President Obaam just overruled the OLC

In which I lose a lot of respect for Obama: (NYT article)

WASHINGTON — President Obama rejected the views of top lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department when he decided that he had the legal authority to continue American military participation in the air war in Libya without Congressional authorization, according to officials familiar with internal administration deliberations.

Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon general counsel, and Caroline D. Krass, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, had told the White House that they believed that the United States military’s activities in the NATO-led air war amounted to “hostilities.” Under the War Powers Resolution, that would have required Mr. Obama to terminate or scale back the mission after May 20.

But Mr. Obama decided instead to adopt the legal analysis of several other senior members of his legal team — including the White House counsel, Robert Bauer, and the State Department legal adviser, Harold H. Koh — who argued that the United States military’s activities fell short of “hostilities.” Under that view, Mr. Obama needed no permission from Congress to continue the mission unchanged.

Presidents have the legal authority to override the legal conclusions of the Office of Legal Counsel and to act in a manner that is contrary to its advice, but it is extraordinarily rare for that to happen. Under normal circumstances, the office’s interpretation of the law is legally binding on the executive branch.

A White House spokesman, Eric Schultz, said there had been “a full airing of views within the administration and a robust process” that led Mr. Obama to his view that the Libya campaign was not covered by a provision of the War Powers Resolution that requires presidents to halt unauthorized hostilities after 60 days

“It should come as no surprise that there would be some disagreements, even within an administration, regarding the application of a statute that is nearly 40 years old to a unique and evolving conflict,” Mr. Schultz said. “Those disagreements are ordinary and healthy.”

 Read the rest of the article. The White House knows that most people have never heard of the OLC, and they're going on that, forgetting that the OLC is a vital, vital institution, and that being cavalier with it (or portraying it as "just another adviser") is setting all sorts of bad precedents. One of the strongest controls on the foolishness that David Addington (Cheney's Cheney: nice in person but wiht crazy ideas about executive power) was the OLC and its refusal to allow Bush a free leash, as if the President could ignore the law.

Obama is now repeating the same mistake that Bush made, and which originally made me a supporter of him, but he's gone a step further by straight-up overruling the OLC. It's a horrible, horrible precedent and the ends do not justify the means. Not. At. All.

My most recent Record op-ed

I turned 13 on Sept. 11, 2001. Sunday evening, eight years to the day after George W. Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech, I ran home to Susie Hopkins after learning that the man chiefly responsible for that event had been killed in a firefight.

We live, it is said, in a purple bubble here at Williams, isolated by mountains in every cardinal direction. Our lives are enabled and assisted through the efforts of hundreds of staff who provide us with security and services while we pursue our education. While the Internet has made true isolation less possible, we are sheltered here from hunger and the worst sort of injustices that have provoked the current Arab Spring.

Nate Krisoff ’03 departed from this shelter and entered the United States Marine Corps. The plaque commemorating his life and death on Dec. 9, 2006, sits alone above one of the back doors of Thompson Chapel, dwarfed by the long lists of names from other wars in which Ephs took greater part. He was a co-captain of the swim team, known for his one-liners and the blue and white Adidas tracksuit top that he wore everywhere.
After his death, his father, a surgeon, enlisted in the Naval Medical Corps to honor his son’s memory, serving a seven-month deployment at Camp Al Taqaddum, Iraq, among other places. I know of no other Ephs who followed Bill Krissoff’s example; Williams students are rarely found in today’s armed forces.

We serve in the government, yes, and I have no doubt that many ’11s, ’12s, ’13s and ’14s will leave this valley to accomplish great feats, but many of us will remain within the security and comfort that the privilege of a Williams degree will help to provide. We will not be able to claim the words of Professor of Rhetoric Carroll Lewis Maxcy’s 1926 eulogy:

“And some, in answer to the call of country, have gone out to battle for the common rights of men against the enemy. Some of them will not return to me, for they have given all they had, and now they rest at the foot of a simple cross or lie deep below the waves. But even as they passed, the music of the chimes was in their ears and before their eyes were visions of the quiet walks beneath the elms.”

I am not suggesting that Ephs commemorate Osama bin Laden’s death by enlisting in the armed forces; my own plans do not include military service, though I respect and honor my friends from home who made that choice..... (read the rest at the Record)

(Screencap source)

Dear media,

The general public/yours truly didn't have a clue about what radation levels constituted "dangerous" or "normal" before the Japan Quake, and since most people aren't as hyperactive news-readers as I, most don't know today that minute amounts of radiation are everywhere, and no cause for concern.

But when you report that there are "trace" or "minute" amounts of radiation in milk or in the air, people don't know that radiation also comes from flying cross country, or even from eating a banana. And because you don't tell them that, (instead saying that "government experts say it wont hurt us"), what you're really telling people to do is to freak out unnecessarily, and from what we know about stress, I'm fairly positive that the media attention to this is going to cause more economic damage in worry and reduced buying of COMPLETELY SAFE PRODUCTS than the radiation ever could.

The fix is simple: compare the radiation level in milk to a "normal" level, or use some sort of relative figure, for example that a person would have to drink 6 billion glasses of milk to get a dangerous dose. These are easy. Sadly, your duty to alert/alarm works, in this case, against the public interest, and it's one of the few times I'm quite disappointed in the modern media.

Palin's Tweets

A moment of partisanship:

Peaceful New Yorkers, pls refute the Ground Zero mosque plan if you believe catastrophic pain caused @ Twin Towers site is too raw, too real 12:58 PM Jul 18th via Twitter for BlackBerry®

"Refute?" What? Yes, the pain at the Twin Towers site is probably raw, but that has very little to do with the rights of Americans to worship. Furthermore, the "Ground Zero Mosque" is a community center that's a block or two away - not even visible.

Peace-seeking Muslims, pls understand, Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts. Pls reject it in interest of healing 1:57 PM Jul 18th via Twitter for BlackBerry®

The subtext is that Americans (who happen to be Muslim) as responsble for America's "healing," and should accommodate people who are scared of their fellow citizens' right to worship. Building a church is not provocation in foreign countries where Christians killed people, right? This is the same way. It's xenophobic & wrong. I will acknowledge that there are Americans who equate all of Islam with 9/11, but Gov. Palin's role should be showing people what freedom of religion is all about.

"Refudiate," "misunderestimate," "wee-wee'd up." English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it! ! 3:38 PM Jul 18th via web

New words are cool when we don't have words that already mean the same thing. Switching out an f for a p does not a decent new word make.

Rant over.

A comment on Israel

Posted without a link to the original post (about standing up for Israel), since I don't have permission to link to it.

Nearly all of my exposure to Jewdom has come at Williams. I had a single Jewish friend growing up, but he went to a different high school and I never really talked to him about faith.

So in the Williams world of political apathy and happy dinners at the JRC where I get tastes of Jewish culture, I'm always a little surprised when someone steps out of the apoltical box and defends Israel, or when I learn that Jewishness is a prerequisite for any sort of romantic relationship. The friction comes, I think, because I thought of Jews as a religious group akin to my Baptists, but I think posts like this reflect a deeper Jewishness that I certainly don't understand. I still remember when someone was surprised I didn't automatically know who was Jewish on College Council; there's a common knowledge or culture that I certainly never tapped into growing up. It feels like Jews are acting like a race, weirdly enough, and that doesn't compute for me.

So that means that I'm surprised by these seemingly hidden bonds of Jewdom, and I can feel an internal reaction of bias against you since a line that I grew up thinking to be fairly weak has suddenly risen strongly between us. There's suddenly a club I can't join, and my ego doesn't like it.

Hopefully, that bias is nullified by the fact that it is recognized, but I think it's a factor in what you observed - people don't like the idea of what can sometimes appear to be a global network of people with more than friendly loyalty to a country not their own. It might also reak a little of the Jewish banker stereotype, but I'm not talking about power, but rather allegiance.

Now to your piece. I'm going to post reactions as I read through.

The surprise you expressed at seeing the flyer seemed a little surprising to me. Your wording suggests that you think the flotilla tragedy was the cause of this meeting; I would strongly suggest otherwise. The issues that I have with Israel aren't part of the raid; while I think the loss of life was sad, it was a confusing situation and stuff happens. I find it interesting that Israel got so much flack when the US has killed many more civilians with bombs in Afghanistan.

My issues with Israel, off the top of my head so that I show a gut reaction, are essentially these:

There seems to be an element within Israel that believes the country should be expanded to include the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip. This group violates international agreements by constructing "settlements" that are actually fortified outposts, and takes homes away from Palestinians who have lived in them for generations. There is no justification for ignoring these treaties, since the reciprocal would be someone taking over Jewish land.

What's interesting about this is that the anti-settlement faction within Israel is just about invisible to me, and because of this, I perceive the country as expantionist: going beyond the borders that it agreed to by treaty.

Israel continues to receive a large amount of American aid that I have never seen reason for. That doesn't mean such a reason doesn't exist, but instead that all I hear about is X billions going over to Israel while people I know here are not going to get unemployment because the Senate scuttled it for fiscal reasons. That's another strike.

Lastly, there's a strong feeling that AIPAC is supoer-powerful and controlling; that to speak against is Israel in any way, shape, or form is to commit a sacrilege. If I was interning on the Hill, I would be sufficient scared about AIPAC not to post this for fear of what it might do to my boss. In my mind, AIPAC = Rush Limbaugh; you can't go against it/him without paying a heavy price.

So the three things above combine for me to think that Israel is a state expanding with American dollars that I can't speak against because of it's domestic power. That's a pretty awful perception, and all of the good I know Israel does from visiting its embassy, reading Alan Dershowitz, and reading the news doesn't change the fact that Israel feels like an unjust state.

I'm an advocate for soft power; I think Bush hurts our horribly with his actions regarding rendition and torture, and I think our security was damaged by those perceptions, which I would seek to reverse. The problem for Israel is that for most of its neighbors, those perceptions will never be reversed; without agreement on the right to exist (which I would say is real), so Israel focuses more on hard power than soft power. After all, the perceptions of the people where you are are ultimately much less important than stopping another suicide bomber.

There's a bias in the world to sympathize with the person/group who lacks hard power, and so you end up more vilified than the idiot (I use the term in the classical sense) bombers who imagine their actions to be doing good. That's sad, but Israel seems to have chosen safety at home while neglecting, to some extent, soft power abroad.

So that's how you end up standing in front of a hostile crowd, and I'm sorry that the situation was so uncomfortable. You seem to have conducted yourself quite well, and I commend you for sticking around to talk, and to build bridges of trust over this polarized chasm.

I would also say that generic anti-Jewish bias still exists, and that sucks a huge deal. Holocaust denial amazes me.

But the more you do to argue your point politely and rationally, the more people will see you as the face of Israel, as opposed to the racist Jews who end up on youtube or blogs for spitting on, beating up, and being cruel to Palestinians.

Ann Curry on reporting from Haiti & links

by Ann Curry

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti-- All hotels are down, so we are sleeping on the tarmac... Brian in a tent, me in a Canadian Air luggage container, many others on metal grates. In all cases, the ground is hard, so we are using blankets, pieces of foam, some of us even suitcases to sleep on top of.

We are worried about rats, which are numerous. There are lots of mosquitoes.

Hard to sleep because the planes are so loud, especially the c130s. We have to negotiate for bathrooms in nearby buildings, and are currently without one.

We brought in water, but are running out of food, which now consists of MREs. We hope for more supplies tomorrow.

Tonight we have a luxury... the crew of one plane gave us all airline pillows. We are definitely not comfortable, but we are also in the lap of luxury compared to so many here in Haiti.

How are we successful? There are no winners amongst us. We are all focused on getting the story out that must be told.

This is how $10 million/year earners are living in Haiti: think about where that puts the normally impoverished population and you have a clue, to whatever extent a clue is possible from a safe computer seat in a much safer and better equipped country.

More links:

• Fallows on the percentage dead. 
• The effect of poor construction materials/practices. 
• This post made me tear up. So very sad.
  

Links on China

• Fallows pulls from the mailbag 
• Another mailbag post 
• The Google post that prompted the whole thing; there are strong indications that this was the gov't, though Google didn't say so.

In case you missed it, the big cyber-attacks from last month and this past summer appear to have been the work of the Chinese government. Wow.

Links on Obama's Terrorism Policy

• The NYT Story on the guy who came out against Cheney.
  
• Yglesias finds a fairly darning quote 
• Another take on attachment issues
• I'd take Douthat's argument and say that this issues seems to be ripe for a new group of moderates to split from Cheney's nonchalance about torture.

And side note: our former President is still being classy and not taking the spotlight from Obama/spreading the nonsense that Cheney seems to traffic in. Props.

How Low We Sunk

Sullivan's e-mail of the year:

That said, I am surprised you did not highlight what me and my colleagues agreed was the single most horrifying passage from the Court’s decision.  It was the Court’s quotation of something an interrogator said to al-Rabiah during his interrogation.  The interrogator told al-Rabiah:

“There is nothing against you. But there is no innocent person here. So, you should confess to something so you can be charged and sentenced and serve your sentence and then go back to your family and country, because you will not leave this place innocent.”

Court Memorandum and Order, p. 41 (emphasis mine).

This was an agent of the United States saying this.

Sorry to have posts on such a downer topic, but the discomfort is marginal compared to the danger of legitimate torture.

Sullivan on Torture

I find that my beliefs have much in common with Andrew Sullivan, at least in this area. Some quotes:

Those of us who warned that torture, once admitted into the mainstream, will metastasize beyond anyone's control now have the example of Charles Krauthammer's arguments to back us up. Stephen Hayes, Cheney's stenographer along with Mike Allen, even argued on Fox News that Cheney's assault on the president as an alien threat to the American people was too soft and wanted to "squeeze" the pantie-bomber for more info. These are neo-fascist sentiments, empowering lawless violence by the government, justified solely by fear of terror incidents. Whatever else junking the entire history of Western jurisprudence and the laws of war is, it is not in any way conservative. It is a radical assault on one of the central pillars of our civilization.

The truly naive are the Krauthammers and Thiessens and McCarthys who seem to believe - against all history and human nature - that torture can be controlled, that it can be sealed within a very tight box, used only by good people, never abused, never allowed to spread. But this has never happened. We know very well from brutal historical experience that the power to torture even one person always metastasizes. And we have seen it with our naked eyes in America. What was Abu Ghraib if it wasn't proof that orders to torture from the very top instantly spread through the system so that a handful of torture victims becomes hundreds in a matter of weeks; when torture is allowed the CIA and the military, it instantly spreads, as we have seen, to every theater of war, to every branch of the armed services, from Navy SEALS to special ops guys openly torturing mere suspects under the watch of Stanley McChrystal.

Why do I worry? Because of posts like this one:

A Bipartisan Proposal [Cliff May]

Step (1): Return all Gitmo detainees to Yemen.

Step (2): Use Predator missiles to strike the baggage-claim area 20 minutes after they arrive.

Just an idea.

Iran, Iran, Iran

Also a worrying article lede:

Iran warned on Saturday the West has until the end of the month to accept Teheran's counterproposal to a UN-drafted plan on a nuclear exchange, or the country will start producing nuclear fuel on its own.

This regime has so much legitimate egg on its face that there's nothing left but fear and power, which the country is now seeking at full speed. Why can't the Arab League step in and do something without US involvement?

How Israel does Airport Security

Interesting:

Despite facing dozens of potential threats each day, the security set-up at Israel's largest hub, Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport, has not been breached since 2002, when a passenger mistakenly carried a handgun onto a flight. How do they manage that?

"The first thing you do is to look at who is coming into your airport," said Sela.

The first layer of actual security that greets travellers at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport is a roadside check. All drivers are stopped and asked two questions: How are you? Where are you coming from?

"Two benign questions. The questions aren't important. The way people act when they answer them is," Sela said.

I wonder if the TSA is up to this sort of work.

Settlement Freeze = segregation?

I'm confused:

The freeze is an edict that the public cannot tolerate. It is not democratic, nor is it humane. It hits hard at the pockets of law-abiding citizens and embitters their lives. But at its foundation, either intentionally or by accident, is pure and basic apartheid - it is forbidden for Jews to live in certain places. It is forbidden to build. It is forbidden to develop. And it doesn't matter what the reasons are.

Riiiiiiiiight. Show me a Right of Return, and then I'll listen to you about not being able to build settlements. No, thank you? Can't say I'm surprised.

You can't claim that a settlement freeze is apartheid when you block the people on the other side from living in your land. I hope I'm missing something obvious, because this op-ed rationale makes no sense to me.

Settlers in Israel

Something to remember, in reference to this:

There are a LOT of Israelis and Palestinians living in the Middle East, and despite the high number of publicized attacks, life is still possible and regular for many of them. That's not to say that there aren't constant injustices, like rocket attacks or discrimination at checkpoints (which aren't equivalent), but for the most part, the people are normal. They aren't all bombing or displacing or war-making; that's just all we hear about.