This WSJ editorial beating up on Dems for their shiny new FISA spine is full of the illogical blathering you’d expect. Take this paragraph, which claims that even with immunity from PAA and even with a FISA court order, the telecoms simply won’t do as they’re mandated to do.

Mr. Reyes claims that existing wiretap orders can stay in place for a year. But that doesn’t account for new targets, which may require new kinds of telecom cooperation and thus a new court order. Mr. Reyes can make all the assertions he wants about immunity, but they are no defense against a lawsuit. For that matter, without a statute in place, even a renewed order by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is likely to be challenged as illegitimate. A telecom CEO who cooperates without a court order is all but guaranteed to get not merely a wiretap lawsuit, but also a shareholder suit for putting the company at legal risk.

Apparently, the WSJ believes that even if the telecoms have immunity, it’s no defense against a lawsuit (someone better tell Mitch and Mike McConnell that all their immunity efforts are for naught). And even if the FISA Court issues a warrant under that statute known as "FISA," the telecoms would regard such an order as illegitimate, because there’s no statute supporting it.

And of course, the WSJ parrots the now mandatory claim that ACLU and EFF are really trial lawyers wearing low-paying disguises.

So instead they’re trying to do it through the backdoor by unleashing the trial bar to punish the telephone companies.

I’m most amused, though, by the closing paragraph, which gets to the heart of the panic over FISA.

Mr. Bush has been doing his part in this debate, but his political capital is waning. The Republican who needs to make himself heard now is John McCain. The Arizona Senator is voting the right way, but he seems curiously disengaged from a debate that plays to his national security strengths. The time to speak up is before the next 9/11 Commission. [my emphasis]

Bush’s "political capital is waning" must be GOP-speak for "don’t look now because the Democrats have stood up to Bush."  And, pathetically, the WSJ whines that John McCain isn’t cowering Democrats into unquestioning obedience, either.

It’s like flying without a net, isn’t it, WSJ? When you can’t rely on Bush’s "political capital" to cow others into compliance?

Let’s see if these results last after they count the vote, but it looks like Musharraf’s party lost today’s election–resoundingly.

From unofficial results the private news channel, Aaj Television, forecast that the Pakistan Peoples Party would win 110 seats in the 272-seat National Assembly, with Mr. Sharif’s party taking 100 seats.

Mr. Musharraf’s party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, was crushed, holding on to just 20 to 30 seats. Early results released by the state news agency, The Associated Press of Pakistan, also showed the Pakistan Peoples Party to be leading in the number of seats won.

The Election Commission of Pakistan declared the elections free and fair and said the polling passed relatively peacefully, despite some irregularities and scattered violence. Ten people were killed and 70 injured around the country, including one candidate who was shot in Lahore on the night before the vote, Pakistani news channels reported.

Fearful of violence and deterred by confusion at polling stations, voters did not turn out in large numbers. Yet fears from opposition parties that the government would try to rig the elections did not materialize, as the early losses showed.

If it’s true that Musharraf’s government didn’t (or didn’t succeed in) rigging the elections, score one for democracy. But that doesn’t mean the US is prepared to deal with the aftermath–even if, as projected, Bhutto’s party the PPP comes out ahead.

The results opened a host of new challenges for the Bush administration, which has been criticized in Congress and by Pakistan analysts for relying too heavily on Mr. Musharraf. Even as Mr. Musharraf’s standing plummeted and the insurgency gained strength, senior Bush administration officials praised Mr. Musharraf as a valued partner in the effort against terrorism.

The NYT, at least, makes it sounds as if Musharraf is ready to pack it in.

Two politicians close to Mr. Musharraf have said in the past week that the president was well aware of the drift in the country against him and they suggested that he would not remain in office if the new government was in direct opposition to him. “He does not have the fire in the belly for another fight,” said one member of his party. He added that Mr. Musharraf was building a house for himself in Islamabad and would be ready soon to move.

What will Dick Cheney do without his faithful puppet?

The issues surrounding the FISA legislation are still roiling in Congress, thanks to the sudden appearance of a spine and principle by the Democrats in the House of Representatives (and correspondingly, with no thanks to the spineless and craven counterparts in the Senate, especially Jello Jay Rockefeller, the SSCI, and Harry Reid for bringing the horrid Intel committee bill to the floor instead of the far superior Judiciary bill). The most contentious issue has been, and continues to be, the proposed retroactive immunity for telco companies. Since the ugly head of the issue was first raised last summer with the railroaded passage of the Protect America Act, I have been arguing vehemently that the telcos are not in any grave danger financially from the civil suits currently pending. If their conduct is as has been described to date, they are already protected from liability for the actions that have been described, both by existing statutory immunity and by a right to indemnification from the government. The full court press for immunity by the Administration is entirely about cover for the lawless Bush Administration, and not about the impending financial demise of the telcos.

This post will go back over some of the basis for my argument that has been laid out previously, both here at Emptywheel and, earlier, at The Next Hurrah. I will also try to relate a few basics on what the general concept of indemnification is, and how it relates to contracts, in this case the agreements between the telcos and the Bush Administration. I have been making this argument for quite some time now, since last August, and have yet to have anybody put a significant dent in it; but it is no good if it cannot hold up to scrutiny. In that regard, I have posited my theory to several other lawyers expert in the field of governmental/Fourth Amendment litigation, including some extremely knowledgeable on the very civil suits at issue here, and all have agreed with the validity of my premise.

The Argument: The Bush Administration, with the help of telco providers (telelphone, cellphone, internet and other communication providers) engaged in massive wiretapping and datamining efforts, ostensibly to protect the United States from attack by terrorists. The legality of much of these programs has been questioned in many fora, but the germane ones for the immunity demand by the Administration are the civil suits that have been filed against both the telcos and the government that are currently pending in Federal courts. There are a handful of different suits out there (40 is a number that has been used, but some have been consolidated); the best known are the Hepting v. AT&T case being prosecuted by the EFF and the al-Haramain case. Under both traditional tort theories, as well as specific statutory provisions under FISA and related statutes, monetary damages are sought by the plaintiffs. These suits are not just critical for the individual plaintiffs, but due to the refusal of the Bush Administration to be honest and forthright about what spying they are doing on the American public, and the refusal of Congress to demand answers and accountability on the same, the civil suits are pretty much the only vehicle that the American public, and posterity, have for finding the truth about what has been both done to them and in their name. The Administration now, of course, wants to close off this avenue of discovery and accountability for their nefarious actions through the immunization of the telcos for their acts (which would result in dismissal of the civil suits).

First off, lets be honest; you don’t need immunity for legal and proper conduct. In this regard, telcos are already specifically protected and "immunized" from liability for anything they did that was even remotely legal and performed under the broad provisions of FISA (50 USC 1801 et. seq.), the general criminal wiretapping statutes (18 USC 2510 et. seq., specifically 18 USC 2520), the Communications Act (47 USC et. seq., specifically 47 USC 605) and the Stored Communications Act (18 USC 2701 et. seq., specifically 18 USC 2707 and 2712). There is already, by existing law, no liability for any conduct undertaken, by either the telcos or the government, in compliance with these statutes. So, make no mistake about it, it is blatantly illegal behavior (and NOT good faith legal behavior), performed at the Bush Administration’s demand and direction, for which the immunity is being sought.

Okay, but many, including, seemingly, members of the SSCI and witnesses (see here and here) argue that the telcos were not operating under statutory "safe harbor" provisions as described in the last paragraph. So, what if the telcos engaged in behavior outside of said "safe harbor" statutory provisions that turned out to be illegal behavior, but did so in response to to heated demands from the Bush Administration, and with assurances by the Administration that there was a legal basis and dire necessity; shouldn’t they be entitled to immunity from massive civil liability damages for that conduct? No; that is where the indemnification portion of the argument kicks in. Indemnification is the act of supplying indemnity in a contract:

An indemnity contract arises when one individual takes on the obligation to pay for any loss or damage that has been or might be incurred by another individual. The right to indemnity and the duty to indemnify ordinarily stem from a contractual agreement, which generally protects against liability, loss, or damage.

It is my contention that the telcos have just such indemnification agreements with the Administration/government, that we do not know about because they are classified and hidden, that so protect them for any liability and losses resulting from the litigation they are faced with; thus they do not need immunity to protect them from potential liability verdicts, they are already covered. Telcos have some of the best attorneys and legal departments in the world, and they also recruit heavily from the upper echelons of the Department of Justice (see, for instance: William Barr and Peter Keisler, who is now, of course, conveniently back in the DOJ leadership). Simply put, telco legal departments are huge, experienced, and cutthroat competent. They did not fall off the turnip truck last night, nor any other night; and they have been dealing with wiretapping issues for law enforcement and national security concerns since the telephone came into use. As someone that has had dealings with such entities regarding bad/illegal wiretaps, I can attest that they always protect themselves vis a vis the governmental entity they are working for and are not shy about the use of indemnity provisions.

Okay, but is there any basis for the Administration having given such an indemnification agreement to the telcos in such an unusual national security scenario and with such massive potential exposure? Yes, indeed that is exactly where such agreements are contemplated (see, also, here). As a perusal of the links will exhibit, the President has the authority under 50 USC 1431 et seq. to authorize exactly the type of immunity agreements that are described herein, and, furthermore, to promulgate specific rules (including secrecy and classification, see 50 USC 1433) for their implementation. Now, it should be noted that one of the provisions of 50 USC 1431 is notification of Congress, specifically the respective Armed Services Committees, if the amount in question exceeds 25 million dollars. It will be interesting to see if this was, in fact, done or if the Administration disingenuously took the position that there was not yet an amount in controversy because there was not yet any known or set amount of indemnified liability (which is my bet under both a reading of 1431 and 1432(f)) and has kept this under their belt with the exception of limited disclosure to the Gang of Four/Gang of Eight as discussed here. In either case, this is potentially an explanation for why even the Democratic Congressional leadership has been compliant in ramming through passage of immunity; they don’t want the public to find out that they signed off on massive liability to be paid out of taxpayer’s pockets.

What if the telcos failed to get such indemnification agreements, or alternatively, they did but the agreements were informal or the government refused to honor them? For the reasons stated above, this is next to impossible to believe; the telcos and their legal departments are simply too tough, experienced and savvy to not have covered themselves. In the unlikely event this did turn out to be the case, however, the telcos still have the right to file a claim against the government for their losses incurred as a result of good faith reliance on the Administration’s assertions and demands. Such a claim would most likely be brought pursuant to the Tucker Act as it would arise pursuant to contract or quasi-contract; although a creative litigator could surely plead other conceivable bases as well.

Conclusion: For the foregoing reasons, the telcos are already protected by the immunity of existing statutory safe harbor provisions for legal conduct requested by the Administration and will have indemnity for other acts demanded by the Administration. I respectfully submit that the telcos are already sufficiently protected from the Spectre (some pun intended) of massive financial peril of the existing civil lawsuits; and that the only real reason for the desperate push for immunity is panic among Administration officials that their craven illegality will be exposed and they will be held to account. We now know for a fact, that which we have always suspected, thanks to Mike McConnell, namely that the entire belligerent push for FISA reform is all about immunity, and not about what George Bush would call "protectun Amarikuh".

The minor issues with FISA that need tweaking could have been easily accomplished and, indeed, Congress offered long ago to work with them to do just that; but, of course, were belligerently spurned because, as Dick Cheney famously bellowed, "We believe… that we have all the legal authority we need". This furious push has been about immunity, from the start, to prevent discovery of the Administration’s blatant and unconscionable criminal activity. The House of Representatives, and the cave-in Administration cover-up specialists in the Senate as well, should take a long, hard look at what is really going on here and steadfastly refuse the Administration’s self serving craven grab for the cover of telco immunity.

One last point. In addition to the foregoing, there is an extremely good case to be made that the granting of retroactive immunity to the telcos would comprise an improper and unjust taking of the existing plaintiffs’ right to compensation under the Fifth Amendment and would, therefore, be in direct violation of the Constitution. I don’t want to belabor this thought; just put it out there so that it is considered in the mix. Hey, "Teh Google" is a most marvelous thing; here is an absolutely outstanding discussion of this issue by Professor Anthony J. Sebok of the Cardozo School of Law.

Am I the only one that finds it especially ironic that Poppy Bush endorsed McCain one day after McCain came out with a "no new taxes" pledge? If the timing was unintentional, I’d consider it a rather inauspicious coincidence if I were McCain.

I’m not surprised the Administration is withholding the report showing polluted sites around the Great Lakes may be contributing to elevated cancer rates.

The lead author and peer reviewers of a government report raising the possibility of public health threats from industrial contamination throughout the Great Lakes region are charging that the report is being suppressed because of the questions it raises. The author also alleges that he was demoted because of the report.

I’m just wondering whether they’re doing so for explicitly political reasons.

You’ll recall the description of why Dick Cheney intervened into the Klamath River dispute.

In Oregon, a battleground state that the Bush-Cheney ticket had lost by less than half of 1 percent, drought-stricken farmers and ranchers were about to be cut off from the irrigation water that kept their cropland and pastures green. Federal biologists said the Endangered Species Act left the government no choice: The survival of two imperiled species of fish was at stake.

Law and science seemed to be on the side of the fish. Then the vice president stepped in.

First Cheney looked for a way around the law, aides said. Next he set in motion a process to challenge the science protecting the fish, according to a former Oregon congressman who lobbied for the farmers.

Because of Cheney’s intervention, the government reversed itself and let the water flow in time to save the 2002 growing season, declaring that there was no threat to the fish. What followed was the largest fish kill the West had ever seen, with tens of thousands of salmon rotting on the banks of the Klamath River.

Characteristically, Cheney left no tracks. [my emphasis]

After deciding for farmers over fish, the Administration did a bunch of photo ops to claim credit with voters in the area.

It was Norton who announced the review, and it was Bush and his political adviser Karl Rove who traveled to Oregon in February 2002 to assure farmers that they had the administration’s support.

[snip]

Norton flew to Klamath Falls in March to open the head gate as farmers chanted "Let the water flow!"

Now, as the map included in the report makes clear, this report is talking about toxic hazards in the potential swing states of MN, WI, MI, and OH. Add in the potential swing Congressional Districts around Buffalo, and I can certainly see why the Administration wouldn’t want voters to know they had increased cancer risks because of the industrial pollution in their neighborhood, particularly not with a corporate friendly Administration that didn’t make such toxic hazards a priority. The WaPo article notes that the CDC won’t commit to an official release date for this report.

Nowak said that there was no set date for publication, and that the release was delayed to address concerns raised by the Environmental Protection Agency and other reviewers last summer.

But I’m guessing they were hoping to withhold it until sometime after mid-November.

And note, too, the MO is the same as it was with the Klamath fish issue: the Administration is pushing it’s very own scientific interpretation so as to skew the report that will allow it to achieve it’s political objectives.

Which in this case appears to be to avoid telling a bunch of swing voters they’re at significant risk for cancer.

As we await certain doom because the NSA has to rely on FISA to authorize any new warrantless wiretaps (though it can continue all the programs currently in place), I wanted to correct what appears to be a common mistake about the earlier warrantless wiretap program. I’ve seen a lot of people claim that all of Congress knew of the program, that the Gang of Eight got regular briefings about it, that Congress wants the telecoms to get immunity because leaders in Congress want immunity.

The reality–at least according to the published record of those briefed on Bush’s warrantless wiretap program–is much more narrow. And as this fight moves into the House, it’d pay to have a clear understanding of who got briefed and how they claimed to have responded.

The Gang of Eight was not briefed regularly on the program

Kit Bond likes to claim that the Gang of Eight–the majority and minority leaders of both houses of Congress and the majority and minority leaders of both intelligence committees–were briefed on the program. That’s a lie. In general, the Administration briefed the intelligence committee heads, but not the Majority and Minority leaders. The first time the entire Gang of Eight was briefed on the program was when, on March 10, 2004, the Administration tried to get them to authorize continuing the program even though Jim Comey said it was illegal. At the time, the following were members of the Gang of Eight:

• Denny Hastert
• Bill Frist
• Tom Daschle
• Nancy Pelosi
• Porter Goss
• Jane Harman
• Pat Roberts
• Jello Jay Rockefeller

After Harry Reid became Minority Leader of the Senate in 2005, he received a briefing on February 3, 2005–by himself, as did Crazy Pete Hoekstra when he became HPSCI Chair in September 2004. There was not any other briefing where the entire Gang of Eight got the same briefing. Though after Risen and Lichtblau exposed the program, Jello Jay received a briefing with the Republican half of the Gang of Eight, and then Reid, Pelosi, and Harman received a briefing (which Roberts also attended).

As Arlen “Scottish Haggis” Specter has pointed out, the Administration was in violation of the National Security Act when, with the exception of March 10, 2004, it limited its briefings to just the intelligence committee heads.

The entire Congress was not briefed on the program

Aside from those members who have, at one point, been members of the Gang of Eight (Harman no longer is, and Pelosi has had two roles in it), just three members of Congress got briefings on the program before Risen and Lichtblau revealed it. The day after the hospital confrontation, Tom DeLay got a briefing, probably so he could tell Cheney that even he could not force through a bill authorizing the illegal program.

And, December 1, 2001, Daniel Inouye and Ted Stevens–as the ranking members of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee–got a briefing, presumably so they could authorize the NSA to pay the telecoms tons of money to wiretap Americans. (Bill Young and John Murtha got briefings in 2006, after the Administration started briefing more members of the intelligence committees presumably in response to the Risen-Lichtblau revelations.)

Tom DeLay is, thankfully, moot. But the Inouye briefing is interesting in that he was one of the sane Democrats who repeatedly voted with Republicans in support of trashing civil liberties and privacy.

Focus on Jello Jay, Harman, and Pelosi

Certainly, Jello Jay’s example in the Senate is not cause for optimism. Jello Jay attended the March 10, 2004 briefing where the Administration proposed going forward without AG approval, tantamount to going forward illegally. Jello Jay claims he never affirmatively approved the program.

The record needs to be set clear that the Administration never afforded members briefed on the program an opportunity to either approve or disapprove the NSA program.

And Jello Jay warned Cheney that the program seemed to violate the ban on data mining–at precisely the time when the Senate was banning data mining. Jello Jay should know better than anyone that the Administration broke the law–and that the telecoms continued their cooperation at a point when they didn’t have AG approval, thereby breaking the law.

Nevertheless, Jello Jay supported immunity. You might argue that Jello Jay was protecting himself–except that he left a clear paper trail of his opposition.

But thus far, the House is different. Jane Harman has shown interest in compromising in the past. But significantly, she was not among the 21 Blue Dogs who petitioned Pelosi to go with the SSCI bill just passed by the Senate. Harman has opposed immunity without full disclosure (note, since she’s no longer in HPSCI, she hasn’t seen the documents explaining the legal rationale for the program), and I think if we can keep Harman with the majority, it will keep a number of other Democrats who might cave to Republican pressure.

And as for Pelosi? She has stated clearly that she opposed the program going forward without AG approval; she opposed the program in its most illegal form.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, who attended the 2004 White House meeting as House Democratic minority leader, said through a spokesman that she did not dispute that the majority of those present supported continuing the intelligence activity. But Ms. Pelosi said she dissented and supported Mr. Comey’s objections at the meeting,

So like Jello Jay, Pelosi didn’t exactly approve of the worst parts of this program. And, as Novak describes, with the support of an overwhelming majority of her caucus, Pelosi used her prerogatives to stall Bush’s push for immunity.

For the moment, Pelosi can and is using her position to ensure we get a real compromise bill (and Harman’s support may help keep Blue Dogs with the caucus). And it certainly helps that Silvestre Reyes is writing scathing letters chiding Bush for his fear-mongering.

This fight in the House is going to come down to the roughly 40-50 Congressmen who preferred to side with the Republicans/bow to fear. But so long as Pelosi supports the will of the rest of the caucus, we can win that fight.

A number of you sent me this Eric Lichtblau story describing how, because of a "technical glitch," the FBI accidentally got all the emails going to one domain, rather than just the emails to and from their particular target.

A technical glitch gave the F.B.I. access to the e-mail messages from an entire computer network — perhaps hundreds of accounts or more — instead of simply the lone e-mail address that was approved by a secret intelligence court as part of a national security investigation, according to an internal report of the 2006 episode.

F.B.I. officials blamed an “apparent miscommunication” with the unnamed Internet provider, which mistakenly turned over all the e-mail from a small e-mail domain for which it served as host. The records were ultimately destroyed, officials said.

Bureau officials noticed a “surge” in the e-mail activity they were monitoring and realized that the provider had mistakenly set its filtering equipment to trap far more data than a judge had actually authorized.

The episode is an unusual example of what has become a regular if little-noticed occurrence, as American officials have expanded their technological tools: government officials, or the private companies they rely on for surveillance operations, sometimes foul up their instructions about what they can and cannot collect.

The problem has received no discussion as part of the fierce debate in Congress about whether to expand the government’s wiretapping authorities and give legal immunity to private telecommunications companies that have helped in those operations.

But an intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because surveillance operations are classified, said: “It’s inevitable that these things will happen. It’s not weekly, but it’s common.”

My response to this is sort of similar to Kagro X’s (and given all my posts about minimization, I would certainly take issue with Lichtblau’s assertion that "the problem has received no discussion"). This story illustrates why minimization is every bit as important in the FISA discussion as immunity.

Hmm. Minimization. That rings a bell. What was it?

Oh yeah! The FISA fight in the Senate! Minimization was a concern because the Senate bill pretty much gave the government a free hand to suck up every phone call, e-mail, text message, etc. there is, and — amazingly enough — had to be amended on the floor in order to even approach a proper handling of minimization concerns. Curiously, it happened that there was no provision in the new law that said what actually happens if the government, oh, let’s say… doesn’t destroy "accidentally" captured communications. Senator Whitehouse had to try to shoehorn that in as an amendment, and along the way had to agree to soften his language from explicitly authorizing compliance reviews by the FISA court, down to some mumblings about how nothing in the bill should be construed to reduce or contravene the FISA court’s inherent authority to enforce its orders regarding minimization (if any).

Subtle difference, I suppose. The affirmative power to conduct reviews, versus a grudging acknowledgment that a court should be able to enforce its own orders. But not that subtle.

The story actually does sound a genuine mistake. It illustrates the need for minimiz ation. But it doesn’t explain why it is that McConnell apparently abandoned the Democratic bills in August 2007 because they actually required minimization. It doesn’t explain why the Administration is so afraid of oversight on their ability to minimize US person data.

See, I’m not so much worried about mistakes like this. I’m worried about the apparent fact that having real oversight to find the non-mistakes was a deal-breaker in August.

Yesterday, Danger Room reported that the Administration’s rationale for shooting down the rogue spy satellite is laughingly bogus.

The Pentagon says it has to shoot down a malfunctioning spy satellite because of the threat of a toxic gas cloud. Space security experts are calling the rationale highly unlikely. "Having the US government spend millions of dollars to destroy a billion-dollar failure to save zero lives is comedic gold," one tells DANGER ROOM.

[snip]

So what could that other reason be?

Our veteran space security specialist believes there are several. To him, the satellite shot is a chance for the military to try out its missile defense capabilities; a way to keep secret material out of the wrong hands; and a warning to the Chinese, after they destroyed a satellite about a year ago. He shared some educated guesses:

My first thought is that MDA [Missile Defense Agency] is always looking for ways to pimp their systems and provide further justification that they work. The upcoming change in Administration is almost guaranteed to result in missile defense losing the top-level advocacy that it has enjoyed for the last several years. Any additional missions and justifications that the missile defense community can provide would increase the likelihood of their systems (and budgetary power) surviving.

An additional reason could be that destroying the satellite would prevent any chance of another nation getting access to any of the potentially sensitive technology on board. However, I have heard from other sources that supposedly the NRO [National Reconnaissance Office – the country’s spy satellite shop] is actually against the "shootdown" (and I hate that term – the satellite is not flying and is coming down regardless of whether or not it gets hit by a missile). Their absence at the press briefing could lend some weight to this rumor, although it could also be explained by the nature of the satellite and its still classified link to the NRO.

My real concern is that this is simply a knee-jerk reaction made by the Administration in response to the purported threat by the Chinese. Since the April 2007 ASAT [anti-satellite] test, there have been rumors and whispers going around that the Administration and like-minded individuals are looking for more sticks (instead of carrots) to use against China. While this "shoot down" is not a direct action against China, it would be a clear signal that the US can possess an active ASAT capability at any time if it so desires. That is a serious development as the previous US ASAT system using F-15s was mothballed in the 1980’s.

[my emphasis]

Today, Danger Room attaches a price tag to this "comedic gold."

Big bucks. "The attempt by the U.S. Navy to use an anti-missile missile to shoot down a potentially hazardous satellite will cost between $40 million and $60 million, Pentagon officials told CNN. "The missile alone costs almost $10 million."

This is basically a $40 million "comedic gold" pissing contest with the Chinese. Instead of paying for this pissing contest, we could buy 40 MRAP vehicle and save real lives of real Marines stuck in Iraq. But given the Bush Administration’s priorities, I can see why they chose the pissing contest instead.

I can’t vouch for their underlying research, but two professors just completed a study showing a strong correlation between the number of payday lenders in localities in the US and the prominence of Christian Conservatives (h/t The Consumerist).

Payday lenders, creditors that charge interest rates averaging about 450 percent, are more prevalent in Conservative Christian states, according to a new study coauthored by University of Utah law professor Christopher Peterson. The study, which is based on the most comprehensive database of payday lender locations yet compiled, maps a surprising relationship between populations of Christian conservatives and the proliferation of payday lenders.

“We started this project hoping to find out more about the spatial location of payday lenders and were surprised when a pattern reflecting a correlation with the American Bible Belt and Mormon Mountain West emerged,” said Peterson, who conducted the research and coauthored the article with Steven M. Graves, an associate professor of geography at California State University, Northridge. “The natural hypothesis would be to assume that given Biblical condemnation of usury there would be aggressive regulation and less demand for payday loans in these states, but ironically, the numbers show the opposite is true. It’s sad that states with a pious and honorable religious heritage now disproportionately host predatory lenders.”

Peterson and Graves’ article, titled “Usury Law and the Christian Right,” is forthcoming this Spring in the Catholic University Law Review. It profiles states all around the nation examining the unprecedented spread of payday lenders during a time of growing Christian engagement in the political process. “A generation ago, populist Christian leaders were among the most aggressive opponents of usurious lending. But today many Christian leaders take large campaign contributions from the credit industry and no longer support the Biblical injunction against usury in public life,” Peterson said. [my emphasis]

In the context of primary discussions about how President Hillary or President Obama will fix Bush’s clusterfuck economy without turning the US into Argentina, I find this detail really fascinating. The people preying on the financial insecurity of working people are also some of the people bank-rolling the preachers who give Republicans moral cover for their immoral ways.

All the more reason to make this kind of predatory lending illegal.

Update: Here’s what PastorDan has to say about this (see his h/t to selise, too):

Now, correlation is not causation, of course. Even if it were, none of these are perfect correlations. But my hunch is that with a little investigation, we’ll discover this study describes the cultural creep of Southern mores hitting a roadblock in the Northeast and in a few other places with effective usury laws on the books.

To the "faith and politics" point, though, it seems to me that the best use of these maps might be to suggest places for local reform of lending practices. There’s no reason why states like Michigan or Wisconsin should have anywhere near as many payday operations as they do. We have the political and religious resources to put an end to that form of predation. It’s the right thing to do, and it’s a great springboard into a broader progressive economic agenda.

Speaking from MI (and PastorDan is speaking from WI), I’d love to see us have the resources to put an end to predatory lending… 

AJ Rossmiller (of AmericaBlog fame) nailed the results of the 2005 Iraqi election. You might recall that as the election where, after it had long become clear Ahmad Chalabi had little base of support in Iraq, some anonymous sources in the Administration nevertheless had great hopes that somehow Chalabi might end up as Prime Minister.

Though he lacks any mass appeal, some U.S. diplomats even cite the secular Shi’ite as a possible compromise candidate for prime minister in a coalition government.

But Chalabi won just .5% of the vote. Iyad Allawi, in whom the Administration also invested their hopes, won just 8% of the vote. And the Shiite coalition dominated by SCIRI and the Sadrists got 41% of the votes. In his book, Still Broken, AJ describes that he saw this coming.

After Iraq’s winter elections, the results validated the predictions contained in the paper I’d written in the fall. It created something of a stir because the paper turned out to be remarkably accurate, far more so than the forecasts of other agencies and departments. Before the election occurred, a high-ranking official requested a follow-up evaluation of our assessments, and I wrote a memo that described our precision. The memo made its way up through the chain, and a few days later the office got a note from Stephen Cambone, the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, praising both the prediction and the self-evaluation.

Unfortunately, the bulk of the last half of AJ’s book describes how such accurate predictions are generally weeded out by higher-ranking analysts worried that their office’s work product might piss off the Administration. For example, AJ describes some of the conversations leading up to the election (edited to take out classified information), where people argued against his analysis because it didn’t accord with that of other intelligence agencies.

"You’re being too pessimistic. [The secularists] are gaining strength."

"There’s no way Iraqis will vote for [those in power] again. We can’t pass this up the chain."

"[Other agencies] are predicting something totally different and we need to make sure we’re not too far off message with this."

You can’t predict the Shiite parties will win the election, apparently, because that is considered pessimistic, because it doesn’t accord with the Administration’s great hopes that they’ll somehow salvage a secular, moderate Iraq out of their disastrous war.

AJ’s description of events leading up to the 2005 Iraqi election gets to the core of the problem with the Administration’s efforts to invent its own reality. The byzantine vetting process for intelligence virtually guarantees that when you conclude something counter to the Administration’s grand hopes, those conclusions will–at a minimum–be watered down long before someone in power ever sees them.

It was pretty clear to me, leading up to the elections, that sheer force of numbers would guarantee that Shiites would win that election (though I can’t claim to have predicted the actual tallies). But those running this country sustained a completely contrary belief, partly because of the perversion of the intelligence vetting process. In addition to their own refusal to see facts in front of their face, top Administration officials are literally shielded from the most important (and fairly obvious) facts. And the politicization of intelligence ensures that few people are even going to try to present the unvarnished truth to top officials.

When AJ was asked how he got the 2005 election right, one of the things he pointed to, half-seriously, was the open source work of Juan Cole.

I began to write the explanation of our methodology, and I tried to resist the temptation to criticize other agencies while explaining how and why we did things differently. State, in particular, was very sensitive about their screwup, and I didn’t want to piss anybody off.

"Sir, can’t I just say that I copied and pasted Juan Cole?"

You see, those running the most powerful country in the world aren’t reading Juan Cole directly, or at least they weren’t. If they’re lucky, some analyst like AJ will read him and allow Cole’s expertise to influence his analysis. And if they’re lucky, that analysis might bubble up to decision-makers without being censored by the vetting process. But AJ’s book demonstrates that those are two very big "if’s."

AJ will talk about his book at FDL’s book salon today at 5PM ET; as a special treat, former counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke will host the discussion. I imagine this is one book salon not to be missed. And don’t forget to buy AJ’s book!