Eight years ago, our President was on vacation, ignoring a Presidential Daily Brief that warned, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US." The brush on a pig farm in Texas, you see, was far more  important.

And here we are now, six whole days in to August, and Obama’s just got one week planned on Martha’s Vineyard. How will the brush get cleared? How will the PDBs get ignored?

Obama has chosen today, PDB day, for John Brennan’s coming out party, where Brennan will present Obama’s new direction in counterterrorism. (Spencer will be liveblogging from the talk at the Windy).

There are parts of today’s speech that are welcome. This is a reiteration of Obama’s March renunciation of the War on Terror.

"This is not a ‘war on terror.’ . . . We cannot let the terror prism guide how we’re going to interact and be involved in different parts of the world." 

It’s an embrace of soft power–a real engagement with the rest of the world. (Mind you, Bush tried it, but sent Karen Hughes to do the job.)

Washington must couple the military strikes that have depleted al-Qaeda’s middle ranks with more sustained use of economic, diplomatic and cultural levers to diminish Islamist radicalization, he said, exercising "soft power" in ways that President George W. Bush came to embrace but had trouble carrying out.

 But it also seems to represent the ascendancy of John Brennan, Obama’s holdover from Bush’s War on Terror team.

"His portfolio is growing, not shrinking," said Mark Lippert, a longtime Obama foreign policy aide and now chief of staff for the National Security Council, which is run by Brennan’s boss, national security adviser James L. Jones. Brennan’s role spans terrorism, cybersecurity, swine flu and some intelligence matters. "He has the president’s trust. . . . Folks from all parts of the policy and intelligence community respect him," Lippert said. 

I’m sure John Brennan is very knowledgable and all. But he was also, apparently, intimately involved in the illegal activities of the Bush Administration, particularly Bush’s domestic surveillance program. 

So soft power is all well and good–provided we make a more competent attempt at it than Karen Hughes was able to muster. But will it move beyond the abuse of power Brennan was involved in under Bush?

Spencer has an appropriately skeptical look at this at the Windy:

… it’s on Brennan to explain how this approach is more than saying, No, no, we mean it this time … Is there an ideological component? Or does that implicitly overestimate the intellectual force that al-Qaeda possesses and counterproductively links al-Qaeda to a mainstream of Islamic thought? How does Brennan link Afghanistan, where the mission appears to be moving to something beyond counterterrorism, to this effort? Are these changes in policy or changes in branding?

And: how do the Republicans react? If the Obama administration is doing anything, it’s slowly killing the idea of a war on terrorism, which became almost a culture-war issue during the Bush era. “You cannot win a war when you don’t believe you’re fighting one,” President George W. Bush hectored in the days before the 2004 election.

Maybe it’ll draw Cheney out of his cave to attack Obama–we haven’t had a Darth Cheney sighting in a while.

Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer’s background has been a key topic of discussion in CREW’s lawsuit to force DOJ to release Dick Cheney’s interview with Patrick Fitzgerald. The problem is, DOJ forgot to reveal that Breuer had represented one of the people involved with issues directly related to Cheney’s interview.

DOJ needed an expert on investigations of White House officials–so they got Breuer

During a hearing on whether or not DOJ should release Dick Cheney’s interview with Patrick Fitzgerald back in June, Judge Emmet Sullivan suggested that DOJ ought to have someone with actual experience in investigations of high level White House officials make their argument that releasing Cheney’s interview would make such investigations more difficult in the future.

MR. SMITH: In this case I don’t see — the law enforcement issue here is very unique and it’s very different than I think in Sussman and in most other cases. It’s an interest, it’s basically a chilling interest that if the Vice-President’s interview is released, that could have a chilling effect on future senior leadership.

THE COURT: Says who?

MR. SMITH: Says the Attorney General Mukasy [sic], that was his conclusion.

THE COURT: He didn’t file a declaration. Mr. Bradbury filed a declaration. He didn’t base it upon any experience, he didn’t base it upon anything. He didn’t articulate the bases for his declaration. Other than he was designated to follow declaration. So it wasn’t Mr. Mukasy [sic] who filed the declaration which arguably could have carried great weight. If the chief law enforcement officer says based on my experience and experience of others in law enforcement, it could have but that’s not the case here. Bradbury was a political appointee. I don’t know what his experience was. He was appointed to, maybe he was appointed to file this declaration. I don’t know what else he did. He’s no longer there at OLC. And essentially the government in footnote says I should defer to his declaration.

This is not a deferential review. I want to be clear I’m not suggesting that the Attorney General should sign a declaration. I’m not ordering, certainly not ordering him to do anything, but I’m just saying in response to what you just said arguably it could have carried greater weight for such a declaration to come from a law enforcement official based upon his or her experiences with respect to this chilling effect. Otherwise, it’s just an assumption this man makes based upon nothing he can point to. [my emphasis]

So rather than have the discredited Steven Bradbury submit this declaration, DOJ got Breuer to do so. After Breuer submitted a statement arguing that release of Cheney’s interview will present some new disincentive for high level White House officials in the future to cooperate that thirty years of routine release don’t already present, CREW questioned what basis Breuer had to make that claim.

The only experience plaintiff is aware of Mr. Breuer having with law enforcement investigations involving the White House is his tenure as special counsel to President Clinton during the Independent Counsel’s “Whitewater” investigation. Mr. Breuer “appeared before the grand jury . . . and invoked Executive Privilege,” a claim that was rejected by Chief Judge Johnson and that the Independent Counsel described as “interposed to prevent the grand jury from gathering relevant information.”

In response, DOJ played up Breuer’s experience relevant to this issue.

Mr. Breuer’s experience in criminal law and government investigations is, in fact, extensive. Prior to his appointment as Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division, Mr. Breuer served as an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan, a senior legal official in the Clinton Administration, and the Co-Chair of Covington & Burling’s White Collar Defense and Investigations practice group.

What they didn’t say, though, is that Breuer represented someone involved in this very case.

What they didn’t say is that Breuer represented someone whose involvement in this matter may be related to precisely those things being hidden by DOJ’s refusal to release the interview.

Lanny Breuer represented one of the people at CIA involved in responding to Dick Cheney’s inquiries

Breuer, as his financial disclosure reveals, has provided John Kiriakou at least $5,000 of legal services. Now, Kiriakou is best known for going on ABC in 2007–shortly after the destruction of the torture tapes was first revealed–and claiming Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded just once, for 30, 35 seconds. A claim that, as readers of this site know well, turned out to be totally false.

But Kiriakou was also closely involved in the CIA Leak case. He was the one who, on June 10, 2003, was trying to come up with some answers about Joe Wilson for Vice President Cheney. He’s the author of the email that explains,

The VP apparently heard the below story and had questions on it. The DDCI needs a response before his noon meeting tomorrow (Wednesday [June 11]) with the VP, so if you could get back to me by 1000 or 1100 tomorrow, I’d appreciate it. Thanks a million.

Story: In Februay 2002, CIA received an initial report of a shipment of uranium from Niger to Chad [sic]. Former Ambassador to Cameroon [sic] Joe Wilson (an old friend of the Agency and former Charge d’Affaires in Baghdad) was supposedly sent by CIA to Niger to investigate the story. He did so, and he concluded that there was no truth to it. Wilson said that he was debriefed by a CIA case officer who flew in (to where is unclear) [redacted].

VP Questions: Is this story true? Do we have a chronological account of the above events? What is the nature of Wilson’s relationship with CIA? What exactly did Wilson report to us? Was this in a reporting cable [redacted] (if it was, can somebody send me a copy of it? Will you also send me a copy of the intel? [redacted] Didn’t the Brits come out with a similar report detailing a Niger-Iraq uranium connection? [redacted]

And that’s relevant because two of the things DOJ is trying to protect in Cheney’s interview pertain to Cheney’s conversations with the CIA–precisely what Kiriakou was personally involved in.

Vice President’s discussion of the substance of a conversation he had with the Director of the CIA concerning the decision to send Ambassador Wilson on a fact-finding mission to Niger in 2002. (Page 3, lines 15-17, 21-28)

Vice President’s discussion of his requests for information from the CIA relating to reported efforts by Iraqi officials to purchase uranium from Niger. (Page 6, lines 30-33, 39-40)

Indeed, Cheney’s conversation with Tenet is one of just two things in the interview DOJ is trying to hide that was not otherwise released in some form at the Libby trial (the other being a conversation Cheney had with Condi Rice). And we know that Kiriakou was gathering evidence for Tenet’s Deputy, John McLaughlin, on precisely this issue, around the same time that–Libby claimed–Tenet told Cheney about Plame’s identity.

Lanny Breuer’s ethics letter limits whether he can participate in issues related to people he represented

Now, I’m not sure whether and to what extent that at-least $5,000 of legal services involved helping to explain the context of Kiriakou’s e-mail about collecting information for Cheney. But I do know that Breuer has a letter agreeing that he would not participate in any matter in which a former client of his is a party for one year after he last provided services to that client.

For a period of one year after his resignation from the law firm of Covington & Burling, LLP, he also will not participate personally and substantially in any particular matter involving specific parties in which that law firm is a party or represents a party, unless he is first authorized to participate pursuant to 5 C.P.R. § 2635.502(d). In addition, he will not participate personally and substantially in any particular matter involving specific parties in which a former client of his is a
party or represents a party for a period of one year after he last provided service to that client, unless he is first authorized to participate pursuant to 5 C.F.R. § 2635.502(d).

Now, so long as Breuer’s relationship with Kiriakou ended at least a year ago, so long as Covington & Burling is not still representing Kirakou, this letter should not be a problem at all (yes, I’m working on finding out when C&B ended their relationship with Kiriakou).

But as a matter of common legal ethics, shouldn’t Breuer at least reveal to the Court that he represented someone who was personally involved in precisely the matters DOJ is trying to hide? 

There was a fair amount of back-and-forth in court filings about why Lanny Breuer was the one guy at DOJ best qualified to make the Jon Stewart defense: Whitewater, Assistant DA, Covington & Burling’s White Collar Defense practice. Somehow, though, DOJ forgot to mention Breuer’s most direct qualification for assessing whether the exposure of Cheney’s interview would embarrass him: representing one of the guys who was personally involved in one of the matters DOJ is trying to hide, Cheney’s discussions with the CIA about Wilson.

You’d think DOJ maybe could have mentioned that.

Mark Ambinder wrote a controversial post in which he compared efforts to protect social security in 2005 with the GOP’s Rent-a-Mobs now. His argument, basically, is that just because the Rent-a-Mobs were organized by the corporations trying to doom healthcare reform doesn’t mean we can assume the anxiety expressed by people at Town Halls isn’t "real" justifiable anxiety. And if that anxiety is "real," we need to deal with it.

When you find Astroturfing, the next question ought to be: but does it reflect anything real? If it does, then you’ve got work to do.

Now, Ezra has the best rebuttal to claims that the press should treat the Rent-a-Mobs as reflecting "real" anxiety. If it’s so important to report what goes on at these town halls, then why hasn’t the press reported the consistent call for single payer at town halls–sustained over a much longer period of time?

I’ve been attending health-care panels and events on a pretty regular basis for four or five years now. Each event, of course, is its own precious snowflake, with its own set of graphs and bullet points and dweebish jokes. But one thing is perfectly predictable: The Q&A session will be dominated by single-payer activists asking about HR 676.

[snip]

The media hasn’t shown the slightest inclination to cover their presence at event after event after event.

That’s worth keeping in mind as people begin to focus on the anti-health-care tea parties. The political system does not have some sort of consistent reaction to grassroots pressure. Rather, it picks and chooses when it wants to listen to the views of the very, very non-representative groups of people who sit through at town halls and panel discussions.[my emphasis]

Aside from Ambinder’s seeming fascination with Rent-a-Mobs to the detriment of single payer activists, there’s another problem with his argument. He argues that we can’t assume that the concerns expressed by the Rent-a-Mobs aren’t "real" concerns because there is "real" uncertainty about how health care reform will turn out. Fair enough. But to make his case, he chooses a wonky issue not really raised by the Rent-a-Mobs. He suggests the anxiety of those at the Rent-a-Mobs stems from their understanding of how iMAC will work (or, more specifically, whether it’ll even be passed by the Senate).

Take, for example, the question of whether people would have to change their policies or their doctors as the result of a robust public plan. Obama says no — and he makes a credible argument for it. Many real people — regardless of their motives — have legitimate and credible reasons to believe that the answer is yes. In cases like this, maybe there is no middle ground — ya just believe it or you don’t. But empirical data-gathering and analysis isn’t set up to answer questions like these, because they derive their power from emotion and gut feelings. Will the iMAC proposal lead to reduced health care costs over the long-term? Anyone who says they KNOW it will cannot possibly be telling the truth: there is no way to know whether lobbyists will be successful in getting the 50 members of the Senate, say, to overturn a particular provision. We can make a reasonable guess that by changing the context and forcing Congress to vote "no" on something billed as a cost-cutting measure, it’ll be tougher for lobbyists to work their charms. But we don’t know.

Where do you draw the line? It depends on the issue and the context. For example: evolution is true and supported by evidence, and enough evidence so as to overwhelm whatever value-laden arguments its opponents muster. I think journalists can call evolution "true" without compromising their duty; indeed, I think that our duty demands it. But that question is categorically different than asking journalists to come down on the side of a policy option where the truth cannot be known until the experiments are run. Taking the truth seriously means, I think, being able to know when and where the truth can be discerned.

By pretending this is about wonky disputes, Ambinder gives himself the luxury of distinguishing between certainties–like evolution and (later in his post) Obama’s American birth and citizenship–and uncertainties like cost-control in Medicare.

He of course totally ignores what ginned up the Rent-a-Mob anxiety. Not discussions–good faith or not–about iMAC or even, really, discussions about whether people could keep their current healthcare plan. But claims that a measure to ensure end of life care discussions as an option is tantamount to a plan to euthanize the elderly. Or claims that Obama wants to take away seniors’ Medicare and instead force them to use a government-run program (ha!).

Ambinder’s presumption that the anxiety of the Rent-a-Mobs is "real" frees him from having to explain the connection between the deathers’ claims–that Obama’s health care will treat Granny like a clunker and freeze up her engine with a silica solution–and the Rent-a-Mob.

There is some "real" anxiety expressed at the town halls (including from those who believe single payer is the only way to fix health care). But there’s also a whole lot of anxiety ginned up by claims that are as non-sensical as creationist and birther claims. Ambinder’s happy to speak in lofty terms of the duty of journalists to insist that evolution is "real." But he’s seems perfectly content to simply presume that the worry that Granny will be offed by the government to save money is also "real."

Yesterday, I showed that the only "made in America" car (including engine and transmission) that would get someone trading in an Explorer the full $4500 Cash for Clunker benefit was a Ford Focus (though I shortchanged the Chevy Malibu and Saturn Aura, which are assembled in the US though may have an engine or transmission made in Canada or the US).

The point being that manufacturers don’t make many efficient cars in the US.

That said, if we look at whether the cars bought in the Cash for Clunkers are assembled in the US, then the story is more positive. Here’s the list of the top 10 vehicles bought with a Cash for Clunkers credit:

1. Ford Focus
2. Toyota Corolla
3. Honda Civic
4. Toyota Prius
5. Toyota Camry
6. Ford Escape FWD
7. Hyundai Elantra
8. Dodge Caliber
9. Honda Fit
10. Chevrolet Cobalt

All but the Caliber and Camry would have qualified for a full rebate under my scenario (if I used a 4WD Ford Explorer, which was the most traded-in vehicle, rather than a 2WD, then the Camry would get you the full benefit, and note the Escape qualifies for the small truck benefit, which is less stringent). 

Here’s the list again, with the assembly location:

1. Ford Focus, Wayne, MI
2. Toyota Corolla, Fremont, CA
3. Honda Civic, Greensburg, IN and Canada
4. Toyota Prius, Japan
5. Toyota Camry, Georgetown, KY and Lafayette, IN
6. Ford Escape FWD, Claycomo, MO
7. Hyundai Elantra, South Korea
8. Dodge Caliber, Belvidere, IL
9. Honda Fit, Japan
10. Chevrolet Cobalt, Lordstown, OH 

So in addition to all the local jobs based out of dealers, this program is supporting jobs in MI, CA, IN, KY, IN, MO, IL, and OH (as well as Korea and Japan). Claire McCaskill, you still hate Cars for Clunkers?

With the wild success of the Cash for Clunkers program, I’ve seen a number of people asking why the program didn’t also come with a requirement that the new car be made in the US. So I did an experiment. I pretended I had a 1999 V6 Ford Explorer–just the kind of car this program aspires to get off the road. I started with this list of cars assembled in the US, then cross referenced those cars with the CARS.gov site to see what would get me a full $4500 rebate. I always opted for the smallest automatic engine I could get and I looked only at 2009 models.

And here’s what–doing a quick review–I could get:

In other words, if you wanted to make sure the Cash for Clunkers program went into a car that was assembled in the US with a US engine and transmission, you’d be requiring consumers to buy a Ford Focus. (And, in fact, Ford Focus was the most popular car under the program.)

And maybe a Saturn Aura or Chevy Malibu, Toyota Venza or Ford Escape (in the latter two cases, you’d be using the program’s lower requirements for MPG improvements for small trucks). 

A couple of caveats about this. First, I’m sure I missed something–probably a hybrid, or someone’s small truck or crossover that qualifies under lower standards for MPG improvement (I apologize in advance for whatever I missed). Which of course demonstrates that for several of these–Escape, Ranger, B Series, Tribute, Outback, and Venza–a new buyer would only get the benefit because of the lower requirements for trucks. Also, if someone had an even bigger clunker than a Ford Explorer, they’d get the full $4500 benefit from more cars, including things like Accords and Camrys and Malibus (the Ford Fusion is assembled in Mexico) that are assembled in the US but do not improve MPG enough over the 16 MPG Explorer to qualify for the full bonus.

You see, manufacturers–whether they’re American or Japanese, union or non-union–simply don’t build many efficient cars in this country. There are a lot of reasons for that, but the basic reason is that the margins on efficient cars are much smaller, and with higher labor and–more importantly–health care costs in the US, it is a lot harder for a manufacturer to build small cars profitably in this country than to build trucks. And so, manufacturers–whether they’re American or Japanese, union or non-union–build bigger cars in the US and import the smaller cars.

And note, this is going to get worse in the near future before it gets better. While GM has wavered about whether the G5 will go the way of the rest of Pontiac, it appears that it will disappear, as will the Saturns. And Toyota is most likely going to close its Fremont, CA plant and send Corolla production to Canada, where it won’t have to pay health care. (Note, too, that Honda only makes some of the Civics sold in this country in the US, with the rest assembled in Canada.) GM and Chrysler both promised to build minis they’ll introduce in upcoming years–the Spark and the 500–in the US, but that will take a few years. And Toyota promises to build the Prius in Mississippi one of these years.

But until then, any effort to get clunkers off the road will by definition be a Cash for Imports or a Cash for Ford Focus program.

Update: Added the Aura to the "maybe Made in USA" per FunnyDiva2002.

Update: Added the Chevy Malibu to the "maybe Made in USA" after bmaz the GM fan hounded me; I had checked the 4-speed, and not the S6, which would qualify for the full $4500. 

The Miami Herald has done an investigation into the allegation that their excellent Gitmo reporter, Carol Rosenberg, had sexually harassed a Gitmo officer, Jeffrey Gordon. The investigation concluded that Rosenberg used "unnecessary profanity," but had not harassed her accuser.

In a letter Monday to the Pentagon, Miami Herald Vice President of Human Resources Elissa Vanaver wrote that the newspaper’s internal investigation ‘‘did not find corroboration” for the complaint of sexual harassment and abusive behavior made last month by Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon.

Herald executives interviewed military officials and journalists from other news outlets, some of whom had witnessed the incidents Gordon cited in his complaint. "We found some inconsistencies in [Gordon’s] version of events," said Miami Herald Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal.

[snip]

The written complaint, which is available on the Internet and has been a hot topic on blogs that follow the Guantánamo story, prompted dozens of people familiar with the sometimes-contentious relationship between Gordon and Rosenberg to contact The Herald in support of Rosenberg, Gyllenhaal said.

"We even heard from generals," he added.

Aside from my, um, solidarity with someone guilty of unnecessary profanity (though I insist that "blowjob" is not a profanity), this conclusion makes me ask the question I asked earlier.

Did Gordon file a complaint about Rosenberg because she’s doing the best reporting from Gitmo?

"We tortured Qahtani," the convening authority for military commissions, Susan Crawford, admitted to Bob Woodward earlier this year. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture."

Though I’m sure it happened, any criticism of Crawford for this admission was muted. I know of no one who claimed that Crawford was causing servicemen and women to be distracted from their core mission of protecting the country. No skies fell, and few claimed they had or would.

But it’s not just Crawford who confessed that the military tortured a Gitmo detainee. Congress, too, has chronicled the ways in which the military tortured detainees. The Senate Armed Services Committee spent eighteen months investigating the way in which the military adapted SERE techniques for use on al Qaeda, Afghan, and Iraqi detainees. Their report describes how techniques approved by Donald Rumsfeld for some circumstances–sleep deprivation and stress positions contributed to homicides in Afghanistan.

In December 2002, two detainees were killed while detained by CITF-180 at Bagram. Though the techniques do not appear to have been included in any written interrogation policy at Bagram, Army investigators concluded that the use of stress positions and sleep deprivation combined with other mistreatment at the hands of Bagram personnel, caused or were direct contributing factors in the two homicides.

It describes how, a month before those homicides, the Special Forces wrote a memo noting their risk in participating in such interrogations.

"we are at risk as we get more ‘creative’ and stray from standard interrogation techniques and procedures taught at DoD and DA schools and detailed in official interrogation manuals."

It describes the CIA’s General Counsel warning DOD that certain units in Iraq were using methods that not even the CIA would use on the same detainees (suggesting the military interrogators were violating the Geneva Conventions in a legal war zone).

CIA General Counsel Scott Muller had called Jim Haynes and told him that the techniques used by military interrogators at the SMU TF facility in Iraq were "more aggressive" than techniques used by CIA to interrogate the same detainees.

It describes the actions those who tortured, those who planned the torture, and those who authorized it.

It describes interrogators stripping detainees, beating them, making them stand for 12 hours, interrogating them for 20 hours, threatening death and the detention of detainee family members, female interrogators touching them inappropriately. It describes the documents that authorized some version of those actions.

It describes James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen developing interrogation plans based on SERE and Colonel Randy Moulton pitching those techniques throughout the military and intelligence services. It describes Major General Dunlavy asking to use harsher interrogation methods in Gitmo and Captain Carolyn Wood adopting the methods from Afghanistan in Iraq. It describes Jim Haynes recommending methods amounting to torture in a mere one page memo and Rummy approving that memo even as he added a snarky comment asking why detainees didn’t have to stand more. It describes David Addington and Alberto Gonzales helping to craft the legal cover for these activities. It describes the multiple warnings, internally, that this program constituted torture.

In short, SASC produced a report that showed how torture was systematically introduced into the military, with the participation of figures from the White House on down to unit commanders. SASC produced that report and–with a reasonable amount of redaction–released it to the public.

And while some Republicans (notably, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s ranking member, Kit Bond) tried to claim the report had been a partisan hit job, none of the Republicans on the Committee dissented in its release: not John McCain, not Jeff Sessions, not even James Inhofe.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates did not write op-eds wailing that such oversight would distract servicemen and women and impede their ability to defend the country. While some people who had personally been involved in setting up Gitmo–most notably Kirk Lippold–have personally attacked Obama for ending torture and moving to close Gitmo, even Lippold’s complaints were not directed against oversight itself.

There were, for a few weeks, claims that Congress’ oversight of the military’s role in torture would make the sky fall, but the sky didn’t fall. Admittedly, there were many more claims that the release of new detainee abuse pictures might make the sky fall, but even there, those cries were directed against ACLU, and not oversight in general.

In this day and age, those Special Forces personnel involved in interrogation are every bit as exposed as the CIA. They did everything the CIA did except perhaps for waterboarding (and some may have even participated in the abusive interrogations of top al Qaeda figures). So the military is just as exposed because of its involvement in torture as the CIA. 

Yet the military withstood oversight and exposure of its role in torture.

Compare that to the CIA’s response, as the Senate Intelligence Committee conducts what appears to be a thorough investigation and as the House Intelligence Committee begins a broader investigation into CIA’s role in covert ops. Such oversight will doom the morale of the men and women at CIA! In doing so, it will distract these professionals and prevent them from doing their jobs! 

And, most recently, the Director of the CIA issued a veiled threat, suggesting CIA shouldn’t use intelligence on Congress (and vice versa).  Imagine the response if, in response to Congressional oversight, the Secretary of Defense were to raise using DOD’s weapons on Congress (which is not to say NSA hasn’t collected some Congressional communications over the years).

I know it’s a perennial game in DC to wail that the intelligence community will simply melt if Congress exercises oversight over it. But really. In the face of DOD withstanding precisely the same kind of oversight Congress is discussing for the CIA, isn’t it time to simply laugh at the cries that the sky is falling?

I’ve disliked Greg Craig since the time–before Obama was elected–he insulted our intelligence by suggesting Obama had flip-flopped on FISA because FISA (and not the odious Protect America Act) was expiring. It was bad enough that Obama caved on an important issue without his advisor insulting our intelligence as to why.

But I’m worried that Greg Craig’s job as White House Counsel may be in jeopardy for the wrong reasons. 

The WSJ reports that is in jeopardy.

Mr. Craig has come under criticism from inside the administration and in Congress for a perceived failure to manage the political issues that have originated from Mr. Obama’s decision to close Guantanamo, according to officials in the administration and in Congress. This criticism has drawn focus away from president’s priorities, such as health care and energy.

Since when is it the job of the White House Counsel to manage "the political issues" on key national security issues? Isn’t that the job of the political people–men like Rahm Emanuel (whom Greg Craig saved a heap of headache in the way he handled the Blagojevich fallout, though in that, too, he insulted our intelligence) and David Axelrod?

And from there, the description gets even weirder. Apparently, Greg Craig is in trouble because Dick Cheney made a stink after Obama released the torture memos.

Mr. Craig and Attorney General Eric Holder won the fight to release the memorandums, with minimal redactions, but the White House had to move quickly to limit political damage. Former Vice President Dick Cheney sharpened criticism of Mr. Obama during a televised speech that followed Mr. Obama’s own address intended to explain his national-security vision. 

And because polls no longer support closing Gitmo.

Mr. Obama signed executive orders during his first week in office to close the Guantanamo prison, to review the cases of the more than 200 detainees there and to draw up possible changes to detention and interrogation policies.

At the time Mr. Obama enjoyed public support for his Guantanamo plans, polls showed. Six months later that public support has dissipated, polls show.

In other words, WSJ seems to suggest that Craig is in trouble because he supported the right decisions on policies, but the political people in the White House mismanaged implementing those decisions. Taking the correct stand on moral issues only works, after all, if you sustain that stand and refuse to be cowed by Dick Cheney.

I fault Greg Craig because he has apparently hewn too close to Dick Cheney’s philosophy, particularly in the Obama Administration’s serial, absurd invocation of state secrets. But this rumored discussion to can him seems to instead stem from a desire to scapegoat him because Rahm screwed up health care reform.

In other words, I worry that this is an attempt to shut down all efforts to do the right thing on torture, and not an attempt to implement those right decisions more effectively.

To be honest, I’ve lost count, but I believe we have had close to eight cyberczars in the last eight years.

Make it nine.

The White House’s acting cybersecurity czar announced her resignation Monday, saying in an interview that she is leaving for personal reasons.

Melissa Hathaway, who completed the Obama administration’s cybersecurity review in April, had initially been considered a leading contender to fill the post permanently.

[snip]

Ms. Hathaway said she took her name out of the running for the post two weeks ago.

At this point, you’d think someone smart would take a step back and re-evaluate and–more importantly–have a public conversation about what our country needs to do for cybersecurity.

As I understand it, two factors have been chasing cyberczars back to the private sector as fast as we can hire a new one. First, no one wants to demand that private sector companies meet certain standards for their cybersecurity. As a result, their vulnerability becomes our vulnerability. But in the US of A, you simply can’t ask money-making institutions to sacrifice for the public good, so one after another cyberczar realizes their job is completely unworkable, and leaves.

Then there’s the giant pissing match over turf within the government. The NSA has the best capabilities for taking on this job. But to give them the job would mean the same people spying on our emails would also be (hell, probably already are) spying on our internet use. Plus there’s the whole problem of what is basically a defense function within our day-to-day Toobz. 

Now, I know the government doesn’t like to talk openly about how easily the Chinese and Israelis and Russians can waltz into our computers and fuck around. And I know how mandating that businesses do certain things cuts into the donor pool. But perhaps the problem is in the entire way we’re conceiving of the Toobz police. Perhaps it’s time to reconstitute the NSA such that the military isn’t–as they now are–given carte blanche to sneak in my metaphorical panty drawer. Maybe if we rethink this whole thing we can actually keep someone on this job for more than 18 months?

Everytime I do TV, there’s one line I immediately wish I had used as soon as the opportunity passes, and that’s the line I wish I had used to rebut Bob Franken’s inane argument that we ought to replace the Cash for Clunkers program with the Gravy for Guns program. "Consumers can’t save $750 a year driving a more efficient gun to work." I also wish I had had about 20 minutes to be able to rebut the stupid arguments about GM and Chrysler shutting down dealers so they can compete with Toyota.

Nevertheless I had a bit of fun arguing in favor of the Cash for Clunkers program.