Balking at the budget

Labor groups are pressuring GOP members not to vote for the budget reconciliation bill due to cuts in Medicare.

Are the Republicans starting to finally feel the heat after 5 years of President Bush's budgets?

With the criminal investigations spreading through the Republican party, and a President reaching lame-duck status in record time, a breakdown in the Republican message control, the Republican members of Congress may suddenly be more concerned with how budgets and legislation will affect their constituents, not their party funds.

- Murphy

Woodruff, Vot and Jill Carrol: keep 'em in your thoughts

How many journalists will have to be wounded, captured or killed before the administration's defenders stop attacking the working press as "missing the big picture" in Iraq? It's hard to spend time counting the numbers of pencils the U.S. is sending the schools when you might be blown up or abducted for doing your job.

I would say that when your friends and co-workers are being killed, injured and abducted on a regular basis, you have a pretty clear image of the "big picture."

It's hard to learn when insurgents are sowing chaos in your cities and towns.

- Murphy

Justice is more than a pretty word

So many of the changes occurring under the Bush administration go not not only behind closed doors, but in obscure offices that few have heard of, let alone understand.

The administration is making enormous, unilateral changes that are cloaked in legalese and policy. Those changes affect the legal status of U.S. citizens, affect our health care, affect our jobs and how our soldiers fight. They are major changes that can easily be obscured through bureaucratic and legal language.

A lawyer can tell you they are taking your house and you won't even realize it until the Sheriff arrives to boot you.

Newsweek has an excellent story detailing the behind-the-scenes fight between the President Bush's assertion that he has absolute power in times of war, and those folks at the Justice Department who believe that the rule of law supersedes the President's wish to be king.

- Murphy

End of the Sharon Era?

Israeli paper, Haaretz seems to think so.

If the Israeli prime minister's situation is as severe as is speculated, it may be a sad day for his family and for his supporters.

If Sharon does survive this life-threatening incident, he is unlikely to return to the political stage, as Haaretz noted above.

- Murphy

Time to get cable?

I may finally have to break down and get cable. There is just so little left worth watching on broadcast t.v.

Via Romenesko, it looks like Ted Koppel and eight other members of Nightline are moving to the Discovery Channel.

The well-respected newsman plans on producing and hosting programs examining important topics.

I have long been a fan of Koppel and have been nervous about reports that ABC execs want to liven up the program to increase its ratings. I guess well-produced insightful news programs just aren't enough.

I held out a small flicker of hope that Clooney's "Good Night and Good Luck," would spark a renewed interest in serious television journalism. That, unsurprisingly, hasn't come to pass.

Yet the success of "The Daily Show" and some of HBO's and Showtime's more serious programs show there is an audience for smart, challenging programing. TDS never intended to be anything other than a parody. Yet sometimes satire is far more informative than straight news. John Stewart and his crew, however, seem to enjoy their ability to inform through humor, though they always maintain that being funny will always come first.

- Murphy

Seperation of Powers and Wiretaps

Does the FISA court have you down? Do multiple decades of intricate legal machinations cause you to glaze over? Just want a simple explanations of what is legal and illegal; or perhaps concerned that your conversations may have been listened in on? (Just because you're paranoid....)

Well, Morton Halperin has written a very good summary of the many legal and Constitutional issues involved. It's not the shortest summary, but it is one of the best.

Halperin not only explains the role different legal standards play in determining if the President has the right to conduct warrant-less wiretaps, but explains the historical considerations and the intentions of Congress.

The intentions issue is one of importance simple due to the fact that the one of the legs of administration's argument rests on its interpretation of Congress' actions. If Congress specified a particular reason for including or excluding certain powers, and the President reads it another way, well…rhetoric aside it leaves little room for argument.

The President's argument rests on the administrations interpretation of the Constitution's description of a President's power, Article II (specifically the part on his role as Commander in Chief, section 2), and Congress' passage of the Authorization for Military force in September of 2001.

The case revolves around the issue of, "Why didn't the President go to the FISA courts?" The process was already in place to do exactly what the President said he needed, to act quickly and secretly. The only reason to avoid that process was to avoid having to approach the FISA courts; courts that haven't met a government request it did like.

Why avoid a system that was virtually a rubber stamp for warrants related to national security and provided complete secrecy?

- Murphy

Badges? We don't need no stinkin' badges...

The Bush administration's disregard for international law, domestic law and laws pertaining to the President has recently been exposed to public scrutiny.

Legal scholars have spent many a day arguing over whether the President is right or not but they are, with a few exceptions, opposed and appalled by the administration's contempt for any law that restricts their ability to act. Much of the administration's legal arguments have been formulated by a conservative lawyer who, until recently, remained unknown by those outside the legal sphere; John Yoo.

Yoo's work for the administration has received much publicity in light of the President's recent assertion that the Iraq Resolution signed by Congress gave him power to ignore the Fourth Amendment and turn the U.S.'s powerful intelligence apparatus inward.

An interesting history and analysis of the President's role and responsibility regarding international law and the strictures of war powers is up on the New York Review of Books. Georgetown law professor David Cole presents an interesting synopsis of the pertinent law and gives his analysis of the situation.

Cole has publicly come out against the administration's legal positions, but his recount of the history and where the President stands in relation to the framers of the Constitution and established law is important.

- Murphy

Heading down the Eastern seaboard

One of the great resources for thoughtful analysis of subjects ranging from history to literature, to politics and people is weighing anchor and heading South (Via Romanesko).

The Atlantic magazine has called Boston, MA its home for 148 years. Its next edition, however, will be postmarked Washington, D.C.

The sometimes eclectic and always enlightening magazine has been a favorite of mine for many years. It's the one subscription I actually keep up with.

It is not a news magazine, but a intelligent and incisive journal of America; its stories and its history. Storytelling is preferred over speed.

Its inception set a high standard to which it has striven to maintain. A publication initially conceived of by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Oliver Wendell Holmes has quite the birthright to aspire to.

This past week, the Boston Phoenix reported on a farewell affair held last week at the Harvard Club. Members of the publication, both present and past, gathered to express reservations and remembrances on the eve of the publications relocation.

It will be interesting to see what, if anything, changes. Many of the current employees including its current managing editor, Cullen Murphy, will not be joining The Atlantic in its new home.

- Murphy

Did I mention 9/11?

The most-oft repeated comment about the President's recent PR pushback was that he has departed from type by taking responsibility for the intelligence failures, admitting planning mistakes and even taking a question or two (though they went, effectively unanswered).

The President's recent efforts, culminating in Sunday's Oval office address (his first since announcing the beginning of the Iraq War 2-1/2 years ago), have been designed to give the impression that the war in Iraq and the anti-terrorist efforts has been subject to continuous review; that problems have been dealt with behind closed doors, but policy changes must remain secret.

Yet despite changing his public attitude from petulantly dismissive to begrudgingly contrite, there is little in the Bush Administration's policy to support the view that anything has changed. In fact, in the face of public criticism, the administration has withdrawn behind the cloak of the imperial executive.

The administration's propensity for lashing out at its opponents, combined with an increasingly bold disregard for the Constitutional separation of powers, presents an even more disconcerting challenge. Our law enforcement can track down and arrest domestic threats, our military can flatten military opponents around the globe. Yet the very freedoms and principles those two examples of U.S. power are designed to protect may be under threat from within.

An administration that believes it must have unfettered use of force and unrestricted intelligence investigations (domestic and foreign) is one that threatens the U.S. role in the world. The
U.S. is the gold standard for freedom and power in the world. It stems form an absolute dedication to the protection of our basic rights as citizens. That freedom expresses itself in political action, commerce and even military strength.

The Constitution not only confers on us the freedoms we enjoy, but it also charges us with their protection. To tolerate violations of our rights for short-term, tactical gains, sets us on the ultimate slippery slope.

- Murphy

Fine line

In '06 and '08, immigration will be linked closely to national defense and law and order, two areas where Republicans poll very well. Yet they will have to keep the ranks in line because too often the darker, nationalist and somewhat racist sides of the immigration debate come to light.

From Hotline: "...in the immigration debate, many GOP pollsters and strategists and big thinkers believe that independent voters, especially women, and nearly all Latino voters, interpret "preserving national identity" as a code word for "keeping America white and Christian."

- Murphy