A Question of Human Dignity

The Washington Post editorial board writes: "Mr. Bush's pass-it-now-or-the-terrorists-will-win rhetoric is overheated fearmongering. He should agree to a second extension, which would allow intelligence agencies to operate under the existing law. The fact is that even if the law is permitted to expire Saturday, as scheduled, the orders under which surveillance is being conducted would remain in place. Any new orders could be issued by the FISA court, and without the backlog that had slowed the court's operations before the Protect America Act was passed last August. Allowing legislators a few more weeks to try to resolve differences presents no evident threat to U.S. security. A few more weeks could even produce a better bill."

Contempt Watch

Alexander Bolton writes in The Hill: "The House will vote Thursday on holding White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers in contempt of Congress. . . .

"Democratic leaders' decision to hold a vote follows repeated efforts by Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) to obtain information related to the firing of several United States attorneys. White House officials have refused to allow Bolten and Miers to testify before his committee. . . .

"Republicans excoriated the decision to have an acrimonious debate only a day after Republican and Democratic leaders appeared together Wednesday at the White House to celebrate the signing of a bipartisan economic stimulus package."

Here's what Conyers had to say yesterday: "[D]espite duly issued subpoenas, the White House has determined that it has the unilateral authority to prevent Mr. Bolten from providing us with a single piece of paper and to prevent Ms. Miers from even showing up at a Committee hearing.

"If the executive branch can disregard Congressional subpoenas in this way, we no longer have a system of checks and balances. That is the cornerstone of our democracy, and it is our bipartisan responsibility to protect it."

Conyers also asked for authorization to pursue a civil suit. "Under the contempt statute, the U.S. Attorney 'shall' refer the contempt citation to a grand jury for action after receiving it from the Speaker. Unfortunately, only last week Attorney General Mukasey testified before our Committee that he is inclined to follow the view of the White House and not enforce contempt despite the clear statutory command.

"In light of that, the privileged resolution introduced today follows the suggestion first made by former Judiciary Committee chairman James Sensenbrenner last year and authorizes the House general counsel to file a civil suit to enforce the subpoenas. That way, if the Administration refuses to enforce the contempt finding, we can take action in the courts to vindicate Congress' authority."

The Politico's John Bresnahan has the official White House reaction: "'The American people will find it baffling that on a day that House leaders are trying to put off passing critical legislation to keep us safer from the threat of foreign terrorists overseas, they are spending scarce time to become the first Congress in history to bring contempt charges against a president's chief of staff and lawyer,' White House spokeswoman Dana Perino wrote in an e-mail.

"'If the House had nothing better to do, this futile partisan act would be a waste of time,' she said. 'Unbelievably, it is being considered in place of legislation to make us safer, address concerns in the housing market, improve health care conditions for our veterans, reauthorize No Child Left Behind or open new overseas markets for U.S. goods and services, among other bills. The 'people's House' should reflect the priorities of the American people, not the fantasies of left-wing bloggers.'"

The New York Times editorial board writes: "The House . . . needs to stop procrastinating and vote to hold witnesses in contempt for refusing to testify in the wider scandal. . . .

"The stakes are high. There are people in jail today, including a former governor of Alabama, who have raised credible charges that they were put there for political reasons. Congress's constitutionally guaranteed powers are also at risk. If Congress fails to enforce its own subpoenas, it would effectively be ceding its subpoena power. It would also be giving its tacit consent to the dangerous idea of an imperial president -- above the law and beyond the reach of checks and balances.

"The founders did not want that when they wrote the Constitution, and the voters who elected this Congress do not want it today."

State Secrets Watch

Laurie Kellman writes for the Associated Press: "In a new challenge to President Bush's use of executive power, Senate Democrats want to make the government produce evidence for a judge to review when it claims disclosing such information would endanger national security.

"The Senate Judiciary Committee's chairman is developing legislation aimed at reining in the administration's use of a state secrets privilege to argue for dismissing cases that might reveal misconduct.

"Democrats contend the administration has used that tactic in cases involving suspected terrorists interrogated overseas and in the president's secretive surveillance program.

"'It has taken a legal doctrine that was intended to protect sensitive national security information and seems to be using it to evade accountability for its own misdeeds,' the chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said Wednesday."

Ben Wizner writes in a Los Angeles Times op-ed: "Of the myriad tactics the Bush administration uses to prevent oversight of its controversial anti-terror policies, none has been more successful, or more far-reaching, than the state secrets privilege. On Wednesday, the Senate considered, at long last, bipartisan legislation that would place reasonable limits on the executive branch's use of the privilege to terminate lawsuits on dubious grounds. But for some -- like my client, Khaled El-Masri, who was mistakenly kidnapped, imprisoned and tortured by the CIA -- Congress' interest, though welcome, comes too late. . . .

"El-Masri, a German citizen, was forcibly abducted while on holiday in Macedonia, detained incommunicado, handed over to the CIA, then beaten, drugged and transported to a secret prison in Afghanistan for harsh interrogation. Five months after his abduction -- long after the CIA realized its mistake -- El-Masri was deposited at night on a hill in Albania.

"El-Masri's ordeal received front-page media coverage throughout the world and has been the subject of criminal and intergovernmental investigations in Europe. His allegations are supported by eyewitness testimony and physical evidence. Nonetheless, when we brought suit against former CIA Director George Tenet and others seeking compensation for the brutal treatment of El-Masri, the administration insisted the case be dismissed because any litigation of the claims would reveal state secrets. The government's argument prevailed, and the Supreme Court declined to intervene.

"So as the law stands, the U.S. can engage in torture, declare it a state secret and, by virtue of that designation alone, avoid any accountability for conduct that violates the Constitution and universal human rights guarantees. A broad range of executive misconduct has been shielded from judicial review under this doctrine."

Permanent Bases and the Abuse of Language

Skeptics contend that Bush and Vice President Cheney intend to keep military bases in Iraq permanently -- in fact, have already built several such bases. But Bush and his aides (see, for instance, yesterday's op-ed in The Post from the secretaries of state and defense) repeatedly deny any desire for permanent military bases.

So are the skeptics wrong? Or is the White House simply playing word games?

Olivier Knox of Agence France Presse asked Perino yesterday if the U.S. has any bases she would call permanent anywhere in the world. And guess what? Her answer was no.

Knox writes: "Amid a bitter dispute over U.S. bases in Iraq, the White House signaled Wednesday it does not view any U.S. military installations overseas -- except perhaps Guantanamo Bay, Cuba -- as permanent.

"'The United States, where we are, where we have bases, we are there at the invitation of those countries. I'm not aware of any place in the world -- where we have a base -- that they are asking us to leave. And if they did, we would probably leave,' said spokeswoman Dana Perino.

"'Asked about Guantanamo Bay, Perino replied: 'I'm going to say that one doesn't count.' . . .

"'Perino's comments signaled that Washington does not consider any of its overseas bases to be permanent -- including the half-century presence in South Korea, or the forces stationed in Japan since World War Two.'"

In a nutshell, this means that the administration can deny any intention to keep permanent military bases in Iraq while, in fact, building and planning for what by any other name are permanent military bases.

In my Live Online yesterday, I asked readers for more examples of words or concepts that Bush and his aides use that, to paraphrase Inigo Montoya, do not mean what they want us to think they mean.

The most blatant example, of course, is torture. The official White House line is that we don't torture -- while engaging in acts most of us would call torture.

Live Online readers came up with several other examples, including "a nation of laws," "activist judges" and "strong dollar policy." In e-mails, other readers nominated "bipartisan", "surge" and "progress," as well.

EPA Watch

Speaking of the abuse of language, Felicity Barringer wrote in the New York Times last week: "A three-judge federal appeals panel in Washington struck down on Friday the Environmental Protection Agency limits on mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants.

"The panel said the agency had ignored its legal obligation to require the strictest possible controls on the toxic metal or to justify an alternative approach. . . .

"The appellate ruling faulted that approach, calling it 'the logic of the Queen of Hearts, substituting E.P.A.'s desires for the plain text' of the law."

John Walke, the director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's Clean Air Program, blogs that "there is a prevalent strain within EPA -- fostered by but not limited to political appointees -- that approaches the responsibility of statutory interpretation with a linguistic relativism that verges on nihilism. Under this EPA school of thought and practice, words in statutes mean whatever EPA wants them to mean. While legal doctrines afford federal agencies discretion in areas where they are considered expert, for example in scientific matters, EPA abuses these doctrines in order to distort the act of reading the English language into a policy play thing. This is precisely why one sees courts resorting to rebukes that sound 'like a civics lesson by an exasperated instructor' and 'The Collected Works of Lewis Carroll' to characterize the absurdities of EPA's positions."

Stimulus Watch

Jeremy Pelofsky writes for Reuters: "President George W. Bush on Wednesday argued the 'genius' of the U.S. economy is its ability to withstand financial shocks, as he signed a bill to put $152 billion in taxpayers' hands in a bid to avoid a recession."

Sue Kirchhoff and Barbara Hagenbaugh write in USA Today: "The stimulus law signed by President Bush on Wednesday provides what he called a 'booster shot' to the economy, but the medicine might not be strong enough to ward off a recession.

"The $168 billion package of personal tax rebates and business tax cuts will likely help shore up consumer spending later this year, economists say. That could minimize the pain of a possible downturn. But it won't resolve longer-term issues bedeviling the economy, such as a free fall in home sales and prices, and a credit crunch that has persisted despite aggressive Federal Reserve interest rate cuts."

Mortgage Watch

Eliot Spitzer, the governor of New York, writes in a Washington Post op-ed that even as "predatory lending was becoming a national problem, the Bush administration looked the other way and did nothing to protect American homeowners. In fact, the government chose instead to align itself with the banks that were victimizing consumers. . . .

"When history tells the story of the subprime lending crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners, the Bush administration will not be judged favorably. The tale is still unfolding, but when the dust settles, it will be judged as a willing accomplice to the lenders who went to any lengths in their quest for profits. So willing, in fact, that it used the power of the federal government in an unprecedented assault on state legislatures, as well as on state attorneys general and anyone else on the side of consumers."

Travel Watch

Chris Reiter writes for Reuters: "The U.S. travel industry is looking forward to the end of George W. Bush's stay in the White House.

"While the weak U.S. dollar has put the United States on sale for many travelers, tough border controls and an unfriendly image of the United States abroad may have kept some travelers away. A new administration could help change that.

"'We're looked at as being extremely arrogant throughout the world, and Bush certainly contributes to that,' Michael Depatie, chief executive of boutique hotel operator Kimpton said at the Reuters Travel and Leisure Summit this week.

"Despite the falling dollar, the U.S. has lost 17 percent market share of international arrivals since the last quarter of 2001, according to Marriott International Inc, the second-largest U.S. hotel company.

"'I think you probably need not just a new occupant in the White House, but you probably need some meaningful change in visa policy to get some of that lost share back,' Arne Sorenson, Marriott's chief financial officer, told the Summit."

Cartoon Watch

Here's Stuart Carlson on Bush's tortured excuse.

And here's an animated Valentine from Dick Cheney, via Ann Telnaes.