Memorial Day

Quick Muse: An Epic Battle of Poets!

(Perseus' use of free verse confounds the iambic tetrameter approach of the Kraken.)

The newsletter of Florida State University (one of my many alma maters) reports that "FSU Creative Writing Professor Julianna Baggott will be "competing" tonight against former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky in a new-style online "poetry slug-fest" (all in good literary fun!) in which notable poets square off to see who can write the best poem in 15 minutes."

A previous bout between poets Paul Muldoon and Thylias Moss is up on the very young but witty website Quick Muse. A New York Times article on Quick Muse can be read here (try this link after the first one goes defunct), while Quick Muse publisher Ken Gordon speaks about the series in Poets & Writers here.

I'm intrigued by Pinsky's involvement because while he's not at all a snob and not opposed to "poetry slams," nonetheless he doesn't view slam poetry as poetry per se, and Quick Muse smacks a little of a highbrow slam. (I view poetry slams as much more performance art than poetry, similar to Pinsky's view.) Quick Muse features three key differences. Firstly, unlike a slam, which typically features pre-written poems, or a rap-off, which offers only a few minutes to compose a diss of one's opponent, Quick Muse poets sit down to write for 15 minutes. Secondly, Quick Muse gives the poets a passage or quotation for inspiration (for Muldoon and Moss it was a wonderful passage by Elizabeth Bishop on the difficulty of writing poetry!). Lastly, Quick Muse is not competitive. It's fascinating and elucidating to see how two accomplished poets attack the same task, each with a different emphasis and style. (While my loyalties are divided for tonight's bout, I have to "back" Pinsky - if such a thing is even possible! Meanwhile, Muldoon and Moss both produced striking work of radically different feel and form.) Really, when poetry's celebrated and promoted, how can there be any losers?

Godspeed, Quick Muse!

Alberto Mora's Stand Against Torture

Alberto Mora provides a splendid op-ed for The Washington Post today entitled ”An Affront To American Values.” The Post explains that Mora, “who retired as Navy general counsel last year, wrote a memo to Pentagon officials two years before the Abu Ghraib scandal that warned against circumventing international agreements on torture and detainee treatment. This article is excerpted from remarks he made upon receiving a 2006 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.”

Mora’s full remarks can be read here. The John F. Kennedy Library Foundation’s write-up of him can be read here. Christy Hardin Smith of Firedoglake posted on the Profiles in Courage Awards here, quoting Ted Kennedy’s speech about Mora and the other recipient this year, Democratic Congressman John Murtha.

Mora first became known to the wider public thanks to Jane Mayer’s excellent 2/20/06 article “The Memo” for The New Yorker. Mayer’s article online now allows readers to download Mora’s 22-page memo about torture and the treatment of prisoners. Mora is one of many career professionals in the government who stood up against what he saw as the abuse of the law and a violation of core American values. Mayer quotes more than one colleague that remarks on Mora’s “intellectual courage” and “personal integrity.” A conservative Republican, Mora is not of the partisan “My President right-or-wrong” school, but of the rule of law, civil rights, protect-the-Constitution school. We need more like him. As Mayer describes him:

Mora was a well-liked and successful figure at the Pentagon. Born in Boston in 1952, he is the son of a Hungarian mother, Klara, and a Cuban father, Lidio, both of whom left behind Communist regimes for America. Klara’s father, who had been a lawyer in Hungary, joined her in exile just before the Soviet Union took control. From the time Alberto was a small boy, Klara Mora told me, he heard from his grandfather the message that “the law is sacred.” For the Moras, injustice and abuse were not merely theoretical concepts. One of Mora’s great-uncles had been interned in a Nazi concentration camp, and another was hanged after having been tortured. Mora’s first memory, as a young child, is of playing on the floor in his mother’s bedroom, and watching her crying as she listened to a report on the radio declaring that the 1956 anti-Communist uprising in Hungary had been crushed. “People who went through things like this tend to have very strong views about the rule of law, totalitarianism, and America,” Mora said.

Mayer’s article is essential reading if you missed it before (or all of the subsequent articles on Mora from other publications). Important battle lines were drawn, not always with Mora’s knowledge, between competing forces in the government. Needless to say, his conscience and scholarship were not welcomed by all parties. Mora discussed at length these issues of torture with William Haynes, the Pentagon’s general counsel, but:

In confronting Haynes, Mora was engaging not just the Pentagon but also the Vice-President’s office. Haynes is a protégé of Cheney’s influential chief of staff, David Addington.

A must-read profile of Addington recently appeared in U.S. News and World Report (I’ll be doing a separate post on Addington soon, I hope.) The conflicts of Cheney, Rumsfeld and their allies against Powell and the State Department are well-documented by now. Mora was not alone in his battles, but he was now going up against a powerful machine:

Lawrence Wilkerson, whom Powell assigned to monitor this unorthodox policymaking process, told NPR last fall of “an audit trail that ran from the Vice-President’s office and the Secretary of Defense down through the commanders in the field.” When I spoke to him recently, he said, “I saw what was discussed. I saw it in spades. From Addington to the other lawyers at the White House. They said the President of the United States can do what he damn well pleases. People were arguing for a new interpretation of the Constitution. It negates Article One, Section Eight, that lays out all of the powers of Congress, including the right to declare war, raise militias, make laws, and oversee the common defense of the nation.” Cheney’s view, Wilkerson suggested, was fuelled by his desire to achieve a state of “perfect security.” He said, “I can’t fault the man for wanting to keep America safe, but he’ll corrupt the whole country to save it.” (Wilkerson left the State Department with Powell, in January, 2005.)

It’s particularly troubling that Haynes told Mora that:

Rumsfeld was suspending his authorization of the disputed interrogation techniques. The Defense Secretary also was authorizing a special “working group” of a few dozen lawyers, from all branches of the armed services, including Mora, to develop new interrogation guidelines.

Mora, elated, went home to his wife and son, with whom he had felt bound not to discuss his battle. He and the other lawyers in the working group began to meet and debated the constitutionality and effectiveness of various interrogation techniques. He felt, he later told me, that “no one would ever learn about the best thing I’d ever done in my life.”

It was a cruel move by Haynes, because as the article goes on to show, he outright lied to Mora. While Mora and other government lawyers worked hard to craft effective and ethical detention guidelines, Haynes, working with figures such as Addington and John Yoo, labored to codify a policy of torture. Rather than addressing Mora's crucial concerns, Haynes and his faction increasingly him cut out of the loop. The Rumsfeld-Cheney “cabal,” as Wilkerson calls them (more here and here), effectively did an end-run around Mora, the military code of conduct, and the Constitution.

It’s impossible to avoid the fact that the Bush administration is not ignorant of the mistakes they have made. But they do not view them as mistakes, or at the very least did not at the time. Whether it comes to the 4th Amendment, judicial review, and the illegal NSA eavesdropping program — or using discredited reports of Nigerian uranium sales to sell the case for war — or disregarding plans for the reconstruction of Iraq — or pushing for a policy of torture — they have been warned of the dangers and proceeded anyway. The Bush administration has not been given solely bad counsel. It has ignored, suppressed, and aggressively attacked good counsel. Given the ongoing disastrous consequences, “hubris” is just too tame a word.

Edmund Burke famously stated that “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Alberto Mora deserves praise as a good man who followed his conscience out of respect for the law and essential American principles. But right now, we need many more good men and women in Washington.

(On the related subject of torture, Jane Mayer also wrote “The Experiment,” which appeared online for The New Yorker on 7/4/05.)

Specter May Enforce the Law

(Really, it's a sad post title, isn't it? Such are the times we live in... )

In a recent post I wrote about a chilling, infuriating move by GOP lawmakers to obstruct judicial review of the illegal NSA eavesdropping program. However, with a new bill co-sponsored with Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA), it appears Arlen Specter (R-PA) may have regained his soul after all by enforcing existing FISA law. This is extremely heartening. As with the previous post, I’m drawing on the invaluable work of Glenn Greenwald, who reports this latest development here. As Greenwald notes in his updates, Specter characteristically equivocates in his statements about the bill, which really merely reinforces existing law. The real test for Specter (as for many a politician) is always his actions.

While this new bill is merely common sense, and enforcing a sensible and successful law should never be a radical move, Specter deserves immense credit if he does the right thing and fights for its passage. This should not be a partisan issue. It’s possible that even if the bill becomes law, Bush will continues to break it, thus forcing the Constitutional showdown he’s been working to avoid (the showdown may come sooner than that anyway, with other challenges in the works). It's important in such a showdown that Congress chooses the right side: The Constitution over any political party.

Gay is the New Blind

This must be seen to be believed. The female newscaster in this video clip perpetrates one hell of a Freudian slip, thus upholding the high standards local newscasts are renowned for. (Hat tip to Wonkette.)

Apparently, the newscaster in question, Cynthia Izaguirre, works for the ABC affiliate in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her webpage reports:

If you see her around town while she's doing her favorite activities (running marathons, skiing, and shopping), say "hello!" Cynthia loves to make new friends.

And if you're lucky, Cynthia will respond with a friendly "You're gay!"

Stephen Colbert for Tom DeLay... Right?

One would think that after Stephen Colbert was lambasted by conservatives for daring to challenge George W. Bush with a brilliantly satirical stint at the White House Correspondent's Dinner, more conservatives would be clued into the fact that it's an act. Stephen Colbert is not a conservative. He has created the persona of a pompous ass who knows very little but thinks he knows it all (and has little need to learn anything more). Colbert the anchor is modeled primarily on Bill O'Reilly but also other figures such as Stone Phillips. Colbert plays it so straight, I can see some people being thrown initially, but no intelligent person with a sense of irony and humor can miss what he's doing for long.

However, in one of the weirdest, funniest moves of the year, Tom DeLay's Defense Fund has sent out an e-mail touting how documentary filmmaker Robert Greenwald, who just finished a documentary on DeLay, "crashed and burned" when interviewed by Colbert. Delay's people also posted the video on their site. (I first saw this reported by Wonkette.)

The e-mail is of course slanted, but outright lies at least once in claiming that Delay brought "legal and Constitutional redistricting to Texas" since a group of lawyers (including several conservatives) at the Department of Justice unanimously disagreed. (If you missed it, the lawyers were put under a unusual gag order, they were overruled by senior officials and later banned from evaluating such matters in the future.) I suppose Delay could argue the Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the matter, but come on, it's not like he's operating at that level of nuance.

However, the real joy is the video. You see, you've got conservatives thinking a liberal is a conservative because he mocks conservatives by adopting... oh, never mind.

A couple possibilities exist:

1) DeLay's people are really dumb.
2) DeLay's people think their donors are really dumb.
3) They sort of get Colbert's act, but watched the segment and thought, "That Colbert made some great points and sure showed Greenwald!"
4) Some bizarre combination of the above.

If nothing else, this incident is an immense compliment to Colbert's satirical powers, since evidentally he channels the Delay camp so perfectly. Either that, or they're really desperate... It's probably both. Really, all one can do is cry out:

The irony! The irony!

The Hiding of Illegal Actions

Glenn Greenwald has produced two more splendid, definitive columns. Unquestionably one of the best writers in any medium on the illegal NSA wiretaps, Greenwald points out that the Bush administration always knew the program was illegal in "Gen. Hayden admits the Administration knew it was violating FISA." And, if you missed it, this weekend Attorney General Alberto Gonzales stated that the Bush administration can and may prosecute journalists for publishing leaked, classified information that makes it look bad. Crooks and Liars has the video here. In "Imprisoning Journalists," Greenwald observes that even Nixon didn't go this far, and persuasively argues that the illegality and the efforts to cover it up are of course related. However, the main thrust of his post is a passionate defense of Freedom of the Press. The only sad thing is that it's at all necessary to write in the first place.

(In a third post, Greenwald also has a nice account of National Review editor Rich Lowry's latest hypocrisy.)

When hostility toward the rule of law, the separation of powers, and the Constitution are accepted as mainstream ideas, we're in deep trouble. When essential civil liberties are viewed as an inconvenience and basic honesty is seen as a nuisance by the key players in the White House – and no one with the power to do so challenges them - we're in grave danger.

The consistent line of the Bush administration has been: "The incompetence and illegality of our actions is not the problem. It's the damn media reporting it." Greenwald cites a Thomas Jefferson quotation that's been much used on the blogosphere of late:

"If I had to choose between government without newspapers, and newspapers without government, I wouldn't hesitate to choose the latter."

A Mother's Nightmare in Iraq

Ellen Knickmeyer pens an absolutely chilling tale in today's Washington Post titled "An Iraqi Mother's Most Dreaded Mission: Search for Missing Son in Baghdad Only Adds to Loss and Uncertainty." Riyah Obeid, 27, goes to replace a lost ID card, which sets in motion of series of horrible events. Honestly, it reminds me the most of accounts of Nazi Germany or the Rwandan genocide. Given the situation, it's astounding any good reporting can be done in Iraq. The Shia-Sunni conflict is plainly deadly not only for high profile figures but ordinary Iraqis. As the article captures one family's growing tragedy, without chance of justice from an indifferent or hostile system, it also clearly shows their situation is frighteningly common.

Froomkin versus Kurtz on Snow

I read The Washington Post almost every day, and two of my must-reads are the weekday online columns of Howard Kurtz and Dan Froomkin. Normally, they overlap somewhat on what they cover and don't clash too directly on analysis, but their columns yesterday (Wednesday 5/17/06) on new White House Press Secretary Tony Snow were strikingly different. From Kurtz we have "Melting Snow" which focuses on the personal nature of Snow and gives him good marks overall. In contrast, Froomkin's "Two Faces of Tony Snow" highlights not only Snow's evasiveness but also how most of the press gave him both a glowing review and a pass on some glaring gaffes.

Kurtz writes:

Snow was actually . . . interesting to listen to. He seemed to be engaging the press in a conversation, rather than spending his time in a defensive crouch. Yes, he split plenty of hairs in trying to discuss the domestic eavesdropping program without confirming or denying its existence, which seems a bit silly at this stage. He occasionally seemed to wander into rhetorical trouble.

But he didn't insult the press by saying, in effect, no matter what questions you ask, I'm going to repeat the same boilerplate phrases. Maybe that will change as the talk show aura wears off. As for pulling the plug on televised briefings, I still think it's hard to grasp why President Bush would hire a Fox News veteran as his press secretary and then allow the cameras to be kicked out.

In his coverage, Froomkin quotes Kurtz but then offers a rejoinder:

"But he didn't insult the press by saying, in effect, no matter what questions you ask, I'm going to repeat the same boilerplate phrases."

Nope, he found new ways to insult the press.

How so? Froomkin covers elements Kurtz downplays or ignores, noting Snow's equivocation and evasiveness on several issues, along with Snow's use of the term "tar baby." Froomkin highlights the sections of Snow's performance I found the most maddening:

"Q In his news conference with John Howard, was the President giving kind of a back-handed confirmation of the stories that the NSA is compiling telephone --

"MR. SNOW: No, he wasn't. If you go back and listen to the answer he gave you, he was talking about foreign-to-domestic calls. The allegations in the USA Today piece , which we'll neither confirm or deny, are of a different nature. So, no, he was not giving a back-handed confirmation."

If in fact you go back to look at that transcript , there was no mention of foreign-to-domestic calls. Bush did say "if al Qaeda is calling into the United States, we want to know, and we want to know why," but then he clearly referred again to the original question, which was about the domestic database.

At his briefing, Snow proceeded to engage in precisely the same sort of back-handed discourse, actually referring to aspects of the USA Today story when it served his purposes -- but then refusing to answer any questions, when it didn't.

Here's part of his exchange with Hearst columnist Helen Thomas:

Snow: "[Y]ou're mentioning a USA Today story about which this administration has no comment. But I would direct you back to the USA Today story itself, and if you analyze what that story said, what did it say? It said there is no wiretapping of individual calls, there is no personal information that is being relayed. There is no name, there is no address, there is no consequence of the calls, there's no description of who the party on the other end is.

"Q Privacy was breached by turning over their phone numbers.

"MR. SNOW: Well, again, you are jumping to conclusions about a program, the existence of which we will neither confirm, nor deny."

When Snow turned away from Thomas to Martha Raddatz of ABC News, she followed up:

"Q You might repeat the same thing, but why not declassify this? I mean, the President did talk about the surveillance program a day after The New York Times broke that story. This would seem to affect far more people, and it did sound like the President was confirming that story today. He was answering Terry's question --

"MR. SNOW: Well, if you go back -- if you go back and you look through what he said, there was a reference to foreign-to-domestic calls. I am not going to stand up here and presume to declassify any kind of program. That is a decision the President has to make. I can't confirm or deny it. The President was not confirming or denying."

Then Snow continued: "Again, I would take you back to the USA Today story, simply to give you a little context. Look at the poll that appeared the following day. While there was -- part of it said 51 percent of the American people opposed, if you look at when people said, if there is a roster of phone numbers, do you feel comfortable that -- I'm paraphrasing and I apologize -- but something like 64 percent of the polling was not troubled by it. Having said that, I don't want to hug the tar baby of trying to comment on the program -- the alleged program -- the existence of which I can neither confirm nor deny.

"Q But there are polls that show Americans are very concerned about it.

"MR. SNOW: The President -- you cannot run a security -- you cannot base national security on poll numbers. As the President of the United States you have to make your own judgments about what is in the nation's best interest.

"Q You just brought it up, though.

"MR. SNOW: Well, I did bring it up because what you were talking about is how people were concerned about privacy issues, and I tried to relate to you what happened. It was interesting, when people were given the specifics in that story, they did not seem to be terribly troubled."

Let's unpack that. First of all, not only was Snow citing poll results when it suited him, then getting righteously indignant when a reporter cited poll results that didn't, but he didn't have his facts straight.

I think Froomkin nails it here. The pretense is annoying. Qwest confirmed the program's existence, as did the President indirectly. And speaking in defense of it, Orrin Hatch has subsequently confirmed the program exists. Talking to the American people and the press as if they're idiot children isn't exactly encouraging. One more look at my favorite paragraph:

Snow: "[Y]ou're mentioning a USA Today story about which this administration has no comment. But I would direct you back to the USA Today story itself, and if you analyze what that story said, what did it say? It said there is no wiretapping of individual calls, there is no personal information that is being relayed. There is no name, there is no address, there is no consequence of the calls, there's no description of who the party on the other end is.

Give that man a doublespeak award! Here Snow essentially says, "There's no reason to be worried about a program that I won't confirm exists." More than that, here and in other responses, he argues that if this program that may exist existed, the American people wouldn't be bothered by its existence! How exactly can one boast about the restraints of a non-existent program? He refuses to comment on and thus indirectly challenges the essential point of the USA Today article, that this call-tracking program exists, then cites the article itself as support for his mollifications! This is all just silly.

My own take is that Tony Snow deserves a little slack as he gets used to the job, but if he goes on like this, I certainly won't respect him any more than Bush whipping boy and ineffective PR flack Scott McClellan. The "let's all pretend that I'm not lying" tact wears out veeery fast.

As to the "tar baby" reference, it clearly was not intended as a racist comment (ironically, Snow used the term "segregate" only a minute or so previously). I'm frankly a bit heartened to see a Bush administration use a non-sports metaphor. However, as evocative a metaphor as "tar baby" is, the term is loaded these days because of its use as a racial insult. Snow has pledged not to use it again, even if he's decried people for taking offense. I give him a pass on this one.

Tony Snow also managed some inadvertent comedy when he forget he no longer worked for Fox and referred to ABC as a "competing network."

As to Kurtz and Froomkin, I feel both do valuable work. Kurtz is officially The Post's media critic and also hosts a weekend show on CNN. Froomkin is officially a columnist and his work is labeled "opinion." While Kurtz gets bashed by the liberal blogosphere at times, sometimes deservedly so, overall I feel he does a good job. He can get testy at times when challenged, but he does admit mistakes. His fault as I see it is that he's essentially civil but also assumes that all other media combatants are as well. Very much part of the professional chattering class, Kurtz tends to fall into the false equivalency trap of “he said, she said” at times without always grilling folks that lie or distort things. He also quotes, far too often, shallow conservative blowhards like John Hinderaker and Jonah Goldberg. I prefer my conservatives intelligent; spare us the JV pundit team.

Froomkin, meanwhile, is fiercely pro-accountability. He grilled the Clinton administration as well, but the Bush administration has given him a wealth of material. What’s particularly refreshing about Froomkin is he’s willing to come out and say someone lied if they did. He brings some of the irreverence of a good editorial cartoonist to a researcher’s zeal for detail and is dedicated to journalistic transparency. Case in point: he made a mistake in the column I’ve linked above. He amended a correction to it by about 6:00pm that night and directly addressed it as an item in his column today. I like that. Kurtz is more measured but sometimes overly cautious, Froomkin is more opinionated and biting. Both provide a great round-up of the major stories of the day with a glimpse at what everyone’s saying about them. And both do champion the work of bloggers.

(Finally, having recently been the victim of an atrocious copy editor, I feel compelled to point out I'd never make it in that position. Copy editors inevitably adore bad puns for article titles and would inevitably have worked the already overused pun "snow job" into this blog post title. Or then there's "Kurtz Sunny on Snow, Froomkin Rains on Parade.")

Waas' Plamegate Coverage

Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher has a great post that links every single Plamegate article by investigative reporter Murray Waas, complete with dates and 1-2 sentence summaries. Jane also provides an entertaining supposition for how Plamegate coverage develops in the news. Needless to say, Waas continues to be the pioneer (or as Jane puts it, "Exhibit A"), breaking the majority of developments in this affair and featuring the highest level of accuracy to date.