The pressure on CARE is emblematic of that facing many other secular groups. President Bush's faith-based initiative has not only increased funding for church groups, but also raised the expectations of the religious right, which has asserted a stronger role in setting policy.

The pattern of outcry by religious conservatives, followed by accommodation by the administration, has been replicated on numerous occasions at USAID, from personnel decisions to choices of who runs humanitarian programs overseas...

James Towey , the former head of the White House's faith-based office, acknowledged that he fought hard to shift international aid to faith-based groups, although he denied it was a political payback.

"The fact is [officials at USAID] tended to be left of center and they tended to be more of a secular perspective than a religious one," said Towey, who served as Bush's top faith-based official from 2002 until June 2006. 

Religious right wields clout
Secular groups losing funding amid pressure
By Michael Kranish, Globe Staff | October 9, 2006

James Dobson’s Focus on the Family has played a major role in presidential politics.

For six decades, CARE has been a vital ally to the US government. It supplied the famed CARE packages to Europe's starving masses after World War II, and its work with the poor has been celebrated by US presidents. So the group was thrilled when it received a major contract from the Bush administration to fight AIDS in Africa and Asia.

But this time, instead of accolades came attacks. Religious conservatives contended that the $50 million contract, under which CARE was to distribute money to both secular and faith-based groups, was being guided by an organization out of touch with religious values.

Bush Balks at Criteria for FEMA Director
Signing Statement Asserts Right to Ignore Parts of New Homeland Security Law
By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 7, 2006; A02

President Bush reserved the right to ignore key changes in Congress's overhaul of the Federal Emergency Management Agency -- including a requirement to appoint someone with experience handling disasters as the agency's head -- in setting aside dozens of provisions contained in a major homeland security spending bill this week.

Besides objecting to Congress's list of qualifications for FEMA's director, the White House also claimed the right to edit or withhold reports to Congress by a watchdog agency within the Department of Homeland Security that is responsible for protecting Americans' personal privacy.

None of the men and women who voted for this bill has any right to speak in public about the rule of law anymore, or to take a high moral view of the Third Reich, or to wax poetic about the American Ideal. Mark their names. Any institution of higher learning that grants honorary degrees to these people forfeits its honor. Alexander, Allard, Allen, Bennett, Bond, Brownback, Bunning, Burns, Burr, Carper, Chambliss, Coburn, Cochran, Coleman, Collins, Cornyn, Craig, Crapo, DeMint, DeWine, Dole, Domenici, Ensign, Enzi, Frist, Graham, Grassley, Gregg, Hagel, Hatch, Hutchison, Inhofe, Isakson, Johnson, Kyl, Landrieu, Lautenberg, Lieberman, Lott, Lugar, Martinez, McCain, McConnell, Menendez, Murkowski, Nelson of Florida, Nelson of Nebraska, Pryor, Roberts, Rockefeller, Salazar, Santorum, Sessions, Shelby, Smith, Specter, Stabenow, Stevens, Sununu, Talent, Thomas, Thune, Vitter, Voinovich, Warner.

To paraphrase Sir Walter Scott: Mark their names and mark them well. For them, no minstrel raptures swell. High though their titles, proud their name, boundless their wealth as wish can claim, these wretched figures shall go down to the vile dust from whence they sprung, unwept, unhonored and unsung. 

Congress' shameful retreat from American values
Published October 4, 2006

I would not send my college kid off for a semester abroad if I were you. Last week, we suspended human rights in America, and what goes around comes around. Ixnay habeas corpus.

Dahlia Lithwick at Slate:

Look again at the images from Abu Ghraib. Most of those prisoners aren't being sodomized or water-boarded. They are largely being subject to stress positions, sexual humiliation, religious desecration, mock executions, and terrorization with dogs. And make no mistake: These are among the "alternative interrogation tactics" that will, along with sleep deprivation and exposure to extreme temperatures, likely be permitted by CIA interrogators under the new detainee legislation; or, to the extent there is a difference, that is how the president will construe the new law.

So, what happened between April 2004 and September 2006 that has so deadened American outrage? What has made Democratic senators who were prepared to filibuster over a judicial nomination unwilling to do so now, or even to express horror over the brutalization of enemy prisoners? Is it that in the intervening time we have made a hero out of 24's Jack Bauer, a man who tortures so that the rest of us may walk free? Is it that if you see enough "iconic" photos of a man in a hood with electrodes, they lose their ability to turn your stomach? Or is all the legalistic jive talk—the brazen congressional hairsplitting over abuse that results in "severe" vs. "serious" vs. "extreme" pain—numbing us to the reality of what remains unconscionable conduct?

It is all of these things, and also this: The legal "expectation of abuse" has been shaped by the new jurisprudence of abuse. The legal notion of what constitutes a "reasonable expectation of privacy" is often criticized as circular because the test for unreasonable government searches depends on one's subjective expectation of privacy, which is diminished as the government encroaches upon our privacy. So, too, the public notion of what constitutes reasonable abuse is diminished each time the government condones abuse. Thus the images from Abu Ghraib and the torture memos and the new detainee bill don't merely codify the boundaries of acceptable interrogation. They also shape them.

...which is why I don't publish war porn.

We are not dealing with hypothetical abuses. The president has already subjected a citizen to military confinement. Consider the case of Jose Padilla. A few months after 9/11, he was seized by the Bush administration as an "enemy combatant" upon his arrival at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. He was wearing civilian clothes and had no weapons. Despite his American citizenship, he was held for more than three years in a military brig, without any chance to challenge his detention before a military or civilian tribunal. After a federal appellate court upheld the president's extraordinary action, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, handing the administration's lawyers a terrible precedent.

The new bill, if passed, would further entrench presidential power.

I'm in Atlanta now...and I just heard on CNN that Congress is considering givin Bush retroactive immunity for war crimes!

Okay, people. I know BushCo committed war crimesand YOU know BushCo committed war crimes.

Now we know for sure...for SURE...the Republican Congress knows BushCo committed war crimes.

I'm still not up for capital punishment. But I'm damn sure up for  impeaching his goat-smelling ass.

I got a reception to go to. I'll continue the Warrior Lessons I discussion tomorrow. 

A close reading of the Arar Commission report offers a rare window on American actions in the case, describing seemingly flimsy evidence behind the American decision in 2002 to send Mr. Arar to a country notorious for torture; a deliberate attempt by American officials to deceive Canada about where Mr. Arar was; and lingering confusion among top American officials about the two countries’ roles in the case...

Cases like that of Mr. Arar would not be affected by the compromise legislation on detainee treatment worked out between the White House and Republican senators last week, since it would have no effect on interrogation methods used by other countries. In fact, the proposed bill would strip non-Americans held overseas under United States control of the right to challenge their detention in federal court.

Torture Victim Had No Terror Link, Canada Told U.S.
By SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, Sept. 24 — When the United States sent Maher Arar to Syria, where he was tortured for months, the deportation order stated unequivocally that Mr. Arar, a Canadian software engineer, was a member of Al Qaeda. But a few days earlier, Canadian investigators had told the F.B.I. that they had not been able to link him to the terrorist group.

That is one of the disclosures in the 1,200-page report released last week after a two-year Canadian investigation of Mr. Arar’s case found him to be innocent of any terrorist ties. The report urges the Canadian government to formally protest the American treatment of Mr. Arar, a recommendation Canadian officials are considering.

Glen Greenwald read John Woo's defense of his defense of dictatorial powers for the office of the President. I'll spoil it for you and let you know he quotes the Federalist Papers to eviscerate the very concept of Yoo's argument.

It put me in mind of a post Anil Dash made three years ago when he was a blogger. You only have to glance at the post to see what's going on but make sure you read the comments.

Many of those chosen by O'Beirne's office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq's government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance -- but had applied for a White House job -- was sent to reopen Baghdad's stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq's $13 billion budget, even though they didn't have a background in accounting.

The decision to send the loyal and the willing instead of the best and the brightest is now regarded by many people involved in the 3 1/2 -year effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq as one of the Bush administration's gravest errors. Many of those selected because of their political fidelity spent their time trying to impose a conservative agenda on the postwar occupation, which sidetracked more important reconstruction efforts and squandered goodwill among the Iraqi people, according to many people who participated in the reconstruction effort.

The CPA had the power to enact laws, print currency, collect taxes, deploy police and spend Iraq's oil revenue. It had more than 1,500 employees in Baghdad at its height, working under America's viceroy in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, but never released a public roster of its entire staff.

Interviews with scores of former CPA personnel over the past two years depict an organization that was dominated -- and ultimately hobbled -- by administration ideologues.

Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq
Early U.S. Missteps in the Green Zone
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 17, 2006; A01

Eavesdropping case gains steam
National security: - A judge gives a defunct Oregon charity the go-ahead on a lawsuit over private conversations
Friday, September 08, 2006
ASHBEL S. GREEN

A Portland-based federal judge on Thursday refused to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the Terrorist Surveillance Program -- just as President Bush was urging Congress to authorize it.

U.S. District Judge Garr M. King ruled that a lawsuit by an Oregon-based Islamic charity could go forward without revealing state secrets, rebuffing the government's attempt to dispose of the case swiftly.

King left for another day the ultimate question: Does the warrantless eavesdropping program, administered by the National Security Agency and authorized by Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, violate the law?

I guess that's why they're Conservative...

Crooks and Liars:

Video-WMP Video-QT (rough transcript)

Control Room: Norah–we just got statement from ABC that we have been waiting for. I’ll read it right now–"The Path to 9/11″ is not a documentary of the events leading up to 9/11. It is a dramatization, drawn from a variety of sources including the 9/11 Commission Report, other published materials, and personal interviews. As such–for dramatic and narrative purposes, the movie contains fictionalized scenes-–composite and representative characters and dialogue–and time compression.

No one has seen the final version of the film–because the editing process is not yet complete, so criticisms of film specifics are premature and irresponsible. [P6: emphasis added] The attacks of 9/11 were a pivotal moment in our history–and it is fitting that the debate about the events related to the attacks continue. However, we hope viewers will watch the entire broadcast of the finished film before forming an opinion about it"–So bottom line they’ve just released a statement about it. They’re not going to change this movie at all…

While ABC tells you their propaganda movie is a docudrama, 9/11 commission ex-co-chair Tom Kean says otherwise.

I don't watch ABC anymore. Dead serious. Just as I don't watch Fox channels...and the next Yu-gi-oh! series will be on Fox this weekend (this is a monor personal loss, but a loss nonetheless). ThisWeek will be the sole exception, and if it starts to slip it's out too.

Why?

You know that massive, decamillion dollar donation ABC is making to the Republican National Committee? You know that massive, decamillion dollar donation ABC is making to the Republican National Committee? 

You know, the $30-40 million movie that lies about the lead-up to the attack on 9/11? The one that is being broadcast for six hours of the most expensive broadcast time in existence?

The one they say is a "docudrama," and is therefore free to be as inaccurate as it chooses to be?

Courtesy...okay, stolen from Crooks and Liars.

I repeat: Every judge that was a member of an organization that held an "affirmative action bake sale" has to tell us all about how that affects their ability to be impartial.

A Matter of Appearances