Politics: Friday's Lesson

I think it's only appropriate to start Friday off with some good old fashioned misappropriation of government resources. To wit, from today's Washington Post:

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) acknowledged yesterday that his office called both the Federal Aviation Administration and the Justice Department to help track down 51 Texas House members who fled the state to derail a GOP congressional redistricting plan.

The Texas Democrats left Austin on May 11 to prevent the state House from establishing a quorum and taking up the GOP plan, which would have created several new Republican-leaning U.S. House districts. Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick (R), trying to force the Democrats back to Austin, asked DeLay for help in locating the plane of former state House speaker Pete Laney (D), which some lawmakers used to reach Ardmore, Okla.

A DeLay aide gave the Laney airplane's tail number to the FAA, which subsequently reported where the plane had taken off and landed -- which is public information -- DeLay's office said yesterday. Craddick also asked DeLay to contact the Justice Department to see how the Republicans could force the lawmakers' return, DeLay staffers said.

Some Democrats have suggested DeLay improperly involved federal agencies in a partisan spat limited to one state. DeLay told reporters yesterday that he called the Justice Department to ask "about the appropriate role of the federal government in finding Texas legislators who have warrants out for their arrests."

Now I don't believe anyone has ever thought for one second that Tom Delay was anything other than a slimy, fork-tongued toady who gladly sell his mother to a white slavery ring if it meant one more filthy corporate donation in the NRCC's luxurious coffers. But here he is, a dirty man admitting a dirty, dirty crime -- misappropriation of government resources for petty personal gains, at the very least -- and there is no outrage. There is nothing. Let's move on.

Next on the Friday roundup, readers will be urged to skip a great deal of the pap served up in the Washington Post save the few articles profiled here, beginning with Dana Milbank's brave analysis, with Jim VandeHei, of exactly how much of a compromise President "Mr. Popularity" Bush had to make to get his own party to support his loathesome tax cut. Thankfully, Milbank and VandeHei point out exactly what a sh*t-eating liar pretty much anybody who calls this tax cut for the rich a victory for the president. Let's read together:

In brokering and celebrating a $350 billion tax-and-spending package he derided less than a month earlier, President Bush and top aides this week made the calculation that it was more important to have a tax cut than to stand on principle over its size and content.

In Ohio last month, Bush said senators "might have some explaining to do" for approving "a little bitty tax relief package" of $350 billion. "The package ought to be at least $550 billion in size over a 10-year period in order to make sure that the economy grows," he said.

But it was a different Bush who appeared in the Capitol yesterday to congratulate lawmakers for reaching agreement on a $350 billion plan with $318 billion of tax cuts over 10 years.

Harold Meyerson in this month's TAP pointed out some facts that bear repeating: Since the first Bush tax cut, which was advertised as a means to spur economic growth, America has lost 69,000 jobs a month. During President Clinton's term, American gained about 240,000 jobs per month. Immediately after that little gem, Meyerson gives us the gift of clarity, in a one-sentence paragraph I fell in love with as soon as I read it: "On the basis of no credible evidence whatsoever, the White House boasts that Bush's proposed tax cut would create 1.4 million jobs by the end of 2004. Even if it did, Bush would still have presided over a net loss of 1.3 million jobs during the 2001–2005 presidential term." Yes! Yes! Yes!

But let us turn our attention now to the matters of threats to the homeland, in the form, of course, of turf battles and undermining our efforts understand those threats. In this department, two entries. First, the Washington Post again, with another pre-Memorial Day starred entry from the Liquid List. New Panel, Independent of 9/11 Commission, Is Sought reads like a horror story for all of the weekend's travel plans. But why tell you, when I can show you?

Several prominent lawmakers, including two Democratic presidential contenders, yesterday urged an independent commission to forcefully investigate government shortcomings prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, including an aviation security system experts described as riddled with holes.
...
"The American people deserve to know the full and objective truth, as best it can be determined," Lieberman said. "We have not received that, unfortunately."

Graham, who helped lead last year's congressional review of intelligence issues related to the attacks, said the commission "should vigorously pursue the links between foreign governments and the September 11th hijackers," including U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia.

"Ignoring facts simply because they make some people uncomfortable or because it might stand in the way of short-term policy goals will prevent Americans from learning the truth about 9/11," Graham said.

The session featured other Bush administration critics. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) warned of "bureaucratic stonewalling"; Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) criticized funding levels for first responders; and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said a House-Senate intelligence inquiry last year was too limited.
...
Some of the sharpest criticism came from a Federal Aviation Administration whistle-blower, who testified that politics often trumped that agency's ability to address security lapses and said the terrorists' use of aviation was not surprising given well-known security loopholes.

"What I do know is if a terrorist wants to, [he] can get through the system," said Bogdan Dzakovic, a former member of the FAA's "red team," who spent years testing the nation's security screeners and equipment.

While some security measures have improved since the attacks, Dzakovic said he still does not feel safe enough to fly. He said the newly formed Transportation Security Administration, where he now works, needs to do a better job.

Several commissioners were visibly disappointed with answers from former FAA administrator Jane Garvey, who said intelligence reports indicating terrorist plans to use airplanes as missiles were viewed as not credible or considered applicable primarily overseas.

I really gave you pretty much the whole thing there, but Jesus, shouldn't somebody be caring about this right now? No? Oh. Okay.

While I would never call it good, I can tell you that the Post today is doing better than I expected. As such, I've got another piece, in which Attorney General John Ashcroft shows Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge the sole of his jackboot. It seems that Ridge and Ashcroft were having a little asshole-battle about exactly who would be able to oversee which parts of the remarkably inept war on terror. (In an aside, Tarek noted that it would make more sense if they were somehow battling over who would be forced to take responsibility for the war's failures; that was, however, not the case, since both men are of spectacularly low intellect.) Finally, Ashcroft boned Ridge out of the high-profile economic investigations component (which I assume includes lucrative Hezbollah cigarette smuggling prosecutions) of the war on terror. This is despite the fact that the Secret Service, which investigates these sorts of things, belongs now to the Homeland Security Department. In fact, the Secret Service has never been part of the Justice Department, and was previously part of the Department of the Treasury. And in fact again, the Justice Department and the FBI especially, should probably be on some sort of probation for how badly they f*cked up securing the homeland in the first place anyhow. But let's let the Secret Service Director explains how bad this is:

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge have settled a bitter dispute between their agencies, signing a truce that gives the FBI sole control over financial investigations related to terrorism. But many Homeland Security officials say the deal is a dangerous mistake.

W. Ralph Basham, director of the Secret Service, which is now part of Homeland Security, wrote a memo to Ridge after the agreement was signed last week complaining that it "would severely jeopardize thousands of ongoing investigations and could compromise the federal government's ability to effectively prevent future attacks against our financial and critical infrastructures."

Investigations are what we do best, aren't they? And here's another.

It appears that someone in the CIA has noticed something fishy going on these past ten months. I presume, then, that the world's preeminent intelligence gathering agency hasn't been examining such hard-to-find data sources as the New Yorker. But all that's about to change! Yes, the CIA has decided to look into the independent intelligence agency set up by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz inside the Defense Department. The CIA will review the possibility -- shocking! -- that this little shadow agency was designed to find (that's code for fabricate) connections that Rummy is certain exist between al Qaeda, Iraq, weapons of mass destruction, France, acid reflux disease, Hollywood liberals and anything else that would let us blow the f*ck out of any goddamn country we wanted. Yes, the CIA is certainly going to look into this:

The CIA review, coupled with the letter sent to Tenet by the House intelligence panel, follows criticism that the Defense Department, particularly a new Pentagon intelligence office, and other parts of the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to make the case for war in Iraq. Some members of Congress and intelligence officials are questioning the accuracy of the intelligence describing Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction and connections to al Qaeda.

Read all the way to the bottom that this article for the Defense Department's amazing rationalization for creating a separate intelligence agency that amazingly found reasons to drop bombs: Rumsfeld just wanted to "learn about the [intelligence] process, including the policymaker's role in it." Why doesn't he look at the cameras and say, "I'm just a caveman. I don't understand your mysterious intelligence-gathering ways."

Finally, let's quickly review this three-day weekend's homework assignment. I'd like everyone to read Molly Ivins column from yesterday, which includes this little tidbit:

Iraq is in chaos, and apparently the only way we'll be able to stop it will be to kill a lot of Iraqis. Just what Saddam used to do. The other day, we announced we were going to shoot looters, and when that produced nightmare scenarios of children dead for stealing bread, we had to cancel that plan. Now we're going to try gun control – that should have the enthusiastic support of the NRA. Meanwhile, the chaos in Iraq seems to be costing us whatever goodwill we earned for getting rid of Saddam Hussein, the one unmitigated good to have come from all of this.

Yes, ma'am. Class dismissed.