Drug War Rant reports Bill Richardson refuses to be bullied by the D.E.A. and has been actively trying to implement New Mexico's medical marijuana law. (Background here.)

He's directed state officials to continue to work toward finding a way to implement the law, and has written a letter to the President urging him to end the "White House Office of National Drug Control Policy's misguided priority and wasted resources spent to intimidate states trying to implement medical marijuana programs."

From Richardson's letter to Bush, which he posted on his website.

I am writing to raise my deep concern about the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy's misguided priority and wasted resources spent to intimidate states trying to implement medical marijuana programs that provide relief to citizens suffering from the pain of severe illness or injury.

"At a time when the scourge of meth is coming across the border, and cocaine and heroin use continues to ravage our communities, the federal government should be cracking down on real criminals---not people who are trying to help those in pain."

Today's NY Times on the FISA legislation signed into law less than two weeks ago: Concerns Raised on Wider Spying Under New Law:

Broad new surveillance powers approved by Congress this month could allow the Bush administration to conduct spy operations that go well beyond wiretapping to include -- without court approval -- certain types of physical searches on American soil and the collection of Americans' business records, Democratic Congressional officials and other experts said.

Administration officials acknowledged that they had heard such concerns from Democrats in Congress recently, and that there was a continuing debate over the meaning of the legislative language. But they said the Democrats were simply raising theoretical questions based on a harsh interpretation of the legislation.

They also emphasized that there would be strict rules in place to minimize the extent to which Americans would be caught up in the surveillance.

Once again, Congress adopts something and reads it later. What are we paying you guys for?

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Walter Pincus in the Washington Post reports the Defense Intelligence Agency wants to spend $1 billion on contractors outside the U.S. to do its dirty work.

What work? Collecting and analyzing intelligence information. Can you say data-mining? That's my interpretation.

When Iraq Debacle And Surge Supporters Ken Pollack and Michael O'Hanlon dishonestly labelled themselves war and Surge critics, their endorsement, in a NYTimes Op-Ed, of the Surge was falsely treated as big news. Now we have an Iraq War and Surge supporter declaring the Surge a failure in an Op-Ed in the NYTimes. His name is Tom Friedman:

Ditto with Iraqi surges. If it takes a Middle East expert to explain to you why it is working, it’s not working. . . . There’s only one thing at this stage that would truly impress me, and it is this: proof that there is an Iraq, proof that there is a coalition of Iraqi Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds who share our vision of a unified, multiparty, power-sharing, democratizing Iraq and who are willing to forge a social contract that will allow them to maintain such an Iraq — without U.S. troops. . . . [T]he Bush team will say the surge is a “partial” success and needs more time. But that is like your contractor telling you that your home is almost finished — the bricks are up, but there’s no cement. Thanks a lot. My answer: If I saw something with my own eyes that I hadn’t seen before — Iraq’s Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni leaders stepping forward, declaring their willingness to work out their differences by a set deadline and publicly asking us to stay until they do. That’s the only thing worth giving more time to develop. . . . Only Iraqis living in Iraq can prove otherwise. So far, I don’t see it.

Think that will get half of the coverage of the O'Pollahan dishonesties? Me neither.

See also Joe Klein, on this powerful piece by NCOs of the 82nd Airborne. Joe sez "It puts to shame--and shame is the appropriate word--all the Kristol, McCain, Lieberman, Pollack and O'Hanlon etc etc cheerleading of the past two months." Also John Cole.

As always, I speak for me only.

Adam Cohen gets it right:

. . . Members of Congress should keep in mind, however, that the founders gave them the impeachment power for a reason — and Mr. Gonzales’s malfeasance is just the sort they were worried about.

The Constitution provides for impeachment for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Not a clear formula, but it wasn’t meant to be. Impeachment, Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist 65, cannot be “tied down” by “strict rules, either in the delineation of the offense” by the House, or “in the construction of it” by the Senate.

. . . Impeachment of Mr. Gonzales would fit comfortably into the founders’ framework. No one could charge this Congress with believing that executive branch members serve at the “pleasure of the Senate” or the House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has indicated that impeachment of President Bush is “off the table,” and there has been little talk of impeaching Vice President Dick Cheney or others in the administration . . . MORE

Scarecrow at Firedoglake and Marcy at The Next Hurrah are covering today's New York Times article suggesting that the FISA Amendment grants far more power than previously thought to intercept phone calls and obtain call and e-mail records of ordinary Americans not suspected of being involved in terrorism.

Broad new surveillance powers approved by Congress this month could allow the Bush administration to conduct spy operations that go well beyond wiretapping to include — without court approval — certain types of physical searches on American soil and the collection of Americans’ business records, Democratic Congressional officials and other experts said.

I'd like to focus on one other aspect: deficiencies in reporting requirements. How will the American whose conversations, business records, call records or e-mails are intercepted by virtue of the FISA Amendment find out and how will they be able to challenge it? The answer, as far as I can tell, is they won't know about it and they won't be able to make a legal challenge. The ACLU describes the paltry reporting requirements here.

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Hugh Hewitt at Town Hall has a proposal for the White House on how to present the mid-September report of General Petraeus. He argues against having only an announcement and a press gaggle with the traditional White House Press Corps present to ask a few questions.

It is the right of the American people, and especially those families that have sacrificed so much through the loss of a loved one, and the men and women of the military who are called on to bear the burden, to receive both an unmediated report from the general, but also a serious set of tough questions.

I'm flattered to be included on Hugh's list of "new media" representatives he recommends for selection. (I'm also available.)

Hugh's specific proposal is below:

Kevin Drum writes:

Sure, the war skeptics might have been afraid to go against the herd, but I think that was just an outgrowth of something more concrete: a fear of being provably wrong. After all, everyone agreed that Saddam Hussein was a brutal and unpredictable thug and almost everyone agreed that he had an active WMD program. . . . This meant that war skeptics had to go way out on a limb: if they opposed the war, and it subsequently turned out that Saddam had an advanced WMD program, their credibility would have been completely shot. Their only recourse would have been to argue that Saddam never would have used his WMD, an argument that, given Saddam's temperament, would have sounded like special pleading even to most liberals. In the end, then, they chickened out, but it had more to do with fear of being wrong than with fear of being shunned by the foreign policy community.

With all due respect to Kevin, who has been doing some great blogging lately, this is sheer nonsense. I believed Saddam had chemical and biological weapons and a desire to gain nuclear weapons (but it was clear he he was not close to gaining them or even that he had a viable plan for it.) But like others who believed Saddam had WMD, I vehemently opposed the Iraq Debacle. Let's look at why those of us did.

Update: The transcript of the debate is available here. My final thoughts: Hillary and Richardson really did well today. Biden was better than usual. Edwards was good but failed to break out of the pack. Obama had little of substance to say and didn't seem to get much time. Kucinich and Gravel were...Kucinich and Gravel. Dodd was good.

Here's a video of Hillary saying Karl Rove isn't going to endorse her and seems obsessed with her.

Update: I'm watching after all.

8:00 Strange opening...GS introduces them by their poll ratings. Obama at 27%, Hillary and Edwards at 26%. First question: Is Barack Obama ready to be President and is Hillary electable?

Obama half of the queston goes to Hillary, who answers saying she's running on her own record. Dodd skirts as well. Then goes to Dodd.

They are all subdued. Probably because its so early in the morning. Biden really seems tired. He tries to skirt and then when confronted with him saying Obama wasn't ready in the past, says he stands by that statement. Richardson cracks a joke, saying with Obama you get change, with Hillary you get experience, with him you get both. He says Obama is a geat guy and a fresh voice.

Obama cracks a joke too. "To prepare for the debate I rode in the bumper cars at the state fair."

They've woken up.

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Gideon Rose, the editor of Foreign Affairs, has struck back against the mean blogs:

The lefty blogosphere, meanwhile, has gotten itself all in a tizzy over the failings of the "foreign policy community. . . . First, many of the people in the various national security bureaucracies are indeed Humphreys, and deserve to have their every move and utterance treated with great skepticism. . . .

But that of course is a description of the two peole subject to the "blogger tizzy," Michael O'Hanlon and Ken Pollack. They chose to describe themselves as war critics when they were Iraq Debacle and Surge supporters. They lied. And predictably, I think they knew this personally, their lies were used for the purpose of giving their analysis credibility it did not deserve. It was the dishonesty, stupid. Much like these lies from McCain:

It’s entertaining, in that I was the greatest critic of the initial four years, three and a half years. I came back from my first trip to Iraq and said, This is going to fail. We’ve got to change the strategy to the one we’re using now. But life isn’t fair.

Greatest critic? My left cheek:

The Bush Administration's purpose for the Surge has always been to distract from the call for withdrawal from Iraq. In today's NYTimes, they admit it:

White House to Offer Iraq Plan of Gradual Cuts

The White House plans to use a report next month assessing progress in Iraq to outline a plan for gradual troop reductions beginning next year that would fall far short of the drawdown demanded by Congressional opponents of the war, according to administration and military officials. One administration official made it clear that the goal of the planned announcement was to counter public pressure for a more rapid reduction and to try to win support for a plan that could keep American involvement in Iraq on “a sustainable footing” at least through the end of the Bush presidency.

Now Bush gets to announce troop reductions. But the reductions will, in the best of circumstances, leave us at troop levels that existed prior to the Surge. Oh by the way, this too will be a NEW strategy:

The officials said the White House would portray its approach as a new strategy for Iraq, a message aimed primarily at the growing numbers of Congressional Republicans who have criticized President Bush’s handling of the war. Many Republicans have urged Mr. Bush to unveil a new strategy, and even to propose a gradual reduction of American troops to the levels before this year’s troop increase — about 130,000 — or even lower to head off Democratic-led efforts to force the withdrawal of all combat forces by early next year.

This has always been nothing but a game for the Bush Administration and Congressional Republicans. The Surge may have been a serious strategy for General Petraeus. For the Bush Administration it has always been an attempt to run out the clock until the end of his term. More.

Just click on "How Long" to play. Despite what I said earlier about it being "so.... Eagles. Really, like 1973 Eagles" it's really catchy. I like it more each time I hear it.

Or you can visit the Eagles My Space page.