Arlen Specter abandons GOP

The defection of Arlen Specter from the increasingly schizophrenic GOP is truly good news for the future of this country. With his presence in the Democratic Senate caucus, and the inevitable addition of Al Franken to the Minnesota seat, the Democrats will have the filibuster-proof 60 seats in the Senate. While this doesn't mean that Specter will always vote with the Democrats it does mean that it will be very difficult, if not impossible, for the Republicans to block Obama's agenda. This is crucial because it is also the time when Obama is pushing through the Congress two major initiatives of his presidency and the Democratic party's agenda in general: health care reform, and an energy bill. Both of these bills are essential to the fulfillment of Obama's campaign promise to provide affordable health care to all Americans and weaken our dependence on foreign oil while at the same time crafting a sound environmentally-friendly energy policy. Obama's rock-star popularity even in the heartland of the country, the increasing signs of the economy's stabilization (or at least moderate thawing), and the filibuster-proof of Senate majority for the Dems means that Obama will get his way on almost all of his agenda items. And this is good news for all of us, even the Republicans who will benefit from getting more affordable health care and breathing less polluted air.

At the same time, GOP's response to Specter's defection shows the depth of their insanity and points to the probability that the Republicans are going to stay in the crazy wilderness for election cycles to come. The GOP commander in chief, Rush Limbaugh said "good riddance" to Specter and told him to take McCain and his daughter with him. The GOP nominal chairman Michale Steele said that Specter was doing this for self-preservation and that somehow his defection was inevitable due to Specter's "left voting record." And finally, this morning in his WashP op-ed Bill Kristol (the venerable ideological "brain" behind the GOP and who has been wrong on every single issue!) said that this is good for the Republican party!

What this collective response shows is the GOP's continuing belief in some imagined "purity" of the party's ideology. Reacting to any challenge to their right-wing narrow-mindedness with aggressiveness that reminds one of middle-school gym locker fights (even if the challenge comes from McCain's daughter), the Republican ideologues have really resigned themselves to being the far right-wing party of the South. Their argument that Specter is doing this for survival is so blatantly shallow that it really merits now comment, but I can't help it: of course he is doing this for self-preservation! He was facing an impossible Republican primary challenge in Pennsylvania and running on that ticket against a Club for Growth far-right winger (a man who I think truly needs medical attention) would have been insane and politically stupid. Specter has always been treated like an outcast by the Republicans especially with the recent descent of the GOP into the far right-wing nuttery. After all, Specter entered politics as a Democrat and switched to the GOP in order to win a District Attorney seat on a Republican ticket. But this is what politics is all about! And instead of figuring out how to reshape their party's platform in order to keep people like Spector and draw millions of Americans to their party tent, the GOP reacted with such stupid, shallow aggressiveness that it really makes one concerned for the future of our two-party democracy.

The resigned criticism of Specter also shows that the Republicans have lost their mind if they think they can win on their ideology alone: this country's demography necessitates that the party in power support: gay rights, abortion rights, more activist government, and less belligerent foreign policy.

For their part, the GOP operatives keep railing against Obama's "socialism" (or fascism, depending which side of his bed Glen Beck got up that morning), roaming the dense inhospitable jungle of their wilderness increasingly resembling rabid dogs and not mature political opposition!

I really don't mind them staying in the wilderness for as long as it is humanly possible, but I do worry about the Democrats having unchecked power. Not because of their agenda: in fact, this is one reason we all should be happy right now, in fact thrilled! The Democratic agenda is good for this country and we should make no secret that we want it. But what I worry about is Democrats' lately dormant but inevitable propensity for infighting and the possibility of several camps being established within the Democratic caucus in both houses. The simmering fight over investigations of Bush's torture policies might present the first opportunity for the Democrats to start dividing. But even these divisions (if they are over substantive policy differences) might be good for this country because they fill the never satisfied need of this country for a true multiparty system.

Grading Obama at 100 days

Let me also jump on the 100 days bandwagon even though the White House has called this a "Hallmark holiday," they themselves seem to be readying for it with a prime time news conference scheduled for Wednesday night preceded by a town-hall meeting with the President in St. Louis. The 100 days mark also matters because it allows us to gauge what kind of President Obama promises to be. This is how I would grade him--you are welcome to chime in.

Economy: A-
In the first 100 days he has passed the biggest stimulus bill in the American history and the stimulus is already having affects. Just yesterday, the NYT reported that the people in the small economically depressed Indiana town Anderson are feeling more optimistic about the overall economy, and the city's mayor can begin many reconstruction projects. Our own university budget is not being rescinded 3% (a standard operating procedure during the disastrous Blago tenure), but it is actually being increased 1%. The reason I would give him a - is because the stimulus was stripped of considerable punch by the so-called "moderate Republicans," and the President necessarily had to go along with this. At the same time, however, the plan to fix the housing market seems to be working: the home sales are up, the cost of refinancing mortgages is at its historic low and has triggered a flood of refinancing and seems to have slowed the rate of foreclosures. Further, Giethner's long-criticized plan to save the banking system also seems to be working: Wells Fargo posted its best profit last month and many banks seem to be doing much better. The rallying of the Wall Street in the past few weeks suggest that we at long last may have reached the bottom of the recession.


Foreign Policy: B
Obama has drastically shifted gears from the horrors of the previous administration. He has followed through on his campaign promise to do more listening than talking in the world, to talk to our enemies, and to be more respectful of other points of view. Our relationship with both Cuba and Venezuela seems to be thawing: there are major discussions in the works between the US and Cuba and Hugo Chavez is going to send the Venezuelan ambassador to the US. Obama's popularity in the world, particularly in Europe, has done wonders for our relations. His performance on the world stage has been superb. However, I am very worried about his decision to escalate the fighting in Afghanistan: it seems that Afghanistan is becoming his Iraq and I just can't see what good can come out of it. At the same time, Iraq is almost destined to spiral down into violence once we leave: already the violence is ratcheting up as Maliki is becoming increasingly sectarian, provoking a reaction from the disaffected Sunni exiles who are funding the insurgency. In short, the Iraq quagmire remains just that: a horrible quagmire out of which I see no exit.

Changing America's image in the world: A+
I really think Obama has done a superb job on changing the image of our country in the world. On the second day in office, Obama banned all "enhanced interrogation" techniques (read: torture) that the Bush administration had used with impunity; he has ordered the closing of Guantanamo, and has re-instituted the rule of the Geneva Conventions in our treatment of detainees. His performance on the world stage (as I said above) has been nothing short of superb and he has followed through on every single campaign promise in terms of changing America's image in the world.

Restoring the Constitution: C
I am afraid this is where he gets lowest marks from me. While he did change the direction of our country, Obama has also been lukewarm at best and politically cowardly at worst in reversing the serious damage the Bush administration had done to our Constitution. In particular, he has been very disappointing with restoring the habeaus corpus to detainees, arguing that those at the Bagram prison in Afghanistan do not have the right to due process that our Constitution guarantees. Further, his continuing defense of the wiretapping program that he voted for while a candidate is really worrisome. He needs to completely restore the habeus corpus to everyone and outlaw warantless wiretapping. Finally, probably the most worrisome thing about his restoration of the Constitution has been his lukewarm support for holding the torturers-in-chief accountable for their grave violations of our laws. His support for a "bipartisan Commission" is a transparent political ploy to push the issue out of the White House. He needs to step back and allow Eric Holder of the Justice Dept to appoint a Special Prosecutor who will investigate these potential war crimes. Obama's mantra that he is interested in "looking forward, not looking backward" drives me nuts because it doesn't mean anything! Looking forward is impossible without looking backward because it would mean that the words in our laws and our Constitution mean nothing and can be violated at will.

Restoring America's confidence: A+
This is another area where he gets the highest marks. The polls show the country is generally optimistic about the direction we are taking (compared to only 28% who thought we were going in the right direction during the last thralls of the Bush regime). Obama's approval rating stands at the historic high of 69%, which is higher than Reagan's at this time, and all of his predecessors, with the exception of Eisenhower. This morning the NYT also reported that Obama is changing the perception of race relations in this country with more than half seeing the conditions of race relations improved and the number of black Americans who think so has nearly doubled since July! The mood of the country is extremely important not just for our economy, but for the very soul of our country. What is particularly a positive development of Obama's young presidency is the shift in the public perception of the role of government in our lives. People increasingly view the government as the solution and not as the problem (as Reagan idiotically claimed!). Obama's budget priorities coupled with the stimulus are making the government cool again. This might give Obama the necessary public support to push through the long overdue health care reform and move the country to the left.

So for the most part, Obama has kept his campaign promises. His personal favoribility ratings are also at a historic high: 74% and Michelle Obama's are 85%! The image of the first family in the White House has also done wonders for America's image in the world.

Ali Soufan: The American hero

As the fallout from the torture revelations continues, there are several officials of the US government who emerge as true heroes who resisted the impulse of the moment to engage in brutal tactics, and instead, passionately defended American values. The star of these brave souls is the former FBI agent Ali Soufan who, seven years after, is speaking out in this Newsweek article. Ali Soufan was a veteran FBI interrogator and a student of John O'Neill, the famous FBI agent who had warned about Bin Laden and was ignored of course. A son of Beirut immigrants who moved to Philadelphia as a child, he was eventually recruited into the FBI anti-terrorism unit and spoke fluent Arabic. His knowledge of the Kur'an was legendary according to his former colleagues: during interrogations he would cite Kuranic verses, and argue with terrorists about the meaning of certain passages, the legacy of Muhammad, etc. Eventually, he would gain their trust and information would start pouring out. He was a lead investigator of the USS Cole bombing.

In the spring of 2002, Ali Soufan was thrown in the middle of the brewing conflict between the CIA and the FBI over the methods for interrogating terrorism suspects. The subject of contention this time was Abu Zubaydah a fiery and borderline szchizophrenic Palestinian who was seen as a chief logistics chief of Al-Q. He was badly wounded in a firefight in Pakistan and was transferred to US custody by the Pakistanis, and was taken to an unknown location (probably Thailand). He was turned over to Ali Soufan and his fellow FBI interrogator. Together, they nursed the terrorist's wounds: Soufan held ice to his bruised lips, and his colleague nursed his buttocks! Eventually Abu Zubaydah opened up and started telling them valuable information. In the meantime, Soufan had poured through his FBI file and started addressing him by the nickname that his mother had used for him, shocking Abu Zubaydah into talking! In fact, they even started arguing about US influence, and globalism, after which Abu Zubaydah asked for a Coca-Cola a request which had them both laughing. In any case, Abu Zubaydah soon identified Khalid Sheikh Muhammad as one of the plotters of 9/11 and told them in detail valuable information about terrorists training camps.

However, the FBI agents were soon interrupted by CIA contractors, led by James Mitchell who became the architect of the interrogation program. Soufan became alarmed when he saw a coffin-like box outside of Zubaydah's cell, saw him naked, and even heard Mitchell talk about waterboarding him. Furious, he phoned his headquarters and soon the FBI director Muller became involved. After CIA interrogators repelled Soufan's advice that this was illegal (arguing that they had Gonzales' authorization), Soufan threatened to arrest them! At which, he was told by his headquarters to leave CIA premises, and Muller ordered his agents to stay clear of the CIA.

Ironically, the whole episode re-opened the deeply entrenched rift between the FBI and the CIA regarding anti-terrorism struggle with the latter seeing FBI as weak and too patient with terrorists. As the 9/11 Commission report pointed out, it was the FBI-CIA rivalry that had caused serious missteps in the prelude to 9/11. And now, the rift was greater than ever before.

Ali Soufan must be feeling pretty good about himself right now as does the FBI director Muller. As they all should. These are the true American heroes.

Conspiracy established

The flood of information on Bush administration's torture policies has clearly established a well-organized conspiracy that will definitely hold up in the court of law. It all started when President Bush signed the Executive Order of Feb 7, 2002 ordering the suspension of the Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions in our treatment of detainees. This triggered a chain-reaction of flurry of legal activities within the Office of the Legal Counsel of the Justice Department, the Pentagon's legal counsel office, as well as Vice President's Legal Counsel David Addington. What is particularly important in this case is that it has been clearly established that those who drafted the torture memo KNEW they were violating the law at the time those memos were drafted.

The clear evidence of this is the fact that as early as December 2001, the Dept of Defense asked the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA), which had devised the interrogation training of our own servicemen0--the similar methods were to be used against the detainees--to comment on these interrogation methods and if they were successful. Not only did the advice from the JPRA refer to these methods--including water-boarding--as "torture," but they were confused as to why the DoD wanted to use these interrogation methods to obtain intelligence in a fast manner. The whole point of these methods--initially used by North Koreans and the Chinese--was to extract FALSE information from our servicemen. This is why our PoWs were captured on camera saying that they believed in Communism, that the US was bad, etc. You know "The Manchurian Candidate" kind of staff. (The movie was actually inspired by these methods). So, for the administration to argue that they used these methods to gather information fast in order to prevent an attack is completely ridiculous. This is further confirmed by the memo of the former legal counsel to Condi Rice, Philip Zelikow who warned the administration that this would violate the US law and would be ineffective. Of course, both Zelikow's memo and the dissenting opinions of the JPRA were quashed, ignored, as the administration frantically proceeded to implement its torture policies. In fact, just a few days after a high-level visit to the GITMO by high officials of the Bush administration, GITMO started using the same methods. Once the war in Iraq started and Abu Ghraib became a US prison, the methods were employed there, as it was confirmed by the shocking photos we all saw in 2004.

So, why would the administration do this? It turns out that the torture of Abu Zubayda started when someone from the administration asked the CIA to probe him about Iraq-AlQ links. After the CIA interrogators said he did not know anything about such a link, they pushed the CIA to employ the tougher methods. Yes, the administration used torture for political purposes! In order to drum up the fake case for the war in Iraq!

This stuff is simply unbelievable. Attn General Eric Holder needs to appoint an independent and credible and respected Special Prosecutor, give him free reign, and allow him to follow the trail of evidence. What we have, from what we have learned in the last week or so, is a clear conspiracy to violate the law. This, in a nutshell, is a war crime.

I am increasingly confident the Obama administration will let its Justice Dept. do its constitutional duty.

Another Torture Bombshell

If anyone had any doubt as to the absurdity of the Bush administration's argument supporting torture, they should read the article in today's Foreign Policy issue written by a former Bush official. The official in question is a man by the name of Philip Zelikow. He was appointed as Secretary of State's Condolezza Rice's counsel and was the executive director of the 9/11 Commission. But because he had a high security clearance he vowed to secrecy (even though he had seen the memos) and spoke out only today after the memos became public knowledge.

It turns out that Zelikow wrote an alternative memo at the time Gonzales and his clan were writing their torture memos. The memo offered an alternative view of their interpretation of the US and international law. In particular, Zelikow argued that their interpretation of "cruel, human and degrading" was not legally sound: and in fact, that those methods clearly violated Article 16 of the Convention against Torture, as well as the Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. By the way, the violation of Common Article 3 is a federal offense, a war crime, punishable up to life imprisonment! In addition, this bureaucrat argued for moral standards to be evaluated before approving these methods. In other words, what was the unique value of the information we learned from the terrorists? And what did that do to us? In other words, the question is not who these terrorists are, but who we are, as Zelikow eloquently puts it. In addition, he pointed out that the memo ignored the 8th amendment, "conditions for confinement," by approving the confinement of prisoners in small boxes. Finally, he also suggested that the methods would be legal if they would not "shock the conscience" of the American people and if the federal courts could impose the same methods on the American citizens in American jails if national security was at stake. This obviously would never be possible! Hence, the methods are illegal under US law in the opinion of Mr. Zelikow.

Ok, but even this damning memo is not the end of the story. It is what the Bush cronies did with it! Not only did they ignore it, but they tried to destroy every single copy. This sounds much like obstruction of justice and tampering with crime scene! I mean, this stuff just keeps getting nastier and nastier.

In the end, I was really heartened by President Obama's statement today that it would not be up to him to decide if those who drafted the memos would be prosecuted. This is up to the Justice Department! Well said, Mr. President. You truly make us all proud!

Torture Investigation(s) Imminent

There are some good news this morning on the possibility that many branches of our government might conduct special investigations of those who approved torture methods outlined in the memos President Obama released. Despite Obama's reluctance to prosecute even those who drafted the memos (John Yoo, Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury), Eric Holder's Justice Department leaked the news late last night that Mr. Holder is seriously considering appointing a special prosecutor to look into the ways in which these torture methods were authorized at the top. At the same time, the White House went back on Rahm Emmanuel's slip on "This Week" that no one should be prosecuted, retracting that wide-ranging blank check by saying that President's Chief of Staff meant to say that those who carried out orders would not be prosecuted and not those who ordered them. This was an obvious move to leave the door open to these prosecutions. Furthermore, there is a growing pressure in the Congress on the Justice Department to investigate: the Judiciary Committee and the Armed Service Committee are both conducting their own investigations. Finally, the pressure from the international community is building: UN's chief torture expert said yesterday that the US is obligated under the Convention Against Torture to investigate.

The fact that our Attorney General Holder (who is emerging to be my favorite guy in Obama's administration) is seriously considering this, despite Obama's objections, shows the level of independence this Justice Department has from the White House, contrary to what it looked like under the Bush regime. It is also interesting that today we hear of the terrible scandal implicating Rep. Jane Harman (D-California) in a complicated scheme, involving indicted Israeli lobbyists and Attorney General Roberto Gonzales. According to the still sketchy reports, Harman was inadvertently picked up by NSA's wiretapping program as she promised to the Israeli lobbyists to push for the FBI investigation of their espionage activities to be dropped in return for their help in getting the chair of the Intelligence committee. At the same time, Alberto Gonzales pressured his department to slow down the investigation in return for Harman's cooperation on the Bush administration's desire to keep the wiretapping program secret. I mean, this reads like a depressing spy novel! And it shows the level of incest between Bush's White House and their Justice Department. And finally, it shows the need for Obama's Justice Department to assert its independence and this would be the issue to do it with!

That an investigation seems imminent is confirmed by the increasingly panicked Dick Cheney who rushed to the Fox News Channel yesterday and hysterically argued that Obama revealed "our national secrets," of course ignoring the fact that all those memos had been revealed by the leaked International Red Cross report in the New York Review of Books, including day to day interrogations of the suspects. He also (falsely) argued that during those interrogations, we got some useful information that saved lives, again ignoring the testimonies of many CIA agents that by the time the torture started, the suspects had already told them everything they knew. Yesterday's NYT report that one of the suspects was waterboarded 183 times in a month (!!!) shows the ineffectiveness of the method. Leaked interviews with those CIA interrogators shows that even before the torture started they alerted their headquarters that the suspect had told them everything he knew but it was from the higher echelons of power that the orders for those methods came.

Which brings us to why Cheney seems so panicky these days. As he should be!

President Ahmedinejad: Shut up!

The Iranian President Mahmud Ahmedinejad just a few minutes ago confirmed the wisdom of Obama's decision not to attend the annual UN conference against racism. The Iranian leader began his speech by calling Israel "completely racist," and arguing that the European "settlers and emigrants" were allowed to flood Palestine after WWII. But he did not mention why they were allowed to settle there? Hmm, maybe because 6 million of them had just been murdered and gassed?! Ahmedinejad's rhetoric is not only "vile," as the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described it, but it is also extremely unhelpful to Obama.

President Obama has staked a lot of political capital on his calm, deliberative, respectful foreign policy and has truly opened up new channels of dialogue with the Iranian regime(s). Ahmedinejad has responded by repeating (for the hundredth fucking time!) the same old anti-Semitic mantra against Israel and listing (again for the hundredth time) all the sins of the US in the world. More substantively, the Iranian regime at large has responded by jailing a US citizen and journalist on the obviously drummed up charges of treason. And of course by continuing to enrich uranium.

I still believe that Obama's foreign policy will yield much better results, and already is yielding these results, than Bush's cowboy showmanship. In fact, Obama's reception at the South American conference, his chat with Hugo Chavez and his overtures to Cuba, have really opened up a new era of US' relations with the rest of the world. It is also true that the US had been inflicting damage on many other countries for decades, it will take more than a couple of nice words from a well-intentioned President, to change the image of the US. But, having said that, the rest of the world, especially countries like Iran, have to meet Obama at least halfway!

Repeating the same-old anti-Semitic delusions, which we thought had been forever discredited by the horror of the Holocaust, is beyond unhelpful. It is criminal! So, President Ahmedinejad: shut up! And get off the stage!

Obama is Wrong!

Obama has to be commended for releasing the so-called "torture memos," that Bush's Justice Department officials wrote in the aftermath of 9/11 as a legal advice for CIA interrogators who were in the process of questioning "high-level" detainees at CIA's secret prisons abroad. The memos are truly disgusting. They make for a hair-raising reading and make one ashamed to be American! They confirm every single torture method previously reported by many courageous whistle blowers, Jane Mayer's book "The Dark Side," and most importantly, the 2006 secret report by the International Red Cross who had the chance to interview the 14 suspected terrorists who had been exposed to these methods.

The memos, written by the Office of the Legal Counsel, outline in bureaucratic and detached detail how far the CIA could go in interrogating the suspects. In short, the memos allowed: waterboarding, slamming prisoners against the wall, forced nudity for extended periods of time, dousing with cold war, slapping, stomach punching, putting a prisoner in a small box, placing insects inside the box, etc. If anyone had doubted that torture had been authorized by Bush himself, these memos leave no doubt that Bush and his Justice Department legally authorized torture, violating the International Convention Against Torture, the UN Charter of Human Rights, and several sections of the Geneva Conventions, the violations of which constitute a war crime.

So while Obama bravely declassified these memos--going against the strong push from the CIA and the intelligence community not to--he also issued a statement in which he closed the door to any prosecution of any CIA interrogators. The legal argument is as flimsy as it gets: they were following orders. As a constitutional lawyer Obama surely knows that this argument did not work for the Nazis at Nuremberg, or the Japanese who waterboarded our soldiers and whom we sentenced to death after WWII. I am by no means comparing CIA to Nazis, but merely pointing out that this attempt at legal immunity for lower-level violators has been historically discounted. The matter is further complicated by the fact that CIA has to rely (by law) on the opinion of the Office of the Legal Counsel. Otherwise, every CIA officer would have to hire his/her own lawyer and ask for advice before doing anything. This is why we have the Office of the Legal Counsel. But for too long this office has been staffed by administrations' cronies who issue opinions that are not legally sound, but rather, politically correct in that they are written with the interests of the administration in mind and not in the spirit of the law. According to the internal investigation of the Justice Department, John Yoo and Co. at Bush's office of legal counsel seriously violated ethics and wrote unsubstantiated memos based on flimsy legal arguments.

While Obama is partially right in saying that CIA interrogators followed what they thought were legal procedures, this statement also ignores the fact that there was seriously internal dissent regarding these methods. The FBI director, to whom I give a lot of credit for his courage, told his agents to walk out of the room and forbade them from participating in what he thought was a war crime. The Navy's counsel at Gitmo was appalled at the treatment of the prisoners there and soon resigned. And the list goes on. The Red Cross was issuing warnings and the CIA kept up with the interrogations as late as 2005. So the argument that they were doing this in the frantic days after 9/11 does not hold water at all. Even if it did, why do we need laws if they are going to collapse like a house of cards every time we have a national crisis?

What is most disturbing about Obama's blank-check immunity to CIA interrogators is the fact that this statement closed the door to any future prosecutions of the lawyers who wrote the memo. I would be fine with Obama not prosecuting lower level officials if he had committed to prosecute those who legalized torture, and go up the chain of command. But his emphasis on looking to the future and not going back to the past seriously dampers hope that anyone will ever be held accountable for these crimes.

Finally, what needs to be done is the whole Justice Department structure should be overhauled by making the Office of Legal Counsel independent of administrations so that it is staffed not by political appointees but by veteran government legal bureaucrats. This would prevent future misdeeds. But before we even get here and if we want to have any legal credibility left in the world, those who tortured must be held accountable. Period.

Republicans' Slide into Right-Wing Nuttery

The already bruising fight over the Republican primary in Pennsylvania for Arlen Specter's Senate seat, in May 2010, shows the extent to which the Republican Party has become a composite of sexually frustrated Sarah Palin fans, gun-toting, tax hating militiamen, and overtly racist fanatics who are enraged that the country has dared to elect its first black President. Arlen Specter is one of the last remaining sane voices of the Republicans in the Senate: he supports abortion rights, he was staunchly opposed to unwarranted NSA surveillance of American citizens, he blocked the right-wing nutjob Robert H. Bork from becoming a Supreme Court justice, and finally and most importantly, he voted for the stimulus package. Because of his vote (although he and his other moderate Republican colleagues had destructively watered down the stimulus) hundreds of thousands of police officers, firemen, teachers, professors, teaching assistants, etc, are not being laid off. Our own university's budget is actually being increased 1% this year, for the first time in 5 years! And Specter is to be commended for his opposition to his party's slide into the right-wing wilderness. According to the Congressional Quarterly, he has broken with his party 43% of the time.

It is because of his moderation that he will almost certainly (although it might still be too early to tell) lose his seat to his Republican challenger, an authentic Republican with right-wing nutjub credentials, Pat Toomey who lost to Specter by 2% in the last Republican primary. But after his vote for the stimulus, Specter has seen his popularity among his Republican voters plunge (his Republican challenger is up almost 14 points in the latest poll!). The irony of it all is that Specter's loss in the primary to Toomey would be wonderful news for the Democrats who would then almost certainly win that seat in November 2010 since Pennsylvania's demographics and voting pattern has shifted to the left, mimicking the country-wide trend (with the exception of the South). This has left Republicans like Specter vulnerable to right-wing vultures who love to campaign on socially divisive issues.

Specter's ostracism from his party shows the extent to which the Republican party has fatalistically accepted being the party of the right-wing, content with talking to itself rather than to the larger American electorate. This would be all good news to me, who as you probably know thinks that the Republican Party has pretty much destroyed this country during their 8-year rule, but I do think our country needs healthy, vibrant, and constructive opposition. Without an intellectually vibrant Republican Party, the Democrats may lose their way pretty soon. And that's the bad news....

Accessory to Murder

A few days ago I wrote about the impact our gun culture is having on the drug wars in Mexico and this morning's NYT confirms this in staggering detail. According to the Times, drug cartels in Mexico have been using individuals in the US (Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico) who have no criminal record and who are strapped for cash to buy weapons and smuggle them across the border. The criminal lack of gun control in our country means that anyone can walk into a store and buy as many AK-47s as they want. For example, this is exactly what happened the other day when a 28 year old unemployed man from Houston bought an assault rifle in cash. Since he had no criminal record and the gun dealer only cares about making a profit, he walked out. A few weeks later that same gun was traced as having been the murder weapon in the killing of three Mexican police officers. In another instance, an American woman walked into a store in Houston and tried to buy an AK-47 even though she knew nothing about weapons. After the suspicious gun dealer informed her she could face up to 10 years in prison if she was buying weapons for someone else, she walked out bewildered.

But even if you have a criminal record you can still legally buy as many rifles as you can. The NRA's ability to block Congress' attempts to regulate gun shows means that gun dealers at these shady shows can sell their weapons to anyone under the sun even (and they often do) to convicted killers: no background check is required, and no reporting to the ATF or any other branch of our government is required. It turns out that drug dealers from Mexico have been using some of these shows themselves in buying weapons and then smuggling them across the border and then using them to kill Mexican police officers. According to our statistics, over 90% of guns in Mexico come from our country.

And what does the criminal NRA say about this? Their argument is so childish and dishonest that it would not merit a response were they not so powerful in the halls of power in this country. An NRA spokesman says that since these dealers will get their guns anyway, why tighten the laws?! This is like a murderer saying "oh my victim would have been shot by another criminal, so why blame me for the murder." And that's exactly our crime in Mexico: accessory to murder.

When President Obama is in Mexico this Thursday, the Mexican President should remind him that the US is obligated by international law to halt the flow of gun smuggling from our country into Mexico. Since these weapons are coming from the territory where the US government is the sovereign, we have a moral and more importantly, legal, obligation to seize these weapons. And tight gun control laws are essential in doing this. Gun shows have to be regulated: 1) every purchase of a weapon has to be recorded and reported to the ATF, including the serial number for the weapon; 2) there needs to be a long waiting period for anyone who wants to acquire more than a hunting rifle, 3) mandatory background checks need to be imposed on every gun dealer, including those at gun shows; and 4) most importantly, the Congress has to re-institute the assault weapons ban, which Clinton had put in place and Bush had criminally allowed to lapse (with the Democrats' acquiescence)-this would ban murderous weapons such as AK-47s.

As long as we do not tighten our gun control laws we will continue to be accessories to murder.

Taxation in Nature

In commemorating the dreaded tax day, the NYT is running a fascinating articlethis morning on the presence of taxation methods among most species in nature. It turns out that our abstracted and sophisticated tax code is not all that dissimilar to the tax codes present in many animal kingdoms on the planet. For example, researchers at Harvard have discovered that when rhesus monkey finds high quality food (such as ripe coconut) he/she is supposed to give a characteristic food call to fellow monkeys. This means that the food will be shared. What happens if the monkey doesn't follow the proper tax procedure? Well, call it an audit: if the cheating monkey is discovered as having not shared his/her food, the group will not only take away all of his food, but the most dominant among them will beat him mercilessly in front of the group. Not that different from an IRS audit I guess.

Benjamin Franklin may have compared paying taxes to dying (although the wonderful thing about Franklin is you never know when he was being serious), but toll collection is widespread in nature and seems to be an integral part of survival. Each individual has to contribute to the group. Another fascinating example are the bell miner birds of Australia. In preparing the nest for the young ones, the pairs of breeding adults are helped by male youthful helpers who provide a steady supply of nest-making material, and food for the young. In return, they get to stay within the well-protected colony of their fellow species. Not much different than us paying taxes to the Pentagon, I guess.

According to human behavior scientists, humans have had different kinds of elaborate taxing schemes for hundreds of thousands of years. In fact, taxation seems to have become a part of our survivalist DNA. So, what do we do with those idiot "tea party" protesters? Should we follow the example of rhesus monkeys?

Obama's Education Agenda

Obama is facing yet another ferocious fight in Congress in the coming weeks, this time over his education agenda. The main point of contention is his plan to replace subsidized student loans made by banks with direct government lending. The private student lending industry is of course up in arms about this because for years they have been imposing hefty fees on student loans that are subsidized by the government anyway. They have used these fees to enrich themselves while students are left in a limbo of uncertainty on whether or not they could qualify, how much interest and fees they have to repay, etc. Last week, Sallie Mae, one of the industry's giants, reported that despite losing $213 million in 2008, it paid its CEO more than $4.6 million in cash and stock options and its vice chairman more than $13.2 million, including the use of a company plan. While they did not take any bailout money, the private lending industry would have collapsed as a whole if it were not for government help. So what does Obama want to do?

Since the government already guarantees repayment of these loans up to 97% these loans have been risk-free for banks. Obama wants to replace these loans with direct government lending and redirect the profits to pay for Pell Grants, which are invaluable to struggling students. The direct lending program is already being used by over 1,500 schools nationwide. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the plan would save $94 billion over the next decade and this would be the money the government would have to spend on Pell Grants which would increase every year to keep up with inflation thereby removing considerable amount of uncertainty in students' lives over whether or not Pell Grents would be available. Some powerful Congressional Democrats are up in arms because they would no longer have any control over the lending industry and would have to spend money on Pell Grants while the private lending industry and their lobbyists argue that this would leave private industry employees unemployed.

The government could absorb some of the employees from the private lending industry putting them in charge of loan processing, etc, but there is absolutely no reason this shouldn't be done. It is about time the government would start putting students ahead of banks' profits. And that's exactly what Obama will do. And no one can argue otherwise. This is why he should come out in front of the American people and dare these lobbyists and Congressional opponents to publicly oppose the plan.

Return of Internationalism

After eight years of narrow-minded cowboy-styled posturing against the rest of the world, the United States, I think, is returning to the tradition of internationalism. George W. Bush argued that Sept.11th had made the US immune to those international laws which it saw as hampering its "war on terror": the Geneva Conventions, the 1984 Convention Against Torture, international Cold War-era laws dealing with arms race, among others. The effects of this paradigm shift have been devastating for both, the US and the world: the image of the US had completely diminished in the eyes of most; rights of US' detainees (some of whom who were indeed terrorists, and some who were innocent) violated; the images of naked human pyramids from Abu Ghraib prison, the photograph of an American soldier draping the statue of Saddam Hussein with the American flag. All of these images portrayed an America which had become drunk with hubris, ignorant (and apathetic) towards the needs and interests of the world, and consumed with the Crusade-inspiring prosylitizing mission of "bringing democracy to the Middle East."

No more. The election of Barack Obama has already done amazingly positive things for our country and the rest of the world. The US no longer tortures. The CIA no longer has "black sites," as the new CIA director Leon Panetta declared the other day. Our Justice Department is run not by President's cronies whose purpose is to draft memos that would support policies that the administration had already decided upon, but instead, an Attorney General who is so intellectually and morally honest as to drop an entire multi-million dollar investigation against a leading Republican Senator (Ted Stevens) due to prosecution's misconduct.

Most importantly for our long-term health, the US is returning to the international law community. Obama has signaled the US' intention to re-join the UN Human Rights Committee, which the Bush administration boycotted, he has reimposed Geneva Convention rules on our treatment of detainees, and re-instituted the Army Field Manual as the blueprint for interrogations, and has signaled a significant shift away from bullying to the respect of other nations' sovereignty (in the case of Iran). Finally, the US is not only NOT boycotting the world's efforts to fight global warming, but it is LEADING the diplomatic orchestra to set up a new post-Kyoto treaty in the upcoming climate summit in Copenhagen.

Our re-discovered respect for the international community of nations is having immensely positive ramifications here at home. The US courts are moving in the direction of many European courts in signaling a more activist and progressive tone. Previously restricted to the more liberal coasts of the US, even the courts in America's mid-Western heartland are following the wind change: the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that the ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional, triggering a legalization of gay marriage in this state. Sensing the shift in the country's collective mood, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg, one of the most liberal justices on our court, openly said in Ohio that she disagreed with the more conservative Justices (Roberts, Scalia, and Alito) when it came to the influence of foreign law on our law. The US Supreme Court should cite decisions of foreign judges when issuing opinions since the US belongs to the larger legal community of the world. If we ignore the international law, then our law will not get cited at all in foreign jurisprudence. Significantly, she cited the recent Israeli Supreme Court's decision, banning the IDF from torturing its prisoners. "Why shouldn't I cite this decision," Justice Ginsburg stated.

The rule of international law is back and we are all better off for it!

Eric Hobsbawm: End of Capitalism?

In his brilliant article in yesterday's Guardian, the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm offers his assessment of the impact of the current economic crisis. According to Hobsbawm, the meltdown has not only destroyed the fetishism of the free-market, but has also confronted the Left with a seemingly unsolvable puzzle: what alternative can it offer? In other words, while the crisis might have left the Reagan/Thatcher-worshipping Right speechless, it has also accelerated the identity crisis of the Left that has been brewing since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Hobsbawm argues that the meltdown of capitalism has brought the experimentation of the 20th century to a full circle: the failure of the Soviet-style socialism led to the global march of Thatcherism which is being destroyed in front of our eyes. But, Hobsbawm convincingly argues, there are no ready-made solutions. The Left has no coherent progressive policy that can offer to the millions of unemployed and disenfranchised in offering a new way for the world's economy.

A huge part of the reason for our stunning lack of alternatives, according to Hobsbawm, is the fact that the British Labor had uncritically adopted the Thatcherite fetishism of free-market because the British Left had become fearful of the dominance of the Conservatives. Thus, both, Blair and Gordon Brown--both of whom Hobsbawm brilliantly dubs "Thatcher in trousers"--did exactly what Bill Clinton, a liberal Republican, did in the US: opened up markets to the influx of foreign capital, turned London into the financial capital of money-laundering and a haven for the zillioners of the world. But what this policy ignored were the results it had produced: while London might have become more chic and wealthier, it had become so only for a select few while most Brits could no longer afford to live in the city, or send their kids to good schools. Hobsbawm blames Thatcherite economics for making Britain into the ground-zero of the current economic meltdown.

But what is brilliant about Hobsbawm is his soberness. The failure of free market capitalism does not mean a return to socialism. No one is suggesting this not only because of the latter's potential political illiberalism and oppression, but also because of its sluggishness and inefficiency (although educational achievements of the system should not be underestimated). So what next?

Hobsbawm's prescription for a new progressive policy is based on one simple principle: economic growth should be seen as the means to an end, and not an end in itself. Economic policy can no longer be about maximizing the GDP and the individual incomes, but the public "capabilities" through collective action. This must mean public non-profit initiative even if it only includes redistribution of wealth. In the words of Hobsbawm, a truly progressive policy for the early 21st century should consist of "public decisions aimed at collective social improvement from which all human lives should gain." But isn't this what socialism is all about? And if so, isn't Hobsbawm himself trapped in his own maze?

I am also not sure that Hobsbawm is correct in his assumption that the current meltdown represents a whole-scale destruction of capitalism as we know it. As he himself admits, most governments are still deeply wedded to the idea of free capitalism and the very policy they have implemented to get us out of the crisis (i.e. Obama and Gordon's bank bailouts) are based on the principle that might have gotten us here in the first place: free market is still the best option. The recent "glimmers of hope," to quote our President, when it comes to our economy (the slowly rising consumer confidence, DOW's gains, decrease in job loses, and profits for banks), might actually prove Hobsbawm wrong.

After all, it was Hobsbawm who in the early 1990s predicted the end of nationalism, just 2 years before nationalist violence would ravage what it had been known as Yugoslavia. Thus, his assessment now might be more product of wishful thinking than a sober prediction. But this remains to be seen...

Our descent into violence

Pittsburgh: a felon with an AK-47 guns down three police officers. In Oakland, four police officers gunned down by another felon with an assault rifle. In Washington State, a frustrated wife-beater mows down five of his kids with a rifle while they were playing on their lawn in a trailer park: the kids were easier targets because he hadn't been able to track down his wife. And then the 13 dead last week in Binghampton after an insane former immigrant walked into an immigration center and shot randomly because he thought people were making fun of his poor English skills. In one month, 57 people lost their lives to mass shootings, all committed with weapons that had been banned by the Assault weapons ban that Bush let expire in 2004.

Our fetishism for guns is spilling over to our southern neighbors as Mexico struggles desperately to fight the drug cartels whom our demand for drugs has made incredibly rich while the lack of gun control laws has made weapons smuggling across the border a piece of cake.

Our country seems to be brewing with anger. Driving in rush hour traffic is enough to witness people slamming their steering wheels and shouting at each other, middle fingers flying from all lanes. Some are frustrated by their boring jobs. Some, many, by the lack of jobs and they have become addicted to watching the rants of lunatics on Fox News. Many of them are angry because they think Obama is the anti-Christ who will take away their guns in a major offensive against our very freedom. The delusional representative from Minnesota Michelle Bachmann warned that our President is getting ready to institute "re-education" camps for young people. Hannity thanked her for "defending our freedom against tyranny." The borderline schizophrenic Glenn Beck warned that "they don't surround us, we surround them," as he cried, begging for our country to be taken back. Take our country back from whom?

If Fox News sounds even crazier than they normally do--as lately they have clearly transgressed into the militia loony territory--we really have to be worried. These appalling statistics should give us pause: 17,000 Americans murdered each year and more than 70% by guns; our murder rate is three times that of Canada and England and five times that of Germany.

The Democrats need to use this tragically deadly month to pass strict gun control laws, including the assault weapons ban, and ignore the NRA maniacs. Even if this means losing the next round of elections.

Medical "supervision" of torture

The New York Times reported this morning that the long-classified investigative report by the International Committee of Red Cross outlines the participation of medical personnel, including physicians, in torturing the 14 "high-level" detainees who were eventually transferred to Guantanamo. According to the previously classified report, the CIA interrogators were almost always supervised by medical personnel who would often order them to either stop, continue, or adjust the torturing procedure. As a reminder, the full report had been disclosed earlier and it had outlined the types of torture the CIA used: slamming the prisoner into a wall, having them shackled to the ceiling for hours at a time, sleep deprivation, locking the prisoner in small cages, and of course waterboarding. In one disturbing description, a one-legged prisoner said he was ordered to stand on his remaining leg for hours and a doctor would occasionally inspect the swelling and once the swelling of the leg became really bad, the doctor ordered him to sit down.

The Red Cross concludes that this behavior of the medical personnel violated not only the code of medical ethics but the international law: “The totality of the circumstances in which the 14 were held effectively amounted to an arbitrary deprivation of liberty and enforced disappearance, in contravention of international law,”

There have been some recent hopeful developments in Europe that suggest that there may be some justice coming to the torturers-in-chief of the Bush administration. Apparently, a Spanish court--presided over by the same prosecutor who relentlessly prosecuted the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet--has ordered an inquiry into the potential war crimes of 6 Bush officials, all lawyers, who sanctioned torture. The officials include, David Addington (Cheney's chief of staff and the main architect of torture), John Yoo, and Alberto Gonzales, among others. If the court concludes that war crimes were committed, it is bound law to issue arrest warrants. Then it would be up to the Obama administration to either, extradite the former officials or try them here. But even if Obama does not do either, these officials could no longer leave the US without being arrested as soon as they stepped foot on foreign soil.

Given the fact that after World War II there were about 70 cases of medical personnel prosecuted for participating in Nazi war crimes, the list of defendants at the Spanish court needs to be expanded, substantially!

A glimmer of hope for the Middle East?

Seymour Hersh writes in the most recent issue of the New Yorker that there seem to be some real openings for a comprehensive peace settlement in the Middle East, involving Syria, Israel, Iran, and of course, the United States.

The hope comes from a recent thawing of the tense relationship between Syria and the United States as Assad has made overtures to the US that he might be willing to negotiate. As evidence, Hersh summarizes a series of meetings between Israeli and Syrian officials with the mediation of Turkey as well as the overtures of the Obama administration for unconditional direct talks. The main controversies, in the eyes of the US, swirl around Syria's housing of the Hamas leader in exile, its support of Hezbollah, and Iran's influence in Syria. It seems, however, that Assad's openness to talks with the US have really worried Iran who is afraid to lose its influence over Syria and remain even more isolated in case a deal was reached between Syria and the US. Assad wrote emails to Hersh in which he clearly stated his desire for continuing negotiations with Israel over Golan Heights (which Israel took from Syria in the 1967 war), and which are rich in water, the most precious and scarce resource in the region. Assad has even intimated that he might be willing to consider leasing the area to Israeli access if the latter gave the sovereignty over the area back to the Syrians and evacuated thousands of Israeli settlers who have expanded their illegal settlements.

Hersh's report shows the extent of destructiveness of Dick Cheney even in the last throes of the Bush administration. According to Hersh's reliable and well-connected sources (and I have no doubt about this as he is a superb journalist), during Israel's brutal attack on Gaza in December and early January, then President Elect Obama was on the phone with Israel trying to get them to stop the invasion before his inauguration. According to Hersh, Cheney was also talking to Israel, but telling them not to trust Obama because he was "pro-Palestinian" and would not "make it in the big leagues." From a man who derailed our fight against terror, brought us torture, and destroyed our reputation, this is a pretty gutsy statement.

The election of the far-right wing Netanyahu and his insane foreign Minister Lieberman dim these hopes for peace especially after Lieberman said today that the government is not bounded to follow the Road map for peace that was negotiated in 2007. His history of making explicitly racist statements about Arabs, and demanding that all Arabs in Israel take loyalty oaths, makes it really hard to see how it would be Lieberman who oversees the evacuation of settlers from the West Bank or the Golan Heights.

So for now, everything still seems frozen, but there are some early signs of thawing. It may still not include the Palestinians, but if Obama could score some sort of a deal with the Syrians this would go a long way towards opening that heavy door to peace. The spontaneous meeting of Obama's Afghanistan envoy Holbrooke and an Iranian high official at a meeting in the Hague also points to thawing between the US and Iran.

It also shows that civility goes a long way in international diplomacy.