More Subpoenas for Doolittle

The Sacramento Bee and the AP (via TPM) are reporting more subpoenas for CA-R Congressman John Doolittle.

Rep. John Doolittle said Thursday that the Justice Department has issued subpoenas to him and five of his staff members seeking records going back 11 years...

In a release issued by Doolittle's office, it said that the Justice Department has assured the five staff members that they are merely witnesses. Left unanswered is the question of what Doolittle's status in the investigation is, and whether he has become a target in the on-going investigation related to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff that would mean an indictment is near.

It's bad timing for Doolittle, who just yesterday was complaining when a watchdog group named him to their list of Most Corrupt Members of Congress.

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It appears Doolittle is going to attempt to make this into a "separation of powers" issue: the mean ol' executive (via the Justice Department) shouldn't have the ability to kick around Congresscritters.

Now, granted, considering the way things have been going, it's not a bad line to take. God help us if the Unitary Executive ever decided to use its powers to go after random Senators the way Rove appears to have gone after the former Governor of Alabama...

"These efforts raise serious constitutional issues going to the very core of our separation of powers created by the Founding Fathers," [Doolittle attorney David] Barger said.

The Constitution prohibits the executive branch from using its law enforcement powers to interfere with legislative business. Barger said he and Doolittle would "be vigilant" to ensure Congress' independence is "vigorously protected." Any court challenge would go before a federal judge, but the documents would be sealed.

It's possible that the subpoenas may be too much of a fishing expedition, reportedly asking for nearly all legislative documents for the past 11 years. The AP notes that,

in the case of LA-D Congressman Jefferson, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held that FBI agents trampled on congressional independence during the raid. Even though they took only documents relevant to their bribery investigation, agents also reviewed legislative documents, which the court said was unconstitutional.

Ironically, it was just last week that the Sacramento Bee reported on a possible motive for Doolittle sticking it out and going for another term: if he's reelected, it bumps his pension by $16,000 a year.

The Roseville Republican is under pressure to retire from Congress. The pressure is coming from members of his own party who think that his embroilment in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal has rendered him unelectable in his Republican-dominated district.

Doolittle has responded by branding some of his harshest Republican critics as "weasels." He has said he is not quitting when the current term ends in December.

"I will not step aside," Doolittle said in a defiant telephone news conference earlier this month. "I am running again. Period."

But with Doolittle up to his eyeballs in corruption charges, it's going to be tough for him to beat Charlie Brown this time around...

Nobody is Funnier Than Wavy Gravy

(One from the archives... hard to believe this is almost 20 years ago, from the 1988 campaign against Bush the First)
Wavy Gravy is a soldier of the clowns.

He was recently at a large demonstration at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in California, a place where they do much nuclear stuff. He was dressed as a giant bunny, and carried a sign saying “Mutant Bunnies for Peace - Save the Humans.”

And he wore a human foot on a chain around his waist. For luck.

“Now I assure you that police do not want to be photographed busting no mutant bunny,” he notes genially. “It messes with their macho image.”

So he had practically walked in the gate before he was detained.

“So they grab me, and it was then that I whipped out - my ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card.” He pauses. “Laminated.”

He has the impeccable timing of a years-practiced comic. “It’s very important to laminate it first if you want it to be effective.”

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Well, the cops looked it over, then called in their superior, who called in his superior. Ultimately, the ultimate superior was called in. He scrutinized the laminated card, as all the other police waited breathlessly.

“Well,” said the cop honcho, “this thing’s only good in Contra Costa County....”

“But see,” notes Gravy, “what it did was smash any of that yada-yada energy and it lightened everybody up. I mean, who wants to be blown up by nuclear holocaust? Not even the police. It’s a question of survival.”

Wavy calls his sense of humor his greatest survival weapon. But he also claims he’s not really all that funny.

“It’s the situations that are funny,” he says. “All I do is point.”

As he talks, he is putting on his whiteface - his secret weapon. You see, when the clown puts on his whiteface, he is not putting on a particular face. He is putting on NO face, a blank face; a mirror. He puts on my face, and your face, the face of each person he... entertains. Touches.

“Look,” he is saying, nonverbally, “see, this is you.” We see ourselves, being silly, being vulnerable, and its OK.

With laughter, he breaches our daily defenses and strikes at our hearts with his cream-pie rapier. And we think. And we see. And we understand.

But it requires a delicate balance. Too much whipped cream, and you have nothing but the shallow Barnum and Bailey, clowns without purpose chasing their empty tails, our laughter a hollow practice at the letting down of walls without the consummation of illumination.

And too much of the rapier will wound, injure, cause the hitherto willing victims to recoil in pain, shut the doors, turn from the wounding messenger and spurn - or fail to attend - the message. Lenny Bruce learned this, and it killed him.

Before that, before Bruce unleashed his acid wit on an America that had not yet been Norman Leared, Saturday Night Lived, and MTV’d, Lenny Bruce was Wavy Gravy’s manager.

It is sad, for Bruce could have learned from Wavy, the living master, the consummate balancer: he who walks the line between the hippies and the politicians, between the hog-farms and the police stations.

“I always get arrested as a clown,” he says. “And you know why? You Know WHY?” he says it slowly, like a teacher explaining an important lesson to his students, like a minister imparting a parable of wisdom: “BECAUSE CLOWNS ARE SAFE.”

There have been a lot of long roads for Wavy. His resume reads like... well, like “A certified psychedelic relic,” as he puts it.

He was Born Hugh Romney on May 15, 1936 in East Greenbush, right outside of Albany, NY. He lived in Albany for almost two decades.

Then, “A hundred million years later,” Wavy Gravy was born: He was one of Ken Kesey’s original Merry Pranksters; he M.C.’d at Woodstock; he took a busload of hippies from Paris to Nepal.

And he got involved in politics. His street-theater group worked for Lyndon Johnson’s Campaign in 1964, “because Goldwater was going to start dropping atom bombs.” But when Johnson escalated the war in Vietnam, Wavy lost faith in politicians.

In ‘68 he ran a pig for President: Pigassus. “She was the first female black-and-white candidate for president,” he recalls proudly.

Wavy believes that in any year, “none of the above” should be an option on the ballot. After all, even in Chile they get to vote ‘no’.

“In the old days,” he recalls, “we used to register and write-in for Nobody. The concept was ‘Write in, right on, write off.’ This time we’re telling people to keep the spirit alive in their heart, but register and vote to lick Bush.”

And to help keep the spirit alive, Nobody is running again.

Wavy has hit the road on his fourth quadrennial “Nobody for President” tour, which will bring him to the Iron Horse in
Northhampton tonight. Wavy would never run for President himself, although he points out that with his years of campaigning, he’s at least as qualified as Dan Quail.

“I just work for Nobody. I’m Nobody’s fool. This is the fourth time that Nobody’s run. We were going to run a Piano in ‘88. But when Jesse Jackson threw in the towel... we have these plastic talking teeth that we use for Nobody’s speeches, and they started clicking of their own volition. It was scary - all the hairs on my arm leaped to attention. And I knew it was time.”

He points out that when you look at the issues, Nobody comes out looking magnificent:

• First of all, Nobody totally understands the economy.
  
• Nobody’s freed the hostages, Nobody knows what to do with radioactive waste, Nobody’s lowered your taxes, Nobody’s in Washington right now working for me and you.
  
• Nobody keeps all his campaign promises.
  
• Nobody always tells the truth.
  
• In fact - Nobody’s perfect!
  
• And Nobody works for nothing.
  
• Nobody bakes apple pie better than mom.
  
• Nobody knows you when you’re down and out.

“Look,” says Wavy, a sardonic smile on his lined and lumpy face. “I firmly believe that Nobody should have that much power. I want Nobody to run my life. And if Nobody wins - Nobody loses....”

Which just goes to show that Nobody is funnier than Wavy Gravy.

Into Africa

(Crossposted at EcoFabulous)
One of the best ways to help indigenous people help themselves and the environment is to go there. For example, when you visit Campi ya Kanzi, at the foot of magnificent Mount Kilimanjaro, you'll get the trip of a lifetime as well as help the Maasai people of Kenya and their local wildlife.

Located on 400 square miles between Tsavo and Chyulu National Parks in the heart of Maasai country, the camp offers gourmet-quality meals, wildlife tracking with Maasai guides, and scenic flights around Kilimanjaro.

Love Kenyan coffee? Imagine having it brought to you fresh-brewed first thing in the morning... or sipping it by the campfire as the sun sets. This is the cradle of the first humans, and as you dine under the stars, you can't help but feel the draw of our deep ancestral roots.

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And by going there you help create a better life for the next generations of Maasai people. Not only does the camp provide employment, it also supports the Maasai Foundation, which provides a range of health and educational services. For instance, after years of hunting, lions are staging a comeback - good for the ecology, but bad for semi-nomadic herders like the Maasai; foundation supporter Ed Norton has teamed with jeweler Cartier to raise funds to compensate the community for livestock killed by lions, so the tribesmen won't retaliate against the big cats.

The camp combines charcoal-fired cookery with solar power and hot water heaters - a wonderful marriage of traditional life and modern sensibilities. Not as luxurious as Branson's African oasis, but a pretty awesome and honest way to experience Africa. While you are checking on your flights, don't forget to offset your travel!

Hyping al Qaeda in Iraq, The Anbar Awakening and the Surge

The administration is trotting out a shiny new narrative on Iraq: Petraus's Anbar Awakening has brought around the Sunni Tribes, who are now our allies in a battle against the wicked excesses of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

But what if everything we've heard about AQI is as overblown as the original scare-stories about Saddam's WMD?

Andrew Tilghman, a former Iraq correspondent for the Stars and Stripes newspaper, has an article that just hit the Washington monthly that takes an in-depth look at just how big a movement AQI really is – and the answer isn’t pretty. Particularly since the Anbar Awakening strategy is based around arming Sunnis to fight AQI, it’s pretty important to know just how much AQI there is... and what we’re really arming those tribal leaders for. If AQI is "is a microscopic terrorist organization," then what will the Sunnis do with all those guns?

Never mind the fog of war... Never mind the incredible moving casualty figures... This is midnight in the coal mine, and we really have no clue about what’s going on here...

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Tilghman notes that "In July... the president gave a speech about Iraq that mentioned al-Qaeda ninety-five times." So what's the real scoop? The biggest claim by the military is that AQI is around 15% of the insurgency, but after looking at all the evidence....

The most persuasive estimate I've heard comes from Malcolm Nance, the author of The Terrorists of Iraq and a twenty-year intelligence veteran and Arabic speaker who has worked with military and intelligence units tracking al-Qaeda inside Iraq. He believes AQI includes about 850 full-time fighters, comprising 2 percent to 5 percent of the Sunni insurgency. "Al-Qaeda in Iraq," according to Nance, "is a microscopic terrorist organization."

One gauge of responsibility is the claims AQI itself makes on its various websites. They're hardly shy:

AQI took credit for 10 percent of attacks on Iraqi security forces and Shiite militias (forty-three out of 439 attacks), and less than 4 percent of attacks on U.S. troops (seventeen out of 357).

Okay, so maybe they don't have a high percentage of the total attacks. But what about the spectacular attacks? The admin has been quick to blame AQI for such huge, destructive bombings as those in Samara or Tal Afar. But according to Tilghman, the pattern has been to step in and blame AQI, even though the evidence is either scanty, or points in other directions:

...it remains unclear whether the original Samara bombing was itself the work of AQI. The group never took credit for the attack... The man who the military believe orchestrated the bombing, an Iraqi named Haitham al-Badri, was both a Samara native and a former high-ranking government official under Saddam Hussein... Samara was the heart of Saddam's power base, where former regime fighters keep tight control over the insurgency.

Same with Tal Afar. The administration blamed that on AQI, but when arrests were made:

...when the U.S. military issued a press release about the arrests, there was no mention of an al-Qaeda connection. The suspects were never formally charged, and nearly six months later neither the U.S. military nor Iraqi police are certain of the source of the attacks. In recent public statements, the military has backed off its former allegations that al-Qaeda was responsible, instead asserting... that "the tactics used in this attack are consistent with al-Qaeda."

Everyone has an interest in promoting the Al Qaeda myth: The Shiite government can avoid looking incompetent in the face of Sunni attacks by blaming the AQI bogeyman; Sunnis can claim "it’s not us, it’s AQI"; reporters hoping for page 1 stories are inclined to hype AQI, since it's easier to report than a confusing, muddled "sectarian violence" narrative; and of course there’s Bush.

This scenario has become common. After a strike, the military rushes to point the finger at al-Qaeda, even when the actual evidence remains hazy and an alternative explanation—raw hatred between local Sunnis and Shiites—might fit the circumstances just as well. The press blasts such dubious conclusions back to American citizens and policy makers in Washington, and the incidents get tallied and quantified in official reports, cited by the military in briefings in Baghdad. The White House then takes the reports and crafts sound bites depicting AQI as the number one threat to peace and stability in Iraq.

So what does all this mean?

We're watching the meme-shifting in Washington, from the failure of the benchmarks to the amazing success of Petraus's brilliant gambit - win over the Sunnis to the war on Al Qaeda! Look, the surge is working!

But if AQI is a rump movement, we're watching yet another short-term fix that will screw us in the long term.

Consider the track record:

* Our ally is the Maliki government. But he was put in power by the Sadrists.
* The Sadrists are our enemy. Why? They want US troop out. We spent more than a year at war with one of the government’s biggest supports.
* We’re also at war with the other side: the Sunni insurgency.
* Next, we declare rhetorical war on the Iranians and their allies. That’s the other half of the government. Smooth move.
* That leaves us with just the Kurds - and our allies the Turks are practically at war with them. Smooth move.
* Fast forward to this year and the Anbar Awakening, in which we arm the Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar, the same Sunni leaders who were our enemies not long ago... So we're fighting our friends, and arming our enemies. Smooooth move.

While the U.S. military has recently touted "news" that Sunni insurgents have turned against the al-Qaeda terrorists in Anbar Province, there is little evidence of actual clashes between these two groups. Sunni insurgents in Anbar have largely ceased attacks on Americans, but some observers suggest that this development has less to do with vanquishing AQI than with the fact that U.S. troops now routinely deliver cash-filled duffle bags to tribal sheiks serving as "lead contractors" on "reconstruction projects."

So we’re attempting to defuse a civil war... by arming and training the fighters on the anti-government side. Smooth move.

At least they’re going after AQI, right? But if Tilghman is right, there isn’t much AQI for them to go after. 850 fighters? That seems like a good deal for the Sunnis – "Sure, help us arm and train a force of thousands, and we’ll go after this annoying upstart runt of a movement for you. And when we’re done... well, we’ll see."

Truly smooth move on their part.

But this leaves just one more question:

If the Kurds are our allies, and the Shiites are our allies (the Sadrists have sensibly ordered their fighters to stand down until after the surge), and now the Sunnis are our allies, and AQI is actually a tiny faction – just who the hell have we been fighting? And where are all these casualties coming from?

And how the hell do we ‘win’ on a battlefield as incoherent as this?

Michael Zacchea, a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Reserves who was deployed to Iraq, said he was sometimes skeptical of upper-level analysis emphasizing al-Qaeda in Iraq rather than the insurgency's local roots. "It's very, very frustrating for everyone involved who is trying to do the right thing," he said. "That's not how anyone learned to play the game when we were officers coming up the ranks, and we were taught to provide clear battlefield analysis."