One-Way Street

Cheney's Law

Last night's Frontline documentary "Cheney's Law" was a chronicle of horrors, to be sure, but there were no new revelations about the Vice President's implacable assault on the Constitution. The dramatic tension of the documentary was provided by Jack Goldsmith, a conservative law professor from the University of Chicago who served, briefly, as the head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel before he ran into the David Addington buzz saw. It was Goldsmith's legal analysis that set off the near-palace coup surrounding the renewal of the warrantless wiretapping program. By demonstrating how Cheney's legal team had stepped well beyond conservative legal principles--well beyond any recognizable legal principles--Goldsmith revealed how monadic, not to mention fanatic, Cheney's claims for executive privilege have become.

Cheney's version of events was provided by a series of black and white photographs of the vice president in which he displays his entire emotional range, conveyed in exactly two expressions: the beady-eyed stare of the monomaniac, and the cagey smile of a man who has the entire nation bugged. David Addington, Cheney's Cardinal Richelieu, looks as innocuous as a stamp collector. Strung together in a narrative, Cheney's machinations enhancing presidential power are mortifying, but the documentary didn't do much to solve the essential mystery of the man. "Cheney's Law" doesn't convey the grandeur of his secrecy and fanaticism, or why the issue of executive power, which he can never enjoy directly, became his reason for being. While there are plenty of logical explanations for the policies of the Bush Administration, none to them, to my mind, satisfactorily explain the vehemence of Bush and Cheney's beliefs or the magnitude of their failures. It seems that the more we know about what goes on inside the Administration, the more baffling it appears.

The Googlization of Public Space

Today Google Maps adds Chicago to its "Street View" function, so that urbanites' activities in all their banality are memorialized until the next image refresh. No one cares that their phone may be tapped, but they get incensed if someone tries to photograph them unloading groceries.

The Street View is neither a panoptic intrusion into our private lives nor Walter Benjamin's utopian concept of a public space in which people feel as comfortable and as empowered as they do in private space. Rather, the Street View is a symptom of a reality deficit, in which everything is so indexed and classified that there's nothing left to discover. It's an anti-dérive.

The Not Ready for Prime Time Terrorists

In a kind of "dog that didn't bark in the night" investigation, Nation writer James K. Galbraith considers the curious lack of details about the British terrorist plot of August 10. It's starting to look like there are some holes in the terrorist plot that spooked us all and caused countless gallons of perfume to be dumped into airport garbage cans. Like there were no plane tickets or passports for the would-be suicide bombers. Or even bombs with which to commit suicide. The initial reports about the plotters' methods made it seem like if you accidentally spilled Gatorade and Evian on your iPod you could take down a 747. Turns out liquid bombs are difficult to transport and mix without anyone on a crowded transatlantic flight noticing. Which is good news for us all. And it's not like terrorist masterminds have a large pool of experienced suicide bombers from which to draw to pull off tricky attacks like the one contemplated in Britain.

Galbraith also points out that the British plot seems to lack a larger rationale. These "one-off" attacks are not the type that brings the Anglo-American alliance to its knees. As any good insurgent knows, you either need a spectacular attack like 9/11, or a long series of smaller attacks that demonstrates your implacability. What did they hope to accomplish by bringing down ten airplanes? Do the terrorists plan to do anything beyond period shocks to our sense of security? Maybe, despite the catastrophe that is Iraq, we're winning the war on terrorism after all.

Wipe that Smile Off Your Face, Sir

Last week there was talk that the next step in airport screening would be body cavity searches, but there seems to be something even more invasive on the horizon: face scans. The Wall Street Journal, no doubt with a keen eye to the profit opportunities presented by the new paranoia, reports on the TSA's development of technology that will scan your face for any traces of a suppressed emotion, like a murderous impulse or extreme aggravation at yet another airport screening delay. Already in Knoxville, TN the TSA is trying out a manual procedure, first developed in Israel, in which screeners will look really closely at passengers and try to detect "vocal timbre, gestures and tiny facial movements" that indicate a potential terrorist attack. The next step is an interview in a closed room. What happens next is a little hazy: Guantanamo? The CIA rendition program? But don't worry: the company involved hopes to improve the screening process so that no more than 4% of innocent travelers are dragged off to the next stage in the terrorist inquiry. No figures on the acceptable number of terrorists making it through the system.

The Police Action Against Terrorism

This morning, while driving my wife and son to O'Hare Airport, I heard Britain's Home Secretary John Reid speak about his decision to move against the people who plotted to blow up airliners over the Atlantic. In calm, measured tones and a thick as haggis Scottish burr, he explained his decision to give the arrest order perilously close to the "execution phase" of the plot. He made the most dramatic arrest since 9/11 sound like a move against a meth lab. I didn't hear George Bush's sour twang remind us we're at war with "Islamic fascists" "who hate our freedoms," but it was dismaying to read his statement with its holy war language raising a police action against band of deluded Pakistani malcontents to the level of a clash of civilizations. This type of language serves the power interests both of the terrorists, who get confirmation of their grandiose delusions, and the Republican Party, which is taken a beating on its incompetence and bad faith in the War on Terror. The War on Terror is coming to grief on the streets of Baghdad. What we need is a police action on terror, preferably run by competent professionals making informed, sober decisions--and modulating their language when talking about murderous zealots who threaten all civilizations.

The NPS's Moronic Plan to Protect Independence Hall

On my first weekend after I moved to Philadelphia, when I was still uncertain about my decision to move there, I walked to the historic district and strode right into Independence Hall. The accessibility of history in Philadelphia, just lying about so casually, was one of the chief that factors changed my mind about Philadelphia. When I returned for a visit a couple of years ago, I was dismayed to see Independence Hall cordoned off, the goofy actors playing Ben Franklin replaced by glowering Park Service rangers.

Now Brad Maule at Phillyskyline.com reports that Independence Hall "is yet again being threatened with nauseating irony, trickled down through the sieves of bureaucracy as decided by Washington." The Park Service has decided to erect a seven-foot tall fence through the square where the Declaration of Independence was first read in public on July 8, 1776. The New York Times quotes Philadelphia mayor John Street describing the fenced-in Hall as "an armed camp." As Ed Rendell, the former mayor and current governor of Pennsylvania, says, "If I were a terrorist. I’d look at this plan and smile."

No kidding. The plan demonstrates, yet again, we've entrusted our national security to morons. Independence Hall Square is not only a lovely and historical place, but also an exemplary public space, without which we can't function as a democratic, civil society. Maule is right about the nauseating irony of the fence: the very place where Americans struck their most decisive blow against tyranny is sundered by one of the most authoritarian administrations in American history.

Alberto Is Watching You Surf the Web

Inspired by the resounding success and popularity of the NSA's mass phone bugging operation, AG Alberto Gonzales and the FBI have asked Internet and telecom companies to keep records of their customers' online activities for two years. The telecoms and the ISP's have "voiced concern" about the requests, but there's no indication that they'll do anything but meekly comply. Yet more blatant violations of Americans' privacy might be more palatable if they made public the surfing habits of certain people. For instance, it would be interesting to know Karl Rove's Google search keywords.

Impeach Gonzales

Not that this is going to happen, but the other day a conservative Republican Congressman named Darrell Issa threw out an interesting idea: impeach Alberto Gonzales. Issa is a member of the House Judiciary Committee, so he's not entirely blowing smoke. Still, even a hopping mad Congress didn't exactly take up the battle cry of impeachment. Plus, it's not even clear if the FBI's ransacking of William Jefferson's office was illegal. It was certainly arrogant, but arrogance is rarely punished and isn't unconstitutional, or George Bush would have been impeached a month into his presidency.

Nevertheless, Issa's outburst leads The Nation's John Nichols to a flight of fancy:

Add to that bill of particulars [i.e., the search of Jefferson's office] clear evidence that the president, the vice president and administration aides employed deceit and chicanery to organize the invasion and occupation of two foreign countries without a Declaration of War – or a plan – and the outline for articles of impeachment begins to take shape.

Congressional Republicans cheapened impeachment with Bill Clinton. They run the danger of making impeachment proceedings a regular feature of second-term presidencies, like the lame duck watch or the Easter Egg hunt controversy. The impeachment buck, as it were, stops with Gonzales. The best argument against impeaching Bush: President Cheney.

Dennis Hastert Has Bush in a Three-Quarter Face Lock Russian Leg Sweep

I don't know what a three-quarter face lock Russian leg sweep is, either, but wrestling metaphors accompany Dennis Hastert wherever he goes. Dana Milbank throws out some colorful ones in a piece on Hastert snapping back (I associate dog metaphors with the Speaker, for some reason) at the administration for leaking word of the FBI investigation into his possible role in the Jack Abramoff affair. Hastert is in high dudgeon over reports that he's being investigated, and Milbank lets him loose:

Asked later if he was charging the Justice Department with retaliating for his stance in the congressional office raid, [Hastert] answered: "Here are the dots. People can connect any dots they want to." If that wasn't clear enough, he added: "I thought it was an interesting sequence of events."

Tony Snow's thoughtful response was "false, false, false."

Hey, didn't Nixon use the FBI to intimidate his political enemies?

The Iranians Are Everywhere!

Fox News, never shy about terrorizing its audience, has a breathless report about sleeper cells of Iranian terrorists all over the country. In fact, if the cleaning women forget to vacuum, I'll find one or two cells under my desk in the morning. One starts to wonder if the sleeper cells haven't infultrated Fox News.

Thanks to AlterNet for the link, so I don't have to watch Fox News.