Plan to Cut Weapons Programs Disputed

Defense Supporters Say 100,000 Jobs Are in Jeopardy

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Some of the nation's largest defense contractors, labor unions and trade groups are banding together to argue that the Obama administration is putting 100,000 or more jobs at risk by proposing deep cuts in weapons programs.

The defense industry and its supporters argue that the proposals by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates will increase unemployment during a historic economic crisis. Why, they ask, would President Obama push hundreds of billions in stimulus spending to create jobs only to propose weapons cuts that would eliminate tens of thousands of them?

"It doesn't make sense that our government is looking at trying to save or create jobs at the same time it's talking about cutting something like this," said Jeff Goen, president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers chapter in Marietta, Ga., where Lockheed Martin does final assembly on the F-22 Raptor fighter jet, which is slated to be cut.

Lockheed and other contractors predict that up to 95,000 direct and indirect jobs are at risk because of Gates's plan to halt production of the F-22, which is built and assembled across 48 states but which has never been used in combat. Boeing says thousands more positions could be lost if the Pentagon halts production on other programs such as the C-17 cargo plane, which is assembled at a 5,000-worker plant in Long Beach, Calif.

The clash poses a nettlesome political challenge for Obama, who relied heavily on Democratic union support during his presidential campaign but who is backing the ambitious efforts of his GOP defense secretary to remake the Pentagon budget. Opposition on Capitol Hill is being led by Republicans who hope to enlist the support of union-friendly Democrats to quash many of the proposed cuts.

Gates and other Obama administration officials argue that job-loss fears are overstated, and note that the Pentagon's overall budget would increase by $20 billion, to $534 billion, under the plan released this month. Proclaiming the need to "reshape the priorities of America's defense establishment," Gates called for halting or cutting a host of programs that have been plagued by delays, cost overruns or performance problems, including the F-22, the C-17, a fleet of new presidential helicopters and the Future Combat Systems program.

But Gates and his generals have also tailored the budget to include growth in other programs that may lower the intensity of opposition, and has successfully brought Air Force generals in line on cutting back the F-22 and other programs that the service has historically championed. Although Maine would lose some jobs with the shuttering of the F-22 program, for example, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) praised Gates for planning to build three DDG-1000 destroyers at General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works.

"A lot of people are ascribing real cleverness to Gates in the way he has structured this," said Loren B. Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute think tank. "He has spread things out in a way aimed at dividing and weakening opposition."

The approach has already muffled criticism from Lockheed, the nation's largest defense contractor. The Bethesda-based company would gain from an expanded order for F-35 Lightning II stealth fighters that would help make up for the end of production on the F-22. Bruce Tanner, Lockheed's chief financial officer, told Wall Street investors last week that, on the F-22 at least, the company has accepted defeat.

"We've had our chance to lobby this matter," Tanner said.

The defense sector is a major Washington powerbroker, giving nearly $26 million to congressional candidates last year and spending $150 million on lobbying, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Even before Gates's final proposal came out, the machinists' union joined forces with Lockheed, Boeing and 11 other contractors to produce a slick Web site and ad campaign asserting that the F-22 program "provides jobs, a paycheck and economic security." Boeing is running full-color newspaper ads extolling the virtues of the C-17, which Obama singles out for praise on the White House Web site, even though it is one of the biggest targets on Gates's list.

In another ad campaign, the Aerospace Industries Association proclaimed: "Aerospace and defense is a powerful economic engine. We must keep the industry strong." Marion Blakey, the group's president and CEO, said the employment issue is "a compelling argument. . . . These are high-paying jobs."

The machinists, meanwhile, are targeting Democratic lawmakers in areas with defense-related jobs, union officials said. The group's 700,000 active and retired members will be asked to bombard lawmakers with phone calls, e-mails and letters. "It's going to be about jobs at the end of the day, but not in a selfish way," said Rich Michalski, the union's political director.

The criticism of Gates on Capitol Hill has been led by fellow Republicans, most of whom opposed Obama's stimulus plan but contend that defense spending is different. "At a time of economic difficulty, it makes no sense to take a strategically important weapons system and cap it and cost 95,000 jobs in a relatively short period of time," said Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.).

Key Democrats, including Sen. Carl Levin (Mich.) and Rep. Ike Skelton (Mo.), the chairmen of the armed services committees, have generally withheld judgment on Gates's proposals so far.

Gates told reporters this month that the changes will help create some jobs. He pointed to the F-22 as an example, saying that while 24,000 people are directly employed on that project, the F-35 already employs 38,000 and is projected to employ 84,000 by 2011.

"We cannot be oblivious to the consequences of these decisions," Gates said. "But nonetheless, we have to make them as a whole in terms of what's in the best interest of the country."

Specter Switches Parties; More Heft for Democrats

By CARL HULSE and ADAM NAGOURNEY
Published: April 28, 2009

WASHINGTON — In an unexpected turnabout in political loyalties, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania announced on Tuesday that he was leaving the Republican Party to become a Democrat, bolstering President Obama at a pivotal moment for his policy agenda and further marginalizing Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Senator Arlen Specter was surrounded by reporters on Tuesday after it was announced that he will switch parties.

Mr. Specter acknowledged that the surprise decision was driven by his intense desire to win a sixth term next year. It came after he and his political advisers concluded over the weekend that he could not win a Republican primary against a conservative challenger, particularly in light of his vote for the president’s economic stimulus package.

“I am not prepared to have my 29-year record in the United States Senate decided by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate — not prepared to have that record decided by that jury,” said Mr. Specter, 79, a moderate who has long been known for breaking with his party.

Republicans were knocked off stride by the announcement, and many had no warning from Mr. Specter, who met a polite but chilly reception when he entered a party luncheon to inform his colleagues. They immediately labeled it, in the words of Senator John Cornyn of Texas, who heads the party’s campaign arm, a naked act of “political self-preservation,” and they sought to portray it as an isolated case growing out of Pennsylvania’s political environment.

The defection of Mr. Specter creates the potential for Democrats to control 60 votes in the Senate if Al Franken prevails this summer in the court fight over last November’s Minnesota Senate election, a prospect that appears increasingly likely.

If Democrats could hold those votes together, Republicans would be unable to mount filibusters as Congress moves into the critical phase of acting on Mr. Obama’s ambitious agenda on health care and energy. A last line of defense against a Democratic-controlled Congress and White House would thereby be eliminated.

“This is transformative,” said Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon. “It’s game-changing.”

Democrats warned that it would remain a formidable challenge to keep their ranks together. Mr. Specter said he would not be an automatic Democratic vote, though he will be pulled in that direction since he now faces the prospect of running in a Democratic primary.

Mr. Specter was one of just three Republican senators to vote in favor of the stimulus package this year. He is a supporter of abortion rights and expanded embryonic stem cell research, and he opposed a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. But he also voted to authorize the war in Iraq, backed President George W. Bush’s Supreme Court nominees, favors school vouchers and has taken many other positions that put him at odds with most Democrats.

Mr. Specter said he had received commitments from Mr. Obama and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, to support him in any primary, backing intended to deter Democratic challengers. Mr. Obama is scheduled to endorse Mr. Specter on Wednesday morning at a joint appearance.

Administration officials said Mr. Obama was handed a note from an aide at 10:25 a.m. Tuesday in his daily economic briefing. The note, said a senior administration official, read, “Specter is announcing he is changing parties.” Seven minutes later, Mr. Obama reached Mr. Specter by telephone.

In a brief conversation, the president said, “You have my full support,” said the official, who heard the phone call. The president added that Democrats were “thrilled to have you.”

White House officials said Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had been at the center of the effort to persuade Mr. Specter to change parties. They said a switch had been the subject of years of bantering and discussion between the two men, who often sat together while riding the Amtrak train home. But the conversation turned more earnest after Mr. Biden lobbied Mr. Specter to vote with the White House on the stimulus bill this year.

One adviser to Mr. Biden said that since that day 10 weeks ago, Mr. Biden and Mr. Specter had spoken 14 times — six times in person and eight in telephone conversations. In each case, White House officials said, Mr. Biden argued that the Republican Party had increasingly drifted away from Mr. Specter since the election and that ideologically, he was closer to the Democratic Party.

White House officials said that there was no realistic way to guarantee that Mr. Specter would not face a primary race for the Democratic nomination, but noted that there was no Democrat in a position to resist the state’s political machine and make a serious challenge. More than that, White House officials said they had assured Mr. Specter that Mr. Obama would campaign for him and raise money for him if necessary.

“The president’s appreciative of this decision and particularly appreciative of the support that he gave on a number of things, the stimulus package being one of them,” said David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser. “And the president will do whatever he can do to help.”

Some Republicans bade good riddance to Mr. Specter, who was badly trailing in polls against former Representative Patrick J. Toomey, who also once led the Club for Growth, a group of fiscal conservatives who have financed primary challenges against Republicans they consider to have strayed too far from conservative principles.

Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, did not mince words, saying Mr. Specter “left to further his personal political interests because he knew that he was going to lose a Republican primary due to his left-wing voting record.”

But Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, a Republican who also supported the administration’s economic stimulus plan, said Mr. Specter’s view that the party had shifted too far to the right reflected the increasingly inhospitable climate for moderates in the Republican Party.

Ms. Snowe said national Republican leaders were not grasping that “political diversity makes a party stronger, and ultimately we are heading to having the smallest political tent in history.”

Other Republicans said Democrats were on the verge of unchecked power in Washington, a theme Republicans have pushed in an effort to turn political weakness into a strength.

“The danger of that for the country,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, “is that there won’t automatically be an ability to restrain the excess that is typically associated with big majorities and single-party rule.”

Mr. Specter, who sat on the Democratic side of the dais during a committee hearing Tuesday afternoon, said he had been assured that his seniority would be recognized by his new party, which would put him in line to jump over some Democrats for subcommittee chairmanships after the 2010 midterm elections.

Mr. Specter has suffered from a variety of serious illnesses over the years, but said on Tuesday that he was “full of vim, vigor and vitality.”

He has angered many Democrats over the years with his positions, particularly his support of Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. But he said that with his record of 10,000 votes cast over almost 30 years, he had done something to anger virtually everyone.

“I don’t expect everybody to agree with all my votes,” he said. “I don’t agree with them all myself at this point.”

Reporting was contributed by David M. Herszenhorn, Robert Pear and Jeff Zeleny from Washington, and Katharine Q. Seelye from New York.

CIA reportedly declined to closely evaluate harsh interrogations

Current and former U.S. officials say the failure to carefully examine the value of 'enhanced' methods like waterboarding -- despite calls to do so as early as 2003 -- was part of a broader trend.

By Greg Miller
April 26, 2009

Reporting from Washington — The CIA used an arsenal of severe interrogation techniques on alleged Al Qaeda prisoners for nearly seven years without ever seeking a rigorous assessment of whether the methods were effective or necessary, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The failure to conduct a comprehensive examination occurred despite calls to do so as early as 2003. That year, the agency's inspector general circulated drafts of a report that raised deep concerns about waterboarding and other methods, and recommended a study by outside experts on whether they worked.

That inspector general report described in broad terms the volume of intelligence that the interrogation program was producing, a point echoed in smaller studies later commissioned by then-CIA Director Porter J. Goss.

But neither the inspector general's report nor the other audits examined the effectiveness of interrogation techniques in detail, or sought to scrutinize the assertions of CIA counter-terrorism officials that so-called enhanced methods were essential to the program's results. One report by a former government official -- not an interrogation expert -- was about 10 pages long and amounted to a glowing review of interrogation efforts.

"Nobody with expertise or experience in interrogation ever took a rigorous, systematic review of the various techniques -- enhanced or otherwise -- to see what resulted in the best information," said a senior U.S. intelligence official involved in overseeing the interrogation program.

As a result, there was never a determination of "what you could do without the use of enhanced techniques," said the official, who like others described internal discussions on condition of anonymity.

Former Bush administration officials said the failure to conduct such an examination was part of a broader reluctance to reexamine decisions made shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Defense Department, Justice Department and CIA "all insisted on sticking with their original policies and were not open to revisiting them, even as the damage of these policies became apparent," said John B. Bellinger III, who was legal advisor to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, referring to burgeoning international outrage.

"We had gridlock," Bellinger said, calling the failure to consider other approaches "the greatest tragedy of the Bush administration's handling of detainee matters."

The limited resources spent examining whether the interrogation measures worked were in stark contrast to the energy the CIA devoted to collecting memos declaring the program legal.

Justice Department memos released this month show that the CIA repeatedly sought new opinions on the legality of depriving prisoners of sleep for up to seven days, throwing them against walls, forcing them into tiny boxes and subjecting them to the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding.

How well those methods worked is facing independent scrutiny for the first time only now, three months after President Obama banned the CIA from using them.

As part of an executive order shutting down the CIA's secret prisons, the White House has set up a task force to examine the effectiveness of various interrogation approaches.

The Senate Intelligence Committee launched a similar review, and began combing through classified CIA cables that describe daily developments in the agency's interrogations of Al Qaeda prisoners.

"To the best of our knowledge, such a review has not been done before," said a Senate aide involved in the probe.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano declined to comment on the reviews, saying their contents remain classified.

A U.S. intelligence official who defended CIA interrogation practices said that "productivity was an obvious and important measure of the program's effectiveness. The techniques themselves were not designed to elicit specific pieces of information, but to condition hardened terrorists to answer questions about Al Qaeda's plans and intentions.

"By that yardstick -- the generation of reporting that was true and useful, that led even to other captures -- it worked."

Obama has described the agency's activities as "a dark and painful chapter in our history," and senior members of his administration, including Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr., have called the techniques torture.

Defenders of the program, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, have accused Obama of dismantling a capability that was critical to keeping the country safe. Cheney also has called for the release of classified documents that he said would show how effective the program was.

Officials said that Cheney was probably referring to memos that were drafted by leaders of the CIA's counter-terrorism center to serve as talking points on the program to use in briefings for members of Congress and White House officials.

Is Cheney Winning the Torture Debate?

April 23, 2009 , 4:04 pm
By Eric Etheridge

At the Plum Line, Greg Sargent says that an article in today’s issue of The Times — originally titled “At Core of Detainee Fight: Did Methods Stop Attacks?” — is proof that Cheney & Co. are effectively “shifting the torture debate on to the narrow question of whether torture has ‘worked.’ ”

The Bushies want this question — “did torture stave off terror attacks and save lives?” — hovering in the air. There’s plenty of evidence that torture hasn’t worked at all and has done more harm than good. Even some former Bush administration officials have conceded it hasn’t done anything to stop terror attacks.

But it’s easy for the Cheney camp to muddy the waters and turn this into a matter of debate by citing unspecified classified info that supposedly supports the claim that it has saved lives — info that we’ll never see. Having the debate focused this way also lays the groundwork for the Cheney camp to say “I told you so” in the event of another terror attack.


Indeed, the question of effectiveness is “now on the front burner,” writes Michael Tomasky at The Guardian, as it has been pretty much both online and off since Cheney said in his Fox interview Monday night there were classified documents that proved the value of his approach. Former Bush speechwriter Marc A. Thiessen made the “it works” argument in a Washington Post op-ed Tuesday, and his facts and analysis were quickly engaged by Slate’s Timothy Noah, Tapped’s Adam Serwer and others.

Today a former F.B.I. interrogator who questioned Abu Zubaydah writes in a Times op-ed “there was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics.” (At Firedoglake, Marcy Wheeler says the important thing about the op-ed is that it is an “on-the-record refutation of the very cornerstone of the Bybee Memo–and with it the entire torture regime.”)

And Sargent himself just this morning linked to a December 2008 interview of F.B.I. director Robert Mueller in Vanity Fair, in which Mueller said “he believed” no terror incidents had been prevented by information from enhanced interrogations.

If “it works” is the primary line of defense, there are secondary lines being argued as well — primarily “criminalizing policy differences” and “which Democrats should we also indict?”

The Wall Street Journal editorialized about the former this morning, invoking the specter of third-world politics:

[A]t least until now, the U.S. political system has avoided the spectacle of a new Administration prosecuting its predecessor for policy disagreements. This is what happens in Argentina, Malaysia or Peru, countries where the law is treated merely as an extension of political power.

The editorial echoed comments yesterday from senators Arlen Spector, who used the phrase “banana republic,” and John McCain, Lindsay Graham and Joe Lieberman, who wrote in a letter to the president that they did not believe that “legal analysis should be criminalized.” Also pounding this line online yesterday were John Podhoretz and David Frum, who wrote:

After the 9/11 attacks, President Bush drew a curtain of oblivion against all the errors and mistakes that had led up to the attacks. There was accusation and counter-accusation in the media, but at the official level there was no recrimination against President Clinton’s decision not to kill bin Laden when he had the chance, no action against those who had failed to stop the 9/11 hijackers from entering the country.

If Obama proceeds to take legal action against those who did what they thought was right to defend the country, all that will change. Prosecutions launched by Obama will not stop when Obama declares “game over.” If overzealousness under Bush becomes a crime under Obama, underzealousness under Obama will become a crime under the next Republican president. . . .

It’s a nightmare future. Let’s banish the possibility now.

The other defense — “Which Democrats should be indicted?” — also invokes a scorched-earth, post-apocalyptic scenario, primarily aimed at Congressional Democrats: if anyone gets indicted for torture, so will you. Peter Hoekstra advances this case this morning, also in The Journal, and gets right to the point:

I have asked [Director of National Intelligence Dennis] Blair to provide me with a list of the dates, locations and names of all members of Congress who attended briefings on enhanced interrogation techniques.

Or as Ari Fleischer asked Paul Begala yesterday on Anderson Cooper: “Which Democrat members of Congress who sat in on the briefings . . . would you say need to be prosecuted?”

The battle lines will likely continue to shift as more documents are, or are not, released. And it’s hard to see torture opponents refusing to engage detail-for-detail on the issue of effectiveness, when they have so much evidence to argue from. Still, the simple case against torture — it’s wrong — is being made. Most famously and profanely yesterday on, of all places, Fox News, where Shephard Smith burst forth with an emphatic and impassioned: “We are America! We do not torture!”

That’s the cleaned-up version of what he said, actually. And it’s all I can share with you here, this being a family media outlet and all. But if you don’t mind a bit of saltiness, the video is worth seeking out.

The Cold War at Home

United States History

Not only did the Cold War shape U.S. foreign policy, it also had a profound effect on domestic affairs. Americans had long feared radical subversion, and during the Red Scare of 1919-1920, the government had attempted to remove perceived threats to American society. Even stronger efforts were made after World War II to root out communism within the United States.

Foreign events and espionage scandals contributed to the anti-communist hysteria of the period. In 1949 the Soviet Union exploded its own atomic device, which shocked Americans into believing that the United States would be the target of a Soviet attack. In 1948 Alger Hiss, who had been an assistant secretary of state and an adviser to Roosevelt at Yalta, was accused of being a communist spy by Whitaker Chambers, a former Soviet agent. Hiss denied the accusation, but in 1950 he was convicted of perjury. Finally, in 1950, the government uncovered a British-American spy network that transferred to the Soviet Union materials about the development of the atomic bomb. The capture and trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg for revealing atomic secrets furthered the perception of a domestic communist danger. Attorney General J. Howard McGrath declared there were many American communists, each bearing "the germ of death for society."

When Republicans were victorious in the midterm congressional elections of 1946 and appeared ready to investigate subversive activity, the president established a Federal Employee Loyalty Program. Workers challenged about past and present associations often had little chance to fight back.

Congress, meanwhile, embarked upon its own loyalty program. In 1947 the House Committee on Un-American Activities investigated the motion-picture industry to determine whether communist sentiments were being reflected in popular films. When some writers refused to testify, they were cited for contempt and sent to prison. In response, Hollywood capitulated and refused to hire anyone with a marginally questionable past.

But the most vigorous anti-communist warrior was Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, a Republican from Wisconsin. He gained national attention in 1950 by claiming that he had a list of 205 known communists in the State Department. Though McCarthy subsequently changed this figure several times and failed to substantiate any of his charges, he struck a responsive public chord.

McCarthy gained power when the Republican Party won control of the Senate in 1952. As a committee chairman, he now had a forum for his crusade. Relying on extensive press and television coverage, he continued to charge top-level officials with treachery. Playing on his tough reputation, he often used vulgarity to characterize the "vile and scurrilous" objects of his attack.

But McCarthy went too far. Though polls showed half the public behind him, McCarthy overstepped himself by challenging the United States Army when one of his assistants was drafted. Television "in its infancy" brought the hearings into millions of homes. Many Americans saw McCarthy's savage tactics for the first time, and as public support began to wane, the Senate finally condemned him for his conduct.

Until then, however, McCarthy exerted enormous power in the United States. He offered scapegoats to those worried about the stalemate in Korea or about communist gains. He heightened fears aroused by the Truman administration's own anti-communist effort and legitimized tactics that were often used against innocent people. In short, McCarthy represented the worst domestic excesses of the Cold War.

The American Eleven: A Values-Led Plan for Victory in November

The American Eleven: A Values-Led Plan for Victory in November
by Newt Gingrich
09/05/2006


Welcome to a special 2006 election edition of "Winning the Future."

The fall 2006 elections are now just two months away. Although the conventional wisdom is that Republicans will have a tough time this fall, I believe that we can still win -- but not without substantial changes.

In this edition of "Winning the Future," I outline 11 values-led policies that are both morally right and that enjoy (not coincidentally) the overwhelming support of the American people. These are the values and the policies that Republicans should embrace this fall.


Here's the key:

Republican victory in 2006 depends on a return to the American values that twice elected Ronald Reagan and returned the House to a Republican majority with the Contract with America.

Republicans in 2006 must return to the pattern that allowed the center-right majority to win decisive elections for President Reagan in 1980 and 1984 and win with the Contract with America in 1994.

President Ronald Reagan was successful because as governor, as a candidate and as President he spoke for and advocated the values of the overwhelming majority of Americans.

The Contract with America succeeded because its core solutions (standing on President Reagan's shoulders) reflected deeply held American values. It is vital that Republican leaders understand these were American values not Republican values.

* 92% of the American people favored welfare reform.
* 88% of the people on welfare favored welfare reform.
* 83% of the American people favored a balanced budget.

On issue after issue the Contract with America represented the values of the American people. The left was defeated in 1994 because it had lost touch with the American people.

The Reagan-Contract Rule: Change Starts With the People

For the last few years, Republicans in Washington have forgotten the Reagan-Contract rule that successful change starts with the American people. There is a real danger that Republicans will lose the House and the Senate this fall because they have strayed from this core principle of starting first with the concerns and values of the American people and then developing effective policies.

Consultants are working overtime to convince the American people to favor Republican policies. This is exactly backwards.

What really works is what happens when Republicans identify themselves with the American people and against the values of the left-wing establishment that dominates the media, the bureaucracies and the lobbying community.

11 Ways to Say: "We're Not Nancy Pelosi"

Republicans should spend the next two months focused on 11 straightforward, morally grounded issues about which the American people have clearly defined beliefs.

Some of these issues will make Republican elitists uncomfortable, but these were the same elitists who were uncomfortable with President Reagan and who scoffed at the Contract with America and rejected its bold proposals.

A Republican majority in the House that spent the next two months on these eleven issues would go a long way toward clarifying the choice between the San Francisco values of Nancy Pelosi and those of a GOP majority. This refreshing approach would reject the "incumbentitis" of relying on pork-barrel spending for reelection and return to the basic populist conservative values which gave us a majority in the first place.

These 11 issues are all clear and all doable.

1. Make English the Official Language of Government. The House should pass a bill making English the official language of government, abolishing multilingual ballots and reaffirming that new citizens should be required to pass a test on American history in English. The Rasmussen poll reported that support for English as the official language was 85%. The Zogby poll had it at 84%. Why do Republican leaders find it so hard to side with more than four out of every five Americans? How many liberal Democrats who currently assume they are unbeatable would suddenly have a hard time explaining a series of votes against English to their constituents? Remember, at 85%, there are no anti-English congressional districts no matter what the elite media says.

2. Control the Borders. The House should pass a narrowly focused bill to ensure that the United States can control the border. The current Senate bill is a disaster. It is impossible to pass a "comprehensive" immigration bill in the next two months. The American people overwhelmingly want the borders controlled and every act of terrorism reminds us that having the borders uncontrolled makes us more vulnerable to attack. The House should immediately pass a border-control bill and conservative Republican senators should move every day to bring it up in the Senate. Let Democrats and elitist Republicans block controlling the border and make that a referendum test for Election Day.

3. Keep God in the Pledge. Congress should take two steps to preserve the right to say "one nation under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, a right which is supported by 91% of all Americans. The American people feel deeply that our Declaration of Independence is correct in saying that each of us is endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights. Beginning with the Supreme Court's 1963 decision outlawing school prayer, the courts have waged a 43-year assault on the core values of American liberty. It is time to return to a balanced Constitutional system. There is no Constitutional case for five lawyers' on the court being a floating majority for a permanent Constitutional Convention.

The American people would rally to the elected branches' taking steps to rebalance the Constitution. First, the House should pass a bill suspending the recent federal district court decision in California outlawing the words "one nation under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. Second, the House should pass a law blocking the Supreme Court from reviewing the constitutionality of the Pledge of Allegiance (a power of the Congress expressly granted in the Constitution).

4. Require a Voter ID Card. The American people overwhelmingly support (85% in one poll) having a voter id card so we can be sure only legal citizens are voting. Passing a bill to require this in all federal elections would be a big step toward more honest elections.

5. Repeal the Death Tax, for Good. The American people have consistently supported the total repeal of the death tax and the House should simply pass it once a week and attach it to various Senate bills to force the Senate to deal with it again and again. Let liberals explain why they oppose something that more than 70% of the country favors.

6. Restore Property Rights. The American people are deeply opposed to local politicians' being able to seize a citizen's home or business. The Supreme Court's Kelo decision on eminent domain is one of the most unpopular in recent years and is also one of the most dangerous. Anyone who knows the history of local government corruption in America knows it will not be long before some corrupt developers engage some corrupt politicians and this power is exploited at the cost of most Americans. Members of the Black Caucus have been among the most vocal in pointing out that it is poor people who will be the most victimized so rich developers and greedy politicians can make the money off their homes and businesses. The House should pass a powerful bill returning the constitutional law to the pre-Kelo rules and blocking the Supreme Court from reviewing it.

7. Achieve Sustainable Energy Independence. The country is eager for a straightforward new energy strategy for national security, environmental and economic reasons. The combination of $3 gasoline, watching Iran, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Russia get more of our money, and concerns about the environment come together to require real change. The House should meet that need. Starting with Rep. Jim Nussle's (R-Iowa) bill on renewable fuels, adding to it clean nuclear power using new technologies that are safe and produce little waste, developing more clean coal solutions, investing in a conversion to a hydrogen economy, incentivizing conservation, providing tax credits so the auto industry can invest in the new technology and new manufacturing equipment needed to produce revolutionary new vehicles, creating the tax incentives to build the distribution system for biofuels, hybrids, and hydrogen, providing deeper tax incentives for radically better cars (imagine a substantial tax credit for cars exceeding 200 miles to the gallon of petroleum through a combination of E-85 or biodiesel, hybrid use of electricity and hydrogen), and a bill to create state flexibility in exploring off shore with a 50% split in revenue so state legislatures and governors would have an incentive to develop environmentally sound methods of exploration and production.

8. Control Spending and Balance the Budget. The House should pass new budget legislation to control spending, leading to a balanced budget in seven years (the length of time we gave ourselves in the Contract with America and which led to the first four balanced budgets since the 1920s), with special focus on programs liberals will fight to increase spending. Let the country see who is really committed to smaller government with lower taxes and who is committed to bigger government with higher taxes.

9. Tie Education Funding to Teacher Accountability. A major result of the No Child Left Behind legislation has been the clear revelation that a number of schools systems are crippling and destroying children. When the Detroit school system only graduates 21% of entering freshman on time, it is clear the children are being cheated. The American people strongly support reforms designed to save the children. The first step would be to insist that federal funds only go to school systems which require teacher competency and accountability. A clear choice between those who want to save the children and those who want to save the bureaucrats would mobilize the country in favor of dramatic education reform.

10. Defend America From the Irreconcilable Wing of Islam. Terrorism is a real threat. Congress should hold hearings on the recent terrorist activities in Canada, the U.K. and Morocco. The House should move bills that strengthen our security from terrorists with increased powers for surveillance, an overruling of the disastrous Hamdan decision and a series of other steps.

11. Focus on Iran and North Korea. The American people are very prepared to believe we face extraordinary threats from a nuclear North Korea and an Iranian regime actively seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Any actions in Iraq need to be recast in terms of their impact on Iran. A weak America in Iraq will be unable to stop Iran. Stopping Iran is potentially literally a matter of life and death. Congress should hold hearings on the scale of the Iranian and North Korean threat, the statements of their key leaders and the requirements for action to replace these dictatorships before they succeed in killing millions of Americans. The Santorum Iranian democracy bill should be forced out of the Senate in the context of these threats. Everything about Iraq should be debated within this larger and much more dangerous context.

These eleven steps focus on the House because Republicans have practical control of the House and can move legislation in the House in a timely manner.

The Senate is so hard to manage and the confusion in the Senate is so great that it is impossible to imagine a clear message coming from the Senate.

The House of Representatives, however, has the opportunity to set the agenda for the fall and to define the issues in terms which will have overwhelming support from the American people.

House Republicans have two months to change history. They can go one of two ways.

They can continue to ignore the lessons of history, and forget the fact that real change must begin with the American people, not the media or Washington elite.

Or House Republicans can learn from history. They can listen to the American people and return to the center-right populist majority which President Reagan and the Contract with America gave them. The choice is theirs -- and ours.

Your friend,

Newt Gingrich

Mr. Gingrich is the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and author of "Real Change: From the World That Fails to the World That Works" and "Winning the Future" (published by Regnery, a HUMAN EVENTS sister company).
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How Dems Can Win the Midterm Elections

How Dems Can Win the Midterm Elections
By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek

Friday 08 September 2006

What the Democrats should do to win the midterms - and the '08 race for the White House.

Let the talking heads and the lawyers debate the new U.S. Army field-manual rules about interrogation. Democrats should play rope-a-dope, absorb the blows and put the spotlight on President Bush's empty rhetoric about winning the war against terrorism. Five years after 9/11, Osama bin Laden is still on the loose and Americans don't think the Iraq war is making them safer.

What Bush did in his speeches this week is the national-security version of the perp walk. By rolling out a rogue's gallery of scary-looking Middle Eastern men, Bush transformed a debate about a ruinous war in Iraq into hand-to-hand political combat over which party has captured more bad guys.

Given Bush's sorry record and all the other conversations the media could be having, the renewed emphasis on terrorism is good news for Republicans. Democrats can't change the channel. They've got to win on the ground that Bush has established. That means thinking like Karl Rove and going after the opposition's strength until it becomes a vulnerability. Iraq is a quagmire. Whether U.S. troops withdraw next year or in 10 years, they will leave behind a country fractured by civil war and an oil-rich theocratic government dominated by Iran - hardly the democratic beacon to transform the region.

Democrats have no power. It's not up to them to draft the exit strategy. But if they're going to win back at least one house of Congress in November, they need to raise the comfort level among the American people with their party. Republican pollster Bill McInturff says it doesn't take long in focus groups to get people talking about whether Democrats are resolved and tough enough. Republicans are trying to "seduce Democrats into a debate about the future as opposed to a judgment on the past," says Thomas Mann, a congressional scholar at the Brookings Institution. Democrats should keep from "getting snookered" into offering a detailed plan of their own. "There's no good alternative in Iraq," he says. "We've going to have to settle for the least-worst option as we extricate ourselves."

Just as the November election will be a referendum on the war, the '08 presidential race will turn on national security. A Fox News poll last month found former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and Sen. John McCain the top choices on the Republican side among registered voters nationwide, with Giuliani holding a slight edge on McCain, and both men beating Hillary Clinton and every other likely Democratic nominee. Not everybody is convinced Giuliani will run. He's not working at it like McCain, who is in a fever to lock up traditional support and run like Bush did in 2000. Maybe Giuliani is keeping hope alive to build his speaking fees. But if '06 is a heavy Democratic year, Republicans will be hungry in '08, and ideological conservatives have no one candidate to rally around. They're all flawed on the right, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney less so because he's really smart and mediawise, but a Mormon from Massachusetts may be a bridge too far for party activists.

A Republican insider talking off the record sketched a scenario that might get Giuliani the nomination. First, conservatives don't trust McCain. They think he's a snake because he voted against tax cuts, promotes global warming and hangs around with Hillary and Ted Kennedy. He's to conservatives what Joe Lieberman is to liberals, finger nails on a blackboard, an irritant. Second, Giuliani's heroism on 9/11 shows no sign of fading. He's got charisma and presence that is unmatched. He's pro-choice and pro gay rights, but that can be finessed if the Republicans want to win bad enough. Giuliani can placate the right by making a deal on judges, promising to name judges in the Scalia-Thomas-Roberts-Alito mold. It was the dilemma faced by Alan Alda's character, a pro-choice Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Arnold Vinick, in the final season of "The West Wing." Senator Vinick refused to sell out; he also lost the election. Giuliani would have to reassure the right that as president he wouldn't make a major sift on social issues. And he'd have to name a strong conservative as his running mate and political heir to seal the deal with the right.

For all the problems with his "New York lifestyle," buzzwords for his multiple marriages, Republicans can't dismiss a candidate like Giuliani. Very few people can say they transformed a major city and that they led the nation when the president was absent from the airwaves in the aftermath of a terrorist attack. There's a reason why Giuliani has appeal right now. He reacted instinctively and well on 9/11, and he governed a city that works - and right now even Republicans are talking about competence. Giuliani and McCain too look like they are people who get things done. In the end, primary elections among Republicans come back to abortion, the gun issue and gay marriage. Ideology matters, but if Bush's legacy is a failed war in Iraq and a lot of empty rhetoric, ideology might not matter so much in '08.

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Former C.I.A. Director Defends Interrogation

By JOSHUA BRUSTEIN
Published: April 19, 2009

Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who served as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency during the last two years of George W. Bush’s presidency, said Sunday that the Obama administration’s recent release of memos detailing harsh interrogation techniques would limit the agency’s ability to pursue terrorists in the future.

The C.I.A. used harsh techniques like waterboarding on detainees from 2002 through 2005, before General Hayden became director. He told a Congressional committee in 2008 that the technique was explicitly dropped from the agency’s authorized methods in 2006 and that he believed its use was likely to have been illegal.

But speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” General Hayden said that the descriptions gave Al Qaeda a tactical advantage by allowing them to prepare for specific practices used by the C.I.A., even if those practices are not in use now.

“It describes the box within which Americans will not go beyond,” General Hayden said. “To me, that’s very useful for our enemies, even if, as a policy matter, this president at this time had decided not to use one, any, or all of those techniques.”

The detailed memos released Thursday by the Justice Department describe techniques that were used by the C.I.A. between 2002 and 2005. The Obama administration outlawed harsh interrogations and ordered the C.I.A.’s secret prisons closed on his second day in office. The president has said that the use of so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” amounted to a dark chapter in American history.

Senator John Ensign, a Republican from Nevada, also criticized the administration on Sunday, saying that the disclosure would limit future options against terrorism.

“The harm is that if we ever return to those policies, one is they can train against them now,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Do we really think that having advanced interrogation techniques is something we don’t want to use if we find Osama bin Laden?”

The Obama administration has said that it opposes prosecuting agents involved in interrogations using techniques that they had been told were legal, although some Democrats have raised the prospect of prosecuting senior Bush administration officials and Justice Department lawyers who authorized the harsh interrogations.

Mr. Ensign and Gen. Hayden also argued that the prospect of prosecution would give C.I.A. agents pause when accepting legal advice about the practices they use.

“The basic foundation of the legitimacy of the agency’s action has shifted from some durability of law to a product of the American political process,” he said. “That puts agency officers in a horrible position.”

Democrats on Sunday played down the importance of the release of the documents, saying that most of the information was already public. David Axelrod, a senior adviser to President Obama, said there was “no legal rationale for keeping them classified.”

Mr. Axelrod said that the president’s ban on enhanced interrogation techniques was more important that the release of the C.I.A.’s memos.

“We’re moving past all of that,” Mr. Axelrod said on “Face the Nation.” “And to revisit it again and again and again isn’t, in the president’s view, in the country’s interest.”

Mr. Axelrod reiterated that harsh interrogation techniques are ineffective. This view was bolstered by the disclosure in the memos released last week of a debate within the C.I.A. about whether the brutal treatment of Abu Zubaydah, a detainee captured in Pakistan in 2002, yielded any real intelligence. According to the documents and former intelligence officials, the first use of waterboarding and other rough treatment against Abu Zubaydah was ordered despite the belief of interrogators that he had already told them all he knew. The harsh treatment led to no breakthroughs, according to one intelligence official with knowledge of the case.

Gen. Hayden on Sunday questioned this account, saying that Abu Zubaydah had “clammed up,” but then gave up information that led to the arrest of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who was later charged with helping coordinate the Sept. 11 attacks.

In an opinion column in Friday’s Wall Street Journal, Gen. Hayden and former U.S. Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey wrote that “fully half” of the government’s information about Al Qaeda’s structures and activities came from interrogation when “coercive interrogation” was used.