill Richardson endorsed Obama:

1. He’s decided that Obama is going to win and wants a new job.

2. He actually believes what he says about Obama.

Regarding the first, I want to point out that the Bill Clinton we know would act similarly, in a heartbeat, when it comes to advancing his own agenda, regardless of questions of loyalty (Lani Guinier anyone?). That aside, Bill, Hill, and Bill are all three career politicians. That the Clintons would expect Richardson to not deliberately advance his own career in order to advance that of Bill Clinton’s wife is kind of silly, if you ask me.

Regarding the second, the Clintons imply that what Richardson actually believes shouldn’t matter at all. All that should matter is loyalty to them. As though the Democratic Party is actually a large organized crime outfit and Bill Richardson is (was) one of their Lieutenants.

To follow the Clinton logic, we should want our political leaders to place blind loyalty above what is right. And even further, they are implying that they don’t respect Richardson’s opinions all that much in the first place. All they want is for him to do his duty and stay in his place.

This is very revealing about them actually, and I don't really think it inspires loyalty to begin with. While the media spins it as a “fiery break-up,” the rest of us should recognize that the Clintons are playing to the gut-check most of us have when it comes to “loyalty” for their own political gain. And it isn't very honest.

As for Richardson's motivations, I figure they're based in a little bit of both premises. When combined they clearly would create a compelling juggernaut for him.

An Aside

Speaking of ethics, did you guys see that Monahan promises the results of his "college challenge" tomorrow? Who wants to lay odds on what the general outcome will be...? An incremental approach at the Roundhouse?

Remembering why I hate Rush

Maggie says:
Since Rush Limbaugh's fall from grace with the whole drug addict thing, I've happily put him out of my mind. Sure, he can still generate a headline or two - like advising Republicans to vote for Clinton in open primaries so they can beat her in November - but whatever. How many people are really listening anymore? Yet his latest "explanation" about Democratic women takes me right back to the '90s:

"You have to understand the mindset of a lot of these feminists and women...These women have paid their dues. They've been married two or three times; they've had two or three abortions; they've done everything that feminism asked them to do. They have cut men out of their lives; they have devoted themselves to causes and careers. And this — the candidacy of Hillary Clinton — is the culmination of all of these women's efforts." - Limbaugh, yesterday on his talk show

Are there words, really?

Spotted in Dallas (proof!)

Maggie asks:
Remember my report of the Protruding Chestbone from a recent Dallas gala? In case non-locals weren't sufficiently impressed turned off by my description of the boy chest (except for when implanted) sweeping Dallas, I offer proof:

Over on FrontBurner, the "Lft at Victory Park" ad makes my eyes pop every time it flashes by:

Allergy attack check-in

Maggie says:
Allergies going crazy lately, and coffee not really kicking in today, so I'm resorting to bullets and fragments:

• Mugabe out?: Mind-blowing. Really monumental.
  
• Alphonso Jackson resigning "for family reasons": About damn time. While I have low expectations for the lame duck who'll be put in through January, I look forward to a Democratic administration that actually acknowledges and values the mission of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Jackson's actions were atrocious.
  
• John Adams miniseries: Good enough that we finally broke down and ordered HBO. Paul Giamatti is my favorite actor to play an asshole, so he's perfect for Adams. I mean this in more than a snarky way - I grew up in a rather Jefferson-worshipping household, and McCullough's biography was good enough for me to find the humanity in the man behind the Alien and Sedition Acts. The miniseries finds it too, helped along by really brilliant casting. (I'll watch Giamatii and Laura Linney do anything.)
• NC sibs heading to Dallas: So overdue! I think not having my family visit was a way to not really acknowledge that I live here. But next week my brother, sister, and their mates arrive to celebrate my birthday. In between gluttonous sushi dinners and a whole of lot of drinks, I guess it's also my reality check. ;-)
• Dallas blogs that make me happy: They're out there. The Eleventy Billionth Blog (because Bethany cracks me up), So Dallas (because I adore the way "Jackie O" takes this town on), and Random Rantings (because Slynnro's fun posts are balance to all the politics and seriousness in my brain)
• Oh, and Marty for Life?: Ha! Thanks FBIHOP, 'Burque Babble, and SWOPblogger! (By the way, I'm going to credit Scot for giving Marty the idea thanks to his brilliant and ongoing use of the term "Feudal Prince Marty.")
  

Happy April Fool's Day, oh...and by the way, Monahan, are those results in yet?

marjorie says...

The past couple of days I’ve kinda sorta been wondering what media pranks were in store for today. Maybe that’s why I had a half-awake dream moment this morning when I just *knew* that Joe Monahan was going to blog about the results of the student contest he created well over a month ago. In his blog he would spin a believable yet just a touch crazy yarn about two college students lobbying at the Roundhouse on behalf of ethics reform. It would be the kind of blog that gets you all excited (sort of like Google’s offer this morning to roll back the clock). Then at the end, he’d cop to it: April Fool’s! And acknowledge what we all know: the failure of ethics reform legislation at the Roundhouse in 2008 wasn’t about the lobbying efforts of reform advocates, it was about entrenched legislators who don’t want to give up their gravy-train.

After all today is April Fools Day and how brilliant would that have been? Alas. Like many of these half-awake dream state moments when you *just know* something, it was simple fantasy.

Monahan devised his contest as a way to move on from a moment when he and his lobbyist alligator were roundly criticized for suggesting ethics reform was dead in the water due to advocates not knowing how to lobby. Monahan’s lobbyist cronies don’t like it when outsiders come to the Roundhouse, after all, it’s their living room, not ours. So they attacked Common Cause specifically, and by extension the many non-profit advocates who communicate with legislators about, among other things, the inordinate and destructive nature of the lobbying cabal as it exists today. Many of us think this take is pretty backwards. It leaves legislators off the hook by blaming the messenger.

The time has never been more right for comprehensive ethics reform, given the highly publicized ethics violations and corruption in this state. But according to Monahan, we should take baby steps over many years, because not only were legislators not swayed when they should have been, the public is too confused by the proposals and therefore can't weigh in adequately. As you may remember, I couldn’t help but ask in response what person in their right mind doesn’t know what “campaign contribution limits” means? The fact is that the public is a lot savvier than Joe likes to suggest.

Monahan’s contest had a deadline of March 8, with results to be announced on the 30^th. You can see the details of the contest here. Essentially, he offered $500 to the student who developed the best “lobbying/PR” ethics reform plan for next year’s legislative session. Despite the fact that this contest is totally passive-aggressive, I never discount the creativity of young people. I want to see the results. Well, Joe?

Preferential mating

Maggie says:
Gene's right... it's totally time to bring back the discussion of how we mate (or most likely don't) through our preferences in books, movies, eating, and the like. Put on the fond memory music and stoke the conversational fires, because to facilitate our fun I'm going to link to an oldie-but-goodie: the much-loved "taquito moment" article.

Our original post (remember m-pyrical?) is here, with some of our taquito moments from '05 and '06 included in the post and comments. And since then... well, one M is married and another fled the state for a boy (cue eye-roll), so life is a lot different now.

And yet, discussions of attraction and repulsion never cease to be a good time, however hypothetical they may be.

The fascinating question that rises to the top of all of these articles is not about what we like, but actually about what we detest. The logic goes, if we can eliminate prospective mates by things they possess that we hate, will we eventually land on the person who has it all? Or does not possessing any inoffensive qualities simply give us a bland candidate, rather than one who might embody qualities we both love and love hating? And is it obnoxiously post-modern to maintain that our best matches will love our loves of books, movies, art, music, poetry, food, etc.... or is that just common sense? Is our luxury of having the time and confidence and freedom to endlessly choose actually more harmful to us in the end? Do the best of us just fall early and figure it all out later, happily rolling our eyes at their DVD collection for the next fifty years? Or can time give us the luxury of finding that person who also has sentence twelve on page 149 of our favorite book underlined, and does that give us more in the end?

Let the debate begin continue.

The Original: Picky, Picky. In the Outlet Mall of Love, Finding a Good Fit Can Mean a lot of Returns. "The Taquito Moment comes to represent a moment of clarity, the thing you fasten onto later when explaining why you could never go out with that person again."

Books: It's Not You, It's Your Books. "If you’re a person who loves Alice Munro and you’re going out with someone whose favorite book is ‘The Da Vinci Code,’ perhaps the flags of incompatibility were there prior to the big reveal."

Food: I Love You, but You Love Meat. "He had no problem searing her vegan burgers alongside his beef patties, but she found the practice unenlightened and disturbing."

The State of Politics

Mikaela says:
Sorry about my extended absence here on m-pyre. I won't go into the whole thing, but it has to do with world weariness and personal changes and a fundamental questioning of whether it makes sense to share thoughts in a public sphere when I'm not a journalist and don't want to be.

After a talk with Marjorie, I've drawn the line for myself that those bloggers who try to make a living at this -- drawing revenue from ads, etc. -- incur the added responsibility for fact-checking. Those of us, like the ms on m-pyre, who are merely lay commentators, must trust our secondary sources. When we find them to be untrustworthy, we have to temper our reliance on them. And that's about it. Otherwise, I think we just have to call 'em as we see 'em from our limited, but sometimes helpful and sometimes more wide-angle lens, perspectives.

That being said, here's four tidbits that have me hopping today.

The first two come via Democracy Now's headlines:

Bush Jeered at Baseball Game

President Bush was met by jeers and cheers last night as he threw out the first pitch of the Washington Nationals baseball season. The Washington Nationals opened their season in a new $600 million stadium that was financed almost entirely by government subsidies.

Man do I want to see this footage! You can do that here. The two highlights are at about 35 seconds into the clip, when the boos first start and about 55 seconds, when Bush appears to GLARE at the crowd. The announcers don't say a WORD about the jeering. They just compliment his throw and move on... Not sure that counts as announcing so much as editing, but oh well.

80-Year-Old Deacon Arrested at Mall for Antiwar T-Shirt

In Long Island, New York, an eighty-year-old church deacon was removed from a shopping mall Saturday and arrested after he refused to remove a t-shirt protesting the Iraq war. Deacon Don Zirkel was handing out antiwar pamphlets when he was approached by security guards at the Smith Haven Mall. The guards placed him under citizen’s arrest after he refused orders to turn his t-shirt inside out. When the local police arrived they charged him with criminal trespassing and resisting arrest.

How awful is this? It brings to mind all the hoopla about anti-"gang" rules that malls adopted so they could harass and throw out youth, who misguidedly assumed, as most of us did, that malls are public space. Not so, apparently. They're entirely private, and they can mess with whomever they wish, unfortunately. In the planning sphere, this has huge implications about who actually "owns" the spaces where they public interacts, and what that implies about civic life. This latest story takes this to whole new and scary levels. What's next?

By the way, via another website, here's a description of the t-shirt at-issue:

Zirkel, a deacon at Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal in Wyandanch, said his shirt had the death tolls of American military personnel and Iraqis -- 4,000 and 1 million -- and the words "Dead" and "Enough." The shirt also has three blotches resembling blood splatters.

The third is from my ever-beloved This American Life, who this week took on the Bush Administration's abuse of power and perhaps lasting corruption of the executive office and its bureaucratic minions across our governmental system.

The Audacity of Government
Stories of the Bush Administration, its unique style of asserting presidential authority, and its quest to redefine the limits of presidential power.

We've noticed a trend in a number of actions taken lately by the United States government. Tiny things, things you probably haven't heard of, but with big implications. Harassing widows. Defying a century-old and utterly benign treaty—with Canada! So we've decided to spend an hour talking about the unrelenting, combative style of this Administration.

The show includes an interview with Charlie Savage, who single-handedly educated our nation about Bush's use of signing statements to by-pass Congress, which has significantly called our system of checks and balance into question. One interesting portion of the interview is hearing what the current Presidential candidates said their positions were on signing statements (McCain vowed not to use them; Obama and Clinton said they would) and indefinite holding of "enemy combatants" -- an entirely new designation created by Bush to get around the Constitutional requirement of habeas corpus and other international laws (I think all said they didn't agree the President had that power, even though the Supreme Court ruled otherwise for Bush).

The show also tells the story of how Immigration has bucked the law in order to deport widows of U.S. citizens. Even the interviewee can't quite figure out what's at stake for the government to fight so hard, and perhaps illegally, to do this, but it doesn't bode well, whatever the reason. The neat legal noose they use should scare us all, as it has implications for many levels of government, and it could signal the doorway to huge abuses of power that affect us all.

The last is via Dan Froomkin's White House Watch, my perennial favorite source for all things Bush related.

Brazilian Tells Off Bush

AFP reports: "Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Thursday he told US President George W. Bush to fix his country's economic problems before they spill over and harm other economies.

"'Son, here's the problem,' Lula said he told Bush in a telephone call. 'We've had 26 years with no growth. And now that we're growing, you want to complicate things? Fix your own crisis!'

Doesn't that just speak for itself? Way to go, Lula!

The "Invisible Hand" sure is looking feeble these days

marjorie says...

From a Wall Street Journal Q&A with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, regarding recommendations for addressing the current mortgage lending induced Wall Street crisis:

WSJ: Would this new framework have prevented the current credit-market turmoil?

PAULSON: I don’t mean to imply that we aren’t going to keep having these periods every five to ten years. I don’t think any regulatory system is going to change that. I think we rely very, very heavily on market discipline. Mistakes are made. Having said that, I still think we need a system that is more efficient and gives us a better chance, gives us more tools to try to solve problems.

What we just saw the Fed do was not something that happens every five to ten years. The Fed doesn't periodically bail out Wall Street investment firms that are about to implode due to rampant speculation.

The primary issue, to my mind, is that during the 90's the final nail was put in the coffin of what is called the Glass-Steagull Act. Glass-Steagull was one of the measures stemming from the Great Depression. It separated speculation (underwriting of stocks & bonds) activities from commercial lending to consumers. In other words, commercial banks that hold everyday people's money, and lend to us, were insured through a new agency, the FDIC. These commercial banks could not engage in "brokerage"...so in effect, they had to make a choice. The intention was to ensure the safety and viability of the American banking system, while letting the "free market" go about its speculative business on Wall Street. In the late 90's, this historic separation of commercial banks and brokerage firms was eliminated through an Act of Congress that Bill Clinton signed into law.

In the new era this means, practically speaking, that the federal government insures Wall Street in addition to Commercial banks. And we just saw a great example of this in action. Bear Stearns was bailed out because of the fear of a domino effect since the regulatory separation between banks and investment firms has been eliminated. Think: Citigroup.

Paulson says that we're in a new era, that the old regulatory framework doesn't fit anymore. He's right. But the proposal put forward by the Treasury Department this week doesn't really regulate the new mega-firms that are now mixing it up. Instead, it shifts agencies around, provides for numerous reporting mechanisms (basically bringing greater transparency to licensing and state-based regulation of the mortgage lending industry) and expands the power of the Fed to step in during a crisis, such as what happened with Bear Stearns. Frankly, I want to avoid a crisis. Regulation means that industries are "regulated." They have actual rules they have to follow.

The sub-prime mortgage lending disaster didn't have to happen. Paulson says there are oversight gaps that need to be closed so that these types of situations can be predicted with more accuracy. Well, it seems to me that the average Joe and Janice on the street were able to predict it well in advance. The problem is a lack of regulation. Our system is too complex to spin on a dime. Our ideological splits often require a lot of dialog to reach consensus, and due to the nature of a representative democracy the impetus for real bi-partisan political action often only occurs when there is a real crisis. This is why the time is ripe, right now, to implement real controls on a system that needs it. The feeble "invisible hand" of the market is not enough.