Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog!: Lying runs in the family
The Hunting of the Snark: Greasing the Skids
Calculated Risk: Unofficial Problem Bank list grows to 500
La Gringa's Blogicito: Possible resolution to political crisis in Honduras
Ken Silverstein: Six questions for Desmond Travers on the Goldstone Report
The Impolitic: Big Friday news dump
Fox's Catherine Herridge has been reporting for a couple of weeks about the White House's change of policy regarding reporters' access to detainees at Guantanamo Bay, which while problematic from a journalist's perspective has all the earmarks of a classic bureaucratic conflict with reporters.
Herridge ran an update yesterday on Fox's Live Desk with Marsha MacCallum, including a clip of a Pentagon spokesman being short with Herridge, evidently, over her persistent questions on the issue. It looks like a tempest in a teapot, but Herridge is a serious reporter and her beef has some legitimacy, especially when it comes to transparency for this White House.
The interesting part of this report, though, came immediately after Herridge's report, when MacCallum hosted our old friend Judith Miller, the woman who helped bring you that six-years-and-running disaster on wheels known as the Iraq War. Miller decided that this Pentagon spokesman was in need of upbraiding:
MacCallum: What did you think of the Pentagon response there to Catherine's question?
Miller: You know, I thought, it's very combative. Excuse me, Mr. Pentagon Spokesman, for Fox doing our job. We're supposed to be there, we're supposed to be reporting on what the Pentagon is doing to and for these prisoners, or detainees, as they prefer to be called. And if he doesn't like our going back and back to look in on those people, well, maybe we should just believe everything they put out.
I found it completely combative, unnecessarily so.
So now we're being lectured on the relationship of reporters to official sources by the woman who was the faithful stenographer of Bush's Pentagon -- particularly Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- in selling the public on the notion that there were indeed weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein. The woman who -- after the utter mendacity of her sources was revealed -- told an interviewer:
"[M]y job isn't to assess the government's information and be an independent intelligence analyst myself. My job is to tell readers of The New York Times what the government thought about Iraq's arsenal."
I don't have a problem with Fox reporters pushing for transparency from the Pentagon. I do have a problem with Judith Miller telling us how we should do that.
It sure is heart-warming, after all, to see Miller get concerned about looking into the accuracy of Pentagon claims -- though it does seem rather convenient that this is a concern of hers only now, now that we have a Democratic administration.
If she had demonstrated even an ounce of this concern during the Bush years, the nation might not have been talked into an outrageous, costly, and wholly unnecessary war.
James Moore wrote the ultimate survey of Miller's journalistic miscreancy.
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition: FBI numbers prove that the 'War on Drugs' is a failure
Wall St. Cheat Sheet: Congressman Alan Grayson talks Fed transparency and missing money
Culture Monster: Glenn Beck and Freedom Works' 9/12 logo based on communist and socialist designs
The New Republic: Wealthcare
Echidne of the Snakes: Guarding our hearts and wallets
Sadly, No!: Quick Question
Remember that Rolling Stone piece about Goldman Sachs I mentioned the other day? Here's another post from Matt Taibbi that should raise serious concerns about the stranglehold the company has on the economic markets:
"In a move set to infuriate and send many Zero Hedge readers over the top, the NYSE has taken action to make sure that nobody will henceforth be able to keep track of the complete dominance that Goldman Sachs exerts over the New York Zero Hedge Stock Exchange. This basically ends our weekly Program Trading updates disclosed every Thursday indicating that Goldman has singlehandedly captured all of NYSE's program trading."
-- Zero Hedge
I'm sorry I didn't post this earlier, but I urge readers to go over to Zero Hedge and check out this post about the NYSE's recent decision to change its procedures... to protect Goldman Sachs from bloggers like Zero Hedge!
This is complicated stuff (for people with no financial background, like me, it's nightmarish) and I have a longer thing about this coming out later. But the essence of this story is that Tyler Durden over at Zero Hedge has, for months, been complaining that Goldman has been manipulating the NYSE, in particular manipulating program trading in somewhat the same way (although perhaps not to the same extent) that they manipulated the commodities markets. In order to make his case -- and his theory has gained a lot of acceptance, to the point where Goldman had to respond to the allegations publicly -- he has been analyzing data the NYSE releases on program trading every week.
So what happened this week? The NYSE announced that it will no longer be releasing its weekly program trading data. This is quiet obviously a move designed to make it even more impossible to track what's going on in the NYSE and shield, in particular, Goldman Sachs. Let's hope there's a public uproar about this; Zero Hedge posted contact info for NYSE officials, and has urged readers to petition the exchange to restore the old rules in the name of transparency.
They plan to do this by July 10th, so it's important to call now. Let them know what you think of them making it impossible for anyone but insiders to know what's going on. From Zero Hedge:
This is a travesty, as well as a complete obliteration and a mockery of the move for transparency that the Administration, Regulators and Exchanges have been posturing they support.
We advise all readers to contact the provided staff on the memorandum and voice your incredulity with this brazen move to completely obfuscate Goldman's behind-the-scenes take over the world's biggest stock exchange.
Robert Airo, Senior Vice President, NYSE Euronext at (212) 656-5663 or
Aleksandra Radakovic, Vice President, NYSE Regulation at (212) 656-4144
This topic comes up once in a while, but I think it's good to get out there again because it's all about transparency. Why won't the Supreme Court allow cameras into the process? I know being on TV could affect some of the court, but if they are so solid in their understanding of the law then why should it matter? We need to be able to see how they conduct themselves and how major decisions are handed down.
Arlen Specter says he will push for cameras in the high court. I think that's a great idea even though Joe Sestak looks to be a solid challenger for his seat and is for the public option also.
Charles Grassley is starting to sound as incoherent during his television interviews as he does in his Tweets. Grassley doesn't think we need more regulation. We just need more transparency. Yeah, that's going to make the finace companies behave. And when asked if the banks are in any position to protest if they're not going to make as much money, Grassley comes back with this:
Greed is human nature. We shouldn't blame greed any more than you'd blame gravity when a plane has an accident and goes down.
I'm sorry Senator, but I think we can blame greed for the mess we're in. Greed and the unwillingness of the government to put a check on it.
Sotomayor and the White House have responded to the Senate questionnaire in record time. The answers are posted on the Senate Judiciary Committee site, along with transcripts of most of her speeches. Sotomayor and the administration should be applauded for the thoroughness, transparency, and speed of their response.
Remember how Republicans insisted that a president deserves to have the advisers he chooses? When it's a Democrat in office - not so much.
Scott Horton in The Daily Beast says the Republicans are holding hostage two Obama nominations to keep the torture memos from being released:
Senate Republicans are now privately threatening to derail the confirmation of key Obama administration nominees for top legal positions by linking the votes to suppressing critical torture memos from the Bush era. A reliable Justice Department source advises me that Senate Republicans are planning to "go nuclear" over the nominations of Dawn Johnsen as chief of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in the Department of Justice and Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh as State Department legal counsel if the torture documents are made public. The source says these threats are the principal reason for the Obama administration's abrupt pull back last week from a commitment to release some of the documents. A Republican Senate source confirms the strategy. It now appears that Republicans are seeking an Obama commitment to safeguard the Bush administration's darkest secrets in exchange for letting these nominations go forward. (...)
The Justice Department source confirms to me that Brennan has consistently opposed making public the torture memos -- and any other details about the operations of the extraordinary renditions program -- but this source suggests that concern about the G.O.P.'s roadblock in the confirmation process is the principle reason that the memos were not released. Republican senators have expressed strong reservations about their promised exposure, expressing alarm that a critique of the memos by Justice's ethics office (Office of Professional Responsibility) will also be released.
"There was no 'direct' threat," said the source, "but the message was communicated clearly -- if the OLC and OPR memoranda are released to the public, there will be war." This is understood as a threat to filibuster the nominations of Johnsen and Koh. Not only are they among the most prominent academic critics of the torture memoranda, but are also viewed as the strongest advocates for release of the torture memos on Obama's legal policy team.
A Republican Senate staffer further has confirmed to me that the Johnsen nomination was discussed at the last G.O.P. caucus meeting. Not a single Republican indicated an intention to vote for Dawn Johnsen, while Senator John Cornyn of Texas was described as "gunning for her," specifically noting publication of the torture memos.
On CNN's "State of the Union" this morning with John King, I heard something that almost made me choke. King interviewed Charlie Swift, a formal Naval defense attorney, and former Bush defense policy advisor Doug "Stupidest Guy in the World" Feith about Cheney's warning to Obama about repudiating torture:
KING: Is he right? Are there Americans alive today because the Bush Administration used these controversial tactics?
SWIFT: "Who knows? See, that's the problem. No evidence is brought forth. It's said that everything that was learned is so secret that we can't tell you, and that's one of the other parts of the Obama executive order that is critical. He's asking for a complete look into the interrogation methods and what was seen.
One of the real problems with Guantanamo was the lack of transparency - we're right, you've got to trust us. And every time the administration turned out to be wrong - and they were wrong many times - then that trust was lowered each time that happened. ... It's my personal belief that it's very unlikely that enhanced interrogation techniques produced a great deal of actionable intelligence."
[...]
DF: It's quite clear that President Obama has recognized there are serious security problems involved here. This is not simply a matter of establishing civil liberties issues. It's a balancing of very important civil liberties issues against very important security issues. I think that the administration has an interest, as Mr. Swift says, in being as transparent as possible. So did the Bush administration. Reasonable people can differ about how those balances get struck, but I think this administration is going to have to take very seriously the security issues, and they're going to realize this is a problem that's not as simple as it was suggested during the campaign that it was."
Well, Dougie, I guess it depends on what you mean by "transparency." The Bush Administration used words in a peculiar way - that is, to communicate exactly the opposite. (See "Clear Skies" initiative, "No Child Left Behind Act," etc.)
For instance, George Bush signed something last year that would seem to indicate support for transparency with one caveat - when he decided it's against the interests of the country - which was, you know, always?
I don't know how any reasonable person can assert transparency as a value of this administration, but that's not really the main point here. It's that the Republicans, embracers of anti-American values like torture, are quite obviously setting the stage to pin the blame on Obama in the event of another terror attack.
The American people have made their position clear: They'll take their chances with Obama.
