Month: February 2010

From the OPR Report:

Based on the results of our investigation, we concluded that former Deputy AAG John Yoo committed intentional professional misconduct when he violated his duty to exercise independent legal judgment and render thorough, objective, and candid legal advice.

My italics. Here is the definition of these legal terms:

OPR finds professional misconduct when an attorney intentionally violates or acts in reckless disregard of a known, unambiguous obligation imposed by law, rule of professional conduct, or Department regulation or policy.In determining whether an attorney has engaged in professional misconduct, OPR uses the preponderance of the evidence standard to make factual findings.

An attorney intentionally violates an obligation or standard when the attorney (1) engages in conduct with the purpose of obtaining a result that the obligation or standard unambiguously prohibits; or (2) engages in conduct knowing its natural and probable consequence, and that consequence is a result that the obligation or standard unambiguously prohibits.

So, in plain English, the Justice Department’s internal watchdog found that John Yoo intentionally decided not to provide independent legal judgment to the president on the question of what was legal with respect to interrogation, that he did so knowing that the law unambiguously prohibited what he said was legal, and did so with the purpose of providing a golden shield for war crimes. Whatever Margolis said, and however much the MSM refuses to provide the facts of this report, that means that Yoo is a war criminal who deliberately distorted the plain and unambiguous meaning of the law to enable war crimes. It means that under Geneva and the Nuremberg rules, he must some day be prosecuted, if not by this country then by another signatory to Geneva, or Geneva no longer has any force at all. Notice, in Yoo’s defense, that the DOJ investigators use the “preponderance of evidence” standard. But also notice something else the MSM hasn’t reported. Much of the critical email evidence in Yoo’s case – from the relevant period – had been destroyed:

After it became apparent, during the course of our review, that relevant documents were missing, we requested and were given direct access to the email and computer records of Yoo, Philbin, Bybee, and Goldsmith. However, we were told that most of Yoo’s email records had been deleted and were not recoverable. Philbin’s email records from July 2002 through August 5, 2002 – the time period in which the.Bybee.Memo was completed and the Classified Bybee Memo (discussed below) was created – had also been deleted and were reportedly not recoverable. Although we were initially advised that Goldsmith’s records had been deleted, we were later told that they had been recovered and we were given access to them.

My italics. From the videotapes of the CIA waterboarding sessions to the last taped interrogation session of Jose Padilla to the surveiilance videos of the Gitmo “suicides” to the emails of Yoo (and Bybee, by the way): all of these critical pieces of evidence that would help clear up the true nature of what was done in the name of the American people were destroyed.

By the government.

(Photo: John Yoo by Melissa Golden/Getty.)

The people who really do represent people with disabilities and special needs increasingly doubt it:

In the past, such as during the Terri Schiavo controversy, disability-rights activists have allied themselves with the religious right, which embraced Palin’s “death panel” rhetoric to fight health-care reform. Yet today most mainstream disability-rights groups are strong supporters of President Obama’s proposed health-care overhaul. Though many of the disability community’s priorities were excluded from the process—leading to some grousing among advocates about Democrats—the various proposals would prevent insurance companies from denying coverage due to pre-existing medical conditions, a common problem for people with disabilities. The Senate version of the reform plan also contains a provision that would provide states with extra Medicaid funding if they agree to give disabled patients the option of being cared for at home, instead of in institutional settings such as nursing homes and mental-health facilities. Called the Community Choice Option, it is a top priority for disability activists. In 2008, the McCain-Palin campaign opposed a similar piece of legislation, the Community Choice Act, prompting activists from the group ADAPT to storm John McCain’s Senate office, where they were arrested.

But this quote seems to me to be getting closer to the point:

“I don’t think you can have a child with a significant disability and run away from these issues.

Your interest only deepens over time,” said Imparato of the American Association of People with Disabilities. “It’s the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Let’s take a hard look: Where are we? Why are so many people with disabilities living in poverty? Why are the employment numbers not going up? Why do we have this use of seclusion and restraints in classrooms?

“My hope is that Sarah Palin will take this opportunity to really look at and speak about these issues.”

How many mothers who had a child with a significant disability would drag him around “like a loaf of bread” on a book tour as a prop?

Bush-era profligacy has an heir:

A POLITICO analysis of expenses found that compared with 2005, the last comparable year preceding a midterm election, the committee’s payments for charter flights doubled; the number of sedan contractors tripled, and meal expenses jumped from $306,000 to $599,000. […] When Steele took over the chairmanship last winter, he inherited a $23 million surplus. Since then, the former Maryland lieutenant governor has raised $10 million less than the party collected in 2005 and has spent $10 million more. By the end of 2009, the committee’s surplus had shrunk to $8.4 million, according to campaign finance reports.

A reader writes:

This rabbi thinks you're wrong about circumcision and occasionally overwrought in the way you write about Israel, but the charge of antisemitism is just so ludicrous that the only thing to do is remind people that Abe Foxman's entire job is to find and denounce antisemitism, and he's very, very well paid for it.

Another writes:

I find it ironic that Abe Foxman, who spends his life defaming others, leads an organization named the Anti-Defamation League.

Another:

I'm a Jew.  I'm 24 years old and I've been to Israel on Birthright (essentially a propaganda trip disguised as hook-ups and drinking).  I agree with some (but not all) of your criticism of the BiBi government.  I guess that makes me a self-deprecating Jew.  Oh well.  I guess that's why not as many Jews are making Aliyah to Israel anymore, because they cannot capture the young generation of my peers who have dissenting views.

Another:

If you're an antisemite, then what does that make me? I agree with you on most things related to Israel, and I'm freaking Jewish and half-Israeli. I don't understand these Americans.

Another:

I'm a Jew and horrified by the attacks on anyone who dares question Israel's actions. I urge you to keep speaking out – you are doing an enormous amount of good, so please don't let intellectual bullies like Chait and Wieseltier dictate the terms of debate.

Another:

I am Jewish and I generally support Israel, but if Foxman is calling you an anti-semite there is something really, really wrong down at ADL.  In fact, Mr. Anti-defamation-league is defaming himself and all Jews by calling you an anti-semite.  He plays right into the hands of those who say you can't criticize Israel without being called either an anti-semite or a self-hating Jew.  I am incredibly angry and frustrated by this.

I disagree with you sometimes – but I stand with you shoulder to shoulder on your right to speak without being smeared.

Fallows follows up on the political criteria for Margolis' over-ruling of the clear findings of professional misconduct on the part of Yoo and Bybee in legally authorizing torture beyond any reasonable interpretation of the law. He also adds a new tool for reading it, which I urge every reader to do. I know it's long and I haven't finished it all myself yet, but all I can say is that, even for someone like me who has been steeped in this for years, it's a revelatory insight into how a constitutional democracy can be perverted into something much more akin to a permanent monarchical protectorate while the general public carries on unawares:

Searchable versions of both of these reports, along with many other torture-memo-related documents, are now available here.

If you believe that the first duty of a citizenry is to make sure its constitution is not under extreme attack from its own leaders, then there is no civic duty more pressing than reading this chilling report in full.

America's most famous teen mom will now guest-star as herself on the ABC series "The Secret Life of the American Teenager," acting as a mentor to the show’s pregnant protagonist.  Mudflats recalls:

[Tripp] was supposedly going to be traumatized by having his custody battle open for the world to see. The Palins, who fought to have the proceedings sealed, feared that media exposure might come back to haunt the young lad as he grew, they said.  Clearly, he did nothing to deserve this scrutiny and attention.  And clearly it couldn’t do anything but make his life a little more challenging than it otherwise would be.  How dare he be subjected to the magnifying glass, and all the potential psychological scarring it might bring!

Ambers tries to make sense of the 2012 field:

Romney could not be positioned more poorly to harness the Tea Partiers, the Paulites, and the social conservatives right now: protestant evangelicals still think he's a Mormon of the suspect kind (unlike, say, John Huntsman Jr., who comes off as a real guy); he is a national security hawk at a time when there is a growing "get us out of there" movement within the base of the GOP; he is unlikely to embrace libertarianism (gambling, marijuana, civil unions) that would transform his political image and attract some of the Paulites; his immigration positioning is solid enough, but his association with the GOP establishment — he's seen as the establishment candidate — will make anything he says suspect.

In another blatant "go Cheney yourself" to both president Obama and any Palestinian representatives seeking a two-state solution, the Israeli prime minister decided to make this lovely gesture for peace this past weekend:

On Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu laid out a $100 million government plan to rehabilitate what he called “archaeological and Zionist heritage sites,” during a special cabinet meeting held in northern Israel at Tel Hai, the scene of a 1920 battle between Arabs and early Zionist settlers. He said he intended to include the Cave of the Patriarchs, also known as Ibrahimi Mosque, the Hebron shrine revered by Jews, Muslims and Christians as the burial place of Abraham, on the list of about 150 sites. In 1994, a Jewish settler, Baruch Goldstein, fatally shot 29 Palestinian Muslim worshipers inside the shrine. Mr. Netanyahu said he also planned to include Rachel’s Tomb, a shrine just inside the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

Yes: the site of the massacre by far right settler hero, Brooklyn-born Baruch Goldstein, deemed as holy by Muslims and Jews, will become a "Zionist heritage site". Sensitive timing, no? Then, for good measure – just as Mitchell was shuttling forth between both sides – this:

Mr. Netanyahu took the opportunity of the approaching holiday of Tu Bishvat, a Jewish arbor day, to reaffirm Israel’s claim to the Etzion bloc of settlements just south of Jerusalem. “Our message is clear,” he said during a tree-planting ceremony there. “We are planting here, we will stay here, we will build here. This place will be an inseparable part of the State of Israel for eternity.”

The man is either a fanatic or a politician who has to cater to fanatics. This follows the Dubai assassination and a refusal by the far right foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman to meet some US congressmen because they were escorted by J-Street. If people cannot see how radical and a dangerous the Jerusalem government is increasingly becoming, they have blinkers on.

When, one wonders, is the US going to stand up to these brazen acts of contempt for an ally and deliberate attempts to poison relations so that no peace process has any chance of starting?

(Photo: Israeli soldiers stand guard near the the Tomb of the Patriarchs in the West Bank town of Hebron on February 23, 2010. Stone-throwing Palestinians were clashing with Israeli troops in Hebron amid outrage over Israel's plan to restore two flashpoint Jewish holy sites in the occupied territory, including the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem in a 100-million-dollar plan to restore national heritage sites. By Hazem Bader/AFP/Getty Images)