Wall Street Journal: Growing Friedman-Goldman Sachs Scandal Endangers Federal Reserve

Even though Journal editors appear to be pulling their punches somewhat, today's Wall Street Journal editorial calls for the resignation of Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Donald Kohn, who approved NY Fed chair Stephen Friedman's ethics waiver that permitted him to remain on the Goldman Sachs board and trade their stock. The Journal concludes:

The problem is the politics of all this. Half of the financial world already thinks Goldman runs the U.S. Treasury and Fed, however unfairly. The American public is furious about the bailouts of AIG and banks, engineered by the Fed and Treasury, that have helped the likes of Goldman Sachs. And guess who Mr. Friedman's search committee picked as Mr. Geithner's successor when he left to run Treasury? Another Goldman alum, William Dudley. Yet with all of this in the political air, Mr. Friedman tried to stay in the New York Fed post at least through the end of 2009, and Mr. Kohn granted the waiver. It's hard to imagine a more politically obtuse judgment.

Their behavior has handed a sword to those in Congress who have long wanted to exert more political control over the 12 regional Fed bank presidents. Unlike Federal Reserve governors, the regional presidents aren't appointed by the U.S. President and confirmed by the Senate. They are appointed by their regional bank boards. They nonetheless serve, on a rotating basis, on the Fed's Open Market Committee that sets monetary policy, and the New York Fed president is Vice Chairman of the FOMC. This structure was designed under the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 to help insulate the Fed from political pressure, and it has worked well.

This insulation is especially important now, given how Mr. Kohn and Chairman Ben Bernanke have made the Fed an arm of the Treasury over the last 18 months. The Washington Fed has immersed itself deeply into fiscal policy and recently decided, for the first time since the early 1950s, to directly monetize U.S. debt by buying Treasury securities. Barney Frank would love to get more control over the regional banks to make them more amenable to political pressure as well, and the Friedman flap has given the politicians an opening.

At least Mr. Friedman is gone, but for all the harm he has done to the Fed's political independence, Mr. Kohn should resign too.

Unfortunately missing from this editorial: a demand for an SEC investigation into insider trading at Goldman Sachs and the Federal Reserve of New York...IMHO, necessary to begin to restore some confidence in the system.

More on this story from Robert Scheer at the Huffington Post, here...and Michelle Malkin, here,

A Good Sign from the White House...

The director of White House Military Affairs has resigned in the aftermath of the NYC Air Force One flyover fiasco. I can't remember Bushies or Clintonites doing the decent thing like this (remember Janet Reno "taking responsibility" for Waco but keeping her job?). Let's hope we see more such resignations in future...starting with Timothy Geithner.

FOIABlog: Update on Jarvik v. CIA

From FOIABlog:

Last fall, journalist Laurence Jarvik sued the CIA for a second time (his first suit revolved around a fee waiver). The CIA has now denied the request in full and Jarvik has sought an in camera review by the court. His most recent filings can be found here.

Happy V-E Day!

Wikipedia has the story, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_in_Europe_Day.

Ideoblog: Investigate Friedman's Insider Trading

From Ideoblog:

Friedman says he wasn’t involved in the Fed's decision to give AIG an $85 billion bailout, part of which was used to repay debts to Goldman. Well, maybe. But the rule against insider trading is supposed to be a prophylactic and its application doesn't depend on whether the insider participated in a particular corporate decision.

Even if there’s no problem with Friedman’s initial GS share position, the additional purchases are a different matter, particularly since Friedman never told the Fed about those purchases and never asked for a waiver.

Friedman says he bought the shares because they were “cheap.” What does that mean? In an efficient market, shares are “cheap” only if you know something. What did Friedman know? He bought shares in a bank while he was working for a branch of the agency that was running banking (not to mention the rest of the economy). Could he have known something?

As it turned out, Friedman bought the shares at prices ranging from $66 to $80/share which were trading at $127.08 on Friday, for an accrued gain of $2.7 million.

While Congress and the SEC are investigating those hedge funds, do you think maybe they could find some time for Mr. Friedman?

Text & Legislative History of Hawaii's "Islam Day" Law

I couldn't find this in the news articles on the web, so downloaded the text of HCR 100 from the Hawaiian Capitol webpage to read it without journalistic filters:

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
TWENTY-FIFTH LEGISLATURE, 2009 H.D.1
H.C.R. NO. 100
STATE OF HAWAII

HOUSE CONCURRENT
RESOLUTION

PROCLAIMING SEPTEMBER 24, 2009, AS ISLAM DAY.

1 WHEREAS, Hawaii is known for the wealth of its cultural and
2 religious diversity and the harmony with which people of many
3 cultures and religions live together; and

4

5 WHEREAS, Muslims constitute an ethnically diverse part of
6 Hawaii's cultural fabric, with around 3,000 practicing members;
7 and
8
9 WHEREAS, the Prophet Mohammad left his house to migrate to

10 Madinah and reached Quba in the vicinity of Madinah on the 12th

11 day of Rabi ul-Awwal according to the lunar calendar, or

12 September 24th according to the Gregorian calendar, thereby

13 marking the birth of Islam; and

14

15 WHEREAS, Islam, a religion with a long and noble history,

16 is the second largest religion in the world, with over one

17 billion followers spread across every continent, and including

18 members of many nations and cultures; and

19

20 WHEREAS, the Islamic world preserved and made original

21 contributions to works of science and philosophy during the

22 Middle Ages when these disciplines were threatened by bigotry

23 and prejudice in other parts of the world; and

24

25 WHEREAS, Islamic artists, scientists, and philosophers have

26 a rich history of contribution to world literature and our

27 collective scientific understanding; and

28

29 WHEREAS, the Islamic faith shares common teachings found in

30 the texts of both Christianity and Judaism, whose followers are

31 respected and considered "People of the Book"; and

HCR100 HD1 HMS 2009-3797

Page 2 100

H.D.1

H.C.R. NO.
1 WHEREAS, Islamic doctrine encourages generosity in its
2 adherents, maintaining that those who possess much have a
3 responsibility to care for those in need; and


4

5 WHEREAS, Islam, along with its monotheistic counterparts,
6 holds that peace is a divine quality and necessary for
7 collective human happiness; and
8
9 WHEREAS, Islam strives for a world-wide community which, in

10 the words of one Islamic poet philosopher, "does not recognize
11 the superficial differences of race, or history, or
12 nationality"; and
13
14 WHEREAS, the United States and countries of the Islamic
15 world hold in common many beliefs and values including concepts
16 of world community and'mutual responsibility; and
17
18 WHEREAS, international understanding and peace, as well as
19 understanding and peace in our local communities, are
20 strengthened by free and open communications among everyone
21 representing various cultural and religious traditions; and
22
23 WHEREAS, the 96th United States Congress officially
M recognized the noble qualities of Islam in a concurrent
25 resolution on October 15, 1979 (SCR 43), honoring the religion's
26 14th centennial; now, therefore,
27
28 BEIT RESOLVED by the House of Representatives of the
29 Twenty-fifth Legislature of the State of Hawaii, Regular Session
30 of 2009, the Senate concurring, that September 24, 2009, shall
31 be known as "Islam Day" to recognize the rich religious,
32 scientific, cultural, and artistic contributions Islam and the
33 Islamic world have made since their founding; and
34
35 BEIT FURTHER RESOLVED that certified copies of this
36 Concurrent Resolution be transmitted to Hawaii's congressional
37 delegation, the Governor, and the Board of the Muslim Association of Hawaii.

HCR100 HD1 HMS 2009-3797

Legislative History:

Hawaii State Legislature
2009 Regular Session
HCR100 HD1
Measure Title: PROCLAIMING SEPTEMBER 24, 2009, AS ISLAM DAY.
Report Title: Islam Day
Description:
Companion: HR79
Package: None
Current Referral: EDT
Introducer(s): BERG, HANOHANO, Belatti
Date Status Text
3/4/2009 H To be offered.
3/5/2009 H Offered
3/6/2009 H Referred to TCI, referral sheet 25
4/8/2009 H Resolution scheduled to be heard by TCI on Thursday, 04-09-09 9:30am in conference room 312.
4/9/2009 H The committee(s) recommends that the measure be deferred.
4/14/2009 H Resolution for decision making on Thursday, 04-16-09 10:00AM in conference room 312.
4/14/2009 H This measure has been deleted from the meeting scheduled on Thursday 04-16-09 10:00AM in conference room 312.
4/16/2009 H Scheduled for decision making on Thursday, 04-16-09 2:00 PM in conference room 423.
4/16/2009 H The committees on TCI recommend that the measure be PASSED, WITH AMENDMENTS. The votes were as follows: 7 Ayes: Representative(s) Manahan, Tokioka, Berg, Choy, Evans, Tsuji, Wooley; Ayes with reservations: none; Noes: none; and 3 Excused: Representative(s) McKelvey, Wakai, Marumoto.
4/16/2009 H Reported from TCI (Stand. Com. Rep. No. 1776) as amended in HD 1, recommending adoption.
4/17/2009 H Adopted as amended in HD 1 with none voting no and Keith-Agaran, Takai excused.
4/17/2009 H Transmitted to Senate.
4/20/2009 S Received from House (Hse. Com. No. 615).
4/21/2009 S Referred to EDT.
4/23/2009 S The committee(s) on EDT has scheduled a public hearing on 04-28-09 2:00PM in conference room 423.
4/28/2009 S The committee(s) on EDT recommend(s) that the measure be PASSED, UNAMENDED. The votes in EDT were as follows: 3 Aye(s): Senator(s) Fukunaga, Baker, Ige; Aye(s) with reservations: none ; 1 No(es): Senator(s) Slom; and 1 Excused: Senator(s) Hee.
5/5/2009 S Reported from EDT (Stand. Com. Rep. No. 1557) with recommendation of adoption.
5/5/2009 S One Day Notice 05-06-09.
5/6/2009 S Report and Resolution Adopted. Ayes, 22; Aye(s) with reservations: Bunda. Noes, 3 (Green, Hemmings, Slom). Excused. 0 (none). Transmitted to House.
5/6/2009 H Returned from Senate (Sen. Com. No. 783).
5/6/2009 H Resolution adopted in final form.

Sponsors BERG & HANOHANO bios:

Lyla B. Berg, Ph.D.

Dr. Berg is the owner of Lyla Berg & Associates, a company that provides consulting, training, and facilitation services on leadership development, effective communication skills, interpersonal relationships, and customer service. Her clients include financial and educational institutions, retail businesses, non-profit organizations, state agencies, and companies engaged in the visitor industry. Lyla integrates Hawaiian values and concepts in her custom-designed sessions with the belief that "thinking with a heart of ALOHA is the avenue to a successful organization." She believes that an organization's performance excellence is linked directly to its human assets and that the long-term prosperity of that organization is directly impacted by how the people of that organization interact with one another in their response to change. (source:http://www.lylaberg.com/index.php?page=biography)


Faye P. Hanohano
4th Representative District
Hawaii State Capitol, Room 303
415 South Beretania Street
Honolulu, HI 96813
phone 808-586-6530; fax 808-586-6531
From the Big Island, toll free 974-4000 + 66530
E-mail rephanohano@Capitol.hawaii.gov
Personal
Born and raised in Pahoa, Hawaii on December 21, 1953
Married to Leslie Kalani Jaime Julian
Education
University of Phoenix - MBA
University of Hawaii at Hilo - BA in Sociology
Hawaii Community College - AD in Political Science
Kamehameha Schools - High School Diploma
Political Office
Hawaii State House of Representatives, 2007 - present
District 4 ( Puna, Pahoa, Hawaiian Acres, Kalapana)
- Assistant Majority Floor Leader
Experience
Retired after 25 years from Kulani Correctional Facility
-Adult Corrections Officer - Acting Captain/Administrative Lieutenant
Former State Secretary-Treasurer of United Public Workers
- Also, negotiation chairperson for Unit 10 contract
DOE Substitute Teacher
Hawaiian Studies Lecturer at HCC
Program Coordinator at Kalani Honua and Honua Hawaii
Elected to the House: 2006 - Present (source: http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/site1/House/members/Rep4.asp)

NY Fed Chairman Stephen Friedman's "Insider-Type" Trading

From reading Simon Johnson's BaselineScenario blog today it looks like Goldman Sachs' man at the NY Federal Reserve may be guilty of an offense that sent Martha Stewart (among others) to jail. Will he get away with it?:

The idea of a stress test, of course, is to see what goes wrong under pressure. We do this for banks with hypothetical scenarios, but when you go to see the cardiologist you need to step on a treadmill and actually get your heart rate up. The stress test for bankers is very relevant for thinking about our future financial system in three ways:

1.We are now seeing how they behaved during a boom, both in terms of compensation system and insider-type transactions.
2.We can see what happened during a crash and attempted recovery; part of which is about massive taxpayer provided subsidies (do the bankers even have the manners to say thank you?) and much of which is about tilting the playing field towards pre-provision earnings (for which Jan Hatzius of Goldman has the most eloquent exposition).
3.Most interesting, of course, is how bankers think. They regard themselves as entitled to outsized compensation that encourages excessive risk taking. They think that insider trading rules apply to other people. And they are convinced that only they – and their friends – are capable of running government in boom or bust (or in ways that boom leads to bust, at which time you buy low and then recover through large implicit support from the government.)

Really what we have seen over the past two years (a great Freudian slip from the Comptroller of the Currency on NPR last night) is a stress test of our bankers. If you think they basically did fine, then we can go about our business with essentially the same financial system that has developed in the last couple of decades.

If you have concerns about how they behaved and the potential consequences of such behavior down the road, then we need to talk further. The banks passed their stress tests, in part because these were designed by bankers and people friendly to bankers (we could also think about how our regulators have done over the past two years). But are the bankers passing their stress tests?

Also this tidbit, from today's Wall Street Journal profile:

Mr. Friedman preferred to keep a lower profile than Mr. Rubin, leading some analysts to refer to him as Goldman's "Mr. Inside."

The Enron Economy

Our hosts in Chicago screened Alex Gibney's Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room while we were visiting. I had heard about this 2005 film from my business communication students, who apparently had been required to watch it for ethics training. What struck me about the documentary--which did a good job of capturing the psychopathic leadership and corporate culture of Enron--is that far from being a "wake-up call," Enron seems to have served instead as a model for what followed in American capitalism. Indeed, if the scandal happened today, after "stress tests," one might hear Secretary Geithner arguing for a government subsidy for Ken Lay and his cronies because the company were "too big to fail" (it was the largest energy company in the US at one point). Watching Enron's executives, listening to their voices on tape, I could only think of AIG, Halliburton-KBR, Goldman Sachs, Citibank, Moody's, Madoff, General Motors and the long list of corporate scandals involving bribery, fraud, bonuses, skimming, and corruption of various kinds that festoon our newspapers . Indeed, by comparison with today's crisis, Enron looks like nothing much. And at least the Enron story had a happier ending than we see today: Arthur Andersen went out of business, Enron collapsed and disappeared, Fastow and Skilling were convicted, and Ken Lay may have killed himself...

Why America is Angry Hamid Karzai Picked Mohammad Qasim Fahim

Perhaps because it represents an Afghan tilt towards Russia, and away from the United States (which has been "distancing" itself from Karzai)?

Some hints from Wikipedia's profile of the Afghan official:

Two views exist in regards to Fahim's past, first view holds that Fahim is the son of Abdul Matin from the Panjshir Valley. He is reported to have finished his studies in Islamic Sharia at an Arabic institute in Kabul in 1977. He went to Peshawar, Pakistan in 1978 where upon returning to Afghanistan joined Ahmad Shah Massoud in the Panjshir Valley. With the collapse of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul in 1992, Fahim was appointed head of KHAD under interim president Sibghatullah Mojaddedi and continued to serve under president Burhanuddin Rabbani. (Bhatia, 2007[2];Brown & Oliver, 2001[3]; also [1][2][3][4][5][6]

The second views holds that, Fahim began his career as a Soviet-trained intelligence officer in the KHAD secret police in the 1970s and 80s, [7] [8] becoming deputy to future president Mohammad Najibullah. Adding that Fahim abandoned Najibullah when his government fell in 1992, and joined the forces of Ahmad Shah Massoud, [9]. In addition, he maintained close ties to Moscow (and also reportedly the Communist Party of Tajikistan)[10]

Palette & Chisel

Walking down Dearborn on our way from the Chicago Historical Society to lunch at the Arts Club of Chicago--after a bitter disappointment in front of a padlocked entrance to the now-shuttered Three Arts Club recommended for its courtyard in our 2006 Rough Guide to Chicago--someone I know and I stumbled across The Palette & Chisel Club, located in a beautiful old townhouse, perfectly preserved, as if in amber, with an art gallery instead of living and dining rooms. Definitely worth a visit. Official description on their website:

The founding members were evening students at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1895. They wanted to paint from the model under daylight, which was rather difficult since most of them worked six days a week and the Art Institute did not offer Sunday programs. Charles J. Mulligan, a member of this group, was an assistant to sculptor Lorado Taft. He was able to persuade Taft to rent the fledgling organization part of his seventh floor studio in the old Athenaeum Building on Van Buren Street in Chicago. Taft was in the habit of maintaining large, ostentatious studios - more to impress prospective clients than from need for such space. Within a short time, the Palette & Chisel membership multiplied.

In 1921, to accommodate their burgeoning numbers, members pooled their money and purchased a three story Italianate mansion at 1012 North Dearborn. It was one of the first buildings to be built in the neighborhood after the great fire of 1871. Founding member Fred Larson and several others guaranteed the mortgage using their own homes as collateral.

Early supporters of the organization included: Charlie Russel, Alphonse Mucha (a leader of the art nouveau movement), William Merrit Chase and George Bellows. Though largely a group of amateurs, the Palette & Chisel quickly began to produce artists with their own singular vision. Walter Ufer, Victor Higgins, and Martin Hennings began their art careers at the Palette & Chisel and later became famous in the West as painters in the Taos School. Later, the Palette & Chisel served as the artistic home of J. Jeffrey Grant, James Topping, Rudolph Ingerle, Eugene Savage and muralist Otto Hake. The first woman member, Ruth Van Sickle Ford, was accepted in 1961.

A contemporary survey of members would include: internationally recognized artist Richard Schmid, who served as president of the Palette & Chisel from 1986-1989; marine painter Charles Vickery; super-realist George Fischer; sculptors Margot McMahon and Patrick McKearnon.

A Chicago Sculpture Album

Saint-Gaudens' Abraham Lincoln:

From the entrance arch to the Chicago Stockyards in the Historical Society Cafe:




And a sign of the times:

Carl Holzman at the Triangle Gallery of Old Town

At the opening of his new show in Chicago, last Sunday, in front of his Sunflowers in a Talavera Pot and Fresh Pasta with Parmesan:

Daniel Pipes: Why I Supported Steven J. Rosen

From DanielPipes.org:

On the other hand, he (along with his AIPAC colleague Keith Weissman) stood accused by the Bush administration of breaching the ominously-named Espionage Act of 1917, and faced criminal charges that could have landed him in jail for years. Although he was not accused of spying, his (and our) opponents reveled in calling him an "accused spy"; and, of course, we worried about the ramifications for us if he were found guilty.

During extensive consultations with the MEF's board of governors, I found a consensus on wishing to bring on board so formidable an analyst in his hour of need mixed with apprehension about the criminal case.

Two developments resolved the dilemma for us in September 2008. Our study of the government's case convinced us of its injustice, shoddiness, arbitrariness, hollowness, and futility. Certain of Mr. Rosen's innocence, the lawsuit against him would not stop us from hiring him.

Second, world events kicked in. Seeing the Iranian drive to get the bomb as the single greatest danger both to the Middle East and to the United States (in the later case, via electro-magnetic pulse), we realized that the outgoing Bush administration would not take steps to stop the Iranian pursuit of nuclear weapons; and that Barack Obama, with his soft approach to Iran, would likely win the election.

Accordingly, the Forum in October 2008 began funding Mr. Rosen to work on ways to stop the Iranian march to nuclear weapons. He is ideal for the job, having begun efforts to stymie Iranian nuclear ambitions fifteen years ago – long before these became a general concern. Working behind the scenes, for example, he initiated efforts to develop leverage over Tehran through graduated economic sanctions by securing two presidential orders in 1995, followed by the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act of 1996 which laid the foundation for all subsequent efforts to bring economic pressure to bear against the Iranian government. He has been active in this arena ever since.

Following the inauguration, the Forum brought Mr. Rosen formally on board as a visiting fellow. In his brief time in this capacity, he initiated a Washington Project with his influential weblog, "Obama Mideast Monitor," and a new publication series called The Policy Forum. Notably, Mr. Rosen's blog started the chain of events that caused Charles Freeman to withdraw his name for consideration as chairman of the National Intelligence Council.

Then, on May 1, came the welcome news that the U.S. Department of Justice dropped its case against Messrs. Rosen and Weissman. In the words of the Washington Post, this decision amounted to "a stunning vindication" for them. Beyond that, it confirms the limits on arbitrary and prejudicial government actions.

Arianna Huffington: Geithner's "Stress Tests" Mean More Insider Trading Scandals

From today's Huffington Post:

The reason is, the banks are using this time to negotiate how much information about their portfolios the hoi polloi will be privy to, and are trying to get the government to reconsider its analyses (which are already iffy, since they are based on the banks' own estimates and on assumptions about the economy - including unemployment rates, and cumulative real estate and credit card losses -- that are hardly stress-inducing). This is the equivalent of a teacher giving a student a look at his grades and allowing the student to try to cut a better deal before report cards are sent home to mom and dad.

It shows how out of whack the power dynamic is when it comes to the administration and Wall Street. In the natural pecking order, regulators are above the regulated. They don't ask for permission. And they certainly are not worried about ruffling any feathers.

But for some reason -- the Wall Street-centric bias of Tim Geithner and Larry Summers, perhaps, or, as Joseph Stiglitz puts it, the government's confusion of "the notion of too big to fail with the notion of too big to be financially reorganized" -- the banks continue to hold the upper hand (see the cramdown debacle).

The delay in releasing the test results also opens the door to potential funny business, with some troubling insider-trading scenarios and a huge payoff, as David Min at the Center for American Progress points out.

We've already seen Goldman Sachs raise eyebrows with its sale of $2 billion in non-government-guaranteed bonds last week -- a move that sidestepped its agreement with the government not to disclose the results of its stress test, instead sending a signal to investors that there was no bad news in the stress test for Goldman. Of course, Goldman's receipt of $10 billion in TARP funds and $29 billion in bonds backed by the FDIC might have something to do with how well it is doing.

Goldman is typical of the banks' have-it-both-ways approach. By announcing its intention to repay the TARP money it received (thus freeing itself from government compensation restrictions) while continuing to issue government-backed bonds, the banking giant is acting like a man who wants all the benefits of being married while still being able to slip off his ring and have an affair anytime he feels the urge.

And then there is the trouble with the assumptions at the heart of the stress tests. As Nouriel Roubini put it: "These are not stress tests but rather fudge tests... The results of the stress tests -- even before they are published -- are not worth the paper they are written on."

Arianna Huffington: Stop the Banking Lobby!

From today's Huffington Post:

Just this week, the bankers and their lobbyists -- who you might have reasonably thought would be the political equivalent of lepers in the halls of power these days -- have kneecapped substantive bankruptcy reform in the Senate, helped pull the plug on a government-brokered deal with Chrysler, and tried feverishly to throw up a roadblock in the way of credit card reform in the House.

You heard me right. America's bankers -- those wonderful folks who brought us the economic meltdown -- are still being treated as Beltway royalty by those in Congress.

According to Sen. Dick Durbin, the banks "are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place."

When it comes to reforming our financial system, we are truly through the looking glass. I mean, since when did it become "to the vanquished go the spoils"? How do the same banks that have repeatedly come to Washington over the last eight months with their hats in their hands, asking for billions to rescue them from their catastrophic mistakes, somehow still "own the place"?

But the banks continue to be rewarded for their many failures.

Let's start with bankruptcy reform. The banks scored a lopsided victory on Thursday when the Senate rejected an amendment that would have allowed homeowners facing foreclosure to renegotiate their mortgages under the guidance of a bankruptcy judge. The measure would have helped 1.7 million homeowners keep their houses, and preserved an additional $300 billion in home equity.

Given the tidal wave of foreclosures that have so destabilized our economy, this seems like a no-brainer piece of legislation. There were over 800,000 foreclosures in the first three months of 2009 -- more than 341,000 in March alone.

But the banking lobbyists went after it with guns a-blazing - even after Durbin and the measure's other backers seriously diluted the bill. These concessions did nothing to sway the Mortgage Bankers Association (whose members' subprime schemes have helped bring us to the point of collapse), the Financial Services Roundtable, and the American Bankers Association, among other hired guns (check out this video of the Mortgage Bankers Association's annual meeting, held the night before the cramdown vote, and note the overpowering scent of self-congratulations).

And their aim was true -- and deadly. Heading into the vote, those pushing for reform hoped to gather the 60 supporters needed to bring the cramdown amendment to a final vote. Instead, Durbin struggled to find 45 Senators willing to side with consumers. The final tally: Bankers 51, Consumers 45.

Twelve Democrats sided with the banks -- Max Baucus, Michael Bennet, Robert Byrd, Tom Carper, Byron Dorgan, Tim Johnson, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson, Mark Pryor, Arlen Specter, and Jon Tester -- as did every Republican who voted.

As HuffPost's Ryan Grim reported, some of the key Democrats who voted against the measure have been on the receiving end of major banking industry campaign contributions:

The banking and real estate industry have funneled roughly $2 million into Landrieu's campaign coffers over her 12-year career, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. The financial sector is Nelson's biggest backer; he's taken $1.4 million from banks and real estate interests... Tester has fielded roughly half a million in his two years in office. Lincoln has taken $1.3 million from banking and real estate interests.
In the run-up to the vote, Durbin called it a "test": "Who is going to win this debate?" he asked. "The mortgage bankers and the American Bankers Association or the consumers across America?"

We just got our answer.

The shocking swagger of those in the financial sector was also evident in the negotiations that resulted in Thursday's announcement that Chrysler would file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

For much of the back-and-forth between Chrysler, its lenders, and the Treasury Department, those lenders (comprised of banks, including Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and JP Morgan -- all recipients of bailout money -- and private equity firms) were playing hardball. They repeatedly rejected attempts by Treasury to get them to lower the amount of Chrysler's debt.

The car company owes its creditors $6.9 billion. Treasury proposed that the banks and private equity firms accept 15 percent of what they are owed. The creditors scoffed at that and suggested they'd settle for getting 65 percent of what they are owed (around $4.5 billion), plus a 40 percent stake in Chrysler and a seat on the company's board.

Picture this for a moment. On one side you have the Treasury, which has helped funnel tens of billions of dollars to these banks, making what it considers an equitable proposal. On the other side, you have the bankers, the recipients of that government largess, showing their gratitude by scoffing at Treasury's proposal and demanding a much, much better deal. Clearly, Goldman has gotten way too used to sweetheart deals like the 100-cents-on-the-dollar payout it received as part of the AIG bailout.

Treasury eventually upped the proposal to $1.5 billion (22 percent of what the creditors were owed) and a 5 percent equity stake in the carmaker. Again the bankers scoffed, before finally, at the 11th hour, agreeing to accept $2 billion (around 29 percent) and a small equity stake.

A Treasury official took a victory lap, calling the deal "an exceptional accomplishment in line with the President's firm commitment that all stakeholders sacrifice to make this deal succeed."

Then the 12th hour arrived and the hedge fund managers, who hold around 30 percent of the Chrysler debt, decided they didn't want to sacrifice that much after all and refused to sign off on the deal -- even after the offer was sweetened with an additional $250 million. At least the hedge funds had not improved their balance sheets with billions in taxpayer dollars and government loan guarantees before scuttling the deal.

As for credit card reform, the House's resounding 357-70 passage of Carolyn Maloney's Credit Card Holders' Bill of Rights would seem like a rare defeat for the banking lobbyists who furiously opposed it. But a number of elements of the legislation demonstrate that even when the bankers lose, they still win. For instance, despite the desperate urgency of the situation, all but one of the consumer-friendly provisions of the bill won't take effect for a year. And the bill doesn't contain any cap on credit card interest rates -- an amendment to cap rates at 18 percent never got any traction. And, of course, the bankers will get another crack at derailing credit card reform when the Senate takes up its version of the bill, sponsored by Chris Dodd, later this month.

So no matter how badly the banking industry fails and how much its failures cost us, it continues to be Washington's 800 lb gorilla -- and the greatest risk to Barack Obama's presidency.

At his press conference, Obama bemoaned the fact that he "can't just press a button and suddenly have the bankers do exactly what I want."

It's too bad the same can't be said for the bankers, who keep pressing Congress's buttons, and getting pretty much what they want.

May Day's Chicago Roots

This entry from the Encyclopedia of Chicago tells the story of the Haymarket riots that led to an international socialist holiday:

On May 1, 1886, Chicago unionists, reformers, socialists, anarchists, and ordinary workers combined to make the city the center of the national movement for an eight-hour day. Between April 25 and May 4, workers attended scores of meetings and paraded through the streets at least 19 times. On Saturday, May 1, 35,000 workers walked off their jobs. Tens of thousands more, both skilled and unskilled, joined them on May 3 and 4. Crowds traveled from workplace to workplace urging fellow workers to strike. Many now adopted the radical demand of eight hours' work for ten hours' pay. Police clashed with strikers at least a dozen times, three with shootings.

At the McCormick reaper plant, a long-simmering strike erupted in violence on May 3, and police fired at strikers, killing at least two. Anarchists called a protest meeting at the West Randolph Street Haymarket, advertising it in inflammatory leaflets, one of which called for “Revenge!”

The crowd gathered on the evening of May 4 on Des Plaines Street, just north of Randolph, was peaceful, and Mayor Carter H. Harrison, who attended, instructed police not to disturb the meeting. But when one speaker urged the dwindling crowd to “throttle” the law, 176 officers under Inspector John Bonfield marched to the meeting and ordered it to disperse.

Then someone hurled a bomb at the police, killing one officer instantly. Police drew guns, firing wildly. Sixty officers were injured, and eight died; an undetermined number of the crowd were killed or wounded...

...Inspired by the American movement for a shorter workday, socialists and unionists around the world began celebrating May 1, or “May Day,” as an international workers' holiday. In the twentieth century, the Soviet Union and other Communist countries officially adopted it. The Haymarket tragedy is remembered throughout the world in speeches, murals, and monuments. American observance was strongest in the decade before World War I. During the Cold War, many Americans saw May Day as a Communist holiday, and President Eisenhower proclaimed May 1 as “Loyalty Day” in 1955. Interest in Haymarket revived somewhat in the 1980s.

A monument commemorating the “Haymarket martyrs” was erected in Waldheim Cemetery in 1893. In 1889 a statue honoring the dead police was erected in the Haymarket. Toppled by student radicals in 1969 and 1970, it was moved to the Chicago Police Academy.

Carl Holzman at Old Town Triangle Gallery, Chicago

Our Chicago painter friend Carl Holzman shows his latest still life paintings at the Old Town Triangle Gallery, opening Sunday, May 3rd in Chicago. You may also look at his work on his website, here: carlholzman.com.

Arlen Specter Jumps Sinking Republican Ship

That's the bottom-line on Specter's move from (R) to (D). The discredited and morally bankrupt (though personally enriched) Republican Party has nothing to offer the Pennsylvania Solon but tsuris anymore. Specter actually voted for much of the Republican agenda over the years, despite reports to the contrary. His defection hurts, in the same way Lieberman's defection hurt the Democrats a few years back. IMHO, it's a matter of "tipping points," for the party and the country. We'll see if the left-wing of the Democratic party is any nicer to Specter (remember Anita Hill?) than it has been to Lieberman (who suffered for his support for the Iraq war). If Specter is challenged in the 2010 Pennsylvania primary, he may be forced to go independent to keep his position, following Lieberman and Vermont's Bernie Sanders (who once called himself a Socialist)...though after listening to Senator Bob Casey's press conference, I think Pennsylvania Democrats might be smarter than the Connecticut hedge fund managers who gave the world Ned Lamont....

President Barack Obama: Happy Birthday, Israel!

This blog joins the President of the United States in congratulating the Jewish State on her 61st birthday. Here's the President's Statement on the 61st Anniversary of Israel’s Independence:

On behalf of the people of the United States, President Obama congratulates the people and government of Israel on the 61st anniversary of Israel’s independence. The United States was the first country to recognize Israel in 1948, minutes after its declaration of independence, and the deep bonds of friendship between the U.S. and Israel remain as strong and unshakeable as ever. The President looks forward to working with Israel to advance our common interests, including the realization of a comprehensive peace in the Middle East, ensuring Israel’s security, and strengthening the bilateral relationship, over the months and years to come.

Out of the Past: A Classic Film Blog

Found this while googling information about Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three. Personal responses to classic films, from a 20-something in publishing: http://outofthepastcfb.blogspot.com/.

Mark McKeon: Prosecute American Torturers in US Courts

In today's Washington Post:

I hope that the United States has turned the page on those times and is returning to the values that sustained our country for so many years. But we cannot expect to regain our position of leadership in the world unless we hold ourselves to the same standards that we expect of others. That means punishing the most senior government officials responsible for these crimes. We have demanded this from other countries that have returned from walking on the dark side; we should expect no less from ourselves.

To say that we should hold ourselves to the same standards of justice that we applied to Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein is not to say that the level of our leaders' crimes approached theirs. Thankfully, there is no evidence of that. And yet, torture and cruel treatment are as much violations of international humanitarian law as are murder and genocide. They demand a judicial response. We cannot expect the rest of humanity to live in a world that we ourselves are not willing to inhabit.

Arianna Huffington on Obama's 100-Day Minuses

After listing the pluses, Arianna draws attention to these minuses in Obama's 100 Days:

*The bank bailout. In his appointments at almost every agency, Obama has demonstrated a desire to receive a wide range of opinion. But the exception is a doozy: at Treasury, the range of opinion goes all the way from Goldman to Sachs. Several hundred billion dollars later, the banks still aren't lending, the zombies are still on their feet, preferred shareholders are still being catered to, the knowledge of where our money has gone is spotty at best, and oversight and transparency remain unfulfilled promises. The Obama White House's vision for the rescue remains startlingly myopic. The result is the continued funneling of hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to the very people who got us into the mess we are in -- with very little accountability demanded in return. The biggest black mark on Obama's first 100 days is his head-scratching reliance on the bank-centric beliefs of Larry Summers and Tim Geithner.

*Afghanistan. Obama has committed 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan but as many, including Obama himself, have noted, there is no exclusively military solution to Afghanistan. What's more, unlike with Guantanamo, Obama has adopted Bush's policies regarding the enemy prisoners being held at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.

*Torture accountability. Obama has said he wants to look forward and not back, and it's reasonable for him to not want his agenda sidetracked by torture commissions and investigations. But the way we respond to the revelations about the Bush administration's use of torture isn't merely a question of policy; it a question of morality. The minute the president starts framing the issue as a matter of right vs wrong, his choices will be clear. Because if there is one thing Obama cannot afford to abandon it's the moral high ground. And he can trust the American public to walk and chew gum at the same time -- to be able to support a national health care plan, a new energy plan, the reforming of our education system, and at the same time support accountability for those who undercut our fundamental values.

*Sensible gun control. Despite a recent run of deadly gun rampages and an appeal from the president of Mexico, whose country is paying a heavy price for bought-in-America guns, Obama has chosen the path of political expediency and turned his back on his campaign promise to reinstate a ban on assault weapons.

Swine Flu, Deja Vu...

Someone I know and I were reminiscing about the time we were innoculated for Swine Flu at college, during an epidemic in 1976, the handling of which had apparently been botched, at least according to this 2002 Washington Post account on the UCLA School of Public Health website:

Events began with the death, on Feb. 4, 1976, of an Army recruit at Fort Dix, N.J., during an outbreak of respiratory infections following the holidays. Throat washings were taken from 19 ill soldiers, and a majority tested positive for that winter's dominant strain of the influenza virus, which was called A/Victoria. But four samples were different, and New Jersey public health officials sent them to the CDC to be identified.

On Feb. 12, the CDC delivered a chilling report. The four samples -- which included one from the dead soldier -- were swine flu. As the name suggests, swine flu was endemic to pigs. However, the devastating pandemic of the Spanish flu in 1918 and 1919 is believed to have been caused by a strain of swine flu that, through mutation, gained the ability to infect people.

In 1927, a scholar put the Spanish flu's global mortality at 21.5 million. In 1991, a systematic recalculation raised it to 30 million. The latest estimate, published in the current Bulletin of the History of Medicine, sets the minimum mortality at 50 million, with an upper limit of 100 million.

The possibility that the Spanish flu had reemerged was a matter whose importance is hard to overstate -- and wasn't missed by anyone in 1976. Within days of identifying the strain, federal health officials were meeting at the CDC to discuss what to do.

According to various accounts, the idea that a swine flu epidemic was quite unlikely never received a full airing or a fair hearing, although numerous experts apparently held that view. Instead, the notion that an epidemic was likely enough to warrant population-wide vaccination grew from dominant opinion to unquestioned gospel.

At the same time, the rhetoric of risk suffered steady inflation as the topic moved from the mouths of scientists to the mouths of government officials. In a memo prepared for his superiors at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW), David Sencer, head of the CDC, talked about the "strong possibility" of a swine flu epidemic. Later, HEW's general counsel commented that "the chances seem to be 1 in 2." A memo from the HEW secretary to the head of the Office of Management and Budget noted that "the projections are that this virus will kill one million Americans in 1976."

A few experts suggested the vaccine be made and stockpiled but used only if there was more evidence of an epidemic. This was considered but rejected early on. The argument was that the influenza vaccine had few, if any, serious side effects, and that it would be far easier (and more defensible) to get it into people's bodies before people started dying.

On March 24, President Gerald Ford announced on television that he was asking Congress for $135 million "to inoculate every man, woman and child in the United States" against swine flu.

Over the next nine months, very little went right -- or as planned.

Pharmaceutical companies undertook crash programs to make enough of the vaccine by the start of flu season in October. But it turned out the Fort Dix bug grew poorly in chicken eggs, the growth medium for the influenza virus. This meant that yields were going to be about half of what was planned. In addition, one company used the wrong virus and had to start over.

The insurance industry announced it wouldn't insure manufacturers against liability arising from the vaccine. An act of Congress shifted most of the liability to the government.

Studies of Fort Dix's soldiers showed that about 500 had been infected with swine flu. But with only one death, this called into question the deadliness of the strain. In addition, swine flu didn't appear that summer in the Southern Hemisphere, as would be expected if a pandemic were starting.

Tests showed that single injections of some vaccine formulations didn't protect children. This required time-consuming studies of a two-shot regimen.

Albert Sabin, the father of the oral polio vaccine and a high-profile advocate, broke with the party line and called for stockpiling, but not immediate use, of the vaccine.

Three elderly people in Pittsburgh died on the same day within hours of getting swine flu shots. It was a chance event, but just the sort of guilt by association that arises whenever a public health intervention is done on a mass scale.

What killed the program, though, was the observation in early December that people given the swine flu vaccine had an increased risk of developing Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare, usually reversible but occasionally fatal form of paralysis. Research showed that while the actual risk for Guillain-Barre was only about 1 in 1,000 among people who had received the vaccine, that was about seven times higher than for people who didn't get the shot.

On Dec. 16, the swine flu vaccine campaign was halted. About 45 million people had been immunized. The federal government eventually paid out $90 million in damages to people who developed Guillain-Barre. The total bill for the program was more than $400 million.

There are a lot of lessons to draw, said Harvey Fineberg, a former dean of Harvard's School of Public Health, who co-authored an analysis of the "swine flu affair" for Joseph A. Califano, HEW secretary under President Jimmy Carter, who succeeded Ford in January 1977.

Among them: Don't over-promise; think carefully about what needs to be decided when; don't expect the consensus of experts to hold in the face of changing events. The biggest, he said recently, was perhaps the most obvious: Expect the unexpected at all times.

Coming This Wednesday...

To the Arts Club of Washington, DC, Wednesday, April 29, 2009, from 5:30pm - 8:30pm:

EVENINGS WITH EXTRAORDINARY ARTISTS: 3 HOLLYWOOD VIENNESE: WILDER, ZINNEMANN, PREMINGER

Arts Club Cinematography chair Larry Jarvik will moderate a panel devoted to the life, work and creative legacy of producer-directors Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann, and Otto Preminger. Towson University professor Peter Lev will discuss “Otto Preminger’s Fatal Women.” Prof. Lev is co-editor of The Literature/Film Reader: Issues of Adaptation and author of History of the American Cinema: The Fifties. Dr. Lawrence Suid will focus on “The Search for Fred Zinnemann.” Dr. Suid, author of Guts & Glory: The Making of the American Military Image on Film, is now writing Zinnemann’s biography. Jarvik’s topic is “One, Two, Three: Billy Wilder’s Coca-Cola Comedy.” The evening will feature clips from a number of the Viennese auteurs’ best films, as well as an opportunity for audience participation.

Cost of the program is $20, including wine and hors d’oeuvres; reserve at 202-331-7282, ext. 16, by 3 p.m. on Tuesday, April 28th. Free validated parking is available at the Nation Parking garage on 20th Street NW (located between Eye and K Streets, NW).

Location: Arts Club of Washington
2017 Eye St NW
Washington, DC

(Please forgive the self-promotion...)

Rabbi David Golinkin on the Bergson Group in Israeli History

On the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day and Israeli Independence Day, Dr. Rafael Medoff sent me last week's interview in the Jerusalem Post with Rabbi David Golinkin, who stars as Rabbi Stephen Wise in the Jerusalem production of Bernard Weinraub's The Accomplices. An excerpt:

Your father, Noah Golinkin, was a young rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary in those days. He and his classmates Jerry Lipnick and Buddy Sachs fashioned their own unique response to the news about Europe's Jews. Why?

After Stephen Wise snubbed them, my father and his fellow-students felt they had no choice but to create their own activist group, called the European Committee. No budget, no staff, no office, just some 20-somethings in their dorm rooms with a rickety typewriter. They organized an amazing conference in February 1943, bringing Christian and Jewish students from 11 theological seminaries together to learn what was happening to Europe's Jews and to discuss ways to help. My father and his friends also managed to persuade the Synagogue Council of America to launch a nationwide campaign to get synagogues to hold memorial rallies in May 1943, to insert special passages about Europe's Jews - written by my father - in their prayers, to wear black ribbons and more.

This was all a very important part of making the Jewish public aware of what was happening and of putting rescue at the top of the Jewish community's agenda. It's really remarkable to think that a handful of college students could make that happen.

Your father had just recently escaped from the Nazis and reached America. Usually one thinks of immigrants as being afraid to "make waves" in their new country. What made your father different?

He only arrived in the US in 1938. Through intensive lobbying in Congress, he managed to get his parents out in 1939 and his sisters out in 1942. This proved to him that lobbying did work. The second reason was simply his personality - he was a doer. If he saw a problem, he tried to solve it. When he saw the Jewish leaders staying quiet, he prodded them to act before it would be too late.

The controversy over president Roosevelt and the Holocaust continues to provoke debate, more than 60 years after the fact. Now it's coming to the Jerusalem stage. How do you think Israelis will respond to it?

Israelis care deeply about these issues, and they should. The Allies' response to the Holocaust has affected so many issues, from the creation of Israel, to the nature of America-Israel relations, to the influence of American Jews on US foreign policy. Also, many Israelis will naturally see Peter Bergson [Hillel Kook] as "one of ours" - he and the other leaders of the Bergson Group came to America from Mandatory Palestine, and after their work was done, they went back to Eretz Yisrael. Bergson and two of his colleagues even served in the first Knesset. The story of the Bergson Group is not only part of American Jewish history, it's a very important part of Israeli and Zionist history as well.

Chris Buckley's "Mummy Dearest"

In today's New York Times Magazine, a memoir of growing up as the Crown Prince of Conservatism. It's the first thing written by Chris Buckley that I enjoyed reading, perhaps because it reminded me of my one and only dinner with Bill and Pat Buckley more than a decade ago...one at which she barely said a word, except to the servants, whom she called on what looked like a TV remote control, while wearing dark sunglasses at the dinner table. Odd, and memorable. Like Chris Buckley's memoir. A sample:

I remember the time I first caught Mum in some preposterous untruth, as she called it. It, too, featured British aristos. She grew up a debutante in a grand house in Vancouver, British Columbia, the kind of house that even has a name: Shannon. Grand, but Vancouver-grand, which is to say, provincial.

So one night, when I was 6 or so, sitting with the grown-ups at the dinner table, I heard Mum announce that “the king and queen always stayed with us when they were in Vancouver.” By “king and queen” she meant the parents of the current queen of England. My little antennae went twing? I’d never heard my grandparents refer to a royal visit, which is a pretty big deal. I looked at Mum and realized — twang! — that she was telling an untruth. A big untruth. And I remember thinking in that instant how thrilling and grown-up it must be to say something so completely untrue — as opposed to the little amateur fibs I was already practiced at, horrid little apprentice sinner that I was, like the ones about how you’d already said your prayers or washed under the fingernails. Yes, I was impressed. This was my introduction to a lifetime of mendacity. I, too, must learn to say these gorgeous untruths. Imaginary kings and queens will be my houseguests when I am older!

When Mum was in full prevarication, Pup would assume an expression somewhere between a Jack Benny stare and the stoic grimace of a 13th-century saint being burned at the stake. He knew very well that King George VI and Queen Elizabeth did not routinely decamp at Shannon. The funny thing was that he rarely challenged her when she was in the midst of one of her glorious confections. For that matter, no one did. They wouldn’t have dared. Mum had a regal way about her that did not brook contradiction. The only time she ever threatened to spank me was when I told her, in front of others, following one of her more absurd claims, “Oh, come off it!” Her fluent mendacity, combined with adamantine confidence, made her really indomitable. As awful as it often was, thinking back on it now, I’m filled with a sort of perverse pride in her. She was really, really good at it. She would have made a fantastic spy. Really, she would have made a fantastic anything. She was beautiful, theatrical, bright as a diamond, the wittiest woman I have ever known. (Whatever talent I possess as a “humorist” — dreadful word — I owe to her.) She could have done anything; instead, she devoted herself, heart, soul and body, to being Mrs. William F. Buckley Jr. (A full-time job.)

At any rate, I hadn’t written to rebuke her over the Cat and Kate dinner, so that was one letter from me Mum never had to not open. What, really, would have been the point of writing?

I forgive you. I was glad to have the chance to say that to her at the hospital, holding her hand, tears streaming down my face. I can hear her saying, Are you quite finished, or shall I fetch my Stradivarius?

Howard Kurtz's Washington Post story on Buckley's memoir at this link. You can buy the book from Amazon.com here:

Judith Miller On Obama's 100 Days

The formerly jailed New York Times correspondent writes that she likes what she has seen so far:

How's he doing? Very well, given the mess he inherited. He has implemented key campaign pledges, at least rhetorically, while leaving himself considerable wiggle room. On his first day in office, for instance, he announced that he would close Guantanamo and end "enhanced interrogation techniques," known to most English speakers as torture. But he pushed Gitmo's closure off by a year and created a task force to decide whether, where, and how the "worst of the worst" and future detainees are to be held. While he abolished torture, he formed another group to study which techniques are legitimate and devise a broader framework for their use. Wisely, Obama has usually created a trap door for himself, in case a decision or policy turns out to be unrealistic or unwise.

Despite his inspirational rhetoric, he is remarkably pragmatic, centrist, and in some instances, quite steely. In Iraq, for instance, he set a compromise deadline for withdrawing, but made clear that a deterioration in security might prompt him to reevaluate the pace of withdrawal. In Afghanistan, while he vowed to limit the war to "disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda and its allies," he effectively embraced nation-building by pledging to train Afghan security forces, fight the drug trade, restructure the agricultural sector, reduce corruption, and do what is needed to prevent the Taliban from returning. Under President Obama, the war in Afghanistan has officially become his Af-Pak war. He has "surged" forces while eschewing the word. The number of combat, training, and support troops in Afghanistan is scheduled to increase from the 31,000 deployed at the end of President Bush's term in December, 2008 to some 68,000 this fall.

Several top appointees have military backgrounds or are veterans of the Bush era so despised by the left-wing of his party – Pentagon chief Robert Gates, for instance, General Jim Jones, his national security adviser, and Admiral Dennis Blair, his director of national intelligence. For his secretary of state, he chose former rival Hillary Clinton, whose foreign policy/national security views – having supported the war in Iraq, for one — are much to the right of his own. While he has endorsed greater effort to cooperate with such multilateral institutions as the United Nations, he refused to attend its despicable racism conference in Durban. President Obama clearly knows how to say no.

Harman Warned CIA Not To Destroy Torture Tapes

From the Council on Foreign Relations website (ht The Moderate Voice):

Representative Jane Harman, Chair of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence, released this letter to then CIA General Counsel Scott Muller on January 3, 2008. It is dated February 10, 2003 and exhorts the CIA to not destroy evidence from the interrogation of al Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah. The interrogation videotapes were destroyed in December 2007; Harman then requested that her letter and the subsequent response be declassified.

Mr. Scott Muller
General Counsel
Central Intelligence Agency
Washington, DC 20505

Dear Mr. Muller:

Last week’s briefing brought home to me the difficult challenges faced by the Central Intelligence Agency in the current threat environment. I realize we are at a time when the balance between security and liberty must be constantly evaluated and recalibrated in order to protect our nation and its people from catastrophic terrorist attack and I thus appreciate the obvious effort that you and your Office have made to address the tough questions. At the briefing you assured us that the [redacted] approved by the Attorney General have been subject to an extensive review by lawyers at the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Justice and the National Security Council and found to be within the law.

It is also the case, however, that what was described raises profound policy questions and I am concerned about whether these have been as rigorously examined as the legal questions. I would like to know what kind of policy review took place and what questions were examined. In particular, I would like to know whether the most senior levels of the White House have determined that these practices are consistent with the principles and policies of the United States. Have enhanced techniques been authorized and approved by the President?

You discussed the fact that there is videotape of Abu Zubaydah following his capture that will be destroyed after the Inspector General finishes his inquiry. I would urge the Agency to reconsider that plan. Even if the videotape does not constitute an official record that must be preserved under the law, the videotape would be the best proof that the written record is accurate, if such record is called into question in the future. The fact of destruction would reflect badly on the Agency.

I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,
JANE HARMAN

Is America the New France?

Apparently, this is the idee du jour in Washington, DC...and subject of a symposium at the Brookings Institution next Tuesday, according to an announcement I received today:

Is America the New France? How President Obama’s Policies Are Transforming the United States

When President Barack Obama unveiled his budget proposal in February, many observers described it as a radical departure for the American experiment, one that put the United States on a path to become like a European social democracy. One columnist lamented that "one France is enough,” and a political opponent derided the budget as "a blueprint for the France-ification of America.” The new administration bears more than a passing resemblance to its European counterparts in setting aside funding for universal health care and high-speed trains, increasing federal intervention in the markets and embracing green industrial policy and greater social equality. But, is the Obama administration really taking the American model in the direction of European social democracies? If so, would that be such a bad thing?

On April 28, the Brookings Institution will host a discussion to assess the scope and meaning of the "Obama revolution,” possible reactions by the American public and an apparent narrowing of U.S.-Europe differences. Panelists include Brookings Senior Fellows William Galston and Pietro Nivola; Guest Scholar Jonathan Rauch, a senior writer for National Journal and The Atlantic Monthly; and Clive Crook of the Financial Times, The Atlantic Monthly, and National Journal. Senior Fellow Justin Vaisse will provide introductory remarks and moderate the discussion. After the program, panelists will take audience questions.

When Will the Obama Administration Release Congresswoman Harman's Wiretap Transcripts?

Cong. Jane Harman asked that her NSA phone call transcripts be released on April 21st. So far, I haven't seen any answer...or any reason given why they should not be made public. Here's a copy of Harman's letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, from her official website:

April 21, 2009

The Honorable Eric Holder
Attorney General
Department of Justice
Washington, DC 20530

Dear General Holder:

I am outraged to learn from reports leaked to the media over the last several days that the FBI or NSA secretly wiretapped my conversations in 2005 or 2006 while I was Ranking Member on the House Intelligence Committee.

This abuse of power is outrageous and I call on your Department to release all transcripts and other investigative material involving me in an unredacted form. It is my intention to make this material available to the public.

I also urge you to take appropriate steps to investigate possible wiretapping of other Members of Congress and selective leaks of investigative material which can be used for political purposes. As you know, it is entirely appropriate to converse with advocacy organizations and constituent groups, and I am concerned about a chilling effect on other elected officials who may find themselves in my situation.

Let me be absolutely clear: I never contacted the Department of Justice, the White House or anyone else to seek favorable treatment regarding the national security cases on which I was briefed, or any other cases. You may be aware that David Szady, the FBI's former top counterintelligence official, is quoted in the media saying of me "…in all my dealings with her, she was always professional and never tried to intervene or get in the way of any investigation."

Sincerely,

JANE HARMAN

BTW, John Loftus's book The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed The Jewish People
provides interesting background reading that may be related to this case:
UPDATE: House Intelligence Chair Silvestre Reyes has announced an investigation into the Harman wiretap. Let's hope the public is able to see what results from this inquiry...I see from a Google search that Chairman Reyes stood up to the PBS bureaucracy in the case of Ken Burns' WWII film, acting as a supporter of the Defend the Honor Campaign. Let's hope he can stand up the the so-called Intelligence Community's version of Dickens' "Circumlocution Office" as well...He may have a hard time getting NSA to turn over the name of the culprit, especially since unauthorized release of wiretap information is a felony offense, according to the Federation of American Scientists' Secrecy News:

Ironically, the single identifiable crime in this whole story is the unauthorized disclosure of the classified contents of an intelligence intercept to CQ, and then to the New York Times. While there is no categorical legal prohibition against all classified leaks, several specific categories of classified information are protected by statute and their release is a felony offense. Under 18 U.S.C. 798, one of those is the unauthorized disclosure of communications intelligence, like that gathered by NSA.

Obama is Right to Oppose "Truth Commission"

IMHO, Allegations of torture are a matter for the Justice Department and Congress to investigate...any more "commissions" would be a sign that it is "business as usual" in Washington. The 9/11 Commission was a double-cover-up, that allowed serious questions to be papered over and resulted in a war strategy that left the US bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan some eight years after the destruction of the World Trade Center. Any so-called "Truth Commission" would be as unsatisfactory as the Warren Commission in clearing up public doubts (remember LBJ's resignation in disgrace?). It would end up as nothing more than a "Cover-Up Commission," whatever the intentions of its supporters, as anyone who has lived in Washington for more than a few months knows.

Yes, the Democrats were briefed and failed to stop torture under Bush. So what? Two wrongs don't make a right. President Bush didn't pardon Dick Cheney or his cronies, and that leaves the door open for criminal prosecutions and congressional investigations.

The time for cover-ups is over, there really needs to be some actual house-cleaning. When I worked at the Heritage Foundation, they were fond of quoting Richard Weaver's motto: "Ideas have consequences."

So should advocating and approving torture.

New Film Documents Plight of French Jewry

A friend from New York City forwarded this press release about Being Jewish in France:

MEDIA CONTACT: Gabriele Caroti at 212.875.5625 or gcaroti@filmlinc.com
April 23, 2009

May 13 – 19. North American Theatrical Premiere.
Winner of the Jewish Experience Award, Jerusalem Film Festival.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center is proud to present The North American Theatrical Premiere of Yves Jeuland’s Being Jewish in France showing at the Walter Reade Theater from Wednesday, May 13 through Tuesday, May 19. This sweeping documentary explores 100 years of the rich and complex history of Jews in France, the first nation to grant them full citizenship. The undisputed sensation of this year’s New York Jewish Film Festival, the film examines the explosive Dreyfus Affair, the Vichy government’s collaboration with the Nazis, the absorption of Sephardic Jews from Arab countries in the decades after WWII, and continues all the way through contemporary times.

Being Jewish in France offers a multifaceted and thoughtful approach to a subject that continues to spark controversy. In recent years, despite the fact that France continues to have the largest Jewish community in Western Europe, a number of anti-Semitic attacks have once again raised questions about French-Jewish identity.

Director Jeuland masterfully gives a vibrant human dimension to this examination of Jewish life in France by bringing together an extraordinary constellation of French-Jewish voices and experiences, from leading politicians, intellectuals, and artists. Being Jewish in France is primed to become the quintessential film on the subject.

Press Screening (held at the Walter Reade Theater)
Thursday, April 30 at 10:30am
Please note that this film is in two parts – there will be a 5 minute intermission.
To RSVP, please email pkim@filmlinc.com

France | 2007 | 185 min. (Part I: 73 min. Part II: 112 min.) | In French with English subtitles
Directed and Written by Yves Jeuland. Produced by Michal Rotman. Narrated by Mathieu Almaric.
A National Center for Jewish Film release.
Press releases and hi-res images may be downloaded from filmlinc.com/press
Password: press
Being Jewish in France will be shown daily from Wed, May 13 – Tue, May 19.
Wednesday, May 13/Thursday, May 14/Tuesday, May 19: 3pm 7pm
Saturday, May 16 Sunday, May 17: 1pm, 4:45pm 8:15pm
Friday, May 15: 7pm
Monday, May 18: 1pm

Single screening tickets for Being Jewish in France are $11; $7 for Film Society members, students and children (6-12, accompanied by an adult); and $8 for seniors (62+). They are available at both the Walter Reade Theater box office and online at filmlinc.com. For more information, call (212) 875-5601.

The work of The Film Society of Lincoln Center is made possible by the generous support of the Irene Diamond Fund, 42 Below, Stella Artois , Illy, and public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center, under the leadership of Executive Director Mara Manus and Program Director Richard Peña, was founded in 1969 to celebrate American and international cinema, to recognize and support new directors, and to enhance the awareness, accessibility and understanding of film. Advancing this mandate today, The Film Society hosts two distinguished festivals—The New York Film Festival and New Directors/New Films—as well as the annual Gala Tribute, and a year-round calendar of programming at its Walter Reade Theater. It also offers definitive examinations of essential films and artists to a worldwide audience through Film Comment magazine.

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Bernard Weinraub's "The Accomplices" Premieres in Jerusalem

Judy Lash Balint was there, and writes about the play's Israeli premiere at Frontpage.com:

These days, I no longer go to the official ceremonies. Fewer and fewer survivors are there too, since not many have the stamina to endure the lengthy security procedures, the wait for the president and prime minister to arrive and the hour-long ceremony itself. Besides, how many times can we listen to the pronouncements of the politicians and watch the endless laying of wreaths ?

This Yom Hashoah, as dusk descended and the somber memorial day unfolded, I found myself at the Israeli premiere of a powerful play by Bernard Weinraub called 'The Accomplices,' that dealt with the failure of the US government and the organized Jewish community to intervene in the Holocaust.

On the way home, it's easy to sense the heaviness that descends on the city. Flags fly at half mast; all cafes and places of entertainment are closed; only somber music plays on the radio.

On the morning of Yom Hashoah, the country comes to a standstill at precisely 10 a.m as the sirens wail marking the only ritualistic aspect of the day. I'm standing on Rachel Imeynu Street during the two minute call to attention. It's a moment of solidarity and comfort as the nation joins together in remembrance and resolve. In Musrara, on Jerusalem's seam between the eastern and western parts of the city, Israel's schizophrenia is exhibited for all to see. My son who lives in that neighborhood reports that the Arab commercial area doesn't miss a beat even as the Jews bring traffic to a halt just a few yards away.

My teacher and mentor, Rabbi Avi Weiss, has written extensively about the need for ritual in assuring Holocaust memory:

"I am concerned about how the Shoah will be remembered. Survivors are growing older. Neither can Shoah memory be entrusted to the museums. While they are of importance for memory, there are those controlled by universalists who take their orders from non-Jewish institutions. We dare not allow the Shoah to be politicized. Nor will the camps where the horror took place tell the story. Too many have already been Christianized and the emphasis on financial restitution has raised other serious challenges. No doubt assets should be recovered. Still, our community should be concerned that as this effort continues, the Holocaust will be remembered for stolen money rather than for stolen souls. The only way to ensure the Shoah will be remembered is through Jewish ritual; by speaking and re-enacting what our people endured sixty years ago, much in the same way as we do for yetziat Mitzraim (the Exodus from Egypt)."

Rabbi Weiss goes on to suggest various meaningful rituals that would go a long way to effectively preserve memory.

Here in Israel, along with the need to appropriately memorialize the Shoah, there's a rising awareness of the urgent need to take care of the remaining survivors. It's estimated that more than 80,000 of the 240,000 survivors in Israel live in dire poverty. The meager monthly compensation allowance from the Finance Ministry stands at 1,040NIS (about $250), but even this is only paid to those who arrived before 1953. Recent Knesset legislation has provided more assistance, but to date only 2,000 out of 8,000 survivors eligible have actually received any payments. As one radio talk show noted in his Yom Hashoah morning broadcast, "When Yom Hashoah is over, almost all our politicians will go back to their petty squabbles and fights over their own pensions and their budgets that pay for phones and newspapers for life."

All afternoon, despite the bright sunshine outside, I can't help but stay glued to the TV, watching documentary after documentary of almost unfathomable tales of every facet of the human experience that took place during and after the Shoah. I long ago found it impossible to read any more Holocaust memoirs, but there's something compelling about hearing the incredible stories of those who survived and made it to Israel; seeing on film how second generation Israelis are trying to unearth the truth about their parent's experiences.

At the end of the day, as the memorial candle on my window-sill burns down, after all the talk and ceremony, there are, of course, no new answers to the greatest tragedy to befall the Jewish people in the modern era. What remains is a sense of protracted shiva. We get up and resume our lives, internalizing our collective memories.

Her blog is called JerusalemDiaries.

ACLU Petitions to Investigate Torture Allegations

I thought I'd share today's email with my readers, and I'm signing the petition, myself:

Dear ACLU Supporter,

Since the ACLU forced the release of four critical Bush torture memos, the demand for an independent investigation has been growing louder and louder. Even President Obama said it's up to Attorney General Eric Holder to decide whether to prosecute the memos' authors.

Tomorrow, the ACLU and a number of partner organizations will raise the stakes.

We’ll deliver hundreds of thousands of petitions to Attorney General Holder as he testifies before the House Appropriations Committee on Thursday afternoon -- his first public testimony since the memos were released.

Sign the ACLU petition calling on Attorney General Holder to appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate high-level involvement in torture.

The more disclosure there is about deep, high-level involvement in torture and detainee abuse, the more indefensible it becomes to avoid investigating and prosecuting those responsible.

Involvement in torture is among the most severe violations of the law imaginable. And that should make it one of the last things we would ever think about overlooking. This isn’t about retribution or recrimination. It’s about standing up for what we believe in and restoring our country to an America we can be proud of again.

Make the midnight deadline. Add your name to the ACLU’s anti-torture petition now.

Tomorrow, people from all across the country will demand that the Attorney General takes action. Count yourself among them. Act now.

Sincerely,

Caroline Fredrickson
Director, Washington Legislative Office
ACLU

P.S. It took five years of hard work for the ACLU to force the Justice Department to release the Bush torture memos.

Please support our ongoing efforts to hold those who ordered, authorized, and carried out these horrible crimes accountable. Make a donation to the ACLU today.

© ACLU, 125 Broad Street, 18th Floor, New York, NY 10004

Hilary Clinton Blasts Pakistan

In today's Congressional testimony, according to Reuters:

The Pakistani government is "basically abdicating to the Taliban" in agreeing to the imposition of Islamic law in part of the nuclear-armed country, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday.

"I think that the Pakistani government is basically abdicating to the Taliban and to the extremists," Clinton told lawmakers when asked about the introduction of Islamic law in Pakistan's northwestern Swat valley under a deal to end Taliban violence.

Hello? Didn't anyone think of this possible outcome when the US gave a green light to the overthrow of General Pervez Musharraf? What's the contingency plan?

If there isn't one, I'd suggest that the Secretary of State begin reading Professor James Kurth's article, "Coming to Order" in the Winter, 2007 edition of The American Interest, in which he advocates returning Pakistan to India:

While there were particular ethnic communities that served as loyal allies of imperial powers in imposing order upon disorderly cities and turbulent frontiers, there were also particular ethnic communities that always seemed to be in opposition to the imperial order, or, indeed, to any order other than their own peculiar one. The British called these “unruly peoples.” The most notorious of these unruly peoples—indeed, the British called them “ungovernable”—were the Pashtuns (then called the Pathans), who inhabited both the southern and eastern parts of Afghanistan and the Northwest Frontier Province of British India. And so the Pashtuns have remained, right down to the present day. We might now call them a rogue people.

They have been a rogue people at great cost to the rest of the world. The Pashtuns are virtually the only ethnic community in Afghanistan that supports the Taliban, and indeed virtually everyone in the Taliban is a Pashtun. It was, of course, the Taliban regime and therefore the Pashtun community that hosted and protected al-Qaeda before the American invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, and it is the Pashtun community in the Northwest Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan that hosts and protects al-Qaeda there today.

Like many close-knit ethnic or tribal communities, the Pashtuns have an intense sense of communal identity and almost no sense of an individual one. They also naturally have an intense sense of their enemies’ communal identities, including their collective guilt. It is impossible to deal with the Pashtuns as individuals, responding to calculations of individual benefits and costs. This is why, after more than five years, no one has stepped forward to turn in Osama bin Laden or Mullah Mohammed Omar (the leader of the Taliban), even though the United States has offered a $25 million reward for each. The only way to deal with the Pashtuns is the way they deal with themselves and with everyone else, as a community that is capable of both collective honor and guilt...

...With its vast Muslim population of 130 million, India has had ample and generally successful experience with the problem of maintaining law and order invoving an internal Muslim community. In its ongoing Islamist insurgency in Kashmir, India has also had ample and often painful experience with this problem—a sort of Indian “near abroad.” India certainly is a willing ally in a grand coalition against Islamist terrorists, so long as we do not insist on formally calling them an ally.

India’s biggest contribution could issue from any future disintegration of Pakistan. This state has always been an artificial and brittle one, and in many areas—most obviously, in the Northwest Frontier Province, the autonomous tribal areas, and, increasingly, in Baluchistan, as well—it is a failing one. With a strong Islamist presence in the country and even in the military, Pakistan could one day become an Islamist state already possessing nuclear weapons. An Islamist Pakistan, perhaps with al-Qaeda operating on its territory, would probably be the most dangerous state in the world, a rogue state in the fullest sense of the term.

If the United States should ever determine that this state had to be put to an end, India would be the best ally to help do it—to “crack the Paks”, as it were. The ruins of this artificial country would produce four or five separate ethnic provinces, each of which could be reconstructed and ordered by a new Indian Raj with a mixture of direct and indirect rule—in a way not unlike the British Raj that once ruled these very same provinces.

Freddie Mac CFO Found Dead

Obviously, something is still seriously wrong in the financial sector, otherwise, why would 41-year old David Kellermann, 16-year veteran Freddie Mac employee appear to have hanged himself?

Arianna Huffington: Stay Outraged Over Financial Crisis!

Arianna just published a list of things to be outraged about. Example number four:

The three big credit rating agencies -- Moody's, Standard & Poor's, and Fitch -- stand to gain hundreds of millions of dollars in the government's latest plan to ease the credit markets.

You may remember these three as primary cast members in the ensemble production that's practically destroyed our economy. Without the AAA rating these three agencies gave to billions of dollars worth of junk, we might not be where we are today.

But fear not. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke says he has looked at the models the three are using now and is "comfortable."

Not exactly the word I'd use. Especially since, as the Wall Street Journal notes, the ratings agencies are still paid by the companies whose products they're supposedly giving disinterested ratings to for the benefit of investors.

"Until the rating firms bite the bullet and develop forward-looking signals and methods," says former credit-rating analyst, Ann Rutledge, "it's going to be same old, same old, and their models can be gamed."

After all, them's the rules. And Ben Bernanke is "comfortable" with them.

I'm not. And you shouldn't be either. I know from personal experience that it's easy to become worn down by the steady drip, drip, drip of scandal after scandal after scandal. But our weariness plays perfectly into the hands of those who got us into the mess we are in (the same people, by the way, who remain in charge of Wall Street). They welcome our outrage fatigue. They are counting on it. Their future depends on it.

Which is why we need to stay outraged. Even if it means losing out on a good night's sleep. And you know how much that means to me.

Is Rahm Emanuel the New Stuart Eizenstat?

Articles about Obama chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel and Israel like this one from the Jerusalem Post remind me of all the fussing over Stuart Eizenstat during the Carter administration. Eizenstat was Carter's Chief Domestic Policy Adviser and Executive Director of the White House Domestic Policy Staff. He went on to a number of jobs in the Clinton administration. But in the end, he was eclipsed by NSC adviser Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, whose gross incompetence brought us Ronald Reagan (not such a bad thing). Likewise, for all the talk about Rahm Emanuel, I'd say Obama NSC Adviser General James Logan Jones' and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton's views may carry more weight with the President at the end of the day.

Let's hope they do a better job than Brzezinski or Vance...

Los Angeles Remembers Peter Bergson

A phone call from a friend just brought this development to my attention. At this Yom HaShoah season, Los Angeles is paying tribute to Peter Bergson, protagonist of my documentary film. What do you think? asked my friend.

Better late than never.

Oh, Jim!

The other night at Politics & Prose bookstore, The Newshour's Jim Lehrer was kind enough to sign a copy of his new novel, Oh, Johnny, with a dedication "To Bettye," the mother of someone I know. The heroine of his story is named "Betsy," so I had to spell it out for him. He got it right. He signed books after reading a passage from the story about a Marine suffering from shell shock that caused him to choke up...A different side of the normally low-key onscreen TV news anchor.

Oh, Johnny is about Marines, baseball, and buses--three of Lehrer's long-term interests. Lehrer mentioned his USA Today interview about the book during his talk and the Q & A (to an audience with Marines and journalists, not too many bus drivers or baseball player could be discovered), so here's a link.

Oh, yes. Lehrer did do one of his famous bus calls for the audience, recreating the first time he was paid to speak into a microphone in Victoria, Texas...

Summit of the Americas--Direct

Here's a link to the official website of the Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain, Trinidad...

http://www.fifthsummitoftheamericas.org/

To End Piracy, Stop Shippers Using "Flags of Convenience"

Today's Huffington Post reports that NATO defended a ship registered in the Marshall Islands against Somali pirates, freeing some 20 hostages. Which raises the question, why are NATO forces protecting non-NATO-flagged ships? It may be cheaper for the industry, but it is bad for global stability. Shippers should be forced to register their ships under the flags which can protect them at sea--and yes, pay for more expensive Western crews if need be. There is no reason for the profits of shipping to go to places like the Marshall Islands or Liberia, while the costs of protecting the fleets are borne by the US Navy and/or NATO. It means, simply, denying protection to ships from nations that are not protecting the ships--no more "free rides" until piracy is stamped out. In addition to denying shipping companies offshore registration in places like the Cayman Islands. Insurers would be instructed to pass the full cost of insurance to the non-Western shippers.

Bottom line: It is a national security issue to rebuild the American merchant navy at this time and give preference to US-Flag carriers in government policy. Bye-bye tax havens, bye-bye union- and regulation-busting foreign registration.

I'd hope that organized labor make this an issue, ASAP...

Russia Celebrates Orthodox Easter With Cultural Festival

From the Moscow Times:

Among the events on Sunday in celebration of the Russian Orthodox Easter will be the opening concert of the eighth annual Moscow Easter Festival.

Continuing until Victory Day on May 9, this year's festival will include the usual mix of symphonic and choral concerts and afternoon bell ringing from the towers of churches throughout the city.

In addition to its local program, the Easter Festival again reaches far beyond Moscow, bringing music to some 26 Russian cities and, for the first time in its history, going outside of the country for a pair of concerts in the Armenian capital, Yerevan.

The artistic director of the festival since its founding in 2002 has been conductor Valery Gergiev, and dominating its agenda have been performances by the orchestra of St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theater, of which Gergiev is also artistic director. Once again, it seems fair to ask whether any other city in the world blessed with musical talent comparable to Moscow's would almost exclusively enlist musicians from elsewhere for the central element of a festival bearing its name. Rather by way of exception this year, a single slot in the festival's symphonic program has been allotted to a Moscow-based ensemble, the Novaya Rossiya Orchestra.

Happy Easter to our Russian (and all our Eastern Rite) readers!

Good Friday II

It's Orthodox Good Friday, and they are celebrating it in the Holy City of Jerusalem, according to the Jerusalem Post:

Orthodox Christian clergymen and pilgrims marked Good Friday in Jerusalem's Old City, at the site where they believe Jesus was crucified on this date two millennia ago.

Protestants and Roman Catholics marked Good Friday last week, but members of Orthodox Christian churches follow a different calendar.

Black-robed Greek Orthodox clergymen held wooden crosses as they entered the courtyard outside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Armenian priests also held Good Friday prayers at the ancient church, which is shared by different sects.

CQ: CIA Torture Memo Release Shows Congressional Oversight Failed

According to Congressional Quarterly:

Steven Aftergood, an expert in government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, says Obama's decision to release the information in response to the ACLU's [FOIA] suit points to a breakdown in relations between the branches.

"Congressional oversight did not get the job done," Aftergood said. "This reflects a significant and dangerous weakness on the part of Congress."

Aftergood noted former CIA Director Michael Hayden told MSNBC that the interrogation program "began life as a covert action." According to that reasoning, Aftergood says, Bush should have issued a presidential "finding" or some other official declaration authorizing the program. Instead, the interrogations were a covert action, increasing the potential for deception, Aftergood notes.

All of which means the release of the memos will probably provide fodder for future congressional hearings, as lawmakers try to play catch-up.

No "truth commission" would be required if Congress would do it its job here, IMHO...