Internet Scofflaw

As I suspected might be the case, Tom Ridge’s publisher appears to have oversold the allegations in Ridge’s new book:

Ridge says he did not mean to suggest he was pressured to raise the threat level, and he is not accusing anyone of trying to boost Bush in the polls. “I was never pressured,” Ridge said.

We still don’t know what the book actually says, but apparently what happened is that Rumsfeld and Ashcroft urged that the alert level be raised in response to a videotape from Osama bin Laden. Noting that bin Laden’s tapes never amounted to anything, Ridge’s staff declined to do so, and Ridge wondered what they were thinking. (This is pretty much Ace’s case two.)

On the other hand, Ridge reportedly makes other allegations in his book that I’m pretty sure will stand up. Basically, the Bush administration never took homeland security seriously:

In the book, Ridge portrays his fledgling department as playing second fiddle to other Cabinet-level heavyweights. As secretary, he says he was never invited to participate in National Security Council meetings, he was left out of the information loop by the FBI and his proposal to establish Homeland Security offices in major cities such as New Orleans were rejected.

This seems pretty much inarguable. By now it’s clear that the function of Homeland Security is largely to make people feel safe, not be safe. And the neglect continues:

• He is “dumbfounded” that the government still has no way to track foreign visitors who don’t leave the country when their visas expire, noting that two of the 9/11 hijackers were in the country on expired visas.
• Government officials and members of Congress rarely discuss homeland security issues and have “lost the sense of urgency” about protecting the nation from terrorist attacks. Because of the economy and growing budget deficits, he also is worried about funding for future efforts to tighten security.

(Via the Corner.)

The president calls it a myth:

Today, I want to spend a few minutes debunking some of the more outrageous myths circulating on the internet, on cable TV, and repeated at some town halls across this country.

Let’s start with the false claim that illegal immigrants will get health insurance under reform. That’s not true. Illegal immigrants would not be covered. That idea has never even been on the table.

However, the Congressional Research Service, which analyzes legislation on behalf of members of Congress, says it’s true. Specifically, the bill does bar illegal immigrants from collecting the subsidy, but it provides no enforcement mechanism:

Some have expressed concerns that since H.R. 3200 does not contain a mechanism to verify immigration status, the prohibitions on certain noncitizens (e.g, nonimmigrants and unauthorized aliens) receiving the credits may not be enforced. However, others note that under §142(a)(3) of the bill, it is the responsibility of the Health Choices Commissioner (Commissioner) to administer the “individual affordability credits under subtitle C of title II, including determination of eligibility for such credits.” Thus, it appears, absent of a provision in the bill specifying the verification procedure, that the Commissioner would be responsible for determining a mechanism to verify the eligibility of noncitizens for the credits.

In fact, as David Freddoso points out, Democrats blocked efforts to add an enforcement mechanism to the bill, which makes their intent pretty clear.

ASIDE: This is no surprise. Some in Congress feel so strongly about benefits for illegal immigrants that the Democrats falsified a floor vote in the House of Representatives to ensure that illegal immigrants could receive food stamps.

Also, Mark Tapscott observes that the CRS report also finds that illegal immigrants would be able to participate in the insurance exchange:

H.R. 3200 does not contain any restrictions on noncitzens–whether legally or illegally present, or in the United States temporarily or permanently–participating in the Exchange.

As regular readers know, I am fairly ambivalent on the issue of illegal immigration, so I don’t see this as an outrage the way some do. What I do see as an outrage (albeit an expected one) is the president labelling this as a myth, when it’s actually true.

(Via Hot Air.)

POSTSCRIPT: Interestingly, there’s not a thing about this on the White House “reality check” page about this. Is that a tacit acknowledgement?

Who ever could have seen this coming?

Morale has sagged at the CIA following the release of additional portions of an inspector general’s review of the agency’s interrogation program and the announcement that the Justice Department would investigate possible abuses by interrogators, according to former intelligence officials, especially those associated with the program.

A. B. “Buzzy” Krongard, the third-ranking CIA official at the time of the use of harsh interrogation practices, said that although vigorous oversight is crucial, the public airing of once-classified internal assessments and the prospect of further investigation are damaging the agency. “Morale at the agency is down to minus 50,” he said.

(Via Hot Air.)

Jacob Weisberg, writing for Slate, says that Republican tax policy is “pulling the plug on grandma.” No kidding:

It’s not preposterous to imagine laws that would try to save money by encouraging the inconvenient elderly to make a timely exit. After all, that’s been Republican policy for years.

It was Sen. Grassley himself who rammed the GOP’s most astonishing pro-death policy through the Senate in 2001. The estate-tax revision he championed reduces the estate tax to zero next year. But when the law expires at year’s end, the tax will jump back up to its previous level of 55 percent. Grassley’s exploding offer has an entirely foreseen if unintended consequence: It’s going to encourage those whose parents and grandparents are worth anything more than a million bucks to get them dead by midnight on Dec. 31, 2010. This would be a great plot for a P.D. James novel if it weren’t an actual piece of legislation.

(Via Hot Air.)

This is stunningly offensive, but since he brought it up, let’s take it seriously for a moment. It’s not the elimination of the death tax that is the problem, it’s the reinstitution of the death tax that is problem! Republicans wanted to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, but Democrats blocked it. So if the return of the death tax is going to kill people (and Weisberg is the one that says it will), Democrats are the ones doing it.

Now I know why the unions are supporting health care nationalization so strongly. The health care “reform” bill includes a $10 billion payoff for the unions:

Antilabor forces say it’s welfare for the UAW and Democrats’ union allies. Labor supporters say it falls short of what’s needed as tens of thousands of union members are pushed into early retirement as employers cut back health care coverage.

They’re both talking about a $10-billion provision tucked deep inside thousands of pages of health care overhaul bills that could help the UAW’s retiree health-care plan and other union-backed plans.

It would see the government — at least temporarily — pay 80 cents on the dollar to corporate and union insurance plans for claims between $15,000 and $90,000 for retirees age 55 to 64.

Unions fail to fund their pension obligations properly, and the taxpayer picks up the difference. And that’s after we just gave them two car companies. Nice.

For an extra dose of chutzpah, some say $10 billion isn’t enough:

“It is not enough money,” said former U.S. Rep. David Bonior, a Mt. Clemens Democrat who chairs the board at Washington, D.C.-based American Rights at Work, a labor advocacy group. “That will have to be supplemented to fill the gap.”

(Via Hot Air.)

The White House claims that no one will lose their insurance under Obama’s health care plan. They have a “reality check” page dedicated to the subject, headlined “You can keep your own insurance.”

At the same time, President Obama has promised to abolish high-deductible insurance plans. This isn’t some ancient campaign promise. It’s from a town meeting in Portsmouth, NH earlier this month:

Now, when we pass health insurance reform, insurance companies will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or a lifetime. And we will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses, because no one in America should go broke because they get sick. (Applause.)

And finally — this is important — we will require insurance companies to cover routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies — (applause) — because there’s no reason we shouldn’t be catching diseases like breast cancer and prostate cancer on the front end. That makes sense, it saves lives; it also saves money — and we need to save money in this health care system.

So this is what reform is about.

(Emphasis mine.)

I have a high-deductible health care plan, because as I see it as the one that makes financial sense. I can pay for typical, predictable expenses; there’s no need for me to run the money through an insurance company. I need insurance in case of major problems.

It’s just like all my other insurance. I’ll pay my electric bill myself; my homeowner’s coverage is in case the house burns down. But, if others want low-deductible plans, that’s their choice.

Unfortunately, Obama isn’t willing for me to make my choice. He promises to abolish high-deductible plans. In his very own words, he “will require insurance companies to cover routine checkups and preventive care.” Those are exactly the sort of things I’d rather pay myself under my high-deductible plan, but my plan will not be permitted.

Next time you hear about the health care “myths”, remember who is spreading them. Out of one side of this mouth, he promises you can keep your insurance, but out of the other, he promises to take your plan away if he doesn’t approve of it.

(Via Volokh.)

Charles Krauthammer predicts what will happen with health care reform. First, Congress will throw out nearly everything it has so far, then:

Tear up the existing bills and write a clean one — Obamacare 2.0 — promulgating draconian health-insurance regulation that prohibits (a) denying coverage for preexisting conditions, (b) dropping coverage if the client gets sick and (c) capping insurance company reimbursement.

What’s not to like? If you have insurance, you’ll never lose it. Nor will your children ever be denied coverage for preexisting conditions.

The regulated insurance companies will get two things in return. Government will impose an individual mandate that will force the purchase of health insurance on the millions of healthy young people who today forgo it. And government will subsidize all the others who are too poor to buy health insurance. The result? Two enormous new revenue streams created by government for the insurance companies.

And here’s what makes it so politically seductive: The end result is the liberal dream of universal and guaranteed coverage — but without overt nationalization. It is all done through private insurance companies.

This would be very smart for the Democrats. Promising free candy puts the debate on Democratic turf, whereas their current effort to create a federal candy rationing authority puts it on Republican turf. Of course, the free candy is an illusion:

Ostensibly private. They will, in reality, have been turned into government utilities. No longer able to control whom they can enroll, whom they can drop and how much they can limit their own liability, they will live off government largess — subsidized premiums from the poor; forced premiums from the young and healthy. . .

Isn’t there a catch? Of course there is. This scheme is the ultimate bait-and-switch. The pleasure comes now, the pain later. Government-subsidized universal and virtually unlimited coverage will vastly compound already out-of-control government spending on health care. The financial and budgetary consequences will be catastrophic.

However, they will not appear immediately. And when they do, the only solution will be rationing. That’s when the liberals will give the FCCCER regulatory power and give you end-of-life counseling.

But by then, resistance will be feeble. Why? Because at that point the only remaining option will be to give up the benefits we will have become accustomed to. Once granted, guaranteed universal health care is not relinquished. Look at Canada. Look at Britain. They got hooked; now they ration. So will we.

I think he’s right. Our best hope is that Democrats will be too stupid to do it. But polls show that the bottom drops out of Democratic support for health care reform without a public option, so I think we’ve got a chance.

The National Endowment for the Arts (a government agency that is the largest supporter of the arts in the United States) is being turned into a propaganda institution:

On Thursday August 6th, I was invited by the National Endowment for the Arts to attend a conference call scheduled for Monday August 10th hosted by the NEA, the White House Office of Public Engagement, and United We Serve. The call would include “a group of artists, producers, promoters, organizers, influencers, marketers, taste-makers, leaders or just plain cool people to join together and work together to promote a more civically engaged America and celebrate how the arts can be used for a positive change!” . . .

Backed by the full weight of President Barack Obama’s call to service and the institutional weight of the NEA, the conference call was billed as an opportunity for those in the art community to inspire service in four key categories, and at the top of the list were “health care” and “energy and environment.” The service was to be attached to the President’s United We Serve campaign, a nationwide federal initiative to make service a way of life for all Americans.

It sounded, how should I phrase it…unusual, that the NEA would invite the art community to a meeting to discuss issues currently under vehement national debate. I decided to call in, and what I heard concerned me.

The people running the conference call and rallying the group to get active on these issues were Yosi Sergant, the Director of Communications for the National Endowment for the Arts; Buffy Wicks, Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement; Nell Abernathy, Director of Outreach for United We Serve; Thomas Bates, Vice President of Civic Engagement for Rock the Vote; and Michael Skolnik, Political Director for Russell Simmons.

We were encouraged to bring the same sense of enthusiasm to these “focus areas” as we had brought to Obama’s presidential campaign, and we were encouraged to create art and art initiatives that brought awareness to these issues. Throughout the conversation, we were reminded of our ability as artists and art professionals to “shape the lives” of those around us. The now famous Obama “Hope” poster, created by artist Shepard Fairey and promoted by many of those on the phone call, and will.i.am’s “Yes We Can” song and music video were presented as shining examples of our group’s clear role in the election.

Obama has a strong arts agenda, we were told, and has been very supportive of both using and supporting the arts in creative ways to talk about the issues facing the country. We were “selected for a reason,” they told us. We had played a key role in the election and now Obama was putting out the call of service to help create change. We knew “how to make a stink,” and were encouraged to do so.

(Via Volokh.)

This is truly frightening.

UPDATE: George Will suspects that this broke some laws.  I’m sure the Justice Department is going to get right on that. (Via Instapundit.)

Charles Rangel (D-NY), the chief tax writer in the House of Representatives, failed to pay property taxes on land he owns in New Jersey. (Via Instapundit.)

The amount at issue in the New Jersey property isn’t large (just a few hundred dollars), but it’s almost certainly just the tip of the iceberg. Rangel concealed most of his finances, but income taxes (unlike property taxes) are confidential. (For now.)

A Democratic Congresswoman admits that health-care nationalization will result in painful cuts to Medicare:

Some people, including Medicare recipients, will have to give up some current benefits to truly reform the nation’s health-care system, Rep. Betsy Markey told a gathering of constituents in Fort Collins on Wednesday.

Markey has repeatedly said during the August congressional recess that Medicare spending needs to be reined in to help pay for reforming the broader health-care system.

“There’s going to be some people who are going to have to give up some things, honestly, for all of this to work,” Markey said at a Congress on Your Corner event at CSU. “But we have to do this because we’re Americans.”

(Via Hot Air.)

Somebody flag this woman, she’s contradicting the president!

The Richardson pay-to-play investigation being conducted by the US Attorney in New Mexico, has been killed by “top Justice Department officials” in Washington:

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and former high-ranking members of his administration won’t be criminally charged in a yearlong federal investigation into pay-to-play allegations involving one of the Democratic governor’s large political donors, someone familiar with the case said.

The decision not to pursue indictments was made by top Justice Department officials, according to a person familiar with the investigation, who asked not to be identified because federal officials had not disclosed results of the probe.

“It’s over. There’s nothing. It was killed in Washington,” the person told The Associated Press. . .

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Albuquerque said he had no information about the Justice Department’s decision and couldn’t comment.

(Via American Thinker, via Instapundit.)

This smells really bad, particularly coming on the heels of the DOJ’s dismissal of voter-intimidation charges against the Black Panthers (after the case was already won), and its opening of a witch-hunt against CIA investigators.

UPDATE: The NYT contradicts the AP, saying that the US Attorney decided to close the investigation. I’m not sure how to reconcile that with his spokesman’s statement that had had no information about the Justice Department’s decision.

UPDATE: Under DOJ rules, the US Attorney is supposed to have final say over a local corruption case. For Washington officials to end a case violates DOJ rules.

A Mason-Dixon poll shows Danny Tarkanian leading Harry Reid 49-38.

CBS reports:

Section 431(a) of the bill says that the IRS must divulge taxpayer identity information, including the filing status, the modified adjusted gross income, the number of dependents, and “other information as is prescribed by” regulation. That information will be provided to the new Health Choices Commissioner and state health programs and used to determine who qualifies for “affordability credits.”

Section 245(b)(2)(A) says the IRS must divulge tax return details — there’s no specified limit on what’s available or unavailable — to the Health Choices Commissioner. The purpose, again, is to verify “affordability credits.”

Section 1801(a) says that the Social Security Administration can obtain tax return data on anyone who may be eligible for a “low-income prescription drug subsidy” but has not applied for it.

(Via Hot Air.)

Oh geez. Even not applying for a subsidy won’t protect your privacy. Government bureaucrats can root through tax data looking for people who didn’t apply to see if they could have.

The Washington Times reports:

A month after they voted to punish some corporate executives for taking hefty bonus payouts, members of the House of Representatives quietly gave their own staffers a new potential bonus by making even their top-earning aides eligible for taxpayer dollars to repay their student loans.

The change, which took effect in May, means House employees earning up to $168,411, or the top level, are now eligible for government-funded subsidies to help pay down their student loans.

House officials defend the change as a job-related benefit necessary to keep the government competitive in the hiring market – the same argument corporate chieftains used to defend their own pay scales.

(Via Hot Air.)

Congressional Democrats were so exercised about AIG’s retention bonuses, they were prepared to pass an unconstitutional bill of attainder. Now they’re issuing them themselves.

But don’t call them hypocrites, this is totally different. AIG was a failed enterprise that dismally failed to anticipate the financial crisis and was kept afloat by the taxpayer. Congress on the other hand, uh, never mind.

Of course, to Paul Krugman, that’s a good thing:

Crucially they also allow people to buy into a publicly-run plan which would compete and I believe actually would in the end kill the private plans in the competition. So it’s a route that can lead to single-payer.

Uh oh, Paul; you’re spreading “misinformation“. Prepare to be flagged.

The White House is trying to distance itself from the CIA witch-hunt:

Cheney said in a statement released Monday that “President Obama’s decision to allow” prosecutor John H. Durham . . . to examine the legality of other interrogation-related activities was “a reminder, if any were needed” of why some Americans question the Obama administration’s ability to protect the nation. . .

A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, called Cheney’s comments “off base” and took umbrage at the idea that Obama had personally allowed Durham to expand his inquiry. “This was not something the White House allowed, this was something the AG decided,” the official said, referring to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.

(Emphasis mine.) (Via Commentary, via the Corner.)

Wow. Not only is the president not in charge, but they take “umbrage” at the idea that he would be.

It is sometimes said that opponents of health care nationalization, such as myself, want to preserve the status quo. It is true that, like the majority of voters, I prefer the status quo to the “reform” being contemplated in Congress. The paramount thing is to scuttle the Democratic effort to nationalize health via a “public option” or “co-ops”.

But the status quo isn’t good either. So here are seven things I think we should do to reform health care:

1. Allow insurers to compete across state lines. Currently health insurers are not permitted to compete in other states, which gives us 50 largely uncompetitive markets instead of one competitive market. As Charles Lipson explains, lifting those restrictions would create competition in health care, improving quality and lowering cost.

2. Remove the tax penalty for individually-purchased health care. The discrepancy in the tax treatment of individually-purchased and employment-based health care makes individual health care much less affordable.

   One direct way to do this is the way advocated by John McCain during the 2008 election campaign, to make employment-based health care taxable, and compensate for that with a tax credit. This is politically impossible, since the Obama campaign demagogued that strategy, portraying it dishonestly as a tax increase. Fortunately, the problem can be resolved on the other end as well, by making health insurance premiums tax deductible.

3. Voluntary tort reform. Institute “loser pays” and caps on punitive damages to reduce the cost of frivolous litigation.

   In its usual form, tort reform is probably a political impossibility, since it would mean total war by the trial-lawyer lobby and  its retainers in the Democratic party. However, it could be instituted in a way that would be difficult to oppose: Allow individuals to sign waivers that would institute tort reform on any cause of action they might bring, and (importantly) allow health care providers and insurers to take those waivers into account in their pricing structure. Persons willing to accept tort reform for themselves would see lower prices. Additionally, by looking at the price gap between waivered and non-waivered customers, we could easily quantify the cost of litigation to our health care system.

4. Universal Health Savings Accounts. Make HSAs available to everyone. Also, allow the payment of health insurance premiums from an HSA, thereby incorporating point 2.

5. Allow the use of unapproved drugs with informed consent. It is a cruel irony that people die waiting for drugs that could have saved them to be proven safe. People should be allowed to take unapproved drugs after being made aware of the risks.

6. Improved information and education. Collect information on the performance of health care providers and insurers and make it available and searchable on the internet. Also, institute a series of public service announcements encouraging high-deductible plans and otherwise discouraging moral hazard.

7. Cut taxes and the budget. Putting more money into the individual’s pocket will make health care more affordable. Let people decide for themselves how to spend their money.

The beauty of this agenda is every one of these items would increase our liberty, not the power of the state.

UPDATE: I originally had an eighth item (listed as #3), which called for making it possible for those who leave employment to continue to purchase the same health care for one year. As a commenter points out, that’s already covered by COBRA for all but the smallest employers. For some reason, I erroneously thought that COBRA applied only to lay-offs. Since that item is already law (COBRA actually gives 18 months), I’ve deleted it from the agenda.

It seems the White House’s deficit numbers still include $600 billion in revenue from auctioning 100% of the cap-and-trade permits. Of course, the current bill auctions only 15%, and gives the rest away. So that’s another $510 billion we can add to the $9 trillion deficit.

It’s not clear whether the Concord Plausible Baseline assumes that $510 billion in revenue or not, but they don’t mention dropping it so I’m guessing it does.  If so, we can bump their deficit projection up to $14.9 trillion.

Jonah Goldberg expresses my feelings perfectly:

I’m staying mostly silent about Ted Kennedy for reasons that should be obvious. . . But here’s one tip for liberals outraged that anyone would speak ill of the dead in regard to Kennedy. Such protests are fair for the moment. But they lose all legitimacy the moment liberals try to use his memory to steam roll a healthcare bill through Congress. If they want to invoke his memory or legacy as a reason to pass their partisan version of healthcare reform, that is their right. But they should not then say that nobody should dare criticize Kennedy. That’s not making an argument for healthcare reform, that is simple bullying and I see no reason why opponents of the Democratic push should cave in to it.

Of course, the left is already doing exactly that. I think it will be ineffective, though. People fear the bill and distrust those who are writing it, and one man’s death won’t change that.

If you think the White House’s $9 trillion projected deficit from 2010 to 2019 is appalling, you won’t like the Concord Coalition’s projection. Using a variety of plausible assumptions that are contrary to current law but very likely to happen (e.g., an AMT fix), they put the ten-year deficit at $14.4 trillion.

(Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE: Maybe $14.9 trillion is even more plausible.

Rasmussen reports:

Seventy-five percent (75%) of U.S. voters are at least somewhat concerned that dangerous terrorists will be set free if the Guantanamo prison camp is closed and some prisoners are transferred to other countries. Fifty-six percent (56%) are very concerned. . .

Support for the president’ s plan to close the prison camp for suspected terrorists at the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba continues to erode. It’s been steadily dropping since Obama announced the camp closure just after taking office in January. Only 32% of voters now favor closing the prison camp, down six points from May and down 12 points since the President announced his decision in January.

Fifty-five percent (55%) now oppose closing the prison, with 13% not sure. In January, just after the president announced his decision, just 42% were opposed.

(Via Hot Air.)

In retrospect, maybe it was a mistake to announce that he would close the Guantanamo prison without a plan to do it safely.

Last March, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released its projection of deficits that would result from President Obama budget: $9.3 trillion from 2010 to 2019. That same day, Peter Orszag, the director of the president’s Office of Management and Budget, defended the OMB’s much rosier (but still appalling) estimate of $7 trillion over the same ten years, and said that the CBO was wrong.

Well, well, well. Last week, in a late Friday news dump, the White House revised its ten-year deficit estimate to $9.05 trillion, very nearly the CBO estimate. In fact, the remaining $250 billion discrepancy is accounted for by a $250 billion bank rescue contingency that was budgeted but won’t be spent.

Earlier this year, the OMB already adopted the CBO numbers for 2009. Without admitting it explicitly, the OMB is now conceding that it was wrong and the CBO was right for 2010-2019 as well. Will Orszag apologize? Not likely, but we know now that we can discard his numbers. That leaves us with just the dark red bars in the notorious we’re-screwed chart:

POSTSCRIPT: I blogged this last Friday, but I didn’t make the connection that the OMB was adopting the CBO numbers it previously criticized. Thanks to Power Line for pointing that out.

UPDATE: CNN gives the new deficit figure as $9.05 trillion, rather than the round $9 trillion figure I had before. That completely erases the discrepancy between the old CBO number and the new OMB number. I’ve edited the post accordingly.

UPDATE: On the other hand, the CBO has revised its projection to be rosier. Go figure.

CQ Politics reports that Charles Rangel (D-NY), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, failed to disclose half his wealth and most of his investment income:

House Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel , already beset by a series of ethics investigations, has disclosed more than $500,000 in previously unreported assets.

Among the new items on Rangel’s amended 2007 financial disclosure report were an account at the Congressional Federal Credit Union worth at least $250,000, an investment account with at least $250,000, land in southern New Jersey and stock in PepsiCo and fast food conglomerate Yum! Brands. None of those investments appeared on the original report, which was filled out by hand and filed in May 2008.

According to the original report, Rangel’s net worth was between $516,015 and $1,316,000, while the amended report showed his net worth, as of Dec. 31, 2007, roughly double that amount — at least $1,028,024 and as much as $2,495,000.

Rangel also revised his disclosed investment income from 2007. The original report showed he had received between $6,511 and $17,900, but the new report shows between $45,423 and $134,700. The report also includes eight previously undisclosed financial transactions.

(Via Instapundit.)

The president’s word:

Obama: CIA interrogators won’t face charges
Updated 4/17/2009

President Obama threw open the curtain Thursday on harsh interrogation techniques used by the Bush administration against terrorism suspects, but he said CIA officers would not be prosecuted for their actions. . .

Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder said CIA interrogators would not be held accountable because their actions had been sanctioned by the Justice Department. Holder also said the government would defend them against any lawsuits and seek to indemnify them against monetary judgments.

isn’t worth spit:

Attorney General Eric Holder has asked federal prosecutor John Durham to examine whether CIA interrogations of suspected terrorists were illegal, the Justice Department announced Monday.

UPDATE: Victoria Toensing writes:

“All volunteers step forward. We have a person in custody who is high-ranking al-Qaeda. He taunts that an attack on United States soil is imminent but laughs mockingly when we ask for specifics. We need interrogators.” Such was the threat in the summer of 2002 when the CIA asked the Justice Department for guidance on what its personnel could do to get such information from captured al-Qaeda lieutenant Abu Zubdayah.

Since then, the lawyers who stepped forward to provide carefully structured counsel have been criminally investigated and told that, even if they are not prosecuted, their conduct will be turned over to their state bars. The interrogators who stepped forward were promised in early spring by President Obama that, even if they erred in judgment while protecting our country, the president would rather “move forward.” However, in late summer, they are under criminal scrutiny.

The next catastrophic intelligence failure is being enabled this very day.

Last week, the White House denied responsibility for its spam emails in support of health care “reform”. They blamed unspecified third-parties for adding names to the White House’s mailing list.

Now it’s revealed that the White House hired a private contractor to send the emails:

The White House hired a private communications company based in Minnesota to distribute mass e-mails, helping to shed light on how some recipients received e-mails in support of President Obama’s health care plan without signing up for them, FOX News has learned.

The company, Govdelivery, describes itself as the world’s leading provider of government-to-citizen communication solutions and says its e-mail service provides a fully-automated on-demand public communication system.

It is still unknown how much taxpayer money the White House provides to Govdelivery for its services. . .

The revelation comes after the White House acknowledged this week that people were receiving unsolicited e-mails from the administration about health care reform and suggested the problem was with third-party groups that placed the recipients’ names on the distribution list.

(Via Hot Air.)

Apparently the government uses Govdelivery for most of its official email distribution:

Govdelivery does extensive work with a bevy of federal, state, and local agencies, including 11 Cabinet-level departments such as Defense, State, and Justice. Among the tasks Govdelivery performs are FBI internal e-mails and external regional crime alerts, and FEMA hurricane or other natural disaster alerts.

In fact, before Jan. 1, Govdelivery handled 85 percent of mass e-mail deliveries for federal agencies.

Whether Govdelivery commonly does political work, and who pays for it, isn’t clear, but I’m sure someone will ask. In any case, both Govdelivery and the White House agree that the White House, and not Govdelivery, is responsible for the mailing list.

(Previous post.)

POSTSCRIPT: Ed Morrissey claims that the White House has blamed Govdelivery for the spam, but I don’t know where he’s getting that. Perhaps he’s confused about which third parties the White House was referring to. (Indeed, they were deliberately vague.) But Fox News is clear that they were not referring to Govdelivery:

The White House insists that Govdelivery aggregates nothing and plays no role in the formation of its e-mail list; it is merely an end-product e-mail distributor.

Rasmussen’s presidential approval index hits a new low at -14, with 41% strongly disapproving and just 27% strongly approving. Overall, 48% approve and 51% disapprove, within a few points of where he’s been for the last month.

(Via Instapundit.)

Is cash-for-clunkers the worst-managed government program ever? It’s in the running:

The U.S. Transportation Department, billions of dollars behind in paying “cash-for-clunkers” rebates, has hired private contractors and solicited volunteers from the Federal Aviation Administration and its own executive ranks to work overtime to clear the backlog.

Employees of the FAA’s air-traffic-control unit were asked to help, but the Transportation Department stressed Friday that essential safety personnel were not diverted from their duties.

A total of 1,200 workers, including about 300 contractors from Citigroup, the financial services giant, are now working seven days a week to review applications and reimburse auto dealers for rebates advanced to customers, officials said. . .

The National Automobile Dealers Association . . . urged the Obama administration late Friday to extend the deadline because the program’s Web site was crashing. . .

From the start, the Car Allowance Rebate System, or CARS, proved too popular for its $1 billion budget and the several hundred employees assigned to the program.

Planners who expected to sell 250,000 cars in three months are now deluged with nearly twice that many applications seeking more than $2 billion in rebates after less than one month. Only 7 percent of the rebates have been paid, leaving many auto dealers out millions of dollars. Dealers were supposed to be repaid within 10 days. . .

“We set up the program in 30 days, which was what Congress gave us,” said Jill Zuckman, assistant to [Transportation Secretary] LaHood.

“No one anticipated that 250,000 cars would be sold in the first four days. It proved to be more than the people we had available could handle.”

(Via the Corner.)

The government decides to hand out $3 billion and then they’re surprised when people are eager accept the money? Sheesh.

Anyway, there’s a bit more on the diversion of staff from air traffic control:

An FAA memo obtained by The Washington Times reads in part:

“We have been asked to provide volunteers to assist with this high-visibility program . . . employees may work during regular business hours (providing mission allows) and/or overtime.

“The [Air Traffic Organization] has been asked to provide a list of 100 employees to assist. They will be asked to attend a two-hour training course this afternoon. The task is expected to take 5 to 10 days.”

But Ms. Zuckman said that only support personnel, such as in finance and operations, were asked to work on the clunkers program.

“Nobody is being ordered to do anything; we weren’t asking air traffic controllers to leave their posts. We’re using budget and accounting people primarily,” she said.

So you can take your pick of two different brands of incompetence:

• We are actually diverting administrative staff from an essential government function, “during regular business hours,” in order to encourage people to discard perfectly good cars!
• We have staff in air-traffic control who would otherwise be sitting around doing nothing.

Rasmussen reports:

Forty-nine percent (49%) of U.S. voters say working Americans should be allowed to opt out of Social Security and provide for their own retirement planning.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 37% disagree and do not believe Americans should be able to opt out of Social Security. Fifteen percent (15%) are not sure.

(Via Moe Lane, via Instapundit.)

Nations that didn’t “invest” in a big stimulus package are coming out of the recession more quickly than those that did:

In Brazil, India, China, Japan and much of Continental Europe the recession has ended. In the second quarter this year, both the French and German economies grew by 0.3 percent, while the U.S. economy shrank by 1 percent. How can that be? Unlike America, France and Germany had no government stimulus worth speaking of, the Germans declining to go the Obama route on the quaint grounds that they couldn’t afford it. They did not invest in the critical signage-in-front-of-holes-in-the-road sector. And yet their recession has gone away. Of the world’s biggest economies, only the U.S., Britain and Italy are still contracting. All three are big stimulators, though Gordon Brown and Silvio Berlusconi can’t compete with Obama’s $800 billion porkapalooza. The president has borrowed more money to spend to less effect than anybody on the planet.

(Via Instapundit.)

President Obama goes off the teleprompter again (I hope!):

“There’s something about August going into September — where everybody in Washington gets all wee-weed up,” the president said yesterday to a gathering of Democratic Party activists. (Spelling in that quote is courtesy of the official White House transcription.)

The crowd laughed. “I don’t know what it is,” the president added, to more laughter. “But that’s what happens.”

So, uh, what does that mean? Robert Gibbs has to uncork the omnipotent clarity to explain this one:

“I think ‘wee-wee’d up’ is when people get nervous for no particular reason,” Gibbs said. . .

As for the president’s colorful phrasing, Gibbs said, “‘Bed wetting’ would be the more consumer-friendly term.”

If the comedians can’t get any material from this, we’ll know they’re completely in the tank.