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Washington dumps its bad news on the press on Fridays; reporters are theoretically on the way to the shore or the mountains and won’t pay much attention. Scott Shane and Eric Lichtblau stayed around to write up the results of Steven J Hatfill, M.D. vs Attorney General John Ashcroft, U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, et al. According to their story in The New York Times today, the five-year-old lawsuit was settled yesterday, with the Department of Justice to pay $2.825 million in cash plus a 20-year annuity yielding $150,000 a year.

In the 2002 anthrax scare, Hatfill was publicly listed as a “person of interest” by then-Attorney General Ashcroft, and was followed by FBI investigators and the press for months. The Times article asserted,

After Dr. Hatfill came under suspicion in the anthrax case in 2002, an F.B.I. surveillance team began following him everywhere, and a small motorcade sometimes trailed his car around Washington.

In May 2003, an F.B.I. surveillance car ran over Dr. Hatfill’s foot in Georgetown as he approached the car to take the driver’s picture. He was given a ticket for “walking to create a hazard” and was fined $5.

According to the complaint, federal employees “have ruined Dr. Hatfill’s current and future employment prospects by repeatedly leaking anonymous, defamatory, and erroneous information about his character and criminal culpability to the news media, expecting that it would be widely disseminated.” The text of the 2003 suit provides detailed allegations of numerous civil rights violations by the government in the investigation of Dr. Hatfill.

There have been costs for the media also. Toni Locy, formerly of USA Today, still faces a contempt order for refusing to reveal her source in the case. Hatfill’s suit against Vanity Fair and Reader’s Digest was reportedly settled last year. And he is appealing the dismissal of a separate suit against Nicholas D Kristof and The New York Times.

A Justice Department statement yesterday admitted no liability. Representative Rush Holt (D-NJ) commented,

As today’s settlement announcement confirms, this case was botched from the very beginning… The F.B.I. did a poor job of collecting evidence, and then inappropriately focused on one individual as a suspect for too long, developing an erroneous theory of the case that has led to this very expensive dead end.

Dr. Hatfill’s attorneys summarized: “We can only hope that the individuals and institutions involved are sufficiently chastened by this episode to deter similar destruction of private citizens in the future — and that we will all read anonymously sourced news reports with a great deal more skepticism.” I strongly support these hopes. There is plenty of criticism to go around for the handling of this investigation, both for the government and for the press. If any good can come from it, it will be the potential of the incident to become a cautionary tale for our institutions, provoking more careful (and lawful) behavior….. for economic reasons, if not for ethical ones.

I just heard a bit of Senator McCain’s speech at a GM assembly plant in Warren, Ohio this morning. He referred to his earlier proposal for a summer “gas tax holiday.” In mid-April he was challenged about his proposal’s potential effectiveness, and he replied,

Let’s have some straight talk, it’s not a huge amount of money. But it might be nice to be able to save a few bucks and maybe buy something else the next time that they have to fill up their gas tank and say, “You know I’m going to be able to afford that little expense now.” A little psychological boost. That’s what I think it would help.

This morning he continued that theme, explaining that his “gas tax holiday” proposal wasn’t meant to be a way to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. But he was talking with a truck driver the other day, and “Wouldn’t it be nice,” he said “if we could give him a break” from the 24 1/2 cent per gallon tax on diesel? The truck driver agreed that it would be nice.

Hey, it would be nice if someone offered me a job earning, say, $100,000 per year. It would be nice if the air conditioning were working in my car, too. Heck, it would be nice if I’d win the lottery tomorrow.

Here are a couple of questions I’d like to ask Senator McCain’s friendly truck driver.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you felt confident that the bridge you’re driving over won’t fall down and there isn’t a chuck hole around that curve that’s going to blow one of your tires? If given a choice between making sure maintenance repairs are made to roads and bridges this year and saving 24 1/2 cents per gallon for a couple of months which would you choose?

Wouldn’t it be nice if the oil companies would pass the 24 1/2 cent per gallon savings on to you if the federal government cuts out the gas tax this summer? Do you believe that would happen, or would the oil companies keep that extra 24 1/2 cents and then pass continued increases on to you?

I wonder how that truck driver would answer today. I wonder whether this “feel good” strategy will be effective in generating votes. And as long as I’m wishing,

Wouldn’t it be nice if someone would display some leadership and develop some responsible energy policies and lead the public to support them and Congess to approve them…. policies not locked into the vested interests of either the oil lobby or the environmental lobby…. policies that lay out a realistic path to energy independence… policies that don’t reward one small segment of society at the expense of the vast majority… But let’s have a little straight talk; it would be naive to think we can wish our problems away. Eh?

In Congressional testimony yesterday, Katty Pien, Brand Director for Häagen-Dazs Ice Cream, asserted that such flavors as Vanilla Swiss Almond, Rocky Road, Strawberry and Cherry are endangered by the mysterious disappearance of millions of honeybees. Recently dubbed “Colony Collapse Disorder” (CCD), this problem was first identified three years ago, when many hives were abandoned by their denizens. Pien continued,

While CCD has not yet led to higher prices, we fear that’s a likely result if the crisis remains unabated. Farmers and pollinators will either pass along their skyrocketing costs, or choose to exit a field that is less profitable, thereby reducing the supply of pollinated ingredients to companies such as Häagen-Dazs.

About one-third of the our diet is from foods which must be pollinated by insects. Honeybees are needed for some of the tastiest, such as: “apples, nuts, avocados, soybeans, asparagus, broccoli, celery, squash and cucumbers. And lots of the really sweet and tart stuff, too, including citrus fruit, peaches, kiwi, cherries, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries, cantaloupe and other melons.”
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Interesting. (hat tip: Matt Drudge)

An era is coming to an end; Bill Gates is retiring from Microsoft this week. Bill and I are of a similar age and both lean toward geekiness. So although everything else about our lives are wildly dissimilar, I feel as if I can empathize with him sometimes. Whatever you think of him, he is one of those few people who have had an outsized impact on the world we live in today.

I use some Microsoft products; almost all of us do. There have been years when I’ve passionately hated Microsoft, even while channeling tens of thousands of dollars to them as an IT Manager. But the fact that Bill Gates was capable of writing a memo like this one from 2003 is why I always grudgingly liked the guy. Read it. You’ll feel better!

From: Bill Gates
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:05 AM
To: Jim Allchin
Cc: Chris Jones (WINDOWS); Bharat Shah (NT); Joe Peterson; Will Poole; Brian Valentine; Anoop Gupta (RESEARCH)
Subject: Windows Usability Systematic degradation flame

I am quite disappointed at how Windows Usability has been going backwards and the program management groups don’t drive usability issues.

Let me give you my experience from yesterday.

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Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in the early 1950s, before I was born. As a teenager I was intrigued by the case of these infamous convicted “atomic spies,” the only American civilians executed for espionage during the Cold War. More information has been revealed over time, including some by the Russians in the 1990s. But questions linger in a story of intrigue, American’s early nuclear program, passionate ideology and larger-than-life figures.

On July 22 a court hearing will consider the release of grand jury testimony from the famous trial nearly 60 years ago, prosecuted by Roy Cohn, later an assistant to Senator Joseph McCarthy and ultimately a prominent New York lawyer. In a surprise decision, government lawyers indicated this week that they are willing to open to publishing the testimony of 35 of the 45 witnesses. They will withhold only testimony from the 10 witnesses who are still living and unwilling to approve such a release at this time.

What we learn about this case will not be a matter of much national concern, although the case was similar to the “O.J.” trial in the national media of its time. But it is still of interest to many, including those who wish to continue to argue either the case for or against the Rosenbergs. And I’m sure there are many like me, with insatiable curiosity about what really happened and how it came to pass.

Steve Clemons reported last night that the Bush administration will ask Congress today to remove North Korea from the “terrorist watch list.” According to his post at The Washington Note, Vice President Cheney’s office was not in support of the move. Clemons reports the recommendation is

a major victory for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Deputy Secretary John Negroponte, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and others — but the real winner is Department of State Asst. Secretary for East Asia Affairs Christopher Hill — who has been under almost constant assault from John Bolton and others opposed to deal-making with North Korea.

Just two weeks ago, Clemons wrote “Cheney Winning the Inside Battles Again” in a post at TPM. He asserted,

David Addington, Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, is winning on virtually every battle he is fighting — from not moving forward on new legal protocols that would be more internationally palatable on combat detainee rights to shelving the Law of the Seas Treaty ratification.

Eight months earlier in a piece at Salon called “Why Bush won’t attack Iran,” Clemons wrote that Bush was favoring the influence of the team at State over the OVP and neo-conservative pressure for bombing Iran.

So does Steve Clemons know what he’s talking about? Has the U.S. Executive Branch Foreign Policy become a frighteningly unpredictable tug-of-war between two power centers in Washington? We’ll get more insight next year when out-of-work administration insiders begin writing their memoirs. But in the meantime, recent back-and-forth on Iran may be illustrative.

I’ve written a few posts recently on the building drumbeat for war with Iran. Over the weekend the administration was publicly quieter, but the rhetoric continued from supporters:

• Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and New York Times columnist, suggested on Fox News Sunday that President Bush might be more likely to bomb Iran if he thinks that Senator Obama is going to win the election.  A post at Think Progress also cites earlier examples of this thinking.
• John Bolton, former controversial U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, followed up on Kristol’s argument on the same program.  He suggested “I think if they [Israel] are to do anything, the most likely period is after our elections and before the inauguration of the next President… I don’t think you’d hear the Arab states say this publicly, but they would be delighted if the United States or Israel destroyed the Iranian nuclear weapons capability.”
• “Yes, Iran Wants a Bomb,” said Marty Peretz at The New Republican on Monday, asserting, “The fact is that almost no one believes that the National Intelligence Estimate of Iran’s nuclear program.”
• On Monday the European Union imposed new sanctions on Iran, “including freezing assets of the country’s biggest bank,” Bank Melli.

So what’s this discordant note? “Toehold in Tehran?” At the Washington Post Fred Hiatt told us on Monday,

Senior officials at the State Department and beyond are mulling a proposal to open an interest section in Tehran, similar to the one the United States has operated in Havana since 1977. This would fall short of full diplomatic recognition, but it would open a channel to the Iranian people and, maybe, eventually, to the regime as well.

Iran responded quickly, indicating that “in principle, Iranian officials will consider requests they receive through formal channels.”

Whichever side you take in these debates on policy toward Iran, it would be difficult to argue that our Foreign Policy apparatus is united on how to project U.S. power in the world. For myself, I continue to hope that Secretary Rice’s faction has the power to keep the neocons away from President Bush for seven more months.

Yesterday the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released Part II of their U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, a major study of the religious beliefs of Americans. (summary, full)  Part I of the study was released in February, and focused on Americans’ religious affiliations (report), while Part II looks at social and political views of the faith community.

The new 276-page report affirms that religion is “very important” in the lives of most Americans.  And it asserts that American believers are less dogmatic than we might have supposed: “A strong majority of those who are affiliated with a religion, including majorities of nearly every religious tradition, do not believe their religion is the only way to salvation.”  Highlighting this shift John Green, political scientist and senior fellow with the Pew Forum said, “You no longer have an alignment of affiliation, belief and behavior. Instead we find complexity, and diversity not only between religious communities but within them, as well. We find a high level of comfort with this diversity.”

In 2004 Barack Obama was running for Senator from Illinois against Republican candidate Alan Keyes.  During this campaign Keyes, a former Presidential Candidate, reportedly said “Jesus Christ would not vote for Obama,” due to votes Obama cast in the Illinois Senate in 2001 against anti-abortion legislation. At the time, Obama responded with what he called “a typical liberal response… that we live in a pluralistic society, that I can’t impose my own religious views on another, that I was running to be the U.S. Senator of Illinois and not the Minister of Illinois.” Keyes ultimately lost the election, receiving just 27% of the vote.

Two years later, Obama reflected on the incident in the keynote address to a Call to Renewal conference (text, audio, video1,2,3,4,5), “I had to take Mr. Keyes seriously,” Obama said, “for he claimed to speak for my religion, and my God. He claimed knowledge of certain truths… Keyes’s implicit accusation that I was not a true Christian nagged at me.” Continuing on with the theme of religion in politics, Obama asserted:

For some time now, there has been plenty of talk among pundits and pollsters that the political divide in this country has fallen sharply along religious lines. Indeed, the single biggest “gap” in party affiliation among white Americans today is not between men and women, or those who reside in so-called Red States and those who reside in Blue, but between those who attend church regularly and those who don’t.

Conservative leaders have been all too happy to exploit this gap, consistently reminding evangelical Christians that Democrats disrespect their values and dislike their Church, while suggesting to the rest of the country that religious Americans care only about issues like abortion and gay marriage; school prayer and intelligent design.

Obama spoke at length about his own religious experiences, and tied it to an assertion that Democrats need to think more deeply about the role of religion in American society. He concludes that Americans are looking for a more sophisticated discussion of religion and values in the public square, rejecting the over-simplifications of focusing only on issues such as the abortion and homosexuality debates.

James Dobson, will reportedly accuse Obama of “distorting Christianity” in his radio address this morning. Today’s broadcast highlights segments of Obama’s 2006 Call To Renewal speech according to an advance copy of Dobson’s remarks, sent to the Associated Press. One of Evangelical Christianity’s most influential leaders, Dobson says of Obama, “I think he’s deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology… He is dragging biblical understanding through the gutter.”

Having read the text of Obama’s 2006 speech and parts of yesterday’s Pew study, I’d suggest they echo similar themes. Of course I haven’t heard Dobson’s remarks, as they haven’t been broadcast yet. But based on the previews, I wonder if Dobson may be less effective at influencing voters than he’s been in the past. If Pew and Obama are correct that Americans are moving toward more respect for diversity of belief, it may be Dobson’s worldview that is ultimately rejected.

Last Friday the Russian Foreign Minister urged the U.S. to delay its controversial deployment of a missile defense shield in Europe. According to the Moscow Times, Sergei Lavrov, spoke in Moscow of both the missile defense system and NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, asserting “We propose taking a break… This means that all these projects must stay where they are. … They must be frozen.”

Today, Time reports Lavrov may get his wish; “U.S. plans for a missile defense system in Europe could be delayed well beyond the 2013 target because Defense Department experts say the interceptors have not been adequately tested.”

This multi-billion dollar project has been one of President Bush’s top military priorities. Arguing that the system is necessary to protect against hypothetical missiles from Iran down the line, the administration has reportedly assured Congress that it has been tested and will work. But, last October the Defense Department’s internal testing oversight arm, the Operational Test and Evaluation Directorate, gave Congress a report which was critical of claims about previous test results. This report was not publicly released at the time, but today’s news is based on a copy reportedly obtained by the Associated Press. The oversight experts claimed at least three additional tests are required, a process which will require several years.

Given the Bush administration’s lack of credibility, not to mention serious pushback from not only Russia but also from Poland (where the missiles are to be based), I think most Americans will be content to see decisions on this expensive initiative delayed for the next administration to consider. As I’ve thought it was an ill-considered idea from the beginning, it’s definitely the best news I’ve heard today!

According to former U.S. Rep. Dick Armey, FreedomWorks chairman, the provision requiring payment-card reporting to the IRS would have an

astonishing reach, and it was slipped into the [Senate Housing] bill [last] week. Not only does it affect nearly every credit card transaction in America, such as Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express, but the bill specifically targets payment systems like eBay’s PayPal, Amazon, and Google Checkout that are used by many small online businesses. The privacy implications for America’s small businesses are breathtaking.

Rarely have I agreed with Rep. Armey, and my concerns are focused more on privacy and data security concerns for individuals than his. But my initial reaction is that this has frighteningly large ramifications and we need to get it publicized before it gets swept into law under the cover of foreclosure relief.

Sometimes called the “e-bay reporting provision,” this legislation has a goal of improving collection of taxes on income underreported by small business, estimated to cost the government as much as $150 billion dollars annually. Apparently it was inserted into pending bills in both branches of Congress last week.
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Democrats in Indiana held their nominating convention this past weekend, cheering their Gubernatorial Candidate Jill Long Thompson enthusiastically when she lambasted Governor Mitch Daniels for privatizing the Toll Road.

As governor, I’ll stop the Daniels obsession with privatization,” Long Thompson said. “Selling a toll road at a fire-sale price to a foreign consortium that doubles the tolls — What was he thinking? You don’t need a degree in business to recognize a bad deal like that.

Governor Daniels has been nothing if not controversial during his 4-year tenure. Arriving back in Indiana in 2003 after a 2-year stint as head of President Bush’s Office of Management and Budget, Daniels brought his pro-business bent with him. Among his more debated moves:

• Privatization of Toll Road (75-year lease to Australian consortium)
• Changing state to Daylight Savings Time, without referendum (It’s dark at 8 a.m. in the fall, and light at 9:30 at night now….. sigh….)
• Privatization of social services to most needy, including Food Stamps & Medicaid
• Raising Sales Tax
• Only reluctantly supporting Property Tax reform after near-revolt by taxpayers in 2007

U.S Representative Long Thompson will be Indiana’s first female governor if she wins this fall. Although she prevailed a hotly-contested primary, she is not well known statewide. So Conventional Wisdom views the race as primarily a referendum on Governor Daniels first term. Long Thompson would like to define it as a race against Bush-Daniels:

The unified voice of the 1.2 million Hoosiers who cast a Democratic ballot for change on May 6 speaks volumes. Hoosiers want a new direction for our state. It is time to bring an end to the Bush-Daniels era in Indiana.

CW in Washington has suggested that Indiana is not in play in the fall Presidential race. I think they’re misreading the mood here. If Dems can successfully tie Daniels with President Bush, Senator Obama will win Indiana.

Last Wednesday, the Kennedy Center announced George Carlin as its 2008 Mark Twain Prize winner. In a November ceremony, Carlin was to be the 11th recipient of this annual honor for American humor, first awarded in 1998 to Richard Pryor. If I were ranking the influence of American comedians, I would have put him higher on the list than 11th… certainly before Lorne Michaels, Steve Martin and Neil Simon… arguably before Billy Crystal, Carl Reiner and Lily Tomlin.

Then again, my favorite George Carlin routine wasn’t on the list of his greatest hits, so my ranking of comedy probably doesn’t reflect general popularity. Here’s “Fear of Germs:” (video)

George Carlin died of a heart attack yesterday in Santa Monica, California, at the age of 71. Love him or hate him (and millions did both) he had a profound influence on American entertainment over the past 40 years. And, unlike many comedians today, he was truly funny.

Iran’s Press TV reports today that 61% of Iranians are obese. According to pediatric gastroenterologist Ali Akbar Sayari, as in “other parts of the world, the obesity trend has doubled in the country in the past decade.” Sounds familiar….

Yesterday Morgan Tsvangirai assured his supporters “no one has the right to cancel an election,” although his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party seemed divided on whether to continue on to this week’s planned runoff. Incumbent President Robert Mugabe has repeatedly declared that the MDC will never rule Zimbabwe, and has orchestrated a brutal campaign of murder, torture, rape and intimidation against his opposition since Tsvangirai won a plurality in the Presidential election twelve weeks ago. But today Tsvangirai dropped out of the race, announcing, “We in the MDC have resolved that we will no longer participate in this violent, illegitimate sham of an election process.”

Making his announcement at a press conference in Harare after supporters were attacked en route to a planned pre-election rally, Tsvangirai called on the international community to intervene to prevent genocide. So far, only South Africa appears to have much leverage on Mugabe’s regime. On Saturday, two mediators were sent by South African’s President Thabo Mbeki to help defuse the situation. BBC correspondent Peter Biles suggests,

this was possibly a last effort to persuade Mr Mugabe to cancel the election run-off, and to persuade both sides to begin negotiations on a government of national unity. It is widely accepted that in the present circumstances, with serious political violence, the election will not resolve Zimbabwe’s problems…

But despite increasing unrest in South Africa stemming from the flood of 1 to 3 million Zimbabwean immigrants, Mbeke’s government has not aggressively pursued international solutions for this crisis, referring to it as “strictly a domestic problem” at the United Nations in April, according to the Boston Globe.

The runoff campaign has seen as many as 70 murders, frequent beatings and the repeated arrests of Presidential Candidate Tsvangirai, Tendai Biti (secy-general of MDC), and others. Even U.S. and British diplomats were caught up in the violence, as a group was reportedly assaulted/arrested/detained (depending on the report) on June 6. Watchers worry that Mugabe will continue to take revenge against his oppostion, sparking more violence and increasing the refugee movement toward neighboring countries.

Update: The Dutch Foreign Ministry announced this morning (06/23/08) that Tsvangirai has sought refuge in their embassy in Harare, Zimbabwe. An opposition spokesman reported that some 60 people, including women and children, were arrested in a raid on opposition headquarters earlier today.

Update 2: The UN Security Council and the US State Department have finally weighed in with criticism President Mugabe’s behavior and the Zimbabwe violence. The Independent published a feature today on Mugabe’s early years, excerpted from ‘Dinner with Mugabe’, by Heidi Holland. (06/24/08)

MSNBC is on for background noise this morning… An hour or so ago, some “expert” was on (I didn’t catch his name) talking about a hypothetical Israeli attack on a nuclear weapons development target in Iran. (I need a clip of this guy!)

In his opinion…. Iran would behave like Syria and probably wouldn’t say anything at all. They want nuclear weapons, he said. So they’d just continue doing what they’re doing and ignore it.

Maybe. I’d give that, say, a 0.005% probability…. right up there with “They’ll welcome us as liberators!”

Since we’re looking at hypothetical scenarios here, try this one. The U.S. is developing something that violates the rules of an international treaty. Russia bombs the laboratory where it is being developed. Does the U.S.:

1. Ignore it?  We’ll just build a new laboratory and pretend it never happened.  After a couple of weeks, we’ll file a complaint with the United Nations.
2. React a little? We’ll shoot for a proportional response, perhaps building a international coalition first.  Then, we’ll find something Russia’s doing that’s controversial (say… pumping oil), and bomb it.
3. Overreact?  We’ll immediately do whatever we can to wipe Russia off the face of the earth.

Syria is a small, poor country with a population with about 19 milliion and an failing economy; it didn’t have the ability to do much overtly, even if it wanted to. Israel has bombed it before and has beaten it before in a couple of wars. It was apparently caught with its pants down, in a gamble that hadn’t been a public issue.

Iran is the 18th largest country in the world with a population of 70 million and a well-developed economy. Both the U.S. and Israel have been dissing Iran off and on for almost 30 years, and have ratcheted up the rhetoric since the U.S. invasion of Iraq. There’s been plenty of warning, so there’s been plenty of time (and resources) to prepare a response, against both Israel and the U.S.

Another note…. last winter leaks came out of the Pentagon indicating we needed to develop a new nuclear bunker-busting bomb in order to “take out” Iran’s underground development facilities. IIRC they were asking Congress for some supplemental funding for this weapon. If that was true, we’d have to supply such a weapon to Israel to use in their theoretical attack…. so it would be impossible for us to pretend we have clean hands. Further, if it’s a nuclear attack, doesn’t that ratchet up the odds that Iran might respond????

Where do they get these experts????

Josh Patashnik at TNR finds today that Vice President Cheney “has apparently prevailed in his fight to declare himself part of neither the executive nor the legislative branch, and thus not required to open his office’s records to public scrutiny.” I agree it is “astonishing that we have no idea who and how many people Cheney employs, or what information his office has classified,” but I hope he is wrong in (apparently) believing that there will ultimately be no accountability for Cheney.

At The Hill yesterday evening, Kevin Bogardus and Rebecca Brown reported that Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has given up his fight to subpoena records from Cheney’s office, conceding “He has managed to stonewall everyone.” In “Cheney gets last laugh” they outline some of the history of this particular fight between Congress and the OVP. Cheney has argued that the Vice President is not fully a member of either the the legislative or executive branch of government, and is not subject to oversight from anyone other than President Bush. Although previous VPs have argued some similar points, Cheney has pushed the issue further than any have before.

Whether or not we ever are able to figure out what Vice President Cheney has been up to for the past 8 years, this isn’t an acceptable situation for the future. I don’t believe the American people will support the idea of an office which does not have the same accountability and transparency standards as required from the rest of the government. I hope Congress will take a look at the issues raised by Cheney’s arguments, and makes some attempt to resolve them. But, like Josh Patashnik, I will probably be disappointed.

Prices at Chinese gasoline and diesel pumps were raised 16.7% today, in a move which may help to reduce oil demand. As reported by Al Jazeera, the new price is still some 25% below the retail price in the U.S., but it moves the price closer to reflecting increases in crude oil prices.

China is responsible for about 40% of the past 5 years’ global growth in oil demand. So today’s price increase elicited positive responses from some economic analysts. Others cautioned that the move is more political than substantial, intended to curry favor with the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. Chinese consumers, who have been experiencing significant inflation in other areas, were not pleased with the unexpected hike.

Interesting….

Gallup has been polling Americans’ confidence in our institutions for 35 years. Never has the annual poll reported a result as low as Congress’s confidence level this year: 12%. Congress edged out HMOs (13%) for the bottom position in the field of 16 institutions.

The military led the list at a 71% confidence level, as it has every year but one since 1988. Small business was second (60%), but large business was near the bottom of the heap at 20%. Since 2004, every one of the institutions experienced a decline in confidence. The Presidency (-26), banks (-21) and Congress (-18) saw the largest 4-year declines.

Interesting stuff…..

It sounds to me as if England’s bureaucracy is not superior to ours in evaluating the threats posed by potential visitors. The Daily Telegraph informs us today that Martha Stewart has been denied an entry visa to Britain. Stewart was planning a speech at the Royal Academy, along with several business meetings in the next few days.

The UK Border Agency said it would not comment on individual cases. A spokesman added: “We continue to oppose the entry to the UK of individuals where we believe their presence in the United Kingdom is not conducive to the public good or where they have been found guilty of serious criminal offences abroad.”

My guess is that this decision will be more harmful to the UK’s “public good” than Martha Stewart would be… but it may make for some really funny cartoons! (hat tip: Memeorandum)

As expected, the U.S. House of Representatives has passed a compromise update to the FISA bill (293-129), and the Senate is expected to follow suit next week. There are political imperatives on both sides to get this vote behind them; if there weren’t it would have been impossible to reach such a compromise in a Presidential Election year.

From what I’ve gathered during the debates over FISA over the past year, this bill does what what was initially most critical; it updates FISA to encompass new technologies developed since the writing of the original bill. Further it does so before August, when surveillance activities authorized under the Protect America Act of 2007 will begin to expire.

But I am saddened by this bill’s handling of the issue of so-called “Telecom Immunity”, probably the most contentious portion of the legislation. For all intents and purposes, the revised FISA grants immunity from prosecution to the telecommunications companies which may or may not have illegally surveilled American citizens, from September 11, 2001 through January 1, 2007. There’s a mechanism in the bill that suggesting there will be legitimate judicial review of the immunity decisions, but it is an transparent subterfuge, understood by all of those voting today and developed to allow Democratic legislators some cover.

I am disappointed in this outcome because I would like to see the results of a more thorough investigation of intelligence collection by our government during that five-year period. Granting immunity from prosecution to the telecom companies closes off one of the most likely means of ever finding out what really happened, and seriously reduces the possibility that there will ever be any accountability for any behavior by government or corporate entities which may have been illegal.

“What happened” matters to individuals who may have been illegally surveilled; but this bill closes down one of the few opportunities for anyone to prove in the courts that they have been harmed. “What happened” matters to those concerned about our Constitution, as serious accusations of Constitutional violations may never be resolved. “What happened” should matter to all of us, as we all have a stake in ensuring that our government and our businesses operate under the rule of law; if we cannot determine whether people have violated our laws and hold them accountable for their actions, it erodes future accountability, sending the message that we do not take our laws seriously.

I feel as if our politicians have let us down on this issue. And I wonder if Congress understands how strongly many Americans feel about accountability. I wish Senator Obama had taken a leadership position on it this week; I suppose he may be forced to address it with respect to the Senate vote next week. Although Speaker Pelosi has stated that she was not in support of the Telecom Immunity portion of this legislation, I can imagine ways she could have handled this differently over the past nine months so that the Blue Dog Democrats would not have been in a position to force this through. This bill’s handling and outcome lend credence to the suggestions that full investigation of the history of post-9/11 intelligence collection on American citizens would reflect that the leadership of Congress, on both sides of the aisle, would not appear to have clean hands.