Why Clinton Pardoned Mark Rich

I never paid much attention to the Mark Rick controversy. All presidents pardon sleaze balls in the waning moments of their presidency, and I always assumed this was just another. The reports that there was monetary tit-for-tat was in keeping with the Clinton reputation.

The Mark Rich pardon is relevant today because of the Eric Holder Attorney General nomination and his role in the pardon. But it turns out there were international political reasons why Rich was pardoned and why the normal process was bypassed in his case: Rich was a key factor in Clinton's desperate attempt to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement by the end of his term.

Joe Conason writes about it at Salon:

But Holder understood that there were deeper reasons why the pardon was likely to be approved, which had nothing to do with the political and charitable contributions of Rich's ex-wife, the Manhattan socialite Denise Rich. The New York Times offered just a hint in a front-page story that appeared shortly after the Holder nomination was announced. Only at the very end did the Times mention the pressure from "the Israelis" that had persuaded Holder not to oppose the pardon...

Winning the pardon was a top priority for Israeli officials because Rich had long been a financial and intelligence asset of the Jewish state, carrying out missions in many hostile countries where he did business.

According to Conason, Holder did not defend his acquiesence (Clinton didn't need Holder's permission) so as not to bring up the foreign policy implications that heavily influenced his decision at the time. This was apparently the Obama transition team's strategy to get Holder through the Senate confirmation hearings relatively "unscathed."

"We don't know him". But these folks do

Opponents will protest that "we don't know anything about Obama," but this is utter nonsense. There has been so much written about him and by him over the years, it's hard to keep a straight face when one hears this "complaint."

Here's an interesting bio from the Guardian. It's vignettes in time by people who knew him well.

Schoolfriends remember his love for comic books, basketball and teasing the girls. A former boss recalls him as a young man running a community project in Chicago. A fellow senator remembers being beaten by him at poker. Gifted student, quiet persuader, charismatic speaker, loyal friend... We speak to the people who knew Barack Obama best, revealing an intimate, often touching, portrait of a man on the brink of greatness.

Read the entire article.

Ready to be Conmmander-in-Chief

This is a great article by Joe Klein in Time Magazine on why Barack Obama is qualified to be Commander-in-Chief:

General David Petraeus deployed overwhelming force when he briefed Barack Obama and two other Senators in Baghdad last July. He knew Obama favored a 16-month timetable for the withdrawal of most U.S. troops from Iraq, and he wanted to make the strongest possible case against it. And so, after he had presented an array of maps and charts and PowerPoint slides describing the current situation on the ground in great detail, Petraeus closed with a vigorous plea for "maximum flexibility" going forward.

Obama had a choice at that moment. He could thank Petraeus for the briefing and promise to take his views "under advisement." Or he could tell Petraeus what he really thought, a potentially contentious course of action — especially with a general not used to being confronted. Obama chose to speak his mind. "You know, if I were in your shoes, I would be making the exact same argument," he began. "Your job is to succeed in Iraq on as favorable terms as we can get. But my job as a potential Commander in Chief is to view your counsel and interests through the prism of our overall national security." Obama talked about the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, the financial costs of the occupation of Iraq, the stress it was putting on the military.

A "spirited" conversation ensued, one person who was in the room told me. "It wasn't a perfunctory recitation of talking points. They were arguing their respective positions, in a respectful way." The other two Senators — Chuck Hagel and Jack Reed — told Petraeus they agreed with Obama. According to both Obama and Petraeus, the meeting — which lasted twice as long as the usual congressional briefing — ended agreeably. Petraeus said he understood that Obama's perspective was, necessarily, going to be more strategic. Obama said that the timetable obviously would have to be flexible. But the Senator from Illinois had laid down his marker: if elected President, he would be in charge.

Read the whole article.

Fired for a magic trick

A substitute teacher at a Florida middle school performed a simple magic trick and was fired for "wizardry."

The Gospel According to Scalia

Ask any "conservative" how they would want Supreme Court vacancies filled, and they'll tell you they want another "Scalia." Antonin Scalia is their model as an "originalist", one who would interpret the law based on the original intent of the Framers of the Constitution.

Scalia was interviewed on "60 Minutes" on April 26, 2008. He's an intelligent man with an impressive background. It's no surprise that he believes that "Roe v. Wade", the landmark decision protecting reproductive rights, should be overturned.

What IS surprising is his view (actually it is the truth because according to him, he is always right) about the status of the so-called "unborn child", so often the focus of the anti-choice crowd. Here is a direct quote from Scalia:

My job is to interpret the Constitution accurately, and indeed there are anti-abortion people who think that the Constitution requires a state to prohibit abortion. They say that the equal protection clause requires that you treat a helpless human being that’s still in the womb the way you treat other human beings.

I think that’s wrong. I think when the Constitution says that “persons are entitled to equal protection of the laws” I think it clearly means walking-around persons. You don’t count pregnant women twice. [emphasis added]

There you go. Scalia, never wrong, clearly says that an unborn fetus is not a person. Case closed.

Shouldn't we be quaking in our boots?

Genn Greenwald at Salon.com makes a great point.

Every now and then, it is worth noting that substantial portions of the right-wing political movement in the United States -- the Pajamas Media/right-wing-blogosphere/Fox News/Michelle Malkin/Rush-Limbaugh-listener strain -- actually believe that Islamists are going to take over the U.S. and impose sharia law on all of us. And then we will have to be Muslims and "our women" will be forced into burkas and there will be no more music or gay bars or churches or blogs. This is an actual fear that they have -- not a theoretical fear but one that is pressing, urgent, at the forefront of their worldview.

And their key political beliefs -- from Iraq to Iran to executive power and surveillance theories at home -- are animated by the belief that all of this is going to happen. The Republican presidential primary is, for much of the "base," a search for who will be the toughest and strongest in protecting us from the Islamic invasion -- a term that is not figurative or symbolic, but literal: the formidable effort by Islamic radicals to invade the U.S. and take over our institutions and dismantle our government and force us to submit to Islamic rule or else be killed.

Those of us of a certain age, as they say, lived through the early years of the cold war, Kruschev saying, "We will bury you" and the Cuban missile crisis obviously survived this threat. And it was truly a threat. "They" had bombers and ICBMs." We had air raid drills and some built bomb shelters, but nobody gave up their civil rights.

Have we raised a generation of cowering wimps who truly believe that the "Islamo-facists" can actually storm our shores and put our women in Burkas?

Open thread

Welcome to Jay, phil, chet, and andy.