Fund raising

I just caught this at TPM. Note the numbers

Today the Republican field's fundraising numbers are in for the quarter -- and Rudy Guiliani takes it with $17 million, up on Mitt Romney's $14 million.

So the top two Republicans combined managed to raise as much money as Barack Obama did on his own. I wonder if Republicans are happy with these numbers.

Scooter Scoots

Of course the huge news is that Bush commuted Scooter Libby's sentence for perjury and obstruction of justice. I'm hardly surprised, given the current crew, but I am outraged. As others have already noted, this is plainly a self-serving and corrupt act. This was not done to please Bush's base, Republicans support this decision at only 31%. This was done to keep Scooter quiet. He lied to the Grand Jury to protect Cheney and this is his price. It is disgraceful and a shame. This country deserves so much better than this crew.

One thing that struck me about though was the manner in which the deed was done. No contact or review by Justice and then done as a sudden surprise late in the day. It was a cowardly way to do this. Bush has always been unwilling to face adversary himself, but this was striking.

Bush's Legacy

List of articles on Bush's "accomplishments".

State of the Bush Presidency

McClatchy has a good piece on the state of the Bush Presidency. It is basically right in claiming that Bush will be able to get little, if anything done, for the rest of his term. He might well be able to stave off major losses, but he will not be able to push through any new measures. The tax cuts will expire and NCLB will have a major overhaul or be abandoned. Little will be left of his main legislative efforts. It is still a big question, however, whether or not he will be able to stonewall investigations into his various power grabs. There are occasional grumblings of Republican disaffection (Sen. Lugar being the latest) but Atrios is consistently right. None of these folks (Lugar, Voinavich, anyone) are actually willing to do anything. So maybe the dam will burst over the next year, but history gives us little reason to believe that it will.

One thing in the article was both amusing and frustrating. The conventional wisdom, at least as represented by the likes of David Broder, has it that the Democrats have killed the immigration bill, in spite of the fact that Democrats largely supported the President's bill and Republicans opposed it. Right in keeping with this analysis we have McClatchy saying

In the Senate, 37 Republicans — including both senators from Bush's home state of Texas — joined 15 Democrats and one independent in blocking the immigration plan.

So the 15 Democrats and on independent blocked the bill, with a little help from the greater than twice than number of Republicans who joined them? I don't think so. Rather, 37 Republicans moved to block the bill and succeeded with the aid of some 15 Democrats and one independent. Note that the 37 Republicans needed only three more votes to block the bill.

Libby Defenders

Mark Kleiman makes a very good observation about the motives and principals of those who are defending Scooter Libby and calling for his pardon.

If you had any doubt that the fuss about Libby's sentence is largely a matter of Washington insiders, political and journalistic, rallying to the defense of one of their own, consider the contrasting silence about the Siegelman case. A highly popular Democratic Governor of Alabama was indicted by a highly political U.S. Attorney's office, which is now seeking a thirty-year sentence. He was convicted of appointing someone to a state board that the same man had been appointed to by three previous governors, in return for a contribution in support of a referendum campaign. If that's a crime, then what are we to say about the system of rewarding campaign contributors with plum Ambassadorships?

Look into the Siegelman case in more detail and the contrast becomes much starker. Our national defenders of Scooter Libby are ready to declare Patrick Fitzgerald to be an out of control prosecutor. But consider this from the Siegelman case

But Siegelman's case differs from the usual pattern in some ways. For example, former Gov. Guy Hunt, a Republican, was found guilty in state court of personally pocketing $200,000. And state prosecutors sought probation, not jail time, in the Hunt case.

To support their call for the lengthy prison term for Siegelman, federal prosecutors gave Fuller a list of additional alleged illegal activities, including material from the counts on which the former governor had been acquitted by the jury.

So, to justify their call for a thirty-year sentence they made reference to the activities for which he was acquitted. This produces no outrage for a prosecution out of control. Can anyone seriously believe that the support of Scooter Libby is due to any principals based on law or justice?

I see now that Siegelman has been sentenced to seven years and four months. Sure makes Scooter's two years and six months seem outrageous, doesn't it?

Some Progress

While the White House continues to stonewall on the NSA wiretapping issue and the firing of the USAs, Rep. Henry Waxman has succeded in striking a deal on his efforts to investigate how the Executive Branch (and Dick Cheney) have been handling classified information. Recall that the whole "fourth branch of government" came to a fore, in part, over Dick Cheney's refusal to comply with an executive order on handling classified information. It seems that there have been even larger problems with how the White House handles classified information.

The heads of the office[White House Security Office or WHSO], just-departed director James Knodell and deputy Ken Greeson, took no action when presented with charges that aides to President Bush and Vice President Cheney left classified documents strewn throughout hotel rooms and across their desks, and they themselves took cellphones and Blackberries into secure facilities in violation of protocol.

Waxman's House Government Oversight Committee has been pursuing this issue for some time now, with little cooperation from the White House. The committee had gotten to the point where unless they got access to interview current and former White House officials who could speak to the alleged pattern of abuse, the committee would issue subpoenas. Apparently Fielding and Waxman have agreed on terms for the interviews. Interestingly

The White House has consented to "transcribed interviews" with Alan Swendimen, director of the Office of Administration; Mark Frownfelter, an ex-security officer; and former WHSO head Jeff Thompson.

So for this investigation the White House will agree to transcription of the interviews. The perjury trap question isn't relevant here. Why? Why then are they opposed to even transcripts for the interviews with Harriet Miers and with Sara Taylor? What is it that makes these two so much more likely to commit perjury if they have their comments transcribed.

Dick Cheney's fourth branch

Just another though I had on the surreal argument about Dick Cheney's assertion that he constitutes a separate, independent branch of government. Apparently, Dick Cheney's theory is that because he has some legislative functions, as VP, he is outside the authority of either the legislative or the executive branch. I'm just waiting for someone to notice that the President signs bills into law, thus completing the legislative function, and starts to argue that he is outside the authority of the Executive branch.

Testing Bush

So Kagro X over at Kos has a lengthy post up about the running story of Dick Cheney (and now amazingly George Bush) are exempt from Bush's executive order defining how classified information is to be handled. The major points are noted in the post. For one thing, while Bush and Cheney are now claiming that the order doesn't apply to them, that is no where indicated in the actual order. In fact the order makes specific mention of the role of the President and Vice President at numerous places. To claim now that they have nothing to do with it, is absurd.

But I think the order, and the current response of our chief executives, says a great deal about their competence. One overriding feature of the Bush/Cheney administration is the refusal, under any circumstances, to allow a set of standards to be defined ahead of time, standards by which they might be judged a success or a failure. They are incompetent. Should any standard be defined ahead of time, they would invariably fail to meet it. Their only chance of being viewed by anyone as a success is if the standards of success can be defined after the fact.

We see that again in the current dispute. Even when they have a standard set by themselves, they have to exempt themselves from it. If they were to be held to adhere to any standard, they would demonstrably fail.

Close the Carbon Cycle

This is part of my general musings on the environment.

I have come across a lot of proposals for what to do about greenhouse emissions. There is also a lot of debate the relative merits of different options trying to consider how every aspect of the technology will impact greenhouse gas emissions. Ethanol, for example, burns quite cleanly, but you have to use a lot of energy to produce it, and if that energy comes from fossil fuels itself, you need to take those emissions into consideration. There are other proposals like putting chalk in asphalt making it gray instead of black. This is actually a good idea, as it will increase the amount of solar radiation reflected back into space, and so reduce surface warming (this is known technically as increasing the earth's albedo). In the discussion that I've seen, however, (although I must say my research to date has not been extensive) what I think the central objective of our efforts must be, is being missed.

The ultimate objective, with regards to greenhouse emissions, needs to be to close the carbon cycle. That is, we need to get to a point where the amount of carbon emitted into the atmosphere in the form of CO2 each is less than or equal to the amount of CO2 drawn from the atmosphere each year. Plants growing, oceanic algae, a host of other activities, pulls CO2 from the atmosphere each year. Great. Respiration from animals and human activities like burning fossil fuels adds CO2 to the atmosphere. Currently we put a lot more in than gets taken out. So keep in mind that we won't solve the greenhouse gas problem, until we close the carbon cycle.

The upshot is that nuclear power, which I'm not opposed to, is an aid to the greenhouse gas issue only to the extent that it replaces the burning of fossil fuels. It does not help the issue if it simply adds capacity and people simply use more power. Likewise, the chalk in the asphalt, or other techniques to raise the earth's albedo, will put off the day that increasing CO2 levels will have devestating effect. And that is a good thing. However, it does not help close the carbon cycle, which ultimately we must do.

More on these ideas in a future post.

This would be great

It looks like maybe the Democrats might actually play hardball with Mr. Cheney. Rahm Emmanuel has put forth an amendment to cut funding for the Office of the Vice President from the bill that funds the executive branch. Given Cheney's recent claims that he comprises his own branch of government this is exactly the kind of action the Democrats need to be doing. Go, Rahm.

Green Thoughts

Just a Kos diary I wanted to keep a record of. I'm getting interested in learning more about various energy options and have come across a number of sources which indicate that it should be possible to produce a considerable amount of bio-diesel from waste material. This seems to me to be a very promising route, but more on all that later.

Cheney

Well, I've got to mention the latest on Dick Cheney's new grab for power. He seems to be asserting authority outside of any branch of government now. Check out The Reality Based Community for some good commentary. Also, this at Daily Kos.

The Kos article is particularly valuable as Progressive American Patriot hits on the obvious problem with Cheney's claim. Cheney claims to be part of both the executive and legislative branches, therefore rules applying to the executive branch don't apply to him. That makes no sense. Even if we accept his two branch position, then that would simply imply that the rules of both branches apply, not that neither rules apply. If I own land that stretches across the boarder between Maryland and Pennsylvania, I would then be subject to the laws of both states, not subject to the laws of no state. The fact that such obvious absurdity is taken seriously by anyone is disturbing.

The article over on TRBC is good satire, although I find the argument that the Vice President's office is not executive neither right on the merits nor particularly amusing, but maybe I'm missing some subtle humor. He does make good points on the relationship between Dick Cheney's "fourth branch of government" and Bush's claim to a unitary executive (totally contradictory) and between Cheney's fourth branch and strict constructionalism (totally contradictory). Furthermore, the idea of simply defunding the Vice-Presidency is a very good idea.

Giuliani again

I basically have to agree with Mark Kleiman here

Of course, I also don't believe that he selflessly decided to forgo the opportunity to burnish his national security cred in the run-up to the election lest his presence "politicize" a process run largely by Jim Baker. But if I had to guess which of Giuliani's ruling vices was on display, my money would be on ambition and cowardice, not greed.

with particular emphasis on the cowardice. We have an unfortunate tendency to try and pick one reason for criticizing our opponents, when multiple reasons are available. Settling on "Rudy skipped the ISG meetings just to make money" is not sufficient.

I think, though, that Mark misses some of Rudy's character in his analysis. Mark suggests

Maybe he was quick enough — I never claimed the man wasn't shrewd — to figure out before the rest of us that the ISG would come down on a position that Bush, and more important the Republican primary voting base, wouldn't swallow.

But then why not stay on the commission, go to the meetings and fight for a set of recommendations that the Republican base would love. He could then quit the commission, publicly and openly, and be in great shape. The reason is the cowardice. Rudy is not going to take a stand on anything that might cost him down the road. Rudy is a perfect example of where the Republican party is today, someone who is all about appearing tough and decisive, but who is completely opposed to actually ever being tough and decisive.