Report: Gregg Steered Earmarks To Project In Which He Had Invested

Judd Gregg has invested in several of his brother's projects

Zachary Roth
TPMMuckracker
February 27, 2009

Maybe Judd Gregg’s withdrawal as Commerce Secretary nominee really was for the best.

In a lengthy and detailed investigative report, the Associated Press reveals today that the New Hamshire GOP senator funneled federal earmarks to a defunct Granite State air-force base, despite the fact that he and his brother had lucrative real estate investments there.

The key details:

Gregg, R-N.H., personally has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in Cyrus Gregg’s office projects at the Pease International Tradeport, a Portsmouth business park built at the defunct Pease Air Force Base, once home to nuclear bombers. Judd Gregg has collected at least $240,017 to $651,801 from his investments there, Senate records show, while helping arrange at least $66 million in federal aid for the former base.

So let’s lay out what we know here.

On one side, Judd Gregg seems to have a significant personal financial stake in Pease.
Cyrus Gregg is a partner in a development firm, Two International Group, that has built roughly a dozen office buildings at Pease. And according to state corporate records and Senate disclosure reports, Judd Gregg has invested in several of his brother’s projects.

How much has Judd Gregg made from those investments?. According to the AP, which looked at Gregg’s Senate disclosure filings, “at least $240,017 and possibly as much as $651,801″ between 1999 and 2007 in rent and capital gains.

Now, let’s look at the other side: What has Gregg done to benefit Pease from the Senate?

Over to the AP again:

In the Senate, Gregg has repeatedly won federal money for Pease’s redevelopment:
• At least $24.8 million for a new federal building. The senator said the city of Portsmouth wanted to move an unattractive federal building out of its picturesque downtown. The new building hasn’t been built yet, he said.
• At least $24.5 million for other New Hampshire National Guard projects at the base, including a new fire and crash rescue station, a new medical training facility, repair to an aircraft parking ramp and the upgrade of an aircraft parking apron.
• $8.9 million for a new wing headquarters operations and training facility at Pease for the Air National Guard.
• At least $8 million to help Pease’s airport transition from military to civilian use, including improving terminal security, buying snow removal equipment, building an aircraft deicing area and adding a parking lot.
• $475,000 to shield office buildings at Pease from noise from the former Air Force runway, which is now used by private planes and the New Hampshire Air National Guard. Earlier, Gregg lined up $25,000 in federal money for noise monitoring equipment at Pease.
• $400,000 for development of a photonics and laser technology program at the New Hampshire Community Technical College campus at Pease. Earlier, Gregg and then-Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H., won federal money to develop the college’s biotechnology lab, and education and training center at Pease.

Gregg claims he broke no laws or ethics rules, and that the earmarks don’t benefit him financially. But improvements to Pease’s terminal security, and efforts to shield Pease’s office buildings from noise, would appear, at least potentially, to increase the value of his investment.

It’s not clear whether Gregg’s interest in Pease played a role in his withdrawal as Commerce Secretary nominee. AP reports:

The senator has said his withdrawal had nothing to do with anything the White House uncovered in his background. A White House spokesman, Ben LaBolt, declined to discuss the matter with the AP. AP began looking into the Greggs’ activities at Pease before then but had not yet contacted them or the White House before Judd Gregg withdrew.

Copyright 2009 TPM Media LLC.

If an elected official wants to have her children around her at all times… RESIGN

Have kids, will travel

Syrin from Wasilla’s Blog

(2/27/09) In response to the recent settlement with the personnel board over state paid travel expenses for her family, Governor Palin’s office has begun asking those who extend an invitation for the governor to attend a function, “Is the first family invited?”

Is the First Family invited?: *
Yes [_]
No [_]

However, anyone extending an invitation to the governor might have cause to worry that if they check the box no, the governor might choose not to attend.

Part of the disagreement over whether a family travel expense qualifies for state reimbursement has been about the degree of benefit the state received from paying for airfare, in this case for the governor’s children to travel.

The question of whether the family is invited goes to the heart of the “state benefit” threshold. If the family is invited, then the argument could be made that it is a state benefit and the state should reimburse for the family members airfare.

I’m not quite sure where this “family travel protocol” theory came about, but it fails to pass the taxpayer straight face test.

Why should taxpayers ever have to pay for any governor’s child to travel to an event.

When this story first broke back in October, former Governor Tony Knowles stated that his children never took state paid trips, saying he couldn’t ever imagine when it would have been appropriate to do so at taxpayer expense.

In her press release announcing the settlement, Palin once again presents the issue as a simple Hobson’s choice. It’s a big state and she doesn’t think she should have to choose between visiting communities and spending time with her family.

“This is a big state, and I am obligated to – and intend to – keep Alaskans informed and meet with them as much as I can, from Barrow to Marshall to Ketchikan. At the same time, I am blessed to have a large and loving family, and the discharge of my duties should not prevent me from spending time with them. I will do so in accordance with the upcoming rewrite of regulations concerning travel expenses, and despite those who would crimp me from fulfilling either my obligations to the state or my obligations to my family,” Palin writes in her press release dated February 24,2009.

But once again, Palin frames it as an “I’m being picked on again” moment.

The fact is nobody is forcing her to choose between either fulfilling her obligations to the state or the spending time with her family.

If the governor wants to take her kids to Philadelphia for five days, fine.

However taxpayers shouldn’t have to pick up the cost of their round trip airfare and five nights at the Ritz Carlton.

Is that so unfair?

The Memo

In an interview I did for blog a few months ago, I spoke with a former employee in the governor’s office. He told me that early on in Palin’s administration, her staff was telling her that she was on thin ice trying to claim reimbursement for her children’s travel expenses.

A memo was recently unearthed, (attached) by former Attorney General Greg Renkes which clearly states that travel on the state’s King Air for those traveling on non-official business should have to reimburse the state for the cost of a coach ticket.

It would seem that if the rules pertaining to who pays on the state plane have been hashed out, those same rules would apply to the state paying for commercial air travel.

The Renkes memo which was originally issued in September of 2004, was re-released in March of 2007, at the same time according to my source, the governor’s staff had raised the issue about the state paying for the children’s travel.

Vox © 2003-2008 Six Apart, Ltd.

Senate to investigate CIA’s actions under Bush

The ‘fact-finding’ effort will seek details on secret prisons and interrogation methods — but will not aim to determine if CIA officials broke laws, legislative sources say.
Greg Miller
Los Angeles Times
February 27, 2009

The Senate Intelligence Committee is preparing to launch an investigation of the CIA’s detention and interrogation programs under President George W. Bush, setting the stage for a sweeping examination of some of most secretive and controversial operations in recent agency history.

The inquiry is aimed at uncovering new information on the origins of the programs as well as scrutinizing how they were executed — including the conditions at clandestine CIA prison sites and the interrogation regimens used to break Al Qaeda suspects, according to Senate aides familiar with the investigation plans.

Officials said the inquiry was not designed to determine whether CIA officials broke laws. “The purpose here is to do fact-finding in order to learn lessons from the programs and see if there are recommendations to be made for detention and interrogations in the future,” said a senior Senate aide, who like others described the plan on condition of anonymity because it had not been made public.

Still, the investigation is likely to call new attention to the agency’s conduct in operations that drew condemnation around the world. It is also bound to renew friction between Democrats and Republicans who have spent much of the last five years fighting over the Bush administration’s prosecution of the war on terrorism.

The investigation also could draw comparisons to the special Senate committee formed to investigate the CIA in 1975 and headed by Sen. Frank Church, an Idaho Democrat. Revelations by the Church Committee led to greater congressional oversight and legislation restricting intelligence activities.

The terms and scope of the new inquiry still were being negotiated by members of the committee and senior staffers Thursday. The senior aide said that the committee had no short-term plans to hold public hearings, and that it was not clear whether the panel would release its final report to the public.

The inquiry, which could take a year or more to complete, means the CIA will once again be the target of intense congressional scrutiny at a time when it is engaged in two wars and its ongoing pursuit of Al Qaeda.

The agency was stripped of some of its power and prestige after coming under severe criticism in previous investigations of its failures leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks and the war in Iraq.

But whereas those investigations focused largely on errors in the CIA’s analytic efforts, the new inquiry will dive directly into its most sensitive operations, seeking to unearth details that previous generations of agency officials referred to as the “crown jewels.”

During the Bush administration, the agency was often able to safeguard many of those secrets. Lawmakers have never been told the locations of the CIA’s secret prisons overseas, for example.

But the Obama administration is expected to give congressional investigators new access to classified records as well as individuals who took part in operating the secret prisons and interrogating detainees.

CIA Director Leon E. Panetta

CIA Director Leon E. Panetta pledged this week that he would cooperate with any congressional investigation.

“If those committees are seeking information in these areas, we’ll cooperate with them,” Panetta said in a meeting with reporters Wednesday. “I think that we have a responsibility to be transparent on these issues and to provide them that information.”

Panetta argued that CIA officers should not face prosecution if they were acting on orders in accordance with Bush administration legal opinions.

“I would not support, obviously, an investigation or a prosecution of those individuals,” Panetta said. “I think they did their job, they did it pursuant to the guidance that was provided them, whether you agreed or disagreed with it.”

News of the inquiry was greeted with concern among agency veterans.

“There is a good deal of investigation fatigue, and a feeling that the agency has become even more than before a piñata,” said a former high-ranking CIA official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The new investigation is likely to “stimulate more risk aversion,” the former official said. “There’s a potential cost to other operations down the road when the current administration says, ‘We would like you to take this operation, it’s been blessed by lawyers and briefed by Congress.’ Why should we do anything anywhere near cutting-edge if down the road the next administration can decide to get back at their political opponents?”

Senate aides declined to say whether the committee would seek new testimony from former CIA Director George J. Tenet or other former top officials who were involved in the creation and management of the programs.

The Senate investigation will examine whether the detention and interrogation operations were carried out in ways that were consistent with the authorities and instructions issued in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, officials said.

The panel will also look at whether lawmakers were kept fully informed. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the committee, and others have said that the Bush administration improperly withheld information from Congress on the CIA’s operations.

The investigation comes at a time when the Obama administration is in the midst of making dramatic changes in the CIA’s counter-terrorism programs.

Last month, President Obama ordered the CIA to close its secret prison facilities and to abandon “enhanced” interrogation measures, including waterboarding, a method that simulates drowning. Instead, Obama ordered the agency to abide by the Army Field Manual on interrogation.

The administration has also established a task force to look at the interrogation programs, although that effort is mainly designed to examine their effectiveness and determine whether the CIA should again be granted authority beyond the Army Field Manual.

Senate investigators plan a similar line of inquiry, with a goal of assessing the effectiveness of enhanced interrogation techniques employed by the CIA, including sleep deprivation and subjecting prisoners to cold temperatures.

Panetta’s immediate predecessor as CIA chief, Michael V. Hayden, has defended the agency’s use of such methods and argued that the agency should not be bound by Army Field Manual constraints.

Hayden has said the agency has held fewer than 100 prisoners in custody since the Sept. 11 attacks, and less than one-third of those were ever subjected to enhanced interrogation measures. Three prisoners, including self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, were subjected to waterboarding.

There has also been a push from other lawmakers to launch an independent investigation of the CIA’s operations. The Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled a hearing next week on a proposal to create a commission like the one that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks to examine CIA counter-terrorism operations under Bush.

“The last administration justified torture, presided over the abuses at Abu Ghraib, destroyed tapes of harsh interrogations,” said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the chairman of that committee. “How can we restore our moral leadership and ensure transparent government if we ignore what has happened?”

But the Senate Intelligence Committee has direct jurisdiction over U.S. spy agencies, and is launching its inquiry in part to make sure its members have independent data and are in position to influence future interrogation and detention policies, officials said.

Aides said the negotiations were aimed at producing an investigation with broad support from both parties. Republicans have argued that the inquiry should focus on CIA programs and not become a referendum on Bush administration policies, such as the Justice Department legal memos that underpinned the program.

Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.), the panel’s ranking Republican, “does not think that witch hunts and discussions of the legality of [Justice Department] memos are in any way helpful at this point,” another Senate aide said.

Copyright 2009 Los Angeles Times

Senate will advance torture commission

Is there a lot America doesn’t know about Bush torture policies? There is, says Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. “This is going to be big.”

On a Mission

Mark Benjamin
salon.com
Wednesday, Feb 25, 2009

WASHINGTON — The Senate Judiciary Committee plans to move forward with a commission to investigate torture during the Bush administration. Committee Chairman Pat Leahy, D-Vt., told Salon Tuesday that his panel would soon announce a hearing to study various commission plans. His staff said the announcement could come as early as Wednesday.

While Michigan Democrat Rep. John Conyers and North Carolina Republican Rep. Walter Jones drafted a bill to create a commission to review abuse of war powers during the Bush administration, Leahy’s Senate commission would represent the first concrete steps toward a broad review of U.S. torture since 9/11.

Spearheading Senate efforts to establish a torture commission is Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse. As a member of both the Judiciary Committee and the Intelligence Committee, Whitehouse is privy to information about interrogations he can’t yet share. Still, regarding a potential torture commission, he told Salon, “I am convinced it is going to happen.” In fact, his fervor on the issue was palpable. When asked if there is a lot the public still does not know about these issues during the Bush administration, his eyes grew large and he nodded slowly. “Stay on this,” he said. “This is going to be big.”

Whitehouse admitted he had not discussed the plan yet with President Obama, who has been notably wishy-washy on the notion since taking office. On the one hand, Obama has consistently said that “my administration is going to operate in a way that leaves no doubt that we do not torture.” Yet on the other hand, he has insisted that “nobody is above the law, and if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen; but that generally speaking, I’m more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards.”

According to Whitehouse, current politics dictate that Congress should take the lead on establishing a torture commission. “When you look at the economic meltdown that [Obama] was left by the Bush administration, you can see why he would want to reassure the American public that he is out there looking at these problems and trying to solve them and not focusing on the sins of the past,” he said.

Whitehouse, however, predicted that Obama would not object to a torture commission moving forward in Congress. Besides, he said, “When push comes to shove, we are the legislative branch of government. We have oversight responsibilities. And we don’t need the executive branch’s approval to look into these things just as a constitutional matter.”

Plans to establish the commission still remain in their infancy, as senators and staff look at previous panels, such as the 9-11 Commission, and investigations following Watergate. Whitehouse, a former U.S. attorney, noted that a torture commission might need the power to immunize witnesses on a case-by-case basis. The prospect of future prosecutions, he said, are beside the point. Most important was putting a spotlight on abuses committed by the Bush administration.

“We have this American government, which has an architecture and a shape and a system that drives it and constrains it and that keeps it honest,” he said. “And what happened is that the Bush administration figured out a lot of ways to tunnel through the walls and sneak over the fences. So now we need to go back and say, ‘We have got to plant those walls deeper so you can not tunnel under them.’ We’ve got to spotlight how they did it,” Whitehouse explained. “The ultimate goal in this is to protect and enhance American democracy.”

Last week, retired Maj. Gen. Tony Taguba, known for conducting an honest investigation of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, discussed his support for such a commission in an exclusive interview with Salon. Taguba joined a group of former high-level diplomats and law enforcement officials who also announced their support for a torture commission late last week, along with 18 rights groups.

During that interview, Taguba stated that any review must include close analysis of claims from Bush administration officials that abusive interrogations worked. “Some of those activities were actually not effective and those who thought so were in the academic or pristine settings of their offices,” Taguba said. “What would they know?”

Whitehouse agreed, and depicted as ironic the fact that some members of the intelligence community saw themselves as “the Lance Armstrongs of interrogation,” while some members of the military objected to abuse as ineffective. “In fact, the exact opposite was true,” Whitehouse said about such claims from the CIA.”It was amateur hour with them, and the career, tough, serious military interrogators said that this just was not effective,” he said. “But it is important to prove the point, because they keep saying, ‘We saved lives. We interrupted plans. We did this, that and the other.’” Whitehouse added, “Well, when you drill down, there is never a fact there. It turns into fog and evasion.”

Copyright ©2009 Salon Media Group, Inc.

As the GOP Burns, Some Party Leaders Still Cling to Conspiracy Theory

This is just embarrassing.

Steve Benen
Washington Monthly
February 22, 2009

Why is it so painfully difficult to take the Republican Party seriously in the 21st century? Because they haven’t quite figured out that credibility comes with a degree of political maturity. Take Sen. Richard Shelby (R) of Alabama, for example. (via Ben Smith)

Another local resident [in Cullman County, Alabama] asked Shelby [yesterday] if there was any truth to a rumor that appeared during the presidential campaign concerning Obama’s U.S. citizenship, or lack thereof.

“Well his father was Kenyan and they said he was born in Hawaii, but I haven’t seen any birth certificate,” Shelby said. “You have to be born in America to be president.”

According to the Associated Press, state officials in Hawaii checked health department records during the campaign and determined there was no doubt Obama was born in Hawaii.

The nonpartisan Web site Factcheck.org examined the original document and said it does have a raised seal and the usual evidence of a genuine document. In addition, Factcheck.org reproduced an announcement of Obama’s birth, including his parents’ address in Honolulu, that was published in the Honolulu Advertiser on Aug. 13, 1961.

This kind of stupidity took a right turn at annoying quite a while ago, and now rests comfortably in the realm of madness. When Alan Keyes launches into a ridiculous tirade about the president’s birth certificate, it’s not especially surprising — Keyes, based on all available evidence, is apparently not well. Anyone looking for lucidity from the poor man is bound to be disappointed.

It’s far more annoying to have elected Republican officials in Tennessee signing on as plaintiffs in a lawsuit “aimed at forcing” the President to “prove he is a United States citizen.”

But the Shelby example is a different magnitude of idiocy. Shelby isn’t just some random yahoo with a right-wing radio talk-show; he’s a four-term United States senator. He’s the ranking member on the Senate Banking Committee, for crying out loud. It’s incumbent on him to be somewhat coherent and conduct himself with at least a little sanity.

In the broader context, the Republican Party is still unsure how to get back on the road to electoral success after years of failure and defeat. While the party mulls its options, we have a leading House Republican comparing the GOP to the Taliban; a prominent Senate Republican wanting to position the party as “freedom fighters” taking on the “slide toward socialism”; and a leading Senate Republican publicly questioning the President of the United States’ birth certificate.

What an embarrassment.

It seems a little early in Obama’s presidency to see Republicans become this deranged. I shudder to think how unhinged they’ll be in, say, a year.

Copyright 2009 Washington Monthly

Whalin’ Palin

She may be off the national stage, but the Republican empress continues to ravage America’s great wilderness state. Her latest target? Beluga whales.
Katharine Mieszkowski
salon.com
Monday, Feb 23, 2009

The 180 watery miles from the Gulf of Alaska to Anchorage known as Cook Inlet are a tough place for a beluga whale to make a living.

In the summer, when glacially fed streams and rivers wash fine sediment into the water, the turbidity makes the water opaque. The relatively small white whales, made famous to children everywhere in the Raffi song “Baby Beluga,” use echolocation to find food and navigate their cloudy surroundings. The belugas send out noises until they bounce off something, like sonar in a submarine. They are the most vocal of all whales, and their frequent high-pitched twitters have earned them the affectionate nickname the “sea canary.”

Looking for food, the belugas in Cook Inlet venture into perilously shallow areas. “They move in extremely dangerous areas and in some of the biggest tides in the world,” says Craig Matkin, a marine mammal biologist for the North Gulf Oceanic Society. “Sometimes they strand and have to get off the sand.” The whales can withstand being beached for as long as 12 hours, waiting for the next tide to come in.

But for all the amazing ways that the Cook Inlet belugas cope with their stark environment, there’s one imminent threat for which they have no adaptation: Gov. Sarah Palin.

Palin’s old-school approach to wildlife management is legendary. Despite her incongruous penchant for sporting a polar bear pin, the governor’s antipathy for federal protections for the polar bear has led her administration to sue the federal government over the bear’s threatened status. Palin’s gruesome policy of supporting aerial hunting of wolves is so infamous that Defenders of Wildlife has launched an entire “Eye on Palin” campaign, starring actress Ashley Judd. The site has prompted the governor to denounce the venerable environmental organization as an “extreme fringe group.” Now, new federal protections to protect the belugas of Cook Inlet are Palin’s latest target.

On Jan. 14, 2009, the Alaska governor announced that the state had filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue the federal government for protecting the whales, arguing that Alaska is already doing enough for the whales in the Inlet. Palin’s chief of staff published an Op-Ed in the Anchorage Daily News on Jan. 28 titled “Protection Requirements for Cook Inlet Belugas Are Silly.”

While there are five stocks of beluga whales in waters near Alaska, the ones in Cook Inlet are isolated and genetically distinct from their cousins. That population has declined dramatically since the 1980s, from over 1,000 to about 375 now. More than 300 whales perished in one four-year stretch (1994 to 1998) alone, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service. Marine mammal biologists and conservationists were hopeful that sharply limiting subsistence hunting of the whales by native Alaskans would see the whales bounce back. But despite only five whales being killed by hunting since 1999, when new regulations went into effect, the whales have not rebounded.

Even the Bush administration took note of the Cook Inlet belugas’ decline, after being pressured by environmental groups. In October 2008, the National Marine Fisheries Service announced the listing of the Cook Inlet population of beluga whales as a full-fledged endangered species. Yes, the Bush administration, infamous for its disdain for science when it came to protecting endangered critters, saw fit to offer protections to the belugas living in Cook Inlet. But not the Palin administration.

“It’s hard to imagine that anyone could be more anti-environmental than Bush, but Palin is Exhibit A,” says Brendan Cummings, oceans program director for the Center for Biological Diversity. “Here we had the most anti-environmental administration in U.S. history, and Palin still feels compelled to sue over one of the few environmentally positive things to come out of that administration.”

If the Alaska governor does indeed represent the future of the Republican Party, her cavalier approach to preserving endangered species represents a break from the GOP’s past. After all, the Endangered Species Act, passed by a Democratic Congress, was signed into law by President Richard Nixon. “Sarah Palin is a very gifted politician, she obviously has a future and she’s going places,” says Jim DiPeso, spokesman for Republicans for Environmental Protection. “And she is certainly within her rights to file litigation. But in this case she’s on the wrong side of history and the American conservation movement, and of what’s prudent and right.”

What’s hampering the Cook Inlet belugas’ comeback? Marine mammal biologists don’t know yet, says Karla Dutton, Alaska director for Defenders of Wildlife. Hypotheses range from climate change altering the habits of the fish that the whales prey on, to city noise pollution impacting the belugas’ hunting and travel. There’s a theory that more killer whales could be venturing into Cook Inlet and preying on them. Or perhaps a parasite or disease is hindering their return. Or maybe there are simply so few females of reproductive maturity now that it’s hard for the whales to stage a comeback.

But the health of the species could have implications for the rest of the ecosystem they inhabit. As year-round residents, the belugas represent the top of the food chain in Cook Inlet and their disappearance could have a cascade effect. And whatever’s harming the whales could have implications for other species in Cook Inlet. One thing the scientists do know for sure is that the belugas’ new endangered species status will encourage more study of them. Plus, an endangered designation means that the federal government will designate “critical habitat” for the belugas this year within Cook Inlet, offering new protections for spots frequented by the whales.

That’s what’s got the Palin administration’s goat. “The fear is that the Endangered Species Act listing of the beluga will lead to regulation of essentially unfettered industrial activity in Cook Inlet,” explains Cummings. Today in Cook Inlet, the oil industry is still allowed to dump its toxic waste into areas with fisheries. That seemingly outrageous practice is grandfathered into law because the industry’s activities predated the Clean Water Act of 1972. “Cook Inlet remains in this kind of 1950s regulatory backwater,” says Bob Shavelson, executive director of Cook Inlet Keeper, a nonprofit advocacy group working to protect the watershed.

The beluga also happens to inhabit the part of Alaska with the largest human population, making it essentially an urban whale. Listing the beluga as an endangered species could affect plans to expand the port of Anchorage and to build the Knik Arm Bridge, now known by critics as “the other bridge to nowhere.” The critical habitat designation could also curtail oil and natural gas exploration and drilling in Cook Inlet, as well as coal mining in the watershed.

But environmentalists argue that protecting the whales does not have to halt such industrial projects altogether, just make them more whale-friendly. “There is the handful of interests that have been getting the free pass, and will be subject to new regulation and don’t want it: oil, bridge construction, sewage treatment and port expansion,” says Cummings. “Those are activities that will get more regulation. That doesn’t mean that they won’t occur, it just means that they’ll have to demonstrate how they’re compatible with the protection of the beluga.”

Still, Palin’s objection to the listing of the whale goes beyond hampering her desire to “drill, baby, drill.” “It’s the classic Western mentality toward the federal government: Give us all your money, and then leave us alone, and don’t regulate us,” says Cummings. “Alaska is completely dependent on federal pork, but completely opposed to any form of federal regulation.”

In her Jan. 22 “state of the state” address, Palin herself said as much, bragging about suing the federal government for “misusing the Endangered Species Act … to impose environmental policies that should be debated and approved legislatively, not by court order or bureaucratic decree.” She promised: “We’ll challenge abuse of federal law when it’s used to lock up Alaska.”

“Palin is pandering to a national base because [attacking] the Endangered Species Act has grown into a very effective organizing tool for the private-property rights advocates, who want to see all regulation disappear,” says Shavelson. “I think this is a frivolous lawsuit, and a waste of taxpayer money.”

The good news for the belugas of Cook Inlet is that advocates are confident the National Marine Fisheries Service under the Obama administration will vigorously defend the beluga listing from Palin’s lawsuit. Yet having had the opportunity to once again shake a legal stick at federal regulation may be victory enough for Palin.

Copyright ©2009 Salon Media Group, Inc.

Investigating Bush’s Crimes

The Gang

SCOTT HORTON
The Nation
February 18, 2009

When the Obama transition team opened a questions referendum on its popular change.gov website in December, one issue quickly soared to the top. “Will you appoint a Special Prosecutor (ideally Patrick Fitzgerald) to independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush Administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping?” And when Obama stepped to the microphone at his first presidential press conference, the question came again, this time with reference to a Congressional call for a truth commission. Obama’s response: “My view is also that nobody is above the law, and if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen; but that generally speaking, I’m more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards.” The answer was a slight variation on the theme he has struck consistently since the final days of his campaign. But what does it mean with respect to the criminal accountability of Bush-era policy-makers? Many are inclined to hear confirmation of their hopes–Republicans eager to see the disastrous Bush years passed over without more fuss will stress the intention not to “look back,” while Obama supporters who embraced his strong criticism of Bush’s torture and surveillance policies will emphasize his observation that “nobody is above the law.” Others are displeased with the ambiguity and press for a conclusive decision on the question.

But these exchanges give us the essence of the “no drama Obama” style: he builds support with lofty rhetoric, giving some sense of his policy objectives, but he consciously avoids committing himself to any particular resolution. Obama is not being coy, I think. He means precisely what he says. Accountability is not a part of his affirmative agenda, least of all for his first hundred days, on which the long-term success or failure of his presidential term may hang. An economic stimulus package, healthcare initiatives and a series of foreign policy challenges occupy center stage. Even in the Justice Department, Obama’s first objectives involve restoring the institution’s self-confidence and resurrecting its historical role in civil rights and voting rights enforcement. It’s not that Obama and his senior advisers see the accountability issue as inherently unimportant–on the contrary, they readily admit that it may be the key to long-term resolution of a series of questions surrounding the abusive extension of presidential power. But it is clearly a back-burner issue for them, something better addressed near the end of his first term or, better still, during a second term.

Obama’s problem is that a growing number of Americans are concerned about what the Bush administration did and are eager to press the issue. The extent of public concern has been reflected in several recent public opinion polls, including one in February by USA Today showing that nearly two-thirds of Americans support investigations of the Bush administration’s use of torture and warrantless wiretapping; roughly 40 percent support criminal investigations.

And the shift in public opinion is not the only thing transforming the environment in Washington on this issue. Susan Crawford, a Cheney protégée and the senior Bush administration official responsible for the military commissions in Guantánamo, told the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward that she refused to approve the charges against Mohammed al-Qahtani because he had been tortured. Torture is, of course, a felony under US law, and if multiple figures are involved, it might well be “conspiracy to torture,” a separate crime. As ABC News reported and President Bush later confirmed, the full book of proposed techniques to which Qahtani was subjected had been approved by the National Security Council, headed by Bush. A senior Obama Justice figure remarked after reading the Crawford interview that it would be “impossible to sweep the matter under the carpet.” That’s a view that seems to be shared by US allies and United Nations officials, who, pointing to Crawford’s admissions, are asking why the United States has failed to introduce a criminal inquiry into how torture came to be practiced as a matter of US policy. Articles 4 and 5 of the Convention Against Torture require the United States to prohibit torture under domestic criminal law and to investigate and prosecute incidents in which it is practiced. The failure even to begin criminal investigations has placed the United States in breach of its obligations under the treaty, a point that even torture apologists like University of Chicago Law School professor Eric Posner freely concede.

President Bush was widely expected to issue blanket pardons to those involved in his interrogations and surveillance programs, but he did not do so. Moreover, the Bush administration’s tenuous claim to legality for its torture programs was ended immediately after Obama assumed office, when he directed a reassessment of interrogation policies and revoked all of the relevant Bush-era Justice Department opinions with the stroke of a pen.

Obama has been careful to avoid any suggestion that he or his senior officers are directing a criminal investigation or prosecution of the Bush-era torture enablers. He is right to do so. The criminal justice system of a democratic state should not operate like a well-oiled military machine taking its cue from the commander in chief. It requires professional prosecutors who operate with critical detachment from political officials when they pursue criminal investigations. Moreover, the painful circumstances of the torture and surveillance programs, particularly the fact that senior Justice Department officials were complicit in their implementation at almost every step, make it an ethically doubtful proposition for the Justice Department even to take up the matter. ( Next )

Copyright © 2008 The Nation

Republicans are the party that wrecked America

GOP Wrecked America

AmericaPANIC: Picking Up the Pieces After the Republicans Wrecked America

It’s fun to go back and read the Republican trolls and their misguided predictions. I don’t think they saw it coming.

America’s not embracing the Democrats, don’t get that confused. Nope, America is simply kicking the Republicans to the curb.

The GOP has been destroyed.

It will never, EVER, come back.

The national Republican Party is now dead.

Goodbye Rush Limbaugh. Goodbye John McCain. Goodbye Sean Hannity. Goodbye George Bush. Goodbye Karl Rove. Goodbye Fox News. You are completely and forever discredited. You wrecked America and you are now dead.

That said, the former members of this dead and discredited party will resurface, and they’ll likely form new political parties. Some might even stay under the old “Republican” banner, after the GOP civil war. But the GOP as you knew it is now dead.

Good riddance.

Never before has a political party, and their ignorant and misguided supporters, done so much damage to America. And the Republicans are now competing with the German Nazi Party for the banner of “most destructive political party in world history”.

Good riddance.

History will be brutal.
Copyright 2008 AmericaPANIC: Picking Up the Pieces After the Republicans Wrecked America

“Trailblazer”

Editor’s Note: Article was first post on The Immoral Minority on Friday, February 20, 2009 http://theimmoralminority.blogspot.com/2009/02/all-we-need-to-know-about-sarah-palin.html . Sorry

Yeah "Trailblazer" - right!

Syrin’s blog
Syrin from Wasilla’s Blog
February 21, 2009

“She ran around like a rabid little thing” (Cheryl) Welch recalled. “She did not like to lose and sometimes cried after losses. She was very petulant and formidable–there was no stopping her. We’d be practicing and drilling–she wanted the ball so badly she would get red in the face and scratch and claw until you just wanted to say, “Here, take the ball.” When I heard they nicknamed her Sarah Barracuda after the way she played on the basketball court, I thought, “Wow, perfect.”

Welch said that even after she left middle school, her experience with Sarah Heath stayed with her forever. “She struck me as too competitive and didn’t strike any balance in her life. What she wanted, she really wanted, and no one was going to tell her no. She acted like she was everyone’s favorite.” (Chapter two pg. 28-29)

Now when I read this I was immediately struck by how little Palin’s personality has changed since her days on the middle school basketball court.

Her absolute “win at any cost” attitude is still very evident in how she conducts herself during campaigns, and in her inability to understand or care how her actions may be affecting her opponents or teammates.

Now here is a little gift for those of you whose were asking for the real dirt in this book. I am not up to the Trig pregnancy story yet, but I did stumble across this little tidbit in chapter five.

Sarah and Todd’s business partner would become good friends. They enjoyed politics, and Brad would eventually win a seat on the Palmer City Council. Years later. after Sarah was nominated as a vice-presidential candidate, the National Enquirer alleged that they had an affair after Sarah became mayor, an accusation that was vociferously denied by both sides.(Chapter five pg.70)

Okay now to divulge a little bit of “behind the scenes” blogging information. I was contacted by John South, the National Enquirer reporter who wrote that Palin affairstory. He was chasing another rumor that I was not very helpful with, but while I had him on he phone I asked him about this article. He said that they had been unable to confirm this story in Wasilla itself, but had tracked down a few people outside of Alaska who were willing to confirm it. And then he told me to keep in mind, that nobody had threatened legal action over the revelation nor had Governor Palin herself ever gone on record to address it.

Now flash forward to my family room just last week. Somehow this story came up during my conversations with some political friends and I offered that I had heard that while Palin may have had feelings for Brad Hanson that it may never have been consummated. My two very knowledgeable friends from Wasilla both laughed out loud. (Now in my defense I was simply offering up another rumor that I had heard to see if there was any validity to it.)

“How could it be considered a affair, if nobody had sex?” asked one of my friends. And the other one said, “Trust us, they consummated the relationship.”

I have no direct information about this possible interlude, and can not say if it really happened one way or the other. But my friends have been pretty spot on throughout this whole situation, so take that for what it is worth.

So there is your dose of Sarah Palin scandal. Now I have to go read some Shakespeare to cleanse my mental palate.
Vox © 2003-2008 Six Apart, Ltd.

Why does Sarah Palin disrespect the American Flag?

This photo, used in a Newsweek article last year about Sarah Palin, appears on the 2009 Sarah Palin calendar, and was just lauded by Pat Buchanan on Morning Schmegegge as a demonstration of her patriotism:

Wrapped in the Flag

Brilliant at Breakfast
Friday, February 20, 2009

United States Flag Code, Title 4, Chapter 1, Sec. 8(d):
The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery.

Why does Sarah Palin hate America? Why does she desecrate Our Flag?

Copyright 2009 Brilliant at Breakfast