Flexible Reality
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
Who Lost Iraq?
By PAUL KRUGMAN
The formal occupation of Iraq came to an ignominious end yesterday with a furtive ceremony, held two days early to foil insurgent attacks, and a swift airborne exit for the chief administrator. In reality, the occupation will continue under another name, most likely until a hostile Iraqi populace demands that we leave. But it's already worth asking why things went so wrong.
The Iraq venture may have been doomed from the start — but we'll never know for sure because the Bush administration made such a mess of the occupation. Future historians will view it as a case study of how not to run a country.
Up to a point, the numbers in the Brookings Institution's invaluable Iraq Index tell the tale. Figures on the electricity supply and oil production show a pattern of fitful recovery and frequent reversals; figures on insurgent attacks and civilian casualties show a security situation that got progressively worse, not better; public opinion polls show an occupation that squandered the initial good will.
What the figures don't describe is the toxic mix of ideological obsession and cronyism that lie behind that dismal performance.
The insurgency took root during the occupation's first few months, when the Coalition Provisional Authority seemed oddly disengaged from the problems of postwar anarchy. But what was Paul Bremer III, the head of the C.P.A., focused on? According to a Washington Post reporter who shared a flight with him last June, "Bremer discussed the need to privatize government-run factories with such fervor that his voice cut through the din of the cargo hold."
Plans for privatization were eventually put on hold. But as he prepared to leave Iraq, Mr. Bremer listed reduced tax rates, reduced tariffs and the liberalization of foreign-investment laws as among his major accomplishments. Insurgents are blowing up pipelines and police stations, geysers of sewage are erupting from the streets, and the electricity is off most of the time — but we've given Iraq the gift of supply-side economics.
If the occupiers often seemed oblivious to reality, one reason was that many jobs at the C.P.A. went to people whose qualifications seemed to lie mainly in their personal and political connections — people like Simone Ledeen, whose father, Michael Ledeen, a prominent neoconservative, told a forum that "the level of casualties is secondary" because "we are a warlike people" and "we love war."
Still, given Mr. Bremer's economic focus, you might at least have expected his top aide for private-sector development to be an expert on privatization and liberalization in such countries as Russia or Argentina. But the job initially went to Thomas Foley, a Connecticut businessman and Republican fund-raiser with no obviously relevant expertise. In March, Michael Fleischer, a New Jersey businessman, took over. Yes, he's Ari Fleischer's brother. Mr. Fleischer told The Chicago Tribune that part of his job was educating Iraqi businessmen: "The only paradigm they know is cronyism. We are teaching them that there is an alternative system with built-in checks and built-in review."
Checks and review? Yesterday a leading British charity, Christian Aid, released a scathing report, "Fueling Suspicion," on the use of Iraqi oil revenue. It points out that the May 2003 U.N. resolution giving the C.P.A. the right to spend that revenue required the creation of an international oversight board, which would appoint an auditor to ensure that the funds were spent to benefit the Iraqi people.
Instead, the U.S. stalled, and the auditor didn't begin work until April 2004. Even then, according to an interim report, it faced "resistance from C.P.A. staff." And now, with the audit still unpublished, the C.P.A. has been dissolved.
Defenders of the administration will no doubt say that Christian Aid and other critics have no proof that the unaccounted-for billions were ill spent. But think of it this way: given the Arab world's suspicion that we came to steal Iraq's oil, the occupation authorities had every incentive to expedite an independent audit that would clear Halliburton and other U.S. corporations of charges that they were profiteering at Iraq's expense. Unless, that is, the charges are true.
Let's say the obvious. By making Iraq a playground for right-wing economic theorists, an employment agency for friends and family, and a source of lucrative contracts for corporate donors, the administration did terrorist recruiters a very big favor.
Tuesday, June 29, 2004
"Fueling Suspicion": Christian Aid's Indictment of the CPA and it's failure to account for up to $20 billion of Iraqi oil money which was supposed to have been audited by the CPA in keeping with the UN resolution authorizing income from the sale of Iraqi oil to be used for the reconstruction of the country.
Center for American Progress: June 29th, 2004
CIVIL LIBERTIESNo Blank Check
In a series of decisions that largely transcended political ideology, the Supreme Court ruled that citizens and non-citizens detained by the government – even those deemed "enemy combatants" by the Bush administration – have the right to challenge their detention in front of a neutral arbiter. The court sharply rejected President Bush's position that, as commander-in-chief during a time of war, he has the unilateral power to detain individuals indefinitely without due process of law. Justice Sandra Day O'Conner wrote: "A state of war is not a blank check for the president."
RULINGS AFFIRM BEDROCK PRINCIPLES OF LAW: The rulings – which give 600 detainees held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and U.S. citizen Yaser Hamdi the right to argue for their innocence – indicate that the Bush administration's legal policy has been nothing less than a broad assault against the fundamental principles of the rule of law that have existed for centuries. Justice John Paul Stevens traced the rationale for his decision in the Guantanamo case all the way back to King John's promise in the Magna Carta of 1215 that, "no free man should be imprisoned...save by the judgment of his peers or by the law of the land." The analysis "traced the limits on executive power through English common law, on through the Federalist Papers and down a long line of precedents forged in some of the darkest hours of the nation, including the Civil War and World War II."
THE PADILLA PUNT: The most disappointing aspect of yesterday's decisions was the Supreme Court's failure to grant Jose Padilla – a U.S. citizen detained on U.S. soil who has been held incommunicado for months on a South Carolina naval brig – access to the courts. Instead, the court refused to rule on the merits of the case and, on a technicality, sent Padilla's case back to a lower court. But, in all likelihood, the Padilla case will eventually be another setback for the administration. Four justices are already on the record as supporting due process rights for Padilla. And Justice Scalia – who refused to rule on the merits this time – wrote in the Hamdi case that "Absent suspension [of traditional legal rights by Congress]...the Executive's assertion of military exigency has not been thought sufficient to permit detention without charge." In other words, Scalia does not think designating someone an "enemy combatant" – as Bush did with Padilla – enables the executive branch to block access to the court system.
THE ABU GHRAIB CONNECTION: The Supreme Court's decisions were an implicit rejection of the Bush administration's legal justifications for the harsh treatment of prisoners. In an 8/1/02 memo, the Bush administration argued that the president had authority, pursuant to his commander-in-chief power, to authorize torture and other harsh interrogation tactics for the purpose of extracting information from detainees. But Justice O'Connor wrote in the Hamdi case that "history and common sense teach us that an unchecked system of detention carries the potential to become a means for oppression and abuse of others." Justice Stevens, in his dissent in the Padilla case, wrote that the executive detention of subversives may not be justified "by the naked interest in using unlawful procedures to extract information...For if this nation is to remain true to the ideals symbolized by its flag, it must not wield the tools of tyrants even to resist an assault by the forces of tyranny." Read the Center for American Progress statement on the decisions.
RoHS Problems on the Horizon
This is the Recycling Policy NewsBriefs Email Bulletin for Raymond Communications, Inc. College Park MD, publishers of State Recycling Laws Update and Recycling Laws International.All material copyright 2004, Raymond Communications; permission to reprint or forward with credit.
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June 28, 2004
RoHS Implementation Called a 'Disaster'
While it could cost the electronics industry $1 billion to re-design products to comply with the heavy metals ban in Europe (RoHS), the effect could be even more devastating for many smaller suppliers, according to a new article in the June online edition of Recycling Laws International online. (http://www.raymond.com ).
RLI Publisher Raymond Communications is holding a teleconference July 14, to provide a status report on RoHS implementation, and give suppliers an opportunity to question a UK regulator on the issues. (http://www.raymond.com/conference ) The teleconference is co-sponsored by RETROBOX (http://www.retrobox.com/rbwww/home/Asset_Retirement_Services/index.html ) *
"This is the biggest compliance issue the industry has ever faced.," says Harvey Stone, a consultant with the GoodBye Chain Group, which specializes in RoHS compliance issues. "However, the vast majority of the smaller suppliers are not aware of the directive."
Component suppliers that cannot provide heavy metal-free product will not be able to sell to their international OEMs, he says. He predicts a shakeout. "Out of compliance may mean out of business in the future," he warns.
Meanwhile, compliance managers from a number of top electronics firms are discouraged that the Technical Adaptation Committee at the European Commission seems no closer to making any decisions on clarifying exactly which products and components have to be heavy metal-free by July 2006 under RoHS.
The European Commission has not reached a consensus on the definition of "homogenous materials." This issue is critical to circuit board designers, because the definition will tell them if, for example, they have to reduce the lead to 1000 ppm in the entire circuit board assembly, in components of the board, or in all materials, including the coatings.
"This is a disaster," comments Kris Pollet, a lobbyist with White and Case who represents Japanese electronics makers. "Distressing," comments Paul Quickert, a compliance manager with Hewlett Packard, Palo Alto, CA. "The EC has abrogated its responsibility to establish RoHS as an Article 95 Directive!" This is the Article which harmonizes the standards across the EU. In the absence of clarity, the 25 member states are left to their own interpretation , and Quickert fears an impossible patchwork of country-level requirements.
He also expressed concern that in the absence of clarity from the EC, other countries -- including China -- will move forward with various RoHS definitions that are more stringent. (See full story online.) The UK Department of Trade & Industry plans on issuing some guidance by early July.
Steven Andrews, the RoHS expert at DTI, will provide new information on how the DTI is proceeding to implement RoHS by at the July 14 teleconference. Compliance experts at Dell Computer will provide a summary on the status of industry's efforts to phase out the heavy metals, including NEMI initiatives, as well. To register, go to http://www.raymond.com/conference or call 301-345-4237
Issue Background:
A Brief Summary of some of the RoHS issues that remain unclear:
1. Whether the six heavy metals (lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium VI, Octa- & Penta-BDEs) need to be phased out (no more than 1000 ppm) in:
a. The assembly (eg: a circuit board)
b. The component (eg: each part of a board that can be disassembled eg: each chip; the plastic board ,etc.)
c. In materials - each material used in the board
2. Whether deca-BDEs will be banned, or whether the EC will accept new recommendations from its own study.
3. Definition of a "server," (it could mean all manner of PCs)
4. Testing: Exactly how far companies must go to test their components -- grind them up? Some say yes, but the ARA study implies the environmental benefits does not merit grinding up all parts!
5. Testing standards - not set - Quickert says they cannot have testing standards until the EC clarifies the other issues.
6. Forms - will companies have to use the long forms drafted by EIA/EICTA and Japanese companies? This involves 40 substances delcarations, and many pages. Will different countries require different declarations?
7. Labeling: Will countries start requiring different labels to show compliance?
8. Enforcement: Numerous experts have told RLI the member states are not prepared to enforce RoHS. In fact, one board maker says its not possible to test for chromium, because the directive only bans Chromium VI, but not the others * the breakdown is not readily checkable. Moreover, there is a concern over 'free riders' and Internet sales.
* RetroBox is the leading provider of IT disposal and recycling services that helps companies lower their TCO and mitigate privacy and environmental risk associated with e-waste.
Special Thanks to our regular sponsor - Foresite Systems Ltd. (http://www.foresite.org ) Foresite's extensive software system now includes modules to help you manage your waste electronics fees, and RoHS material declarations as well.
Sincerely,
Michele Raymond
Publisher
michele@raymond.com
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Monday, June 28, 2004
Ralph Nader?
Pat Buchanan's Interview with Ralph Nader..There is a whole Web page devoted to Nader's dark side.
From the New Republic:
THE MYTH OF THE 'GOOD' NADER
Make You Ralph
by Jonathan Chait
Post date 02.29.04 | Issue date 03.08.04
As Ralph Nader prepares for another spoiler run at the presidency, liberals are again wringing their hands at the damage he may do not only to Democrats' chances of retaking the White House but to his own reputation as well.
"The most regrettable thing about Mr. Nader's new candidacy is not how it is likely to affect the election, but how it will affect Mr. Nader's own legacy," editorialized The New York Times this week. "Ralph Nader has been one of the giants of the American reform movement. ... [I]t would be a tragedy if Mr. Nader allowed [his anger] to give the story of his career a sad and bitter ending." The same theme was sounded in November of 2000. "Bernie Sanders is right. Ralph Nader is 'one of the heroes of contemporary American society,'" argued Eric Alterman in The Nation. "How sad, therefore, that he is helping to undo so much of his life's work in a misguided fit of political pique and ideological purity."
As Robert Scheer lamented in the Los Angeles Times, "What Nader did was to impulsively betray a lifetime of painstaking, frustrating, but most often effective, efforts on his part to make a better world. He is a good man who went very wrong."...
Or Mr. Levine's "RALPH NADER AS MAD BOMBER"
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A Few Thoughts for the Green Party from Ralph Nader
June 28th, 2004
Dear members of the Green Party –
Since 1996 we have carried the banner for free elections, clean elections, and the ten key values for a just nation and world all over our beloved country. But the corporate supremacists and their Two Party monopoly have sent the American people their own message—exclusive, rigged elections, sold elections, no other choices and more and concentration of power and wealth, against workers, consumers, small taxpayers, environment, community, and a sane foreign policy. In fact—the Republican and Democratic Parties have left most voters with only one incumbent party through redistricting and carving up the country into one-party domination. This is not even a semblance of democracy.
We have to break up this political plutocracy of the corporate government with a combination of our efforts that strengthen our efforts rather than subtract from them. There are too many good people in our country who know how to build the good society who have solutions—technical, social and economic—but who have no political voice. We strive to be their voice. Our voice and your voice must find a unison this weekend to range our mutual call for action throughout our land.
In this spirit I had the privilege of selecting Peter Miguel Camejo as my Vice President. He brings so much to our candidacy—knowledge, experience, commitment, precision, civic courage for over 40 years of struggle for justice. He brings bilingual eloquence that for the first time can communicate Green values to thirty-nine million Latinos as a Vice Presidential candidate on a ticket already polling 6 to 7% and 12% among younger voters in their teens and twenties. And as you recall he has run twice on the Green ballot for Governor of California, distinguishing himself in the rerun debates last year before a worldwide television audience.
As you know, what is already in place for our candidacy is important for local, state and national Green Party efforts this year. You can make a decision tomorrow that can amplify your resources, visibility, lasting ballot presence and impact at the state and local level where building the Green Party is so critical. With the Republicans and Democrats supporting the War, the Patriot Act and endless military and corporate welfare budgets, less and less is left for the people, their children and their future, especially the tens of millions of poor people. And this corporate political duopoly is making American people pay for their own oppression, their own deprivation, their own disrespect. Enough of the Politics of Fear. It is time to shift the power. It is time for the Solution Revolution. It is time to choose between fear and fortitude.
On the exercise of free accessible elections at all levels, we are working to bring together Third Parties and Independents.
I find Peter Camejo’s Unity Resolution as being in the interests of state Green Parties and as the best way to keep the Green Party together and advance common pursuits of justice. This resolution will make it possible for the Nader-Camejo campaign to support candidates, help preserve your ballot lines and expand the resources of the Green Party. I have had some experience since 2001 in participating at 43 fundraisers and other activities for Greens in 31 states and the disenfranchised District of Columbia. I felt that this effort was both my duty and pleasure.
Many of you have urged my attendance. In my letters to Greens a few months ago I indicated that the Greens should make their decision by themselves, absorbing all well-intentioned advice, on the merits. There is no role for any dramatic arrivals from this quarter. If you decide on nominations, you will achieve different results than if you decide on endorsements. Some want you to lie low this election and not receive many national votes in the close states. This is a peculiar way to expand your Party and establish a poor precedent that the Democrats will seek to exploit. In any event, it is your decision as delegates to make a deliberative choice. May your conscience be your guide.
Thank you for reading these words. Best wishes for your convention.
Ralph Nader
P.S. I am on my way to our Oregon convention this Saturday, but will try to call your gathering this evening in the spirit of further solidarity.
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An Open Letter to Ralph Nader
Ralph Nader replies, in "Whither The Nation?"
Dear Ralph,
According to the latest news reports, you've pushed up your self-imposed deadline for announcing your decision about an independent 2004 presidential campaign from the end of January to mid-February. We're glad to hear that, because maybe it means you're still not sure about the best path to follow. For the good of the country, the many causes you've championed and for your own good name--don't run for President this year.
Ralph, you've been part of the Nation family for a long time, from the day in 1959 we published one of your first articles, the exposé of "The Safe Car You Can't Buy." Since then, you've been a consistent advocate for active citizenship, investigative scholarship and environmental stewardship. It wasn't hype when we called you Public Citizen Number One.
We know you've never been one to back down from a fight. When people tell you you can't do something, if you think it's the right thing to do, you do it anyway. That stubborn devotion to principle is one of your greatest strengths. It inspired a generation of Nader's Raiders in the 1960s and '70s, it helped produce notable victories like the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety & Health Administration, and it inspired a new generation of young people who flocked to your "super rallies" in 2000.
The issues you raise on your website, NaderExplore04.org--full public financing of elections, new tools to help citizens band together, ending poverty, universal healthcare, a living wage, a crackdown on corporate crime--are vital to the long-term health of our country. When those issues are given scant attention by major-party candidates and ignored or trivialized by the sham joint candidate appearances known as presidential debates, we join in your outrage.
But when devotion to principle collides with electoral politics, hard truths must be faced. Ralph, this is the wrong year for you to run: 2004 is not 2000. George W. Bush has led us into an illegal pre-emptive war, and his defeat is critical. Moreover, the odds of this becoming a race between Bush and Bush Lite are almost nil. For a variety of reasons--opposition to the war, Bush's assault on the Constitution, his crony capitalism, frustration with the overcautious and indentured approach of inside-the-Beltway Democrats--there is a level of passionate volunteerism at the grassroots of the Democratic Party not seen since 1968.
The context for an independent presidential bid is completely altered from 2000, when there was a real base for a protest candidate. The overwhelming mass of voters with progressive values--who are essential to all efforts to build a force that can change the direction of the country--have only one focus this year: to beat Bush. Any candidacy seen as distracting from that goal will be excoriated by the entire spectrum of potentially progressive voters. If you run, you will separate yourself, probably irrevocably, from any ongoing relationship with this energized mass of activists. Look around: Almost no one, including former strong supporters, is calling for you to run, compared with past years when many veteran organizers urged you on.
If you run, your efforts to raise neglected issues will hit a deafening headwind. The media will frame you as The Spoiler. It's also safe to predict that you will get far fewer votes than the 2.8 million you garnered in 2000, and not only because your rejection of the Green Party raises expensive new hurdles to getting your name on state ballots. A recent online survey by the progressive news site AlterNet.org found that only one in nine respondents said they'd vote for you if you run this year, a 60 percent drop-off from the number who said they voted for you in 2000. If you run and get a million votes or fewer, the media will say it means your issues were not important. This can only hurt those causes, not to mention the tangible costs another run may impose on the many public-interest groups tied to you.
You have said your candidacy could actually help Democrats by raising issues against Bush that a Democratic candidate would avoid and by boosting turnout for good candidates for the House and Senate, where the slender bulwarks against Bushism must be reinforced. But these arguments do not compel a candidacy by you. As a public citizen fighting for open debates and rallying voters to support progressive Democrats for Congress, or good independents or Greens for that matter, you can have a far more productive impact than as a candidate dealing with recriminations about being a spoiler or, worse, an egotist. And the very progressives distressed by the prospect of your candidacy would contribute eagerly to have that voice amplified.
And if you think that this year you can help the anti-Bush cause by running and peeling off disgruntled Republicans, McCainiacs, Perotistas and the like while not disrupting the Democratic charge, please be honest with yourself. Once upon a time, maybe as late as 1992, when you dallied with a "none of the above" campaign and got 2 percent of the vote in New Hampshire from write-ins in both the Democratic and Republican primaries, your appeal stretched across the political spectrum. No longer, alas. Your nephew, Tarek Milleron, wrote recently that if you run in 2004 it will be "the year of the Elks clubs, the garden clubs, meetings with former Enron employees, the veterans groups, Wal-Mart employees," not progressive super rallies. But how many Elks club presidents are inviting you to speak? How many veterans groups? Such relationships take time to build and can't be conjured out of thin air in the midst of a presidential campaign.
You once told us you play chess at many levels at once. For all we know, you're thinking of running hard and then, if the race is close, throwing your support to the Democrat in the final days. While such a tactic might make for a satisfying conclusion to an otherwise futile quest, we don't think it justifies the risks, antagonism, confusion and contortions that such a run would entail.
Ralph, please think of the long term. Don't run.
Sincerely,
The Nation Editors
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Ralph Nader Replies: Whither The Nation?
The following letter is a response to "An Open Letter to Ralph Nader," which appeared in the February 16 issue.
Washington, DC
As I reread slowly your open letter, which kindly started and closed with your demand "Don't run," memories of past Nation magazine writing, going back to the days of Carey McWilliams and earlier, came to mind. I share them with you.
Long ago the The Nation stood steadfastly for more voices and choices inside the electoral arenas, which today are more dominated than ever by the two-party duopoly trending toward one-party districts:
"Don't run."
The Nation's pages embrace large areas of agreement with the undersigned on policy matters and political reforms, especially the abusive power of Big Business over elections, the government and the economy:
"Don't run."
The Nation has been sharply critical of the Democratic Party's stagnation, the corporatist Democratic Leadership Council and its domination by Big Money. This is the same party that has just ganged up on its insurgents and reasserted its established forces:
"Don't run."
The Nation has urgently reported on a tawdry electoral system--ridden with fraud and manipulation--that discourages earnest people from running clean campaigns about authentic necessities of the American people and the rest of the world:
"Don't run."
The Nation first informed me as a young man about the deliberate barriers--statutory, monetary, media and others--to third parties and independent candidates for a chance to compete, bring out more votes and generate more civic and political energies. This led me to write my first article on these exclusions against smaller candidacies in the late 1950s:
"Don't run."
The Nation has often encouraged the longer- run effect of small candidacies (civil rights, economic populism, women's suffrage, labor and farmer parties), which have pushed the agendas of the major parties and sown the seeds for future adoption:
"Don't run."
The Nation has dutifully recorded the hapless state of the Democratic Party, which for the past ten years has registered more and more losses at the federal, state and local levels. The party even managed to "lose" the presidency in 2000, which it actually won, even with all other "what ifs" considered, both before (Katherine Harris's voter purge), during (the deceptive ballots) and afterward (recount blunders by the party):
"Don't run."
The Nation has editorialized about the spineless Democrats who could have stopped the two giant tax cuts for the wealthy, the unconstitutional war resolution, the Patriot(less) Act and John Ashcroft's nomination (to mention a few surrenders). Yet you have not pointed to any external ways to stiffen the resolve or jolt the passivity of Jefferson's party, which lately has become very good at electing very bad Republicans all by itself:
"Don't run."
The Nation believes this cycle is different and that the Democrats have aroused themselves. This view is not the reality we experience regularly in Washington. Witness the latest collapse of the party's opposition to the subsidy-ridden, wrongheaded energy and Medicare drug-benefit legislation--two core party issues:
"Don't run."
The Nation's venerable reputation has been anything but conceding the practical politics of servility, which brings us worse servility and weaker democracy every four years:
"Don't run."
The Nation has intensely disliked being held hostage to antiquated electoral rules, from the Electoral College to the winner-take-all system that discounts tens of millions of votes. Such a stand would seem to call for candidates on the inside to highlight and help build the public constituency for change over time:
"Don't run."
It doesn't seem that The Nation would disagree with the conclusions of George Scialabba, who wrote last year in The Boston Review, "Two-party dominance allows disproportionate influence to swing voters, single-issue constituencies, and campaign contributors; it promotes negative, contentless campaigns; it rewards grossly inequitable redistricting schemes, and it penalizes those who disagree with both parties but fear to 'waste' their votes (which is why Nader probably lost many more voters to Gore than Gore lost to Nader)":
"Don't run."
The Nation's open letter does not go far enough in predicting where my votes would come from, beyond correctly inferring that there would be few liberal Democratic supporters. The out-of-power party always returns to the fold, while the in-power party sees its edges looking for alternatives. Much more than New Hampshire in 2000, where I received more Republican than Democratic votes, any candidacy would be directed toward Independents, Greens, third-party supporters, true progressives and conservative and liberal Republicans, who are becoming furious with George W. Bush's policies, such as massive deficits, publicized corporate crimes, subsidies and pornography, civil liberties encroachments, sovereignty-suppressing trade agreements and outsourcing. And, of course, any candidacy would seek to do what we all must strive for--getting out more nonvoters, who are now almost the majority of eligible voters:
"Don't run."
The Nation wants badly to defeat the selected President Bush but thinks there is only one pathway to doing so. This approach excludes a second front of voters against the regime, which could raise fresh subjects, motivating language and the vulnerabilities of corporate scandals and blocked reforms that the Democrats are too cautious, too indentured to their paymasters to launch--but are free to adopt if they see these succeed:
"Don't run."
The Nation has rarely been a hostage to prevailing dogma and electoral straitjackets. Its pages have articulated many "minorities of one" over its wondrous tenure and has watched many of its viewpoints today become the commonplace of tomorrow.
I have not known The Nation to so walk away from those engaging in a difficult struggle it champions on the merits, in a climate of conventional groupthink--much less with a precipitous prognosis of a distant outcome governed by a multitude of variables. Discussions and critiques from a distance, after all, are a dime a dozen in an election year. O apotheosis of the exercise of dissent inside and outside the electoral commons since 1865:
"Don't walk."
RALPH NADER
www.naderexplore04.org
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THE EDITORS REPLY
Dear Ralph,
We agree with your characterization of The Nation and what it stands for--and has stood for since 1865. But we disagree with your characterization of why we appealed to you not to run for President this year.
Please don't run. --The Editors
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Reuters
Justices Affirm Legal Rights of 'Enemy Combatants'
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
Published: June 29, 2004
WASHINGTON, June 28 — Declaring that "a state of war is not a blank check for the president," the Supreme Court ruled on Monday that those deemed enemy combatants by the Bush administration, both in the United States and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, must be given the ability to challenge their detention before a judge or other "neutral decision-maker."
Although divided in its rationale, the court was decisive in rejecting the administration's core legal argument that the executive branch has the last word in imposing open-ended detention on citizens and noncitizens alike. The justices' language was occasionally passionate, reflecting their awareness of the historic nature of this confrontation between executive and judicial authority.
Eight justices, all but Justice Clarence Thomas, said the two-year-long detention of an American citizen, Yaser Esam Hamdi, had either been invalid from the beginning or had become so, for constitutional or statutory reasons. The controlling opinion, by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, said that Mr. Hamdi's detention was permissible if designation as an enemy combatant proved to be correct, but that his inability so far to appear before a judge, challenge the government's evidence, and tell his side of the story had deprived him of his constitutional right to due process.
The opinion said that a citizen held as an enemy combatant was entitled to "notice of the factual basis for his classification" and a "fair opportunity to rebut the government's factual assertions before a neutral decision-maker." Writing for herself, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Stephen G. Breyer, Justice O'Connor said, "These essential constitutional promises may not be eroded." [Excerpts, Page A16.]
She added that "we necessarily reject the government's assertion that separation of powers principles mandate a heavily circumscribed role for the courts in such circumstances." She said that the administration's position that the courts could not examine individual detainees' cases "serves only to condense power into a single branch of government." []
Mr. Hamdi, ostensibly picked up on the battlefield in Afghanistan, has sought to contest his designation as an enemy combatant. The federal appeals court that heard his case ruled last year that a nine-paragraph statement filed by a Pentagon official, Michael Mobbs, was a sufficient basis for Mr. Hamdi's continued detention and that no further inquiry into his case was required.
In a second case Monday, concerning the hundreds of noncitizens confined at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, the court ruled 6 to 3 that federal judges have jurisdiction to consider petitions for writs of habeas corpus from detainees who argue that they are being unlawfully held.
The administration's position on the Guantánamo detainees was that under a World War II-era Supreme Court precedent, no federal court had jurisdiction to hear their cases because the base is outside the sovereign territory of the United States. But for a variety of reasons, the precedents the administration relied on did not govern the analysis, Justice John Paul Stevens said for the majority. A main factor was the nature of Guantánamo bay, "territory over which the United States exercises exclusive jurisdiction and control" under a 101-year-old lease, Justice Stevens said.
The majority's analysis suggested, in fact, that federal courts might have jurisdiction to hear claims of illegal detention from those held in other foreign locations as well. While Justice Stevens was not explicit on this point, his suggestion was enough to provoke Justice Antonin Scalia to complain in dissent that "the court boldly extends the scope of the habeas statute to the four corners of the earth." Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Thomas joined the dissent.
Josh Marshall's take on VP Cheney's Cursing Remark to Sen. Lahey
(June 28, 2004 -- 01:21 PM EDT)We are all up in arms right now, it seems, about Vice President Dick Cheney, and the fact that Cheney told one of the more irenic of Democratic senators to "f--k off" in a brief exchange on the Senate floor last Tuesday because the senator in question, Pat Leahy (Democrat of Vermont) had earlier had the temerity to raise questions about lucrative no-bid Iraqi contracts secured by his former employer Halliburton.
Certainly, Cheney and his partisans deserve the knuckle-rapping they're now getting. And it's entertaining to watch avatars of dignity, good order and responsibility like Bill Frist and the folks over at the White House call Cheney's antics good clean fun and politics as usual.
But for those who have few good things to say about the vice-president, I think, the correct response is less outrage than the sort of grim (or perhaps not so grim) satisfaction one feels when a malign character unwittingly reveals himself to a larger audience. Because even if Cheney "felt better" after his outburst, this wasn't a show of strength but one of desperation or, perhaps, impatient impotence.
I think Joe Klein has it right in the title of his new column in Time -- ("Plenty More to Swear About: Bush's security team faces a barrage of criticism as the facts about Iraq come to light"). As Klein writes, last week's "assorted temper tantrums appeared to be a leading indicator of a gathering summer storm confronting this presidency."
Consider for a moment. Who is Dick Cheney? What do we know of him? None of us like being questioned or critized. But in him the disinclination runs particularly deep. He prefers to act in secrecy and is a man to whom government transparency has all the allure that a shaft of sunlight has to a vampire. When challenged, violence seems always to be his preferred method of response, that of first resort --- often a literal sort on the world stage, but with bureaucratic (viz. Plame) and what we might call verbal violence at home. By verbal violence I mean specifically tough talk and threats meant to frighten people away from challenging him further, to knock them on their heels. Even this new case -- saying Leahy et al. had it coming -- is but another example. When that doesn't work, he gets sloppy.
Cheney et al. can see all sorts of bad business coming down the pike in the next few months -- much of it already on the public radar screen, some of it still clogged up no doubt in back channels, newsrooms and new rounds of dirty-tricksterism. It seems clearly to be getting to them.
Supreme Court to Hear Medical Marijuana Case
Alcoholism / Substance Abuse Blog
June 28, 2004
Supreme Court to Hear Medical Marijuana Case
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that would determine if people who have been advised by the doctors to use medical marijuana to ease their symptoms can be prosecuted under federal drug laws.
The case is an appeal of a California case in which an appeals court ruled that two women who use marijuana to reduce their chronic pain and other medical problems were exempt from federal prosecution because they were acting on the advice of their physicians. The U.S. Department of Justice appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court in Ashcroft vs. Raich.
Raich is Angel Raich, 38, of Oakland, who reportedly suffers from scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic fatigue, pain and nausea and one of the plaintiffs in the original case. "I'm real excited and I'm real nervous and real afraid because my life is on the line here," she told reporters.
The case could affect laws in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington state, all of which have medical marijuana laws similar to California. There are 35 states that have passed some form of legislation recognizing marijuana's medical value.
"The Supreme Court has a chance to protect the rights of patients everywhere who need medical cannabis to treat their afflictions," said Steph Sherer, executive director of Americans for Safe Access.
The federal Controlled Substances Act says marijuana has no medical benefits and cannot be dispensed or prescribed by doctors.
