CALIFORNIA YANKEE

'Intelligent Design' Banned In Pennsylvania

U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III has ruled that the teaching of 'Intelligent Design' is unconstitutional.

According to the Associated Press, the school board's claim that they were seeking to improve science education by exposing students to alternatives to Charles Darwin's theory that evolution develops through natural selection failed to convince Judge Jones:

"We find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board's real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom," he wrote in his 139-page opinion.

At Outside The Beltway, James Joyner agrees with Judge Jones posting there is no secular purpose for including this pseudo-science in the curriculum. I disagree with James. I think it is appropriate that students be made aware that some believe in intelligent design and expose them to the arguments concerning it. Judge James says such an approach is acceptable as long as it is not presented as "an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom:"

[W]e do not question that many of the leading advocates of ID have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors. Nor do we controvert that ID should continue to be studied, debated, and discussed. As stated, our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.

Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.

We shouldn't be afraid to expose students to ideas.

Judge Jones' opinion is available here [pdf]. Because that link is difficult to open, Howard Bashman has made it available at How Appealing.

Endangering America To Sell A Book

Friday the New York Times revealed The New York Times revealed, despite strong objections from the administration, that President Bush "secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying...."

The Times noted, in the second paragraph that only international communications were monitored:

Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.

The Times also reported the administration considers the intelligence gathering necessary to protect the United States, that safeguards were in place to protect privacy and civil liberties, and that the Times had delayed publishing the story for a year:

The Bush administration views the operation as necessary so that the agency can move quickly to monitor communications that may disclose threats to the United States, the officials said. Defenders of the program say it has been a critical tool in helping disrupt terrorist plots and prevent attacks inside the United States.

Administration officials are confident that existing safeguards are sufficient to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans, the officials say. In some cases, they said, the Justice Department eventually seeks warrants if it wants to expand the eavesdropping to include communications confined within the United States. The officials said the administration had briefed Congressional leaders about the program and notified the judge in charge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secret Washington court that deals with national security issues.

The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted.

The Washington Post takes the Times to task because the Times' article offered no explanation as to what had changed to cause the paper publish the story now. Even more significantly, there is a possible, undisclosed conflict of interest on the part of the Times and James Risen, the lead reporter on the Times' article:

The paper offered no explanation to its readers about what had changed in the past year to warrant publication. It also did not disclose that the information is included in a forthcoming book, "State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration," written by James Risen, the lead reporter on yesterday's story. The book will be published in mid-January, according to its publisher, Simon & Schuster.

The Post notes that in a statement issued Friday, Times Executive Editor Bill Keller did not mention the book, but did offer an explanation for publishing the story now:

In the ensuing months, Keller wrote, two things changed the paper's thinking. The paper developed a fuller picture of misgivings about the program by some in the government. And the paper satisfied itself through more reporting that it could write the story without exposing "any intelligence-gathering methods or capabilities that are not already on the public record."

Tom Rosenstiel, executive director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, said it was conceivable the Times waited to publish its NSA story as the Senate took up renewal of the Patriot Act. "It's not unheard of to wait for a news peg," he said. "It's not unusual to discover the existence of something and not know the context of it until later."

Which brings us to Senator John Cornyn who accuses the New York Times of endangering American security to sell a book:

"At least two senators that I heard with my own ears cited this as a reason why they decided to vote to not allow a bipartisan majority to reauthorize the Patriot Act," said Republican Sen. John Cornyn (news, bio, voting record) of Texas. "Well, as it turns out the author of this article turned in a book three months ago and the paper, The New York Times, failed to reveal that the urgent story was tied to a book release and its sale by its author."

[. . .]

Times reporter James Risen, who wrote the story, has a book "State of WAR: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration," coming out in the next few weeks, Cornyn said.

"I think it's a crying shame ... that we find that America's safety is endangered by the potential expiration of the Patriot Act in part because a newspaper has seen fit to release on the night before the vote on the floor on the reauthorization of the Patriot Act as part of a marketing campaign for selling a book," Cornyn said.

According to the Associated Press, several senators cited the NSA revelation as a reason to uphold a filibuster on the renewal of the expiring portions of the USA Patriot Act. Supporters of renewing the law failed to get 60 votes needed to break the filibuster.

In his weekly radio address yesterday, President Bush strongly defended both the Patriot Act the intelligence gathering program and was critical of the Times' disclosure:

This is a highly classified program that is crucial to our national security. Its purpose is to detect and prevent terrorist attacks against the United States, our friends and allies. Yesterday the existence of this secret program was revealed in media reports, after being improperly provided to news organizations. As a result, our enemies have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk. Revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemies, and endangers our country.

As the 9/11 Commission pointed out, it was clear that terrorists inside the United States were communicating with terrorists abroad before the September the 11th attacks, and the commission criticized our nation's inability to uncover links between terrorists here at home and terrorists abroad. Two of the terrorist hijackers who flew a jet into the Pentagon, Nawaf al Hamzi and Khalid al Mihdhar, communicated while they were in the United States to other members of al Qaeda who were overseas. But we didn't know they were here, until it was too late.

The authorization I gave the National Security Agency after September the 11th helped address that problem in a way that is fully consistent with my constitutional responsibilities and authorities. The activities I have authorized make it more likely that killers like these 9/11 hijackers will be identified and located in time. And the activities conducted under this authorization have helped detect and prevent possible terrorist attacks in the United States and abroad.

The Associated Press described President Bush's defense of the intelligence gathering program as unapologetic and reports the President often appeared angry in the eight-minute address.

The President should be angry. The New York Times' publication of this classified intelligence program doesn't pass the smell test. The Times published the story on the day the Senate was to vote on reauthorizing the Patriot Act, after withholding publication for a year. The paper's failure to disclose or even address the huge apparent conflict of interest- the fact that the lead writer of the article has a book about to be published on the topic makes all the worse. It is also ironic, as pointed out by Ed Morrissey at Captains' Quarters, that less than a month after the main stream media provided headline coverage to the 9/11 Commission's condemnation of the President and Congress for not doing enough to protect Americans from attack, the President is now lambasted for doing too much.

The argument that the times was right to disclose the classified intelligence gathering program because the program was illegal also doesn't hold water. The program was and is thoroughly reviewed by the Justice Department and NSA's top legal officials and Congressional leaders have been briefed about the program "more than a dozen times." The Foreign Intelligence Security Act permits the government to monitor foreign communications, even if they are with U.S. citizens. A FISA warrant is only needed if the subject communications are wholly contained in the United States and involve a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power.

I don't find the intelligence gathering program very bothersome. We are at war, even though too many pretend we are not. Additionally, anyone who assumes e-mail or cell phone conversations are private needs a reality check.

What does bother me is the public disclosure of a classified program. If we can spend who knows how much and more than two years to investigate who said what to whom and when concerning the Plame name dropping, we can damned well spend the necessary resources to determine who told the Times.

Eugene McCarthy Dies

The Associated Press reports former Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy died today. He was 89.

Eugene McCarthy challenged President Lyndon B. Johnson for the 1968 Democratic nomination. The challenge led to Johnson's withdrawal from the race when McCarthy got 42 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire Democratic primary.

McCarthy ran for president five times.

May he rest in peace.

Remember The Day Of Infamy

Reposted from December 7, 2005.

Early on a quiet Sunday morning on December 7, 1941, aircraft of the Empire of Japan, without provocation or warning, attacked the United States forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

The Japanese attack left 2400 Americans dead, and 1347 wounded. Twenty one U.S. vessels, including eight battleships, were sunk or badly damaged, and 188 U.S. planes also destroyed or damaged.

In the dramatic message that President Franklin Roosevelt delivered to Congress on Dec. 8, 1941, he told Americans:

Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

President Roosevelt then asked Congress to declare war on Japan, a request that was approved by lawmakers, with only one "nay" vote.

Don’t forget!

You can read President Bush’s National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, 2004 proclamation here. I think its peculiar that, like last year's proclamation, it doesn’t even mention Japan.

One of the things I remember most about my visit to the USS Arizona Memorial is that most of the visitors were Japanese. That still puzzles me.

Other Remembrances:

Donald Sensing at One Hand Clapping - Remember Pearl Harbor
La Shawn Barber - The attack on Pearl Harbor remembered 64 years later

Peterson Gets Death

The Jury decided that Scott Peterson gets the death penalty for the murder of his wife Lacy and their unborn child.

Peterson was convicted of two counts of murder in the deaths of his wife, Laci, and her fetus. Prosecutors say he strangled or smothered his wife on or around Christmas Eve 2002 and dumped the body in San Francisco Bay.

As California Yankee posted last month, I oppose the death penalty in cases such as Peterson's where there is a question about his guilt because we make mistakes. The number of convicted murderers that have been cleared and released years after being convicted numbers in the hundreds.

Peterson will br formally sentenced on February 25. The judge has the option of reducing the sentence to life.

Remember The Day Of Infamy

Early on a quiet Sunday morning on December 7, 1941, aircraft of the Empire of Japan, without provocation or warning, attacked the United States forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

The Japanese attack left 2400 Americans dead, and 1347 wounded. Twenty one U.S. vessels, including eight battleships, were sunk or badly damaged, and 188 U.S. planes also destroyed or damaged.

In the dramatic message that President Franklin Roosevelt delivered to Congress on Dec. 8, 1941, he told Americans:

Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

President Roosevelt then asked Congress to declare war on Japan, a request that was approved by lawmakers, with only one "nay" vote.

Don’t forget!

You can read President Bush’s National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, 2004 proclamation here. I think its peculiar that, like last year's proclamation, it doesn’t even mention Japan.

One of the things I remember most about my visit to the USS Arizona Memorial is that most of the visitors were Japanese. That still puzzles me.

Reporter Held In Contempt In Plame Probe

The New York Times reports that a Time magazine reporter was held in contempt of court yesterday and ordered jailed for refusing to name the government officials who disclosed the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer to him. Time was also held in contempt and ordered to pay a fine of $1,000 a day:

"The information requested," Judge Hogan wrote, "is very limited, all available means of obtaining the information have been exhausted, the testimony sought is necessary for completion of the investigation, and the testimony sought is expected to constitute direct evidence of innocence or guilt."

The ruling came in an investigation into whether Bush administration members illegally disclosed the identity of a covert C.I.A. officer.

[. . .]

The subpoenas for Mr. Cooper and other journalists were issued by a special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, trying to learn who told the syndicated columnist Robert Novak the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer, Valerie Plame. Ms. Plame is married to Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former diplomat who asserted in a July 6, 2003, Op-Ed article in The New York Times that President Bush had relied on discredited intelligence when he said, in his 2003 State of the Union address, that Iraq had sought uranium from Africa.

[. . .]

Like Mr. Cooper, Tim Russert, of the NBC program "Meet the Press," received a subpoena in May. In a decision dated July 20 but made public yesterday, Judge Hogan ordered Mr. Russert and Mr. Cooper to testify before the grand jury.

Mr. Cooper refused, leading to the contempt order yesterday. By contrast, Mr. Russert agreed to cooperate.

In a statement, NBC said Mr. Russert was interviewed under oath by prosecutors on Saturday. NBC said Mr. Russert had not been a recipient of a leak and was not asked questions that would have required him to disclose a confidential source.

Looks like the Associated Press missed part of the story yesterday. Judge Hogan's decision is available here.

Journalists Ordered To Testify In Plame Probe

A federal judge ordered Meet the Press host Tim Russert and Time magazine's Matthew Cooper to testify before a grand jury investigating the leak of the identity of Valerie Plame. The Associated Press reports:

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago wants Russert and Cooper to testify "regarding alleged conversations they had with a specified executive branch official," wrote U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan of Chicago. The official he referred to was not further identified in court papers.

The news organizations filed motions in June asking the judge to throw out the subpoenas or block the testimony. According to the Washington Post:

The move by prosecutors to seek testimony from journalists may signal that the six-month investigation is nearing its end, because Justice Department guidelines require that all other avenues of inquiry be exhausted first.

The release of Plame's name was wrong. However, the "leak" became less of a scandal when Plame and her husband, Joseph Wilson, posing for Vanity Fair. I haven't been sympathetic to the Wilson's since they demonstrated such poor judgement. I just want this matter resolved.

Clinton National Security Advisor Under Investigation

Sandy Berger, national security adviser under Clinton, is under investigation after removing highly classified terrorism documents and handwritten notes from a secure reading room during preparations for the Sept. 11 commission hearings. The Associated Press reports:

Berger's home and office were searched earlier this year by FBI agents armed with warrants after he voluntarily returned documents to the National Archives. However, still missing are some drafts of a sensitive after-action report on the Clinton administration's handling of al-Qaida terror threats during the December 1999 millennium celebration.

Berger and his lawyer said Monday night he knowingly removed handwritten notes he had made while reading classified anti-terror documents at the archives by sticking them in his jacket and pants. He also inadvertently took copies of actual classified documents in a leather portfolio, they said.

"I deeply regret the sloppiness involved, but I had no intention of withholding documents from the commission, and to the contrary, to my knowledge, every document requested by the commission from the Clinton administration was produced," Berger said in a statement to the AP.

Lanny Breuer, one of Berger's attorneys, said his client has offered to cooperate fully with the investigation but had not yet been interviewed by the FBI or prosecutors. Berger has been told he is the subject of the criminal investigation, Breuer said.

Berger served as Clinton's national security adviser for all of the president's second term and most recently has been informally advising Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. Clinton asked Berger last year to review and select the administration documents that would be turned over to the commission.

The FBI searches of Berger's home and office occurred after National Archives employees told agents they believed they saw Berger place documents in his clothing while reading sensitive Clinton administration papers and that some documents were then noticed missing, officials said.

When asked, Berger said he returned some classified documents that he found in his office and all of the handwritten notes he had taken from the secure room, but could not locate two or three copies of the highly classified millennium terror report.

"In the course of reviewing over several days thousands of pages of documents on behalf of the Clinton administration in connection with requests by the Sept. 11 commission, I inadvertently took a few documents from the Archives," Berger said.

"When I was informed by the Archives that there were documents missing, I immediately returned everything I had except for a few documents that I apparently had accidentally discarded," he said.

[. . .]

In the FBI search of his office, Berger also was found in possession of a small number of classified note cards containing his handwritten notes from the Middle East peace talks during the 1990s, but those are not a focus of the current criminal probe, officials and lawyers said.

Breuer said the Archives staff first raised concerns with Berger during an Oct. 2 review of documents that at least one copy of the post-millennium report he had reviewed earlier was missing. Berger was given a second copy that day, Breuer said.

Officials familiar with the investigation said Archives staff specially marked the documents and when the new copy and others disappeared, Archives officials called Clinton attorney Bruce Lindsey to report the disappearance.

Berger immediately returned all the notes he had taken, and conducted a search and located two copies of the classified documents on a messy desk in his office, Breuer said. An Archives official came to Berger's home to collect those documents but Berger couldn't locate the other missing copies, the lawyer said.

He retained counsel, and in January the FBI executed search warrants of a safe at Berger's home as well as his business office where he found some of the documents. Agents also failed to locate the missing documents.

I wonder what Berger is trying to hide. You don't inadvertently stick documents in your pants. This gets even more interesting. According to the Associated Press Berger isn't the first high-level Clinton official to improperly remove classified information:

Former CIA Director John Deutch was pardoned by Clinton just hours before Clinton left office in 2001 for taking home classified information and keeping it on unsecured computers at his home during his time at the CIA and Pentagon. Deutch was about to enter into a plea agreement for a misdemeanor charge of mishandling government secrets when the pardon was granted.

Kevin Patrick at Blogs for Bush points out that Berger is "John Kerry's chief foreign policy adviser, Democratic Committee Platform member and someone seen as short-listed for a Kerry administration secretary of state."

Michele Catalano also has the story posted at The Command Post, where a reader comments that Kerry is showing great foreign policy judgement with advisers like Wilson and Berger.

Captain Ed at Captain's Quarters posts:

From John Kerry's blog on restoring confidence in our intelligence and foreign relations:

As president, I will restore the credibility of our intelligence community by ensuring the basic integrity of the intelligence process. ...
Those who seek to lead have a duty to offer a clear vision of how we can make Americans safer and America more trusted and respected in the world.

Well, they're off to a fine start, by stealing documents from an investigative commission.

Draft Rumors Denied

Rumors that the government is secretly planning to bring back the draft have become so rampant that the Selective Service Administration has posted this notice on it's website:

Notwithstanding recent stories in the news media and on the Internet, Selective Service is not getting ready to conduct a draft for the U.S. Armed Forces -- either with a special skills or regular draft. Rather, the Agency remains prepared to manage a draft if and when the President and the Congress so direct. This responsibility has been ongoing since 1980 and is nothing new. Further, both the President and the Secretary of Defense have stated on more than one occasion that there is no need for a draft for the War on Terrorism or any likely contingency, such as Iraq. Additionally, the Congress has not acted on any proposed legislation to reinstate a draft. Therefore, Selective Service continues to refine its plans to be prepared as is required by law, and to register young men who are ages 18 through 25.

The Chicago Tribune reports that there is no truth to the rumors:

Lt. Col. Franklin Childress, spokesman for the Army's personnel branch, said he knew of no change in the Defense Department's policy of maintaining an all-volunteer military.

"We haven't done any preparations for a draft," he said.

Asked at a Pentagon town meeting with military personnel last month if there would be a draft after the election, Rumsfeld replied, "I don't think so.

"We don't need a draft," he added. "We're able to attract and retain all the people we need. . . . So I can't imagine that this country would go back to a draft."

[. . .]

A bill introduced in January 2003 by retiring Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.) would require all men and women 18 through 25 to "perform a period of military service or a period of civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security."

The measure was referred to the Senate Armed Services Committee, where it has yet to be acted upon.

Another bill introduced in the House in January 2003, would likewise require draft-age men and women to perform military or civilian national security service.

That bill was sponsored by Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), who said his bill would address the unfairness of having minorities shoulder a disproportionate share of the burden of military service.

He said the bill was meant to demonstrate his opposition to the war in Iraq and to emphasize that "there should be a more equitable representation of all classes of Americans making the sacrifice for this great country."

That bill was sent to the House Armed Services Committee and never acted upon. Also dormant in that committee is a measure by Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) that would abolish the Selective Service System.

Northwestern University professor Charles Moskos, a military authority and author of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy for homosexuals in the military, said two issues would have to be dealt with before the draft could be restored.

One is women, who are exempt from Selective Service registration but constitute 15 percent of the U.S. military. Though excluded from ground infantry and a few other combat roles, they command combat-area military police companies; fly bombers, fighters and attack helicopters; and command warships.

[. . .]

The other issue is the relatively few people needed for the military compared with the large population of 18-to-25-year-olds that would be eligible for the draft. A random lottery would interrupt the lives and careers of a relative handful of young people without affecting the majority.

Moskos said those problems could be addressed by a universal service requirement for young people that would have three service categories. One group would do traditional military service, a second would join homeland security efforts at the nation's ports and borders and a third would participate in civilian service projects, such as the Peace Corps or Habitat for Humanity.

Reinstating the draft, Moskos said, would address the lack of middle- and upper-class representation in the military.

Snopes.com, the debunker of urban legends, says "probably not" to claim that the draft will be reinstated by Spring 2005. The concern generated by this rumor is demonstrated by the fact that the claim that "The U.S. military will be reinstituting the draft"is number seven on the Snopes top searches page.