From President Bush's radio address today, where he announced that he'd vetoed the Senate authorization bill, which would have effectively outlawed waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation" techniques for the CIA by limiting the CIA to the Army's guide for interrogations, the Army Field Manual:

The bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror -- the CIA program to detain and question key terrorist leaders and operatives. This program has produced critical intelligence that has helped us prevent a number of attacks. The program helped us stop a plot to strike a U.S. Marine camp in Djibouti, a planned attack on the U.S. consulate in Karachi, a plot to hijack a passenger plane and fly it into Library Tower in Los Angeles, and a plot to crash passenger planes into Heathrow Airport or buildings in downtown London. And it has helped us understand al Qaida's structure and financing and communications and logistics. Were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes that al Qaida and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland....

If we were to shut down this program and restrict the CIA to methods in the Field Manual, we could lose vital information from senior al Qaida terrorists, and that could cost American lives.

Nowhere in his speech did Bush mention waterboarding, only at one point alluding to it: "The bill Congress sent me would not simply ban one particular interrogation method, as some have implied."

There are a number of Dem responses to the veto. Reid emphasizes that "the President has substituted his own judgment for that of dozens of bipartisan military and foreign policy experts – including Gen. Petraeus – who agree that torture is counterproductive." Feingold, a member of the Senate intelligence committee, says that the CIA's program is "morally reprehensible and legally unjustified and it has not made our country any safer."

But Senate intelligence committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller's (D-WV) response is the closest to a direct refutation of Bush's claims about the success of the CIA's program:

“The CIA's program damages our national security by weakening our legal and moral authority, and by providing al Qaida and other terrorist groups a recruiting and motivational tool. By continuing this interrogation program, the President is sacrificing our strategic advantage for questionable tactical gain.

“As Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I have heard nothing to suggest that information obtained from enhanced interrogation techniques has prevented an imminent terrorist attack. And I have heard nothing that makes me think the information obtained from these techniques could not have been obtained through traditional interrogation methods used by military and law enforcement interrogators. On the other hand, I do know that coercive interrogations can lead detainees to provide false information in order to make the interrogation stop.

“Our government needs to have clear standards for interrogations, and that standard should be the tried and true methods in the Army Field Manual. These methods have been used by military and law enforcement interrogators for decades, often in life and death situations on the battlefield and in counter-terror investigations.

“The President is out of step with Congress, the American people, the world, and our own national security requirements. While disappointed, I remain committed to bringing all U.S. interrogation practices under the rule of law."

Another perspective from Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Patrick Leahy (D-VT):

As I have said all along, the provision adopted by both the Senate and House of Representatives was not needed to outlaw waterboarding or other forms of torture. Such techniques are already clearly illegal. However, this administration has chosen to ignore the law. The positions that they have taken publicly on waterboarding offend the core values of this nation, and have the potential to threaten the safety and wellbeing of Americans around the world. I supported this provision because a clear, public rejection of those positions was – and still is – needed.

Democratic House leaders have emerged from negotiations with their Senate counterparts on the new surveillance bill with a draft proposal, a senior House aide says. See update below.

The proposal, the contents of which the aide described to me, does not contain a measure granting retroactive immunity to the telecoms for their participation in the warrantless surveillance program. The aide also stressed that the bill "is in the exact same ballpark" in terms of civil liberties protections as the RESTORE Act, the bill which the House passed last year. The draft as described by the aide:

-- requires an audit by the Department of Justice's inspector general of the administration warrantless wiretapping program (not in the Senate bill)

-- has a two-year sunset, as opposed to the Senate's surveillance bill, which has a six-year sunset

-- has an "exclusivity" provision, which specifies that the President cannot circumvent the bill with claimed Constitutional powers (not in the Senate bill)

-- has guidelines to prevent the NSA from tapping foreigners' communications into the U.S. when the real intention is to target a U.S. person, which is called "reverse targeting" (not in the Senate bill)

-- requires pre-approval by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of the "basket warrants" (surveillance of entire terrorist groups, as opposed to just individuals) allowed by the House and Senate bills, except in emergency situations, where the government must seek approval within seven days after initiating surveillance. (also in contrast to the Senate bill)

Of course, just because the House bill does not have retroactive immunity does not mean that the final bill to arise from the process will not. As the Politico reported last night, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) now favors a strategy of "ping-ponging" alternatives back and forth between the two chambers. What that means is that the House could vote out a bill that does not contain retroactive immunity, but that the Senate could vote to add it back in, sending that back to the House, where such a modified bill might pass with the help of moderate Democrats. Of course, such a strategy could also lead to stalemate, as the Politico points out.

At the very least, it's clear that the process is far from over. We'll have more on this in a bit.

Update: Stop the presses! Wendy Morigi, Sen. Jay Rockefeller's (D-WV) spokeswoman, tells me that Rockefeller would not agree to a bill that fits the above description, but would give no specifics. All she could say was "we continue to work with the House to try and find agreement and resolve the differences between the House and Senate bill."

We'll have more as learn more about what is going on here. Rockefeller, the Senate intelligence committee chairman, is obviously the lynch pin of any possible compromise. The only logical inference for now is that House Dems are circulating a draft bill without having hashed out every detail with him.

Justin over at ABC has more on that insurance fraud part of last month's indictment against Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ ):

Rep. Rick Renzi, R-Ariz., allegedly defrauded dozens of pro-life organizations for hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund his first congressional bid, according to an analysis of the recent indictment against him, a state insurance claim and an interview with an insurance lawyer involved in the case....

Renzi has positioned himself as staunchly anti-abortion. "The sanctity of human life should always be upheld, and I will continue to fight for the rights of the unborn in Congress," he said in 2003, as a freshman U.S. representative. In 2006, Renzi received a 100 percent rating from the National Right to Life Committee for his voting record.

Renzi may have embezzled client premiums from "roughly 50 pro-life organizations in 'a multitude' of states" through his insurance company, Justin reports.

From Wired's Threat Level:

A U.S. government office in Quantico, Virginia, has direct, high-speed access to a major wireless carrier's systems, exposing customers' voice calls, data packets and physical movements to uncontrolled surveillance, according to a computer security consultant who says he worked for the carrier in late 2003.

That consultant is a man named Babak Pasdar, who outlined the accusation in an an affidavit (pdf) for the Government Accountability Project. Pasdar does not name the wireless carrier, but Wired reports that "his claims are nearly identical to unsourced allegations made in a federal lawsuit filed in 2006," which names Verizon Wireless.

In the affidavit, Pasdar says that he was hired by the carrier in 2003 to do a major security overhaul, a taxing job that was going relatively smoothly, having covered more than 300 sites, until he asked why the overhaul seemed to be skipping one location, which the carrier consultants called the "Quantico Circuit." Quantico, Virginia is home to the FBI Academy and the bureau's electronic surveillance operations.

When Pasdar asked the company's security consultants about the location, he only got smiles. And when he insisted that the location be covered by the same security procedures as the others, one of the consultants replied "I don't think that is what they want." When he asked "Who?" the consultants didn't respond. Then the company's security director appeared to demand that Pasdar "move on" and "forget about the circuit" or he'd be fired.

In a later conversation, Pasdar asked a company consultant if he didn't think "it is unusual for some third party to have completely open access to your systems like this?"

To which the consultant responded, "Dude, that's what they want." That's all Pasdar was able to learn.

Pasdar's account is reminiscent of that given by Mark Klein, the former AT&T technician who's affidavit about the NSA's room at AT&T's Folsom Street Facility has provided the basis for the Electronic Frontier Foundation's suit against AT&T, with the notable difference that Klein was able to do a lot more snooping.

It's hard to think back to that time when it was arguable that administration officials were telling the truth when they protested that the U.S. attorneys had been fired for "performance" reasons.

That seems pretty much resolved now. All of the main players: Alberto Gonzales, his deputy Paul McNulty, Kyle Sampson, Monica Goodling, Sarah Taylor, et al. are all gone. But before it all went kablooey, before the firings even became public, former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias says that he learned what it eventually took a raging scandal to publicly reveal.

The disclosure comes from Iglesias' book, "In Justice," which is due out in June. In the passage, the details of which were first reported last night by McClatchy, Iglesias writes of a conversation he had with U.S. Attorney for San Antonio Johnny Sutton shortly after he'd been asked to resign. Iglesias thought that Sutton, a longtime friend of Bush's who was the chairman of the committee of U.S. attorneys that advised the attorney general, could help him out. It turned out, no. Here it is:

“I’ve got a sense this is a done deal, David,” he flatly told me after listening to my story.

“Based on what?” I asked, swallowing hard. Maybe I should have just hung up then. It was clear from the guarded tone of his voice that he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, help me.

“Look,” he said, in the same matter-of-fact manner. “I’ve been around awhile. This is political. If I were you, I’d just go quietly.”

I couldn't believe what I was hearing: a U.S. Attorney all but admitting that a colleague was being hung out to dry for reasons that had nothing to do with performance or professionalism. “How do you know?” was all I could ask.

There was long silence on the other end. “I saw your name,” he said at last, in a barely audible voice.

It took a minute for the implications to sink in. “Where?” I finally asked. “You mean, there’s some sort of list?”

“I can’t speak to that,” he answered blandly, and I knew, at that moment, that it was useless to continue.

It's not clear, exactly, what Sutton meant, and his office didn't return our call. At the very least, he meant that it wasn't worth Iglesias trying to contest the firing on the merits, since there weren't any (despite what Justice Department officials later told Congress).

We'll have more later from the book.

Last week, a group called Defense of Democracies let rip with a national ad campaign aimed at pressuring House Democrats (and targeting 15 in particular) to buckle and support the Senate's surveillance bill, which contains retroactive immunity for the telecoms. The ads ended by encouraging viewers to contact their representative and urge them to convince the House leadership to bring the Senate bill to a vote -- because "the law that lets intelligence agencies intercept Al Qaeda communications" has expired, "crippling" surveillance.

The group, other than denying that the telecoms themselves were behind the $2 million campaign, refused to disclose where the money had come from. But in the current issue of the National Journal (not available online), Peter Stone reports that Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino mogul, "chipped in much of the $2 million," citing "sources."

That's not all that surprising, since Adelson (with a net worth of $26 billion, Forbes' 12th richest person in the world) is a big backer of conservative attack groups. For instance, he's the big money behind Freedom's Watch, which reportedly plans to spend $250 million defeating Democrats this election.

Defense of Democracies, a non-profit 501(c)(4) organization, was formed by the related Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a supposedly "non-partisan" non-profit that lost all of its Democratic board members after news of the ad campaign broke. It'll be interesting to see whether the run of ads, which lasted one week and ran on the national cable networks, was a preview of more to come in the election. I guess that depends on how generous Adelson is feeling.

Based on guidance by Bill Clinton and his reliance on President Bush's November 2001 order that expands former presidents' ability to keep internal White House records private, federal archivists will prevent public access to Clinton's papers on the 140 pardons he issued in his last days - including his granting of clemency to fugitive millionaire Marc Rich. The decision has blocked USA Today's Freedom of Information Act Request for information about White House pardon communications and pardon requests rejected by the Justice Department. (USA Today)

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee issued a report calling for Murray Energy - the company in charge of the Crandall Canyon Mine in Utah where six miners were buried alive - to be "fully investigated" because it ignored crucial warning signs and maintained an illegal agreement with federal regulators. The Senate's blistering report called upon the Department of Labor to refer the case to the Justice Department for a criminal investigation of Murray Energy, but the Mine Safety and Health Administration alleges that it is wrong for the Senate to call for an investigation before it has concluded its probe. (Salt Lake Tribune)

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has asked a federal judge to order the White House to explain "alleged inconsistencies between testimony at a congressional hearing last week and what the White House told a federal court in January" concerning the controversy over missing White House e-mails. (AP)

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How are things really going in Iraq? And should the American public know about it?

Next month, The Washington Post reports, the intelligence community will complete a national intelligence estimate on the situation in Iraq. If Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell has his way, the estimate will stay classified.

That's because McConnell is no fan of public debate of intelligence issues. He's said that all this debate about the surveillance bill " means that some Americans are going to die." And he thinks that NIEs should stay secret.

It was a policy that he tried to maintain with regard to the recent NIE on Iran -- which effectively undercut the administration's increasing alarmism about the nuclear threat of Iran by proclaiming that the intelligence community thought that Iran had suspended its nuclear program. McConnell and the administration only begrudgingly agreed to release that NIE, he explained to Lawrence Wright of The New Yorker, due to "the fear that, if we didn't release it, it would leak, and the Administration at that point would be accused of hiding information."

The intel community produced two NIEs last year, one in January (which used the phrase "civil war"), the other in August. Declassified versions of the key findings were released for each. Both sized up the shifting universe of security threats and emphasized the perilous political situation in the country.

This time around, however, things might be different. McConnell decreed in October that NIEs should no longer be released. And:

Intelligence officials said that the National Intelligence Board -- made up of the heads of the 16 intelligence agencies plus McConnell -- will decide whether to release the Iraq judgments once the estimate is completed. But they made clear that they lean toward a return to the traditional practice of keeping such documents secret.

So here's the question. The NIE, which is apparently expected to be issued in April, would most likely be the last word from the intelligence community on the situation in Iraq before the election. Will the administration be able to keep it under wraps? Or will the fear of the report leaking again force it out into the open?

What's a little plagiarism between movement conservatives?

Tim Goeglein has had a tough week, but he still has friends in the “right” places. The former White House aide in charge of religious and conservative outreach resigned late last week after admitting he plagiarized pieces he wrote for the News-Sentinel of Fort Wayne, Ind. Goeglein took passages from Pope John Paul II and Dartmouth professor Jeffery Hart, among others.

But Goeglein is still embraced by the conservative community. At the weekly meeting of center-right leaders at American for Tax Reform on Wednesday morning, he received three rounds of applause from the packed room, including one standing ovation, as he asked for their forgiveness.

Via Nancy Nall, Goeglein's least favorite blogger.

Viktor Bout, the famed Russian arms smuggler, supplier to anybody anywhere in the world who could pay the right price (such as, say, Liberia's Charles Taylor, FARC in Colombia, and the U.S. military), has been nabbed in Thailand. From the AP:

One of the world's most notorious arms dealers was arrested Thursday in Bangkok on allegations that he supplied Colombian rebels with arms and explosives, Thai police said.

Russian Viktor Bout was arrested in his hotel room in the capital, Bangkok, on a warrant issued by a Thai court, said Police Lt. Gen. Pongpat Chayapan, head of the Crime Suppression Bureau. The warrant stemmed from an earlier one issued by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, he said.

A U.S. Embassy spokesman "congratulated" Thai police for the arrest but could not provide details about the role U.S. officials played in it.

Funny, that last bit, since journalists Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun reported in their book on Bout, "Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Plans, and the Man Who Makes War Possible," that both the U.S. military and defense contractors KBR and Dyncorp had used Bout's services in the aftermath of the Iraq war.

Even after President Bush signed an order freezing Bout's assets, the Pentagon continued using his planes, they reported, to get reconstruction supplies into Baghdad. All in all, they say, his planes flew hundreds of flights from 2003 to 2006, even after his work for the Defense Department was exposed in 2004. Bout may have been an international criminal, but he got the job done.

But now Thai police have nabbed him. So congrats!

Update: Turns out that U.S. authorities were in on the bust, which was a "four-month sting by the Drug Enforcement Administration with secret help from security officials in four other nations." Go figure.

As we noted yesterday, the administration is determined to strike a longterm security agreement with Iraq while avoiding the Constitutional requirement that the Senate ratify treaties.

To avoid that outcome, the administration has said that any agreement with Iraq will contain no security guarantee -- just an agreement that U.S. forces will remain in Iraq. Voila! no treaty.

Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) isn't convinced. And during a hearing Tuesday before a House foreign affairs subcommittee, he grilled the State Department's Iraq coordinator about the deal.

But in a State Department official's written reply to Ackerman's questions (which you can see here), the administration showed that it has another trick up its sleeve.

Congress doesn't have to approve any agreement with Iraq, the official writes, because it already has... sorta. That came in the form of the 2002 Iraq war authorization, which authorized force to neutralize the "continuing threat posed by Iraq." Apparently in the administration view, that was also a blanket authorization for the ensuing occupation of Iraq.

Ackerman, speaking yesterday, wasn't convinced: "I don't think anybody argues today that Saddam Hussein is a threat," he said. "Is it the government of Iraq that's a threat?"

But if he doesn't buy that, then there's also Congress' post-9/11 authorization, the official writes, which "authorized the President to use all necessary and appropriate force against nations, organizations, or persons involved in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States." Because the president has said that the invasion was consistent with that authorization, it apparently is. Or at least by their way of seeing things.

Still skeptical? Oh! But there's more. "In addition, Congress has repeatedly provided funding for the Iraq war, both in regular appropriations cycles and in supplemental appropriations." Little did they know that with their annual appropriations, they were tacitly approving a longterm deal.

Evidently, the adminstration is convinced that if they continue to throw enough stuff at the wall, something will stick.

For some reason, Dems in Congress remain unconvinced. Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-MA) even told the Post that the letter "creates the basis for a constitutional confrontation."

Despite recent signs that House Democrats will likely ultimately vote on a bill that contains retroactive immunity for the telecoms, negotiations on a final version of the surveillance bill remain ongoing. Dems, after saying that a vote might come as early as this week, now seem unclear when it might happen.

In a conference call with bloggers today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) made it clear that her highest priority for a surveillance bill was that it contain a so-called "exclusivity" provision -- a measure that would explicitly state that the bill would be the "exclusive means" by which the government would conduct surveillance, or in other words, the president does not have the power to ignore the law if he/she so pleases.

"Exclusivity is the issue," she said.

The Bush administration, which circumvented FISA to conduct its warrantless wiretapping program, does not want its hands tied. And a majority of Republicans helped vote down an exclusivity amendment offered by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) in the Senate, where by bipartisan agreement, the measure required 60 votes. There is such a provision in the House's surveillance bill, which passed last year.

Pelosi says that she "absolutely" opposes retroactive immunity for the telecoms, but that she "didn't want the fight to be so focused there that we neglect exclusivity." Pelosi added that the House leadership was "at the mercy of the 17 or 18 Democrats in the Senate who are voting with the Republicans on this" and said that "we are trying to work with the Dems in the Senate to come to an agreement" on exclusivity, immunity, and other issues.

So this will be an interesting variable to add to the mix as the bill negotiations continue. Would Republicans in the Senate support a bill that had exclusivity in it? And would the President veto a bill that had it?

Last month, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia pronounced in an interview with the BBC that it was "extraordinary" to think that "so-called torture" might be prohibited by the Constitution.

Well, to the quotes from that memorable interview ("You can't come in smugly and with great self satisfaction and say 'Oh it's torture, and therefore it's no good'" and "Is it really so easy to determine that smacking someone in the face to determine where he has hidden the bomb that is about to blow up Los Angeles is prohibited in the constitution?") you can add this, from Scalia's speech at the University of Central Missouri yesterday:

Of torture, Scalia said: "It’s a bad thing to do. But not everything that is bad is unconstitutional."

I guess torture is different from "so-called" torture. So to review your lesson in Scalia jurisprudence for the day: so-called torture, i.e. face-smacking, "sticking something under the fingernails," and one presumes, waterboarding, inducing hypothermia, and the like -- that's OK. Not only is it Constitutional, it's "absurd" to say you can't do it. Torture, on the other hand, is "a bad thing to do" -- presumably because it's against the law. But still A-OK by the Constitution. Class is adjourned.

Via ThinkProgress.

From Newsweek:

The Canadian government is no longer using evidence gained from CIA interrogations of a top Al Qaeda detainee who was waterboarded.

According to documents obtained by NEWSWEEK, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the country's national-security agency, last month quietly withdrew statements by alleged Al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah from public papers outlining the case against two alleged terror "sleeper" operatives in Ottawa and Montreal....

Asked why the statements from Zubaydah had been dropped from the dossiers..., Bernard Beckhoff, a spokesman for Canada's public safety ministry, which oversees CSIS, said he could not comment on developments in either case because they are both still before the courts. But he then added, pointedly: "The CSIS director has stated publicly that torture is morally repugnant and not particularly reliable. CSIS does not knowingly use information which has been obtained through torture."

It's worth recalling that the Canadians aren't the only ones with a problem with Zubaydah's credibility. There's also the FBI.

FBI Director Robert Mueller admitted to Congress yesterday that his agency had improperly spied on Americans through the use of administrative subpoenas called national security letters. According to Mueller, a Justice Department report will soon document the agency's recurring invasion of Americans' privacy in 2006. An FBI audit shows that the FBI potentially violated laws or its own policies on more than 1,000 occasions from 2003 to 2005. (Washington Post)

The newly proposed Office of Congressional Ethics, if enacted into law, will only be allowed to initiate new investigations during July and August. Moreover, any investigation that OCE pursues must be approved by the House ethics committee but that committee is notorious for its glacial movement. One GOP aide notes that “it’s interesting Democrats have devised an ‘ethics reform’ bill that basically guarantees that investigations are punted until after Election Day." It's also interesting that Democratic leaders failed to rally support for their own measure and bring the bill to a vote (sub. req.) yet again. (Politico, Roll Call)

President Bush seems intent on securing a conviction of a Guantanamo Bay detainee (other than that of the Australian prisoner who made a plea deal) before his term expires. With new charges just filed against another Guantanamo prisoner, the trial calendar is full and resources for defendants are scarce. This appears to be an effort to set "up dry runs of the untested legal process that will be used to prosecute self-professed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and five other "high-value" prisoners later this year." (LA Times)

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On February 1st of this year, National Republican Campaign Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-OK) abruptly released a statement about recently discovered "irregularities in our financial audit process." That was it: no details about whether money might have been stolen, just word that they'd seen fit to bring in the federal authorities.

The details, as they've come, have been embarrassing for the committee, which works to get Republicans elected to the House (which was already hurting in comparison to its Democratic counterpart before all this began).

According to The New York Times this morning, it all began to unravel when Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX), a CPA, asked to meet with the audit firm that was supposedly checking the NRCC's books, an idea that apparently no one had had for several years. Christopher Ward, then the NRCC's treasurer, finally relented, but then chickened out 30 minutes before and fessed up that there actually hadn't been any audits.

It was ultimately discovered that Ward had been faking the audits since 2003. The Politico, which laid out this general outline of events early last month, reported that Ward had forged everything, including the letterhead. So when it came time to actually talk to the people who'd supposedly written those fake reports, it all unraveled.

The FBI is currently investigating, and it's not clear yet why Ward was so keen to hide the real numbers. But as the Times reports this morning, the signs are not good. NRCC internal audits since Ward's discovery show that "hundreds of thousands of dollars are missing and presumed stolen." And it gets worse: there are apparently indications that "the financial irregularities might extend beyond the national committee to the campaign funds of individual Republican lawmakers who also worked with Mr. Ward, a longtime party operative."

Ward had been with the NRCC since 1993 and worked for dozens of Republican campaign committees, political action committees, and other organizations. It'll be interesting to see what the FBI turns up.

Like a house of cards. From the AP:

A Swiss bank has dropped its lawsuit against Web site Wikileaks.org for posting sensitive customer data.

Lawyers for Bank Julius Baer filed court papers Wednesday in San Francisco that officially ended the case.

Remember that a judge initially went along with the bank's request to block access to the site, an order that was broadly criticized as unconstitutional. And when a bunch of journalism and civil liberties groups got involved, the judge threw up his hands.

It was a landmark ruling by any measure. On April 2, 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency had the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, and that it had to act. The justices made the choice clear: the agency had to determine whether greenhouse gases contribute to climate change or not. Environmental groups exulted that, after several years of stalling, the administration would finally be forced to do something.

Except that they didn't. Nearly a year after that ruling, which required the EPA to make a decision, the agency still hasn't. And with Administrator Stephen Johnson at the helm, there's no sign that it's going to happen anytime soon.

This is made all the more remarkable by the fact that Johnson, in blocking California's attempt to regulate greenhouse gases, has made it clear that the EPA considers them pollutants. As Georgetown Law professor Lisa Heinzerling, who wrote the lead brief in the Supreme Court case, Massachusetts v. EPA argues, "Johnson concluded that California's problems aren't "compelling and extraordinary" because they're no worse than the very bad problems the rest of the country faces as a result of climate change." That reasoning, she says, made explicit the EPA's view "that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare." That leaves Johnson with no choice, she writes.

But Johnson is a stubborn opponent. Yesterday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) asked Johnson a simple question during a Senate appropriations subcommittee hearing: How many staff at the EPA does he have working on this? Johnson, a Zen master of digression, mind numbing minutiae ("gobbledygook"), and generally thwarting questioners, never gives a simple answer. Here's the video:

After a digression covering Judge Antonin Scalia's minority opinion and all the other things that the EPA is considering ("I can go on and on"), Feinstein had had it.

"Let me ask you this... all right let me ask you this question. How many personnel right now are working on the endangerment finding?"

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If you're a staffer at the Environmental Protection Agency, you might have found yourself wondering what the point is. As EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson likes to put it, the final decision is his to make. And he has a history of disregarding the recommendations of EPA staff when he makes them.

Which makes this not very surprising:

Unionized EPA workers are withdrawing from a cooperation agreement with the political appointees who supervise them over controversies including the agency's refusal to let California regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks.

Nineteen union local presidents representing more than 10,000 Environmental Protection Agency employees signed a letter to Administrator Stephen L. Johnson last Friday accusing him of "abuses of our good nature and trust."...

The union locals involved represent the vast majority of EPA workers around the country. Signers included William Evans, president of the EPA headquarters chapter of the National Treasury Employees Union.

Evans said that the purpose of the Clinton-era National Labor-Management Partnership Council was for senior agency officials and workers to deal with workplace and other issues before the decision stage.

Instead, "what we found is decisions are being made and they're being presented to us," said Evans.

You can read the letter from Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility here.

As you can see, the union senses a pattern in Johnson's leadership. Scientific standards get junked they say, "whenever political direction from other federal entities or private sector interests so direct." Johnson's denial of a waiver for California's greenhouse gas rules, of course, being a prime example.

We'll have a little bit more on Johnson in a bit.

This month, President Bush is expected to veto a Senate bill that would restrict the CIA to using interrogation techniques approved by the Army Field Manual. That would unequivocally outlaw waterboarding, the inducement of hypothermia, sensory deprivation, and other "enhanced interrogation" techniques that have been in the CIA's arsenal.

The veto is likely to survive an attempt by Senate to override because ever since 9/11, the administration and Republicans (including Sen. John McCain) have preferred to keep legal restraints on CIA interrogators loose.

But the FBI, which, unlike the CIA had ample experience with interrogation, took a different tack. During today's hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) asked FBI Director Robert Mueller why:

LEAHY: And you have a policy, as does the military, the military handbooks, not to use coercive techniques like waterboarding. Why do you have that policy?

MUELLER: There are a number of reasons that probably contributed to the development of that policy years ago. Generally, our questioning has been, in the past, done in the United States, and the results of our questioning often end up in a court. Whereas, you and other who have been prosecutors know the question of voluntariness is at issue for the admissibility of information you have.

And, consequentially, the policy was established, I would imagine, given our particular unique mission here and the operation under the Constitution, the applicable statutes and the attorney general guidelines.

It also is a result, I believe, of the analysis of our Behavioral Science Unit as to effective use of particular techniques where we believe that the rapport-building technique is particularly effective.

Mueller also acknowledged that the "rapport-building" approach apparently was quite successful with Saddam Hussein.

Remember that down in Guantanamo Bay, FBI and military interrogators (the "Clean Team") had to re-examine detainees because the techniques used by CIA interrogators meant that the testimony would not hold up in court. Not that the director of national intelligence has any doubt that "enhanced interrogation" techniques produce reliable information ("we can tell in minutes if they are lying"). I guess it's just a different way of doing things.

The Politico gets the temperature of the current negotiations on the surveillance bill and stresses the "unknowns." So while the signs tend towards the final bill somehow containing retroactive immunity for the telecoms against those vicious lawsuits, it's still not a sure thing.

But there was this choice section, where Senate intelligence committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) expresses befuddlement that Republicans have boycotted talks on a compromise bill. The president and leading GOPers have said that it's the Senate bill or nothing so there's no use negotiating. From The Politico:

Rockefeller supports the immunity provision the administration wants, but he said he was perplexed by the fact that the White House has skipped the meetings the Democrats have tried to hold. “I don’t understand why the White House hasn’t been more active in pushing the solution they want,” he said.

“It’s very strange.”

Of course, the Republicans and the administration have been pushing with all their might (I guess Rockefeller missed this ad... and Bush's every public appearance for the past month). They just see no reason to go to the table, figuring that if they push enough, they'll get what they want.

Did CBS Alabama affiliate WHNT just have really rotten luck with its equipment during 60 Minutes' segment on ex-Gov. Don Siegelman (D), or did the station actually try to censor the story on Republicans' alleged attempts to use the Justice Department to take out a political opponent?

Michael Copps, a Dem appointee on the Federal Communications Commission, has already begun pushing for an investigation. Chairman Kevin Martin has been noncommittal.

But Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), who sits on the Senate Commerce Committee, wants Martin to know that he'll be keeping an eye on things. In a letter to Martin today, he asks that Martin share whatever findings emerge from an investigation, and adds "I will be monitoring this situation closely."

The full letter is below.

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Lawyers for Omar Khadr, a Canadian who will be tried by a military commission in Guantanamo Bay on "charges that include murder, related to a 2002 firefight in Afghanistan that left a U.S. soldier dead," are investigating whether a video of Khadr that appeared on CBS' 60 Minutes last fall was leaked by Vice-President Dick Cheney's office. According to Khadr's lawyer, former Guantanamo chief prosecutor Col. Morris Davis "thinks it's possible or likely this tape came from the vice-president's office." If the allegations are true, he says, it would be a "clear violation of the protective orders that are in place" in the case. (CTV)

The towns of Brattleboro and Marlboro, Vermont have passed articles of indictment against President Bush and Vice President Cheney for their violations of the U.S. Constitution. Though one supporter of the articles remarked that he hoped the two were impeached before they were arrested in Vermont, the latter is unlikely because Vermont is the only state in that President Bush has never visited. (USA Today)

When FBI Director Robert Mueller testifies at the Senate today he will face questions about alleged civil rights violations during terror and spy investigations, including the use of national security letters. Last year the Justice Department's inspector general reported that the FBI, between 2003 to 2005, collected personal data on citizens without authorization and in non-emergency situations. (AP)

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While there's a lot of attention on picking a new president, you might not want to take your eye off the current one.

The idea, once scandalous, that Bush would just be handing the Iraq mess off to his successor is now an accepted reality. But he won't be doing it in an informal way, either.

Since last year, the administration has been working towards a long-term security agreement with Iraq, an "enduring relationship," as they had it. The basic outlines were clear: a long-term American troop presence in Iraq and preferential treatment for American investments in return for a guarantee of security for the Iraqis.

To give you an idea of the outline, the Iraqis said that it would be silly to expect that Iraq would be able to defend itself alone until at least 2018. Forever seems a fair conservative estimate.

But there was a problem. There was a strong case to be made that for the administration to strike such a deal without the consent of the Senate was unconstitutional. Democrats were set to fight such a move.

You know what Bush and Cheney think about asking Congress for anything. So, abruptly, the administration's position changed. The administration would be striking a long-term pact along the same lines, but there would be no security guarantee. None at all. According to the letter of the agreement, if Iraq were attacked, we'd just let it burn.

For some reason, some cynics think this is just a workaround. Without the actual security guarantee, the administration can hammer out the treaty without any hassle from Congress.

Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-NY) is such a cynic. And yesterday Ackerman had the opportunity to press David Satterfield, the State Department's Iraq coordinator, about the deal. The exchange, printed today in The Washington Post, had that taint of absurdity so common to Congressional testimony from administration officials:

Update: Here's video of Ackerman's questioning.

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Jonathan Turley, professor of law at George Washington, writing today in The Los Angeles Times:

The recent decisions of Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey to block any prosecution of Bush administration officials for contempt and to block any criminal investigation of torture led to a chorus of criticism. Many view the decisions as raw examples of political manipulation of the legal process and overt cronyism. I must confess that I was one of those crying foul until I suddenly realized that there was something profound, even beautiful, in Mukasey's action.

In his twisting of legal principles, the attorney general has succeeded in creating a perfect paradox. Under Mukasey's Paradox, lawyers cannot commit crimes when they act under the orders of a president -- and a president cannot commit a crime when he acts under advice of lawyers....

When reduced to its purest form, Mukasey's Paradox is that government officials cannot violate the law -- but that because executive privilege is also a law, it's sometimes necessary to violate the law in order to uphold the law.

From the AP:

Rep. Rick Renzi pleaded not guilty Tuesday to all charges in a federal indictment accusing him of abusing his office for financial gain and for raising campaign funds by embezzling insurance premiums collected by his family's firm....

Renzi, a Republican who announced last year that he would not be seeking a fourth term, spoke briefly with reporters after his court appearance.

"I have a lot of faith in my attorneys," Renzi said. "I'll be OK."...

Defense lawyer Reid Weingarten cautioned against a rush to judgment and said Renzi will stay in office. Trial is set for April 29, and Weingarten said the defense was "not going to drag our feet."

An April trial would be a remarkably quick turnaround for such a complicated and weighty case -- especially considering that the other pending indictment against a sitting lawmaker, which came down last June against Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA), has been tied up for months in appeals involving Constitutional issues.

What's best for the telecoms is best for the nation's security, the administration has argued. And what's best for the telecoms is for all those lawsuits against them for cooperating with the warrantless wiretapping program to go away. After all, "these people are responsible for shareholders."

But while administration officials like the director of national intelligence and attorney general have asserted that the telecoms face the "continued risk of billion-dollar class action suits," it's worth putting that claim in context.

I asked Kurt Opsahl, who represents the Electronic Freedom Foundation in its class action suit against AT&T, to walk me through.

EFF's suit features evidence provided by former AT&T technician Mark Klein, who disclosed two years ago how the company had allowed the NSA to use a small room in San Francisco to capture untold millions of phone and e-mail communications. EFF’s complaint charges that the program violated the First and Fourth Amendments and Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and other federal statutes.

Above all, Opsahl said, it's important to realize that for the plaintiffs in the suit to collect damages of billions, "they need to have spied on a lot of people. If they say that the interceptions and surveillance is limited to only people in communication with Al Qaeda, that suggests it's a very small number and therefore a very small amount in damages. For it to be billions, they need to have spied on millions of people."

There are 37 suits against the telecommunications companies alleged to have participated in the program, i.e. AT&T, BellSouth, Sprint and MCI/Verizon; suits that have all been transferred to federal court California's Northern District. Six of those suits are on behalf of state officials in Missouri, Maine, New Jersey, Connecticut and Vermont to investigate the program.

Should damages be awarded, however, they would be awarded based on how many people the government, via the telecoms, surveilled illegally, not the number of suits, Opsahl said. EFF's complaint excludes "foreign powers," "agents of foreign powers" and "anyone who knowingly engages in sabotage or international terrorism" from the class.

When I asked Opsahl what he thought likely damages against AT&T might be -- if the suit was successful on all of its claims, a very big "if" (see below) -- he said $13,000 per customer who was a victim of illegal surveillance.

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As David noted over at TPM last night, James Clark, the former chief of staff to ex-Gov. Frank Murkowski (father of current senator, Lisa Murkowski) will plead guilty today to a conspiracy charge related to the sprawling Veco investigation.

The main thrust is this: in the 2006 election, Murkowski was Veco's man. That's because he supported the construction of a trans-Alaska gas pipeline that would be a major boon to Veco, an oilfield contractor. Never ungrateful, Veco set up a deal with Clark to pay $68,550 for two polls and a political consultant. The arrangement was kept secret, breaking campaign finance laws and raising the question of whether the money amounted to a bribe.

One of the pollsters involved has been identified: Anchorage pollster David Dittman confirmed to The Anchorage Daily News that he's "polling company A" in the plea documents. The others involved, a pollster and consultant who are both based outside Alaska, have not been identified yet. And it's quite possible that this was not a one-time deal, since funding polls was something of a habit for Veco.

Clark's plea deal makes it clear that he will be at prosecutors' beck and call for the next several months -- wherever they want him to testify, whoever they want him to testify against, he'll be there and required to tell them everything.

But who, exactly, he might implicate is unclear. Will it be Clark's former boss Frank Murkowski? Clark, in a statement released to the press, indicates that it will not -- well, at least for the Veco-funded polls. He apologized to Murkowski for breaking the law under his nose and regretted that "some people will unfairly attribute what I have done to him."

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As expected, Attorney General Michael Mukasey gave the House the legal finger on Friday in response to a criminal referral for White House aides' contempt of Congress. Think of that what you will, the House has been forced on to Plan B, a civil suit against the White House.

Roll Call (sub. req.) reports it should be coming soon:

House Democrats said a civil lawsuit could be filed as early as this month that challenges the Bush administration’s claims of executive privilege in curtailing aides from testifying on Capitol Hill….

According to Democratic sources, staff is working expeditiously to finalize the lawsuit, which is expected to be filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia before the House recesses for two weeks on March 14.

The general counsel, which will file the lawsuit on behalf of the House Judiciary Committee, is expected to urge the federal court to rule on the legitimacy of the Bush administration’s claims that executive privilege protects conversations between Miers and Bolten and the president. The court also could compel both individuals to testify before the House committee.

You remember the awful luck of WHNT, that CBS affiliate in North Alabama; on the night of the broadcast of 60 Minutes' story on Don Siegelman, just during the Siegelman segment, the station's feed went black. After initially blaming CBS for the error, WHNT revised its story and said that it had in fact been a technological problem at the station.

As questions mounted, the station ran the segment again that night (during the Oscars) and then again at 6 o'clock the following day as penance. But for some reason, a number of people seem disinclined to take them at their word. From Reuters:

A U.S. Federal Communications Commission official is seeking an inquiry into the blacking out of a politically charged segment of the CBS News magazine "60 Minutes" by a local television station in Alabama.

FCC Commissioner Michael Copps said he had asked the chairman of the FCC to open an inquiry into the Feb. 24 incident at WHNT, a CBS affiliate in Huntsville, Alabama, in which civil rights footage from the 1960s was blacked out.

"The FCC now needs to find out if something analogous is going on here," Copps said at a luncheon with media watchdog groups. "Was this an attempt to suppress information on the public airwaves, or was it really just a technical problem?"

Copps is one of two Democratic appointees on the five-member FCC. The chairman of the agency, Kevin Martin, is a Republican.

Martin responded by saying he would look into the matter but has not indicated yet whether he would issue a letter of inquiry to the station, a source close to the commission said.

A high profile trial for two former high-ranking Shiite government officials accused of kidnapping and killing "scores of Sunnis" has ended abruptly, despite intense preparation for the trial and extensive evidence, because prosecutors dropped the case. A U.S. legal adviser believes that this stunning collapse "shows that the judicial system in Iraq is horribly broken" and "sends a terrible signal: If you are Shia, then no worries; you can do whatever you want and nothing is going to happen to you." (Washington Post)

When Edgar Domenech, the 23-year veteran of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (he was second-in-command for four years), told the Justice Department about