No Clear Map For Clinton's Political Future

The Washington Post reports:

In August 1980, with no hope left of winning the nomination, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy conceded defeat to incumbent Jimmy Carter in the Democratic presidential race.

"For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end," Kennedy said at the Democratic National Convention in New York. "For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."

And with that, at age 48, Kennedy returned to the Senate, where he committed himself to a career as a legislator, crafting landmark bills on health care, education and immigration. Many Democrats are now pointing to the Kennedy model as a path for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to reshape her own political career, assuming she is unable to wrest the nomination from Sen. Barack Obama.

"I loved the Senate before I ran for the president," Kennedy explained in an interview before his recent cancer diagnosis. Losing to Carter, he said, made him appreciate the opportunities in Congress all the more. "I think I became a better senator, with greater focus and attention," Kennedy said. But he added: "It all depends on the attitude, what's in the mind of the person."

Clinton, Kennedy continued, must decide where her heart lies. "She's got great capacity -- she was a good senator before, and she can be a great senator in the future," he said. The question, he said, is "what she does with this experience."

When Kennedy returned to Capitol Hill before the 1980 election, the Massachusetts Democrat was in a similar fix. Like Clinton, he was the heir to a powerful political legacy. But the climate was volatile, and voters were in the mood for change. Kennedy was rejected by many of his Senate colleagues, despite Carter's sagging popularity, and he won just 10 primary states. But like Clinton, he hung on until the bitter end.

Yet Kennedy was an 18-year Senate veteran who had already risen to chairman of the Judiciary Committee and a health subcommittee. Clinton faces few options for quick advancement should she give up her presidential bid, prompting some to speculate that she may look elsewhere for a prominent political post, possibly the governorship of New York.

The climate on Capitol Hill has changed considerably in the 18 months since Clinton began her presidential campaign. The Senate leadership path that she had once viewed as a viable alternative is now all but blocked. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) has gained clout in his role, and he will grow even more powerful if Democrats succeed in expanding their narrow majority in November by up to half a dozen seats.

Reid's deputies, Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (Ill.) and Democratic Caucus Vice Chairman Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), also have enhanced their status in recent months and are quietly laying the groundwork to succeed Reid whenever he decides to step down.

"Within the caucus, there's strong support for Senator Reid, and those who speculate otherwise don't understand the Senate," said Durbin, who was the first senator to endorse Obama. When Clinton returns to her old job, assuming she does not win the nomination, Durbin added, "she will be an important part of the future. But I can't tell you that anyone has approached me, or anyone in the caucus, with any specific suggestions about what she would do."

When Clinton announced her bid in January 2007, she was the prohibitive favorite, and most of her Senate colleagues appeared ready to rally to her side. But as her primary battle with Obama draws to an end, with the senator from Illinois almost certain to emerge the victor, Clinton has discovered that the reservoir of Senate goodwill was not so deep after all.

Clinton collected 13 endorsements from her Senate colleagues, compared with 15 for Obama, and she has not added a name to her list since early February, even though she has won significant contests since then.

"I'm sure she'll remember, for the rest of her life, who was with her and who wasn't," said Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), who ran unsuccessfully this year and then endorsed Obama.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, many Democratic senators said they expect Clinton to work doggedly for Obama this summer and fall, and they agreed that if she does, whatever hard feelings that linger from the primary race will vanish.

But a bigger question is whether, like Kennedy, she will shelve her presidential ambitions, especially if Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) wins in November. The 2012 election would coincide with the end of Clinton's second Senate term, effectively turning her into a lame duck. A run for New York governor would hasten Clinton's departure by two years.

But if Obama wins in November, her next likely opportunity for the presidency would be in 2016, when she would be 69. If Clinton makes it clear her future is in the Senate, she could find several paths open to her, aides and colleagues said.

One would be to champion a major piece of legislation, such as the health-care bill Obama has promised early in his first term.

A member of three prominent committees, Clinton remains a junior member on all three panels and does not stand to become a committee chairman for at least another decade.

But another option would be to assume the chairmanship of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, a demanding but high-profile post that is an appointment by Reid. Sen. Robert Menendez (N.J.) is a potential successor to Schumer, who has led the committee for four years, but Democratic sources said Clinton could get the job if she wanted it.

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.) pointed to the late Hubert H. Humphrey (D-Minn.) as one example of life in the Senate after a losing White House bid. A senator in the 1950s and '60s, Humphrey became vice president in 1965 and then narrowly lost to Richard M. Nixon in the 1968 presidential election. He won another Senate term in 1970 and returned as the most junior member. "He realized he could command an audience anywhere in the world. He threw himself into the issues. He had the time of his life," Leahy said.

On the other hand, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.) returned to the Senate after his failed 1988 presidential bid and became a formidable voice on both the Judiciary and Foreign Relations committees.

With or without a prominent post, Clinton will possess unrivaled clout, her colleagues said. "She is the single most powerful woman in America, and that will be solidified by this race, not diminished by it," said Biden, who has not endorsed a candidate after dropping his own bid earlier this year.

As the former first lady, Clinton arrived in the Senate in January 2001 already a political celebrity, and her status was acknowledged with an appointed leadership position as head of the Steering Committee, with the task of interacting with outside liberal groups.

But colleagues said Clinton showed no interest in using her perch to work toward more powerful posts inside the Senate. Rather, she spent much of her time traveling the country to help Democrats in presidential battleground states, and raising money through her leadership political action committee, HillPAC. She also committed herself to advancing New York state interests, numerous colleagues and senior aides said.

Regardless of which route she now chooses, colleagues who have run failed campaigns said she must first readjust to life in the Senate.

"When you're out on the campaign, you've got to make decisions every hour, every minute," said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa). "Then you come back to the Senate and it's like a cocoon."

Economist Challenges Government Data

From the SF Chronicle, Sam Zuckerman writes:

Oakland economist John Williams doesn't seem like the kind of guy to pick fights with the government.

He's slow moving and soft spoken, conservative in politics and personal habits, a pale and portly 59-year-old who favors Oxford shirts, Rep ties and sensible shoes. Williams is the sort who pays his taxes on time, waits when the signal says "Don't Walk" and snaps to attention when the national anthem is played.

But don't be fooled. The New Jersey native is leading a one-man crusade to expose official economic data as grossly misleading at best and, at worst, a pack of lies.

His Shadow Government Statistics Web site (shadowstats.com) has become a magnet for those convinced that official data put a happy-talk gloss on the nation's economy. The growing popularity of the site, which costs subscribers $175 a year, is testimony to the deep suspicion many Americans harbor about government information as the economy falls into a swoon.

"There's something wrong with the numbers," said ShadowStats subscriber Harry Seitz, a retiree in Davie, Fla. "Over the years, (Williams) has essentially been proven correct."

By Williams' estimation, the government's calculation that unemployment was 5 percent in April and that inflation was 4 percent and economic growth 2 percent over the last year, is fantasy. It might even be disinformation.

An update e-mailed to ShadowStats subscribers at the beginning of the month warned darkly that "GDP (gross domestic product) and Jobs Data Appear Rigged" and "Despite Manipulated Data, the Recession Deepens."

By his reckoning, the economy shrank 2.5 percent in the year that ended in March, unemployment is really 13 percent and year-over-year inflation is 7.5 percent.

Government economic data are "out of touch with common experience. That's why people used to believe the numbers but no longer do," Williams said during an interview in his modest one-bedroom apartment near Lake Merritt.

ShadowStats, which started in 2004, grew slowly at first, but has recently picked up momentum and now numbers subscribers in the "low thousands," according to Williams. They're mostly individual and professional investors, including a fair share of conspiracy theorists and goldbugs, those who believe gold is the best place to put money because of supposedly imminent financial disaster.

Despite his gadfly role, Williams' pedigree is mainstream. A graduate of Dartmouth College, he once managed a family chain-saw import business. He long ran an economic consulting firm that boasted Fortune 500 companies as clients, and he regularly appeared on television investment programs.

Mainstream is one thing he clearly no longer is. Most experts scoff at his contention that economic data are grossly inaccurate. And they say his claim that data are tampered with for political reasons is preposterous.

"The culture of the Bureau of Labor Statistics is so strong that it's not going to happen," said University of Maryland Professor Katherine Abraham, who headed the agency that produces employment and inflation data during the Clinton administration.

Bureau bristles at charge

Steve Landefeld, director of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Commerce Department agency that prepares quarterly GDP reports, said in an e-mail that "the bureau rigorously follows guidelines designed to ensure its work remains totally transparent and absolutely unbiased."

Indeed, it's easy to write Williams off as a crank. His views frequently veer toward the conspiratorial. A Fox News interviewer once accused him of being a "grassy knoll theorist."

He criticizes almost all the major changes made in data gathering and analysis in recent decades, most of which had wide support among experts of all political stripes.

"All of those methodological changes were made after academic economists did decades of research and said they should be done," said UC San Diego economist Valerie Ramey, a member of the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee.

Still, even those who dismiss Williams concede he makes a few points worth considering.

Abraham rejects most of Williams' arguments. But, she said, "There may be grains of truth in some of what he's saying."

Williams produces his online newsletter in his living room, under the dour portraits of earlier generations of Williamses, one of whom was pilloried in London during the 18th century for publishing material that mocked the king. Williams, who is divorced, moved to Oakland in October from New Jersey so he could be near his son.

According to Williams, government data are subject to two kinds of manipulation.
The first consists of technical changes in the way data are collected or interpreted. These have been fully disclosed, discussed in advance and reviewed by outside experts.

"Although it might make academic sense, it does not reflect the real-world experience of ordinary people," he argued. "The effect over time is to give a more rosy scenario."

For example, over the last 25 years, several technical changes have been made in the way the consumer price index is calculated:

-- In the 1980s, the Bureau of Labor Statistics switched from using house prices to equivalent rental prices in calculating homeowner inflation.

-- About a decade ago, the bureau shifted to a model in which consumers are assumed to switch some of their purchases within narrowly defined categories from items that have gone up in price to other items that have risen less, such as buying round steak instead of porterhouse.

-- The bureau has long adjusted prices for quality improvements. If a product gets better or if useful features are added, its price is adjusted down. Thus, with automobiles, additions such as antilock brakes have sometimes resulted in price decreases in calculating the CPI, even though the actual cost of cars went up. In the late 1980s and 1990s, new quality-adjustment techniques were introduced for a range of products, including washers, dryers and televisions.

Each of these changes has had the effect of reducing the reported inflation rate, according to Williams.

The second kind of alleged manipulation is more sinister. "It's where a number is changed for specific political or financial market needs," Williams said.

Williams said both Democratic and Republican administrations have carried out such trickery, citing supposed examples going back to President Lyndon Johnson.

He accused the current Bush administration of taking advantage of a switch to monthly instead of semiannual seasonal adjustment of job creation data to "bring the number in where they want it," though he admitted he had no evidence.

Bureau officials said they were mystified by accusations that the agency falsifies data. The 2003 shift to monthly seasonal adjustment of jobs data "was recognized statistically as a better way," said Assistant Commissioner Patricia Getz.

In any case, she noted, payroll figures are matched once a year with tax records to produce an accurate tabulation of the number of jobs in the economy.

Williams arrives at his alternative GDP, employment and inflation statistics by reverse-engineering the data, backing out changes made over time. In the same way that every change carried out by the government made the economy look rosier, each of Williams' adjustments makes things appear worse.
Figure excludes the hopeless

With unemployment, for example, Williams takes the standard jobless rate - 5 percent in April - which consists of people who have looked for work within the last 30 days. Then he adds in several other categories tabulated by the Labor Department, including those who say they have looked for a job in the last year but have given up and those who are working part-time but want a full-time job. Finally, he throws in several million people who say they want work, but haven't looked in more than a year. Voila - 13 percent unemployment.

His outlook hasn't wavered over the years. A 1989 USA Today article referring to Williams as a "gloom-and-doom economist" noted his prediction that the Dow Jones industrial average would crash below 1,500 by the end of that year. It closed that year at 2,753.

Most economists don't buy Williams' method of calculating unemployment. In any case, they point out, the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes the raw data, so all are free to use whatever measure they prefer.

When it comes to inflation, though, a few of Williams' arguments get a sympathetic hearing, especially the idea that marking down prices for quality improvements doesn't jibe with the way most people see inflation.

"If anything, the CPI understates inflation for the average household," said Irwin Kellner, chief economist for the online investment news service MarketWatch. "Car prices might be down 5 or 10 percent in the CPI, but in reality, when you go to the dealer, you're paying more."

And while there's not much patience for Williams' claim of outright falsification, the idea that politics influences government statistics is not entirely far-fetched.

In the 1990s, for example, Republicans wanted to make changes in calculating inflation along the lines recommended by a special commission, including more use of quality adjustments. By lowering the official inflation rate, such changes promised to reduce the annual cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security and other federal programs.

Abraham, the Clinton bureau commissioner, remembers sitting in Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich's office:

"He said to me, 'If you could see your way clear to doing these things, we might have more money for BLS programs.'"

Kennedys Feel Bobby-Socked

NY Post reports:

Members of the Kennedy family are incensed over Hillary Rodham Clinton's invoking the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy to explain why she's staying in the race - and they think it could be the death knell of an increasingly desperate and sloppy campaign.

"That comment may be the last nail in her campaign's coffin," a Kennedy relative told The Post. "How can Hillary even use the experience argument when she repeatedly pushes the wrong buttons in her comments?"

An insider added, "I think people really felt that a line was crossed and that her campaign - and even her legitimacy as a politician - ended today."

Said a second relative, "She no longer has only her husband to blame for the ill-chosen comments coming from her camp."

While Robert Kennedy Jr. immediately came out in support of Sen. Clinton on Friday, others in the family's inner circle are fuming.

One cited "a perceived insensitivity" in her comment, made Friday before a South Dakota newspaper's editorial board, especially with the 40th anniversary of RFK's death two weeks away and Sen. Ted Kennedy battling a brain tumor.

"We were all sort of dumbfounded that she would say such a thing," the insider said.
There was also anger outside the family. Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), a Hillary supporter, told Bloomberg News that she said "the dumbest thing you could have possibly said." And the Rev. Al Sharpton ripped the comment as dangerous.

The Kennedy family insider added: "I know that many Clinton supporters in New York and New Jersey are sickened by her comments and that they are more concerned with Senator Kennedy's health and well-being than they are her campaign anymore.

Clinton was explaining why she was still in the race against Sen. Barack Obama when she said: "My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June. Right?"

Then she added: "We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California."

That line, which she later said was meant to convey the fact that nomination battles can extend late into the primary season, also sparked outrage for touching upon Obama's personal safety.

It was also just plain inaccurate, say historians, noting that Clinton's drawn-out battle with Obama in a seemingly endless primary season is nothing like the 1968 and 1992 Democratic campaigns.

Bobby Kennedy was not in the midst of a long-fought primary battle when he was assassinated. He entered the race on March 16, 1968, less than three months before the June 5 shooting.

As for Bill Clinton, despite his wife's perceptions, he'd won the nomination long before mid-June 1992. The race was essentially over by March 20, when Paul Tsongas dropped out and Clinton became the front-runner with a 7-to-1 delegate lead over Jerry Brown.

Obama, meanwhile, plans to give the commencement speech at Wesleyan University's graduation today in Connecticut, replacing the ailing Ted Kennedy.

Obama will be greeted by an unprecedented amount of security. The ceremony will be closed to the public, and guests will have to go through metal detectors.

One presidential historian thinks Clinton's loose-lipped reference to assassination raises the danger of someone's targeting Obama.

"Everybody, in the back of their minds, has been thinking of this, that Senator Obama could be in danger," said Rick Shenkman, a professor at George Mason University in Virginia.

"Now it's out there. It only takes one psycho."

In a radio interview yesterday in Puerto Rico, Obama said that he had accepted the apology Clinton issued Friday and that her comment about RFK was just "careless."

White House Denies Bush Intends to Attack Iran

The Jerusalem Post reports:

The White House on Tuesday flatly denied an Army Radio report that claimed US President George W. Bush intends to attack Iran before the end of his term. It said that while the military option had not been taken off the table, the Administration preferred to resolve concerns about Iran's push for a nuclear weapon "through peaceful diplomatic means."

Army Radio had quoted a top official in Jerusalem claiming that a senior member in the entourage of President Bush, who concluded a trip to Israel last week, had said in a closed meeting here that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were of the opinion that military action against Iran was called for.

The official reportedly went on to say that "the hesitancy of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice" was preventing the administration from deciding to launch such an attack on the Islamic Republic for the time being.

The Army Radio report, which was quoted by The Jerusalem Post and resonated widely, stated that according to assessments in Israel, the recent turmoil in Lebanon, where Hizbullah has de facto established control of the country, was advancing an American attack.

Bush, the official reportedly said, considered Hizbullah's show of strength to constitute evidence of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's growing influence. In Bush's view, the official said, "the disease must be treated - not its symptoms."

However, the White House on Tuesday afternoon dismissed the story. In a statement, it said that "[the US] remain[s] opposed to Iran's ambitions to obtain a nuclear weapon. To that end, we are working to bring tough diplomatic and economic pressure on the Iranians to get them to change their behavior and to halt their uranium enrichment program.

It went on: "As the President has said, no president of the United States should ever take options off the table, but our preference and our actions for dealing with this matter remain through peaceful diplomatic means. Nothing has changed in that regard."

In an address to the Knesset during his visit here last week, Bush said that "the president of Iran dreams of returning the Middle East to the Middle Ages."

"America stands with you in firmly opposing Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions," Bush said. "Permitting the world's leading sponsor of terror to possess the world's deadliest weapon would be an unforgivable betrayal of future generations. For the sake of peace, the world must not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon."

Bogus Claim, Al-Maliki Stall U.S. Plan on Iran Arms

At IPS, Gareth Porter reports:

Early this month, the George W. Bush administration's plan to create a new crescendo of accusations against Iran for allegedly smuggling arms to Shiite militias in Iraq encountered not just one but two setbacks.

The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki refused to endorse U.S. charges of Iranian involvement in arms smuggling to the Mahdi Army, and a plan to show off a huge collection of Iranian arms captured in and around Karbala had to be called off after it was discovered that none of the arms were of Iranian origin.

The news media's failure to report that the arms captured from Shiite militiamen in Karbala did not include a single Iranian weapon shielded the U.S. military from a much bigger blow to its anti-Iran strategy.

The Bush administration and top Iraq commander Gen. David Petraeus had plotted a sequence of events that would build domestic U.S. political support for a possible strike against Iran over its "meddling" in Iraq and especially its alleged export of arms to Shiite militias.

The plan was keyed to a briefing document to be prepared by Petraeus on the alleged Iranian role in arming and training Shiite militias that would be surfaced publicly after the al-Maliki government had endorsed it and it used to accuse Iran publicly.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, told reporters on Apr. 25 that Petraeus was preparing a briefing to be given "in the next couple of weeks" that would provide detailed evidence of "just how far Iran is reaching into Iraq to foment instability". The centrepiece of the Petraeus document, completed in late April, was the claim that arms captured in Basra bore 2008 manufacture dates on them.

U.S. officials also planned to display Iranian weapons captured in both Basra and Karbala to reporters. That sequence of media events would fill the airwaves with spectacular news framing Iran as the culprit in Iraq for several days, aimed at breaking down Congressional and public resistance to the idea that Iranian bases supporting the meddling would have to be attacked.

But events in Iraq diverged from the plan. On May 4, after an Iraqi delegation had returned from meetings in Iran, al-Maliki's spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, said in a news conference that al-Maliki was forming his own Cabinet committee to investigate the U.S. claims. "We want to find tangible information and not information based on speculation," he said.

Another adviser to al-Maliki, Haider Abadi, told the Los Angeles Times' Alexandra Zavis that Iranian officials had given the delegation evidence disproving the charges. "For us to be impartial, we have to investigate," Abadi said.

Al-Dabbagh made it clear that the government considered the U.S. evidence of Iranian government arms smuggling insufficient. "The proof we have is weapons which are shown to have been made in Iran," al-Dabbagh said in a separate interview with Reuters. "We want to trace back how they reached [Iraq], who is using them, where are they getting it."

Senior U.S. military officials were clearly furious with al-Maliki for backtracking on the issue. "We were blindsided by this," one of them told Zavis.

Then the Bush administration's campaign on Iranian arms encountered another serious problem. The Iraqi commander in Karbala had announced on May 3 that he had captured a large quantity of Iranian arms in and around that city.

Earlier the U.S. military had said that it was up to the Iraqi government to display captured Iranian weapons, but now an Iraqi commander was eager to show off such weapons. Petraeus' staff alerted U.S. media to a major news event in which the captured Iranian arms in Karbala would be displayed and then destroyed.

But when U.S. munitions experts went to Karbala to see the alleged cache of Iranian weapons, they found nothing that they could credibly link to Iran.

The U.S. command had to inform reporters that the event had been cancelled, explaining that it had all been a "misunderstanding". In his press briefing May 7, Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner gave some details of the captured weapons in Karbala but refrained from charging any Iranian role.

The cancellation of the planned display was a significant story, in light of the well-known intention of the U.S. command to convict Iran on the arms smuggling charge. Nevertheless, it went completely unreported in the world's news media.

A report on the Los Angeles Times' Blog "Babylon & Beyond" by Baghdad correspondent Tina Susman was the only small crack in the media blackout. The story was not carried in the Times itself, however.

The real significance of the captured weapons collected in Karbala was not the obvious U.S. political embarrassment over an Iraqi claim of captured Iranian arms that turned out to be false. It was the deeper implication of the arms that were captured.

Karbala is one of Iraq's eight largest cities, and it has long been the focus of major fighting between the Mahdi Army and its Shiite foes. Moqtada al-Sadr declared his ceasefire last August after a major battle there, and fighting had resumed there with the government operation in Basra in March. Thousands of Mahdi Army fighters have fought there over the past year.

The official list of weapons captured in Karbala includes nine mortars, four anti-aircraft missiles, 45, RPGs and 800 RPG missiles and 570 roadside explosive devices. The failure to find a single item of Iranian origin among these heavier weapons, despite the deeply entrenched Mahdi Army presence over many months, suggests that the dependence of the Mahdi Army on arms manufactured in Iran is actually quite insignificant.

The Karbala weapons cache also raises new questions about the official U.S. narrative about the Shiite militia's use of explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) as an Iranian phenomenon. Among the captured weapons mentioned by Gen. Jawdat were what he called "150 anti-tank bombs", as distinguished from ordinary roadside explosive devices.

An "anti-tank bomb" is a device that is capable of penetrating armour, which has been introduced to the U.S. public as the EFP. The U.S. claim that Iran was behind their growing use in Iraq was the centrepiece of the Bush administration's case for an Iranian "proxy war" against the U.S. in early 2007.

Soon after that, however, senior U.S. military officials conceded that EFPs were in fact being manufactured in Iraq itself, although they insisted that EFPs alleged exported by Iran were superior to the home-made version.

The large cache of EFPs in Karbala which are admitted to be non-Iranian in origin underlines the reality that the Mahdi Army procures its EFPs from a variety of sources.

But for the media blackout of the story, the large EFP discovery in Karbala would have further undermined the credibility of the U.S. military's line on Iran's export of the EFPs to Iraqi fighters.

Apparently understanding the potential political difficulties that the Karbala EFP find could present, Gen. Bergner omitted any reference to them in his otherwise accurate accounting of the Karbala weapons.

*Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.

Letter To Bush About A Preemptive Strike on Iran

Congressman John Conyers: "Join Me in Calling on President Bush to Respect Congress’ Exclusive Power to Declare War"

CASMII reports:

Dear Democratic Colleague:

As we mark five years of war in Iraq, I have become increasingly concerned that the President may possibly take unilateral, preemptive military action against Iran. During the last seven years, the Bush Administration has exercised unprecedented assertions of Executive Branch power and shown an unparalleled aversion to the checks and balances put in place by the Constitution’s framers. The letter that follows asks President Bush to seek congressional authorization before launching any possible military strike against Iran and affirms Senator Biden’s statement last year that impeachment proceedings should be considered if the President fails to do so.

I hope that you will join me in calling on the President to respect Congress’ exclusive power to declare war. To sign the letter below, please contact the Judiciary Committee staff at 225-3951.

Sincerely,

John Conyers, Jr.
Chairman

May 8, 2008

The Honorable George W. Bush
President of the United States
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President:

We are writing to register our strong opposition to possible unilateral, preemptive military action against other nations by the Executive Branch without Congressional authorization. As you know, Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power “to declare war,” to lay and collect taxes to “provide for the common defense” and general welfare of the United States, to “raise and support armies,” to “provide and maintain a navy,” to “make rules for the regulation for the land and naval forces,” to “provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions,” to “provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia,” and to “make all laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution ... all ... powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States.” Congress is also given exclusive power over the purse. The Constitution says, “No money shall be drawn from the Treasury but in consequence of appropriations made by law.”

By contrast, the sole war powers granted to the Executive Branch through the President can be found in Article II, Section 2, which states, “The President shall be the Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into actual Service of the United States.” Nothing in the history of the “Commander-in-Chief” clause suggests that the authors of the provision intended it to grant the Executive Branch the authority to engage U.S. forces in military action whenever and wherever it sees fit without any prior authorization from Congress. In our view, the founders of our country intended this power to allow the President to repel sudden attacks and immediate threats, not to unilaterally launch, without congressional approval, preemptive military actions against foreign countries. As former Republican Representative Mickey Edwards recently wrote, “[t]he decision to go to war ... is the single most difficult choice any public official can be called upon to make. That is precisely why the nation’s Founders, aware of the deadly wars of Europe, deliberately withheld from the executive branch the power to engage in war unless such action was expressly approved by the people themselves, through their representatives in Congress.”1

Members of Congress, including the signatories of this letter, have previously expressed concern about this issue. On April 25, 2006, sixty-two Members of Congress joined in a bipartisan letter that called on you to seek congressional approval before making any preemptive military strikes against Iran.2 Fifty-seven Members of Congress have co-sponsored H. Con. Res. 33, which expresses the sense of Congress that the President should not initiate military action against Iran without first obtaining authorization from Congress.3

Our concerns in this area have been heightened by more recent events. The resignation in mid-March of Admiral William J. “Fox” Fallon from the head of U.S. Central Command, which was reportedly linked to a magazine article that portrayed him as the only person who might stop your Administration from waging preemptive war against Iran,4 has renewed widespread concerns that your Administration is unilaterally planning for military action against that country. This is despite the fact that the December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003, a stark reversal of previous Administration assessments.5

As we and others have continued to review troubling legal memoranda and other materials from your Administration asserting the power of the President to take unilateral action, moreover, our concerns have increased still further. For example, although federal law is clear that proceeding under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) “shall be the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance” can be conducted within the U.S. for foreign intelligence purposes, 18 U.S.C. 2511(2)(f), the Justice Department has asserted that the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping in violation of FISA is “supported by the President’s well-recognized inherent constitutional authority as Commander in Chief and sole organ for the Nation in foreign affairs”.6 As one legal expert has explained, your Administration’s “preventive paradigm” has asserted “unchecked unilateral power” by the Executive Branch and violated “universal prohibitions on torture, disappearance, and the like.”7

Late last year, Senator Joseph Biden stated unequivocally that “the president has no authority to unilaterally attack Iran, and if he does, as Foreign Relations Committee chairman, I will move to impeach” the president. 8

We agree with Senator Biden, and it is our view that if you do not obtain the constitutionally required congressional authorization before launching preemptive military strikes against Iran or any other nation, impeachment proceedings should be pursued. Because of these concerns, we request the opportunity to meet with you as soon as possible to discuss these matters. As we have recently marked the fifth year since the invasion of Iraq, and the grim milestone of 4,000 U.S. deaths in Iraq, your Administration should not unilaterally involve this country in yet another military conflict that promises high costs to American blood and treasure.

Sincerely,

1. Mickey Edwards, Dick Cheney’s Error, Wash. Post, March 22, 2008, at A13.
2. Letter from Rep. Peter DeFazio, Rep. John Conyers, Jr., and 60 other Members of Congress, to President George W. Bush (Apr. 25, 2006) (on file with the Committee on the Judiciary).
3. H. Con. Res. 33, 110th Cong. (2008)
4. Thomas E. Ricks, Top U.S. Officer in Mideast Resigns, Wash. Post, March 12, 2008, at A1.
5. Dafna Linzer and Joby Warrick, U.S. Finds That Iran Halted Nuclear Arms Bid in 2003, Wash. Post, Dec. 4, 2007, at A1.
6. Department of Justice, Legal Authorities Supporting the Activities of the National Secuirty Agency Described by the President, Jan. 19, 2006 at 1.
7. David Cole, Less Safe, Less Free: Why America is Losing the War on Terror, 2007 at 2.
8. Adam Leach, Biden: Impeachment if Bush Bombs Iran, PORTSMOUTH HERALD, Nov. 29, 2007.

Racism Alarms Obama Backers

Candidate's foot soldiers encounter name-calling, vandalism, bomb threats

At WashingtonPost.com, Kevin Merida reports:Danielle Ross was alone in an empty room at the Obama campaign headquarters in Kokomo, Ind., a cellphone in one hand, a voter call list in the other. She was stretched out on the carpeted floor wearing laceless sky-blue Converses, stories from the trail on her mind. It was the day before Indiana's primary, and she had just been chased by dogs while canvassing in a Kokomo suburb. But that was not the worst thing to occur since she postponed her sophomore year at Middle Tennessee State University, in part to hopscotch America stumping for Barack Obama.

Here's the worst: In Muncie, a factory town in the east-central part of Indiana, Ross and her cohorts were soliciting support for Obama at malls, on street corners and in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and they ran into "a horrible response," as Ross put it, a level of anti-black sentiment that none of them had anticipated.

"The first person I encountered was like, 'I'll never vote for a black person,' " recalled Ross, who is white and just turned 20. "People just weren't receptive."

For all the hope and excitement Obama's candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed -- and unreported -- this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They've been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they've endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can't fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president.

The contrast between the large, adoring crowds Obama draws at public events and the gritty street-level work to win votes is stark. The candidate is largely insulated from the mean-spiritedness that some of his foot soldiers deal with away from the media spotlight.

Meeting cruel reaction

Victoria Switzer, a retired social studies teacher, was on phone-bank duty one night during the Pennsylvania primary campaign. One night was all she could take: "It wasn't pretty." She made 60 calls to prospective voters in Susquehanna County, her home county, which is 98 percent white. The responses were dispiriting. One caller, Switzer remembers, said he couldn't possibly vote for Obama and concluded: "Hang that darky from a tree!"

Documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy, the daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy, said she, too, came across "a lot of racism" when campaigning for Obama in Pennsylvania. One Pittsburgh union organizer told her he would not vote for Obama because he is black, and a white voter, she said, offered this frank reason for not backing Obama: "White people look out for white people, and black people look out for black people."

Obama campaign officials say such incidents are isolated, that the experience of most volunteers and staffers has been overwhelmingly positive.

The campaign released this statement in response to questions about encounters with racism: "After campaigning for 15 months in nearly all 50 states, Barack Obama and our entire campaign have been nothing but impressed and encouraged by the core decency, kindness, and generosity of Americans from all walks of life. The last year has only reinforced Senator Obama's view that this country is not as divided as our politics suggest."

Campaign field work can be an exercise in confronting the fears, anxieties and prejudices of voters. Veterans of the civil rights movement know what this feels like, as do those who have been involved in battles over busing, immigration or abortion. But through the Obama campaign, some young people are having their first experience joining a cause and meeting cruel reaction.

On Election Day in Kokomo, a group of black high school students were holding up Obama signs along U.S. 31, a major thoroughfare. As drivers cruised by, a number of them rolled down their windows and yelled out a common racial slur for African Americans, according to Obama campaign staffers.

Frederick Murrell, a black Kokomo High School senior, was not there but heard what happened. He was more disappointed than surprised. During his own canvassing for Obama, Murrell said, he had "a lot of doors slammed" in his face. But taunting teenagers on a busy commercial strip in broad daylight? "I was very shocked at first," Murrell said. "Then again, I wasn't, because we have a lot of racism here."

Vandalism, bomb threats

The bigotry has gone beyond words. In Vincennes, the Obama campaign office was vandalized at 2 a.m. on the eve of the primary, according to police. A large plate-glass window was smashed, an American flag stolen. Other windows were spray-painted with references to Obama's controversial former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and other political messages: "Hamas votes BHO" and "We don't cling to guns or religion. Goddamn Wright."

Ray McCormick was notified of the incident at about 2:45 a.m. A farmer and conservationist, McCormick had erected a giant billboard on a major highway on behalf of Farmers for Obama. He also was housing the Obama campaign worker manning the office. When McCormick arrived at the office, about two hours before he was due out of bed to plant corn, he grabbed his camera and wanted to alert the media. "I thought, this is a big deal." But he was told Obama campaign officials didn't want to make a big deal of the incident. McCormick took photos anyway and distributed some.

"The pictures represent what we are breaking through and overcoming," he said. As McCormick, who is white, sees it, Obama is succeeding despite these incidents. Later, there would be bomb threats to three Obama campaign offices in Indiana, including the one in Vincennes, according to campaign sources.

Obama has not spoken much about racism during this campaign. He has sought to emphasize connections among Americans rather than divisions. He shrugged off safety concerns that led to early Secret Service protection and has told black senior citizens who worry that racists will do him harm: Don't fret. Earlier in the campaign, a 68-year-old woman in Carson City, Nev., voiced concern that the country was not ready to elect an African American president.

"Will there be some folks who probably won't vote for me because I am black? Of course," Obama said, "just like there may be somebody who won't vote for Hillary because she's a woman or wouldn't vote for John Edwards because they don't like his accent. But the question is, 'Can we get a majority of the American people to give us a fair hearing?' "

Skilled at bridging divides

Obama has won 30 of 50 Democratic contests so far, the kind of nationwide electoral triumph no black candidate has ever realized. That he is on the brink of capturing the Democratic nomination, some say, is a testament to how far the country has progressed in overcoming racism and evidence of Obama's skill at bridging divides.

Obama has won five of 12 primaries in which black voters made up less than 10 percent of the electorate, and caucuses in states such as Idaho and Wyoming that are overwhelmingly white. But exit polls show he has struggled to attract white voters who didn't attend college and earn less than $50,000 a year. Today, he and Hillary Clinton square off in West Virginia, a state where she is favored and where the votes of working-class whites will again be closely watched.

For the most part, Obama campaign workers say, the 2008 election cycle has been exhilarating. On the ground, the Obama campaign is being driven by youngsters, many of whom are imbued with an optimism undeterred by racial intolerance. "We've grown up in a different world," says Danielle Ross. Field offices are staffed by 20-somethings who hold positions -- state director, regional field director, field organizer -- that are typically off limits to newcomers to presidential politics.

Gillian Bergeron, 23, was in charge of a five-county regional operation in northeastern Pennsylvania. The oldest member of her team was 27. At Scranton's annual Saint Patrick's Day parade, some of the green Obama signs distributed by staffers were burned along the parade route. That was the first signal that this wasn't exactly Obama country. There would be others.

In a letter to the editor published in a local paper, Tunkhannock Borough Mayor Norm Ball explained his support of Hillary Clinton this way: "Barack Hussein Obama and all of his talk will do nothing for our country. There is so much that people don't know about his upbringing in the Muslim world. His stepfather was a radical Muslim and the ranting of his minister against the white America, you can't convince me that some of that didn't rub off on him.

"No, I want a president that will salute our flag, and put their hand on the Bible when they take the oath of office."

Obama's campaign workers have grown wearily accustomed to the lies about the candidate's supposed radical Muslim ties and lack of patriotism. But they are sometimes astonished when public officials such as Ball or others representing the campaign of their opponent traffic in these falsehoods.

Karen Seifert, a volunteer from New York, was outside of the largest polling location in Lackawanna County, Pa., on primary day when she was pressed by a Clinton volunteer to explain her backing of Obama. "I trust him," Seifert replied. According to Seifert, the woman pointed to Obama's face on Seifert's T-shirt and said: "He's a half-breed and he's a Muslim. How can you trust that?"

Racial attitudes difficult to measure

Pollsters have found it difficult to accurately measure racial attitudes, as some voters are unwilling to acknowledge the role that race plays in their thinking. But some are not. Susan Dzimian, a Clinton supporter who owns residential properties, said outside a polling location in Kokomo that race was a factor in how she viewed Obama. "I think if it was somebody other than him, I'd accept it," she said of a black candidate. "If Colin Powell had run, I would be willing to accept him."

The previous evening, Dondra Ewing was driving the neighborhoods of Kokomo, looking to turn around voters like Dzimian. Ewing, 47, is a chain-smoking middle school guidance counselor, a black single mother of two and one of the most fiercely vigilant Obama volunteers in Kokomo, which was once a Ku Klux Klan stronghold. On July 4, 1923, Kokomo hosted the largest Klan gathering in history -- an estimated 200,000 followers flocked to a local park. But these are not the 1920s, and Ewing believes she can persuade anybody to back Obama. Her mother, after all, was the first African American elected at-large to the school board in a community that is 10 percent black.

Kokomo, population 46,000, is another hard-hit Midwestern industrial town stung by layoffs. Longtimers wistfully remember the glory years of Continental Steel and speak mournfully about the jobs shipped overseas. Kokomo Sanitary Pottery, which made bathroom sinks and toilets, shut down a couple of months ago and took with it 150 jobs.

Aaron Roe, 23, was mowing lawns at a local cemetery recently, lamenting his $8-an-hour job with no benefits. He had earned a community college degree as an industrial electrician, but learned there was no electrical work to be found for someone with his experience, which is to say none. Politics wasn't on his mind; frustration was. If he were to vote, it would not be for Obama, he said. "I just got a funny feeling about him," Roe said, a feeling he couldn't specify, except to say race wasn't a part of it. "Race ain't nothing," said Roe, who is white. "It's how they're going to help the country."

People with funny feelings

The Aaron Roes are exactly who Dondra Ewing was after: people with funny feelings.

At the Bradford Run Apartments, she found Robert Cox, a retiree who spent 30 years working for an electronics manufacturer making computer chips. He was in his suspenders, grilling shish kebab, which he had never eaten. "Something new," Cox said, recommended by his son who was visiting from Colorado.

Ewing was selling him hard on Obama. "There are more than two families that can run the United States of America," she said, "and their names aren't Bush and Clinton."

"Yeah, I know, I know," Cox said, remaining noncommittal.

He opened the grill and peeked at the kebabs. "It's not his race, because I got real good friends and all that," Cox continued. "If anything would keep him from getting elected, it would be his name. It might turn off some older people."

Like him?

"No, older than me," said Cox, 66.

Ewing kept talking, until finally Cox said, "Probably Obama," when asked directly how he would vote.

As she walked away, Ewing said: "I think we got him."

But truthfully, she wasn't feeling so sure.