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Obama’s Relentless Abandonment of Progressive Nominees

Barack Obama was never a hard liberal nor progressive, whatever the supposed difference between the two really is. Those blinded by hope and change who thought otherwise were imprinting their own desires and beliefs on what was a relatively blank slate, which was probably easy enough to do in the despair resultant from the eight years of George Bush. By the same token, however, Mr. Obama cultivated and encouraged such beliefs; this he worked hard at, and it was critical to him being elected president.

Now if you listened to, and read Obama, and paid attention, you knew he was a centrist who worked by increment, compromise and seeking consensus as opposed to a liberal beacon that would take the country in a new and markedly different direction. Again, that said, the liberals and progressives who served as the ground force, heart and soul of Obama’s candidacy and election had every right to believe he would would at least include them at his table and utilize their talents in his Administration and appointments. There was an implicit deal made in this regard, and Obama purchased on it to his wild success. Now he has defaulted.

I first wrote significantly on the betrayal of the Obama White House toward liberal nominees in relation to the nomination of Dawn Johnsen to the critical post of head of the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel. The scorn for, and abandonment of, the Johnsen nomination still stands out because of the fact it is clearly established that there were 60 votes cloture on a Senate floor vote for Johnsen’s nomination. It wasn’t that Johnsen could not be confirmed, she absolutely could have been and would have been; it was that Obama did not want her and would not call for a vote.

Johnsen was not only the best person for a critical job, she was a symbol to a critical part of Obama’s and the Democratic constituency. It is far more than Dawn Johnsen however it is a pattern of abuse and scorn the Obama White House relentlessly exhibits to a major portion of the base. Currently the focus of progressives is on the potential nomination of Elizabeth Warren as head of the newly enacted Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Despite some public platitudes, it is quite clear the Obama Administration does not want a competent crusader for citizens like Warren and, apparently, is working through the cut out of Chris Dodd to see Warren doesn’t get the nod.

Maybe the pressure will get to the Obama White House and Warren will get the post she deserves and would be perfect for; but don’t count on it because Obama, Geithner, Summers, Rahm and the boys on the Obama bus just do not want her. And they didn’t want Christine Romer either, so they let the misogynistic, consistently wrong about everything he touches, Larry Summers push her out. It is becoming a broken record with this White House.

Most distressing to me, because I practice law in the 9th Circuit, is the complete abandonment of two critical liberal judicial nominees, Goodwin Liu and Edward Chen; you may not be aware of because Read more

Was the Real Target of the Spy Sting Russian Official #1?

It appears the White House may have gotten itself caught in the kabuki it played with the press on the Russian spies now swapped for some spies in Russian custody. But the timing of the kabuki suggests the target of the spy sting may not have been the illegals, but two Russian officials working under official cover.

Here’s the relevant chronology:

January 20: Surveillance against Anna Chapman starts

February: NSC, possibly including Obama, briefed on evidence against Russian spies

February 9: On orders from Russia Center, Richard Murphy purchases laptop to bring to Moscow

February 21: Murphy departs for Russia

March 3: Murphy returns from Russia, having swapped laptop for an identical one

March 7: Murphy hands off laptop to Michael Zottoli

April 7: Russian Official #1 aborts laptop chat with Chapman because he identifies surveillance

June 5: Mikhail Semenko’s laptop chats with Russian Official #2 surveilled

June 9: Chapman’s laptop chats with Russian Official #1 surveilled

June 11: Obama briefed about Russian spy swap

June 16: Chapman’s laptop chats with Russian Official #1 surveilled

June 18: Obama chairs NSC meeting on Russian spy swap

June 24: Obama and Dmitri Medvedev go to Ray’s Hell Burger

June 25: Complaint against 9 spies dated

June 26: FBI collects evidence against last two remaining spies; FBI agent says to Chapman, “I know you are going back to Moscow in two weeks.”

June 27: Spies arrested

June 29: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov complains about timing of arrest; Obama reported to be miffed about timing of arrest; DOJ attributes timing to pending travel–presumably Chapman’s

Week of July 5: White House almost cancels spy swap because names of proposed spies in Russia leaked

July 10: Two weeks after FBI Agent said Chapman would be traveling to Russian in two weeks

Now, as I noted when the DOJ first pushed the excuse of–presumably–Chapman’s pending travel for the timing of the arrest, the excuse doesn’t seem to make any sense given that FBI had knowingly allowed Murphy to travel to Russia back in February. The excuse is even weirder now given that we know NSC was briefed about the investigation at that time.

Add in the fact that Obama knew of the prisoner swap when he met with Medvedev, and the fact that the complaints against most of the spies were written the day after that meeting, it sure looks like the timing had more to do with Medvedev than anything else.

Now, on Thursday, Rahm pushed back against any indication that Obama might have been involved in the decision to roll up the spies. First, Rahm claims that the decision to arrest the spies now was entirely that of law enforcement and intelligence.

JIM LEHRER: Was the decision on this spy swap the president’s?

RAHM EMANUEL: Well, first of all, what the president does appreciate is the work of the law enforcement community, as well as the intelligence community for their hard work in this case.

It wasn’t the decision of the president. It was the decision, obviously, of the law enforcement community and the intelligence community. But he does appreciate what they did and making America safer and the hard work that they did to get this done.

JIM LEHRER: Did the president — let me rephrase it then. Did the president sign off on this spy swap?

RAHM EMANUEL: The president was briefed about it.

Then when Lehrer presses (sort of), Rahm goes all spooky on his.

JIM LEHRER: Was the president aware that this spy ring existed before it was revealed publicly and these guys — these people were arrested?

RAHM EMANUEL: I think, Jim, it’s important — there will be a lot of postscripts on this.

JIM LEHRER: OK.

RAHM EMANUEL: And I think that what you should take away from this, obviously, the president was informed appropriately, known what was going on.

And they made the decision to go forward on this action. There will be a lot of writing about it, but I think, at this time, let me just say the cautionary note, the less said, the better.

JIM LEHRER: OK.

(CROSSTALK)

RAHM EMANUEL: Or how about, as I always like to say, less is more?

JIM LEHRER: Less is more.

RAHM EMANUEL: Yes.

JIM LEHRER: Yes, sir, whatever you say.

Ix-Nay on the Resident-Pay’s involvement in spy Wap-Say!

But the news of the June meetings was revealed in a background briefing to reporters yesterday–which may suggest Rahm was hushing talk of Obama’s involvement until the swap had been completed.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of timing, though, has to do with the surveillance on Russian Official #1. Two times, two days after he conducted a laptop chat with Chapman, the NSC met and discussed a spy swap.

June 5: Mikhail Semenko’s laptop chats with Russian Official #2 surveilled

June 9: Chapman’s laptop chats with Russian Official #1 surveilled

June 11: Obama briefed about Russian spy swap

June 16: Chapman’s laptop chats with Russian Official #1 surveilled

June 18: Obama chairs NSC meeting on Russian spy swap

So the meetings at which NSC first got briefed and then discussed in detail a spy swap occurred just after FBI caught Russians working spies in the US.

And while we’re at it, presumably we’ve not just expelled these 10 minor spies, right? We’ve expelled Russian Official #1 and Russian Official #2, right? The ones who were handling Chapman and Semenko directly (Russian Official #2, official the “second secretary” of the Russian UN Mission, has been involved in handling some of the illegals as far back as 2004)?

That is, was it Russian Official #1–who would be working under official cover and therefore be immune from arrest but would nevertheless be identified as a Russian spy through this investigation–that was the target of this kabuki, and not the illegals?

What Did Hillary Think about McChrystal’s Firing?

There’s a lot that’s interesting in this tick-tock of General McChrystal’s firing. It’s a finely crafted narrative, down to the foregrounding of Joe Biden, in spite of the way that the chronology appears to belie that narrative (that is, the chronology appears to start when the White House Press Office learns about the article). And note the way the normally cowardly anonymous source, Rahm Emanuel,  is on the record, as the story’s official narrator?

“He likes Stan and thinks Stan is a good man, a good general and a good soldier,” Mr. Emanuel said. “But as he said in his statement, this is bigger than any one person.”

But I’m most curious this paragraph:

On Tuesday, while General McChrystal was making the 14-hour flight to Washington, the White House was involved in a whirl of meetings about his fate. Along with Mr. Gates, aides say, four other senior officials were influential: Vice President Biden; the national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones; the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Adm. Mike Mullen; and Mr. Emanuel.

Compare this paragraph with the picture, above, of the Afghan strategy meeting held after Obama canned McChrystal, conveniently arranged  by protocol in proximity to the President: Joe Biden, James Jones, Bob Gates, Hillary Clinton, Mike Mullen, Rahm Emanuel, David Petraeus, Tom  Donilon, John Brennan (here’s the official description of the Pete Souza WH picture).

That is, if the decision were made according to seniority, then someone is missing from the list of five important decision-makers counseling Obama (which include Gates, Biden, Jones, Mullen, and Rahm): Hillary Clinton.

Rahm, the official narrator here, says Hillary wasn’t one of the five advisors most central to the decision to can McChrystal.

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Prediction: Media Will Be Angrier About AT&T Breach than Illegal Wiretapping

Anyone want to bet that Rahm Emanuel will be more incensed that AT&T made his Gmail address vulnerable than about the illegal wiretapping the telecom did for Dick Cheney?

Apple has suffered another embarrassment. A security breach has exposed iPad owners including dozens of CEOs, military officials, and top politicians. They—and every other buyer of the wireless-enabled tablet—could be vulnerable to spam marketing and malicious hacking.

The breach, which comes just weeks after an Apple employee lost an iPhone prototype in a bar, exposed the most exclusive email list on the planet, a collection of early-adopter iPad 3G subscribers that includes thousands of A-listers in finance, politics and media, from New York Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson to Diane Sawyer of ABC News to film mogul Harvey Weinstein to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. It even appears that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s information was compromised.

And you think the generals and NYT’s overpaid CEO are gonna be a little miffed by the possibility that their data was compromised?

Thing is, AT&T is a shitty company. They’re a shitty company when they don’t take precautions to protect customer data. And they’re a shitty company when they agree to continue a lucrative wiretap program without even demanding proof that the Attorney General approved the program.

I just hope this stupid data compromise makes the MOTUs with their 3G iPads think a little bit about all the ways AT&T sucks.

The Inexplicable Timing of Dennis Blair’s Ouster

I’m thoroughly unsurprised by the news of Dennis Blair’s ouster. After all, it’s an impossible job that appears to serve one purpose: to provide a deck chair you can rearrange every two years as a scapegoat for our continuing inability to detect terrorists even with all the surveillance toys we’ve got.

(Actually, if you’re Michael McConnell, it serves a second, more personal, purpose: giving you means to privatize intelligence for the benefit of your once and future employers.)

But I’ve got a few questions after I read the following on Twitter:

Chuck Todd: MT @SavannahGuthrie POTUS asked for Blair’s resignation; Blair appealed to Chief of Staff to make a rebuttal — an offer that went nowhere.

Major Garrett: + Feinstein: “I look forward to working with the President as he identifies his nominee.” Feinstein Cmte rpt final straw for Blair

That is, if you believe the tweets of the White House Press Corps, Blair was ousted by Obama (thoroughly unsurprising news) in response to the SSCI report on the Undie Bomber.

Now, that someone would be canned in response to the SSCI report is also thoroughly unsurprising. It’s a damning report, showing we’ve made little progress since 9/11. Now, several people–like Marc Ambinder and Jeff Stein–seem to think National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael Leiter should be the one canned over this report (and that’s even before you consider that Leiter went on vacation right after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempted attack). Whoever gets canned, though, I’m actually a bit pleased that someone will be held responsible for some pretty big failures.

So I understand all that.

It’s the timing I don’t understand. As Ambinder reported earlier this week, this report is not new. It’s just new to us. The White House has had this report for two months.

The SSCI gave its report to the White House and the intelligence agencies two months ago, and an official told me last night that the the IC had made progress implementing many of its regulations. The new budget contains more authority for the DNI to make technical decisions more quickly, which should help with the database issues. A DNI official said that Blair “accepted” blame and is making necessary changes.

If the White House were going to fire Blair in response to the report, why didn’t he get fired two months ago? Why let him start fixing thing (you know, shifting his deck chair), and then fire him?

Or did Rahm and Obama hold off on firing him until this report was declassified so he could serve as a very public scapegoat shortly after its release?

What’s It Take for Holder to Be Allowed to Do a Sunday Show? Kill Miranda!

The White House press made a bit of a todo over the fact that Eric Holder was finally allowed to go on a Sunday show today (he’s appearing on both ABC and NBC). Given all the somewhat bizarre claims from people like Rahm that Holder botches his public statements, it sort of makes you wonder what he’d have to agree to before he’d be allowed out without a minder.

The answer?

Kill Miranda!

Even in his appearance on ABC, Holder makes a case that Miranda has not impeded any investigation to date:

The system has proven to be effective. …. people have been given Miranda warnings, people have continued to talk, as was the case [with Faisal Shahzad], as was the case with Abdulmutallab in Detroit.

And Holder has made even more passionate defenses of Miranda in the past, notably in Congressional testimony (see some quotes from such testimony here). Nevertheless, Holder effectively uses his Sunday show debut to say, “If it ain’t broke, but fearmongers like Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham want to attack it nevertheless, then hell! Let’s break it!”

But gosh. It sure is nice to see the last defender of rule of law allowed to appear on the Sunday shows!

Rahm and Axe: Timmeh Has Got His Groove Back

What a ridiculous piece of crap this A1 article by Anne Kornblut is, proclaiming that Eric Holder is having a good week.

It parrots conventional wisdom about what a bad time Eric Holder has had–pointing to turf battles he lost, rather than matters reflecting on the success or failure of DOJ itself. And then proclaims that the arrest of Faisal Shahzad makes all those political battles disappear, at least for this week. For Anne Kornblut, it’s more valuable for the Attorney General to win the approval of a bunch of demagoguing political enemies than to get one after another terrorist to plead guilty and cooperate with the government.

Which sort of tells you about Kornblut’s judgment.

But it’s not Kornblut’s judgment that is most ridiculous in this article. It’s Rahm and David Axlerod’s:

Likewise, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel acknowledged that Holder had “a very good week,” comparing his ups and downs to those experienced by Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner. “A year ago, people were saying Geithner isn’t what he’s supposed to be — and now he has his mojo back,” Emanuel said Wednesday. “The same with Eric.”

David Axelrod, a senior adviser to President Obama, drew an identical comparison in a separate interview, saying: “Washington is a town of ups and downs, and there are other members of the administration — I think of Geithner, for example — who was in the barrel for a while. And it’s just the way this town works.”

So apparently Anne Kornblut felt her little theory that Eric Holder had a good week was important enough to ask the White House Chief of Staff about.

Really, Anne? That’s what you waste Rahm’s time with? Rather than, say, a question about the coordination between Janet Napolitano and John Brennan on terror strikes and oil spills, something that is not only part of the Chief of Staff’s job description but actually matters?

Apparently, though, both Rahm and Axe not only took her call to answer such an inane question, but they gave her … exactly the same answer. “Sure Anne, Holder has had a good week, but have you noticed what a good week Timmeh is having?” That is, both of them magically turned her inquiry about Holder’s mojo into a question to highlight what they claim to be Tim Geithner’s mojo.

Really, Rahm? Really, Axe?

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Meet Deputy Attorney General Robert Gibbs

I guess, in addition to President Rahm Emanuel and Attorney General Lindsey Graham, Deputy Attorney General Robert Gibbs sees the wisdom in putting aside rule of law for political expediency.

Some policy advisers have wondered why the administration’s flack is so often in attendance, but insiders fluent in the administration’s power dynamics know Obama values his views. According to one administration official, who would not be quoted speaking about internal White House discussions, Gibbs late last year pointed out the political perils of letting the Justice Department try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court and has urged the president to ignore Wall Street critics who argue Obama has adopted too populist a tone when speaking out against executive bonuses. [my emphasis]

You know, when Karl Rove unacceptably took over DOJ, he did so to support world domination. He had a plan.

But apparently we’ve decided to shred the Constitution for no other reason than a press flack thinks it would be smart.

The Anonymous Coward Calling Holder Weak

Time has another one of those Rahm v. Holder profiles. It is notable from the slew of other ones for two reasons.

The anonymous source calling Holder a coward

First, the story features several main sources for this story: Lindsey Graham, speaking on the record.

Holder, issuing no-nonsense statements like this, on the record:

And it’s Holder’s experience in the law-enforcement system that makes him such a strong believer in its ability to put terrorists like KSM away forever. “We should have great faith in the resilience of our systems, the resilience of our people, the toughness that has always separated Americans from other peoples in this world, and that’s what’s made this country great,” he says.

And at least one anonymous White House aide (AKA Rahm).

What I especially love about about that anonymous White House aide is that the guy who is too chicken to speak on the record seems to be parroting GOP attacks calling Holder weak on terror.

Republicans, meanwhile, were busy turning Holder into the poster child for White House weakness on terrorism, and some polls showed that most Americans agreed with them. “The only two people who still believe in civilian trials,” says one of the meeting’s attendees, “are Holder and the President.”

Brave anonymous White House aide!! Singlehandedly fighting terrorism by hiding behind anonymity!!

Lindsey’s July (?) meeting with Holder and December meeting with Obama

The article also provides a useful timeline for two meetings Lindsey had with the Administration, first an July (or August) meeting with Holder.

By July, Obama had asked Holder to decide whether it was feasible to prosecute KSM in a civilian court. Holder chewed on that question for weeks. Meanwhile, Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who opposed civilian trials, asked Holder to meet with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a key centrist vote on matters of counterterrorism. Graham told Holder he strongly opposed civilian trials for the alleged 9/11 conspirators and that they could affect his support for closing Guantánamo Bay prison, a key Obama goal.

And then a December meeting with Obama.

When Obama met with Graham in early December, the Senator laid out his case against civilian trials. But the President said he thought Holder had the better side of the argument. “I just agreed to disagree with the President on that issue,” Graham told TIME.

Those meetings are interesting both for the way they match up to the timeline of the attacks on Holder and Greg Craig (which started in earnest around the time of the first meeting, and culminated in the December meeting after Craig had been ousted.

I’d really love to know the logic for the Obama meeting. After all, this was before the Christmas day bombing, when the Administration was still basking in the success of the foiled Zazi plot. And it came at a time when the Democrats had 60 votes in the Senate.

So why meeting with Lindsey?

It sure suggests the push against civilian trials is more about politics than efficacy.

But we knew that.

When Lawyers Equate Law with PR

Jack Goldsmith and Ben Wittes have an op-ed up in which, claiming that the PR value to military commissions is minimal, Obama should just not give KSM a trial of any sort. They make a clever move in which they first cursorily dismiss the value of civilian trials.

A trial potentially adds three things: the option of the death penalty; enhanced legitimacy in some quarters, especially abroad; and a certain catharsis and historical judgment in the form of a criminal verdict.

These are non-trivial benefits, but as the battle over the past few months has shown, they come at great cost. Domestically, the political costs of trying high-level terrorists in federal courts have become exorbitant for the administration — unaffordably high, it seems to be turning out.

They make no consideration of the importance of a trial for our rule of law, our system of justice. And fail to consider any potential direct benefit in showing potential terrorists that we don’t stoop to the arbitrary authoritarian ways of the oppressive countries many of them are fighting. This is not about impressing Europe, as they seem to suggest, but about impressing young Saudis or Pakistanis, showing them the rule of law.

And from there, Goldsmith and Wittes treat the political debate over civilian trials equally cursorily. They might consider, after all, the reasons why civilian trials have become so costly: the fact that Dick Cheney and his daughter, trying to avoid any consequences for instituting a torture regime, are paying a lot of money to sow fear about civilian trials.

It’s a political ploy. Nothing more. Yet one that plays to the weaknesses of someone like Rahm, who apparently doesn’t see much value in defending principle. But the political cost doesn’t have to be that high; Obama has just let it be made so.

And so, with those five lines dismissing the value of the rule of law on which our country is based, they go on to focus more on their straw man target, military commissions.

The legal and political risks of using the ill-fated military commission system are also significant. After the Supreme Court offered a road map for a legally defensible system, Congress has twice given its blessing. But serious legal issues remain unresolved, including the validity of the non-traditional criminal charges that will be central to the commissions’ success and the role of the Geneva Conventions. Sorting out these and dozens of other novel legal issues raised by commissions will take years and might render them ineffectual. Such foundational uncertainty makes commissions a less than ideal forum for trying Mohammed.

Moreover, the public relations and related legitimacy benefits of trying Mohammed in a commission are not that great, especially since the administration insists that he will remain in detention even if acquitted. The possibility that the administration might try him in a commission has been met with anger and disdain by the American left and many European elites, who think commissions are as illegitimate as they believe the underlying detention system to be. They will work hard to delegitimize their proceedings too.

In short, a military commission trial might achieve slight public relations and legitimacy benefits over continued military detention of Mohammed, and might facilitate his martyrdom by ultimately allowing the government to put him to death. But this would add so little to the military detention that the administration already regards as legitimate that a trial isn’t worth the effort, cost and political fight it would take.

Now, there’s a reason Goldsmith and Wittes focus so much more closely on military commissions than civilian trials. That’s because there are real drawbacks to them. They are legally dicey, they are likely to result in years of delay, they actually offer fewer tools with which to try KSM successfully. And of course, Goldsmith and Wittes don’t acknowledge that that is one key basis for criticism of military commissions: they simply won’t be as effective as civilian trials. Instead, they falsely suggest that leftist opposition to military commissions is some nihilist attempt to discredit the trials just for the sake of principle. By making the criticism of not just the left but the military into a strawman, they avoid the fundamental agreement between us and them about the weaknesses of military commissions.

And so, with that canard, Goldsmith and Wittes dismiss the PR value of military commissions, too.

Poof! By weighing our entire legal system as one big PR gimmick (and failing to do that very well) Goldsmith and Wittes manage to decide it’s just not worth all that much.

But the clever op-ed is valuable for something. It shows what a slippery slope Obama is on. Because once you fail to make the case for the principle of rule of law, when you fail to point out the benefits it offers both as a necessary step to reclaim the America that used to inspire others rather than inflame them and as a proven way to adjudicate crimes, then there’s little to distinguish the benefits of civilian trials and the arbitrary rule of indefinite detention. (I’d also say that, short of pointing out that most candidates for indefinite detention are such because they’ve been tortured into craziness by Goldsmith’s former employers, you fail to point out how Cheney’s mistakes have gotten us here.)

Even Eric Holder, who genuinely wants civilian trials, has conceded the possible efficacy of military commissions and indefinite detention. And once you’ve done that, rather than defend the principle and efficacy of civilian trials, you’re on the slippery slope where our entire rule of law is just a big PR ploy. One that can be discarded for arbitrary indefinite detention when it becomes convenient.