As about everyone knows by now, the great debate is still ongoing on the issue of the debt ceiling. The frustration of those on the left with the intransigence of the Republican Tea Party, coupled with the neutered Democratic Congress, has led many to call for President Obama to immediately “invoke the 14th”. The common rallying cry is that legal scholars (usually Jack Balkin is cited), Paul Krugman and various members of Congress have said it is the way to go. But neither Krugman nor the criers in Congress are lawyers, or to the extent they are have no Constitutional background. And Balkin’s discussion is relentlessly misrepresented as to what he really has said. “Using the 14th” is a bad meme and here is why.

The Founders, in creating and nurturing our system of governance by and through the Constitution provided separate and distinct branches of government, the Legislative, Executive and Judicial and, further, provided for intentional, established and delineated checks and balances so that power was balanced and not able to be usurped by any one branch tyrannically against the interest of the citizenry. It is summarized by James Madison in Federalist 51 thusly:

First. In a single republic, all the power surrendered by the people is submitted to the administration of a single government; and the usurpations are guarded against by a division of the government into distinct and separate departments.
….
We see it particularly displayed in all the subordinate distributions of power, where the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other — that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights. These inventions of prudence cannot be less requisite in the distribution of the supreme powers of the State.

which must be read in conjunction with Madison in Federalist 47:

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

This is the essence of the separation of powers and checks and balances thereon that is the very root foundation of our American governance. It may be an abstract thing, but it is very real and critical significance. And it is exactly what is at stake when people blithely clamor to “Use the 14th!”.

Specifically, one of the most fundamental powers given by the Founders to the Article I branch, Congress, was the “power of the purse”. That was accomplished via Article I, Section 8, which provides:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States…

and

To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

The call to “Use the 14th” is a demand that the President, the embodiment of the Article II Executive Branch, usurp the assigned power of the Article I Congress in relation to “borrow money on the credit of the United States”. This power is what lays behind the debt ceiling law to begin with, and why it is presumptively Constitutional. It is Congress’ power, not the President’s, and “invoking the 14th” means usurping that power. Due to “case and controversy” and “standing” limitations, which would require another treatise to discuss fully, there is literally likely no party that could effectively challenge such a usurpation of power by the Executive Branch and an irretrievable standard set for the future. The fundamental separation and balance of powers between the branches will be altered with a significant shift of power to the Executive Branch.

This is not something to be done lightly or if there is any possible alternative available. Indeed, the only instance in which it could be rationally considered would be if all alternatives were exhausted. That does NOT mean because the GOPTeaers are being mean and selfish. It does NOT mean because you are worried about some etherial interest rate or stock market fluctuation that may, or may not, substantially occur. It does NOT mean because your party’s President and Congressional leadership are terminally lame. That, folks, is just not good enough to carve into the heart of Constitutional Separation of Powers. Sorry.

And for those that are thinking about throwing “experts” such as Jack Balkin in the face of what I have argued, go read them, notably Jack himself, who said before invoking the 14th, first the President would have to prioritize what was paid by existent resources, those that could be liberated and revenues that did still come in:

…certainly payments for future services — would not count and would have to be sacrificed. This might include, for example, Social Security payments.
….
Assume, however, that even a prolonged government shutdown does not move Congress to act. Eventually paying only interest and vested obligations will prove unsustainable — first because tax revenues will decrease as the economy sours, and second, because holders of government debt will conclude that a government that cannot act in a crisis is not trustworthy.

If the president reasonably believes that the public debt will be put in question for either reason, Section 4 comes into play once again. His predicament is caused by the combination of statutes that authorize and limit what he can do: He must pay appropriated monies, but he may not print new currency and he may not float new debt. If this combination of contradictory commands would cause him to violate Section 4, then he has a constitutional duty to treat at least one of the laws as unconstitutional as applied to the current circumstances.

So, contrary to those shouting and clamoring for Obama to “Use the 14th”, it is fraught with peril for long term government stability and function, and is not appropriate to consider until much further down the rabbit hole. It is NOT a quick fix panacea to the fact we, as citizens, have negligently, recklessly and wantonly elected blithering corrupt idiots to represent us. There is no such thing as a free lunch; and the “14th option” is not what you think it is.

As a parting thought for consideration, remember when invasion of privacy and civil liberties by the Executive Branch was just a “necessary and temporary response to emergency” to 9/11? Have you gotten any of your privacies and civil liberties back? Well have ya?

UPDATE: Joberly added this in comments, and a quick perusal of legislative intent materials and the limited case interpretation seems to indicate it is spot on:

Thanks to Bmaz for his post and for his Comments # 3 and # 34. I’m no lawyer, just a history teacher who has taught Civil War & Reconstruction for some time. This is not the time and place for a history essay on the context of Section 4 (“validity of the public debt” clause) of the 14th amendment; instead, let me just point to the so-far-ignored Section 5 of the amendment: “The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.” None of the first dozen amendments to the Constitution had anything like this clause; for the most part, the first dozen limited Congress in what it could enact (think “Congress shall make no law…”). The 13th Amendment, passed by Congress in March 1865 was the first to affirm that Congress had the power to enforce a constitutional right. The 14th amendment repeated that. In short, Section 5 put Congress specifically in charge of making sure of the “validity of the public debt,” and definitely not the president. That was no accident. The Congress that passed the 14th Amendment had zero confidence in the president (Andrew Johnson) in carrying out congressional policy. The last thing they wanted over the winter of 1865-66 was to give Pres. Johnson any more power that he could abuse. But abuse he did and the next House, elected in 1866, impeached him. I’m with Bmaz on this one.

[Note: I actually did this post at the request of our good friend Howie Klein at his blog Down With Tyranny and it is cross posted there as well]

My biggest complain about this statement from Raúl Grijalva is that he doesn’t say who threw Democrats and the people they champion under the bus: President Obama.

That said, his comments about the crossroads facing the Democratic Party are spot on.

This deal trades peoples’ livelihoods for the votes of a few unappeasable right-wing radicals, and I will not support it. Progressives have been organizing for months to oppose any scheme that cuts Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security, and it now seems clear that even these bedrock pillars of the American success story are on the chopping block. Even if this deal were not as bad as it is, this would be enough for me to fight against its passage.

This deal does not even attempt to strike a balance between more cuts for the working people of America and a fairer contribution from millionaires and corporations. The very wealthy will continue to receive taxpayer handouts, and corporations will keep their expensive federal giveaways. Meanwhile, millions of families unfairly lose more in this deal than they have already lost. I will not be a part of it.

Republicans have succeeded in imposing their vision of a country without real economic hope. Their message has no public appeal, and Democrats have had every opportunity to stand firm in the face of their irrational demands. Progressives have been rallying support for the successful government programs that have meant health and economic security to generations of our people. Today we, and everyone we have worked to speak for and fight for, were thrown under the bus. We have made our bottom line clear for months: a final deal must strike a balance between cuts and revenue, and must not put all the burden on the working people of this country. This deal fails those tests and many more.

The Democratic Party, no less than the Republican Party, is at a very serious crossroads at this moment. For decades Democrats have stood for a capable, meaningful government – a government that works for the people, not just the powerful, and that represents everyone fairly and equally. This deal weakens the Democratic Party as badly as it weakens the country. We have given much and received nothing in return. The lesson today is that Republicans can hold their breath long enough to get what they want. While I believe the country will not reward them for this in the long run, the damage has already been done.

A clean debt ceiling vote was the obvious way out of this, and many House Democrats have been saying so. Had that vote failed, the president should have exercised his Fourteenth Amendment responsibilities and ended this manufactured crisis.

This deal is a cure as bad as the disease. I reject it, and the American people reject it. The only thing left to do now is repair the damage as soon as possible. [my emphasis]

Kudos to Ezra for admitting he was dead wrong last year when imagining the Republicans might allow a deal that would let Bush tax cuts lapse.

A year ago, I was less concerned about the Bush tax cuts. I assumed, as did many in Washington, that the Republicans’ antipathy to taxes was a negotiating stance. Eventually, we would strike a “grand bargain” that would reduce spending and raise revenue substantially. The past few months have proved me wrong.

But having recognized that the Republicans will not let those tax cuts expire, Ezra then imagines (apparently in an effort to spin this debt deal as less than catastrophic) that they will let the tax cuts expire in December 2012.

Democrats will have their turn. On Dec. 31, 2012, three weeks before the end of President Barack Obama’s current term in office, the Bush tax cuts expire. Income tax rates will return to their Clinton-era levels. That amounts to a $3.6 trillion tax increase over 10 years, three or four times the $800 billion to $1.2 trillion in revenue increases that Obama and Speaker John Boehner were kicking around. And all Democrats need to do to secure that deal is…nothing.

This scenario is the inverse of the current debt-ceiling debate, in which inaction will lead to an outcome — a government default — that Democrats can’t stomach and Republicans think they can. There is only one thing that could stand in the way of Democrats passing significant new revenues on the last day of 2012: the Obama administration.

Of course, the entire premise assumes that the tax cuts won’t already have been extended by then.

In a couple of months, after all, we’re going to see the next hostage crisis as Congress debates a continuing resolution to fund the government. There’ll be another one in 2012. And I’m sure the GOP will find another several opportunities to stage a hostage crisis.

And why not? Obama has proven, over and over, that he will not take on the hostage-takers. Instead, with every hostage-taking, he just hands over one more thing for the Republicans to take hostage. The Republicans are perfecting a strategy that gives them complete control of a government while controlling just one of two houses of Congress. And each time they stage a hostage taking, Democrats allow outcomes that make the economy worse, all in the name of saving the economy.

But even without another hostage-taking, Ezra’s take assumes that Obama would let the tax cuts expire, even while he admits that the Administration doesn’t want that to happen.

The White House’s strategy in the debt-ceiling negotiations has reflected its ambivalence, with Obama trying to extract either as much revenue as Republicans would allow or as little as Democrats would accept. Obama even offered Boehner a deal in which the Bush tax cuts would be extended right now, so Republicans wouldn’t have to fear a subsequent negotiation in which they lacked leverage. Boehner rejected that deal and, in doing, might have saved the safety net.

But the Obama administration doesn’t want to take its second chance. They argue that the economy will still be recovering in 2013, and so it’s not an ideal time for a large tax increase. True. But what happens in 2012 is not simply setting tax policy for 2013. It’s setting tax policy for decades to come.

Frankly, I agree with Ezra, that if these tax cuts don’t expire–if we don’t start making the rich pay their share to support this country–our country is sunk. I agree that we need to pressure the White House to get serious about revenue.

But think about how the Obama Administration is using this tax cut. He talked about it during the election, he has talked about it repeatedly since then. Yet every single time Obama has an opportunity to do something about it, he manages to cave.

It is serving the same function as abortion does for the Republicans: the promised policy used to get people to vote, even while delivering on that promise always remains in the future.

The problem is, as important as abortion is, having or not having choice won’t collapse the country. Obama’s refusal to do anything to tax the rich will.

I just watched a scintillating panel at the Aspen Security Forum. It featured former LAPD Chief Bill Bratton, Alberto Gonzales, ACLU’s Anthony Romero, John Yoo, and David Cole, moderated by Dahlia Lithwick.

The panel itself was notable for the staging of it. The panelists were seated right next to each other, with no table in front. Gonzales sat right next to Romero; Yoo sat right next to Cole. So when Romero corrected Lithwick’s assertion that the Bush Administration had showed respect for using civilian trials with terrorists by recalling that Gonzales had argued for holding American citizen Jose Padilla without trial, Gonzales shifted notably, uncomfortably, by my read. And when Cole rehearsed the language people like Michael Mukasey and Jack Goldsmith used to describe Yoo’s memo all the while pointing with his thumb at Yoo sitting next to him–“solvenly,” he emphasized–Yoo also shifted, though aggressively towards Cole. Before it all ended, Romero started reading from Yoo’s torture memo; Yoo accused him of using Dickensian dramatic delivery.

The physical tension of these men, attempting to contain the contempt they had for each other while sitting in such close proximity, was remarkable.

There were a number of other highlights: John Yoo made the ridiculous claim that no one in the human rights community had come out against drone strikes (Romero came back later and reminded him the ACLU had sued on precisely that issue, representing Anwar al-Awlaki’s family). Gonzales insisted there should be accountability (no matter that he escaped it, both when he politicized DOJ and when he took TS/SCI documents home in his briefcase). Romero hailed Obama’s “willingness to shut down secret sites,” apparently missing Jeremy Scahill’s recent scoop about the CIA-paid prison in Somalia. Yoo, as is typical, lied to protect his actions, not only repeating that canard that torture helped to find Osama bin Laden (rather than delayed the hunt as is the case), but also to claim that warrantless wiertaps helped find the couriers; they did, but those were warrantless wiretaps in the Middle East, not the US!

Just as interesting, though, were the questions. Yoo was somewhat stumped when an IAVA member and former officer asked what an officer who had taken an oath to support and defend the Constitution should do if he received what he believed was an unconstitutional order.

Finally, most interesting came when Richard Ben-Veniste–the former Watergate prosecutor and 9/11 Commissioner–asked questions. He said, first of all, that Mohammed al-Qahtani had been providing information before he was tortured (a claim I’m not sure I’ve heard before, made all the more interesting given that we know the Commission received interrogation reports on a running basis). But then his torture turned him into a “vegetable,” which meant the US was unable to prosecute him.

And then Ben-Veniste raised something that the panel, for all its discussion about accountability, didn’t mention. The 9/11 Commission recommended a privacy board to ensure that there was some balance between civil liberties and security. Bush made a half-assed effort to fulfill that requirement; after 2006, at least, there was a functioning Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. But Obama has all but spiked it, killing it by not appointing the Board.

Particularly given Ron Wyden’s and Mark Udall’s concerns about secret law, it’s time the civil liberties community returned its focus on Obama’s refusal to fulfill the law and support this board. That board is precisely the entity that should be balancing whether or not the government is making appropriate decisions about surveillance.

Update: David Cole corrected for John.

Well, you knew sooner or later the Masters of the Football Universe (MOTFUs) would prove their superiority to the mental midgets in Congress and get the deal done so as to not cook the golden goose. For once, Daniel Snyder is looking better than the other DC Deciders, although that is a relatively pitiful spectrum of comparison. Well, whatever, we gots teh football back on the burner, and that is awesome. Before we get to that, however, there is the little matter of the Hungarian Grand Prix.

There was no Grand Prix in Hungary in 1961, so we will pick up with the season long retrospective of the 1961 Yankee Champion with the Italian GP at Monza in early September. This weeks tilt is at the the Hungaroring, just outside of Budapest. It is a dusty course that has many of the limitations on overtaking and competitiveness of Monaco without an ounce of the charm and elegance. In other words, as a circuit, it is bleech.

Sebastian Vettel still has a 77 point lead over his Red Bull teammate Mark Webber, and 82 points over a resurgent Lewis Hamilton of McLaren. They simply are not going to catch Vettel, but the remainder of the season looks to be much more competitive across the board and the race for all positions but the Championship will be fierce. Practice revealed Hamilton still fast, followed by Alonso and Button. The other marques waited just a little too late to catch up Red Bull, but they clearly have as to speed.

The BIG news is the continued Murdochization of F1, and it is not welcome:

The bad news comes from Britain, where the country’s F1 fans are seething over the announcement that the BBC and Sky Sports have signed a joint deal to show Formula One from 2012 to 2018, with only half the races being shown on free-to-air TV and the other half on pay TV.

More coverage of the SkyTV deal with F1 here; and the sad truth on where all the riches of F1 are going is to a spoiled little rich bitch. Well, at any rate, at least the race is back to live broadcast in the US again, with coverage starting at 7:30am EST and 4:30am PST on SpeedTV.

Now, and without further adieu (i.e. before Marcy kills me), we move to NFL FOOTBALL!!! Yea! It’s back! Thanks to universe masters that actually can cut a deal without screwing the pooch royally, the NFL is back and the agreement mandates a whole decade of uninterrupted football free of labor disputes. And with that, we are off on a flurry of signings trades and activity. Let’s take a look at what is up with that.

As Ms. Wheel has already pointed out, and somewhat unexpectedly, Bill Bel and the Pats have pulled another fast one and made a huge splash by signing both Fat Albert Haynesworth and Ochocinco. Even money on whether this is genius or catastrophe. Just to throw a little water on the parade, here is Jason Whitlock:

Albert Haynesworth has no love for football. He plays the game because he’s good at it and it financially rewards him. The money he bilked the Redskins for is all he ever wanted from the game. Mission accomplished.

He has no desire to be an all-time great. His effort will always be inconsistent. He is not Randy Moss, an edge player whose penchant for taking plays off can be worked around. Haynesworth, a defensive tackle, is a cancer at the heart of a defense. His unwillingness to work breaks down the entire unit. Defenses are built on trust, gap control and every man filling his lane. You can’t have trust with Haynesworth in the middle of your defense.
….
And I don’t get Ochocinco, either.

It’s a myth that Ochocinco has some great love of football. Ochocinco has a love of attention. He spent the entire offseason attention-whoring. He rode bulls and race cars. He tried out for soccer. He did whatever he could to attract the attention of ESPN cameras.

Sound familiar?

It’s the same act he pulls on the football field. The alleged Patriots Way is that no man is bigger than the team. From the name on the back of his jersey, Ochocinco contradicts Belichick’s philosophy.

Well, oky doky then. The good news for the Pats is, despite earlier predictions, the Jets Jets Jets didn’t really get as much done as they hoped. Read, they could not pull off signing Nnamdi Asomugha. They resigned Santonio Holmes, but that isn’t enough to separate from Belichick and Bieber Brady (Ooops, Scribe informs me Giselle mad Tom get a haircut, and he will now be known as “Dancin Queen Brady“). The Fish picked up Reggie Bush but still have a hole at quarterback. Still may be in play for the only real story left in free agency, Kyle Orton, but less likely with their signing of journeyman Matt Moore. Bills are still lame. A team that did get some immediate help at QB is the Titans, who signed Matt Hasselbeck, who will lead them and groom Jake Locker for the future. With Peyton Manning ailing, and the Colts nothing without him, the AFC South could be up for grabs.

In the NFC, the sleeper team may be the Falcons. The Dirty Birds picked up defensive end extraordinaire Ray Edwards, late of the Vikings; and added stud receiver Julio Jones in the draft. Both are going to really solidify an already very good team. The Cardinals didn’t do a lot, but the one significant move was a huge one in getting starting quarterback Kevin Kolb from the Iggles. Kolb is young, schooled by Andy Reid and has a cannon for an arm. That alone puts the Cards back in the mix in the NFC West and will make Spidey Fitzgerald a happy man. Still a weak division, but is going to be a lot of fun to watch, especially if Jim Harbaugh can firm up Alex Smith and the Niners and Sam Bradford continues to progress for the Rams

The Eagles have made themselves quite a bit better with the addition of star cornerback Nnamdi Asomugha, who left the Raiders and could not be landed by the salivating Jets. Eagles also picked up Antonio Cromartie-Rogers in the Kolb trade with the Cards, and have gone from weak to very strong at CB. With their linebackers and Asante Samuel, the Eagles will be tough on defense. Better hope Mike Vick stays healthy though, because they now have Vince Young as backup, and Young cannot run the West Coast offense for shit. Andy Reid might want to risk getting a wang shot from Brett late at night and keep Favre on speed dial. Giants look like they may just resign Plaxico, which would be a decent move; but their draft was horrid and Eli is more bad than good lately. Redskins still suck, although they jettisoned the Haynesworth lead anchor and contract. Cowboys get Romo back, but jettisoned a LOT of talent, including on their O-Line; that is gonna hurt.

Oh, and the Cowboys also dumped flighty prima donna wideout Roy Williams. Williams was not exactly a genius, was a malcontent and had ping pong paddles for hands. So pairing Rock For Brain Roy with the sterling personality and self absorbed bonehead Jay Cutler is an obvious stroke of Einstein for the Bears. McNabb ain’t enough to help the Vikes, so the Pack should get another title in the NFC Central/North/Whatever. I actually think the Lions may be the second best team in the division at this point.

There are a lot of other moves and grooves, but I will leave that up to you folks in the comments.

Oh, and as a parting shot, the US State Dept has refused visas for the Ugandan Little League team; crushing their hopes of being the first African team to ever qualify for LIttle League World Series. Sad.

bmaz is working on trash. Here’s a highlight of what I’ll be talking about.

Justice and Injustice

Two developments in the Thomas Drake case. First, Josh Gerstein has posted the excerpt from the transcript where Judge Richard Bennett laid into William Welch about the three year delay after raiding Drake’s house. Also, Steven Aftergood reports that Drake’s lawyers are trying to get one of the charged documents declassified so former ISOO head William Leonard (who would have been the Defense’s expert witness had the case gone to trial), can complain about its improper classification in the first place. Ultimately, we’re going to learn the government pursued Drake for years over a document that was improperly overclassified.

The company that holds a patent on the breast cancer genes BRCA1 and BRCA2 won an Appeals Court ruling, allowing it to sustain its patent. One our own smart rulers explained what this means to me some years back–I’m not at high risk for BRCA, but may be at risk for another genetic issue. But no scientist will study the other possible genetic condition unless I have first disqualified being a BRCA holder–at a cost of thousands.

Pam Bondi, FL’s AG who fired the two women doing some of the best investigation in foreclosure fraud, was getting donations from Lender Processing Services and Provest while investigating them.

Update: Here’s Judge Leonie Brinkema’s order requiring James Risen to testify at the Jeffrey Sterling trial, but with strict limits. I’m betting William Welch either appeals–or starts getting cold fee.

Your Daily Murdoch

Three days after Louise Mensch questioned the Murdochs and Rebekah Brooks, she received what is basically a threat to expose her past drug use. She took it in stride, admitting, “Although I do not remember the specific incident, this sounds highly probable.”

The MPs leading inquiries into the Murdoch scandal have called on Gordon Taylor to testify to the judge leading the other inquiry. The settlement–and gag–Taylor made with NotW is at the center of charges that James Murdoch lied to Parliament.

Our Dying Empire

Former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair and Deputy National Security Advisor Douglas Lute have gotten into a pissing match over whether we should use drones or not in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It’s worth emphasizing, though, that Lute cedes Blair’s argument that we should be cooperating more closely with Pakistan, even while saying we’ve got to make an exception now because we have a chance to take out al Qaeda.

“Most” of Saudi Arabia’s troops are being withdrawn from Bahrain.

Our Dying Economy

As part of the devastating GDP numbers today, they revised GDP downward for the last two years to admit that we’re still not back to where we were before the crash. Now that the Village has data showing what the rest of us already knew–that the Great Recession never ended, at least not for the little people–maybe some of them will remember that jobs are more important than austerity.

The Emergency Financial Manager for Detroit’s Public School system, Roy Roberts is the first to modify an existing contract using his powers: he just cut both union and non-union salaries by 10%. This is on top of a big wage concession last year, not to mention huge student-teacher ratios.

Brian Schweitzer–who would win a race easily–said at a presser yesterday he’s not going to run, because the system is broken. I suspect he’s just one of many good candidates who will pass on DC until it becomes functional.

Terrorists and CyberHacks

Charles Johnson has caught Pam Geller in an interesting attempt to bury the past. Just a few days ago, she removed the following line from an email “from an Atlas reader in Norway” “We are stockpiling weapons, ammunition and equipment. This is going to happen fast.” She admitted in comments to posting this anonymously to prevent his arrest. In his Manifesto, right wing Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik complained about Johnson’s past criticism of Geller.

HBGary has prevented its former CEO, Aaron Barr, from appearing on a panel on Anonymous at Defcon. They cited his separation agreement in their threat to file an injunction against his appearance.

The FBI’s WMD Center turned 5 on Tuesday and to celebrate, DOJ has released an interview with Dr. Vahid Majidi. (Part One, Part Two)

The interview is not all that interesting. I’m much more interested in the list of WMD cases Majidi offers as the successes the Directorate has had in the last five years. They are:

• Jirair Avanessian, Farhoud Masoumian, and Amirhossein Sairafi, conspired to ship certain prohibited technologies–notably, vacuum pumps and pump-related equipment–to Iran.
• Jeffrey Don Detrixhe, for possessing 62 pounds of sodium cyanide he intended to sell to “Fat Bob,” a member of the Aryan brotherhood; Detrixhe was captured using an informant, though he did obtain the sodium cyanide on his own.
• Bechtel Jacobs employee Ron Lynn Oakley, for trying to sell uranium enrichment fuel rods to a person he thought was a foreign agent.
• Roger Von Bergendorff, for possessing ricin (and an Anarchist Cookbook to learn to make it).
• The “Newburgh Four,” for plotting to attack synogogues in NY; the plot was hatched by a notorious FBI informant who offered $250,000 for their involvement in the plot.
• Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, for obtaining materials to make explosives to use against American targets.
• Michael Finton (aka Talid Islam), for attempting to bomb an Illinois Courthouse; the plot was a sting set up by an FBI informant, and the bomb was never live.
• Hosam Smadi, for attempting to bomb a Dallas skyscraper; the plot was a sting set up by FBI undercover agents, and the bomb was never live.
• Michael Crooker, for possessing ricin and threatening a Federal prosecutor (including by invoking Tim Mcveigh); an earlier prosecution on firearms possession was overturned.
• Najibullah Zazi, for attempting to use TATP to attack the NYC subway.
• The Hutaree, for attempting to use explosives to attack the government.

Just about all these cases were plead. And, as the list makes clear, a number of the cases (with the exception of the Zazi and Aldawsari, those involving Islamic terrorists) were stings built by informants and/or undercover agents. The “real” plots were just as likely to be launched by right wing terrorists as by Islamic terrorists.

Notice what’s not on this list, though. In addition to Mohammed Osman Mohamud (another plot created by an FBI sting)  and Kevin William Harpham (the alleged MLK bomber) and a number of others, these WMD successes don’t include Amerithrax, by far the biggest investigation into WMD in the last five years.

The interview makes just one reference to a potential anthrax attack:

Q. What about all those white powder letters?

Dr. Majidi: Most turn out to be hoaxes, and they require a lot of investigative resources, but we have to investigate each and every incident. You never know when one of them will be real.

In a different inteview, Majidi points to the FBI’s investigation of hoax letters–but not the real ones–among the Directorates’ work.

If you remember, after 9/11 there was a rash of hoax letters that contained white powder sent to various recipients including to U.S. legislators. People were worried about the spread of anthrax and other disastrous outcomes. Because of our work at the WMD Directorate, we realized a high rate of success in prosecuting those who sent the letters.

These threats were insidious because they terrorized people, closed down businesses, and essentially stopped the business of governing the United States until the FBI could investigate. It involved a tremendous amount of local and federal resources, and at the same time took those resources away from other critical law enforcement and investigative needs. It cost taxpayers money, harmed businesses, essentially slowed down our society, and created measurable panic and insecurity.

No mention–in this interview or the earlier one–of the letters that didn’t end up being a hoax.

And it’s not that the WMD Directorate wasn’t involved in Amerithrax. Indeed, when Majidi, then the WMD Directorate’s Assistant Director, conducted the briefings to explain why FBI believed Ivins was the anthrax culprit, he attributed part of the “success” to the WMD Directorate.

The creation of the Weapon of Mass Destruction Directorate is another example of FBI’s progressive approach focusing on prevention as well as investigations on all issues involving chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear materials.

In terms of time, cost, and attack severity, the anthrax attack has been the most important thing the WMD Directorate has worked on since its inception. So why is Majidi so reluctant to talk about it?

KagroX, who just got named one of Politico’s top tweeters yesterday, just asked this question:

Has there ever been a populist movement cheering for default & austerity?

We’ve seen default situations around the world, and austerity programs imposed as a result. But popular political movements in FAVOR of it?

I replied,

Wrong to describe as populist movement calling for austerity. I think it’s partially populist partially astroturf calling for chaos.

Take a look, for example, at who Yochi Dreazen claims is riding herd on the TeaParty ideology at the moment.

Addington has taken on a new role as enforcer of tea party dogma during the intensifying partisan bickering over the debt ceiling. From his perch as the Heritage Foundation’s vice president for domestic and economic policy, Addington is throwing verbal thunderbolts at House Speaker John Boehner’s current debt-ceiling proposal, which he argues will pave the way to tax increases.

The merits of Addington’s arguments about the need to oppose Boehner’s proposals are in some ways less interesting than the simple fact that Addington is the one publicly making them.

And while I’m sympathetic with those who express horror that our torture architect is now whipping the pro-default vote, I think it worth looking more closely at what Addington said to whip the vote.

This man, after all, championed two unfunded wars. In fact, as he and his boss were putting the final touches on the lies that would justify the second, illegal war, his boss overrode the Treasury Secretary’s fiscal concerns about one of several tax cuts, stating, “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.” And that guy–one of the guys involved in blowing up the deficit with wars and tax cuts–had this to say:

The government has racked up $14.294 trillion in debt — thought of by no-one as a little credit card debt.  The spend-tax-and-borrow crowd, currently headed by President Obama, has been in charge in Washington too long.  They have mortgaged the futures of our children and grandchildren.  Our government is so deep in debt that the share of debt of a baby born today is $45,000.

It is time for the spend-tax-and-borrow crowd to stop.  As the President indicated, conservatives want deep spending cuts.  In contrast, President Obama wants more taxes, a terrible idea.  First, the government already takes too much money from the pockets of Americans in taxes.  Second, if Americans give the government more money in taxes, the government will just find ways to spend it, rather than using it to pay off the public debt.  Third,  raising taxes reduces investment, which cuts economic growth and kills jobs.

So the Heritage Foundation, which of course first invented the legislation–health care reform–that ultimately set off the TeaParty, pays the guy who said, “We’re one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious [FISA] court,” the guy who wielded his pocket Constitution like a sword as he did battle to shred it, to attack those who “spend-tax-and-borrow,” ignoring all the time that the folks who have been in Washington too long are those who “spend-cut-and-borrow.” Addington’s own people.

Meanwhile, the grassroots part of this? They mustered about 50 people for a rally in DC yesterday, one which many of the TeaParty members of Congress attended. And yet as a desperate John Boehner tried to wield what weapons he had to win votes (the TeaPartiers already led him to get rid of the all-important pork he might have used to persuade the TeaPartiers, and Boehner seems to have given up his former ways of distributing checks on the floor of Congress as bribes), one after another TeaPartier refused to budge, even in the absence of any remaining grassroots movement.

In other words, the TeaParty grassroots movement that used to exist is just the excuse, at this point, for those trying to finish the job they started in 2001 redefining our government.

With the chaos that default will cause, think how much easier it will be to convince voters they need a unitary executive?

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Here’s Melissa Harris-Perry talking about the Pew study on net worth from the other day.

Our Dying Economy

Nicholas Shaxson (the author of Treasure Islands) has a post on a probably-doomed attempt by developing countries to have more of a say over international tax policy.

According to Jay Rockefeller, the Republicans shut down the FAA primarily to help Delta ensure its workers never unionize.

A few days ago I linked to an article arguing that Microsoft’s profits largely stemmed from tax avoidance–facilitated in part by their purchase of Skype. Here’s a longer article laying out MS’ tax dodging. It seems like it’d be a useful strategy to lay out how all the companies engaged in the worst kind of tax cheating are doing it because they’re not really doing much as companies anymore.

Our National Security State

Ron Wyden and Mark Udall are basically trying to force Eric Holder and James Clapper to admit that it’s a bad thing to interpret laws–notably, the PATRIOT Act–in ways that the public doesn’t understand. I suspect this won’t make it out of the Intelligence Committee. So I wonder whether Harry Reid will make good on his promise to let them raise it in the full Senate. Me, I think the bill would be more effective if Holder and Clapper each had to write “I will not use smart phones to track innocent Americans’ locations” once for each time they have done so.

ACLU has a new report on secrecy out I plan to return to. In the meantime, Steven Aftergood has some interesting things to say about it.

The Treasury Department says Iran is funneling money to Al Qaeda. I’m more interested in the questions Blake Hounshell raises in reporting the issue, though, than actually convinced Treasury isn’t just making shit up.

Justice and Injustice

A judge just ruled that Shirley Sherrod’s lawsuit against Andrew Breitbart can proceed.

Your Daily Murdoch

Now why do you suppose James Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks were getting briefed by Britain’s Defense Secretary? And does anyone actually believe Murdoch’s top execs haven’t gotten similar treatment here?

It’s not so much that Piers Morgan doth protest too much. It’s that the traditional media is bending over backwards to accept his version of the claim that he never authorized anyone to hack a phone. Not to mention they’re accepting a very carefully parsed answer–Morgan’s “I have never hacked a phone, told anyone to hack a phone, nor to my knowledge published any story obtained from the hacking of a phone” leaves a whole lot of knowledge of hacking on the table.

Apparently, the plan for the cover-up in the UK consists of generalizing the inquiry into journalists’ conduct generally, with a series of seminars about the ethics of journalism, which I presume will ensure that public opinion magically starts to side with Murdoch, not his victims or rule of law.

The Guardian reports that NotW is suspected of hacking the phone of the mother of the girl for whom “Sarah’s Law”–a sex predator transparency law–was named after. It also says Rebeka Brooks gave her the phone! If you saw Brooks’ testimony before Parliament, she used NotW’s championship of Sarah’s Law as PR spin.

Free for All 

Marion Nestle assesses McDonald’s new Happier Meals and finds them unimpressive, largely because they still offer soda. Interestingly, though, it appears Happy Meals aren’t selling like they used to partly because kids are snobbier about toys and partly because the dollar items on McDonald’s menu ends up being a cheaper way to feed kids.

I long meant to do a piece looking at how the Japanese earthquake exposed the problems with our current supply chain. Matt Stoller has taken what happened after the earthquake as an opportunity to reflect on the possibility of systemic failure because our supply chain has been concentrated and outsourced.

In the last few years, economists have spent a lot of time and energy thinking about bank runs. A bank run happens when depositors think a bank is weak and scramble to get their money out before it collapses. “Tight coupling” of financial institutions, like when banks are overly dependent on each other, can create a cascading series of problems for the system itself.

[snip]

Worryingly, there’s been very little consideration of how systemic collapses can happen in another, perhaps more dangerous realm—the industrial supply system that keeps us in everything from medicine to food to cars to, yes, videotape. In 2004, for instance, England closed one single factory, which caused the United States to lose half of its flu vaccine supply.

Barry Lynn of the New America Foundation has been studying industrial supply shocks since 1999, when he noticed that global computer chip production was concentrated in Taiwan. After a severe earthquake in that country, the global computer industry nearly shut down, crashing the stocks of large computer makers. This level of concentration of the production of key components in a globalized economy is a new phenomenon. Lynn’s work points to the highly dangerous side of globalization, the flip side of a hyper-efficient global supply chain. When one link in that chain is broken, there is no fallback.

Lynn has continued to study industrial supply shocks and says, “What I have found most interesting recently is the apparent role supply chain shocks played in triggering a synchronized slowdown of industrial economies in April—production down (in USA, China, Europe, Southeast Asia), jobs down, demand down, GDP numbers down—due almost entirely to the loss of a single factory that makes microcontroller chips for cars.”

Today, the problem manifests as shortages of videotape or auto parts, but the global supply chain is so tangled and fragile that next time it could be electronics, weaponry, or even food or medicine. As Lynn noted in an interview with Dylan Ratigan, China controls 100 percent of the national supply of ascorbic acid, which is a basic food preservative. Leading oncologists are already warning that we are experiencing severe shortages of generic yet pivotal cancer drugs, because there’s no incentive for corporations to make them.

The company Lynn mentions whose chip factories (there were actually 7 originally) went down with the earthquake, Renasas, did a remarkable job both restoring production and sustaining what supply it could.

But it’s telling that a company with just 40% of the market could threaten such a central industry.

Of course, it’s not just in auto manufacturing where chip production has been a critical issue. I’ve bitched before about the concern that “counterfeit” chips have left our military toys susceptible to failure. Or, dispensing with the secrecy, the possibility that specially-engineered chips may have backdoors that hackers are exploiting.

Look at the way our defense establishment proposes dealing with that issue.

In 2010, the US military had a problem. It had bought over 59,000 microchips destined for installation in everything from missile defense systems to gadgets that tell friend from foe. The chips turned out to be counterfeits from China, but it could have been even worse. Instead of crappy Chinese fakes being put into Navy weapons systems, the chips could have been hacked, able to shut off a missile in the event of war or lie around just waiting to malfunction.

[snip]

The US has been worried about its foreign-sourced chips in its supply chain for a while now.  In a 2005 report, the Defense Science Board warned that the shift towards greater foreign circuit production posed the risk that “trojan horse” circuits could be unknowingly installed in critical military systems. Foreign adversaries could modify chips to fizzle out early, the report said, or add secret back doors that would place a kill switch in military systems.

[snip]

The Defense Science Board warned in its report that “trust cannot be added to integrated circuits after fabrication.” IARPA disagrees. The agency is looking for ways to check out chips once they’ve been made, asking for ideas on how the US can verify that its foreign chips haven’t been hacked in the production process.

Keep your suggestions original, though. IARPA’s sister-shop, DARPA, has already done some work on chip verification. DARPA’s TRUST program uses advanced imaging and X-rays to search for deviations from chips’ designs. Its IRIS program aims to check out chips when the US doesn’t have the full designs to compare them to.

One way IARPA would like to make chips from foreign foundries safe is by splitting up the manufacturing process. Under this scenario, the front-end-of-line (FEOL) stage of manufacturing would take place at offshore foundries, while the back-end-of-line processing would finish up at a more secure US facility.

That is, either because we no longer have the capacity (true in part) or our capacity has lost the technological edge (true in part), rather than just mandate that chips going into war toys be built in the US, IARPA proposes a two-step manufacture process to ensure our chips are not counterfeit or hacked. We’ll just do the finishing touches to the chips, IARPA suggests, not build the chip from start to finish.

Is it so unreasonable to instead suggest that chip manufacture is something our country needs to invest in, both to ensure the diversity of the supply chain globally but also to provide supplies to the Military Industrial Complex?

Apparently, that is paradigmatically unthinkable.

At least in DC.

Meanwhile, the Alliance for American Manufacturing has a poll out that shows the US is as close to unanimous as you can get that it needs to invest more in manufacturing. Some of the results:

• 90% have a favorable view of American manufacturing companies – up 22 points from 2010.
• 97% have a favorable view of U.S.-made goods – up 5 points from 2010.
• 94% of voters say creating manufacturing jobs is either “one of the most important” things government can do or “very important.”
• 90% support Buy American policies “to ensure that taxpayer funded government projects use only U.S.-made goods and supplies wherever possible.”
• 95% favor keeping “America’s trade laws strong and strictly enforced to provide a level playing field for our workers and businesses.”

Now, even polls on Medicare and Social Security–for which there is overwhelming support–poll closer to 70%. That says either this poll is skewed, or that the one thing Americans agree upon is that we need to start making things in this country again.

That may not bode well for Obama’s reelection, given that after this debt ceiling gets resolved, he and the Republicans are going to try to rush through three trade deals.

On the economy, generally, there’s a surprising disjunction between what the country believes and what DC espouses. But on jobs and manufacturing, the split is even more stark (well, except for exceptions like Jared Bernstein, who is incredulous at the direction this is heading).

I realize that the government–Obama and the Republicans–have created their own crisis that makes the debt an issue of national importance. But even while they do that, they’re ignoring equally looming threats. And, at the same time, the concerns of 90% of the country.