Monthly Archives: August 2004

What Krugman Left Out

Paul Krugman (where's that Pulitzer?) has a typically savvy column today, on Saving the Vote:

Everyone knows it, but not many politicians or mainstream journalists are willing to talk about it, for fear of sounding conspiracy-minded: there is a substantial chance that the result of the 2004 presidential election will be suspect.

When I say that the result will be suspect, I don't mean that the election will, in fact, have been stolen. (We may never know.) I mean that there will be sufficient uncertainty about the honesty of the vote count that much of the world and many Americans will have serious doubts.

How might the election result be suspect? Well, to take only one of several possibilities, suppose that Florida – where recent polls give John Kerry the lead – once again swings the election to George Bush.

Much of Florida's vote will be counted by electronic voting machines with no paper trails. Independent computer scientists who have examined some of these machines' programming code are appalled at the security flaws. So there will be reasonable doubts about whether Florida's votes were properly counted, and no paper ballots to recount. The public will have to take the result on faith.

As Krugman notes, once one combines the voting machine issues with Governor Jeb Bush's attempts to disenfranchise (via the manipulated 'felons' list) and intimidate Black voters (a traditional Republican pastime here), a close pro-Bush Florida outcome will inevitably be subject to doubt. Krugman proposes that voters be given paper ballots on request to create a paper trail.

That seems very reasonable, except for one thing. I'm actually more worried by something Krugman left out: old fashioned absentee ballot stuffing. We have a lot of that down here in Florida, and we catch a few of the perps every election. Or rather, we used to catch them. Now that the Jeb Bush and the Republican legislature have abolished the witness requirement for absentee ballots, there's no longer going to be any way to tell if one person is responsible for a suspiciously large number of votes —so it's going to be open season on ballot fraud. And the more that people turn to paper in fear of electronic voting the more that 'noise' will camouflage the work of the ballot-stuffers…

Posted in Politics: US: 2004 Election | 12 Comments

Whoa

All of a sudden, the conventional wisdom is talking Bush loses and the edgy folk are talking Kerry landslide. Even Howard Kurtz is hedging his bets.

This is a common euphoric moment between the challenger's convention and the incumbent's. It's the bounce, stupid. Remember how Gore was way up in the polls at this point four years ago?

I still think the fundamentals are there for Kerry to pull it out, maybe by a lot, but this euphoria is way premature. First, it's highly likely that the Republican convention will produce a Bush bounce (do I hear anyone predicting the 15% the Bushies predicted for Kerry?). Republicans are good at TV events, and they are working hard to put their more sensible, moderate wing front and center while keeping the frightening types in the closet.

If the post-convention bounce is likely, the next thing is a dead cert: there is one absolute constant in the Bush family M.O. when threatened electorally—go deeply negative, ideally via surrogates. I first saw this in action in the Republican Presidential primary in Connecticut in 1980, when for a time it looked as John Anderson might carry one of GHW Bush's several home states. All of a sudden anonymous fliers, mass telephone calls, and ads on small radio stations blanketed the state making false allegations against Anderson such as that he wanted to eliminate social security. And all of a sudden GHWB's poll number bottomed out.

Indeed, it looks to me as if the smear campaign is already well under way. If the Kerry people know how to respond to this beyond posing with generals and other veterans (which is good, but not enough), they've yet to demonstrate it. It's always possible the voters will rise above this sort of smear, or that the press will treat it sufficiently critically to defang it, but 'hope is not a strategy'.

Posted in Politics: US: 2004 Election | 5 Comments

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

I've suggested before that the folks who blew the whistle about the abuses in Iraq deserve a medal.

Well, instead of medals, what at least one of them is getting is death threats — threats serious enough for the Army to place Joe Darby and his wife in a secure undisclosed location. I've take the liberty of quoting more than I usually do; I hope author Wil S. Hylton and GQ magazine will forgive me. (That said, you really should read the whole article.):

They shut him up. Fast. You never even saw him. No footage of him coming off the plane, no flags or banners waving, no parade in his honor. He came home from Iraq in May, but there wasn't even a formal announcement. In fact, you're not supposed to know he's here.

He lives in a secret location. It might be just down the street, or it might be halfway to nowhere. Maybe he was sitting at the next table last night, having dinner right beside you. You have no way of knowing: Nobody knows what he looks like. …

… He's been under a gag order for three months.

First the media drove Darby's wife out of her home. Then danger from the neighbors drove her into hiding.

Meanwhile, why can't Darby talk to the press? One reason may be that he knows just how bad the horrors were at Abu Ghraib — and as yet no one has gone on the record to confirm them…

Continue reading

Posted in Iraq Atrocities | Comments Off on No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Another ‘Free Country’ Datum: FBI Questioning POTENTIAL Demonstrators

Note the key facts below:

1. The FBI is systematically questioning groups it thinks are anti-Bush, asking if they plan violent protests during the Republican Convention, or know of anyone who does.

2. The FBI says, “No one was dragged from their homes and put under bright lights. The interviewees were free to talk to us or close the door in our faces,” and indeed there is no evidence to the contrary.

3. At least some potential demonstrators have been intimidated: “they got the message loud and clear that if you make plans to go to a protest, you could be subject to arrest or a visit from the F.B.I.” It may be that they were wrong to be intimdated, but can you blame them? And if this chilling effect is widespread, should that not be a cause for some concern?

4. While the FBI's reported questions would not be troubling in the context of a case where it has particularized suspicion, they are troubling when used dragnet-style. And the FBI's awareness of someone's opposition to the Administration's policies — however fervent — does not imply they intend violence, and cannot suffice to substitute for particularized suspicion.

5. Without knowing more details I cannot say with confidence if the FBI has crossed the line separating mere bad taste and errors of judgment from systematic First Amendment violations. That said, what's going on is bad enough that someone on the inside filed an internal protest, although that must surely be a career-ending event in the FBI. That doesn't look good.

6. There's no comfort to be had from the OLC in the Justice Department opining that it's all 100% kosher. This is, after all, the same office whose warped vision of the Constitution allowed them to opine torture was legal. But I'd sure like to see that “Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy … five-page internal analysis obtained by The New York Times.”

7. It seems the FBI has nothing better to do than to send six — SIX! — special agents to interview one 21-year-old anti-war group intern. Of course, that could never be seen as in any way intimidating.

The New York Times: F.B.I. Goes Knocking for Political Troublemakers. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been questioning political demonstrators across the country, and in rare cases even subpoenaing them, in an aggressive effort to forestall what officials say could be violent and disruptive protests at the Republican National Convention in New York.

F.B.I. officials are urging agents to canvass their communities for information about planned disruptions aimed at the convention and other coming political events, and they say they have developed a list of people who they think may have information about possible violence. They say the inquiries, which began last month before the Democratic convention in Boston, are focused solely on possible crimes, not dissent, at major political events.

But some people contacted by the F.B.I. say they are mystified by the bureau's interest and felt harassed by questions about their political plans.

“The message I took from it,” said Sarah Bardwell, 21, an intern at a Denver antiwar group who was visited by six investigators a few weeks ago, “was that they were trying to intimidate us into not going to any protests and to let us know that, 'hey, we're watching you.' ''

The unusual initiative comes after the Justice Department, in a previously undisclosed legal opinion, gave its blessing to controversial tactics used last year by the F.B.I in urging local police departments to report suspicious activity at political and antiwar demonstrations.

The bulletins that relayed that request detailed tactics used by demonstrators – everything from violent resistance to Internet fund-raising and recruitment.

In an internal complaint, an F.B.I. employee charged that the bulletins improperly blurred the line between lawfully protected speech and illegal activity.

But the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy, in a five-page internal analysis obtained by The New York Times, disagreed.

The office, which also made headlines in June in an opinion – since disavowed – that authorized the use of torture against terrorism suspects in some circumstances, said any First Amendment impact posed by the F.B.I.'s monitoring of the political protests was negligible and constitutional.

If we read about this behavior in another country, would we give the federal politzia the benefit of the doubt? The answer most likely depends on that nation's traditions and recent history.

How long until our national institutions no longer deserve a presumption of honesty when engaged in politically sensitive tasks? Or, in the case of the FBI, headquartered in the J. Edgar Hoover Building, are we well past that point?

Posted in Civil Liberties | 14 Comments

Uh-oh

New Hypoxic 'Dead Zone' Found Off Oregon Coast:

For the second time in three years, a hypoxic “dead zone” has formed off the central Oregon Coast. It's killing fish, crabs and other marine life and leading researchers to believe that a fundamental change may be taking place in ocean conditions in the northern Pacific Ocean.

The event appears similar to one in 2002, when an area of ocean water with low oxygen content formed in the nearshore Oregon coast between Newport and Florence, causing a massive die-off of fish and invertebrate marine species. The fact that it's happening again is triggering concern among marine scientists.

Dissolved oxygen levels are a great deal lower than those seen in the past 40 years. This is a disturbing trend with an unknown cause that scientists now say may reflect a major change in ocean circulation patterns, with serious impacts on marine biology.

“When you see the same thing happening with this regularity, it suggests that something is fundamentally different,” said Jane Lubchenco, the Valley Professor of Marine Biology at Oregon State University. “This is a significant departure from normal conditions and you have to wonder what's going on. This ocean system has changed, and we're paying attention.”

Posted in Science/Medicine | Comments Off on Uh-oh

Don’t Let’s Let this Be Water Under the Bridge

This item, by a soldier recently returned from Iraq, is upsetting on many levels:

Better Angels of our Nature: Over the Bridge: On January 2 of this year, a team of soldiers in my brigade stopped a couple of Iraqis near the town of Samarra. We were engaging in counterinsurgency operations there, trying to stabilize the town so the area could begin to recover and rebuild from the rigors of war. And on that day, one of the men I knew and had worked with, CPT Eric Paliwoda, lost his life during a mortar attack.

Four soldiers stopped two Iraqis. In the passion of war, on a day marred by anger and tragedy, the two Iraqis ended up getting thrown off a bridge. The bridge in question was, if I recall correctly, about 15 feet above the Tigris. The river, at that point, was about 6 feet deep.

That much we know; that much is beyond dispute. Beyond that, everything is in dispute. A man may or may not have died—the soldiers claim he lives, the other man who was flung into the waters says he met a watery doom.

But there is one other thing that I haven't mentioned yet that is also beyond a doubt. No matter what happened on that bridge, the soldiers were ordered to lie about it. And they were ordered to lie about it not just by their team leader, but by the entire leadership of their unit, from their company commander all the way up to their battalion commander.

How do we know this? Because at the Article 32 hearing only 2 weeks ago, their commanders, under grant of immunity, said so.

It's wrong it should happen. It's wrong it should be covered up. It is very very wrong that the investigators should give immunity to the high-ranking officers in order to get evidence against the low-ranking ones and the grunts (isn't it supposed to work the other way? Prosecutors get cooperation from the low-ranking members of the conspiracy to get the leaders?)

There's more in this post besides what I quoted, which discusses the more general context in which these things happen, and that's upsetting too.

Posted in Iraq Atrocities | 3 Comments