Graphic by Frederick

Well, you just knew that the GOP wouldn’t take the bonecrushing loss in last November’s elections to Rico Suave Obama and the too cool for school Dems lightly. They were, like an octogenarian on Viagra, going to get hip. Or a hip replacement. Whatever.

They started by electing the rootin tootin slick dick midnight mustache Michael Steele as RNC Chairman. When coupled with Boner John Boehner, their ultra- tanned sensitive Minority Leader, this is a clear cut recipe for the GOP surgarific return to power. Let’s check in on their street cred. From today’s CNN Political Ticker:

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele says his party is going to launch an "off the hook" public relations campaign that will update the GOP’s image by translating it to "urban-suburban hip-hop settings."
…
He added, jokingly, that “we need to uptick our image with everyone, including one-armed midgets.”

Steele described the new multi-platform PR offensive as “avant-garde, technically. It will come to [the] table with things that will surprise everyone — off the hook.” Asked whether that meant cutting-edge tactics, Steele demurred. “I don’t do ‘cutting-edge,’” he said. “That’s what Democrats are doing. We’re going beyond cutting-edge.”

Booyah. Get down James Brown and Fitty Cent take a backseat. Now let’s look in on the Steeley One’s partner in vice, Boner Boehner. Oooh, here he is jawing up the GOP stimulus position (yeah, okay, bad imagery) and his homeboy. What a twofer:

The stimulus has passed. In addition to voting against it, Republicans are all over the airwaves trashing it.

The leader of their pack is John Boehner, the man with a tan. According to him, the stimulus will not create jobs. According to Michael Steele, the new RNC Chair, if you work and earn money, you do not necessarily have a job. According to all Republicans who voted no, this bill, with terrible ideas such as helping states pay for Medicare, assisting our elders and our children, is a disaster for our country.

That’s right; the Tan With a Plan. Wow. What a dynamic duo. Crockett and Tubbs roll in DC. Oh yeah, and Sistah McKracka is going to take the toobz by storm. What could possibly go wrong?

You might remember a little kerfuffle over the preservation of White House emails that roiled during the Bush/Cheney Administration, consuming national discussion and court resources.

Well, that was during the Bush/Cheney Administration, those fine Republican watchdogs in Congress are calling for change from the previous policy for the Obama Administration. Yep, that’s right, now that there is a Democrat in office, they want some responsibility and accountability And point man on this righteous demand is car thief Representative Darrel Issa (R-Asswipe). From the Political Ticker:

A California Republican congressman has called on President Obama to put in place a system that ensures all White House emails be preserved even if official business was done through private e- mail accounts.

Rep. Darrell Issa, the senior Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, made the request in a February 19 letter to White House Counsel Greg Craig.

Issa specifically mentioned the new administration’s brief use of Gmail accounts after Obama was sworn in last month, as they waited for the official White House e-mail accounts to become active.

"As you know, any e-mail sent or received by White House officials may be subject to retention under the Presidential Records Act (PRA)," Issa wrote Craig in the letter.

"The use of personal e-mail accounts, such as Gmail to conduct official business raises the prospect that presidential records will not be captured by the White House e-mail archiving system. Consequently Gmail users on the President’s staff run the risk of incorrectly classifying their e-mails as non-records under the [Presidential Records] Act."

Oh, that is rich. You have got to be kidding me. Let’s look back for a moment at Issa’s past views to see what a true Galaxy Class Hypocrite looks like. From Mother Jones:

During a House Oversight Committee hearing last month on the preservation of White House records, an indignant Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), a frequent critic of Chairman Henry Waxman’s investigations, did his best to play down the extent of the Bush administration’s now well-documented email archiving problems. Defending the White House’s decision to switch from the Lotus Notes-based archiving system used by the Clinton administration, Issa compared the the software to "using wooden wagon wheels" and Sony Betamax tapes. To observers of the missing emails controversy, Issa’s comments seemed little more than an attempt to deflect blame from the White House for replacing a working system for archiving presidential records with an ad hoc substitute.

Heh. Well, that was then, this is now; don’t ask Baby Darrel to be Mr. Clean, cause baby he don’t know how. It takes a lot of gall for Republicans to be carping right out of the gate about email compliance by Obama, and Issa has a lot of gall.

Image from ExploreHistory.com

Ian has a great piece up at FDL on the financial sector’s problems, their genesis, and the Obama Administration’s conventional wisdom, status quo, manner of dealing with them:

I have become increasingly concerned that some in the Obama administration are treating this economic crisis as a "black swan" event. That is a very rare, random and unpredictable event. The key thing about black swans is that they are random and unpredictable and you can’t stop them from happening, you can only create your systems so that they can handle them if they occur.
…
But, of course, the economic and financial crisis unfolding right now was not random. It was predicted by multiple people, and it was predicted because of policy steps taken by government and widely known private actions.
…
All of which is to say the crisis was caused by a number of factors. It was not random. It was predictable and predicted. If we just muddle through this current meltdown—spend a lot of money bailing out the banks, throw some stimulus around—and don’t fix the fundamentally flawed incentives and structures of the system, it will likely happen again.

Ian was discussing the financial sector, but it strikes me that the same applies for America’s industrial and manufacturing sector. The United States was built on the backs of hard working people that planted and built things, sweated, toiled and prevailed. In the post-modern hustle and flow of the digital and financial whiz bang world, we seem to both forget and neglect the industry, manufacturing and workers that put us here. I want to focus, and open a discussion, on that.

I am not expert on the issues and economics that underpin this area, so I am going to rely on the collective wisdom here to engage and flesh out the discussion. I do, however, want to open that discussion on a familiar note, the American automotive industry. Roland Jones at MSNBC.com yesterday did an interesting piece as to why bankruptcy is not a viable option for General Motors:

“If these companies went into bankruptcy right now, in exactly the position they are in today, they would be liquidated because no one out there would supply them with the financing they need to get through bankruptcy,” Mark Zandi, chief economist with Moody’s Economy.com, told CNBC Wednesday.

That would mean a few million jobs lost, Zandi said, which would be “cataclysmic” for the U.S. economy, already shedding about a million jobs every two months. A better option would be to give the automakers the extra funding they need to stay in business until March 31. Then the government could prepare for a bankruptcy later on with provisions for securing financing to bring them through Chapter 11 and guarantee vehicle warranties.
…
An outright liquidation of either of the companies — which would bring massive unemployment, lost tax revenues, and would place the burden of the automakers’ pension liabilities on the government’s shoulders — would cost the government more, according to Rebecca Lindland, director of the Automotive Group at consultancy IHS Global Insight.

“If taxpayers are complaining now, wait until the pension obligations are swapped over — it will cost a lot more than the $39 billion the automakers are asking for now,” she said. “So in any scenario, it’s not as if the taxpayer’s going to get away with this scot-free. With so many workers losing their jobs there would be a lot of federal aid required.”

This is an aspect of the auto mess that is consistently given short shrift. We are worried about our economy, but keep trying to patch it up with financial jiggering, and don’t seem to be paying attention to the real foundation. That is how we got to this point, not how we will get out of it. It is time for a wake up call in that regard. One person who has been speaking out on this is author William Holstein who has a new book, Why GM Matters, on just this phenomenon, using General Motors as a microcosm of the larger problem:

Holstein is using GM as a symbol for whether it makes sense for the U.S. to bother with manufacturing. That might sound odd for a country that for now probably remains the world’s largest manufacturing economy. But Holstein argues that our political and financial leaders don’t get manufacturing, and don’t think it’s important. This is the crux of the Main Street vs. Wall Street debate, and it is shaping up as the core fight of economic policy over the next few years: do we get a justifiable return if we invest in making things, or should we focus on information-driven innovation?

Holstein seems to represent the argument that information-driven companies — such as financial services firms — simply cannot sustain our economy by themselves, and we must continue to be able to manufacture. In fact, he does directly argue that GM can now manufacture head to head with Toyota, and he might be right.

This is a discussion that is important to have at least side by side with, if not in fact primary to, the discussion on the Wall Street, finance and housing bailouts. Sometime in the next day or so, I plan to bring Holstein in for a live chat discussion about his book and the greater state and future of American industry. I hope one and all will join in, but in the meantime, let’s get the discussion going.

As you may know, President Obama came to Phoenix in order to roll out his $75 Billion Plan to Fight Home Foreclosures. This was exciting for me, because Obama spent last night at a resort, Montelucia, about 3/4 of a mile from my house. Lots of excitement; even more jammed up traffic yesterday afternoon and evening. Still, all in all, pretty exciting for an old desert dweller. Our dog, Kiki, is still barking at all the helicopters. Interlaced into this post will be a series of pictures taken by various Phoenicians and submitted to the Arizona Republic for open use on their website. I would have taken proprietary photos for Emptywheel, especially of the shots going down the road right by my house and entering Montelucia, but, alas, I was tied up with conference calls with multiple attorneys, all of whom are every bit as annoying as I am. Trust me on the latter.

From the New York Times:

President Obama pledged on Wednesday to help as many as 9 million American homeowners refinance their mortgages or avert foreclosure, an initiative he said would shore up distressed housing prices, stabilize neighborhoods and slow a downward spiral that he said was “unraveling homeownership, the middle class, and the American Dream itself.”

The plan, more ambitious than many housing analysts had expected, was unveiled by Mr. Obama in a high school gymnasium here, in a community that is among the nation’s hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis.

“This plan will not save every home, but it will give millions of families resigned to financial ruin a chance to rebuild,” the president told the crowd. “It will prevent the worst consequences of this crisis from wreaking even greater havoc on the economy. And by bringing down the foreclosure rate, it will help to shore up housing prices for everyone.”

In a nutshell from the LA Times, the plan would:

• Remove restrictions on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that prohibit the institutions, both taken over by the government last year, from refinancing mortgages they own or have guaranteed when more is owed on a home than it is worth. The White House says this could reduce monthly payments for up to 5 million homeowners.

• Create incentives for lenders to modify subprime loans at risk of default or foreclosure. For lenders that agree to reduce rates to levels borrowers can afford, the government will make up part of the difference between the old monthly payment and the new payment. Participating lenders also will be required to cut payments to no more than 31 percent of a borrower’s income. Up to 4 million homeowners could benefit.

• Keep mortgage rates low for millions of middle-class families seeking new mortgages. Using money already approved by Congress for this purpose, the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve will continue to buy Fannie and Freddie mortgage-backed securities to maintain stability and liquidity in the marketplace. The department, through its existing authority, will provide up to $200 billion in capital for this purpose.

• Pursue reforms to help families avoid foreclosure. The administration will continue to support changing bankruptcy rules so judges can reduce mortgages on primary homes to their fair market value, as long as the borrower sticks to a court-ordered repayment plan. As part of the $787 billion stimulus package that Obama signed into law on Tuesday, the administration will award $2 billion in competitive grants to communities experimenting with innovative ways to prevent foreclosures.

Here is the detailed plan (pdf) as put out by the White House. Obama was wildly received by the audience from the video I caught, and there were people camping out in line outside the high school he spoke at over a day ahead of his appearance. There was only one serious group of protesters, and they were not anti-Obama. They were demanding justice against our locally oppressive and deadly Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Ya gotta love that.

All in all, a short, but victorious, visit from the President of the United States.

Graphic by Darkblack

The news last week that President Obama had bought into and signed off on the full boat of shameful state secrets assertion in the case of Binyan Mohamed v Jeppesen Dataplan set off a wave of criticism. Obama came to the criticism the old fashioned way, he earned it by breaking his campaign promise and continuing the wretched excess of unitary secrecy. Obama’s about face, and turn to the dark side of Bush/Cheney secrecy shocked even Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Mary Schroeder when confronted with it at the Mohamed v. Jeppesen Dataplan hearing.

That is the part of Obama’s war on Binyam Mohamed through Bush style secrecy that has been widely reported, but there is much more that is not as well known. It ought to be. From this morning’s Guardian:

A policy governing the interrogation of terrorism suspects in Pakistan that led to British citizens and residents being tortured was devised by MI5 lawyers and figures in government, according to evidence heard in court.
…
The existence of an official interrogation policy emerged during cross-examination in the high court in London of an MI5 officer who had questioned one of the detainees, Binyam Mohamed, the British resident currently held in Guantánamo Bay. The officer, who can be identified only as Witness B, admitted that although Mohamed had been in Pakistani custody for five weeks, and he knew the country to have a poor human rights record, he did not ask whether he had been tortured or mistreated, did not inquire why he had lost weight, and did not consider whether his detention without trial was illegal.
…
Mohamed was eventually able to tell lawyers that before being questioned by MI5 he had been hung from leather straps, beaten and threatened with a firearm by Pakistani intelligence officers. After the meeting with MI5 he was "rendered" to Morocco where he endured 18 months of even more brutal torture, including having his genitals slashed with a scalpel. Some of the questions put to him under torture in Morocco were based on information passed by MI5 to the US.

The Guardian has learned from other sources that the interrogation policy was directed at a high level within Whitehall and that it has been further developed since Mohamed’s detention in Pakistan. Evidence of this might emerge from 42 undisclosed US documents seen by the high court and sent to the MPs and peers on the intelligence and security committee (ISC).

To make this crystal clear, similar to what is going on in the Ninth Circuit in Mohamed v. Jeppesen, the High Court in London is being stymied in its inquiry into the criminal torture and abuse of Mr. Binyan Mohamed by a recalcitrant British government that is desperate to conceal its war crimes. But the key part here is how the Brits are concealing, and that is with the direct and active complicity of President Barack Obama and his Administration.

The path of this obstruction is so obnoxious, the Brits must have stolen it right out of Dick Cheney’s playbook. Again from the Guardian:

Lawyers representing Mohamed went to the high court in an attempt to secure the disclosure of the documents, but the court reluctantly refused earlier this month after David Miliband, the foreign secretary, said such a move would damage national security and UK-US relations.

Miliband’s position in the affair came under renewed attack yesterday after it emerged that his officials solicited a letter from the US state department to back up his claim that if the evidence was disclosed, Washington might stop sharing intelligence with Britain. The claim persuaded the high court judges to suppress what they called "powerful evidence" relating to Mohamed’s ill-treatment.

Edward Davey, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, today described the move as possibly "one of the most outrageous deceptions of parliament, the judiciary and the British people. There must be an immediate investigation, with all related correspondence made public."

Edward Davey is right, but what is more outrageous is that the Obama Administration appears to have happily joined in the scurrilous obstruction.

A flurry of letters between the British Foreign Office and the US State Department has revealed that Washington did threaten to withdraw intelligence-sharing with Britain if documents related to the alleged torture of a British terrorism detainee in Guantanamo Bay were made public.

The High Court in London said on Wednesday the Foreign Office had refused to allow the torture documents to be revealed because of a "threat" from Washington to stop sharing intelligence with Britain.

The US warning, related to the case of British detainee Binyam Mohamed, was promptly denied by British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who insisted that there had been no threat from the US to "break off intelligence co-operation".

Now, I would like to make clear that the immediately above details and quote references letters and communications from last fall through shortly before Obama took office. But the salient fact is that, as with their actions in the wiretapping cases, al-Haramain and Mohamed ve Jeppesen, the Obama Administration has done absolutely nothing to change the egregious policy. They just keep following the Bush/Cheney script and, it would appear, that is still the case after a meeting between Secretay of State Clinton and Millbrand in the first week of February. Perhaps the best evidence of the Obama Administration’s determination to maintain complicity on the bogus obstruction of the case in England occurred last week when one of Binyam’s attorneys sent a letter to Obama:

US defence officials are preventing Barack Obama from seeing evidence that a former British resident held in Guantánamo Bay has been tortured, the prisoner’s lawyer said last night, as campaigners and the Foreign Office prepared for the man’s release in as little as a week.

Clive Stafford Smith, the director of the legal charity Reprieve, which represents Ethiopian-born Binyam Mohamed, sent Obama evidence of what he called "truly mediaeval" abuse but substantial parts were blanked out so the president could not read it.

In the letter to the president [PDF] , Stafford Smith urges him to order the disclosure of the evidence.

Stafford Smith tells Obama he should be aware of the "bizarre reality" of the situation. "You, as commander in chief, are being denied access to material that would help prove that crimes have been committed by US personnel. This decision is being made by the very people who you command."

It is understood US defence officials might have censored the evidence to protect the president from criminal liability or political embarrassment.

The letter and its blanked-out attachment were disclosed as two high court judges yesterday agreed to reopen the court case in which Mohamed’s lawyers, the Guardian and other media are seeking disclosure of evidence of alleged torture against him. Mohamed’s lawyers are challenging the judges’ gagging order, claiming that David Miliband, the foreign secretary, changed his evidence.

That’s right, Mohamed’s attorney was begging for assistance for Mohamed and an order releasing the evidence of Binyam’s torture, and it was censored! Oh, and crickets has been the response from Obama. That is diametrically, and cravenly so, opposed to the new, opposite of Bush/Cheney, open policy Obama promised during his campaign.

President Barack Obama has been in office less than a month, yet has been confronted head on with not one, but two, cases directly involving the life and human rights of Binyam Mohamed. Both cases squarely presented an opportunity for Mr. Obama to make the break from the oppressive rules of secrecy and torture ingrained by the Bush/Cheney regime. On both cases Obama threw his lot in with the secrecy and torture crowd.

Why does President Obama Hate The Truth On Binyan Mohamed?

P.S. – For more on the British Binyman Mohamed case, please visit Valtin for his take.

Chicago tenor Roland Burris is singing a new tune:

U.S. Sen. Roland Burris has acknowledged he sought to raise campaign funds for then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich at the request of the governor’s brother at the same time he was making a pitch to be appointed to the Senate seat previously held by President Barack Obama.

Burris’ latest comments in Peoria Monday night were the first time he has publicly said he was actively trying to raise money for Blagojevich. Previously Burris has left the impression that he always balked at the issue of raising money for the governor because of his interest in the Senate appointment.

In comments to reporters after appearing at a Democratic dinner, the senator several times contradicted his latest under-oath affidavit that he quietly filed with the Illinois House impeachment panel earlier this month. That affidavit was itself an attempt to clean up his live, sworn testimony to the panel Jan. 8, when he omitted his contacts with several Blagojevich insiders.

Now this is something that Marcy (see: here and here) predicted, as did many of you. So, it is not exactly a shocking Captain Renault moment. That said, it is still extremely damning and is going to lead to a justified uproar. Already Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan is calling for a deeper investigation, although she has held short of claiming perjury by Burris.

It is just the bundling efforts that Marcy predicted may be in play that appear to be in issue:

Burris said Robert Blagojevich told him, “‘We need to raise some funds. We hope that you could probably get some of your friends together.’ I said, ‘What type of money we looking for?’ He says, ‘Can you raise us 10-or-15 thousand dollars?’

Here are the new details Burris has copped to as of last night:

“So some time shortly after Obama was elected, the brother called,” Burris said last night of Robert Blagojevich. “And now in the meantime, I’d talked to some people about trying to see if we could put a fund-raiser on. Nobody was—they said we aren’t giving money to the governor. And I said, ‘OK, you know, I can’t tell them what to do with their money.’”

“So when the (governor’s) brother called me back, I said, ‘Well, look Rob…I can’t raise any money from my friends. I said, maybe my partner and I, you can talk this over and see, could we go to some other people that we might be able to talk to that would help us out if we give–because we give a fundraiser in the law office, nobody going to show up. We’ll probably have a thousand dollars for you or something to that effect.’

Burris said prior to his final conversation with Robert Blagojevich in November he came to the conclusion that because of his interest in the Senate seat, he couldn’t raise money for the governor.

“I said, ‘No. 1, I can’t raise any money for you and I can’t give you any money because I don’t want to have a conflict,” Burris said he told Rob Blagojevich.

The obvious point there seems to be that, at least so far, there is no evidence against Burris nor admission by him of him actually raising cash as opposed to attempting to do so. He will use this as a basis for arguing that there was no quid pro quo. Quite frankly, that is a fair argument – so far. The other thing is that, in relation to his testimony in front of the Illinois Legislature in January, Burris will say that when he testified "I talked to some friends" he was admitting to talking to the people Jim Durkin was inquiring about and just forgot to specify further, and it was an oversight. Do I believe that? No. Could I sandpaper him up and put him on the witness stand in a perjury trial and argue it up with a closing statement to sell it to a jury? You bet.

There is one other factor that muddies the waters, Mike Ettinger, Robert Blagojevich’s lawyer (and in what has to be a conflict at this point, Rod Blagojevich’s attorney of record in the criminal case), is now spreading a slightly different version:

Ettinger said Robert Blagojevich did not know about Burris’ interest in the Senate seat until the lasts of the three calls, which occurred in November after the election.

Ettinger said Robert did reach out to Burris in October, but to ask him to host a fundraiser, not to make a personal contribution. No specific amount was discussed, Ettinger said.

Ettinger has said he understands Burris contends he had told five people about his interest in the seat during the fall time frame.

"That may be, but my client wasn’t one of them," Ettinger said.

The lawyer said his client spoke with Burris in November while on the phone at the Blagojevich campaign office, which leads him to believe that call was recorded by federal agents, who had tapped the campaign headquarters’ phones.

During that conversation, Robert Blagojevich learned of Burris’ interest in the seat for the first time, and no fundraising effort with Burris went forward, Ettinger said.

The real problem, per the age old maxim, is that it isn’t the underlying act in politics, it is the lying and coverup. Burris may never get convicted of perjury, at least if the facts don’t materially change (Ha!), but he has already bought the farm on credibility. It will be interesting to see if Harry Reid, Dick Durbin and the Senate try to expel him. One thing is for certain, there are already behind the scenes chats with Burris trying to get him to resign. He has been awfully cocky and persistent so far, but we shall see.

UPDATE: Burris says he is game for any investigation:

U.S. Sen. Roland Burris said today he is open to a Senate ethics investigation into how he got the Senate seat from ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich and that he has reached out to a Sangamon County prosecutor who is reviewing Burris’ sworn testimony before Illinois lawmakers.

Burris made a brief statement to reporters in Peoria today, saying an aide had reached out to Sangamon County State’s Atty. John Schmidt, who is reviewing testimony Burris gave last month to House lawmakers in Springfield about his contacts with allies of the ousted governor.

"I have made an effort to be as transparent as I can," Burris said. "I have nothing to hide."

Burris said, "I welcome the opportunity to go before any and all investigative bodies…to answer questions they have."

"There was never any inappropriate (contact) between me and anyone else," Burris said. "And I will answer any and all questions to get that point across and keep my faith with the people of Illinois."

When it was announced Sunday that President Obama had decided against appointing an "Auto Czar", instead opting for a panel of Administration financial experts including, but not limited to, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers and Ron Bloom, it pretty much signaled that the Administration was going to continue to work with GM as an existing, functioning entity instead of forcing them into bankruptcy.

Monday night, that was borne out. From Reuters:

The U.S. government will release $4 billion in additional aid to General Motors Corp (GM.N) on Tuesday as planned, a White House aide said on Monday, ahead of the deadline for the automaker to submit a new survival plan.

The aide said GM’s smaller rival Chrysler LLC’s request for additional aid would be treated as a new request and dealt with separately.

GM is seeking concessions from the United Auto Workers union and creditors under the terms of its $13.4 billion federal bailout. It must submit a restructuring plan to U.S. officials on Tuesday showing how it can cut costs and pay back the loans.

Now that does not mean that the moment is over for GM, far from it. The company still has ongoing crucial negotiations with the auto workers union (UAW) that must be completed, and must formally submit its grand restructuring plan. The plan will not be fully known until officially submitted and made public, which is likely not to occur until the markets close tomorrow, but early details reveal a framework for a radically different General Motors in the future:

G.M. will file what is expected to be the largest restructuring plan of its 100-year history on Tuesday, a step it must take to justify its use of a $13.4 billion loan package from the federal government.

The plan will outline in considerable detail, over as many as 900 pages, how G.M. will further cut its work force, shutter more factories in North America and reduce its lineup of brands to just four, from eight, according to executives knowledgeable about its contents. The remaining core brands will be Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC and Buick.
…
The plan will also probably include revisions in executive compensation and targets for cutting dealers and brands like Saturn and Pontiac.

Similar discussions are underway with Chrysler, which also has a deadline tomorrow to submit its restructuring plan; details of the plan or government commitment are not yet forthcoming.

h/t Zapiro @ sahistory

Joe Conason has a new piece out in Salon that is enough to cause sane heads to explode. Noting that, like math, bringing accountability is hard, Conason biliously opines:

Here we have no such consensus and no revolutionary government with the power to mete out retribution to vanquished foes. What we have instead are the unrepentant officials of the Bush era, who continue to justify their misconduct as critical to the nation’s survival. We have a new administration, immured in a world economic crisis, that recognizes conflicting imperatives of accountability and cooperation. And we have a responsibility to explore how the nation embarked on "a dangerous and disastrous diversion from American values," as Leahy put it.

Is there a way for President Obama to pursue that responsibility without inflicting vengeance or humiliation? Perhaps he ought to consider the creation of a presidential commission whose aims would be purely investigative — and encourage the participation of those implicated in the abuses of the past by promising a complete pardon to anyone who testifies fully, honestly and publicly.

With that gesture, he would acknowledge the importance of uncovering the facts, no matter how ugly, while magnanimously binding up the nation’s wounds. He could leave the issue of criminal prosecution to international authorities that can act without any partisan taint. And he could seek truth without vengeance.

Conason waxes romantic about Sen. Pat Leahy’s much ballyhooed truth and reconciliation plan. Here is the money quote from Leahy:

We could develop and authorize a person or group of people universally recognized as fair-minded, and without axes to grind. Their straightforward mission would be to find the truth. People would be invited to come forward and share their knowledge and experiences, not for purposes of constructing criminal indictments, but to assemble the facts.

That’s right, another blue ribbon commission that is going to solve our difficult problems of governance. Yeah, that is going to work out well because, you know, such things always do. Paging Lee Hamilton to the blue ribbon phone. The problem with Leahy and Conason’s commission is that there exists a body of law, both statutory and common, for a reason; for it to be the rule and for the rule to be enforced. Conason wants to be "magnanimous" and "pardon" and "leave the issue of criminal prosecution to international authorities that can act without any partisan taint". What a totally perfect bunch of tripe. Hey Joe, exactly what "international authorities" are you referring to here? And how are these "miscreant" defendants going to be rendered to justice by said international authorities? Is Conason saying he supports extradition of Americans to the Hague or other loci of international justice? Because if he isn’t (and trust me, his shallow babble doesn’t) then this chatter about international justice for the malfeasants is horribly idle.

Oh, and one more thing, when Conason notes that he and Leahy’s claimed brilliance is founded upon

using a process modeled partly on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of post-apartheid South Africa

it ought also be noted that not quite everybody considers that process to be all that wonderful, even in the tectonic change scenario where it is supposedly appropriate. From yesterday’s Washington Post:

But the ruling also stirred debate about how to deal with history in a young democracy that depicts itself as a miracle built on the notion of forgiveness. In a country where many blacks remain poor and many white perpetrators walk free, it is a question on which even the widows of the Cradock Four do not agree: What is best for reconciliation — digging up the past or letting it lie?

"We have had trickle-down reconciliation in this country," said Piers Pigou, a former Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigator who now directs the South African History Archive. "There’s been an absence of commitment to those issues because it’s likely to raise a lot of hard questions."

The main protagonists of the Bush/Cheney regime effectively reverse engineered our laws and Constitution in order to gut them of all meaning and effect, so that they could impose their demented whims of dominance and submission on the nation and the world. Their crimes are more than the violence of man on man that hold forth in truth and reconciliation commissions; the crimes of Bush and Cheney rip at the very heart of who and what we are, and were founded to be, as a Constitutiional democracy.

The half baked blue ribbon commission of Conason and Leahy will not address the heart of what has gone on, and it will never bring valid accountability for it. Good governance and the maintenance of the rule of law is hard, especially when truth must be spoken to power. Difficulty is no excuse for failure.

Here it is, another glorious President’s day, and wouldn’t you know it world leaders are exchanging presents. And Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has sent one President Obama’s way:

President Hugo Chávez handily won a referendum on Sunday that will end presidential term limits, allowing him to run for re-election indefinitely and injecting fresh vibrancy into his socialist-inspired revolution.

The results, coming after voters had rejected a similar effort by Mr. Chávez just 15 months ago, pointed to his resilience after a decade in power, as well as to the fragmentation of his opposition, which as recently as November had won key mayoralties and governorships.

The vote opens the way not only for Mr. Chávez to run for a new six-year term when his current one expires in 2013, but could also bolster his ambitious agenda as an icon of the left and a counterweight to American policies in Latin America.

It also creates a new foreign policy challenge for the Obama administration, strengthening a leader who has made a career of taunting and deriding the United States, even though Mr. Chávez just this weekend seemed to open the door for a different relationship.

Chavez is not going away anytime soon, and with the petro status of Venezuela remaining significant, both as to the US and as a vehicle for Chavez to spread influence in Latin America, Barack Obama needs to fashion a coherent policy for Latin America as a whole and Venezuela in particular. President Obama has shown a refreshing tendency in foreign policy to address glaring problems head on and, unlike the previous Bush Administration, actually use intelligence instead of muscle.

A heavy fist and a thumbed nose was about all the subtlety George Bush showed in his Latin American foreign policy; it is time for that to change. With the decline and fall of Fidel Castro in Cuba, and brother Raul being both slightly more progressive and not long for office himself, coupled with Chavez’s newfound extended lease on power and inability to know what to do the Obama agency of change, it is time for a new direction on both. We don’t need to all be best friends, but we need to quit being intransigent enemies for the sake of nothing more than needing to make each other a villain to play off of. President Obama can stop the stupid; he should.

In this post, I’m going to make a wildarsed guess at what actually went down with Burris’ campaign to be Senator. See the timeline of known interactions below.

The key to understanding what really happened in Burris’ campaign to be Senator is a discrepancy between what RobBlago is saying and what Burris is saying. In a statement to the Sun-Times, RobBlago’s lawyer  Michael Ettinger claimed that RobBlago didn’t know about Burris’ interest in the Senate seat when he made three fund-raising calls to Burris.

"He didn’t know he was in the running for the U.S. Senate seat," Michael Ettinger said.

But Burris had already expressed his interest in running to at least three people (John Wyma and Doug Scofield at a June fundraiser, and Lon Monk in July and/or September) by the time RobBlago first called. And Burris said that the Senate seat came up during at least two of their calls. In fact, Burris says that when RobBlago first called in October, RobBlago clearly stated that he knew Burris was in consideration for the seat.

I asked Rob Blagojevich what was going on with the selection of a successor if  then-Senator Obama were elected President, and he said he had heard by name mentioned in the discussions.

So here’s what I think happened (and this is all a wildarsed guess).

Burris told all the Blago people he had ties with of his interest in the seat. By early October, RobBlago was already trying to fund-raise off candidates for the seat. He called Burris and specifically in the context of the Senate seat asked him to do a fund-raiser for Blago (note, this would almost certainly have taken place before Fitz bugged Blago’s office, so there’s almost certainly no tape of this conversation). Burris deferred until after the election, perhaps because he wanted to make sure of two things: that Obama got elected and that he was under serious consideration before he went to the trouble of having a fundraiser. It is fairly clear that Burris was playing Blago’s game at this point, because he was already a known candidate for Obama’s seat–doing a fundraiser in October would be perceived as just as much an "attempt to curry favor" from Blago as would a fundraiser after the election!! But rather than saying no, Burris said, talk to me after the election.

After the election, John Harris (who was one of the first people taped after the election pushing Blago to get money for the seat) called Burris to touch base on the Senate seat; Harris remained non-committal about the seat, perhaps to suggest to Burris that unless he started fundraising he wouldn’t even be in the running. After which RobBlago called (as if on cue) and pushed Burris to do a fund-raiser again.

Now this second post-November call is where it gets interesting. Because it sure seems like Burris and RobBlago were talking about ways that Burris could fundraise without it looking like a clear quid pro quo.  At least one of these meetings took place at the campaign headquarters–which was bugged. But when it first came out that Fitz had tapped Blago, he seemed to assume that Wyma and others were wired, not that they had bugged his office. So I wonder whether they thought they were being safe by meeting face to face.

So RobBlago asks Burris for money. And Burris responds that he could not hold a fundraiser because it "could be viewed as an attempt to curry favor with [Blago] regarding his decision to appoint a successor to President Obama." In response, RobBlago suggested having others donate–that is, rather than Burris donating himself or having a fundraiser, he should do some kind of bundling. (Recall, by the way, Jesse Jackson Jr’s denials of paying for the seat–he said no one did it on his orders, and he didn’t know about it, but he never denied that someone had held a fundraiser on his behalf; this appears to be a parallel structure of plausible deniability as Burris and RobBlago seem to have discussed.)

I’m totally agnostic on whether or not someone did fundraise for Burris. But it’s worth noting that Burris’ partner, Fred Lebed, was on the board of the charity that, until recently, employed Patti Blagojevich, and when asked about Lebed’s ties to Blago, Burris claimed he knew nothing about it nor was involved. And Lebed has been involved in Burris’ prior campaigns. 

In any case, after getting busted for trying to sell the seat, and after Ed Genson assured everyone that Blago wouldn’t appoint anyone to the seat, Blago’s not defense lawyer Sam Adam Jr. approached Burris about the seat in two face-to-face meetings at Burris’ house–two conversations that (particularly since Adam was a long-time associate of Burris’) would probably escape the direct notice of the FBI. Only after those two conversations did Blago call, in a conversation that was surely taped, and offer Burris the seat.

Burris spent the next several weeks denying he had any untoward ties with Blago’s people. In his sworn testimony before the IL legislature, Burris dodged questions regarding:

• Whether he had spoken with RobBlago, John Harris, John Wyma, and Doug Scofield
• Whether he would have reported a quid pro quo offer to the Feds
• Whether he had bundled donations for Blago

And only after he was sworn in as Senator did he reveal what Fitz surely knew–that Blago’s people had made a quid pro quo offer. 

What Burris hasn’t admitted–but which the evidence suggests–is that Burris and RobBlago were trying to find a way for Burris to fundraise for Blago without leaving any tracks.

Here’s the timeline:

June 27, 2008: At a $1000 fundraiser for Blago, Burris told both Doug Scofield and John Wyma that he was interested in Obama’s Senate seat.

July (maybe–Burris was unclear whether this was July or September): Burris asks Lon Monk to tell Blago he is interested in Obama’s seat.

September (maybe–Burris was unclear whether this was July or September): Burris asks Lon Monk to tell Blago he is interested in Obama’s seat. There may have been a conversation about whether Blago would think Burris were qualified.

Early October: RobBlago calls Burris to ask him to hold a fund-raiser. Burris asks RobBlago "what was going on with the selection of a successor" for Obama’s seat. RobBlago responds that Burris’ name has come up in those discussions. Burris says he won’t give money now, but will wait until after the election.

October: Burris leaves a voice mail for John Harris, ostensibly to pitch his nephew for a job with the State. 

November (probably post-election–Burris describes it as "approximately three weeks" after he left his email): Harris calls Burris. Burris pitches his nephew for the state job. Then, Burris asks "whether there was any news" about the Senate seat. Harris says there is no news.

November, post-election: RobBlago makes two calls to Burris. RobBlago now says he did not know that Burris wanted the Senate seat, presumably to be able to claim there was no quid pro quo. But given the repeated calls, the subtext was clear. It appears possible that Burris and RobBlago talked about how to fundraise in such a way that the fundraising was not tied directly to Burris.

December 26: Conversation with Sam Adam Jr., Blago’s maybe Defense Attorney, about appointment

December 28: Conversation with Adam, then Blago, accepting seat

January 5: Roland signs affidavit that does not address contacts with Blago’s people, beyond the appointment discussions on December 26 and 28. In it he states:

Prior to the December 26, 2008 telephone call from Mr. Adams Jr., there was not any contact between myself or any of my representatives with Governor Blagojevich or any of his representatives regarding my appointment to the United States Senate.

January 8: In State Legislative hearing, Burris admits to contacts with Lon Monk, but does not mention contacts with four other Blago representatives

January 15: Burris sworn in as Senator

February 5: Burris writes a new affidavit, revealing additional conversations