10 Years Later, 9/11 Commission Says President Is Failing to Protect Civil Liberties

By:  Thursday September 1, 2011 11:37 am

The 9/11 Commission released a 10-year report card on the recommendations they made back in 2004. And one of three recommendations that remains entirely unfulfilled–the only one that is entirely the responsibility of the executive branch–is implementing a board to defend civil liberties.

“[T]here should be a board within the executive branch to oversee adherence to the [privacy] guidelines we recommend and the commitment the government makes to defend our civil liberties.”

An array of security-related policies and programs present significant privacy and civil liberty concerns. In particular, as the FBI and the rest of the intelligence community have dramatically expanded their surveillance of potential terrorists, they have used tools such as National Security Letters that may implicate the privacy of Americans. Privacy protections are also important in cyber security where the government must work with the private sector to prevent attacks that could disrupt information technology systems and critical infrastructure. The same Internet that contains private correspondence and personal information can also be used as a conduit for devastating cyber attacks.

To ensure that privacy and liberty concerns are addressed, the 9/11 Commission recommended creating a Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board to monitor actions across the government. Congress and the president enacted legislation to establish this Board but it has, in fact, been dormant for more than three years.

Describing the PCLOB as “dormant” is actually a huge favor to Obama. It only suggests, but does not make explicit, that before the end of his Administration Bush actually got around to rolling out the PCLOB–evenven if it was so compromised by executive branch control that Lanny Davis felt obliged to resign.

But Obama has avoided even that much oversight by simply letting the PCLOB go unfilled for his entire Presidency. As the report card explains, Obama finally got around to making nominations after Democrats lost the numbers in the Senate to approve his nominees (though one was the Michael Mukasey Assistant Attorney General who rolled out greater investigative powers for the FBI). And even if those two were by some freakish even confirmed, PCLOB would still be short a quorum to do any work.

The Obama administration recently nominated two members for the Board, but they have not yet been confirmed by the Senate. We take the administration at its word that this Board is important: in its May 2009 review of cyber security policy, the administration noted the Board’s importance for evaluating cyber security policies. We urge the president to appoint individuals for the remaining three positions on the board, including the chairman, immediately, and for the Senate to evaluate their nominations expeditiously.

[snip]

If we were issuing grades, the implementation of this recommendation would receive a failing mark. A robust and visible Board can help reassure Americans that these programs are designed and executed with the preservation of our core values in mind. Board review can also give national security officials an extra degree of assurance that their efforts will not be perceived later as violating civil liberties.

PCLOB is an entity mandated by law. But the President refuses to comply with that law to provide for some oversight over civil liberties, no matter how inadequate.

It’s not me accusing Obama of failure on this point–it’s a bipartisan commission primarily concerned with the national security of the country. But they are, in fact, calling him a failure.

Elliott Abrams: A Convicted Liar Defends a Convicted Liar’s Boss by Lying

By:  Thursday September 1, 2011 10:14 am

Elliott Abrams makes a good point: the “reviews,” thus far, of Cheney’s book have focused on particular incidents rather than on the scope of the narrative. Once I get done with it, I plan to do a full review, which I think would have been better titled, “Portrait of the Evil Bureaucrat as a Young Man.”

Yet the sole defense of the full memoir Abrams offers is an assertion that Cheney’s principles as Vice President remained the same as those that guided him when he protected the illegal acts of the Iran-Contra conspirators.

I first knew Cheney when he was chairman of the Republican Policy Committee in the House of Representatives (from 1981 to 1987), and our discussions centered then on the wars in Central America. Neither controversy nor scandal shook his view that preventing communist takeovers in that region was an important goal for the United States. Later, when I served at Bush’s National Security Council, I sometimes worked with Cheney, then vice president. Despite those who claim he changed over time, I did not find that so. The central qualities remained: total devotion to principle and to country, and complete and unswerving commitment to any policy he believed served American interests.

Curiously, Abrams neglects to admit that Cheney’s embrace of illegal means amounted to an embrace of Abrams’ own illegal means. No wonder Abrams is so fawning!

But the rest of Abrams’ piece on Cheney does precisely what he criticizes others for: relitigating individual events, notably Cheney’s policy differences with Condi Rice and Colin Powell.

Which is how he sets up his rather bizarre claim that Cheney never leaked.

Many use leaks to protect their personal interests. Cheney did none of these things. When he differed from a policy he told the president so, privately, and told the press and those outside the White House nothing — a practice that earned him unending attacks in the media from gossip-hungry journalists.

[snip]

As to Powell, the criticism is more personal, for Cheney accuses him of criticizing the president and his policies to people outside the administration and of constant leaking.

Powell himself has admitted that he could not continue after 2004 because his views could not be reconciled with those of Bush. He has not admitted to the leaking, but the leaks by Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, were too widely known in Washington to require any additional proof. And as to Cheney’s indictment of Powell and Armitage for standing by while Scooter Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff, was unjustly prosecuted for the leak of Valerie Plame’s name, the facts are in; the complaint is justified.

Just as a reminder, Abrams was, himself, one of those initially listed among the leakers of Valerie Plame’s identity and we never learned Judy Miller’s sources for Plame’s identity besides Scooter Libby, so perhaps here again he is lauding Cheney for protecting him.

But even aside from Abrams’ factually incorrect statement of the facts revealed at the Libby trial–notably, that Libby lied to hide the fact that Cheney had ordered him to leak information, possibly including Plame’s identity, to Judy Miller–he ignores the leak Cheney’s office used as cover for their conversations with Bob Novak on July 7, the day before Novak asked Armitage questions that elicited Plame’s identity. On July 7, Cheney’s office spoke to Novak, purportedly in an attempt to scotch Frances Fragos Townsend’s appointment as Bush’s Homeland Security Advisor (precisely the kind of leak, Abrams says, Cheney didn’t do). And just as a reminder, Cheney was the only person known to have refused to release journalists he spoke to about Joe Wilson and Plame from their confidentiality agreements.

Elliott Abrams’ post amounts to a celebration that Dick Cheney would use any means–even illegal means–to achieve the ends he believed important, something Abrams himself has done too. And in support of that celebration, this convicted liar lies about Cheney and leaks; he lies about the substance of another convicted liar’s lies.

So I guess Abrams did pay tribute to Cheney’s entire life memoir after all.

Rendition Flight Lawsuit Gives Lie to Government’s Jeppesen State Secrets Claim

By:  Wednesday August 31, 2011 7:14 pm

When they screw our tortured clients, they assert “National Security”, but when it is a matter of money, they don’t. — Reprieve’s Clive Smith

The British human rights organization Reprieve figured out that a NY state court case–a billing dispute between two aviation companies–pertained to rendition flights going back to 2002; it tipped off the press. The Guardian (which offers a separate story with links to some of the documents) lays out how the flight patterns tie to known renditions.

Gulfstream N85VM has already been identified as the aircraft that rendered Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, an Egyptian cleric known as Abu Omar, after CIA agents kidnapped him in broad daylight in Milan in February 2003 and took him to Cairo. Through close examination of the invoices it is possible to identify other rendition flights in which a number of high-profile al-Qaida suspects may have been rendered.

In August 2003, for example, Richmor submitted an invoice for $301,113 for eight flights over three days that took the Gulfstream to Bangkok, via Alaska and Japan, on to Kabul via Sri Lanka, and then home again via Dubai and Shannon (pdf). This operation appears to have been the rendition of Encep Nuraman, the leader of the Indonesian terrorist organisation Jemaah Islamiyah, better known as Hambali. He had been captured in Thailand shortly before the aircraft set off.

The court heard that in October 2004 the aircraft’s tail number was changed to N227SV after the US government discovered that its movements were being tracked. The following March the aircraft was publicly linked to the Abu Omar rendition. Phillip Morse, the aircraft’s ultimate owner, said he was stunned to discover how his plane was being used.

And it describes how the owners came to fear flying their own plane because it had been publicly linked to renditions.

By October 2006, Richards was writing to Moss to complain that his company was suffering negative publicity (pdf), losing business and receiving hate mail. The Gulfstream’s crews were afraid to leave the country. “In the future, whenever the name ‘Richmor’ is googled this will come up. N227SV will always be linked to renditions. No tail number change will ever erase that and our requests for government assistance in this matter have been ignored.”

The AP provides details on how the government provided bogus diplomatic notes

Every time the Gulfstream and other planes in Richmor’s fleet took to the air, they carried one-page transit documents on State Department letterhead. The notices, known as “letters of public convenience” were addressed “to whom it may concern,” stating that the jets should be treated as official flights and that “accompanying personnel are under contract with the U.S. government.”

In trial testimony, Moss said the documents were provided from the government to DynCorp, which furnished them to Richmor. Richards said the letters were given to flight crews before they left on each flight, but declined to explain their use.

The notes, signed by a State Department administrative assistant, Terry A. Hogan, described the planes’ travels as “global support for U.S. embassies worldwide.”

The AP could not locate Hogan. No official with that name is currently listed in State’s department-wide directory. A comprehensive 2004 State Department telephone directory contains no reference to Hogan, or variations of that name — despite records of four separate transit letters signed by Terry A. Hogan in January, March and April 2004. Several of the signatures on the diplomatic letters under Hogan’s name were noticeably different.

(Reprieve gave the story to the WaPo too, which did a thoroughly perfunctory job with it.)

All three stories note that the litigants expected the government to intervene–as they did in the Jeppesen suit–but did not.

Which, as Smith notes, sort of proves the lie behind the Jeppesen state secrets invocation. The government let all the details behind the KSM flights appear in unsealed court dockets. The only thing that separates what would have appeared in the Binyam Mohamed suit against Jeppesen and this suit is the explicit demand for compensation for a torture victim.

National Transportation Safety Board Identifies the Real Threat to Pipelines: PG&E

By:  Wednesday August 31, 2011 3:50 pm

A year ago, I suggested that PG&E’s willful incompetence was probably a bigger threat to critical infrastructure and key resources like pipelines than the anti-fracking activists PA investigated as potential terrorist threats.

Just to take one example, who do you think is a greater risk to our oil and gas infrastructure? A bunch of hippie protesters trying to limit drilling in the Marcellus Shale and thereby protect the quality of their drinking water (which is, itself, considered critical infrastructure)? Or PG&E, which sat on knowledge of an extremely high risk pipeline for three years even after setting aside the money to fix it?

Three years ago, PG&E asked state regulators for permission to spend $4.87 million to replace a section of the pipeline associated with the pipe that exploded in San Bruno last Thursday. The 1.42-mile section that ran under South San Francisco, which is more heavily populated than San Bruno, was considered extremely high risk and in need to replacement. Last year, the utility company made a similar request to replace a larger section of the same pipeline, at a cost of $13 million. Rate increases were approved and the plan should have gone forward. Sadly, nothing was done and lives were lost.

The South San Francisco pipeline replacement project was dropped down on the priority list and the money allocated for the work was spent elsewhere. Many experts and laypersons alike are now asking, why didn’t PG&E replace pipes they knew to be extremely dangerous?

It appears the National Transportation Safety Board–which just issued a scathing report on PG&E San Bruno explosion–agrees with me. It’s findings include the following:

  • Had a properly prepared contingency plan for the Milpitas Terminal electrical work been in place and been executed, the loss of pressure control could have been anticipated and planned for, thereby minimizing or avoiding the pressure deviations.
  • PG&E lacked detailed and comprehensive procedures for responding to a large-scale emergency such as a transmission line break, including a defined command structure that clearly assigns a single point of leadership and allocates specific duties to supervisory control and data acquisition staff and other involved employees.
  • PG&E’s supervisory control and data acquisition system limitations contributed to the delay in recognizing that there had been a transmission line break and quickly pinpointing its location.
  • The 95 minutes that PG&E took to stop the flow of gas by isolating the rupture site was excessive.

[snip]

  • The PG&E gas transmission integrity management program was deficient and ineffective.
  • PG&E’s public awareness program self-evaluation was ineffective at identifying and correcting deficiencies.
  • The deficiencies identified during this investigation are indicative of an organizational accident.
  • The multiple and recurring deficiencies in PG&E operational practices indicate a systemic problem.

If the folks running our pipelines suffer from such systemic problems they can’t avoid blowing up nice suburban areas, isn’t that worthy of at least as much focused attention as all the money dumped into boondoggle War on Terror programs?

If Bank of New York Mellon Has So Many Tax Shelters It Doesn’t Pay Taxes, How Is It NY’s “Main Street”?

By:  Wednesday August 31, 2011 1:55 pm

BERJAYA

Update: Kelly just stepped down, citing “differences in approach.”

A number of outlets have carried the report on the number of CEO’s getting paid more than their companies paid in taxes last year, but few have linked to the actual report, which means just the usual suspects, like GE’s Jeff Immelt, are getting the bulk of the focus.

Yet if you look at the appendices (pages 31-33–click the picture to the right to enlarge it), the report not only lists all the companies paying their CEOs more than they pay Uncle Sam, but provide details like the company’s political spending.

Among those listed in the report not getting much attention is Bank of New York Mellon’s CEO Robert Kelly, who got millions while his company got a $670 million tax refund.

Bank of New York Mellon CEO Robert Kelly took home $19.4 million in 2010. The bank, the same year, claimed a $670 million federal tax refund, despite $2.4 billion in U.S. pre-tax income.

Kelly’s compensation has skated above $10 million during each of the past three years of financial crisis. The CEO artfully managed to avoid the salary limits President Obama’s “pay czar” imposed on bailed-out banks by making sure Bank of New York Mellon repaid the taxpayer funds before those restrictions went into effect.27 The bank raised the money to pay back its $3 billion in TARP assistance by taking on uninsured debt, slashing dividends, and issuing new stock.28

The Bank of New York Mellon, with 10 subsidiaries in tax havens, did not pay a dime in federal taxes in 2010. However, the banking giant did devote $1.4 million to lobbying over the year. The bank’s lobbyists worked diligently to exempt currency trading from new transparency and oversight rules.29 In related news, officials from eight U.S. states are conducting inquiries or pursuing litigation against Bank of New York Mellon for ripping off state pension funds by overcharging for currency trades. The Securities and Exchange Commission and Justice Department are also investigating the allegations.

Screwing pension funds on currency trades is not the only anti-social behavior the federal government gave BNYM a refund to engage in. They’re also the trustee on the controversial Bank of America settlement.

That’s relevant because of the terms the settlement’s chief defender, Kathryn Wylde, has used to defend it, particularly in the face of Eric Schneiderman’s lawsuit to stop it.

The lawsuit angered Bank of New York Mellon, and as Mr. Schneiderman was leaving the memorial service last week for Hugh Carey, the former New York governor who died Aug. 7, an attendee said Mr. Schneiderman became embroiled in a contentious conversation with Kathryn S. Wylde, a member of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York who represents the public. Ms. Wylde, who has criticized Mr. Schneiderman for bringing the lawsuit, is also chief executive of the Partnership for New York City.

[snip]

Characterizing her conversation with Mr. Schneiderman that day as “not unpleasant,” Ms. Wylde said in an interview on Thursday that she had told the attorney general “it is of concern to the industry that instead of trying to facilitate resolving these issues, you seem to be throwing a wrench into it. Wall Street is our Main Street — love ’em or hate ’em. They are important and we have to make sure we are doing everything we can to support them unless they are doing something indefensible.”

Now, as I’ve already pointed out, it’s sort of odd for Wylde to defend Bank of America, a North Carolina corporation, in her role as NYC’s chief booster.

But if BNYM is paying nothing in the US–rather is getting tax refunds–on its $2.5 billion global profit, then presumably it’s a corporate resident of some other place, not New York, not the United States. So maybe, in addition to North Carolina, Wylde has added the Cayman Islands to the list of places whose corporations she defends as her own Main Street?

In any case, Wylde says Schneiderman shouldn’t sue to prevent BNYM’s scam settlement with BoA. Why is she protecting such a giant corporate deadbeat?

DOJ Sues to Stop AT&T/T-Mobile Merger

By:  Wednesday August 31, 2011 11:23 am

Finally, the Department of Justice did something (aside from its good work on Civil Rights) worthy of its name: it sued to prevent the AT&T/T-Mobile merger.

The Department of Justice today filed a civil antitrust lawsuit to block AT&T Inc.’s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile USA Inc.   The department said that the proposed $39 billion transaction would substantially lessen competition for mobile wireless telecommunications services across the United States, resulting in higher prices, poorer quality services, fewer choices and fewer innovative products for the millions of American consumers who rely on mobile wireless services in their everyday lives.

The department’s lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeks to prevent AT&T from acquiring T-Mobile from Deutsche Telekom AG.

“The combination of AT&T and T-Mobile would result in tens of millions of consumers all across the United States facing higher prices, fewer choices and lower quality products for mobile wireless services,” said Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole.   “Consumers across the country, including those in rural areas and those with lower incomes, benefit from competition among the nation’s wireless carriers, particularly the four remaining national carriers.   This lawsuit seeks to ensure that everyone can continue to receive the benefits of that competition.”

“T-Mobile has been an important source of competition among the national carriers, including through innovation and quality enhancements such as the roll-out of the first nationwide high-speed data network,” said Sharis A. Pozen, Acting Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division.   “Unless this merger is blocked, competition and innovation will be reduced, and consumers will suffer.”

The press release, at least, cites a lot of T-Mobile documents to argue for T-Mobile’s key role in keeping the cell phone industry competitive, not an AT&T document that was recently leaked showing that AT&T pursued the merger for anti-competitive reasons.

The complaint cites a T-Mobile document in which T-Mobile explains that it has been responsible for a number of significant “firsts” in the U.S. mobile wireless industry, including the first handset using the Android operating system, Blackberry wireless email, the Sidekick, national Wi-Fi “hotspot” access, and a variety of unlimited service plans.   T-Mobile was also the first company to roll out a nationwide high-speed data network based on advanced HSPA+ (High-Speed Packet Access) technology.  The complaint states that by January 2011, an AT&T employee was observing that “[T-Mobile] was first to have HSPA+ devices in their portfolio…we added them in reaction to potential loss of speed claims.”

The complaint details other ways that AT&T felt competitive pressure from T-Mobile.   The complaint quotes T-Mobile documents describing the company’s important role in the market:

  • T-Mobile sees itself as “the No. 1 value challenger of the established big guys in the market and as well positioned in a consolidated 4-player national market”; and
  • T-Mobile’s strategy is to “attack incumbents and find innovative ways to overcome scale disadvantages.   [T-Mobile] will be faster, more agile, and scrappy, with diligence on decisions and costs both big and small.   Our approach to market will not be conventional, and we will push to the boundaries where possible. . . . [T-Mobile] will champion the customer and break down industry barriers with innovations. . . .”

Still, I would bet this suit became a lot easier to file now that AT&T’s lies about the merger have been exposed.

Update: The complaint references just two AT&T documents (see paragraph 30). Neither is the leaked document, but they deal with fundamentally the same issue, how AT&T responded to T-Mobile on upgrading its network.

IA AG’s Office Whining That They’re Not Getting Credit for Settlement Bank of America Violated

By:  Wednesday August 31, 2011 10:10 am

The folks desperately working to give the banks a Get Out of Jail Free card for their servicing abuses are trying hard to deny they’re not doing so.

Take this anonymous accusation from someone involved in the settlement talks claiming that opponents of the settlement are using innuendo to smear those participating in it.

Another person close to the talks, who like several others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the situation more freely, said many in the group are “just exasperated. . . . This smear campaign of lies and innuendo, it’s uncalled for, it’s unprecedented, and it threatens substantial consumer harm.”

Aside from the fact that even if there were such a campaign it would not be unprecedented, since folks have tried to suggest Eric Schneiderman committed an impropriety by paying himself back for a campaign loan he made to his campaign.

But unless the WaPo left the material describing the substance of the “smear campaign of lies and innuendo” on the cutting room floor, then what we have here is a person anonymously making vague innuendos about a smear campaign of innuendos.

And then there’s the whining from IA Assistant Attorney General Patrick Madigan, who says it’s unfair to say he and Attorney General Tom Miller are in bed with the banks (in spite of Miller’s fundraising outreach to the banks) because of the great work they’ve done holding banks to account in the past.

“We’ve been accused of being in bed with the banks. To say that to a group of people who have spent the last seven to 10 years fighting mortgage abuses day in and day out is an insult of the highest order,” said Iowa Assistant Attorney General Patrick Madigan, a longtime Miller deputy, who has worked on major settlements with subprime lenders such as Countrywide and Ameriquest. “It’s just unreal.

You know, their work “fighting mortgage abuses”? As in the settlement they signed onto with Countrywide in 2008? The one that–according to NV Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto–Bank of America has basically blown off?

In her filing, Ms. Masto contends that Bank of America raised interest rates on troubled borrowers when modifying their loans even though the bank had promised in the settlement to lower them. The bank also failed to provide loan modifications to qualified homeowners as required under the deal, improperly proceeded with foreclosures even as borrowers’ modification requests were pending and failed to meet the settlement’s 60-day requirement on granting new loan terms, instead allowing months and in some cases more than a year to go by with no resolution, the filing says.

The complaint says such practices violated an agreement Bank of America reached in the fall of 2008 with several states and later, in 2009, with Nevada, to settle lawsuits that accused its Countrywide unit of predatory lending. As the credit crisis grew, the settlement was heralded as a victory by state offices eager to help keep troubled borrowers in their homes and reduce their costs. Bank of America set aside $8.4 billion in the deal and agreed to help 400,000 troubled borrowers with loan modifications and other financial relief, such as lowering interest rates on mortgages.

(See DDay for more on Masto’s complaint.)

Perhaps Madigan doesn’t understand this. But pointing to a settlement that, in retrospect, appears to have largely been a PR stunt as proof that you’re not in bed with the banks sort of proves the point that you are.

NYPD’s Failed Ethnic Profiling Program

By:  Wednesday August 31, 2011 8:29 am

BERJAYAWhen Goldman and Apuzzo exposed NYPD’s domestic spying program last week, NYPD insisted it didn’t exist. So this time, they’ve posted documentary proof.

As they report, the domestic spying program employed a “Demographics Unit” that mapped out “ethnic hotspots” in the NY city area.

The program, it seems, would not even (and, as I’ve noted, did not even) accomplish what it aspired to do. While the ancestries of interest included far more nationalities than the federal government’s National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (which served a slightly different kind of ethnic profiling), adding obvious countries like Somalia and allies like Bahrain or Turkey, as well as the “American Black Muslim” ethnicity, it leaves out Nigeria (the Undie-Bomber’s nationality) and all South East Asian Muslim nationalities save Indonesia. Moreover, the group did not, apparently have the linguistic capabilities to infiltrate those groups (a slide lists Arabic, Bengali, Hindi, Punjabi, and Urdu as its linguistic capabilities).

And among the other details from the program, I find one more admission to be telling: the unit aspired to,

Identify and map ethnic residential concentrations within the Tri-State area.

Last week, I noted that the NYPD might have explained that they missed Faisal Shahzad because he lived in CT and received funds from Pakistan via a hawala on Long Island. But clearly both would fall within the scope of NYPD’s aspired goals (if not within its legal jurisdiction).

In other words, as comprehensive as this ethnic profiling program aimed to be, not only did it fall short in conception, but (by missing Shahzad and Najibullah Zazi) in execution.

Obama & Holder Push AZ USAtty Burke Out Over ATF GunRunner Cock-Up

By:  Tuesday August 30, 2011 5:27 pm

Coming across the wire this morning was this stunning announcement by the Department of Justice:

Statement of Attorney General Eric Holder on the Resignation of U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona Dennis Burke 08/30/2011 01:01 PM EDT

“United States Attorney Dennis Burke has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney’s office, first as a line prosecutor over a decade ago and more recently as United States Attorney,” said Attorney General Holder.

Say what? Maybe I am not as plugged in as i used to be, but holy moly this came out of the blue. What is behind the sudden and “immediate” resignation of Dennis Burke, an extremely decent man who has also been a great manager of the Arizona US Attorney’s Office through some of the most perilous times imaginable? The USA who has piloted the office in dealing with such high grade problems such as those stemming from SB1070, to traditional immigration issues, to the Giffords/Loughner shooting tragedy, the corruption and malfeasance of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office to voting rights and redistricting controversies brought on by the ever crazy Arizona Legislature, has now resigned in the blink of an eye? Really?

Why?

The GunWalker mess. Also known as “Project GunRunner” and “Operation Fast and Furious” (yes, the idiots at ATF actually did call it that). From the Arizona Republic:

Burke’s resignation, effective immediately, is one of several personnel moves made in the wake of a federal gun-trafficking investigation that put hundreds of rifles and handguns from Arizona into the hands of criminals in Mexico. Burke’s office provided legal guidance to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms on the flawed initiative called Operation Fast and Furious.

The news comes on the same day as a new acting director was named to oversee the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives following congressional hearings into Fast and Furious, an operation that was aimed at major gun-trafficking networks in the Southwest.

Irrespective of the name attached to the program – I have always known it as the GunWalker operation, so i will stick with that – is has been a first rate clusterfuck from the outset. And, unlike so many things bollixing up the government, it cannot be traced back to the Bush/Cheney Continue reading →

True “Resilience” Would Help Prevent the Next 3,420 Climate-Related Deaths, Too

By:  Tuesday August 30, 2011 1:52 pm

This article–showing how many stupid projects have been funded in the name of homeland security in the last decade–has been making the rounds. Everyone has been pointing to its details on how few people have died in terrorist attacks.

“The number of people worldwide who are killed by Muslim-type terrorists, Al Qaeda wannabes, is maybe a few hundred outside of war zones. It’s basically the same number of people who die drowning in the bathtub each year,” said John Mueller, an Ohio State University professor who has written extensively about the balance between threat and expenditures in fighting terrorism.

“So if your chance of being killed by a terrorist in the United States is 1 in 3.5 million, the question is, how much do you want to spend to get that down to 1 in 4.5 million?” he said.

[snip]

Only 14 Americans have died in about three dozen instances of Islamic extremist terrorist plots targeted at the U.S. outside war zones since 2001 — most of them involving one or two home-grown plotters.

Returning to the National Climatic Data Center data I was looking at the other day, 3,420 people have died since 9/11 in big weather disasters:

2002: 28
2003:131
2004: 168
2005: 2,002
2006: 95
2007: 22
2008: 296
2009: 26
2010: 46
2011 634 (counting 40 thus far in Irene)
Total: 3,420

Now I raise this not just to make the obvious point that we would be better off dumping some of this money into dealing with climate change, but also to make a point about the theme Obama is pushing for this year’s commemoration of 9/11: resilience.

The White House has issued detailed guidelines to government officials on how to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, with instructions to honor the memory of those who died on American soil but also to recall that Al Qaeda and other extremist groups have since carried out attacks elsewhere in the world, from Mumbai to Manila.

The White House in recent days has quietly disseminated two sets of documents. One is framed for overseas allies and their citizens and was sent to American embassies and consulates around the globe. The other includes themes for Americans here and underscores the importance of national service and what the government has done to prevent another major attack in the United States.

[snip]

One significant new theme is in both sets of documents: Government officials are to warn that Americans must be prepared for another attack — and must, in response, be resilient in recovering from the loss.

“Resilience takes many forms, including the dedication and courage to move forward,” according to the guidelines for foreign audiences. “While we must never forget those who we lost, we must do more than simply remember them —we must sustain our resilience and remain united to prevent new attacks and new victims.”

Continue reading →