Homegrown Terrorists

Republicans tell us they have kept us safe and there have been no terrorist attacks in the US since September 11, 2001. But what do you call this? In Miramar Beach, Florida, Dannie Roy Baker shot 5 people killing two of them. Baker had a recent history of e-mailing friends about national political issues. One recipient described the e-mails as "radical" and "inappropriate."

Another acquaintance of Baker commented, "he did come up to me one time and asked me if I was ready for the revolution to begin and if I had any immigrant in my house to get them out." Baker fits my definition of a hateful homegrown terrorist. His demented dreams of creating fear in a group of people through violence and intimidation with the goal of promoting his own ideology unfortunately came to reality last Thursday.

Some people might simply call Baker an "angry white male." Strangely, we didn't hear much about this species during eight years of the Bush administration. Glenn Greenwald points out that this group is not so much fueled by anti-government sentiment but more so by a fear of losing its cultural and demographic supremacy:

What was most remarkable about this allegedly "anti-government" movement was that -- with some isolated and principled exceptions -- it completely vanished upon the election of Republican George Bush, and it stayed invisible even as Bush presided over the most extreme and invasive expansion of federal government power in memory. Even as Bush seized and used all of the powers which that movement claimed in the 1990s to find so tyrannical and unconstitutional -- limitless, unchecked surveillance activities, detention powers with no oversight, expanding federal police powers, secret prison camps, even massively exploding and debt-financed domestic spending -- they meekly submitted to all of it, even enthusiastically cheered it all on.

The angry white male is only pacified when one of his own tribe is in the White House.

Unfortunately the angry tribe has its own political party which is proving itself to be completely out of touch with the American public and reality. Tonight the Daily Show covered the endless hate and malice spewed at last week's CPAC (if video doesn't show, click here):

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CPAC After Party

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

Though Jon Stewart is awesome, I can't laugh. I can't laugh at the CPAC audience laughing at a nuclear bomb being dropped on Chicago. The whole joke -- based on misquoting President Obama -- was too disturbing. The Republicans are cheering for another terrorist attack in the US. And I fear they are trying to inspire such an attack. This is the new Republican Nihilism.

Because they say socialism is the enemy, or "islamofascism" is the enemy, or immigration is the enemy, they are moved to broadcast creepy fantasies about a coming civil war. It's only a matter of time before more disturbed people take these war games as prophecy. Now I know what Republicans really imagine when they say they want Obama to fail.

I keep waiting for somebody in the Republican party to stand up and stop this vitriol for the sake of the nation.

Nailin' Palin

Oh, no! Not another Sarah Palin post! I'll try to be brief. Yesterday a Quebec comedy duo notorious for prank calls to celebrities reached Sarah Palin, convincing the Republican vice-presidential nominee that she was speaking with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Hilarity ensued (if video doesn't show, click here... or if you simply can't stand that shrill voice, read the transcript here):



I'm not going to criticize her for falling for a prank. Hell, I fell for at least one good one in my younger years (maybe that will be a blog post for another day). But what irks me about her conversation with the impostor Sarkozy is her girlish laughter. I imagine that I sounded that way when I was 14 and talking to a cute boy. I've since learned to control myself, and I would hope a VP candidate could also learn to behave a little more appropriately...

Oh, who am I kidding? I'm talking about a ditsy woman with superstitious beliefs and a gross and shamelessly erroneous interpretation of the First Amendment:

Palin told WMAL-AM that her criticism of Obama's associations, like those with 1960s radical Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, should not be considered negative attacks. Rather, for reporters or columnists to suggest that it is going negative may constitute an attack that threatens a candidate's free speech rights under the Constitution, Palin said.

Glenn Greenwald comments on this profound ignorance:

The First Amendment is actually not that complicated. It can be read from start to finish in about 10 seconds. It bars the Government from abridging free speech rights. It doesn't have anything to do with whether you're free to say things without being criticized, or whether you can comment on blogs without being edited, or whether people can bar you from their private planes because they don't like what you've said.

If anything, Palin has this exactly backwards, since one thing that the First Amendment does actually guarantee is a free press. Thus, when the press criticizes a political candidate and a Governor such as Palin, that is a classic example of First Amendment rights being exercised, not abridged.

You can listen to Palin's comment here, but it's painful... and I'm not talking about the pitch this time.

Your E-Mail Is Safe Again

I know the DOJ is trying to make David Kernell sound like a dangerous "computer hacker," but the guy who exposed Sarah Palin's Yahoo e-mail account didn't really hack, he duped. He allegedly answered the standard security questions, reset her password, and posted the mailbox contents to Wikileaks.

Of course, this unauthorized access is a crime, but it's fascinating to watch the over-the-top hysteria from the same government that has been violating our privacy for years. Glenn Greenwald remarks on the irony:

The same political faction which today is prancing around in full-throated fits of melodramatic hysteria and Victim mode (their absolute favorite state of being) over the sanctity of Sarah Palin’s privacy are the same ones who scoffed with indifference as it was revealed during the Bush era that the FBI systematically abused its Patriot Act powers to gather and store private information on thousands of innocent Americans; that Homeland Security officials illegally infiltrated and monitored peaceful, law-abiding left-wing groups devoted to peace activism, civil liberties and other political agendas disliked by the state; and that the telephone calls of journalists and lawyers have been illegally and repeatedly monitored.

Of course, you would expect the right-wing pundits who have defended the surveillance state to announce "if Sarah Palin has nothing to hide, then she shouldn't be worried!" But of course they don't.

And of course, we all now know that Sarah Palin has indeed been trying to hide something -- her personal vendetta against state trooper Mike Wooten.

Here's where these crimes intersect. Governor Palin's exposed email account revealed that she had been violating the Open Records Act:

The bottom line is that Palin appears to have benefited from her decision to conduct state business using private channels. As governor, she has touted the need for accountability and transparency (even though she has withheld about 1100 emails involving her aides, citing dubious justifications). But because Palin used one or more non-state email accounts for official communications--perhaps improperly--she has created a costly mess for her administration's information officers and a situation in which emails from all her accounts will likely not become public before November 4. If her emails contain any information that might not reflect well upon Palin, the McCain-Palin campaign need not worry. Palin, wittingly or not, has engineered a delay that is the functional equivalent of a cover-up.

The exposed email also revealed her possible motive for using the Yahoo email account in the first place -- to hide her husband's involvement in official business.

So now, with good reason, some legal experts are questioning the indictment against David Kernell. If the email intrusion was not committed to further another crime, then it may not be a felony...

But don't expect that to get in the way of this Department of Justice. They will always protect their own. They might save us from one evil hacker, but that's meager consolation when you still live in a surveillance state.

More About the Bush Doctrine

After Sarah Palin's dismal response to Charlie Gibson's question about the Bush Doctrine, I can't get the issue out of my head. So many people are brushing off her lack of knowledge saying, "well, she'll only be VP." However, Glenn Greenwald sums up why we should indeed be scared:

To see why that matters, look at this excerpt today from a new book by The Washington Post's Barton Gellman, which details how Dick Cheney's office exerted virtually exclusive control over large numbers of key U.S. programs, and specifically over the illegal warrantless eavesdropping program -- facts that Gellman had previously documented. There is every reason to believe that Palin, too, would wield very substantial power as Vice President.

In general, the White House is now far and away the most powerful branch of our government -- state power is centralized there to an unprecedented degree. The presidency is so powerful that it's almost impossible for a President not to share substantial responsibility with the Vice President. Moreover, if McCain wins, he is quite likely to perceive -- accurately -- that his victory was due in large part to Palin and the enthusiasm she generated. Independently, her immense political popularity among key GOP factions will empower her. The fact that McCain seems completely uninterested in any issues other than fighting and starting wars and his petty fixation on earmarks -- underscored by his acute indifference to domestic policy -- will leave vast areas for her to manage. His advanced age and previous health problems makes it far more likely than usual that the Vice President will become President.

And so we'll have a powerful VP with no clearly-defined positions on many issues. Palin hasn't studied these policies or thought them through. And yet, without knowing the subject matter, her instinct was to embrace whatever this Bush Doctrine thing is.

What's doubly disturbing is that Gibson asked the same Bush Doctrine question to all the Republican and Democratic candidates during the primary debates, and all candidates were able to answer the question satisfactorily. So that leaves me wondering... wasn't Palin even watching the debates?

But here is the really big question: do we want a president who will continue the Bush Doctrine?

McCain clearly supports it (if video doesn't show, click here):



Barack Obama says that the Bush Doctrine is flawed, but it seems he hasn't rejected it completely:

OBAMA: And that's the flaw of the Bush doctrine. It wasn't that he went after those who attacked America. It was that he went after those who didn't.

And as a consequence, we have been bogged down, paid extraordinary -- an extraordinary price in blood and treasure, and we have fanned the anti-American sentiment that actually makes it more difficult for us to act in Pakistan.

Just one more point I want to make on this, Charlie. I think it is absolutely true that we have to, as much as possible, get Pakistan's agreement before we act. And that's always going to be the case.

At least, maybe, Palin (the moose caught in the headlights) has woken up the public to a foreign policy issue they should have been paying attention to all along.

Anthrax Answers?

Government officials asserted yesterday that Bruce Ivins acted alone to perpetrate the anthrax attack that killed five people, but others believe the evidence is inconclusive. (If video doesn't show, click here.)



Gerald Posner raises the question about how Ivins could have weaponized the anthrax. This mystery alone is one critical reason for the public to scrutinize the government's conclusions.

However, as I wrote about earlier this week, there is another reason for scrutiny over the entire anthrax case. The media's reporting on the attack was used to advance Bush's plan for a war in Iraq. Some people, notably Glenn Greenwald, Jay Rosen and Dan Gillmor, want ABC News to answer vital questions about the sources behind the initial reports connecting Saddam Hussein to the anthrax attacks. Bloggasm has an exclusive interview with Greenwald asking him about ABC's responsibility in the matter:

“I think first of all that this is a basic principal of journalism, that if you get a story wrong, you explain what happened that led to the bad reporting,” Greenwald told me. “That’s what the New York Times did to explain how they got those Judy Miller stories wrong. When people get stories wrong, the credibility of the journalistic outlet depends upon them explaining what happened. If Brian Ross wants to say, ‘our sources acted in good faith, they just got it wrong,’ then he needs to explain the basis of that.”

Yesterday, Brian Ross, ABC's lead reporter on the anthrax stories in late 2001, explained what happened and what it means now: "Our sources were current and former government scientists who were all involved in analyzing the substance in the letter." He says that Ivins was not one of those scientists. He also denies that his reports contributed to the case for war. "The people who say the White House lied to us to build a case on Iraq or something doesn't hold." He says that the White House denied it was bentonite from day one.

I find it strange enough that Ross doesn't believe the Bush administration lied to us to start a war... but his other claims also lead me to wonder why is he a reporter if he believes his own reports are so ineffectual that they don't influence the public? I remember the hype, and I remember the fear. Every claim that went unchallenged and uncorrected added to the public's anxiety. You can't convince me that those reports didn't matter.