House of Cards

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably heard something about 'sub-prime' mortgages recently. Something bad. Two weeks ago on March 13, the stock market had one of its' hiccups that have caused so much excitement of late. Unlike previous recent drops, problems in the sub-prime mortgage market were blamed. Not to worry though! The Market Illuminati have checked the situation out, and it's not going to affect the rest of the mortgage market, let alone the broader economy. So, why am I boring you with this?

Because they are wrong. The rumblings that are now becoming apparent are only the precursors of a much larger disaster. I've seen the narrative on the housing market change steadily in the last three years, and never more so than in the last few weeks. All the changes have been in one direction: towards agreement with the contrarian economic voices that I have been following for the last four years. These sources were warning about the problems of the housing market three years ago. The mainstream economic and financial authorities pooh-poohed the nay-sayers at first, but at this point they have come around to about 90% agreement with the doomsayers. The last points of contention seem to be over how wide the impact of the housing bubble pop will be. So far my sources have been pretty good, and they are saying that it's going to wipe out a lot of money (in the form of depreciating home prices) and cut the legs out from under the economy. If that has piqued your interest, then read the rest for the grim details. Otherwise, here's the essential point:

Many loans were made to people who should never have been allowed to borrow, using exotic variable rate loans whose monthly payments can (and will) increase dramatically over time. The viability of these was predicated on quickly rising real estate prices. Those increases were achieved, in part, because of the generationally low interest rates we have had. The (predictable) resulting bubble generated a tremendous amount of wealth, which found it's way into the economy in a variety of ways: withdrawing money via HELOC's, construction (jobs and materials), and production of all the stuff required to fill those homes with stuff. As our economy has been living by the mortgage markets' sword, so it will die by it. When the market crashes construction will slow (meaning job losses), there will be less extraction of money from houses which will cause people to spend less across the board. The economy retracts, potentially resulting in a recession (never mind being stuck with a house that's worth less than you bought it for).

So, the real question is, will there be a crash? IANAE (I Am Not An Economist) but here goes...

What is the problem, right now?

Sub-prime lenders (institutions that primarily write loans to people who have a higher chance of defaulting on their loan) are starting to fail. In the last few weeks I have watched the number of lenders that have either ceased any new lending or gone bankrupt outright, grow from two dozen to three dozen to over forty. That may not sound like a lot, but one of them is the second largest sub-prime lender in the country, New Century Financial. The lender's share value has plummeted over 90% in the last few weeks, it has ceased lending, and is likely to go bankrupt under the weight of its financial woes along with possible criminal inquiries. The drop in the market last week breached a psychological barrier and the sub-prime market moved from being an uncertain source of concern to being associated with terms like carnage and bloodbath. You never want to hear a Federal Reserve Governor use the term tsunami in relation to future mortgage defaults...

But what's really going on?

Lenders are having to buy back their loans. 'Til now lenders would make loans then bundle those loans up and sell them to other financial institutions. This allowed the lenders to move them off their books and free up the money to lend to new consumers. The sales came with an important clause though. If the bundled loans 'performed poorly', the lender would be forced to buy the loans back. Loans have been doing precisely that. (As an aside, it's important to unpack the term 'perform poorly'. This means the homeowner has defaulted on the loan. It represents a very real, very personal tragedy for some poor soul every time this happens. Some of them gambled knowingly, and I have little pity for them, but some really didn't know what they were getting into)

The macroeconomic problem is that the failures have been occurring at a higher rate, and more quickly, than was expected. So the financial institutions that bought the loans have exercised their right and demanded the lender buy back the bad loans. Essentially the lenders gambled that the rate and speed at which these loans would go bad wouldn't exceed a certain level. Presumably they kept cash reserves to cover that theoretical estimation (although who knows). In any event, they are losing the gamble and don't have the money to meet their actual financial obligations. Here's a map (click on the image in the article) that visually demonstrates the potential breadth and range of the risk due to bad loans.

Ok, Why is this happening?

A variety of things contributed to this mess. For starters, the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates to 40 year lows (around 1.0% as I recall). Doing this was guaranteed to spur a real estate boom. You would have to be mad not to try to get a mortgage at those rates. A few percentage points can really make a difference on a large, long term loan. The extreme attractiveness of real estate led to speculation. This is the spark that started the positive feedback loop that allowed the bubble to be blown. Once it got going, the incentive to get in to the market increased, which led to the relaxation of lending standards and riskier loan vehicles. A much higher percentage of loans originated in the last 5 years are to sub-prime (riskier) borrowers. In addition, a large percentage of the recent loans have been non-traditional in their structure: ARMs, interest-only (principle is flat), negative amortization (the principle GROWS - yikes!) and so on. This is a brief list of a variety of loan vehicles that are new, or under greater utilization, and which are bad ideas.

So, we find ourselves in a situation where there is tremendous incentive to get into a market where the underlying condition, interest rates, are at a level that many buyers, realtors, mortgage brokers, and various financiers have never seen. There's no historical perspective, but there is greed. As a result, it's Off To The Races! Everybody gets a loan! If you find you can't afford a normal loan (at which point the lender should have said, "Good day"), well, they'll come up with one you can afford! The trick with these is that many of them get A LOT more expensive after a few years. In many cases the mortgage brokers were less than scrupulous in explaining the terms of these loans. Other financial institutions got into the act by figuring out a way to get the regulators to sign off on bundling and selling the loans. This gets pretty esoteric, but the idea is to sell the risk to investors. This distributes the risk over a wider area and presumably makes them safer. Since the original institution no longer owns the loans, they are free to loan again. This acts as multiplier on the credit supply. Despite the buy back clauses stipulated, most lenders do not keep cash reserves to cover theses obligations (otherwise what would be the point?)

This all acts as a huge circular pump. People rush into the housing market, credit (money) flows into the economy. People borrow money against their homes and cycle it back into the economy, often in the form of home improvements that raise the value of their house. The increased demand for houses leads to a construction boom, which boosts the economy (a significant percentage of the jobs created in the last few years has been in housing related industries - realtors, financing, construction). Those newly purchased houses often have to be filled with things, so that acts as a boost to the economy as well. Speculators jump in, flipping houses every few years. All the pressure is upward (the very psychology of a boom is self sustaining) as a huge amount of money flows into the housing market (incidentally, this money had to come from somewhere, and the somewhere is China) and from there into the economy.

But it is all predicated on risk. The pump, as in most bubbles, works, until it doesn't. At some point the American consumer is tapped out and can't take on any more debt. Lest there be any doubt about it, the American consumer has gorged on debt, mortgage debt in particular, at unprecedented levels in the last few years. With saving levels negative, he is in fact running beyond capacity. Top heavy, running headlong, and with no cushion to land on, it won't take much to trip him up badly. That's what we are starting to see now. With the housing valuations the result of a bubble, when it pops all that added value can, and will, just disappear.

The fact we had an ahistoric boom should have been no surprise. If the Federal Reserve was caught off guard, after lowering rates so precipitously, then their incompetence borders on malfeasance. It's implausible they didn't see this coming, but that's another story...

Where does this leave us?

Right Now: The Changing Narrative

It's tough to keep up with what the conventional wisdom is. Bloggers I read were warning about housing for the past 3 years. In that time I have seen the conventional wisdom progress as follows:
1) No, there's no bubble
2) Ok, we have some localized bubbles
3) Ok, we have a bubble, but it will land softly rather than pop and crash
4) Erm, well there are some problems with sub-prime, but we still don't think that it will get out of hand
5) Yeah, there were some excesses in the sub-prime market and it's going to be ugly there, but it won't spill over into the rest of the mortgage market, a general credit crunch, or the economy as a whole.

This last shift has occurred in the last two to four weeks I would say. I prefer my sources. They were up front about not knowing when the whole house of cards would collapse, but such things are notoriously difficult to forecast. Still, just because the future is opaque that doesn't invalidate the identification of a bad situation.

This brings us to...

The Future

This isn't going to be contained to sub-prime. The problem isn't just people who shouldn't have gotten loans. It's the way many of the loans themselves are structured. Nouriel Roubini thinks that, rather than the much-touted 6%, garbage loans make up 50% of the recent market. Before the end of 2007 700 million to 1 billion dollars in ARM loans will adjust to higher rates, rates that will likely push many of these into default. We'll have to wait til 2009 most likely before all the ARMs and other funky loans originated in this cycle work their way through the system and reset. Those higher levels will force people into default.

Just as the cycle worked as a positive feedback loop to pump the market up, there is a similar loop that will suck it dry. The market slows, houses cease to appreciate, or appreciate enough (this is already happening). Various loans get more expensive for a range of reasons and people default and turn the property over to the bank, or sell at a loss themselves. Banks have to sell repossessed houses at reduced prices to recoup any of their investment. Prices become depressed and the market is flooded with inventory. Lending standards tighten (meaning some people can't get a loan), which reduces demand for housing. The combination of these two factors hits construction (and housing related industries in general), slowing the economy. A slowing economy causes people to tighten their belts, further dropping demand. As this cycle picks up, it puts the pinch on people who were on the cusp of making it. Some of them will cease to make it, reinforcing the cycle. The cycle stops when it has worked the giant bubble of spun money through it's system, leaving little at the other end. It can take a particularly long time, as houses once built, tend to stick around for a while, giving a long lifespan to the depressed real estate market and construction.

How will we know if this is bearing out? Well, housing starts are a leading indicator of problems in the construction industry. That is, the industry could still be doing fine because it is still processing houses started many months ago (houses take between 6 months and a year to complete). If the number of new housing starts drops it indicates a weakening of the market. Some of the luxury home builders have had to restate earnings due to taking losses on canceled starts (sometimes having to write off plots of land purchased at high prices). Employment stats in the industry are also an indicator, but one that lags, as illegal immigrant labor and 'cash' (under the table) workers, who aren't reported in the first place, are laid of first. If there is a problem there it should become apparent in the next few months when the industry typically goes through a hiring boom.

And, of course, there will be the ongoing news of bankruptcies and failures of lenders, spreading through the sub-prime sector and bleeding over into the rest of the mortgage market. Delinquent loans will increase, prices will slide further. It's going to happen, the question is how extensive and deep the effects will be.

Final Thought

As I said at the top, I'm not an economist. I don't like the look of things though, so my personal feeling is that right now is NOT the time to buy a house. I'm certainly not looking to do so myself. If I were thinking of selling in any near timeframe (a few years), I'd try to do it now. If you expect to live for a long time in the house then the pressure to sell or not buy is reduced somewhat. There is a risk, in holding off buying, that interest rates will rise. You'll have to figure out which is more palatable - low rates on larger loans or higher rates on a more realistic loan.

In the event that this all seems terribly unrealistic or overblown, take our situation right now. My wife and I bought our house somewhat less than two years ago. We are fiscally very conservative - we got a fixed rate 30 year loan. We borrowed far less than the banks were willing to loan us and we put down 20 percent. While we expected to own the house for 4 or 5 years with the understanding that we could reasonably expect a modest return in that timeframe, we are in the position of having to sell now. We aren't in any of the trouble that I have been describing, but appreciation in Seattle has slowed. As things stand, after various realtor fees and so forth are factored in, we will be lucky to break even on the house. It's highly possible we will incur a small loss. You can imagine what situation speculators, who were looking to flip their house after a few years in order to crawl out from under a loan that is about to set to a much higher payment, are in.


Credit where Credit is due

I can't take credit for this being original. I've just collated it, really. The following bloggers are excellent resources on this subject, and economics in general. I owe whatever education I have about economics to their writings over the last few years:

Bonddad
Ian Welsh at the Agonist (he blogs on LOTS of topics)
Stirling Newberry, another multi-disciplinarian at the Agonist. Dailykos has an archive of his writings here.

These are resources I found more recently:
Mike Shedlock
Calculated Risk
Nouriel Roubini

P.S. Since I wrote this, a week ago:

1) The number of lenders that have gone bust or stopped lending has climbed from 41 to 44. A month ago it was 25. Three months ago no one was keeping track of this.
2) Mixed messages on housing: starts are up but building permits are plummeting
3) Credit standards are tightening
4) Sub-prime problems seem to be leaking into the next category, Alt-A loans

And so on... A mixed-to-bad bag of news so far.

A Republican Win Validates Conservatism. A Democratic Win Validates...Conservatism.

So, yeah, I'm pretty pleased about how things went last Tuesday. Certainly, compared to where we were at about 7:00 PM PST, things improved significantly. It wasn't really looking like the Democrats would take the Senate and their lead in the House was much slimmer.

Given all that, you'd think maybe I could find something positive to say this week? Hmmm, well let's start in that vein. I think, of the many odious individuals who lost re-election, I'm particularly glad to see that Richard Pombo of California will have to find a new job. I suspect that most people who become politically engaged have an issue or two which are trump cards for them. For me, for a long time, it was the environment and little else that garnered my vote. While I was vaguely aware of other issues, I cared about the environment at a visceral level. Fortunately for me, the obvious choice on environmental issues, the Democrats, were in line with my other less strongly held beliefs. I now have other concerns that are just as significant (foreign policy, fiscal issues), but our air, water and earth will always hold a special place in my heart.

Pombo was particularly dreadful about the environment. He wanted to sell off national parks to help close budget gaps, he has been a huge proponent of drastically reducing royalties that energy companies have to pay to the US Gov't. to drill on US land, and he was 13th on the list of most corrupt Congressman on a Washington watchdog group. He was defeated on Tuesday and that's a good thing.

Such happy events aside, and as nice as it feels to be on the winning side, electorally, for once, the reality is that there are still huge structural problems for Democrats to overcome.

Exhibit A is the emerging spin that Democrats only won because they ran conservative Democrats and thus the election was not a rejection of Conservatism, but a validation of it. This plays into a broader concept generally, which is that most any given thing will benefit the Republicans and harm the Democrats. Some of this is due to active spinning on the part of the GOP, and at some level that's to be understood as simply good tactics on their part. Always present things in the best light possible. In the months before the election the Republicans were virtually taunting the Democrats to bring the war up. The conventional wisdom, as conveyed by the major newspapers and networks, was that this would harm the Democrats. The Republicans, taking advantage of the cultural bias towards them on National Security, would be able to hammer the Democrats mercilessly if they tried to engage on the Iraq war. It didn't turn out that way. Sometimes the GOP believes this, as I think was the case on the Iraq war, and some times they are trying to call the bluff of the Democrats. An example of the later was on the NSA wiretapping scandal, in which they publicly goaded the Democrats on, encouraging them to bring it up in the media and push for investigations. 'Go ahead, make my day' comes to mind. Privately though they were working furiously to crush any sort of real investigation.

This bias works to the GOP's advantage though because the media has internalized it so deeply. The Republicans hardly have to work at it; often the media will take up the theme on their own or with only the slightest prompting. Essentially the image is of the Democrats as incompetent extremists, one that is extended to all realms. Sometimes the incompetence is played up, other times the extremism. For the later witness the President, in the waning days of the campaign, claiming that a Democratic victory at the polls would be a victory for the terrorists. I have to say, I find it infuriating to be conflated with terrorists.

In any event, if you scan the newspapers or news outlet websites, all the discussion is about how this wasn't so much a win for Democrats as people voting against Republicans. Particularly, Democrats only won because they ran conservative candidates. Now, there is a kernel of truth to this. Democrats DID run some conservative candidates, and certainly the electorate was deeply dissatisfied with their Republican congressional reps. But the media is taking a pretty superficial look at the polling results and the candidates, through the lens I mentioned above, and constructing an analysis almost completely from whole cloth.

If Conservative Democrats are going to beat Insufficiently Conservative Republicans, then it stands to reason that, one, we are unlikely to defeat any supremely conservative Republicans. Richard Pombo should not have been defeated by that logic. Corruption may have been an issue in his case, but he is not alone in being an arch-conservative defeated. Well, you say, corruption was a problem for many Republicans. Perhaps that's the case, but if you have to invoke it as a caveat to your main thesis frequently, then maybe the thesis is wrong, and the caveat is more central, hmmm?

Similarly, it would stand to reason that we could defeat moderate Republicans by running conservative Democrats. I'll let Tom Schaller lay out for you what happened on that front:

As for the goofy talk about the election actually being a victory for conservatism, the fact remains that it was disproportionately GOP moderates (particularly from the Northeast and Midwest) who lost Tuesday, and to progressives who ran to their left. Using the most recent National Journal data, 224 House Republicans can be ranked from most liberal (#1) to most conservative (#224).

What do we find from Tuesday?

• The most liberal Republican to lose was ranked #1 -- Jim Leach of Iowa; the most conservative was Texan Tom DeLay, ranked #213.
• Overall, of the 28 flipped GOPers, more than half -- 16 -- were from the most liberal third of the caucus (1-75); 7 were from that middle third (76-150); and just 5 were from the most conservative third (151-224).
• Most striking is the fact that 10 of the 28 most liberal Republicans in the GOP House caucus lost, including five of the dozen most liberal Republicans: #1 Leach; #3 Nancy Johnson; #6 NY’s Sherwood Boehlert’s vacated seat; #7 CT’s Rob Simmons ; and #12 NH’s Charlie Bass.

In short, the liberal wing of the GOP suffered a disproportionate share of losses compared to the moderate and/or conservative wings. Since the Democrats who beat them ran uniformly to the left of their opponents, the notion that conservative Democrats knocked off a set of mostly liberal Republicans defies simple logic. It’s not that there aren’t exceptions like Pombo and Chocola and Ryun who also lost -- it’s that they are the exceptions. Put another way, for every Chris Chocola there were two Charlie Basses.

The last three he mentions, Pombo, Chocola and Ryun, were quite conservative. The Senate side is a little less clear, simply because the numbers are far fewer. Lincoln Chaffee, a moderate Republican who arguably would have been very much at home in the Democratic party, and was well liked by his constituency, was voted out. I have seen an article to the effect that, despite being highly regarded, he was voted out as a protest against Republican domination. This happened up and down the ticket.

Looking at some of the other Senate candidates, particularly Tester and Webb, the CW is that they are conservatives. If you look at their own statements though, that doesn't necessarily bear out. Tester is against gun control, but he's an organic farmer who wants to repeal (not modify) the Patriot Act, is pro-choice and pro-environment, wants to increase the minimum wage, and push for alternative energies. You can view his positions here, but I think it's pretty clear that while he's no flaming liberal, he's also not conservative. Seems moderate to left to me. As for Webb, here's an NPR interview with him (I'm sorry, I can't get the transcript). In case you can't listen to it, he talks a great deal about Iraq and national security, and this is largely due to the pointed interest of the interviewer. But Webb is at pains to make it clear that he had large concerns about other issues, particularly ones of economic equality. He voices support for a minimum wage hike and discusses the parallels with the disparity in wealth distribution we saw in the 1880's. You can see Webb's positions here. On balance he sounds like a populist, and not of the reactionary, nationalistic kind. I don't think I'm going to see eye-to-eye with him on everything, but he's hardly a died-in-the-wool conservative. To represent the choice as being between Liberal Dem or Conservative Dem is a false dichotomy. There are moderates.

Which isn't to say the Democrats didn't elect some progressives. Chris Bowers at MyDD breaks down the likely distribution of new House members:

Looking only at Democrats who took over Republican-held seats, here is a list of incoming Democratic freshmen in the House who are probably going to join the Progressive caucus:

* AZ-08: Gabrielle Giffords
* CA-11: Jerry McNerney
* IA-01: Bruce Braley
* NH-19: John Hall

In addition to the already listed McNerney, here are the incoming netroots candidates (we only endorsed challengers in 2006):

* MN-01: Tim Walz
* NH-02: Paul Hodes
* NC-08: Larry Kissell (maybe)
* PA-07: Joe Sestak
* PA-08: Patrick Murphy
* WA-08: Darcy Burner (probably)

In addition to the already listed Braley, Hodes, Sestak, Murphy and McNerney, here are the incoming Democrats from blue districts who took over Republican-held seats:

* CT-02: Joe Courtney
* IA-02: Dave Loebsack
* CT-05: Chris Murphy
* FL-22: Ron Klein
* CO-07: Ed Perlmutter
* KY-03: John Yarmuth
* NH-01: Carol Shea-Porter
* NY-24: Michael Arcuri

So, it looks like about 60%-70% of the incoming Democratic freshmen who took over Republican-held seats meet one of the three following criteria:

* Joining the progressive caucus
* From a blue district
* Netroots candidate

Netroots is a term for internet based grassroots organizations. The netroots largely endorses moderate or progressive Dems.

So, all this doesn't bear a lot of relation to the analysis being done by the major media outlets. It's not the only thing that seems to be misrepresented. There's been much discussion about the impact of 'values' voters, that may not bear up under scrutiny:

The Post's Alan Cooperman, writing on the front page of Saturday's paper, is a particularly egregious offender, citing numbers that don't really prove his thesis that "faith" voters were key to the Democrats' win. Cooperman writes that Democrats "sliced the GOP's advantage among weekly churchgoers to 12 percentage points, down from 18 points in 2004 congressional races" and that while "in 2004, 74 percent of white evangelicals voted for Republicans and 25 percent for Democrats, a 49-point spread ... This year, Republicans received 70 percent of the white evangelical vote and Democrats got 28 percent, a 42-point spread."

Both of these sets of figures sound really impressive -- until you look deeper at their actual meaning. When comparing results between elections, it is not only important to look at absolute numbers but also relative numbers: How a specific subset of the electorate moves from one election to another relative to the change in the electorate as a whole. Although vote totals in districts have not yet been finalized, making it difficult to tabulate the exact national popular vote for the House, it appears that the nation voted a net 10 points more Democratic in 2006 House elections than it did in 2004 (a move from a Republican advantage of about 49 - 46 to a Democratic advantage in the ballpark of 53 - 46). So for a group to have disproportionately helped the Democrats take the House this year, it would have to have increased its net support for the Democrats by more than 10 points -- which none of the groups cited by Cooperman actually did.

I realize that this is a lot of inside baseball, and probably dreadfully boring, so just take a look at the parts I bolded. The diary goes on to show groups that DID swing heavily for Democrats. They aren't what's being mentioned in the media.

My point in all this is that due to certain institutionalized biases and myopia in the media, the average person doesn't get an accurate sense of what's going on. How many of you knew that the Democrats have an agenda for the first 100 hours of the next session in the House? It's been around for some time now, but you probably only heard about it since the election. That's the sort of information that would have helped people before the election to make an informed decision.

So, until such biases are rectified, I'm going to be cautiously optimistic about how the Democrats will fare for the forseeable future.

To Win An Election It's Better To Beg Forgiveness Than Ask For Permission

Disclosure: I am going to reference MyDD and TalkingPointsMemo a fair bit here. I have given some (modest) money to both in the past, to fund their work (polling and reporting, respectively).

As we head into the final days of the 2006 midterm election a lot of people are trying to figure out whether the GOP's vaunted ability to 'close the deal' is going to pull them through to victory again. At this point even the mainstream media is speaking in terms of waves (Newt Gingrich's revolution in '94 is the last time we had such), but this time a Democratic one. The generic congressional ballot, a measure of general attitude of the voters toward the parties, has been at historic highs that favor the Democrats. In the last few days that may have started to turn around:

Over the last eighteen hours, two generic ballot polls have given me real pause. Pew just came out with a new generic ballot poll showing the Democratic lead in the generic ballot down to only 47%-43% among likely voters. This is a shift from 50%-39% last week, and the closest it has been in Pew since before Hurricane Katrina. The Pew numbers give more solidity to the ABC-WaPo numbers earlier in the day, which showed the Democratic lead down to 51%-45% among likely voters, after it was at 54%-41% two weeks ago. Granted, the Newsweek poll conducted during the same time period shows Democrats still ahead by a whopping 16 points, 54%-38%, and the Time poll (PDF) of likely voters shows Democrats with a fifteen point lead, 55%-40%. All of these poll still show large Democratic leads among registered voters (9%, 10%, 15%, and 16% for an average of 12.5%), and several more generic polls will be coming out between now and Tuesday morning. Still, this does certainly make me even more skeptical than usual of forecasts predicting a massive Democratic wave.

The generic ballot measure is an imperfect predictor of how elections will go. It certainly points in the right direction but the Republicans have large structural advantages over the Democrats. Although the Democrats have been better able to compete monetarily this year, the Republicans still have a lot of cash to spend. Take it from Karl Rove:

"For most Americans, particularly the marginal voters who are going to determine the outcome of the election, it started a couple weeks ago," he said. "Between now and the election, we will spend $100 million in target House and Senate races in the next 21 days."

Karl Rove is the architect behind President Bush's campaigns and of GOP campaign strategy in general. 100 million is a lot of clams. Could it be that that massive expenditure is having an effect? How would one spend that money in a way that might turn things around? Polls on Iraq show high public disapproval of the war. A wave of scandals (financial and, ah, personal) has largely set the Republicans back on their heels and kept them there. The economy isn't great. I can't find the attribution, but I have read a rather common sense statement to the effect that, if you have to convince people of it, then the economy isn't doing well. On terror the public now, by a very slight majority, prefers the Democrats to Republicans (a first). So there isn't a lot for the GOP to grab onto in a positive way, to either motivate their base (which is dispirited) or to persuade independent voters.

There are other ways to skin the electoral cat though. If you can't get your people out to vote, keep the other side's votes at home. As an historical example of how this was done, a brief synopsis of the NH Phone Jamming Scandal of 2002 (I pulled much of this from TalkingPointsMemo and TPMMuckraker. If you want to dig into this yourself, plug "Phone Jamming" into the TPM's search box (upper right). More articles than you can shake a stick at!):

...the New Hampshire Republican party hired a Northern Virginia telemarketing outfit -- GOP Marketplace -- to jam the phone banks at the offices of the New Hampshire Democratic Coordinated Campaign and the Manchester Firefighters' Union Local on election day last November.

Both phone banks were being used that morning for get-out-the-vote efforts.

According to the Union Leader, GOP Marketplace hired Idaho-based Milo Enterprises to place repeated five-second-and-hang-up calls to the phone banks' numbers, thus effectively shutting them down on election day. After a few hours, Verizon stepped in and shut the operation down.

One of the major tasks that any good campaign engages in is last minute Get Out The Vote efforts. On election day that includes calling people to see if they have voted. The jamming wasn't a lone wolf operation, the NH GOP new about it:

The FBI's 2003 interview with NHRSC Executive Director Chuck McGee is especially revealing in this regard [we've posted it here]. McGee, who has said he originally hatched the plan to jam Democrat's phones, told the FBI that he'd discussed the jamming before Election Day with the NHRSC's Chair, the Vice Chair, Finance Director, and four other senior level Republican staffers in the state. McGee pled guilty for his role in the jamming and has already served his time.

McGee said that the Party's Chairman John Dowd gave him the go-ahead the night before the election [Dowd, for his part, admitted to The New Hampshire Union Leader that McGee told him of the plan, but said he did not authorize it]; that the Vice Chair gave him the number of the Manchester Professional Firefighters Union, one of the jamming's targets; and that the Financial Director, who signed the check to pay for the jamming, disclosed to the FEC that the money was for "GOTV" (Get Out the Vote efforts) when she knew what it was really for [she corroborated this in her interview with the FBI].

Heck, there's evidence that the Whitehouse knew about it:

James Tobin, the RNC's regional political director in 2002, was convicted for his part in orchestrating a scheme to jam Democrats' phone lines on Election Day, 2002. Turns out he was in more or less constant contact with the White House Office of Political Affairs through much of that day.

Tobin called the White House Office of Political Affairs, which was run by now-RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman, more than 75 times from Sept. 30 to Nov. 22 of 2002. That much was reported today in New Hampshire's Union Leader. You can see the analysis that was based on here. He was also in touch with the White House on the day the phone-jamming was taking place.

He called the White House twelve times on the day of the phone jamming, the first time at 11:20 AM -- not long after Verizon intervened to shut down the scheme. The conversation was five minutes long.

Ken Mehlman is now the head of the Republican National Committee. The RNC paid the legal fees of Tobin during his trial (he was convicted), without comment. So what does this have to do with Tuesday's election? In a stunning display of chutzpah, the RNC is engaging in phone based monkey business in NH again. This time they are flooding voters with repeat calls (robocalls), some of them early in the morning.

For the second straight day yesterday, Democratic field offices received dozens of phone calls and e-mails from frustrated voters upset about repeated automated phone calls they thought were coming from Democratic candidate Paul Hodes - though the calls were paid for by a Republican group instead.

The National Republican Congressional Committee spent nearly $20,000 on the calls last week. Depending on the rate, that could mean more than 300,000 automated phone calls into the Second Congressional District.

The RNC said that the calls would continue, despite the Republican incumbent, Charlie Bass, asking them to be stopped! A cynic would say that this is just good theater - it allows Bass to appear independent and moral, while still reaping the benefit of the calls all the same. And these calls do have the desired effect:

I was handing out leaflets for John Hall yesterday at a grocery store. There were two tables, a democratic one and a Republican one.

When I was handing out palm cards, several people said to me something like, "I WAS going to vote for John Hall, until I got all those phone calls. I got seven or eight, right at dinner time."

The guy from the Republican table, who was a local district leader-- friendly and chatty, actually came over to me and said, "You know, most of those are coming from Sue's office, but don't tell anybody."

I don't know how high his connections are to the Kelly campaign, but that's the information he volunteered.

You probably noticed that the candidates mentioned are Kelly and Hall, not Hodes and Bass. That's because the above quote is from a district in New York. That district is getting the same sort of calls. It is being duplicated around the country, in fact. And there are other efforts at disinformation and discouragement of Democratic voters. I'm looking at the front page for TalkingPointsMemo. The proprietor, Josh Marshall, has asked for readers to send in comments on what they are observing, as many of his readers are Democratic activists. This is what's going on on just the page for Nov. 5, 2006:

Harassing and deceptive robocalls in New Hampshire.
Similar robocalls in New York.
Similar robocalls in Kansas, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and California.
Signs saying "Encourage Terrorists. Vote Democrat." in Texas.

My personal favorite is this one (from the same page at TPM):

On Monday morning, when Chapel Hill lawyer Bob Epting approached the early voting center at Morehead Planetarium, he . . . was approached by a female college student who asked whether he was a registered Democrat.

"Yes I am," he said.

She replied, "Good, here's a list of our judicial candidates."

Epting thanked her, folded the piece of paper without looking at it and put it in his pocket. . . .

But after exiting the poll, he remembered the piece of paper and removed it from his pocket. Standing at the top of a dozen or so marble steps, he scanned the list in disbelief. It was a list of Republican candidates.

Lovely. And that's just what I've been able to read today. Never mind the racist ads in Tennessee and Idaho, the RNC ad implying that if you want to die, vote Democrat, the accusation of a GOP candidate that an Iraq war vet, who lost both her legs in combat, wants to 'Cut and Run', and all the other nastiness that's been floating around for the past few weeks. To be fair, there is some of this on the Democratic side of the aisle too. Albert Wynn won his primary in Maryland using some pretty underhanded tactics. Hopefully the Democrats will turn him out in two years. The majority of what I am seeing right now is on the GOP side though.

Misinformation (and a sprinkling of fear), seems to be the national strategy of the GOP in the last days of the campaign. In NH the Attorney General got involved and put a stop to it. It seems such calls are against the law. In particular, there is a $5k fine in NH for calling anyone on the Do Not Call list. With hundreds of thousands of calls, it is estimated that the RNC could have engendered a $100 Million fine because of these (ironic, that's the sum Karl Rove was touting). I suspect though, if this turns the election in their favor and keeps the Congress Republican, that it will be seen to have been worth it. The GOP fears the investigations that a Democratic House would bring. Winning at any cost is the objective now, the fallout can be dealt with later.

I could list a score of instances of other dirty tricks used in the last few elections, deployed at the last moment, that can turn a race. People do it because it works - by the time the law catches up to you, you've already won election and the bar to oust a sitting congressman is a bit higher than for the plebes.

So, please, whatever your orientation, try to find a source you trust on your local races, cut through the noise, and vote (if you haven't already done so).

Oh, an obvious prediction: close elections will be followed by lawsuits. The GOP will be filing a lot of them, I think. No special source of information for this, just a gut feeling born of observation of past behavior.

Keeping Mr. Franklin's Republic

“Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”

“A Republic, if you can keep it.”

Benjamin Franklin in response to a query as he left Independence Hall on the final day of the Constitutional Convention.

Well, the Detainee Bill has passed. I had intended to dip into the vault for my next post and write about Social Security reform, but Shellshocked brought up some good points in the comments that I had intentionally, if reluctantly, left out. Upon reflection the topic is too important to let go.

Here's an interesting tidbit that I came across in reading about the Founding Fathers, who had a keen sense of history and the fragile nature of democracies. John Adams, of all of them, was most sanguine about the longevity of the American Experiment. At his most hopeful (his mood varied) he gave it 150 years before it became unrecognizably corrupt. For those of you keeping track, that would have been in the 1930's, but let's give ourselves the benefit of the doubt.

As it turns out a number of the Founding Fathers were witness to the first stages of decay in their own lifetimes. The next generation of politicians and leaders, reared in the aftermath of the Revolution, already showed signs of having forgotten the lessons that had been so self-evident to the Founding Fathers. It's not surprising, and I don't think it was to Adams, Jefferson and the rest, but I'm sure it was disappointing all the same.

What does this have to do with the Detainee Bill? Well, there are a few other provisions I didn't mention that are fairly difficult to swallow. The big one is the suspension of Habeas Corpus for certain individuals. From Wikipedia:

A writ of habeas corpus is a court order addressed to a prison official (or other custodian) ordering that a detainee be brought to the court so it can be determined whether or not that person is imprisoned lawfully and whether or not he or she should be released from custody. The writ of habeas corpus in common law countries is an important instrument for the safeguarding of individual freedom against arbitrary state action. (emphasis mine)

The Founding Fathers (FF) felt pretty strongly about this. 'Arbitrary state action', in the person of an executive, whether the President or a King, was something they were especially wary about. There had been plenty of it under the British kings, and ultimately that's why we don't have a monarchy ourselves. The FF had passionate disagreements over just how powerful to make the Executive branch, with one faction wanting an extremely weak one. Habeas Corpus was meant to be a safeguard against the excesses of an Executive run amok.

The Detainee Bill allows the President wider prerogatives than is being reported. Glenn Greenwald, a First Amendment lawyer and excellent blogger on legal issues, sums it up nicely:

Opponents of this bill have focused most of their attention -- understandably and appropriately -- on the way in which it authorizes the use of interrogation techniques which, as this excellent NYT Editorial put it, "normal people consider torture," along with the power it vests in the President to detain indefinitely, and with no need to bring charges, all foreign nationals and even legal resident aliens within the U.S. But as Law Professors Marty Lederman and Bruce Ackerman each point out, many of the extraordinary powers vested in the President by this bill also apply to U.S. citizens, on U.S. soil.

As Ackerman put it: "The compromise legislation, which is racing toward the White House, authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights." Similarly, Lederman explains: "this [subsection (ii) of the definition of 'unlawful enemy combatant'] means that if the Pentagon says you're an unlawful enemy combatant -- using whatever criteria they wish -- then as far as Congress, and U.S. law, is concerned, you are one, whether or not you have had any connection to 'hostilities' at all."

How do they do this? By suspending Habeas Corpus, and also by restricting the right of the courts to review the process. The Executive branch will be able to, at its discretion, declare you an enemy combatant, a decision it won't have to defend or explain. It will then be able to hold you indefinitely without trial, during which time whatever procedures the President deems to be only 'minor' breaches of the Geneva Conventions can be used against you. No oversight. No accountability. Basically, it's just 'Trust me.' The arguments against this are legion, and I don't think I need to enumerate all of them. The FF would never have given this sort of unfettered power to the President; they were not ones to trust to the gentle nature of man. In reading through the Federalist Papers I am struck by the persistent theme of pragmatic cynicism that runs through them. This is precisely the sort of situation that led some to argue for a weak Executive in the first place.

Some, perhaps, are hoping that this will be challenged in the courts, and perhaps it will be. But a challenge does not ensure a repeal, and in this case, on 2 of the 3 offensive elements (Habeas Corpus and Judicial Review), there are good reasons to believe they are supported by the constitution:

On the Habeas Corpus issue, the Constitution is regrettably clear-cut. Article I, s.9:

The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

Congress has the power, therefore, to suspend the Writ.... The jurisdiction-stripping issue is more complicated... the basic summary is that Matt is correct that there is a strong Constitutional basis for Congress' actions.

While the Court may review the issue of whether the President can reinterpret the Geneva Conventions (it may be unconstitutional), the other two provisions are likely out of the Court's jurisdiction. Beyond that, you have practical issues due to the ideological tilt of the court. Matt Yglesias (referenced above) notes that the courts generally defer to the Executive branch on issues of National Security (the rubric under which this is all being put forth), and that in particular, with this set of conservative judges, there's no guarantee that they would rule against these items even if they thought they had jurisdiction. I'd love to be proven wrong on this, but I'm not holding out for that.

So, where does this leave us? I have to say, we aren't tending to Franklin's Republic very well. At the risk of sounding alarmist about this, I'm going to bring up the F-word: Fascism. Stick with me now, I know that sounds over the top. It can't happen here, you say. Well, Sinclair Lewis wrote a book of the same name, a political satire that shows just how such a thing could happen, here. He said, famously, "When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." I have seen this quote repeated numerous times in regards to this situation in the last week, most recently in the comments of my previous post. To be fair, the issue is neither patriotism nor religious belief, per se, but the blind obedience to a leader that can sometimes arise from either, and so I think the quote is apt. Let's see what Wikipedia has to say about a definition for Fascism:

A recent definition is that by former Columbia University Professor Robert O. Paxton:

* "Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."

Paxton further defines fascism's essence as:

* "1. a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond reach of traditional solutions; 2. belief one’s group is the victim, justifying any action without legal or moral limits; 3. need for authority by a natural leader above the law, relying on the superiority of his instincts; 4. right of the chosen people to dominate others without legal or moral restraint; 5. fear of foreign `contamination."

There's a lot more in the article and they note that definitions for fascism are "complicated and contentious". Still, the above definition serves as a pretty good working one and we can see some obvious parallels with where we are today. The President and his political allies routinely describe the threat of terrorism as being of equal or greater significance than any conflict we have faced in the past. The War on Terror is one that is so epic that we must rethink our deepest held beliefs - "9/11 changed everything." I think points 1 through 4 can be safely said to apply, to a greater or lesser extent. If we don't quite meet all the requirements, or don't meet them all fully - if we are entering fascism-lite rather than full-blown Fascism - is beside the point to me. That America should find itself in a position where any comparisons can be drawn, where the question can even be entertained, is cause for deep concern. Once started down that road it's not so easy to turn back.

This is difficult to accept; it seems too outlandish. I think it's important to realize that fascism can take many forms, some more overt, some less so. It doesn't always arrive in jackboots. I think it's arguable that we are entering fascism-lite, rather than hard fascism. As such, it's probable that many people will see little effect in their lives. That hardly matters; it's not a principled argument. You look to our own history and we have had our dalliances before, most recently in the '50s with McCarthyism. Not everyone was affected by it, but those who were were harmed greatly. It was and remains a shameful abrogation of our core beliefs. I can only hope that this too will pass. My honest fear is that there is a significant chance it won't and, in purely personal terms, I found this to be quite disturbing:

As we ponder how this torture legislation might develop in the future, it's probably a good idea to check out how the intelligence community of the United States sees the threat of terrorism developing in the future. From the NIE (National Intelligence Estimate):

Anti-US and anti-globalization sentiment is on the rise and fueling other radical ideologies. This could prompt some leftist, nationalist, or separatist groups to adopt terrorist methods to attack US interests. The radicalization process is occurring more quickly, more widely, and more anonymously in the Internet age.

No mention of rightist groups, which actually have attacked US interests, using terrorist tactics. I'm speaking of Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph. No, it's the leftists to worry about, though. I'm a liberal, and I'm using the internet to communicate (not so anonymously) with you right now. You might think that it's quite a leap from that line in the NIE to being dragged off myself. It is, until this sort of thing becomes a little more prevalent and mainstream (the context is that the NY Times had printed photos of Donald Rumsfeld's vacation house. The publication of these photos had been given the OK by Rumsfeld and [more importantly, perhaps] the Secret Service, but that fact was glossed over. Radical conservative David Horowitz took issue with these photos being published, ostensibly exposing the Secretary to personal terrorist threats):

This was about beating the drum to eliminate the enemy. Horowitz set the rhythm:

Make no mistake about it, there is a war going on in this country. The aggressors in this war are Democrats, liberals and leftists who began a scorched earth campaign against President Bush before the initiation of hostilities in Iraq.

And pretty soon everyone else joined in, including commenters like this:

...since we've so civilized ourselves that it's highly unlikely that an angry mob with torches will show up on the NYT's doorstep.

Pity, that.

(Emphasis is mine. This is a relatively tame example. Dave Neiwert, linked above, blogs about hate speech and hate groups at Orcinus.) Just to be clear, the position here is that the NY Times, as the flagship of the liberal (Democratic) war on America, ought to be burned to the ground, as would have been done in better times. I intend to write a post eventually about the demonization of liberals and the very word itself, but this will have to suffice for now.

Perhaps an outside viewpoint will prove more compelling? I came across a discussion with a Ugandan who had emigrated to Canada. He had grown up during the time that Idi Amin rose to power in Uganda and he had an interesting perspective on what is occurring now in America. I would encourage you to read the whole thing. I found this quote, based on his experiences with an authoritarian regime, particularly telling:

My experience tells me this. I don't really know. But if I had to guess, I would guess that your government is doing the worst things you can possibly imagine. Liars are lying because they cannot tell the truth... I feel for you really. Because I don't think you have any idea how far down the road you already are.

In the end I think I can perhaps sum it up using a rule a friend related to me once: the Cynic's Law of Conservation:

"1 ton sewage + 1 tsp wine = 1 ton sewage
1 ton wine + 1 tsp sewage = 1 ton sewage"

In America, a little Fascism means it's not America anymore. To me it's not a question of whether we are too much like a fascist or dictatorial state. We should never have anything in common with either. This is another debate that should never even arise in America. In America, it should always be crystal clear; any such comparison should be laughable. We haven't been giving Mr. Franklin's Republic wine, of late, and I think we'll find she's ailing because of it.

Rules of the Road

Just a note, to help me out. My intent really is to foster a dialog with those close to me. Many of you are coming from a similar page, politically, as I am, but that's not true of everyone. The same can be said of religion; my friends and family span a range of religious beliefs. Politics and religion being two of the most difficult topics to address in America, I naturally chose to write a blog about them. More, really, about politics, but it is my impression that religion has come to play a greater part in politics in the last generation and the two can no longer be as easily separated.

In any event, for my part I'm going to be avoiding the four letter words that do, sadly, make up a fair part of my daily discourse. Similarly, I want to avoid emotional reasoning as much as possible. I won't get anywhere if I devolve into a rant and people feel like they are being attacked when they come to read here.

So, please, be respectful in the comments. It isn't just the choir that's invited here. If that were my target, my writing style would be pretty different.

Thanks!

WWJT: Who Would Jefferson Torture?

Hopefully you are aware of the latest brouhaha in Washington, in this case having to do with a difference of opinion over the President's preferred interrogation techniques and the degree of clarity, or lack thereof, in the Geneva Conventions. The Republicans have been squabbling over this for a week or so, while the Democrats sat back and watched. The GOP came to a compromise on Thursday, and have a bill they are ready to push. Long story short, if it passes, we'll be sanctioning torture as official US policy. The President will be the final arbiter of what is or is not a violation of the Geneva Conventions, and how bad that violation will be. The bill explicitly forbids anyone from trying to bring the courts into the matter. There was a lot of theater over it, but in the end the President is getting what he wants. Just ask this guy:

Dan Bartlett, counselor to the president, said: “We proposed a more direct approach to bringing clarification. This one is more of the scenic route, but it gets us there.”

Scenic route, ha ha ha. How droll. Sadly, we're not talking about a Sunday drive here, but torture. I wonder if the people flown to secret prisons across the world thought it was scenic. In any event, I can't support this, but there's a lot to say about why.

To start, let me ask you a not-so-hypothetical question. In the days after 9/11, would you have predicted that five years out the country would be debating torture? That we would be trying to figure out, à la Goldilocks, what type or amount of torture was just right? The common refrain at the time, and one I wholeheartedly agreed with then (and still do now), was that we should not bow under the threats of terrorists and allow our ideals to be sacrificed on the altars of fear and uncertainty:

I ask you to uphold the values of America, and remember why so many have come here. We are in a fight for our principles, and our first responsibility is to live by them. No one should be singled out for unfair treatment or unkind words because of their ethnic background or religious faith.

That's the President, from his address to a joint session of Congress shortly after 9/11. To give him his due, I agree with that sentiment. The proof is in the pudding though, so let's dig a little into those values, and see how well we've done.

In general I think most of us have a pretty good idea what I'm talking about here: honesty, integrity, courage. The sorts of things that Americans at a deep level believe are part of the fundamental fabric of America. These values are part of the mythology of America which informs our national psyche. I'll give you my take on them.

Courage means taking the hard road in the face of difficult sacrifices, and hewing to that road despite personal fears and the blandishments of cowards. Honesty means telling the truth, simply and straightforwardly. It's not enough to adhere to the letter of the truth; its spirit must be honored as well. Integrity is a little trickier to define simply, but it certainly entails taking responsibility for one's actions and decisions. It could perhaps be summed up as 'doing the right thing'. And one other that I'll add: competence. I think most Americans think we are, if nothing else, a practical folk who gets things done.

Honesty
The President has been clamoring for a bill that would retroactively legalize the illegal (or 'tough alternative' in the President's words) interrogation techniques that have been in use for some time now.

The senators agreed to a White House proposal to make the standard on interrogation treatment retroactive to 1997, so C.I.A. and military personnel could not be prosecuted for past treatment under standards the administration considers vague.

The techniques are torture and they are illegal. Having signed onto the Geneva Convention, it is as legally binding as any domestic law we might pass. From Article 6 of the Constitution:

This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be Supreme Law of the land;

We signed onto the Geneva Convention; we have to adhere to it. When the President says that his alternative procedures are legal, understand that this is based on the judgement of his Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, a man who famously called the Geneva Conventions 'quaint'. Quaint or not, they are the law. Aside from that, many legal and Constitutional scholars have not been kind to the professional opinions of Mr. Gonzales. These arguments are not honest, and they are not made in good faith.

The same can be said for the claim that they need clarification. This is insulting in the extreme. We managed to get through some fifty-odd years, during which time we were involved in a number of struggles (not least the Cold War), without having to clarify them. This is the argument of a type of mind known as a Rules Lawyer. You know the sort: they nitpick and argue over the slightest nuance of every rule, in the process destroying the spirit of the thing. Rules Lawyers never argue in good faith. Their only intent is to win the argument, by hook or by crook. This is a habit that one would hope men in their sixties would have outgrown. Instead, we have to catalog every possible horrifying act we can think of lest we find ourselves dealing with this: "Ok, we can't cut their thumbs off, but it doesn't say anything about smashing them with a hammer. I guess that's not torture."

Please. Let me clear this up. Shorter Geneva Conventions: Treat people with respect and dignity.


Courage
Let's assume for the sake of argument that torturing people is something we feel we shouldn't do. Are we, as a country, going to let a rabble of cave-dwelling fanatics scare us into tinkering with that ideal, or abandon it? I understand that many people are truly afraid of the terrorist threat. Speaking for myself, as someone who lived in Boston, launching pad for 9/11, and in Seattle, the target of the foiled Millenium Plot, terrorism doesn't particularly scare me. The statistics of it just aren't compelling to me. I can respect it if other people don't feel that way though. BUT, that's where courage comes in. Courage says, "No! I won't take the easy road. I'll take the hard road, and I may fail, but I'm going to stick to it." In this case, the hard road is abiding by the Geneva Conventions.

As for the President's personal behavior, asking for a retroactive bill is craven, and the fact that it bars the courts from any jurisdiction in the matter speaks for itself. Given the conservative bent of the Supreme Court, he must know he's on extremely shaky ground if he feels he needs to protect himself this way. Coming from a Republican, a member of the party that promotes itself as the responsible one, I find it strange that he's not willing to take responsibility for his actions. He made the choice -- he should deal with the consequences, not look for a 'Get-out-of-jail-free' card from Congress.

In the end, the President is neither showing, nor appealing to, American courage.

Competence
The President has said that if he didn't get this bill, the interrogation program would not be able to continue. Let me parse that out a little bit more clearly. The President is saying that if torture is not in the toolbox, that there is no way any meaningful interrogation can be done. The Government wouldn't know where to start. This is a laughable, all-or-nothing argument. We've been questioning people for a long time; the Military has a lengthy manual on it, which for some time included no torture (there's been a some revising back and forth of late), and it was generally pretty successful. Either the President is admitting to incompetence of a level that should be of concern to everyone, or again, this is not a good faith argument. Even if we take him at face value, do we really believe that as Americans this is the only way we can succeed?

Integrity
I've saved this for last, in part because I wanted to get the drier, more technical arguments out of the way. So let me return to the question I asked above. For me, I can say that it never crossed my mind. In your heart of hearts, in the America of your dreams, would we be torturing people? Would we be skirting the edges of this pit, a pit that we have condemned others for entering? Stalin was known to use a technique called 'The Conveyor' (CID stands for 'cruel, inhumane and degrading'):

Now it appears that sleep deprivation is "only" CID and used on Guantanamo Bay captives. Well, congratulations, comrades! It was exactly this method that the NKVD used to produce those spectacular confessions in Stalin's "show trials" of the 1930s. The henchmen called it "conveyer," when a prisoner was interrogated nonstop for a week or 10 days without a wink of sleep. At the end, the victim would sign any confession without even understanding what he had signed.

CID is deemed necessary for the war on terror. If you can, go read the whole article above. It's by former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, who suffered torture himself. It's good perspective. As a side note, I'm not going to get into whether torture works or not, but I'd ask you to note the bolded sentence above (my emphasis).

Think about Jefferson for a moment. I am aware of his imperfections and self-contradictions (he was a slave owner). Yet, among our Founding Fathers, he is the one most regularly appropriated by both sides of the political spectrum as ancestor and patron. Having read a few books about him, I don't think that he can honestly be placed in either camp. The simple fact is that the positions of the parties at that time don't map well to today (he was a fiscally conservative Republican who did everything in his power to reduce the size of the Army and Navy, for starters). So why is he so popular? Because of his rhetoric. Read the Declaration of Independence. It is sweeping, majestic, bold, and uplifting. It speaks to the noblest impulses in all of us. It is a document whose sentiment is one that anyone, in any nation, would be proud to own as part of their cultural heritage. Jefferson, in his writings, planted the seed for the idea of American Exceptionalism that forms such a strong core of our own mythology. America does have its own mythology. Gunslinging is our martial art, cowboys are our knights errant, we are an egalitarian meritocracy (aka the American Dream) and a beacon of light to the world, a "shining city on a hill" (a phrase that has come to mean rather more than it did when originally coined).

With that in mind, I ask you, can you honestly say that Jefferson would torture people? Would anyone claim that? It just doesn't register for me, it is completely disconnected from my entire impression of the birth of our nation. I can't square that circle. Who would Jefferson torture? No one. George Washington? No one. The reason for this is simple. Torture is not American. American's. Don't. Torture.

Now, I know that if you look through our history, even recent history, you're going to find some pretty bad things going on. This guy makes an utterly valid point that torture isn't, in fact, such an anomaly. Ok, so we've got some history of it, and I consider that reprehensible as well. The difference is that if this bill goes through, torture will shift from being a shadow policy to an overt, official one. That change is HUGE. Any pretence to adhering to the Geneva Conventions is rendered laughable. Any claim to moral superiority, a defining aspect of America's role in the world for the last few generations, ceded.

Those are practical considerations though, and the reason I have finally been galvanized to write about this issue, of the hundreds that have stirred my outrage over the past few years, is hard to explain. This has touched me at a deep emotional level. I find myself somewhere between rage, horror and despair. Through my head keeps repeating this refrain: "This must not be. This can not be. I am not a torturer. Never in my name!". If this essay has seemed a little dry or dispassionate at times, it is because I can't find the words to properly express the depth of my feelings on this, like a victim of physical trauma who has gone into shock and isn't really feeling the pain. I'm refraining from using four letter words, in order not to seem shrill, but understand that this is a cri de cœur.

Moral reasons aside, here's a scenario that presents a pragmatic reason not to torture. Imagine being identified as a member of a terrorist organization. You are denied the right to a lawyer and questioned forcefully. The US gov't. decides to fly you to Syria (ironically a country that the US has publicly berated for their human rights record), where you are locked in an unlit 3-foot-wide cell known as 'the grave'. You are kept there for months, during which time you are beaten with a cable, threatened with electrocution, and otherwise tortured and intimidated. You don't see the sun for 6 months, and suffer a near nervous breakdown. You sign all sorts of confessions to keep from being tortured (a common failing of torture). Eventually, you get the chance to speak to an official of your country. Four years after your ordeal started, your government starts an inquiry. Eventually, they clear you of any suspicion of terrorist activity.

That is the story of Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen. He was arrested in 2002, and cleared only a week or so ago. As I said, this is a purely practical reason not to torture. In the end, for me, it's not a question of practicalities, though. It's a clear, bright line we don't cross, ever. Think about waterboarding, simulated drowning. I myself have a modest fear of drowning. I can't imagine going through this. Imagine a loved one of yours being subjected to torture, physical or psychological. The after-effects of torture, both on the body and mind, linger for years. I could not bear it if this were to happen to someone I love. For me, to turn my back on it as it is practiced on others would be hypocrisy. I'm going to be calling my Representative, my Senators, and the House and Senate Minority leaders to tell them to defeat this bill - by filibuster if necessary. I'd call the House and Senate Majority leaders, but frankly I don't think it would help much. I'm going to tell them, no hyperbole, that I think this is a battle for the soul of the country. I'm going to tell them that I'd rather be killed in a terrorist attack than have agents of the US Government torture in my name. I mean it.

Who would Jefferson torture? No one. Who will I torture? No one. Not in my name. Never. In. My. Name.

UPDATE: I added a link to back up my assertion that these techniques are torture. After WWII, waterboarding by the Japanese was cited as torture.