U.S. Representative Jane Harman has a lot of explaining to do. So does the New York Times. So does Alberto Gonzales. So does the government of Israel. So does the Democratic Party leadership. So does the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). So does the National Security Agency.

Accusations are flying fast and furious after it was leaked that the National Security Agency wiretapped a telephone call in which it is alleged that Harman offered an agent of the Israeli government in conjunction with the lobbyist group AIPAC, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, in exchange for AIPAC arranging for the House Democrats to give Harmann a congressional leadership position in intelligence affairs if the Democrats retook Congress. Harman was indeed made chair of the House Intelligence Subcommittee in the Committee on Homeland Security when the Democrats took over the House in the election of 2006.

It is also alleged that Harman was on the verge of being formally investigated for this action, when she made a deal with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who was blackmailing her with a transcript of the telephone call. It is alleged that Harman agreed to pressure the New York Times editorial board to censor an article it was preparing revealing the National Security Agency’s program to electronically spy on Americans without any search warrant. Instead of conducting oversight on the unconstitutional spying activities of intelligence agencies, it is alleged that Harman helped cover them up. For a while, the New York Times complied, agreeing to keep the American people in the dark about the spying being conducted against them by their own government.

There are many questions coming out of this story. How many other members of Congress have been blackmailed into supporting the Bush Administration’s unconstitutional programs to spy against Americans? How did Harman, and other government insiders, force the New York Times editorial board to remain silent in the face of these high crimes? Was Jane Harman’s vote in favor of the FISA Amendments Act in 2008 a result of the blackmail, and would the legislation have made it out of committee without her assistance? Why does AIPAC believe that it has the power to direct the Democratic leadership in Congress?

Oh, and here’s another little question, my favorite for the evening: When it comes to unconstitutional wiretaps by the government, does Jane Harman care about anyone but herself?

I’m asking that question because, as those of you who follow Irregular Times are aware, there have been at least two previous scandalous revelations about warrantless wiretapping abuses against the American people by the National Security Agency since the beginning of this month. First, there was President Obama’s declaration that no one has the right to sue the government when their rights are violated by these spying programs. Then, it was revealed that the National Security Agency has used the FISA Amendments Act to spy on massive numbers of Americans within the borders of the USA.

As the chair of the House Homeland Security Intelligence Subcommittee, Jane Harman has the responsibility to investigate abuses of intelligence laws and programs, such as the warrantless spying system perpetuated by the FISA Amendments Act. But what has Representative Harman done in response to the two substantial abuses of warrantless spy powers revealed in the last few weeks?

Nothing. Representative Harman hasn’t lifted a finger to do anything to address these unconstitutional abuses. Harman’s subcommittee hasn’t issued a report or even sent out a press release this year so far. On Harman’s individual congressional web site, recent news focuses on other issues, as you see in the snapshot below:

As you see, Jane Harman hasn’t bothered to speak out against the abusive warrantless wiretapping done routinely against the American people. Today, however, Jane Harman has finally spoken out about warrantless wiretapping - because she says she was the victim. Harman is up in arms, but only only about the alleged wiretapping of her own telephone conversation.

When it comes to the National Security Agency program to use warrantless wiretapping powers against ordinary, law-abiding Americans, Jane Harman doesn’t seem to give a damn. Does Jane Harman care about anyone but herself?

If you’re looking for some good lunchtime reading to browse through as you munch on that cheeseburger, head on over to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and take a gander at the new report published in draft form there.

It’s entitled, White House Orchestrated Taxpayer-Funded Trips to Help Republican Candidates. The report provides evidence that, in 2006, the Bush Administration was converted into a Republican congressional campaign office, with public officials being used to prop up faltering Republican congressional candidates.

The more American voters find out about Sarah Palin, the less comfortable they are with the idea that she could, in the case of an elderly McCain’s illness or death, become President of the United States in as little as five months from now.

The Militant Moderate writes: “I want to vote for McCain, but he is working hard to convince me otherwise. The nomination of Sarah Palin is only the latest, most egregious, example.”

The McCain campaign says that Sarah Palin is not ready to hold a press conference or to be interviewed by journalists. The mystery on the minds of voters is how Palin could possibly be ready to succeed John McCain as President of the United States if she can’t even answer a reporter’s questions.

If the McCain-Palin campaign won’t give the Press the chance to find out more about Sarah Palin directly, then it’s up to the Press, and to the rest of us, to find out what we can on our own. A good place to start is the sixty six page summary of Sarah Palin’s time as mayor of Wasilla, created by Democrats in 2006. The summary is written by Democrats, but the information is from state and local newspapers and the public record.

Read. Inform yourself.

Then call the McCain-Palin press office at 703-650-5550 and tell them you expect Sarah Palin to start answering reporters’ unscripted questions today. Call the Washington Post ombudsman at 202-334-7582 too, and get ask the D.C. paper to put the pressure on McCain as well.

When Nancy Pelosi appeared at the Netroots Nation conference today, people questioned her decision as Speaker of the House to let the H.R. 6304, the FISA Amendments Act, come to the floor. Speaker Pelosi’s answers were anything but respectful to the intelligence and attention span of those who were listening.

Hotline reports part of her answer before the entire Netroots Nation:

“Was it a bill that I would have written? Definitely not. Was it infinitely better than the Senate bill? I believe so.”

Infinitely better? Infinitely? I don’t think Nancy Pelosi knows what “infinitely” means. If the House bill was really infinitely better than an earlier Senate bill, then clearly she would have wanted to have written it (which she didn’t) and voted for it (which she did). The bill is finitely different from the prior Senate bill and finitely similar, but such finite characteristics are beneath her explanation.

Pelosi is the latest politician to mouth the words to the effect that “this wasn’t a bill I would have written” (see Hoyer, Steny and Obama, Barack). If she really, sincerely means this then Nancy Pelosi, like Barack Obama and Steny Hoyer, should be willing to provide the following information:

1. How would you have drafted the FISA Amendments Act? What are the ways in which the FISA Amendments Act, in your judgment, is far from perfect? What are the specific provisions that would be present and absent in a bill that actually is all you want?

2. As the leader of the House of Representatives, what specific legislative actions do you intend to engage in to bring about the specific changes you identify as necessary?

That information is not forthcoming.

Did you notice the passivity of Pelosi’s characterization of H.R. 6304, the FISA Amendments Act? Why, it’s almost as if she were not the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the most powerful member of that body. It’s almost as if she stood by like a little kid, powerless to do anything. Elsewhere in her remarks today, the passivity about the FISA Amendments Act continued: “We had no options,” Pelosi complained. No options? The House of Representatives is a deliberative legislative body. It always has options. They include: 1) amending the bill, 2) rejecting the bill, 3) writing a different and better bill. But no, the Pelosi story is one of passive victimhood. Is Speaker Pelosi really such a hapless, helpless schmuck, or does she just want you to think so?

The helpless tone and passive voice are repeated and multiplied in a separate interview today with TPM Muckraker’s David Kurtz:

David Kurtz, TPM Media: On the FISA vote, was that an election year expediency to get that passed and get that off the table?

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi: No. No. Well, I think we have to protect the American people. We have to protect the American people, and intelligence is a way to do that. We didn’t have to have this bill. But the only alternative that was there, because of the actions of Democrats in the Senate, and I’ll be very clear with all the respect I have for them, they put us in this situation where we only had a choice between the Senate bill, which was completely out of the question, and the alternative that we were putting forth in the House. The bill that we voted for, that overwhelmingly the Democrats I think 100% supported protected the American people in a way that protected and defended the Constitution as well. The Senate didn’t go for it.

Kurtz: If it was a bill we didn’t have to have, then why…

Pelosi: Well we did have to have it. We had to have a bill, because everything had expired. Two reasons we had to have a bill. First of all, I don’t have to tell you that the technology has changed since 1978, and there needed to be a modernization of the FISA bill, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. There had to be a modernization that recognized all the new technologies. So we had to have a bill that recognized that and all the other legislation had expired. So what we wanted to do was to have a bill that protects the American people, insist that include all of the technologies, because what the administration wanted to do was say, “Well, it’ll include e-mail and… the rest of
things we have authority to surveill.” Bring it all under FISA because they wanted a lot of electronic communication to be outside of FISA.

So understand the bad intentions of the White House when it comes to this surveillance. Again, as with everything it was an excuse for them to use to expand the authority of the president, which they said he had inherently from the Constitution, but we wanted to remove all doubt: The FISA law is the sole authority to do that. So we had to have a bill.

And there are those that say, “Well, stall it until next year and under a new administration” — you still need 60 votes to bring up a new bill next year in the Senate even though you have a new president. And mind you 17 of our Democrats voted with the Republicans to give THEM 60 votes. So I put this at the feet of the Senate, and then we have to support it and they walk away from it!

Kurtz: Do you know if the president attached a signing statement to the FISA bill?

Pelosi: I don’t know, I don’t know. I don’t know, but you know what? 107 days until the election, what is it until the inauguration? He’ll be gone soon.

Let’s boil down the bluster to Pelosi’s core contentions:

1. It’s not my fault, it’s the Senate’s fault. Weird thing, but H.R. 6304 was passed by the House first. The Senate voted on the bill after the House did. This makes Speaker Pelosi a science fiction character who is somehow able to use the powers of her office to reverse the flow of causality. Shazaam!

2. We had no choice! See above comments. Legislative bodies have bushels of choices. Capable legislative leaders frame those choices rather than be framed in by a supposed lack of them. What Nancy Pelosi is really telling you here is that she’s an incompetent leader.

3. We had to give Bush a law to do this, because otherwise he was breaking the law to do it. How about impeaching him for breaking the law? Oh, right. Pelosi took that off the table.

4. We had to let the president spy on you without warrants or restriction for periods of 67 days because now we have cell phones. #?^$ !?($$*!?

5. Revoking American freedoms is necessary to protect the American people.. Because now, more than ever, American freedom will kill you. See Bush, George. Also see Franklin, Ben.

6. Don’t worry, we’ll fix everything later, maybe after the next election. See 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006. If you still believe this line after oh so many broken “just wait till next time” promises from the Democrats, see this beautiful bridge I have to sell you.

Excuse me for one moment. I have this wall I have to beat my head against.

…

Hm, no. It still doesn’t make sense.

In pushing to pass the FISA Amendments Act, the U.S. House of Representatives is moving to undo one of the most important promises of the Bill of Rights: The right of protection from unreasonable search and seizure. It’s in the fourth amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, which reads:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

The FISA Amendments Act (H.R. 6304), establishes a regime of search and seizure of the papers, persons, houses and effects of American citizens with NO search warrant, NO proof of probable cause, NOT describing the place to be searched or the things to be seized. The FISA Amendments Act is also against the separation of powers established in the original core of the Constitution, in that it establishes Executive power that is beyond judicial review and congressional oversight.

The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 is a direct assault upon American freedom, and as such, it merits full and open debate in Congress before it is passed. However, the turncoat Democrats of Congress, led by Steny Hoyer, are afraid of full and open debate. They don’t want the American people to know what’s in the FISA Amendments Act. They don’t want you to read it. They don’t want to give American citizens time to think about it.

That’s why they’re rushing the bill through in less than 24 hours, on a Friday in the summertime. They’re hoping no one will notice. Democratic Congressman Michael Arcuri has helped them do that with a resolution to limit debate to just one hour. They’re undoing the fourth amendment to the Constitution in the Bill of Rights, and they restrict debate on the measure to just one hour?

Is this what the Democrats were elected to Congress to do? To shove through legislation for George W. Bush, to help him gain more powers and violate the Constitution? To close off debate?

That’s what Arcuri and Hoyer believe in. Is that the vision you had for the the Democratic Congress back in 2006?

The debate began at 10:48 AM. That means that at 11:48, all debate on this bill in the House of Representatives will be cut off, whether members of the House have questions about the legislation or not. The vote will take place soon after - we’ll be watching, and we’ll be taking names of every single Democrat who joins George W. Bush and the Republicans in attacking the Bill of Rights.

The failed promise of the Democratic majority in Congress elected in 2006 have become especially clear this week, with the passage of the FISA Amendments Act to establish uncontrolled electronic spying against Americans, and with the admission by the White House that it ordered torture, a high crime against U.S. and international law if ever there was one.

What did the Democratic majority in Congress do about these outrages? They let them slide, just like they’ve let everything the Bush White has done to America slide.

Out of Iraq? The Democrats in Congress say no.

Restore habeas corpus? No.

Restore fair and speedy trial? No.

Restore presumption of innocence? No.

Restore right against self incrimination? No.

Restore protection from cruel and unusual punishment? No.

Restore protection from unreasonable search and seizure? No.

Impeachment? The Democrats in Congress say no.

Investigations of baseball? The Democrats in Congress say yes.

While primary elections splash their way across our television screens, the substantive train of legislative politics keeps right on chugging along in the background, taking this country to a dark destination. The FISA Amendments Act, a bill to institute six years of wiretapping and physical searches without a warrant, is up before the Senate now. A variety of amendments are being voted upon this morning. The most notable — an amendment to let people sue corporations for breaking the law, violating Americans’ privacy, and giving Americans’ most intimate conversations up to the government without a warrant — is being voted upon as I write.

A second amendment, also important, has NOT passed.

This amendment stipulated that one of the Bush administration’s tricks — ignoring a law and instituting programs that work outside it — would not be legal. Amendment 3910, the Feinstein Amendment, required that all surveillance programs at least work under the FISA Amendments Act and not outside that measly, impotent, authoritarian, anti-constitutional law. Amendment 3910 was like putting a band-aid on an exploded aorta, but at least the band-aid would have been there, and the White House couldn’t have started up new programs flouting even the measly FISA Amendments Act.

But guess what.

Amendment 3910 failed, 57-41.

Yes, Virginia, 41 Senators voted to let George W. Bush operate surveillance programs on Americans outside the law. Any guesses as to who they were?

57 plus 41 equals 98. That’s not 100. Two senators didn’t bother to show up to vote. One of them was Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton was not there to do her job and cast a vote on this amendment to the FISA Amendments Act.

Barack Obama showed up for work, and cast a vote for this meagerly helpful amendment.

Hillary Clinton threw the rule of law under under her campaign bus.

Senator Clinton can’t claim that this was an unimportant vote, and she can’t say it wasn’t a close vote. It WAS a close vote. The amendment almost passed. It would have passed with 60 votes. Clinton should have shown up for this. But Clinton couldn’t be bothered with that work, the work she signed up for when she was elected to the Senate just fourteen months ago.

Hillary Clinton couldn’t be bothered to vote to uphold the rule of law. So you tell me why I should be bothered to vote for Hillary Clinton when the primaries come to my state of Ohio in March.

Ned Lamont, the Democrat who dared to take on Joseph Lieberman in 2006 and expose the truth about Lieberman’s right wing political agenda, has endorsed Barack Obama for President.

Ned Lamont wrote in explanation of his endorsement:

I am announcing my support of Barack Obama for President because I am convinced that his forward-looking, progressive vision provides the best chance to enact meaningful reforms in the way Washington works.

Sen. Obama has the tone and temperament to bring out the best in our people and our nation, and to bring new coalitions together in support of the progressive policies we all want to see enacted. His campaign has already reflected this, not only by bringing hundreds of thousands of new voters of all ages to the polls, but by inspiring so many who are new to politics to become activists as well…

We have seen that Sen. Obama has the wisdom and judgment to get the big decisions right – as he did on Iraq more than five years ago. And when President Obama steps out of Air Force One in countries around the world, he will represent a fresh start with friends and allies. He will end the war in Iraq, work for a comprehensive peace in the Middle East, and start investing in America again – and we will be safer and stronger for it.

Barack Obama gave praise in return, saying, “Ned Lamont is a strong progressive leader who understands the power of the grassroots, and I’m proud to have his support. Ned and I have both refused to accept money from Washington lobbyists, and we both took a stand against the war in Iraq that never should have been authorized and never should have been waged.”

It’s worth remembering that in the 2008 presidential election, Joseph Lieberman has endorsed a Republican candidate. It’s also worth remembering that in the 2006 election, Bill and Hillary Clinton supported Joseph Lieberman, with Bill Clinton jabbing Ned Lamont even after Lamont got the Democratic nomination.

Michael Mukasey has been confirmed by the United States Senate, even though Mukasey indicated that he would not challenge the use of torture planned by the Bush White House. The confirmation of Mukasey came in spite of the promised change of the 2006 election, when the Democrats swore that they would change things if they got the majority in the Senate. The six Senate Democrats who voted to confirm Mukasey place a stain on the reputation of the Democratic Party.

Things are even worse for the Republican Party, however. Not one single Republican senator had the basic human decency to vote against the confirmation of Mukasey.

The Democratic Party is stained with the support of torture shown by some of its leaders. The Republican Party, however, seems to be pro-torture through and through.

Shame. Shame. Shame.

(Source: Library of Congress)

The biggest result of the 2006 congressional election has been disappointment. Sure, the Democrats took majority control over the House and the Senate, but they have failed to bring about the changes they promised. The Democratic congressional leadership has come up with a list of excuses, just like they always do, saying that if they had just a few more votes then, later, two years from now, the Democrats would finally get a backbone. The Democratic leadership always says that, of course. The real problem is that that many Democrats in Congress, including a bunch of those that were elected in 2006, have been voting with the Republicans to support George W. Bush’s agenda.

Now, the Democrats are asking Americans to strengthen their majority control over both houses of Congress, but the more important task for the 2008 elections is to remove the cancer of right wing politicians from the Democratic Party. If the Democrats in Congress were more reliably progressive, America would be in a much healthier position today.

There’s one primary contest coming up in 2008 that bears special attention. Georgia’s 8th congressional district has long been represented by Jim Marshall, a pro-Bush Democrat who is as opposed to core progressive values as many Republicans.

The following is just a sample of the outrageous right wing record of Jim Marshall:

Jim Marshall voted to help George W. Bush start the Iraq War.
Jim Marshall voted for the Patriot Act.
Jim Marshall voted for the Military Commissions Act.
Jim Marshall voted for the Protect America Act.
Jim Marshall voted to allow Head Start bosses to fire workers for nothing more than not belonging to the boss’s church.
Jim Marshall voted against providing expanded SCHIP health care coverage for children, helping George W. Bush maintain his veto.

Thank goodness, there is a Democratic challenger to Congressman Jim Marshall this time around. Democrat Robert Nowak is running an insurgent campaign in the Democratic primary against Congressman Marshall. Consider Robert Nowak’s positions on the issues:

In his new book, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan criticizes the Republican Party, of which he has been a member for his whole life. Writing of the Republican loss of majority control of both houses of the United States Congress in 2006, Greenspan states, “They swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose.”

Of course, the Republican presidential candidates for the 2008 election are still promoting the same tired agenda that they did back in 2006. They are still choosing to trade principle for power. That’s why, by Alan Greenspan’s own accounting, the Republicans deserve to lose the White House in 2008.

(Source: The Age, September 17, 2007)

After the 2006 congressional elections, when the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was announced, Democrats crowed that the new Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, had forced George W. Bush to get rid of Rumsfeld. It was claimed by many that Pelosi had, in a post-election meeting with Bush, forced Bush to decide between getting rid of Rumsfeld and being impeached. It was cited as proof of what the Democratic majority in Congress could do.

Now we know that’s not how it happened. Recently discovered White House documents, confirmed as correct by the White House, indicate that Rumsfeld actually submitted his letter of resignation the day before Election Day 2006, not after the meeting between Pelosi and Bush as had been previously believed.

Maybe Rumsfeld had been convinced by the clear prospect of a Democratic majority to resign, but it wasn’t the Democratic majority itself that forced Rumsfeld out of office. As much as some Democrats might wish it to be so, there was no threat of impeachment after the election by Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi had voluntarily given up that tool of political pressure against the President long before then.

We now see the consequences of Pelosi’s blunder. If she had kept impeachment on the table, she might have been able to pressure President Bush or the Republicans in Congress to make real changes. With impeachment off the table, however, we get an escalation of the military occupation of Iraq instead of an end to it, and we get the Democratic majority in Congress helping Bush to get terrible legislation like the Protect America Act passed.

The Democrats in Congress have not done what they were elected to do, and it’s because the Democratic leadership has laid down its constitutionally-established powers to hold the President to account, while George W. Bush increases the power of the presidency.

All around the country, the Democratic Party is organizing receptions for their people in Congress for this month, to reassure them that they’re still well-liked. Let me speak for myself: My confidence in the congressional Democrats is rapidly shrinking.

Right wing publications like the The Washington Times and Human Events are running headlines this morning such as Fix FISA Fast and Reform FISA Now. It seems that there is a sudden, urgent push from the right wing to undo the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

It also seems that many Democrats in Congress, like Senator John Rockefeller from West Virginia, are ready to capitulate in the face of this push. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid hurried up to the White House yesterday to beg George W. Bush for a compromise. “Under pressure from President Bush, Democratic leaders in Congress are hurrying to pass legislation this week to expand the government’s electronic wiretapping powers,” writes the New York Times.

Why? Why on Earth are the Democrats in Congress in such a panic to give a President with a history of abusing the rights of American citizens, and an approval rating below 30 percent, new spying powers?

It’s been less than a year since the election of 2006, in which the American people rejected the Republican agenda and put the Democrats into majority control over Congress. Think back - did you vote Democratic so that the President of the United States would be given new powers to eavesdrop on telephone conversations? Do the Democrats in Congress really think that’s what they were elected to do?

There is no need to replace FISA with more lax legislation that gives new powers to the White House to listen in on our conversations. FISA already allows for surveillance to be quickly approved when there is proof that the surveillance is necessary for security purposes.

George W. Bush and his White House aides have no credibility on this issue. They have already been caught breaking the law spying on law-abiding Americans’ private conversations without a warrant and without FISA court approval. They have been caught in hundreds of instances of abuse of the powers to spy that they have already been given under the Patriot Act, and been caught lying to Congress about those abuses. The Bush Adminstration has been caught spying on Americans citizens’ activities on the web, reading their emails, reading their letters, sending government agents to spy on peaceful, lawful anti-Republican political groups. Alberto Gonzales has even suggested that the Bush White House is engaging in additional, illegal spying activities against the American people, and refuses to tell Congress about them.

What kind of fools are the Democrats in Congress to reward these abuses with even more spy powers for George W. Bush?

Don’t let your Democratic members of Congress betray the promise of the 2006 election. Tell your senators and your member of the House of Representatives to get a backbone and say no to new spy powers for President Bush.

Call the switchboard of the House of Representatives at (202) 224-3121.
Call the switchboard of the Senate at (202) 224-3121.

Call today.

(Sources: Human Events, August 2, 2007; Washington Times, August 2, 2007; New York Times, August 1, 2007; Washington Post, August 2, 2007)

In 2006, the Democratic mantra was “change the committee chairs”. Democratic activists gasped to each other, “Can you imagine what it will mean to have a Democrat as chair on every committee?”

Now, in 2007, we can see that Democratic chairs of congressional committees sometimes doesn’t mean very much at all. Take, for example, the chairmanship of John Dingell over the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Representative Dingell is a Democrat, but he’s a Democrat from Michigan, and views it as part of his job to represent the interests of Michigan’s car manufacturing companies.

The car manufacturing companies of Michigan are against efforts to strengthen the fuel mileage standards for cars, and so Representative Dingell is eager to help the Republicans delay any congressional action on the matter. Six months into the new Democratic Congress, John Dingell’s House Committee on Energy and Commerce still had not taken any action on increasing the fuel efficiency of cars. What’s more, Dingell announced that the committee would not even begin to consider such matters until the autumn.

Thanks to John Dingell, we’re seeing the same delay and denial of action on fuel efficiency that we saw when Republicans controlled all the congressional committees. Dingell’s dodge is a great reminder that, when it comes to promoting fuel efficiency and protecting the environment, it’s not enough just to vote for a Democrat and assume that everything will turn out all right. You have to be sure to vote for a genuine progressive.

(Source: The Guardian, June 22, 2007)