Enjoy your day. This is an Open Thread.

The AP reports:

Former Sen. Jesse Helms, who built a career along the fault lines of racial politics and battled liberals, Communists and the occasional fellow Republican during 30 conservative years in Congress, died on the Fourth of July. He was 86.

We do not speak ill of the dead at TalkLeft, at least on the day of the death. Keep that in mind if you feel a need to comment.

RIP, Jesse Helms.

Yesterday, Barack Obama issued a defense of his support for the FISA Capitulation bill. I want to associate myself with the response of Glenn Greenwald:

The new FISA bill that Obama supports vests new categories of warrantless eavesdropping powers in the President (.pdf), and allows the Government, for the first time, to tap physically into U.S. telecommunications networks inside our country with no individual warrant requirement. To claim that this new bill creates "an independent monitor [to] watch the watchers to prevent abuses and to protect the civil liberties of the American people" is truly misleading, since the new FISA bill actually does the opposite -- it frees the Government from exactly that monitoring in all sorts of broad categories.

I also want to associate myself with the words of Justice Louis Brandeis on the subject of liberty:

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The victims this time were Rachel Maddow AND Hillary Clinton. The context was Obama's "inartful" use of the word "refine" regarding his Iraq policy. TChris covered that controversy. Maddow was arguing the Obama argument and Joe Scarborough was not happy about Maddow's laughing as a reaction to Joe's commentary. The result was yet another episode of sexism at NBC:

Yet more guffaws from Maddow.

MADDOW: You're so wrong, I can't even hold it together. You're so wrong.

SCARBOROUGH: You might support Obama but you've got the Clinton cackle down, Rachel. I'm proud of ya.

(Emphasis supplied.) Maddow has been silent and cowardly on the issue of sexism and misogyny at NBC and in general, so you might be tempted to feel some schadenfreude. Resist it. Sexism is wrong whenever it occurs and whomever it is directed at. NBC should suspend Scarborough for this blatant bout of sexism.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

Some morning maniac music for the 4th of July from Woodstock:

First, Jimi Hendrix's Star Spangled Banner and then the Jefferson Airplane signing Volunteers (of America.)

This is an open thread.

I've come to look for America...
They've all come to look for America.

Simon and Garfunkle version here.

One more, Bon Jovi, Miss Fourth of July

This is an open thread. Song suggestions for tomorrow (4th of July) welcome.

Funny headline:

Target: Barack Obama. Strategy: What Day Is It?

The McCain campaign's shotgun attack strategy would be more effective if the campaign had any ammunition with which to load the gun. Today's attack:

On Thursday McCain aides and the Republican National Committee pounced on a comment by Mr. Obama that he would be willing to “refine” his long-held plan to withdraw all combat troops from Iraq within his first 16 months in office.

Because an inflexible unwillingness to respond to changing conditions, even at risk of further endangering lives, is principled? Obama's response:

"We're going to try this again. Apparently I wasn't clear enough this morning on my position with respect to the war in Iraq. I have said throughout this campaign that this war was ill-conceived, that it was a strategic blunder and that it needs to come to an end."

The Illinois senator added, "I have also said that I would be deliberate and careful in how we got out, that we would bring our troops home at a pace of one to two brigades per month and that at that pace we would have our combat troops out in 16 months. That position has not changed."

Do you have a superior withdrawal plan, Senator McCain? Oh, that's right ....

Time for an open thread. Anyone around?

Here's Obama reaching out to the evangelical right. The Associated Press reports:

In an interview this week with "Relevant," a Christian magazine, Obama said prohibitions on late-term abortions must contain "a strict, well defined exception for the health of the mother."

Obama then added: "Now, I don't think that 'mental distress' qualifies as the health of the mother. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term."

Obama made no such distinction last year:

Last year, after the Supreme Court upheld a federal ban on late-term abortions, Obama said he "strongly disagreed" with the ruling because it "dramatically departs form previous precedents safeguarding the health of pregnant women."

NARAL leaders ought to feel like idiots. [More...]

The official position of NARAL Pro-Choice America, the abortion rights group that endorsed Obama in May, states: "A health exception must also account for the mental health problems that may occur in pregnancy. Severe fetal anomalies, for example, can exact a tremendous emotional toll on a pregnant woman and her family."

A leading anti-choice group says Obama either is being disingenous or he's or ignorant. (Note they don't mention the third possibility which is that he's on their side):

David N. O'Steen, the executive director of National Right to Life, said Obama's remarks to the magazine "are either quite disingenuous or they reflect that Obama does not know what he is talking about."

"You cannot believe that abortion should not be allowed for mental health reasons and support Roe v Wade," O'Steen said.

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Nihilists! F##k me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.

-Walter Sobchak

At corrente, I wrote a guest post on developing a blogosphere ethos. I won't repeat it here, but I want to put a question to supporters of the Clinton/Edwards vision of a mandate for universal health care. Suppose for a moment that Barack Obama changed his position (aka flip flopped) on the issue and embraced mandates. Would you consider that a good thing?

A corollary to the question, what if he changed his position due to political pressure as opposed to a good faith change of mind - would that make a difference? To understand why I ask these questions, read my post at corrente.

Speaking for me only

Link:

I want to take this opportunity to speak directly to those of you who oppose my decision to support the FISA compromise.

This was not an easy call for me. I know that the FISA bill that passed the House is far from perfect. I wouldn't have drafted the legislation like this, and it does not resolve all of the concerns that we have about President Bush's abuse of executive power. It grants retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that may have violated the law by cooperating with the Bush Administration's program of warrantless wiretapping. This potentially weakens the deterrent effect of the law and removes an important tool for the American people to demand accountability for past abuses. That's why I support striking Title II from the bill, and will work with Chris Dodd, Jeff Bingaman and others in an effort to remove this provision in the Senate. [MORE . . . ]

But I also believe that the compromise bill is far better than the Protect America Act that I voted against last year. The exclusivity provision makes it clear to any President or telecommunications company that no law supersedes the authority of the FISA court. In a dangerous world, government must have the authority to collect the intelligence we need to protect the American people. But in a free society, that authority cannot be unlimited. As I've said many times, an independent monitor must watch the watchers to prevent abuses and to protect the civil liberties of the American people. This compromise law assures that the FISA court has that responsibility.

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The Drug Enforcement Administration turns 35 this week. Here is a little history :

It was created by executive order of President Richard Nixon and went live on July 1 1973.

At its outset, the DEA had 1,470 Special Agents and a budget of less than $75 million. Furthermore, in 1974, the DEA had 43 foreign offices in 31 countries. Today, the DEA has 5,235 Special Agents, a budget of more than $2.3 billion and 86 foreign offices in 62 countries.

Since 1973, drug arrests have tripled: [more...]

According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, we did go from 628,000 drug law arrests in 1973 to almost 1.9 million arrests in 2006 – that’s about triple the number of arrests.

What have we gotton from the 35 year, $31 billion effort?

Bigger budgets, more drugs. More arrests, more deaths. More seizures, more potency. More agents, more users. For their thirty-fifth anniversary, perhaps they should change their name to the Drug Encouragement Administration.

If you'd like the other side, here's the DEA's view of their history. As to the early years, go here.

[Memo to DEA: I didn't want to steal your bandwidth so I put the photo on Flickr. If that's wrong, just tell me and I'll take it down. You don't need to come with a search warrant.]

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Philip Alston, a special investigator with the U.N.'s Human Rights Council, has some harsh words for the State of Alabama's "refusal to even discuss the possibility that the state's capital punishment system is in need of improvement."

"(Alabama) officials seem strikingly indifferent to the risk of executing innocent people and have a range of standard responses, most of which are characterized by a refusal to engage with the facts," Alston wrote in the report, released Monday.

The Birmingham News agrees: [more ...]

State leaders' stubborn refusal to "engage with the facts" on this issue should not, alas, come as a bitter shock. For years, Alabama's elected officials have refused to address obvious problems with the death penalty, despite a growing body of evidence that the criminal justice system is not as infallible as many assumed it to be. DNA exonerations alone have called into question the reliability of everything from eyewitnesses and jailhouse snitches to confessions. ...

Alabama, which has the highest per-capita rate of executions, desperately needs to ensure that the ultimate punishment is imposed fairly and accurately. But that's hard to do when our leaders either won't admit there's a problem or just don't care.

This is one of the few times that something at least slightly positive can be said about the Texas approach to criminal justice:

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Apparently the U.S. isn't alone in shamefully detaining suspected immigration policy violators.

Latin American leaders on Tuesday voiced their "deep rejection" of the immigration policy adopted recently by the European Union (EU).

Presidents of the Common Market of the South (Mercosur) "member states and associate states reject any attempt to criminalize the irregular migration and the adoption of restrictive immigration policies, in particular against the most vulnerable sectors of society, namely, women and children," said a statement at issued Mercosur summit.

The EU policy goes into effect in 2010 and allows authorities to detain improperly or undocumented immigrants for up to 18 months before deporting them.[More...]

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner considered the new measure unacceptable which "takes us back to times of xenophobia that we thought were long behind us."

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez compared the policy to the barrier being built by the United States along its southern border with Mexico, a "shameful" move as he called it. Perhaps Europeans want to follow the example of the United States and build a wall in the Atlantic Ocean," Chavez said.

A wall in the Atlantic Ocean...what a great image to show the absurdity of border fences.

Matt Yglesias writes today:

I don't think anyone can seriously dispute that the current President of the United States violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act . . . . I wasn't alive in 1973-74 pwhen Nixon was forced to resign]. I have a vague sense that at that time America's elites operated with some sense of conscience and dignity, and it was taken for granted even among Republican leaders that one couldn't just break the law. . . . I don't really know what changed, or why David Broder and other gatekeepers of elite consensus can't see that something's gone wrong here, but I'm not happy about it.

Nicely put. But then he writes in his VERY NEXT POST:

[W]whatever disappointments one has with Obama (and there are sure to be more to come) -- he unquestionably represents a leftward shift relative to the sort of national candidates the Democratic Party has been putting forward in recent cycles.

I'm not sure what went wrong between Yglesias' writing of those two posts, but his lament about Broder sounds empty when he excuses Obama for ignoring the very same FISA law breaking and supporting the FISA capitulation. Because that is what Yglesias was doing there - rationalizing for Obama's FISA flip flop and capitulation.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

As a result of a copyright infringement lawsuit between Google and Viacom,

Google must divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched any video on YouTube, a US court has ruled.

The viewing log, which will be handed to Viacom, contains the log-in ID of users, the computer IP address (online identifier) and video clip details.

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As TalkLeft noted here and here, Ronnie White's death in a jail cell, within a day of his arrest for running over a police officer, is more than suspicious. Under the circumstances, this editorial in The Washington Post is spot on:

IT IS UNSURPRISING but still infuriating that Prince George's County correctional officers have refused to cooperate with investigators looking into the death of inmate Ronnie L. White. These officers, who swore to serve the cause of justice, are preventing investigators from uncovering the circumstances of the death of Mr. White, who was strangled, according to a preliminary autopsy report.

The questions awaiting an answer are many: [more ...]

The details of Mr. White's death are as hazy now as they were before the preliminary autopsy. It is unclear why, if Mr. White was strangled, there were no signs of a struggle, such as bruising on his neck. It is also unclear how Mr. White was strangled in a maximum-security jail cell that was under surveillance by multiple officers. And why, considering the fact that he was accused of killing a county police officer, wasn't Mr. White transferred to a jail outside Prince George's County?

It's one thing for correctional officers to exercise their Fifth Amendment right to remain silent if they're worried that they might respond to questioning with self-incriminating statements. It's another for the county's correctional officers union to criticize efforts to conduct an investigation, and arguably to impede that investigation by making a blanket recommendation to officers not to cooperate, whether or not they have reason to fear self-incrimination.

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Sen. Barack Obama today wrote a letter to stating he oppposed a ban on gay marriage.

In a letter to San Francisco's Alice B. Toklas Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Democratic Club, the presumptive presidential nominee said he opposed "the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution" and similar efforts in other states.

Good on Obama. He's not afraid to change his mind.

Obama is skating gingerly past his previous position on the issue.

The Illinois senator has said repeatedly that he believes marriage should be only between man and a woman. When the California Supreme Court overturned the state's ban on same-sex marriage in May, Obama released a carefully nuanced statement saying he respected the court's decision, believed states should make their own decisions on marriage and "will continue to fight for civil unions as president."

We're behind Obama on this one, all the way.

15 hostages, including 3 Americans have been rescued from FARC in Colombia.

French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt, three US nationals and 11 other hostages were rescued from Marxist FARC rebels Wednesday, freed from years in captivity by a daring Colombian military raid.

Betancourt, who was captured in 2002, and the three Americans held since 2003, were rescued along with 11 Colombian soldiers in dramatic fashion when the Colombian military infiltrated a rebel jungle camp and removed them by helicopter.

A plane carrying the Americans, Defense Department Contractors, is about to land in Texas.

Sen. John McCain was in Colombia today and said he was told about the rescue while there. He said it was a coincidence.