Sherman's Blog - Political & Social Commentary

“Fox News used to be all about: ‘You don’t criticize a president during war time. It’s unacceptable. It’s treasonous. It’s giving aid and comfort to the enemy.’ All of a sudden, for some reason, you can run out there and say Barack Obama is destroying the fabric of this country.” – Jon Stewart (to Bill O’Reilly) More below

Economic Recovery- of Wealthy Shoppers Wall Street bonuses and similar monies going for the Usuals.

More prosperous American shoppers seem to be defying continuing high unemployment levels and economic uncertainty to renew their spending on luxuries such as jewellery, fashion and cosmetics.

That is the picture emerging from the current round of US earnings and sales reports.

Tracey Travis, chief financial officer of Polo Ralph Lauren, said last week that the fashion brand and retail company had “slowly begun to see the gradual return of our core luxury customer”, including buyers of couture dresses that sell for more than $4,000.

Fabrizio Freda, chief executive of Estée Lauder, has said that sales of its beauty products at “prestige” stores – such as traditional department stores – had grown faster than at “mass” drugstores and discounters during November and December, reversing the trend seen earlier in the year.

“We view this as a return of the aspirational consumer,” he said.

Sales of cognac in the US had jumped 19 per cent by volume during the fourth quarter compared with the same period last year, according to BNIC, France’s trade association of cognac makers. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0cfbe50c-1420-11df-8847-00144feab49a.html

Condemning What Once Supported: Security It’s already been demonstrated with deficits- the Republicans condemn Obama’a deficits, yet were silent engineers of the vast percentage of our national debt when in power. Now, security is receiving the same treatment. Dahlia Lithwick calls the ‘terrorist derangement syndrome’

Each time Republicans go to their terrorism crazy-place, they go just a little bit farther than they did the last time, so that things that made us feel safe last year make us feel vulnerable today.

Policies and practices that were perfectly acceptable just after 9/11, or when deployed by the Bush administration, are now decried as dangerous and reckless. The same prominent Republicans who once celebrated open civilian trials for Zacarias Moussaoui and Richard Reid, the so-called "shoe bomber," now claim that open civilian trials endanger Americans (some Republicans have now even gone so far as to try to defund such trials). Republicans who once supported closing Guantanamo are now fighting to keep it open. And one GOP senator, who like all members of Congress must take an oath to uphold the Constitution, has voiced his concern that the Christmas bomber really needed to be "properly interrogated" instead of being allowed to ask for a lawyer.

In short, what was once tough on terror is now soft on terror. http://www.slate.com/id/2243429/

Tea Party Convention: Opened by Tom Tancredo who noted, "People who could not spell the word 'vote' or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House -- name is Barack Hussein Obama."

America's disparate army of angry ­conservatives assembled under one roof yesterday at the first national tea party convention in Nashville, amid controversy over an opening speech which preached bigotry bordering on racism.

Up to 600 delegates from all over the US descended on the cavernous Gaylord hotel to plot a strategy on how to take back the country from the perceived threat of the Obama administration. Sporting a shirt made from the Stars and Stripes, Tim Peak from Arizona said he had travelled so far because it was "time for the silent majority to stand up and start speaking".

…amid talk about fiscal conservatism and the "subversive threat" of the green movement, there was also a strong undercurrent of a cultural bigotry which previously had been kept to the margins of the tea party phenomenon.

Tom Tancredo, a former Republican congressman from Denver in Colorado who ran for president in 2008, devoted most of his opening speech on Thursday night to illegal immigration. He said the fabric of US society had been eroded by the "cult of multiculturalism", "Islamification", and large numbers of immigrants who did not want to be Americans.

In his most incendiary comment, he invoked the segregationist methods of the southern states, saying that Obama had been elected because "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country". Southern segregationist states used to prevent black people having the vote by setting them restrictively difficult qualification tests, a historical allusion lost on few of the delegates present.

Tancredo went on to call on delegates to launch a "counter-revolution" that would "pass on our culture based on Judeo-Christian principles. Whether people like it or not, that's who we are."

That remark received a standing ovation from the audience. http://readersupportednews.org/off-site-news-section/69-politics/941-prejudice-and-principle-brew-at-tea-party-meet

And, their keynote speaker, our national embarrassment, Sarah Palin. You would think she’s been thoroughly exposed as an ignorant poseur, but… She urged Republican lawmakers' priorities be to (1) cut federal spending, though she didn't say where, (2) adopt a conservative energy policy, and (3) turn to "our creator." http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201002060026

Whatever her intentions in terms of 2012, it is undeniable that she is building a political presence that can be matched by very few others on either side of US politics. Almost 3 million copies of her memoirs, Going Rogue, have been printed. In her home town of Wasilla, Fox News is converting a room in her house into a TV studio.

Most importantly, Palin appears to have the ability to draw conservatives from disparate political traditions to her side, from evangelical rightwingers of whom she is one to fiscal conservatives, global-warming deniers and libertarians. The skill was much in evidence in Nashville, where adoration of Palin was one of the common denominators among the attendants.

Lisa Mai, a former staff sergeant in the US airforce turned country singer, performed a homage to Palin called Change You Won't Regret: "She's a pitbull with lipstick, And a real beauty queen, The shining light on the right, The left just doesn't get."

Debi Keatts, a delegate from Danville, Virginia, who belongs to a group called Team Sarah – a support network with 76,000 members – said: "We believe in her values and what she stands for and how she is a true conservative because that's what we are."

Jack Smith, from Ellijay, Georgia, said he had doubts about Obama's legitimacy to be president because he believed he was not a natural-born US citizen, and held Palin up as a positive contrast. "At least she is an American," Smith said.

Palin has been clearly working at the perceived weaknesses that damaged her reputation during the vice-presidential race, particularly her lack of depth in foreign policy. She has taken on a former international affairs adviser to John McCain to steer her, and felt sufficiently confident in this area to lambast Obama for having devoted only 9% of his state of the union address on national security and foreign policy.

In the coming weeks there will be plenty more Palin on display as her brand continues to grow. In March she will attend the start of the next bus tour from the Tea Party Express that will kick off in Harry Reid's home town of Searchlight, Nevada.

She also announced in Nashville that she would begin to openly endorse candidates she thinks are sufficiently conservative – a threat that should send a chill down the spines of many moderate Republicans. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/07/sarah-palin-tea-party-speech1

Jon Stewart on FOX A protracted conversation with Bill O’Reilly; the latter was clearly out-maneuvered, out-smarted. Full video link, below

Mr. Stewart said Fox had been able to “mainstream conservative talk radio.” On television on Wednesday night, the exchange ended there. But in the studio, Mr. Stewart swung harder, saying Fox had mixed the “media arm of a political party” with “a little bit” of objectivity, something that White House officials have also asserted in recent months.

Fox News said the interview was edited only for time. A video of the unedited interview was posted on BillOReilly.com and on foxnews.com on Thursday night.

In the interview and in a subsequent segment, Mr. O’Reilly said Mr. Stewart was basing his complaints “primarily on two guys, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck.” But Mr. Stewart insisted that the conservative bent permeated the network and cited “Fox & Friends,” the network’s entertainment-oriented morning show, as evidence:

“They’ll go through, ‘These children in second grade are singing the praises of Obama! Do you know they sing the praises of their leader in North Korea?’ And then, when the hard news comes on, they say, ‘Some people are concerned that they are indoctrinating children.’ ”

Fox News, far and away the most-watched cable news channel, has stoked controversy (and higher ratings) in the first year of the Obama administration by appearing, at times, to be the network of the opposition. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/06/arts/television/06fox.html?sq=In%20Visit%20To%20Fox%20News,%20Jon%20Stewart%20Faults%20Fox&st=cse&scp=1&pagewanted=print

Unedited Video: http://video.foxnews.com/v/video-embed.html?video_id=4003531&w=400&h=249

-R

Economics: Shaky Even Wall Street notices

Fears about financial crises in the wobbling economies of southern Europe and an unexpected increase in U.S. jobless claims sent global stock markets reeling Thursday, posing new challenges for the European Union and the U.S. economic recovery.

Despite several pieces of upbeat economic data at home, the Dow Jones industrial average plunged 2.6 percent, finishing just two points above the 10,000 threshold it first crossed in 1999. Broader U.S. and foreign market indices fell about 3 percent, and oil prices fell 5 percent. The euro fell to its lowest level against the dollar since May.

What began in recent days as anxiety about the solvency of Greece and the prospect of labor unrest there spread to worry about Portugal's budget and Spain's housing bubble, then to concerns about how Europe's richer nations might come to the rescue of weaker sisters sharing the common euro currency.

Investors fled to the relative safety of U.S. Treasury securities and drove down the value of the dollar, which could dampen the global appetite for U.S. exports needed to boost economic recovery in the United States.

Driven by concerns that stubborn 10 percent U.S. unemployment levels would further slow the recovery, President Obama met with congressional leaders Thursday about a new stimulus program as the Senate prepared to roll out an $81 billion jobs bill.

Some analysts said investors were taking profits in U.S. markets after stock advances in recent months. "We ran up way too fast," said Thomas Francis Nordby, a market strategist for Lind-Waldock. "There is a great deal of fear and anxiety back in the market." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/04/AR2010020404536_pf.html

Afghanistan: Optimism Talking the Talk

The senior commander of American and allied forces in Afghanistan offered a guarded but unexpectedly upbeat assessment of the war effort on Thursday, saying that while the situation remained dangerous it was no longer deteriorating, and that the stage was set for “real progress.”

The commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, noted that last summer he believed that security in Afghanistan was at risk of significant decline, but said that he felt differently now. “I am not prepared to say that we have turned the corner,” he said. “So I’m saying that the situation is serious but I think we have made significant progress in setting the conditions in 2009, and beginning some progress, and that we’ll make real progress in 2010.”

General McChrystal’s assessment of the war came as NATO officials gathered here for a session in which Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates was expected to press allies for contributions of several thousand more trainers to expand and improve the Afghan Army and police forces. Although United States officials have expressed satisfaction with the number of combat troops entering the fight — the bulk, of course, coming from the additional American troops ordered to Afghanistan by President Obama — the mission to teach Afghan security forces and then deploy alongside them remains about 4,000 personnel short. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/world/asia/05gates.html?ref=global-home&pagewanted=print

However…

Political resistance is building in Afghanistan to President Hamid Karzai's two-track plan to end the war by negotiating with Taliban leaders while enticing their foot soldiers with the promise of jobs and development projects.

Decades of war have shaped a broad consensus that fighting cannot end the conflict in Afghanistan, but such early opposition to reconciliation with insurgents points to the difficult road ahead for a process Karzai has deemed a top priority in his second term.

Some worry that funneling millions of dollars into Taliban-held villages in the south could unfairly benefit ethnic Pashtuns and reward those who have fought the government. Others fear that accommodating the Taliban leadership could bring a retreat from women's rights. Former Taliban officials, meanwhile, say that without a shift in American policy, their commanders are unlikely to negotiate with the U.S.-backed government. "There is no clear strategy for negotiations," said Abdul Salam Zaeef, who served as ambassador to Pakistan under the Taliban government. "The Taliban were deceived so many times. They will not be deceived again and again. They need concrete guarantees." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/03/AR2010020303737.html

GOP Chasing Wall Street: John Boehner making the case that Wall Street should rely on Republicans to block any reforms.

Republicans are stepping up their campaign to win donations from Wall Street, trying to capitalize on an increasing sense of regret among executives at big financial institutions for backing Democrats in 2008.

In discussions with Wall Street executives, Republicans are striving to make the case that they are banks' best hope of preventing President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats from cracking down on Wall Street.

GOP strategists hope to benefit from the reaction to the White House's populist rhetoric and proposals, which range from sharp critiques of bonuses to a tax on big Wall Street banks, caps on executive pay and curbs on business practices deemed too risky.

Democrats have dominated Wall Street's fund-raising circles in recent elections. Mr. Obama himself raised millions of dollars from employees of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and other Wall Street firms.

Now, at least some Wall Street executives have reduced their political contributions to the Democratic Party and its candidates, according to fund-raising reports and interviews with executives at financial-services firms.

Last week, House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio made a pitch to Democratic contributor James Dimon, the chairman and chief executive of J.P. Morgan, over drinks at a Capitol Hill restaurant, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Boehner told Mr. Dimon congressional Republicans had stood up to Mr. Obama's efforts to curb pay and impose new regulations. The Republican leader also said he was disappointed many on Wall Street continue to donate their money to Democrats, according to the people familiar with the matter. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703575004575043612216461790.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_PoliticsNCampaign

Xmas Bomber Lessons: The FBI seems to have learned; the Intelligence agencies remain a problem (below)

The FBI has had it figured out for a while. They are leveraging their experience interrogating multiple terrorists over the past two decades along with knowledge gained since 9/11. The result: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be Christmas Day bomber, is talking. This after critics of the FBI's decisions led some pundits to assert that he clammed up or, worse, wasn't interrogated.

According to recent reporting from NPR's Dina Temple-Raston, FBI agents flew the would-be bomber's parents to the United States to speak with him. This is an effective, non-coercive interrogation technique used by every day detectives in the U.S., but also a legal, ethical approach found in the U.S. Army Field Manual for interrogations (in the Manual it's called "Love of Family").

… This is another traditional interrogation technique that plays on a detainee's ego. In the Army Field Manual it's called "Pride and Ego Up (or Down)." I suspect that the interrogators are discussing with Abdulmutallab his failure to ignite the explosives in his underwear.

The FBI interrogators are also reportedly using rapport based-techniques to gain Abdulmutallab's trust. It is a time-tested method of interrogation that is quick, efficient, and in accordance with American values. Those who supported the torture and abuse of detainees, such as former CIA Director General Michael Hayden, continue to spread fear and false information about law enforcement techniques (Hayden, in his latest Washington Post Op-Ed states that Abdulmutallab exercised his right to remain silent; he did, temporarily, and then began cooperating again). http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-alexander/the-fbi-is-getting-it-rig_b_447837.html

Another concern is that Abdulmutallab was already known and being tracked by U.S. intelligence; they knew he was flying to Detroit. Yet, they allowed him to board the plane, allegedly hoping that he would lead them to the larger network. It raises questions as to why “Intelligence” would be willing to endanger the plane’s passengers. Why is there a “No-Fly List?” Those familiar with our history of rogue elements in our intelligence community wrecking havoc over the past decades understandably would wonder if this is another example of Those elements working at cross purposes as to our security and Obama’s reputation.

Testimony as to “Flight 253: Learning Lessons from an Averted Tragedy” was held last Wednesday the 27^th before the Homeland Security Committee. http://homeland.house.gov/Hearings/index.asp?ID=234

Pakistan: 3 American Military Killed Special Ops trio’s presence reveals our ongoing presence, previously a badly kept secret

Three American soldiers were killed and two others injured today in a bomb attack that marked the first fatal Taliban ambush on the US military in Pakistan. Dozens of teenage girls were caught up in the blast outside their secondary school in Lower Dir, in the country's north-west. Three girls were killed along with one paramilitary force member. The father of one wounded girl likened the scene to "doomsday".

A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the attack. "We will continue such attacks on Americans," Azam Tariq told Reuters.

The US embassy said the Americans had been assigned to help train the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force deployed in the tribal belt along the Afghan border. Local reporters initially mistook them for western journalists as they were wearing civilian clothes and carrying cameras.

The explosion, which appeared to be a remote-control roadside bomb, happened as the force's convoy passed the Koto girls' high school, where teenagers were streaming out for their mid-morning break.

Television footage showed distressed villagers scrambling to pull wounded girls from the rubble of collapsed buildings amid scattered books and bags. "What was the fault of these students?" said Muhammad Dawood, a rescuer quoted by Associated Press.
[...]
The bombing shone a light on a little-publicised American military programme. The US defence department sees the Frontier Corps as a key element of Pakistan's fight against the Taliban in North West Frontier province, and has quietly pumped in millions of dollars and dozens of personnel to improve the force's capability. In most cases US personnel train senior Frontier Corps officers.

The attack also highlighted an even less well-known civilian aid scheme: a retired US official said the defence department had been discreetly funding development projects such as schools in North West Frontier for years. The targeted soldiers could have been going to the school in Dir as "a show of solidarity" with their Pakistani colleagues, he said.

Until today the only American serviceman to die at the hands of the Taliban in Pakistan was an airforce engineer killed in the 2008 Marriot hotel bombing. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/03/pakistan-reports-death-mehsud-taliban

Juan Cole:

The fragile Pakistani government of Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani and President Asaf Ali Zardari was deeply embarrassed Wednesday when a massive bombing killed 3 US soldiers on the ground in that country. The Pakistani public has been increasingly upset about US military and para-military (Blackwater/ Xe) actions in their country. On Tuesday, several US drone strikes killed a total of 29 persons. The controversy over whether the US is actually fighting a third war, in Pakistan, may have been settled by the troop deaths.

…Many Pakistanis believe that the wave of bombings besetting their country, blamed by the mainstream on the Taliban, is secretly carried out by American agents, in order to destabilize Pakistan and justify a US imperial presence.

The bombing differs little from numerous other such attacks in the frontier badlands, but is distinctive because it accidentally revealed that some 200 US troops are on the ground in Pakistan, some 60-100 on a training mission. Those killed had been giving training and support to the Frontier Corps, a Pakistani unit charged with policing the lawless Pashtun areas on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The News says, "The US soldiers were apparently in the area to train the FC [Frontier Corps] personnel engaged in the military operation against the Taliban in Maidan, which is the native area of Tanzim Nifaz Shariat-e-Muhammadi's [Organization for the Implementation of the Law of Muhammad's] jailed chief Maulana Sufi Muhammad. The Taliban group in the area was commanded by Hafizullah, who had escaped the action."

The Daily Times notes that 'Local authorities appear confused by the foreign troops’ plans to attend the inauguration of the school, as "they had little role in the project."' http://readersupportednews.org/opinion/89-pakistan/172-us-soldiers-deaths-embarrass-us-and-pakistan

US-Russia Nuke Deal: Progress is always welcomed:

U.S. and Russian arms-control negotiators have reached an "agreement in principle" on the first nuclear-arms-reduction treaty in nearly two decades, administration and arms-control officials said Tuesday. The deal, which was widely expected, would bring down deployed nuclear warheads and sharply limit the number of missiles and bombers that can deliver them.

Rose Gottemoeller, the Obama administration's lead negotiator, flew to Geneva Monday to help draft the final text and begin what could still be an arduous process of translating the agreement into treaty language, an administration official said. "There may be finessing and fine-tuning, but the issues, from our perspective, are all addressed," the official added.

The deal would bring the ceiling for deployed nuclear weapons down to between 1,500 and 1,675 per side, from the 2,200 agreed to in 1991, but nuclear-delivery systems would fall more sharply, to between 700 and 800 each from the current limit of 1,600. In fact, both sides have already reduced their nuclear-armed bombers, submarines and missiles to below 1,000.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a Washington-based advocacy group, said the agreement is a milestone, the first arms-control treaty to not only set goals on warhead deployments but to establish strict limits, with verification measures to hold each side to those limits. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703338504575041562540396530.html

Israeli: Israel Endangered Civilians in Gaza

A high-ranking officer has acknowledged for the first time that the Israeli army went beyond its previous rules of engagement on the protection of civilian lives in order to minimise military casualties during last year's Gaza war, The Independent can reveal.

The officer, who served as a commander during Operation Cast Lead, made it clear that he did not regard the longstanding principle of military conduct known as "means and intentions" - whereby a targeted suspect must have a weapon and show signs of intending to use it before being fired upon - as being applicable before calling in fire from drones and helicopters in Gaza last winter. A more junior officer who served at a brigade headquarters during the operation described the new policy - devised in part to avoid the heavy military casualties of the 2006 Lebanon war - as one of "literally zero risk to the soldiers".

The officers' revelations will pile more pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to set up an independent inquiry into the war, as demanded in the UN-commissioned Goldstone Report, which harshly criticised the conduct of both Israel and Hamas. One of Israel's most prominent human rights lawyers, Michael Sfard, said last night that the senior commander's acknowledgement - if accurate - was "a smoking gun". http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israeli-commander-we-rewrote-the-rules-of-war-for-gaza-1887627.html

Focus on the Family Super Bowl Ad The Tim Tebow ad airing on Sunday has angered pro-choice groups, is especially noteworthy as CBS played a collaborative role.

CBS's decision to air an anti-abortion ad during Sunday's Super Bowl has kicked off a contentious debate about the process through which the network vets advocacy advertisements, and has left pro-choice activists disagreeing on the best way to respond to this latest high-profile parry in the culture war, which reportedly cost Focus on the Family between $2.4 million and $2.8 million.

The spot has not been made public, but is expected to feature college football star Tim Tebow, winner of the Heisman Trophy, and his mother, Pam. In the ad, Pam will speak about her decision to go through with her 1987 pregnancy with Tim after contracting dysentery in the Philippines, despite advice from a doctor to end her pregnancy in order to protect her own health. According to Focus on the Family, the ad will not feature any explicit political message. Its tagline will be, "Celebrate family, celebrate life."

The major broadcast networks have avoided political advocacy ads for years, so CBS's decision to air the Tebow ad caught abortion rights advocates off guard. But Focus on the Family, the Colorado Springs-based conservative Christian group founded by Dr. James Dobson, says that it has actually been working closely with CBS executives for months on the ad's script. http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-02-02/the-making-of-cbss-pro-life-ad/?cid=hp:originalslist7

Scott Brown: Zealot? He was going to wait until next Thursday to be sworn in. Then, apparently Mitch McConnell and whomever else told him to get his rear end to D.C., as some votes were coming up. Brown dutifully complied, then made the statement that he doesn’t like the proposed jobs bill: not my type of legislation, he said, and besides, the Stimulus hadn’t created one job in Massachusetts.

Memo to Scott: Don’t Forget you’re “independent!”

Fox News: A Success How do we know? Tuesday’s Daily Kos poll of Republicans found that 31% believe Obama is a racist; 63% think he’s a socialist; 39% believe he should be impeached; and, only 42% believe he was born in the USA. www.dailykos.com

-R

Financial Reform: The GOP strategy to Block it Frank Luntz, their media guru / wordsmith, recommends selling the Democratic regulatory plan, including the Consumer Protection Agency, as a Big Bank Rescue. His framing has worked before: Recall that much of the population no longer refers to the Estate tax or the Inheritance tax, but rather to the “Death tax.”

Nine months after he penned a memo laying out the arguments for health care legislation's destruction, Republican message guru Frank Luntz has put together a playbook to help derail financial regulatory reform.

In a 17-page memo titled, "The Language of Financial Reform," Luntz urged opponents of reform to frame the final product as filled with bank bailouts, lobbyist loopholes, and additional layers of complicated government bureaucracy.

"If there is one thing we can all agree on, it's that the bad decisions and harmful policies by Washington bureaucrats that in many ways led to the economic crash must never be repeated," Luntz wrote. "This is your critical advantage. Washington's incompetence is the common ground on which you can build support."

Luntz continued: "Ordinarily, calling for a new government program 'to protect consumers' would be extraordinary popular. But these are not ordinary times. The American people are not just saying 'no.' They are saying 'hell no' to more government agencies, more bureaucrats, and more legislation crafted by special interests."

In Republican circles Luntz's words, which have helped the party score win the message wars over health care and other legislative battles, are often treated as gospel. Already, some of the advice he's offered on regulatory reform has found its way into the political discourse -- with a proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency seemingly on life support under Republican objections.

In addition to tying regulatory reform to a massive government takeover, Luntz's memo includes several other data points and messaging suggestions as a blue print for the legislation's defeat. Opponents, he writes, would be well served to link the package to the financial industry bailout (which, it should be noted, is fundamentally not part of the legislation). According to accompanying polling data, 52 percent of voters said they would be "much less likely" to vote for their member of Congress if they voted for a financial reform bill that contained a fund to bail out banks and Wall Street. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/01/frank-luntz-pens-memo-to_n_444332.html

Pakistan: Air War Drones aplenty, yet, under the media radar

Missiles fired by suspected US drones have killed at least 17 people and wounded many more in Pakistan, residents and security officials say.

Officials said the missiles rained down on Dattakhel village in the Degan area of North Waziristan, part of Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal region near the Afghan border, on Tuesday.

They said the missiles struck suspected fighters' hideouts and a training centre.

Al Jazeera's Kamal Hyder, reporting from Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, said there were reports that up to 19 missiles had been fired.

"This would be the first time you get a co-ordinated attack by such a large group of drones since the attacks against targets inside Pakistan began. http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/02/201022151350906994.html

China, World Power Already a powerhouse, they’re now considering setting up military bases outside their territory. As the article asks, “Well, why not?” As “China already pays for our military imperialism by loaning us the money to play soldier. So, why shouldn't the world's new Superpower just cut to the chase and open their own bases?”

The Chinese point of view:

It is baseless to say that we will not set up any military bases in future because we have never sent troops abroad," an article published on Thursday at a Chinese government website said. "It is our right," the article said and went on to suggest that it would be done in the neighborhood, possibly Pakistan.

"As for the military aspect, we should be able to conduct the retaliatory attack within the country or at the neighboring area of our potential enemies. We should also be able to put pressure on the potential enemies' overseas interests," it said.

A military base in Pakistan will also help China keep a check on Muslim Uighur separatists fighting for an independent nation in its western region of Xingjian, which borders the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan. Beijing recently signed an agreement with the local government of NWFP in order to keep a close watch on the movement of Uighur ultras.

… Setting up overseas military bases is not an idea we have to shun; on the contrary, it is our right. Bases established by other countries appear to be used to protect their overseas rights and interests. As long as the bases are set up in line with international laws and regulations, they are legal ones. But if the bases are established to harm other countries, their existence becomes illegal and they are likely to be opposed by other countries.

China develops its military force with a theme of peace in mind. Therefore, we can either develop military forces domestically to maintain peace, or place the forces abroad as long as we take world peace as the ultimate goal. In the 1950s, the Korean War enflamed the border of China. China had no option but to call up volunteer soldiers to fight against the overseas intervention in its northern neighbor. Many of the volunteer soldiers remained in North Korea for years after the end of the Korean war to safeguard the peace of the two countries. Finally, the troops withdrew from the peninsular where the stability was regained. http://www.antemedius.com/content/game-changer-china-plans-open-military-bases-worldwide

Obama Accomplishment: Regulation Credit where credit’s due. After the travesty of Bush-Cheney personnel, Obama’s regulatory appointments could not be more different. From the Reagan-Bush-Bush cronies and pro-industry zealots we improve with OSHA’s David Michaels to EPA’s Lisa Jackson, from FDA’s Margaret Hamburg to FEMA’s W. Craig Fugate- they are experts and often veteran advocates for the public.

[Note: The Friday Obama-GOP leadership ‘debate’ was a rare exposure of their respective “positions”- i.e. Obama’s views and policy initiatives and the Republican postures and talking points. Very revealing, and the GOP may now stay clear of such.]

These days, liberals don’t know whether to feel betrayed by or merely disappointed with Barack Obama. They have gone from decrying his willingness to remove the public option from his health care plan to worrying that, in the wake of Democrat Martha Coakley’s defeat in Massachusetts, he won’t get any plan through Congress. On other subjects, too, from Afghanistan to Wall Street, Obama has thoroughly let down his party’s left flank.

Yet there is one extremely consequential area where Obama has done just about everything a liberal could ask for--but done it so quietly that almost no one, including most liberals, has noticed. Obama’s three Republican predecessors were all committed to weakening or even destroying the country’s regulatory apparatus: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the other agencies that are supposed to protect workers and consumers by regulating business practices. Now Obama is seeking to rebuild these battered institutions. In doing so, he isn’t simply improving the effectiveness of various government offices or making scattered progress on a few issues; he is resuscitating an entire philosophy of government with roots in the Progressive era of the early twentieth century. Taken as a whole, Obama’s revival of these agencies is arguably the most significant accomplishment of his first year in office. http://www.tnr.com/print/article/politics/the-quiet-revolution

Elections: Corporate $ Already #1 Prior to the Citizens United decision, they already were dominant

Marc Ambinder:

For the first time in recent history, the lobbying, grassroots and advertising budget of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has surpassed the spending of BOTH the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee.

This is significant. It means that the Great Transition has already begun. In the days following the decision in Citizens United, campaign finance experts predicted that the decision would open the floodgates of money for trade associations like the Chamber of Commerce. The influx of corporate money, according to some, would weaken the power of the political parties and candidates and lead the political parties to become less important. Republican lawyer Ben Ginsberg went so far as to say that the parties would be "threatened by extinction." And Ginsberg supports the CU decision!

As it turns out, the surge of contributions into the U.S. Chamber has already caused its budget on lobbying, grassroots and advertising to surpass that of both the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee for the first time in recent memory. According to The Center for Responsive Politics, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its national subsidiaries spent $144.5 million in 2009, far more than the RNC and more than double the expenditures by the DNC. http://politics.theatlantic.com/2010/02/the_corporations_already_outspend_the_parties.php

Health Care: California Single Payer bill Advances: No media coverage, unfortunately… and unsurprisingly.

SB 810, The California Universal Healthcare Act, authored by Sen. Mark Leno and sponsored by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses United (CNA/NNU), with broad support among many healthcare, community, and labor groups, will now proceed to a vote by the Assembly, which has passed similar legislation in the past. The bill would establish a single-payer system in California, modeled on the healthcare systems flourishing in virtually all other industrialized nations, where better patient outcomes are achieved at a fraction of the cost of the U.S. system.

… Noting during the floor debate that, “consistently 59 per cent of California voters say yes” they want a Medicare for all system in the state, Sen. Leno added that single-payer is not just a bill for a humane health system, but also a jobs program for a state that desperately needs one: “We can’t compete in a global marketplace where all our competitors have had the government take the burden of healthcare off the shoulders of their employers….as we move towards single-payer in this state, and have better universal coverage, this will attract employers to California. We are already underwater in our healthcare system. We can’t keep up.”

Referring to opposition arguments about supposed ballooning costs under the bill, Sen. Leno pointed out that a single payer system would simply redirect current spending on healthcare, away from insurance overhead and towards a more direct and efficient way of providing care. http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/01/28-7

-R

The Obama Budget: The key: will anything move in Congress?

The $3.8 trillion budget blueprint President Obama plans to submit to Congress on Monday calls for billions of dollars in new spending to combat persistently high unemployment and bolster a battered middle class. But it also would slash funding for hundreds of programs and raise taxes on banks and the wealthy to help rein in soaring budget deficits, according to congressional sources and others with knowledge of the document.

To put people back to work, Obama proposes to spend about $100 billion immediately on a jobs bill that would include tax cuts for small businesses, social safety net programs and aid to state and local governments. To reduce deficits, he would impose new fees on some of the nation's largest banks and permit a range of tax cuts to expire for families earning more than $250,000 a year, in addition to freezing non-security spending for three years.

Despite those efforts, the White House expects the annual gap between spending and revenue to approach a record $1.6 trillion this year as the government continues to dig out from the worst recession in more than a generation, according to congressional sources. The red ink would recede to $1.3 trillion in 2011, but remain persistently high for years to come under Obama's policies.

…The 2011 blueprint repeats many of Obama's grandest ambitions from his first budget, including an expensive overhaul of the nation's health care system, a dramatic expansion of the federal student loan program and far-reaching climate change legislation, congressional sources said. But with Obama's standing in the polls badly damaged by a bruising yearlong battle over health care, all three of those initiatives are stalled in Congress with no clear path forward.

The budget is also expected to revive a series of tax increases from last year, including a cap on the value of itemized deductions for families earning more than $250,000 a year and higher income taxes for hedge fund managers. But those ideas, too, have gone nowhere in Congress and may be even less appealing in an election year. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/31/AR2010013101377.html?hpid=topnews

Health Care Bill: The work had been completed on 1/19, and was ready for Obama, but was history as of 1/20. Republican stalling paid off.

[Tom] Harkin (D-Iowa), who attended healthcare talks at the White House, said negotiators were on the cusp of bringing a bill back for final votes in the Senate and House.

Harkin said "we had an agreement, with the House, the White House and the Senate. We sent it to [the Congressional Budget Office] to get scored and then Tuesday happened and we didn't get it back." He said negotiators had an agreement in hand on Friday, Jan. 15.

Harkin made clear that negotiators had reached a final deal on the entire bill, not just the excise plans, which had been reported the previous day, Jan. 14.

Harkin said the deal covered the prescription-drug "donut hole," the level of federal insurance subsidies, national insurance exchanges and federal Medicaid assistance to states. http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/78889-harkin-health-deal-was-reached-days-before-browns-victory

Afghanistan: Hanging with the Taliban: More negotiations, plans to get out by finding Taliban to ally with.

Taliban commanders held secret exploratory talks with a United Nations special envoy this month to discuss peace terms, it emerged tonight.

Regional commanders on the Taliban's leadership council, the Quetta Shura, sought a meeting with the UN special representative in Afghanistan, Kai Eide, and it took place in Dubai on 8 January. "They requested a meeting to talk about talks. They want protection, to be able to come out in public. They don't want to vanish into places like Bagram," the Reuters news agency quoted a UN official as saying, referring to the Bagram detention centre at a US military base outside Kabul.

The Dubai meeting was confirmed to the Guardian by officials with knowledge of the encounter, but they said they could provide no further details.

It was the first such meeting between the UN and senior members of the Taliban. The fact that it took place suggests that peace talks have revived since exploratory contacts between emissaries of the Kabul government and the Taliban in Saudi Arabia last year broke down.

It also suggests that some Taliban members might be prepared for the first time to put faith in an international organisation to broker a deal to end the nine-year war. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/28/taliban-united-nations-afghanistan

A conference on Afghanistan which only a week ago was seen as the political stunt of an enfeebled British government could now mark the beginning of the end of the war in Afghanistan. The 60-nation meeting in London on Thursday has been preceded by an unexpected groundswell of support, including from top military commanders, for an eventual political settlement with the Taliban. "There seems to be an emerging consensus that when all is said and done, the Afghan jihadist movement - in one form or another - will be part of the government in Kabul," U.S. think tank Stratfor said.

…Only last March, President Barack Obama talked of an "uncompromising core of the Taliban" which must be defeated.

But facing dwindling public support for a war now into its ninth year and economic problems at home, Washington and its allies have been scaling back their ambitions for Afghanistan. "They have defined success as the absence of a Taliban revolution," said Steve Coll at the New America Foundation. "That is an achievable goal."


…"Both sides have similar perceptions that neither side can fully win," said Antonio Giustozzi, a London School of Economics researcher on the Taliban. "It is exactly at this point of equilibrium that negotiations become possible." http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE60Q3IW20100127

Expanding the Military’s Responsibilities: Space added to an ongoing presence in the Middle East for the “near and mid-term future.” Sounds like a minimum of 75,000 troops in Afghanistan on election day, 2012.

The US will take on a broader range of military responsibilities, including defending space and cyberspace, in spite of growing pressure on budgets, a long-awaited administration report is set to conclude on Monday.

Robert Gates, US defence secretary, is due to unveil the Obama administration’s Quadrennial Defense Rev­iew, which shifts emphasis from the post-cold war doctrine that the US is able to fight two “major regional conflicts” at one time.

According to a December draft, the US military will restructure its forces to “prevail in today’s wars” and buy more of the helicopters and unmanned drones that have proved their worth in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the draft also highlights “a multiplicity of threats”, including cyber­attacks and anti-satellite weapons, as well as terrorist groups and the prospect of more nuclear weapon states.

“It is no longer appropriate to speak of ‘major regional conflicts’ as the sole or even the primary template for sizing, shaping and evaluating US forces,” the draft says. “Rather, US forces must be prepared to conduct a wide variety of missions under a range of different circumstances.”

In an apparent nod to Iran, it says that within the next decade the US’s adversaries could include “regional powers armed with modest numbers of nuclear weapons, as well as larger more powerful states”. Despite President Barack Obama’s emphasis on beginning a drawdown in Afghanistan in July 2011, the draft also envisages 75,000 US troops will remain in the country for the “near and mid-term future”. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5ff81a32-0e94-11df-bd79-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

Tensions with China: Since 1949- a familiar script, as the U.S. pushes back after China has a fit over our sending new weapons to Taiwan.

For the past year, China has adopted an increasingly muscular position toward the United States, berating American officials for the global economic crisis, stage-managing President Obama’s visit to China in November, refusing to back a tougher climate change agreement in Copenhagen and standing fast against American demands for tough new Security Council sanctions against Iran.

Now, the Obama administration has started to push back. In announcing an arms sales package to Taiwan worth $6 billion on Friday, the United States leveled a direct strike at the heart of the most sensitive diplomatic issue between the two countries since America affirmed the “one China” policy in 1972.

The arms package was doubly infuriating to Beijing coming so soon after the Bush administration announced a similar arms package for Taiwan in 2008, and right as tensions were easing somewhat in Beijing and Taipei’s own relations. China’s immediate, and outraged, reaction — cancellation of some military exchanges and announcement of punitive sanctions against American companies — demonstrates, China experts said, that Beijing is feeling a little burned, particularly because the Taiwan arms announcement came on the same day that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton publicly berated China for not taking a stronger position on holding Iran accountable for its nuclear program. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/01/world/asia/01china.html?ref=global-home

China as Green Leader: As Obama warned in the SOTU…

China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year.

China has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the country is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants.

These efforts to dominate the global manufacture of renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China.

“Most of the energy equipment will carry a brass plate, ‘Made in China,’ ” said K. K. Chan, the chief executive of Nature Elements Capital, a private equity fund in Beijing that focuses on renewable energy.

President Obama, in his State of the Union speech last week, sounded an alarm that the United States was falling behind other countries, especially China, on energy. “I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders — and I know you don’t either,” he told Congress. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/business/energy-environment/31renew.html?ref=global-home&pagewanted=print

-R

Howard Zinn: Mourn and Organize http://howardzinn.org/default/

"Howard had a genius for the shape of public morality and for articulating the great alternative vision of peace as more than a dream," said James Carroll a columnist for the Globe's opinion pages whose friendship with Dr. Zinn dates to when Carroll was a Catholic chaplain at BU. "But above all, he had a genius for the practical meaning of love. That is what drew legions of the young to him and what made the wide circle of his friends so constantly amazed and grateful." http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2010/01/howard_zinn_his.html

Bernanke Survives: Not a surprise, though the votes against him were unusual for such a nomination

The Senate on Thursday confirmed Ben S. Bernanke for a second term as Federal Reserve chairman, but he scraped by with the narrowest margin in the history of the position and his weakened political standing could weigh on the central bank's ability to maneuver for years to come.

The Senate voted 70 to 30 to give Bernanke four more years as the nation's most powerful economic policymaker, after a sometimes heated debate in which members of both parties -- including some who eventually voted in his favor -- assailed the Fed's actions under his leadership.

While Bernanke won a majority of both Democrats and Republicans, he received more "no" votes than any Fed chairman before, topping Paul A. Volcker, who was confirmed 84 to 16 in 1983.

That congressional anger at the Fed -- and at Bernanke himself -- will color Bernanke's second term. The Fed is designed to be insulated from politics so that its leaders can take a long-term view, especially in setting interest rates. But the Fed is now under greater pressure than at any time in recent history. And after his relatively close call on confirmation, Bernanke may not have the political clout to fend off attacks on the central bank, said people who study the Fed.

"He's coming out of this with less political capital," said Brian Gardner, a Washington analyst for the investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods. "How does he go back to ask senators who stuck their neck out for him to stick with him again? This leaves him in a weakened state."

Congress is considering stripping the Fed of its power to regulate banks, which Bernanke considers central to the Fed's mission. He views a separate congressional effort to initiate audits of the Fed's monetary policy to be a dangerous threat to the central bank's independence.

And the pressures on Bernanke could mount further when, at some point in his new term, the Fed will inevitably raise interest rates -- never a popular action. The Fed is now pulling out all the stops to support the economy, including keeping a key target interest rate near zero. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/28/AR2010012800103_pf.html

Israel: Settlements Stay, Protests Must Stop Out of the spotlight, hope for a Middle East settlement has faded in the face of Netanyahu’s intransigence.

For more than a year, this village has been a focus of weekly protests against the Israeli security barrier, which cuts through its lands. Now, the village appears to be at the center of an intensifying Israeli arrest campaign.

Apparently concerned that the protests could spread, the Israeli Army and security forces have recently begun clamping down, arresting scores of local organizers and activists here and conducting nighttime raids on the homes of others.

Muhammad Amira, a schoolteacher and a member of Nilin’s popular committee, the group that organizes the protests, said his home was raided by the army in the early hours of Jan. 10. The soldiers checked his identity papers, poked around the house and looked in on his sleeping children, Mr. Amira said.

He added, “They came to say, ‘We know who you are.’ ”

Each Friday for the last five years, Palestinians have demonstrated against the barrier, bolstered by Israeli sympathizers and foreign volunteers who document the ensuing clashes with video cameras, often posting the most dramatic footage on YouTube.

Israel says the barrier, under construction since 2002, is essential to prevent suicide bombers from reaching its cities; the Palestinians oppose it on grounds that much of it runs through the territory of the West Bank. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/world/middleeast/29palestine.html?ref=global-home&pagewanted=print

State of the Union Speech (SOTU) A political success for Obama. While progressives may cringe at his emphasis on small initiatives and the aggregate spending freeze, he successfully frustrated and marginalized the GOP (and Alito). He did make a reference to (eventually) increasing taxes on more comfortable Americans (above 250K), other Bush tax cuts and the Reagan tax cuts remained intact.

He should take note of the Oregon results: You can tax the wealthy.

Oregon has set aside its history of shooting down tax increases on statewide ballots, with voters endorsing higher taxes on businesses and the rich amid a brutal economic slump.

Democrats in the Oregon Legislature made it as easy as they could for the voters to raise taxes on somebody else, and the electorate responded Tuesday by approving Measures 66 and 67.

The increases approved Tuesday will hit people with taxable income upward of $125,000 – estimated at fewer than 3 percent of filers. Many businesses who had been paying an annual $10 minimum will see that rise to at least $150.

With 91 percent of the vote counted, the vote was 54-46 on Measure 66 and 53-47 on Measure 67.

Oregon voters have consistently rebuffed legislative attempts to take more in tax revenue – such as a cigarette tax to pay for health insurance for children three years ago, two previous income tax measures that would have hit most Oregonians and nine sales tax measures over the decades. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/27/oregon-tax-hike-on-wealth_n_438040.html

The spending freeze would not include the military. That’s par for the course. But, why not cut the military budget? Apart from the wars, there’s other spending that is always off limits. Shouldn’t be.

Fred Kaplan makes the case:

There is no good reason to exempt the Pentagon's budget from this discipline.

Of course, there are plenty of good reasons to exempt parts of the defense budget from a strict spending freeze. For instance, there should be no arbitrary freeze on spending to support overseas conflicts, for instance in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the broader war on terrorism. There is no way to know now how things will be going in these fights, and how much our forces will need to carry out their missions, in 2011. Because of this, the Pentagon requests much of this money in emergency supplementals to the budget, and these requests should be evaluated on their own terms.

Last year, to his credit, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates put a good chunk of this war-related spending into the baseline military budget. He noticed an unhealthy chasm between the nation's soldiers and the Pentagon's institutional bureaucracy. By putting some of the soldiers' traditionally unfunded needs into the Pentagon's budget, he hoped to give those needs some institutional grounding—and to give the bureaucrats a reason to fight for those needs.

In the fiscal year 2010 budget, which was passed last year, that portion of the budget amounted to $170 billion. This included military pay. In the past 10 years, U.S. servicemen and servicewomen have received a cumulative 65 percent pay raise—and, with an all-volunteer military, in an age of multiple wars, they deserve it. So exempt this from a freeze.

However, the total military budget for FY10—not including the emergency supplementals for fighting wars—amounted to $534 billion. The Congressional Budget Office estimates, in a recent analysis, that cost overruns and other unanticipated hikes will boost this sum to $552 billion.

Deduct $170 billion—the hands-off portion—from the $552 billion amount, and that leaves $382 billion. This $382 billion has nothing directly to do with the wars we're fighting right now. That doesn't mean it's unnecessary or unjustified; maybe some of it is, maybe some of it isn't. But it's not the stuff of life and death, like the other parts of the budget—Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—that Obama wants to exclude from the freeze. It should be subject to the same discipline—the same line-by-line, page-by-page analysis—as the rest of the budget.

Most of this $382 billion consists of weapons systems—combatant ships, fighter jets, submarines, heavy armored vehicles—that the individual branches of the military have been cranking out for decades. If some Rip Van Winkle had fallen asleep in 1982, woken up in 2009, and looked at the U.S. military budget as an indicator of what was going on in the world, he would assume that the Cold War were still raging. http://www.slate.com/id/2242790/

As for Alito, he’s known to badmouth Democrats at social functions (e.g. Biden, 1/09) and presidents- and other politicians- have routinely criticized Supreme Court decisions, most commonly Roe v Wade. This time his head shake and mouthing of “(that’s) not true” was, according to some, an obvious breach of etiquette.

Glenn Greenwald comments:

On a night when both tradition and the Court's role dictate that he sit silent and inexpressive, he instead turned himself into a partisan sideshow -- a conservative Republican judge departing from protocol to openly criticize a Democratic President -- with Republicans predictably defending him and Democrats doing the opposite. Alito is now a political (rather than judicial) hero to Republicans and a political enemy of Democrats, which is exactly the role a Supreme Court Justice should not occupy. http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/01/28/alito/index.html

Dahlia Lithwick disagrees:

Both the president and the justices are political actors, and all are entitled to screw up their faces and grumble in public as they see fit. Anyone who’s watched Alito at oral argument at the high court knows that he screws up his face and mutters to himself all the time. The suggestion that he was showboating or grandstanding last night is spectacularly unfair. Unlike several of his colleagues, Alito is meticulously polite, balanced, and measured on the bench, and goes out of his way to shun big drama. I’m sure if Alito could take it back this morning he would. I’m equally sure that if he attends the next SOTU at all, he won’t move so much as a muscle. http://www.doublex.com/blog/xxfactor/leave-alito-alone

Right-wing Highlights: They are not, contrary to many media reports, gaining strength. Apart from their alienating behavior at the SOTU speech, their “approval” marks have at best remained flat… and low. Specifics:

* Bob McDonnell, new governor of Virginia who did the Republican response to the SOTU speech did so in front of carefully placed white woman, black woman, Asian man, soldier. The content: ‘cut the deficit, talking point, talking point.’

* The talking point post-speech was that Obama was “arrogant.” A few also noted, “punk.” Lovely.

* The Tea Party is fracturing big time. The actual activists are battling the exploiters / astroturfers, and their National Tea Party Convention this coming week has many dropping out, not only because of the hundreds demanded for both admission and the dinner.

* The GOP continues its internal battles. McCain faces a very conservative primary opponent, and Sarah Palin has endorsed McCain, infuriating the Tea Party folk

-R

Louisiana ‘Watergate’ Young conservative activists arrested breaking into / seeking to wiretap Senator Mary Landrieu’s office. O’Keefe, the “pimp” in the ACORN incident, had been hailed as a role model for young conservatives; he now faces a possible 10 years. Is it the tip of an 'iceberg'?

The conservative young filmmaker whose undercover sting damaged a liberal activist group last year faces federal criminal charges in an alleged plot to bug the New Orleans office of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.).

Federal investigators charged that James O'Keefe was among four men who created a ruse to enter the lawmaker's downtown office, saying they needed to repair her telephones. O'Keefe used his cellphone to take pictures of two men involved in the Jan. 25 plot, according to court records unsealed Tuesday.

Those men, Joseph Basel and Robert Flanagan, are accused in an FBI agent's sworn affidavit of impersonating telephone company workers, while O'Keefe and another man, Stan Dai, are accused of aiding the plot.

All four were taken to a suburban New Orleans jail and charged with entering federal property under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony. If convicted, each man faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

Flanagan, 24, is the son of William J. Flanagan, the acting U.S. attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, based in Shreveport. U.S. Attorney Flanagan declined to comment through an office assistant.

Landrieu said Tuesday that the situation was "very unusual and somewhat unsettling for me and my staff," and added, "I am as interested as everyone else about their motives and purpose, which I hope will become clear as the investigation moves forward."

O'Keefe, 25, became a conservative hero last year after he and fellow activist Hannah Giles secretly videotaped several regional offices of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) while posting as a pimp and a prostitute. O'Keefe's videos showed ACORN staffers appearing to offer them housing help and advice on concealing their purported prostitution business. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/26/AR2010012604145_pf.html

Citizens United Ruling: Follow-up:

Unintended Consequences: The foreign angle

While political observers have dissected much of yesterday’s 5-4 Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, one potentially huge (and probably unintended) consequence has gotten little notice: the impact the decision could have on foreign government spending on federal campaigns.

The ruling essentially gives corporations the same rights as individuals in their ability to spend freely on political advertising, even if those advertisements explicitly advocate the election or defeat of a federal candidate. This means that candidates who support, say, increased restrictions on tobacco products could find themselves up against the corporate treasury of say, a major American tobacco company. And even the fear of $10 million in attack ads blanketing the airways come re-election time may give sitting legislators pause before taking on moneyed industries.

But it’s one thing for U.S. firms to have their say. What about foreign companies that operate U.S. subsidiaries? Many of these, like American businesses, are owned by ordinary shareholders — but a host of others are owned, in whole or in part, by the foreign governments themselves.

One prominent examples is CITGO Petroleum Company — once the American-born Cities Services Company, but purchased in 1990 by the Venezuelan government-owned Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. The Citizens United ruling could conceivably allow Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has sharply criticized both of the past two U.S. presidents, to spend government funds to defeat an American political candidate, just by having CITGO buy TV ads bashing his target.

And it’s not just Chavez. The Saudi government owns Houston’s Saudi Refining Company and half of Motiva Enterprises. Lenovo, which bought IBM’s PC assets in 2004, is partially owned by the Chinese government’s Chinese Academy of Sciences. And Singapore’s APL Limited operates several U.S. port operations. A weakening of the limit on corporate giving could mean China, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and any other country that owns companies that operate in the U.S. could also have significant sway in American electioneering. http://www.publicintegrity.org/articles/entry/1913/

Companies’ Discomfort w/ Congressional Solicitation: A wrinkle

Dozens of current and former corporate executives have a message for Congress: Quit hitting us up for campaign cash.

Roughly 40 executives from companies including Playboy Enterprises, ice cream maker Ben & Jerry's, the Seagram's liquor company, toymaker Hasbro, Delta Airlines and Men's Wearhouse sent a letter to congressional leaders Friday urging them to approve public financing for House and Senate campaigns. They say they are tired of getting fundraising calls from lawmakers — and fear it will only get worse after Thursday's Supreme Court ruling.

The court ruled that corporations and unions can spend unlimited money on ads urging people to vote for or against candidates. The decision was sought by interest groups including one that represents American businesses, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. They argued that restrictions on ads they could finance close to elections violated their free-speech rights, and the court agreed.

Congressional candidates who find themselves attacked by a flood of special-interest TV ads in the 2010 elections will likely reach out to their party's biggest donors for money to help them counter the blitz.

"Members of Congress already spend too much time raising money from large contributors," the business executives' letter says. "And often, many of us individually are on the receiving end of solicitation phone calls from members of Congress. With additional money flowing into the system due to the court's decision, the fundraising pressure on members of Congress will only increase."

Among the others signing the letter are current or former executives of Quaker Chemical Corp., Brita Products Co., San Diego National Bank, MetLife and Crate & Barrel.

They sent the letter through Fair Elections Now, a coalition of good-government groups who hope the Supreme Court ruling will lead Congress to pass public campaign financing legislation they have long been seeking. Others supporting public financing include former campaign strategists for President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100122/ap_on_bi_ge/us_campaign_finance_ceos?x=1

Democrats Mull possible Push-Back on Ruling:

Senior Democratic lawmakers are studying a proposal to curtail any potential foreign influence over US elections following a Supreme Court ruling last week that gives corporate America, including US subsidiaries of foreign companies, a blank cheque to support or attack political candidates.

Chris Van Hollen, a congressman from Maryland, and New York senator Chuck Schumer are considering legislation that would bar US subsidiaries of foreign companies - groups ranging from Nestlé to GlaxoSmithKline - from making direct campaign expenditures.

The potential provision would be part of broader legislation aimed at limiting the impact of the Supreme Court ruling. The lawmakers are also looking at restrictions on companies such as AIG, the insurer, which received federal bail-out funds, corporations that compete for government contracts and those that employ federal lobbyists.

Barack Obama, president, promised in his weekly address on Saturday to work quickly with lawmakers on a bill that would "repair the damage that has been done" by last week's ruling, which reversed campaign finance rules that had been in place for decades.

The ruling did not lift existing prohibitions on foreigners, who are barred from donating to US campaigns or making decisions on how campaign donations should be spent. But by opening the floodgates on political spending by companies, legal experts say, the court also appears to allow US subsidiaries of foreign companies to spend freely, as long as those making decisions about the expenditures are American citizens. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fbd66082-0951-11df-ba88-00144feabdc0.html

Action: Call for Populist-Progressive Alliance: E.J. Dionne, liberal columnist, adds his voice

An unusually blunt headline in Friday's print edition of The New York Times told the story succinctly: "Lobbies' New Power: Cross Us, and Our Cash Will Bury You."

Think of this rather persuasive moment in a chat between a corporate lobbyist and a senator: "Are you going to block that taxpayer bailout we want? Well, I'm really sorry, but we're going to have to run $2 million worth of really vicious ads against you." The same exchange might take place on tax breaks, consumer protections, environmental rules and worker safeguards.

Defenders of this vast expansion of corporate influence piously claim it's about "free speech." But since when is a corporation, a creation of laws passed by governments, entitled to the same rights as an individual citizen? This ruling will give large business entities far more power than any individual, unless you happen to be Michael Bloomberg or Bill Gates.

The only proper response to this distortion of our political system by ideologically driven justices is a popular revolt. It would be a revolt of a sort deeply rooted in the American political tradition. The most vibrant reform alliances in our history have involved coalitions between populists (who stand up for the interests and values of average citizens) and progressives (who fight against corruption in government and for institutional changes to improve the workings of our democracy). It's time for a new populist-progressive alliance. http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/hoist-your-pitchforks

Bernanke: The Democrats are rallying to support the Bush nominee, that he may have facilitated our economic plight, but that he’s been skilled at handling the crisis; The GOP largely oppose his re-nomination. Additional ammo for portraying the Democrats as Wall Street champions

When it comes to progressive priorities in the Senate, there’s one standard: 60 votes are needed. But for Ben Bernanke, there’s a second standard: 50 will be just fine, thank you.

Democratic leaders in the Senate are asking colleagues who are reluctant to support Bernanke’s nomination for a second term as Federal Reserve chairman to nevertheless vote with them to end a filibuster and allow a vote on the actual nomination. The reluctant members would then be free to vote no to express their displeasure. Several Democrats have committed to just that and others are considering it. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/26/double-standard-for-berna_n_436971.html

Couldn’t get 60 to vote for health reform, but they’ll get 60 to get Bernanke by stopping the filibuster.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, in a recent interview with Mike Allen of Politico warned that the financial markets could react negatively if Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke isn't confirmed for a second term.

Geithner suggested that the market would see a failed Bernanke confirmation as "very troubling," but claimed that he was "very confident" Bernanke would receive enough Senate votes to win a second term.

"The markets would view this as very troubling thing for the economy as the whole," Geithner said. "I don't think they should be uncertain. I think they can be confident because we're very confident."

Predicting that the U.S. economy will begin to show positive job growth by this Spring, Geithner added that Bernanke has done a "remarkable job of guiding this economy through the recession."

The Treasury Secretary also expressed some sympathy for the millions of Americans still struggling to find work, or otherwise impacted by the financial crisis. The country is "in a moment where people are incredibly angry and frustrated by the damage this crisis caused...You see that across the country. That's perfectly understandable, and everybody involved in this effort is bearing a lot of the brunt of that frustration and anger." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/25/geithner-warns-that-marke_n_435131.html

Spending Freeze. Aggregate, says the administration, meaning some programs will shrink, some will grow. One imagines it was meant as a bone tossed to deficit hawks while Obama pivots to talks jobs, i.e. spending. But: It’s never recommended to do such during a downturn. Seemingly a symbolic, political gesture, it will please no one and irritate / inflame others.

Nate Silver focuses on the (questionable) politics

I'll let the economists talk about the wisdom of curtailing government spending in the middle of a massive consumption deficit, but what concerns me more is the politics. Specifically, the sort of cognitive dissonance that is going to be created in the mind of the average voter when the White House is promising to freeze spending on the one hand (or, more accurately, this will be the media caricature of their gambit), and on the other, trying to defend its stimulus and its health care reform package, trying to excuse the bailout package as a necessary evil, and perhaps trying to champion new programs. Sure, the story is probably being somewhat overreported, and the spending "freeze" will only apply to certain types of spending. And it's applied relative to the already-elevated levels of spending from the FY2010 budget, and not some earlier baseline. There's more bark here than bite, in other words: "freeze on discretionary spending" means something different on K Street than it does on Main Street. But that's precisely what will make the White House (or at least the Democrats collectively) look flip-floppy. Every time the Democrats propose a jobs bill, or a big investment in alternative energy, you're going to have Krauthammer and Kristol chomping at the bit to go on Fox News and proclaim Obama to be a hypocrite. Pity Robert Gibbs trying to parse his way out of that. This is not how one wins news cycles -- or elections. http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/

Paul Krugman: Harshly condemns The Freeze

A spending freeze? That’s the brilliant response of the Obama team to their first serious political setback?

It’s appalling on every level.

It’s bad economics, depressing demand when the economy is still suffering from mass unemployment. Jonathan Zasloff writes that Obama seems to have decided to fire Tim Geithner and replace him with “the rotting corpse of Andrew Mellon” (Mellon was Herbert Hoover’s Treasury Secretary, who according to Hoover told him to “liquidate the workers, liquidate the farmers, purge the rottenness”.)

It’s bad long-run fiscal policy, shifting attention away from the essential need to reform health care and focusing on small change instead. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/obama-liquidates-himself/

Stimulus Evaluated: It did some good, though, again, it wasn’t enough

Economists believe that without President Obama's economic stimulus package, the unemployment rate would have hit 10.8 percent -- up from December's rate of 10 percent -- according to a new survey of economists by USA Today. The difference translates to an additional 1.2 million jobs that could have been lost. In fact, "almost two-thirds of the economists said the government should do more to spur job growth." The assessment is not surprising considering that experts have consistently found that the stimulus package is working, but argued that it is simply too small to counteract the economic crisis. In August, when the U.S. economy began to officially emerge from the recession, Conference Board economist Kenneth Goldstein told Bloomberg, "We've averted the worst, and there are clear signs the stimulus is working." http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2010-01-25-usa-today-economic-survey-obama-stimulus_N.htm/

Public: Stimulus Did Nothing Joe Klein condemns… the public:

Absolutely amazing poll results from CNN today about the $787 stimulus package: nearly three out of four Americans think the money has been wasted. On second thought, they may be right: it's been wasted on them...

So, two thoughts:

1. The Obama Administration has done a terrible job explaining the stimulus package to the American people...especially since there have been very few documented cases of waste so far.

2. This is yet further evidence that Americans are flagrantly ill-informed...and, for those watching Fox News, misinformed.

It is very difficult to have a democracy without citizens. It is impossible to be a citizen if you don't make an effort to understand the most basic activities of your government. It is very difficult to thrive in an increasingly competitive world if you're a nation of dodos. http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/01/25/too-dumbtothrive/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+timeblogs%2Fswampland+%28TIME%3A+Swampland%29

AND: Haiti has a long, painful road, and the coverage is fading; Multiple bombings in Iraq, and the debate is ongoing in the Administration as to making peace with elements of the Taliban in Afghanistan

As the Obama administration pours 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan, it has begun grappling with the next great dilemma of this long war: whether to reconcile with the men who sheltered Osama bin Laden and who still have close ties to Al Qaeda.

The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has said he wants to reach out to the leaders of the Taliban, and administration officials acknowledge privately that they are considering the idea. But they warn that the plan is rife with political risk at home and could jeopardize a widely backed effort to lure lower-ranking, more amenable Taliban fighters back into Afghan society.

The debate, still in its early stages, could shape the next phase of America’s engagement in Afghanistan, officials said, and is every bit as complicated as the decision on whether to commit more soldiers, not least because it rekindles memories of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

On Thursday, donor countries, led by the United States, Britain and Japan, are expected to commit $100 million a year to an Afghan fund for reintegrating the foot soldiers of the Taliban with jobs, cash and other inducements. But the allies are less sanguine about dealing with the Taliban’s high command, particularly its leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, and other “hard core” Taliban elements which, the administration bluntly declared last March, were “not reconcilable.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/world/asia/27diplo.html?ref=global-home&pagewanted=print

-R

Bernanke to be Retained? Bernie Sanders, who placed a “hold” on the re-nomination, has picked up some support and momentum, so another term is not locked up.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke faced mounting Senate opposition for another four-year term Friday, even as the White House described President Barack Obama as confident about his confirmation.

Sen. Barbara Boxer of California announced she'll vote against Bernanke, adding another Democrat to the ranks of those arrayed against Bernanke. "It is time for a change — it is time for Main Street to have a champion at the Fed," she said.

Democratic Sens. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Bryon Dorgan of North Dakota also said they'll oppose Bernanke on the Senate floor. Feingold faults Bernanke for missing a high-risk culture at financial companies that led to a near economic meltdown late last year. Dorgan also is upset that the Fed has kept secret the identities of firms that drew emergency loans from the Fed. http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1956067,00.html

Health care: Pass Some “elements” of the Bill? Confusing signals continue; the Democrats remain divided.

"No, that's not true at all. I think what he's saying is let's take a look at this. There are so many elements of this -- tax breaks for small business, extending the life of Medicare, more assistance for seniors with their prescription drugs, a cap on out-of-pocket expenses, help for people with pre-existing conditions -- that are too important to walk away from. What he's saying is, let's get back to it." – David Axelrod http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/week-transcript-obama-adviser-david-axelrod-sens-jim/story?id=9636625

David Plouffe‘s Fightin’ Words Newly designated the coordinator of the Fall Election effort, 2008 campaign manager Plouffe sounds a more aggressive note, recommending that the Administration proceed with the following:

*Pass a meaningful health insurance reform package without delay. Americans' health and our nation's long-term fiscal health depend on it. I know that the short-term politics are bad. It's a good plan that's become a demonized caricature. But politically speaking, if we do not pass it, the GOP will continue attacking the plan as if we did anyway, and voters will have no ability to measure its upside. If we do pass it, dozens of protections and benefits take effect this year. Parents won't have to worry their children will be denied coverage just because they have a preexisting condition. Workers won't have to worry that their coverage will be dropped because they get sick. Seniors will feel relief from prescription costs. Only if the plan becomes law will the American people see that all the scary things Sarah Palin and others have predicted -- such as the so-called death panels -- were baseless. We own the bill and the health-care votes. We need to get some of the upside. (P.S.: Health care is a jobs creator.)

* We need to show that we not just are focused on jobs but also create them. Even without a difficult fiscal situation, the government can have only so much direct impact on job creation, on top of the millions of jobs created by the president's early efforts to restart the economy. There are some terrific ideas that we can implement, from tax credits for small businesses to more incentives for green jobs, but full recovery will happen only when the private sector begins hiring in earnest. That's why Democrats must create a strong foundation for long-term growth by addressing health care, energy and education reform. We must also show real leadership by passing some politically difficult measures to help stabilize the economy in the short term. Voters are always smarter than they are given credit for. We need to make our case on the economy and jobs -- and yes, we can remind voters where Republican policies led us -- and if we do, without apology and with force, it will have impact.

* Make sure voters understand what the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act did for the economy. Rarely does a congressional vote or issue lend itself to this kind of powerful localization. If GOP challengers want to run ads criticizing the recovery act as wasteful, Democratic candidates should lift up the police officers, teachers and construction workers in their state or district, those who are protecting our communities, teaching our children and repairing our roads thanks to the Democrats' leadership. Highlight the small-business owners who have kept their doors open through projects funded by the act.

The recovery act has been stigmatized. We need to paint the real picture, in human terms, of what it meant in 2010. In future elections, it will be clear to all that instead of another Great Depression, Democrats broke the back of the recession with not a single Republican vote in the House. In the long run, this will haunt Republicans, especially since they made the mess. [...]

* No bed-wetting. This will be a tough election for our party and for many Republican incumbents as well. Instead of fearing what may happen, let's prove that we have more than just the brains to govern -- that we have the guts to govern. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/22/AR2010012204216.html

Citizens United: Contrary Read i.e. Corporations are already so powerful/dominant that the decision can’t make it that much worse. Glenn Greenwald

I'm also quite skeptical of the apocalyptic claims about how this decision will radically transform and subvert our democracy by empowering corporate control over the political process. My skepticism is due to one principal fact: I really don't see how things can get much worse in that regard. The reality is that our political institutions are already completely beholden to and controlled by large corporate interests (Dick Durbin: "banks own" the Congress). Corporations find endless ways to circumvent current restrictions -- their armies of PACs, lobbyists, media control, and revolving-door rewards flood Washington and currently ensure their stranglehold -- and while this decision will make things marginally worse, I can't imagine how it could worsen fundamentally. All of the hand-wringing sounds to me like someone expressing serious worry that a new law in North Korea will make the country more tyrannical. There's not much room for our corporatist political system to get more corporatist. Does anyone believe that the ability of corporations to influence our political process was meaningfully limited before yesterday's issuance of this ruling?

I'm even more unpersuaded by the argument -- seen in today's New York Times Editorial -- that this decision will "ensure that Republican candidates will be at an enormous advantage in future elections." What evidence is there for that? Over the past five years, corporate money has poured far more into the coffers of the Democratic Party than the GOP -- and far more into Obama's campaign coffers than McCain's (especially from Wall Street). If anything, unlimited corporate money will be far more likely to strengthen incumbents than either of the two parties (and unlimited union spending, though dwarfed by corporate spending, will obviously benefit Democrats more). Besides, if it were the case that this law restricts the ability of Republicans far more than Democrats to raise money in election cycles, doesn't that rather obviously intensify the First Amendment concerns? http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/01/22/citizens_united/index.html

Afghanistan: Looking for a way out, there’s more talk of living with the Taliban

General Stanley McChrystal, the Nato commander in Afghanistan, has raised the prospect that his troop surge will lead to a negotiated peace with the Taliban.

Gen McChrystal will urge his allies to renew their commitment to his strategy at a conference in London this week.

In a Financial Times interview, he acknowledged growing scepticism about the war, but said he was poised to make “very demonstrably positive” progress this year as a result of the arrival of an extra 30,000 US troops.

By using the reinforcements to create an arc of secure territory stretching from the Taliban’s southern heartlands to Kabul, Gen McChrystal aims to weaken the insurgency to the point where its leaders would accept some form of settlement with Afghanistan’s government.

“As a soldier, my personal feeling is that there’s been enough fighting,” he said. “What I think we do is try to shape conditions which allow people to come to a truly equitable solution to how the Afghan people are governed.”

Asked if he would be content to see Taliban leaders in a future government in Kabul, he said: “I think any Afghans can play a role if they focus on the future, and not the past.” http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/30b0c4d8-091f-11df-ba88-00144feabdc0.html

Meanwhile, their elections are postponed

Afghanistan's election commission announced Sunday that it is postponing scheduled parliamentary elections from May until September, bowing to logistical concerns, worries about potential voting fraud and the likelihood that the U.S. troop "surge" will lead to intensified fighting in parts of the country.

As the troop buildup continues, five more U.S. service members were killed in the past 24 hours in the volatile south of Afghanistan, the focus of the surge and where the Taliban insurgency is most entrenched.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force reported that three Americans were killed Sunday by improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, and that two more Americans died on Saturday, also from roadside bombs.

Their deaths bring to 26 the number of U.S. service members killed in Afghanistan this month, according to the Web site iCasualties.org, which tracks U.S. and coalition fatalities. U.S. military commanders said they expect casualties to continue to grow as the fighting escalates. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/23/AR2010012300672_pf.html

Pakistan: Military Avoids their Taliban There’s been a long-standing agreement to not mess with them, and Pakistan’s intelligence service has long played footsie with the “militants.”

The Pakistani Army’s announcement last week that it planned no new offensive against militants for as long as a year has deeply frustrated senior American military officers, and chipped away at one of the cornerstones of President Obama’s strategy to reverse the Taliban’s gains in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

When Mr. Obama announced his decision in December to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, he and his aides made clear that the chances of success hinged significantly on Pakistan’s willingness to eliminate militants’ havens in its territory, including in the tribal region of North Waziristan. United States officials described the American and NATO surge of troops as a hammer, but they said it required a Pakistani anvil on the other side of the border to prevent the Taliban from retreating to the mountains.

Now that strategy appears imperiled by Pakistan’s latest statement. On Thursday, soon after Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates arrived on a two-day trip to the country, the Pakistani Army’s chief spokesman, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, rebuffed American pressure to step up attacks in North Waziristan. That area is the main base of operations for the Haqqani network, which stages operations against American and Afghan forces in Afghanistan. It is believed to be responsible for many of the attacks on Kabul, including a devastating assault early last week near the presidential palace. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/25/world/asia/25waziristan.html?ref=global-home&pagewanted=print

Iraq War: Illegal, says Chief Legal Brit. However belated, good to have another confirming voice.

Tony Blair's decision to take Britain to war in Iraq was illegal, the Foreign Office's former chief legal adviser will tell the Chilcot inquiry this week.

The Observer has been told that Sir Michael Wood, who was the FO's most senior lawyer, is ready to reveal that, in the run-up to war, he was of the opinion that the conflict would have been unlawful without a second UN resolution. This will provide an explosive backdrop to the former prime minister's appearance before the inquiry on Friday.

The evidence from Wood, who will appear before the committee on Tuesday, will provide the firmest proof to date of the bitter wranglings that divided the government in the countdown to war.

His testimony will come the day before the appearance of Lord Goldsmith, the former attorney general, who is said to have dropped his legal objections days before the invasion, following intense pressure from Blair and his closest advisers, and the US authorities. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/24/iraq-chilcot-inquiry-michael-wood

-R