Today, we are launching Salon Radio with Glenn Greenwald -- a regularly-scheduled program that will include interviews and discussions with political figures, journalists, activists and the like. For now, all of the segments will be recorded as podcasts and then posted on Salon every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 2:00 p.m. EST. The segments will be between 30 and 45 minutes. Each new show will be posted on Salon's front page, posted here on my blog, and will also be permanently archived so that they can be heard at any time. You can subscribe to the show as a podcast via the iTunes Music Store, here (h/t rwanderman).

I'm really excited about the opportunities this can create to expand and deepen the coverage of issues beyond what is possible from writing alone. Although the podcast show will function as a stand-alone entity, my intent is that it will supplement much of what I write about by enabling me to interview, debate or otherwise engage with people on issues that relate to what I write about. I intend to make it a regular practice to invite onto the show anyone who is criticized here -- journalists, political figures or anyone else -- in order to discuss and debate those critiques.

Salon has invested a substantial amount of time and resources in order to ensure a high-quality technical presentation, but the technical aspect -- like the show itself -- is still a work in progress. With each segment that we do, we'll be able to improve the sound quality and other aspects of the podcast, including enabling other bloggers to embed parts of the segments. And as I do more of these, I'll be able to figure out the optimal uses for this format.

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For the debut segment today, I spoke with Daniel Ellsberg, one of the very few people in America who really merits the term "political hero." During the Vietnam War, Ellsberg -- a Harvard graduate, former U.S. Marine, top aide to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, and State Department official in Vietnam -- had a Top Secret security clearance as a result of his high-level work on the Vietnam War with the Nixon administration and the Rand Corporation, when he obtained the now-famous "Pentagon Papers," which revealed that the U.S. Government, throughout the 1960s, knew that the Vietnam War could not be won, yet continued to deceive the American public as it escalated the war.

Knowing that he was risking life imprisonment, Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in an attempt to alert the public to what the Government was doing (he did so only after numerous members of Congress refused his pleas to make those documents public). The NYT then waged an epic battle with the Nixon administration for the right to publish those papers, resulting in one of the most important First Amendment victories in Supreme Court history. For his efforts, Ellsberg was subjected to extensive warrantless eavesdropping by the Nixon White House, had his psychoanalyst's office invaded and searched at Nixon's behest in an attempt to obtain incriminating information about him, and was arrested and then brought to trial where he faced life imprisonment for having leaked the report (though the charges were ultimately dropped as a result of the Nixon administration's misconduct towards him).

In countless ways, Ellsberg embodies exactly what our political system has been so conspicuously and tragically lacking, and he has become one of the most insightful analysts of our current political crisis. My discussion with Ellsberg can be heard here by clicking PLAY below:

(updated below)

Former Reagan DOJ official, constitutional lawyer, and hard-core conservative Bruce Fein was one of the first prominent Americans to call for George Bush's impeachment in the wake of the illegal NSA spying scandal. Back in late 2005 and 2006, when even safe-seat Democrats like Chuck Schumer were petrified even of uttering the words "broke the law" when speaking of the Bush administration -- let alone taking meaningful action to investigate and putting a stop to the lawbreaking -- Fein wrote a column in The Washington Times forcefully and eloquently arguing:

Volumes of war powers nonsense have been assembled to defend Mr. Bush's defiance of the legislative branch and claim of wartime omnipotence so long as terrorism persists, i.e., in perpetuity. Congress should undertake a national inquest into his conduct and claims to determine whether impeachable usurpations are at hand.

In 2006, Russ Feingold called Fein as one of his witnesses in support of Feingold's resolution to censure President Bush for his lawbreaking. Today, Fein is one of the witnesses who will testify before the House Judiciary Committee in favor of Dennis Kucinich's impeachment resolutions (joined by Elizabeth Holtzman, Bob Barr and several others). As KagroX details here, that the House is holding hearings on Kucinich's resolution is not, in any way, an indication that the Congress is prepared to take those resolutions seriously. Manifestly, they are not.

Yesterday, Jane Hamsher spoke with Bruce Fein on BloggingheadsTV about why the Democrats have, in general, failed to hold the Bush administration accountable for their multiple crimes (Slate yesterday detailed some of the many Bush crimes). Here is what Fein -- echoing an argument I made a couple of weeks ago -- said on that topic:



Jane also asked Fein about Obama adviser Cass Sunstein's recent statements that Bush officials should not be prosecuted for their illegal detention, interrogation and spying programs. To get a sense for why this matters, National Journal this morning listed Sunstein as one of a small handful of likely Supreme Court appointees in an Obama administration. But -- similar to Fein's point regarding Jay Rockefeller, Jane Harman and comrades -- Sunstein has long been one of the most vocal enablers of Bush radicalism and lawlessness, having continuously offered himself up over the last seven years to play the legal version of the TNR role of "even-liberal-Cass-Sunstein-agrees-with-Bush."

During my Democracy Now debate with him, Sunstein said: "I'd be honored but surprised if the military commissions cite some of my academic articles." But as Talk Left's Armando documented, Sunstein would be an ideal and highly likely "legal scholar" for the Bush administration to cite as part of its military tribunals, as Sunstein was an early and outspoken supporter of the theory that Bush had the authority to order military commissions (a theory which the Supreme Court rejected in Hamdan). Identically, while Sunstein now pretends to disagree with Bush's theory as to why he had the power to spy on Americans in violation of the law (Sunstein said on Democracy Now: "while I agree with Senator Feingold that the President's position is wrong"), Sunstein defended those theories as "very reasonable" when he was on right-wing talk radio with Hugh Hewitt in late 2005 during the height of the NSA controversy.

It's really hard to imagine a worse person on whom Obama could be relying as a legal adviser, let alone a potential Supreme Court nominee, and here is what Fein had to say about Sunstein's view of things:



The destruction of the CIA interrogation videos in 2005 that Fein referenced there seems particularly malicious -- plainly criminal -- in light of the new documents obtained yesterday from the CIA by the ACLU. One of those documents -- an August 4, 2004 CIA memo (.pdf) -- explicitly warns "of possible future judicial review of the Program and of these issues," meaning the CIA's interrogation methods and the legality of the Bush administration's behavior. Destroying evidence relevant to a future criminal proceeding is the very definition of obstruction of justice -- a crime for which ordinary people are regularly prosecuted and imprisoned -- yet we have the Cass Sunsteins of the world, speaking on behalf of our political and media class, insisting that it would be terribly unfair and disruptive to treat any of this as a criminal matter (and -- as is true for many of the episodes of Bush lawbreaking -- key Congressional Democrats were briefed on the possible destruction of the interrogation videos as well).

Most revealingly of all, the Kucinich impeachment hearing today is like a parade of those whom the Beltway class mocks as Shrill, Unserious losers and Leftist radicals -- people who actually use overly excitable words like "crimes" and "prosecutions" when talking about our leaders or who, like the ACLU, actually object that most of what our Government does occurs in total secrecy. Serious, responsible Beltway establishment leaders know that courtrooms and prosecutions are only for the common people and -- for our own good -- our leaders cannot, must not and should not be exposed to any of that, and must continue to be able to shield what they do from public scrutiny.

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NPR this morning has a story, both radio and print, regarding the left/right Strange Bedfellows citizen coalition and Money Bomb campaign targeting those responsible for the erosion of civil liberties, constitutional protections and the rule of law. The NPR story includes this:

Earlier this month, Congress passed a rewrite of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA. Opponents say it gives the president too much power to tap private communications without court oversight. That argument was made none too subtly by a TV ad that ran in the home district of Chris Carney, a Pennsylvania Democrat who supported the new FISA law.

"Chris Carney is surrendering to Bush and Cheney the same un-American spying powers they have in Russia and communist China," the ad says.

Apparently, the ad hit a nerve. A Carney spokeswoman called the ad a "smear campaign" and said NPR should not do a story about it. But the ad was paid for by Carney's fellow Democrats.

Blue America is a political action committee promoted by Democratic bloggers like Jane Hamsher. She is disappointed with Congress since it went Democratic.

"I'm very upset with my party right now," Hamsher says. "They were given the majority, and they have a 9 percent approval rating right now for a reason."

Apparently, NPR isn't Comcast -- at least not in this instance -- and it thus ran the story despite Carney's pleas.

UPDATE: To be clear, it's far from certain, obviously, that Obama would appoint Cass Sunstein to anything, let alone to the Supreme Court. And as I've said before, the precarious 5-4 Supreme Court balance is reason enough, just standing alone, to strongly prefer an Obama administration to a McCain administration. But Sunstein -- both due to his relationship to Obama and, independently, to his new marriage -- is one of the most inside of Obama insiders. That he has simultaneously been such an unusually vocal defender of some of the worst Bush radicalism is obviously worth noting, and is self-evidently disturbing. Today, Matt Stoller reviews Sunstein's latest book and several of the odd ideas in it.

Newsweek's Jonathan Alter has an article this week filled with all the standard anti-blogger "pajama" platitudes (along with some praise) and, along the way, Alter writes this:

But we're finding [blogging] works better for keeping on top of daily flaps than for learning genuinely new information. Bloggers rarely pick up the phone or go interview the middle-level bureaucrats who know the good stuff. It's a lot easier to chew over breaking stories and bash old media. Where do they get the information with which to bash? Often from, ahem, newspapers.

Leave aside the question of how much "real reporting" bloggers do as compared to newspapers. If one looks at most of the vital disclosures of the last seven years -- whereby concealed, legally dubious behavior of one of the most secretive administrations of the modern era is exposed -- one finds that such exposure comes overwhelmingly from two sources: (1) conscientious whistle-blowers inside the Government, and (2) advocacy groups such as the ACLU, which have tirelessly waged one litigation battle after the next in order to unearth the Bush administration's secret, improper conduct.

Today, the ACLU (with whom, as I've previously disclosed, I consult on various matters) released three formerly secret Bush administration memos -- two from the CIA to the Office of Legal Counsel inside the DOJ, and one from OLC to the CIA -- which set forth, in a revoltingly clinical tone that is by now all-too-familiar, extremely permissive standards for what constitutes (and what does not constitute) "torture." Raw Story's Nick Juliano has an excellent summary of the memos' lowlights, including the assertion that treatment of detainees does not constitute "torture" as long as there is no "specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering," and the claim that interrogators are free to inflict mental harm as long as it falls short of "harm lasting months or even years after the acts were inflicted upon the prisoners."

The August 4, 2004 CIA memo (.pdf) specifically noted that "the waterboard" (sic) is not "torture," and it further points out that the President ordered that the Geneva Conventions are not always to be complied with, but rather, only "to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity." The same memo also pointedly notes that the Durbin Amendment -- which bars the use of torture and "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment" in all circumstances -- "is not, as of now, law."

What's particularly notable here -- beyond the fact that this is further proof that our Government has engaged in deliberate, systematic and illegal torture -- is what a closed, secretive society we've become. Even the memos which the ACLU obtained -- between four to six years old -- are heavily redacted, with the vast bulk of the legal conclusions of our Government simply blacked out (.pdf). We just don't live in an open society, as most of the most consequential actions in which our Government engages are undertaken behind an increasingly impenetrable wall of secrecy.

The vast bulk of these memoranda consist of nothing more than legal arguments as to why the Bush administration claimed it had the authority -- as the ACLU's Jameel Jaffer put it -- "to permit interrogators to use barbaric methods that the U.S. once prosecuted as war crimes." There is absolutely no justification whatsoever for these Memoranda to be concealed from the public. All they do is set forth the Executive Branch's purported understanding of the law. How can legal arguments about the President's alleged authority possibly be secret?

And yet it was only because the ACLU relentlessly pursued protracted litigation that the CIA was ordered to turn over these documents and we learned about them. That's the same way we learned about the 81-page Memorandum authored in 2003 by John Yoo that provoked such disgust back in April (that's the Memo that calmly analyzed whether "'scalding water, corrosive acid or caustic substance' thrown on a prisoner" was legal and which noted that a prior, still-secret OLC Memorandum had concluded "that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations"). And the DOJ's memoranda justifying Bush's NSA warrantless eavesdropping program -- as well as other long-abandoned, patently illegal surveillance programs -- remain concealed.

It has been left to the ACLU and similar groups (such as the Center for Constitutional Rights and Electronic Frontier Foundation) to uncover what our Government is doing precisely because the institutions whose responsibility that is -- the "opposition party," the Congress, the Intelligence Committees, the press -- have failed miserably in those duties. And while Democrats in Congress passively ignore their oversight responsibility or do the opposite by helping to conceal Bush crimes, the Democratic Party establishment goes around repudiating and even demonizing the factions that have tried to step into the void that they've left, as illustrated by this cowardly "senior Democratic lawmaker" who anonymously told The Wall St. Journal this about Obama's recent FISA vote:

"I applaud it," a senior Democratic lawmaker said. "By standing up to MoveOn.org and the ACLU, he's showing, I think, maybe the first example of demonstrating his ability to move to the center. He's got to make the center comfortable with him. He can't win if the center isn't comfortable.

When Jesse Helms died last month, there was a discussion about Helms in an online email group of prominent liberal Beltway journalists, and one participant asked whether the Left has any equivalent to Jesse Helms, and a well-known "liberal" journalist responded: "Yes -- the ACLU extremists." Time's Joe Klein said last year that objections to the Senate's warrantless eavesdropping bill were merely "fodder for lawyers and civil liberties extremists" -- a phrase which GOP Rep. Pete Hoekstra then praised in National Review. The very same Beltway denizens who have so submissively enabled the radicalism of this administration simultaneously harbor and continuously spew contempt for those Shrill, Unserious "activists" -- such as the dreaded ACLU extremists -- who challenge and disrupt their little Beltway fiefdom.

Even in those rare instances of good investigative journalism -- Dana Priest's CIA black sites exposé and the Risen/Lichtblau disclosure of the NSA program -- most of the disclosures are due primarily to brave whistle-blowers inside the administration who were willing to risk their careers and even their own freedom in order to expose serious government wrongdoing. In addition to Priest and the NYT, there is Charlie Savage and Seymour Hersh and Jane Mayer and other actual journalists who have uncovered serious government wrongdoing, but those are the glaring exceptions.

Jonathan Alter can pat establishment journalists on the back as much as he wants, but the record of the establishment press over the last seven years is one characterized far more by failure and complicity than by real journalism. Alter laments that Americans "so distrust the mainstream media" that they "often prefer rumors to facts," but that's a natural and reasonable response to a media that gave us Iraqi mushroom clouds and Jessica Lynch's heroic firefight and Pat Tillman's dramatic confrontation with the Enemy and a whole slew of other government-dependent propaganda and government-promoting myths.

So much of the real journalism that is occurring isn't from TV and magazine stars but largely from severely under-paid advocates at public interest groups and anonymous government whistle-blowers who aren't even meant to be "journalists." The function of the ACLU and similar groups isn't really to uncover illegal behavior on the part of our Government. That is the intended function of the Congress, the media and the opposition party. But those institutions haven't done that -- with very rare exception, they don't do it (and in the case of Congress, one is hard-pressed to think of any real exceptions at all). As a result, the ACLU and similar groups -- with far fewer resources -- have been forced first to uncover what the Government does, to try methodically and incrementally to erode the government's wall of secrecy, to perform real journalism, in order then to engage in their real function of opposing Government encroachments and defending the Constitution, basic privacy rights and civil liberties.

(updated below - Update II - Update III - Update IV - Update V)

After John McCain sought Pastor John Hagee's endorsement and then heaped praise on Hagee when he received it, a slew of publicity surrounding Hagee's extremist, offensive and outright crazed views forced McCain to repudiate Hagee and reject his endorsement. But not Joe Lieberman. Last year, the Connecticut neocon spoke at the annual convention for Hagee's group, Christians United for Israel, and in an indescribably obsequious speech, said this about the radical Pastor:

I would describe Pastor Hagee with the words the Torah uses to describe Moses, he is an "Eesh Elo Kim," a man of God because those words fit him; and, like Moses he has become the leader of a mighty multitude in pursuit of and defense of Israel.

That Hagee holds views that even John McCain eventually described as "deeply offensive and indefensible" isn't impeding Joe Lieberman's close association with Hagee. This week, Hagee's group is holding its Third Annual Convention in Washington, and here is the line-up for the final night, with the event's keynote speakers listed:


Hagee's bigoted comments against Catholics and gay people are well-documented, and this Jewish group has put together a new video documenting many of Hagee's most intensely anti-Semitic comments, including Hagee's false assertion that Hitler was partially Jewish, his insistence that the anti-Christ will be a Jew, and his claim that Jews believed that their spit contains magic healing powers and thus ran around rubbing it in the eyes of blind people in order to heal them.

As the controversy over Jeremiah Wright conclusively demonstrated, there is a glaring double standard applied to black Ministers such as Wright (who are quickly deemed scary, extremist anti-American radicals and therefore must be banished by all decent people) and white evangelical preachers such as Hagee (who can utter the most inflammatory and contemptible trash and still be treated with the utmost respect from Serious Centrists like Lieberman). More to the point, Democrats are continuously required to "repudiate" members of the so-called "Far Left" upon pain of being deemed un-Serious, while there is no such thing as "too extreme" on the Right, and Joe Lieberman is thus free to share a stage with a crazed extremist like John Hagee and depict him as a modern-day Moses and still be considered (and, at the GOP Convention, will be hailed as) a Serious, Responsible, Honorable, Centrist by our political and media elite.

UPDATE: The debate I had this morning on Democracy Now with University of Chicago Law Professor and Obama adviser Cass Sunstein (regarding his remarks this weekend concerning criminal prosecutions for Bush officials, torture, FISA and the like) can be seen and heard here. The prior segment in which I participated, regarding corporate lobbyists and the Democratic Party's Convention, can be heard here.

UPDATE II: As Atrios notes, a recent poll from a new Jewish political group found that Barack Obama is far more popular among American Jews than is Joe Lieberman:

Only 37 percent of Jews view the Connecticut Independent in a favorable light compared to 48 percent who have a negative perception. As for Obama, 60 percent of Jews view him favorably while 34 percent view him unfavorably.

As is so often the case, the dominant media narrative -- Obama has a problem with Jewish voters! Lieberman's support for McCain is vital to McCain's attracting Jewish voters! -- is baseless and wrong.

UPDATE III: The good version of Barack Obama made an appearance today in Amman, Jordan as he delivered some unusually balanced, even-handed remarks about the Israel-Palestinian conflict. In reporting those comments, Politico's Ben Smith wrote that Obama's suggestion "that the fault in the region is not the Palestinians' alone [is] something you'll rarely hear from Republicans." That's true, but it's a view that is rarely heard from most Democrats as well. It's good to hear that view from Obama.

UPDATE IV: Law Professor Jonathan Turley also has some thoughts regarding Cass Sunstein's odd views on the rule of law, here. Turley apparently discussed these issues on MSNBC's Countdown tonight, though I didn't see his appearance and a transcript isn't yet available.

UPDATE V: Jonathan Turley last night discussing Obama adviser Cass Sunstein's views on the rule of law (h/t RMP):

(updated below)

In Britain, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons has just issued its Human Rights Annual Report (.pdf). It concluded that America's word can no longer be trusted when it comes to claims about torture, rendition and human rights abuses. From The Guardian yesterday:

Britain can no longer believe what Americans tell us about torture, an MPs' report to be published today claims. . . .

In a damning criticism of US integrity, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said ministers should no longer take at face value statements from senior politicians, including George Bush, that America does not resort to torture in the light of the CIA admitting it used "waterboarding". The interrogation technique was unreservedly condemned by Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who said it amounted to torture.

A change in approach would have implications for extradition of prisoners to the US, especially in terror or security cases, as the UK has signed the UN convention which bars sending individuals to nations where they are at risk of being tortured. . . .

Today's committee report said there were "serious implications" of the striking inconsistencies between British ministers continuing to believe the Bush administration when it denies using torture. "The UK can no longer rely on US assurances that it does not use torture, and we recommend that the government does not rely on such assurances in the future," said the committee. "We also recommend that the government should immediately carry out an exhaustive analysis of current US interrogation techniques on the basis of such information as is publicly available or which can be supplied by the US."

The BBC noted that the report also concluded that the British Government must not trust the word of the U.S. Government in light of prior deceit with regard to rendition:

The MPs also challenged the government to check more actively that Britain had not been used by the Americans for so called "rendition" flights -- when detainees are taken to countries where bans on torture may not apply.

The UK had repeatedly accepted assurances that it had not, but it was discovered earlier this year that two rendition planes refuelled on the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

Earlier this year, the British Government suffered substantial embarrassment as a result of this:

Britain's denials that its territories have been used for "extraordinary rendition" were dramatically undermined last night after the United Nations claimed that Diego Garcia has been used as a detention centre to hold US suspects. . . .

The revelations raise fresh questions about the island's role in the process of extraordinary rendition -- moving suspects to interrogation centres in third-party countries where they are held outside the law -- and why the UK government was apparently unaware that its ally was operating a prison on Diego Garcia to house so-called "high-value detainees".

If Britain -- one of America's closest allies during the Bush era -- is openly proclaiming that it cannot trust the word of our government, then who can? Moreover, Britain has hardly been a standard-bearer of human rights itself over the last seven years. Indeed, while our political class in the U.S. is busy covering-up and immunizing our Government's lawbreaking and human rights abuses, members of both the British Left and Right are joining together to demand investigations into what appears to be compelling evidence that their own intelligence officials abducted British citizens and turned them over to Pakistani security services in order to be interrogated and tortured:

MPs are calling for an investigation into allegations that British intelligence has "outsourced" the torture of British citizens to Pakistani security agencies after hearing accounts of people being abducted and subjected to mistreatment and, in some cases, released without charge.

John McDonnell, the Labour member for Hayes and Harlington, and Andrew Tyrie, Conservative member for Chichester, say the allegations should be examined by the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), the Westminster body that oversees the Security Service, MI5, and the Intelligence Service, MI6. . . .

However, details of three new cases have raised concerns among MPs.

McDonnell says he wants to know whether British officials colluded in the abuse of one of his constituents.

The man, a medical student, said he was abducted at gunpoint in August 2005 and held for two months at the offices of Pakistan's Intelligence Bureau opposite the British Deputy High Commission in Karachi. The student, who has not spoken out before, has described how he was whipped, beaten, deprived of sleep, threatened with execution and witnessed other inmates being tortured.

He was questioned about the suicide attacks on London's transport network in July of that year, and says that after being tortured by Pakistani agents he was questioned by British intelligence officers. He was released to his father, who says he received a personal apology from the director of the Intelligence Bureau.

For the British, of all countries, to conclude in a formal Report that the U.S. is essentially an untrustworthy rogue nation when it comes to human rights abuses -- "The committee's conclusions amount to saying we can no longer rely on assurances from a US administration that purports to uphold the civil and political standards of behaviour," as MP Andrew Tyrie put it -- is about as potent an indictment of how far we've fallen as one can imagine.

UPDATE: I'll be on Democracy Now with Amy Goodman tomorrow morning, along with University of Chicago Law Professor (and Obama adviser) Cass Sunstein, to debate Sunstein's views on matters such as torture, FISA, and whether Bush lawbreakers should be prosecuted (I referenced some of his recent comments on those topics here). Our segment will be between 8:00 and 9:00 a.m. EST tomorrow and I'll post the exact time once I know it. Local listings and live audio or video feed are here.

When I wrote over the weekend about Sunstein's remarks urging that Bush officials not be investigated or prosecuted for their crimes, I was relying on Ari Melber's (accurate) report in The Nation about Sunstein's Netroots Nation panel. As amazing as I found Sunstein's remarks based on Melber's summary, they're even more amazing when heard in their entirety, which one can listen to here (the whole Q-and-A session, beginning at 38:00, is what is so instructive -- John Dean is seated on the left and Sunstein is in the middle. The first several questions from the audience are superb and the answers from the panel, from Sunstein in particular, are . . . not superb).

[I'll be on Democracy Now beginning at roughly 8:00 a.m. EST to discuss first the funding issues surrounding the Democratic National Convention (discussed here), and then, roughly at 8:20 a.m. EST, the discussion with Cass Sunstein will begin. The segment will be posted to the website later today].

(updated below)

One of the hallmarks of events at which George Bush appeared was the complete elimination of any dissent. In one of the most notorious cases, three individuals who arrived at a 2005 Bush town hall meeting in Denver with an anti-war bumper sticker on their car and anti-Bush t-shirts underneath their clothing were first threatened with removal before they sat down and then, 20 minutes later, were forcibly removed despite not having uttered a word. Numerous other cases of that kind have been documented, where perfectly well-behaved individuals were barred, removed and even arrested at Bush speeches, including taxpayer-funded events, exclusively for holding signs or wearing clothing that were critical of the Leader or his policies.

At the center of this dissent-suppressive policy was Gregory Jenkins, the former deputy assistant to President Bush and White House director of advance, as well as a former Fox News producer. Jenkins was sued by the ACLU for his role in the removal of the Denver attendees and in several other cases. Bush officials originally denied any role in this conduct, but a Presidential Advance Manual for which Jenkins was responsible uncovered by the ACLU explicitly instructed event workers on when and how "to stop a demonstrator from getting into the event" and "calls for Bush volunteers to distribute tickets in a manner to deter protesters and to stop demonstrators from entering." As the ACLU put it:

The American Civil Liberties Union national office today filed a federal lawsuit against a former high-level White House staffer for enacting a policy that unlawfully excluded individuals perceived to be critical of the administration from public events where President Bush was present. The policy is laid out in an October 2002 "Presidential Advance Manual" obtained by the ACLU. . . .

The ACLU is suing Gregory Jenkins, former Director of the White House Office of Presidential Advance and a Deputy Assistant to President Bush for setting the policy in the manual. Jenkins' policies have led to the removal and, in some cases, arrest of innocent people from taxpayer-funded events.

One of the lawsuits brought against Jenkins -- Rank v. Jenkins, brought by the ACLU on behalf of two Texas citizens who "were arrested for trespassing, handcuffed, and hauled away in a police van" on the West Virginia State Capitol ground when trying to attend a Bush July 4 speech wearing anti-war and anti-Bush t-shirts -- ended with a settlement under which the Government paid them $80,000.

Earlier this month, the same Greg Jenkins joined the McCain campaign to oversee the campaign's advance planning:

Perhaps most important for the campaign's image is the addition of Greg Jenkins, a veteran advance man who ran presidential advance in the Bush White House. Jenkins, also an aide on Bush's 2000 campaign, is working to ensure better stagecraft of McCain's events and to avoid a reprisal of the much-mocked green background behind McCain at a high-profile speech last month.

That move was part of what The New York Times called "the elevation of Steve Schmidt -- who worked closely with Karl Rove," and noted that Jenkins is "another veteran of Mr. Rove's operation."

The placement of Jenkins in charge of McCain campaign events is already producing exactly the heavy-handed, dissent-suppressing tactics that were the ugly hallmark of Bush events. Shortly after Jenkins joined the McCain campaign, this is what happened at a McCain speech, billed as being "open to the public" -- an event which, ironically, also took place in Denver:

A 60-year-old librarian received a trespassing ticket today after a liberal group's protest outside a John McCain town hall meeting Monday.

Clutching a sign that read "McCain = Bush," Carol Kreck was removed from the atrium at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts by four Denver police officers.

Kreck, a former Denver Post reporter who works part-time as a librarian for an education think tank, said she was removed as she quizzed a police officer about whether he could deny her free speech "on city property" by taking away her sign, while McCain supporters wore buttons inside.

Video of this episode was recorded:



Most significantly, the McCain campaign engaged in exactly the same sort of dishonesty about this episode as characterized similar Bush ejections. Originally, the campaign claimed it had no involvement with her removal, and that it was done at the behest of the Secret Service. But the Secret Service denied that, thus forcing the truth to be revealed:

It was Sen. John McCain's staff who asked security at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts to remove people holding protest signs at the venue -- not U.S. Secret Service agents, who were not involved in Carol Kreck's ouster from the galleria. . . .

But Thursday, after two days of being vilified by bloggers, letter writers and others, the Secret Service emphatically denied involvement.

"Contrary to some recent reporting, the Secret Service had no involvement in Ms. Kreck being removed from the area," said Malcolm D. Wiley Sr., spokesman for the Secret Service. "It was not done at our request or suggestion. Any assertion to the contrary is inaccurate and inconsistent with our established policies and procedures."

Because the McCain campaign's ejection of a dissenter was at a private campaign event rather than a publicly-funded speech, many of the legal and Constitutional issues that rendered Bush's similar behavior illegal are likely inapplicable. Nonetheless, the dissent-intolerant spirit of the behavior is exactly the same, and the decision by the McCain campaign to hire a Rove operative like Greg Jenkins -- who was at the center of similar actions on behalf of George Bush -- is clearly a conscious attempt to import those same policies. Regardless of what one thinks of McCain, a McCain administration would clearly maintain in power the same people who have been running the country for the last eight years and, with them, much of the same noxious behavior.

UPDATE: The New Republic's Jonathan Chait -- in very close competition with Bill Kristol for the title of Beltway Pundit Who is Wrong About Everything -- last week wrote an article entitled "Old Flame: Why I still kinda like John McCain," in which he explains that he "still feel[s] some pangs of affinity for the old codger. Where Bush is peevish, entitled, and insecure, McCain's charming, ironic, and self-deprecating" (h/t BarbinMD). The former war supporter and Lieberman lover continues:

The best aspect of a McCain presidency is that, while it would probably follow the policies of George W. Bush, it would put an end to the politics of Karl Rove . . . . A McCain presidency would promise to dismantle the whole Rovian method that has torn open such a deep wound in the national psyche.

In light of the above -- and there is much more here -- it's not really worth saying much about Chait's specific claim. Nonetheless, it never ceases to amaze that no matter how many embarrassing errors Chait and his TNR comrades produce with their quest to show how Smart and Serious they are by being the Reasonable Liberals who praise and defend the Right, they just keep eagerly offering themselves up for that role.

One of the most striking aspects of our political discourse, particularly during election time, is how efficiently certain views that deviate from the elite consensus are banished from sight -- simply prohibited -- even when those views are held by the vast majority of citizens. The University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes -- the premiere organization for surveying international public opinion -- released a new survey a couple of weeks ago regarding public opinion on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, including opinion among American citizens, and this is what it found:

A new WorldPublicOpinion.org poll of 18 countries finds that in 14 of them people mostly say their government should not take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Just three countries favor taking the Palestinian side (Egypt, Iran, and Turkey) and one is divided (India). No country favors taking Israel's side, including the United States, where 71 percent favor taking neither side.

The worldwide consensus is crystal clear -- citizens want their Governments to be neutral and even-handed in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, not tilted towards either side. And that consensus is shared not just by a majority of American citizens, but by the overwhelming majority. Few political views, particularly on controversial issues, attract more than 70% support among American citizens. But the proposition that the U.S. Government should be even-handed -- rather than tilting towards Israel -- attracts that much support. That's not an "anti-Israeli" view -- to the contrary, it's a position that America can and should resolve that violent, four-decades-long dispute by being even-handed rather than one-sided.

Similarly, when asked "How well do you think Israel is doing its part in the effort to resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict," citizens around the world, by a large margin, believe that Israel is doing either "not very well" or "not well at all" (54% -- compared to 23% that say it's doing "very well" or "somewhat well"). And there, too, that worldwide view corresponds to American public opinion as well. 59% of Americans say Israel is doing either "not very well" or "not well at all" -- compared to only 30% that say it's doing "very well" or "somewhat well." And Palestinians don't fare much better worldwide (38-49%) and fare worse in the U.S. (15-75%).

Yet not only is the view of "even-handedness" completely unrepresented among mainstream political figures in the U.S., it's deemed political death to go anywhere near expressing that view. Back in 2003, then-presidential-candidate Howard Dean expressed the exact position favored by an overwhelming majority of Americans, yet triggered an intense and even ugly controversy by doing so:

Dean's Israel troubles began at a Sept. 3 campaign event in Santa Fe, N.M. When it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said that day, "It's not our place to take sides." Then, on Sept. 9, he told the Washington Post that America should be "evenhanded" in its approach to the region.

That's all Dean said. It's a view held by more than 70% of Americans. It ought to be completely uncontroversial -- if anything, it ought to be that view that is deemed a political piety. But what happened? This, according to an excellent account of that "controversy" in Salon by Michelle Goldberg:

The media and the Democratic establishment reacted as if Dean had called Yasser Arafat a man of peace. On Sept. 10, 34 Democratic members of Congress, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, wrote Dean an open letter. "American foreign policy has been -- and must continue to be -- based on unequivocal support for Israel's right to exist and to be free from terror . . ." they wrote. "It is unacceptable for the U.S. to be 'evenhanded' on these fundamental issues . . . This is not a time to be sending mixed messages; on the contrary, in these difficult times we must reaffirm our unyielding commitment to Israel's survival and raise our voices against all forms of terrorism and incitement."

The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported that Dean had badly damaged his own campaign. "Sources in the Jewish community say that Dean has wrecked his chances of getting significant contributions from Jews . . ." the paper wrote. "Many believe Dean's statement will drive more Jews toward Lieberman and Kerry, enabling Kerry to take the lead again."

Dean was roundly attacked by the political elite for uttering "anti-Israel" comments, notwithstanding the fact that Dean is married to a Jewish woman, raised his children as Jews, and, most amazingly of all, had a campaign that was managed by Steve Grossman, a former President of AIPAC. But no matter: Dean had uttered a Forbidden Thought -- forbidden even though it is embraced by the vast majority of Americans -- and thus Grossman and Dean had to subject themselves to abject Apology Rituals:

According to the Dean campaign, the uproar involved semantics, not substance. "Here's what I think happened," says Grossman, Dean's campaign co-chair. "Howard made some comments in someone's backyard in New Mexico that were shorthand, if you will, for some of his Middle East views. In the course of those remarks and some others in the subsequent days, he used some language that gave people consternation, and it was immediately jumped on by Joe Lieberman and John Kerry that somehow Howard Dean was breaking faith with this 55-year tradition of the United States' special relationship with Israel, which is patently absurd". . . .

If Dean's Israel position really puts him far out on the left, it proves that not showing unequivocal support for the Jewish state remains a political poison pill -- for members of either political party. . . .

After all, according to Grossman, the candidate remains in sync with the goals of Bush's Israel policy. . . . No serious candidate took a position to the left of Bush. Indeed, it's precisely because there's no real leftist alternative that Dean's been cast in that role. . . . . But a campaign is always more about images and impressions than carefully formulated positions, and that's where Dean has blundered.

It was conventional wisdom that that Dean had committed some grave mistake even though, as The Nation's John Nichols highlighted at the time, Dean was expressing the overwhelming majority view even back in 2003:

More troubling is the condemnation by Pelosi and other party leaders of even a hint of "evenhandedness." That smacks of the old game of positioning Democrats to the right of the Republicans on Middle East policy -- in a perceived contest for Jewish-American votes and contributions. The problem with this approach, as Middle East scholar Stephen Zunes points out, is that "this suggests you cannot be firmly committed to Israel and question [Israel's hawkish Prime Minister] Ariel Sharon's policies. If that's where Democrats put themselves, they don't leave room to debate Bush on the issue." They'll also have a tougher time appealing to American voters -- 73 percent of whom, according to a recent University of Maryland poll, prefer that the United States not take sides.

It's pretty extraordinary that in a democracy, the political elite is able to render completely off-limits a view that the vast majority of Americans support. They actually render majority-held views unspeakable and then remove the issue entirely from what is debated. No matter what one's views are, there is no denying that our policy towards Israel is immensely consequential for our country. Yet, by virtue of the fact that presidential candidates are required to affirm essentially the same orthodoxies, there's very little difference in their positions towards Israel and therefore our current policy approach towards Israel will simply not be part of anything that is debated, even though most Americans overwhelmingly oppose that course.

Indeed, as soon as he secured the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama made a pilgrimage to AIPAC in order to avoid the "Howard Dean mistake" and to vow that there would be no such debate over Israel in this election:

I have been proud to be a part of a strong, bi-partisan consensus that has stood by Israel in the face of all threats. That is a commitment that both John McCain and I share, because support for Israel in this country goes beyond party. . . .

And then there are those who would lay all of the problems of the Middle East at the doorstep of Israel and its supporters, as if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the root of all trouble in the region. These voices blame the Middle East's only democracy for the region's extremism. They offer the false promise that abandoning a stalwart ally is somehow the path to strength. It is not, it never has been, and it never will be.

Our alliance is based on shared interests and shared values. Those who threaten Israel threaten us. Israel has always faced these threats on the front lines. And I will bring to the White House an unshakeable commitment to Israel's security.

That starts with ensuring Israel's qualitative military advantage. I will ensure that Israel can defend itself from any threat -- from Gaza to Tehran. Defense cooperation between the United States and Israel is a model of success, and must be deepened. As President, I will implement a Memorandum of Understanding that provides $30 billion in assistance to Israel over the next decade -- investments to Israel's security that will not be tied to any other nation.

In fairness, Obama did attack what he called the "failed status quo"; disputed that "America's recent foreign policy has made Israel more secure"; and pointed to "eight years of accumulated evidence that our foreign policy is dangerously flawed." Moreover, Obama -- to his great credit -- spent the primary season making some important and unorthodox points about Palestinian suffering and pointing out that the President should not be blindly supportive of everything Israel's right-wing does, that being "pro-Israel" doesn't mean a refusal to oppose Israeli actions.

But by uttering such Forbidden (though quite mainstream) thoughts, Obama was mercilessly attacked as anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic, and with the nomination secured, the crux of his June AIPAC speech was an affirmation of our political establishment's mandated Israel orthodoxy: the continuation of America's one-sided alliance with Israel, as highlighted by commitments such as this:

Finally, let there be no doubt: I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally Israel. Sometimes there are no alternatives to confrontation. . . . That is the change we need in our foreign policy. Change that restores American power and influence. Change accompanied by a pledge that I will make known to allies and adversaries alike: that America maintains an unwavering friendship with Israel, and an unshakeable commitment to its security. . . .

As members of AIPAC, you have helped advance this bipartisan consensus to support and defend our ally Israel. And I am sure that today on Capitol Hill you will be meeting with members of Congress and spreading the word. But we are here because of more than policy. We are here because the values we hold dear are deeply embedded in the story of Israel.

Again, the point has nothing to do with one's views of the best policy towards Israel. The point is that a position which the vast majority of Americans embrace is one that, simultaneously, is forbidden to be expressed, and the election consequently will involve no debate over that issue.

That profoundly anti-democratic dynamic is by no means confined to Israel. That's just an example. A different University of Maryland poll was released in April of this year, which surveyed public opinion in Iran and the U.S. regarding the disputes between those two countries. The populations of both countries have strikingly similar views with regard to those matters, with large majorities favoring the same deal to resolve the dispute (Iran has the right to develop nuclear energy accompanied by IAEA inspections to prevent weaponization), and large majorities also favor the NPT's goal of "eliminating all nuclear weapons." More strikingly, the citizens of both countries overwhelmingly favor the same policies of rapproachment and cooperation, rather than the bluster, threats, and ongoing provocative acts engaged in by both of their governments:



Remarkably, this desire for cooperation rather than confrontation is the view of most Americans despite the Iraq-level misinformation and propaganda which our political elite has disseminated about Iran:


And while Iranian President Ahmadinejad is depicted by our political class as the Equivalent of Adolf Hitler, savagely oppressing Iranians as some sort of insane, vicious tyrant, that isn't how they see it:


Iranian public opinion distinguishes between the U.S. Government and the American people -- holding favorable views towards the latter and unfavorable views towards the former ("some portrayed the American people, like the Muslim people, as victims of the American government") -- and to the extent there is "anti-Americanism" in Iran, it is based on this widespread assessment:


That, too, is a belief widely held in many places in the world, yet is one that no mainstream politician in the U.S. could express.

There are all sorts of reasons why our presidential elections center on personality-based sideshows (even Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell said as much about her own paper's coverage today). Those gossipy matters are easier for our slothful, vapid media stars to digest and spout. They require very few resources to cover. The campaign consultants who run national political campaigns are experts in P.R. strategies for packaging personalities and indifferent to policy debates, etc. etc.

But one principal reason is that so many of the Government's most consequential actions are concealed behind a wall of secrecy and thus not subject to public debate. Meanwhile, those policies which are publicly disclosed are kept off-limits from any real debate and, even when they are debated, public opinion is almost completely marginalized in favor of the minority elite consensus (see, for instance, the endless Iraq war even in the face of long-standing, overwhelming support for its end).

That remarkable dynamic of debate-suppression is most conspicuous -- and most urgent -- when the policies favored by the political establishment are ones that are vigorously rejected by the citizenry. Thus we have the extraordinary fact that a policy that has long been favored by the vast majority of Americans -- even-handedness in the Israel-Palestinian conflict -- is one that no mainstream American politician of any national significance can espouse without triggering an immediate end to their political career. That discrepancy is a rather potent commentary on how our democracy functions.