The New York Times today highlights a new report released by ProPublica and the National Law Journal concluding that torture and "enhanced interrogation techniques" approved by the Bush Administration and used on suspected terrorists has made it impossible to bring many of those alleged terrorists to justice.
Of the 53 habeas corpus cases brought by Guantanamo detainees and decided by federal court judges, the government has lost 37. Many of those losses were because the only evidence against the detainee was a coerced confession or statements from other prisoners who'd been tortured. Federal court judges have rightly found such statements unreliable and inadmissible. The result is that many of those suspects have won orders of release. (Only three have actually been freed.)
Unfortunately, those orders have led some critics of the administration - including Sen. Lindsey Graham and Brookings Institution commentator Benjamin Wittes - to argue that we need more expansive detention laws so the government doesn't have to let those suspects go. That's precisely the wrong response in a society that claims to presume suspects are innocent until actually proven guilty. (The standard in habeas cases is actually much lower than in a criminal case; the government only has to prove that it's "more likely than not" that the suspect can legally be detained.) Those 37 prisoners won their habeas cases because the government had no reliable evidence that they'd been fighting for al Qaeda or the Taliban. So judges across the political spectrum concluded that the government hadn't demonstrated that these detainees are detainable under the laws of war.
In a report Human Rights First released with The Constitution Project in June, 16 former federal judges explained that the courts deciding these habeas cases are doing the right thing: they're weighing the evidence, deciding the facts and applying the law. No new laws are needed. On the contrary, a new detention law designed to help the government win more cases in the absence of reliable evidence would only tarnish the reputation of the U.S. justice system, which in these cases is doing itself proud.
As the Times points out, these court decisions demonstrate a "respect for due process [that] will help repair this country's battered reputation." The Bush administration's failure to apply basic, longstanding American justice standards is what landed us in this mess in the first place, requiring that some terror suspects go free. Creating a new legal standard to accommodate those past mistakes would only compound the problem and drive the United States' reputation further into the ground.
We're already seeing that happen at the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay. Although, as Peter Finn in the Washington Post today points out, many of the military commission cases have stalled, one that has gone forward recently produced a highly questionable ruling that was immediately broadcast around the world.
In the case of a Canadian citizen and alleged child soldier, Omar Khadr, the judge ruled that a threat of gang-rape and murder in prison from his lead interrogator did not taint any of the 15-year-old's later "confessions" that he threw a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier. Given that there's no physical evidence that Khadr committed the act, his statements to interrogators at the Bagram prison in Afghanistan and later at Guantanamo Bay are critical to the prosecution.
In a similar case, brought against Mohammed Jawad, also accused of throwing a grenade at U.S. soldiers as a child, the military commission judge in 2008 concluded that early threats by Afghan interrogators tainted all of Jawad's later statements made to the Americans. His case was ultimately thrown out and he was returned to Afghanistan.
These sorts of conflicting rulings can happen in the military commissions, an ad hoc justice system created in fits and starts over the last eight years with no binding precedent or road-tested rules. It's one reason why those military commissions lack the legitimacy of civilian federal courts.
Like the court rulings ordering Guantanamo detainees freed, the military commissions, too, are a legacy of torture. They're an attempt to patch together a quasi-justice system to accommodate, without acknowledging or rectifying, the egregious mistakes of the past.
But neither new detention rules nor military commissions can truly overcome torture's legacy. That can only be done by admitting what happened, holding perpetrators accountable, and ultimately, prosecuting terror suspects in our time-tested, world-renowned American justice system. And that is rightly something about which this country can be proud.
For months now, certain commentators and legislators have been arguing that Congress needs to pass a new law authorizing the indefinite detention without charge or trial of suspected terrorists and their supporters.
On its face, that would seem to violate some basic tenets of the U.S. Constitution. But the U.S. government is already detaining hundreds of suspects captured abroad at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. The question is whether Congress should expand that authority and define it in more detail.
Writers such as Benjamin Wittes of the Brookings Institution and lawmakers such as Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina argue that even though hundreds of people have been detained over the last eight years at Guantanamo Bay, the law that justifies their detention or mandates their release isn't clear, and Congress needs to step in and make new rules.
In fact, as a new report issued today by 16 former federal judges makes clear, that's nonsense. The people in the best position to decide when military detention is legal are already doing just that. The new report, published by Human Rights First and the Constitution Project, explains exactly how that process is working - and demonstrates that it's actually working very well. Responding to a series of habeas corpus petitions, where Guantanamo detainees have asked the federal court to review the legality of their detentions, federal district court judges in Washington, D.C. have already issued written opinions concerning 50 different detainees that set out the legal standard for indefinite wartime detention, and which cases do and do not meet it.
The claim by Wittes and Graham that judges are somehow overstepping their bounds and usurping the role of Congress reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how the federal courts and judges work. In fact, the courts are doing just what they're supposed to do: interpret the law.
The reason judges are so well-situated to explain the contours of U.S. detention authority is because, according to judicial rulings, the right to detain arises out of existing laws, including the Authorization for Use of Military Force against Terrorists, or AUMF, passed by Congress in 2001; the traditional law of war; and the U.S. Constitution.
Traditionally, a government at war can detain fighting members of the enemy's forces, under humane conditions, until the war is over. Although that authority is less clear when the government is fighting a loose coalition of insurgent forces around the world rather than another country, the Supreme Court has said that at least in some circumstances, pursuant to the AUMF, the United States can detain enemy fighters seized on the battlefield.
It's the Supreme Court's rulings on the subject, combined with the law of war and the mandates of the U.S. Constitution, that highly experienced federal judges have been applying to the habeas corpus cases that have come before them. Applying those rulings, they've developed a clear and consistent body of law that explains what kind of evidence the government needs to have amassed against a suspected insurgent to justify his military detention.
Under the D.C. District Court's rulings, for example, Fouad Al Rabiah, a 43-year-old, 240-pound, Kuwaiti Airways executive with a long history of volunteering for Islamic charities who'd been discharged from compulsory military service in Kuwait due to a knee injury, and who suffered from high blood pressure and chronic back pain, did not meet the requirement of being "part of" or having "substantially supported" al Qaeda, the Taliban or associated forces. Although seized while attempting to leave Afghanistan in 2001, by the time of Al Rabiah's hearing, even the government had decided the witnesses who claimed he'd helped al Qaeda weren't credible. The government's own interrogators didn't believe his "confessions," which the court determined had been coerced and were "entirely incredible."
On the other hand, Fawzi Al Odah, also Kuwaiti, did meet the law's detention standards. The same judge found that he'd attended a Taliban training camp, learned to use an AK-47, travelled with other armed fighters on a route common to jihadists, and took directions from Taliban leaders - all making it more likely than not that he was a member of Taliban fighting forces.
Still, despite the courts' careful analysis in these cases, Congress could step in and write its own new law on indefinite detention. But how can any one statute possibly address all the vastly different factual scenarios, many spanning several countries and decades, that constitute the government's claims that any particular individual is detainable? What's more, any new law will still have to meet the requirements of the U.S. Constitution, and the Supreme Court gets the ultimate say on that. Any new statute passed by Congress, then, would likely be challenged as soon as it's applied, causing more confusion about what the law really is until the U.S. Supreme Court weighs in on that new statute several years later.
The federal judges of the D.C. District Court and Court of Appeals are already way ahead of that game. In addition to the trial court opinions, the appellate court recently issued its own opinion setting out the law of detention and the government's constitutional authority. That decision may be appealed to the Supreme Court, whose opinion would set out the binding standard that every judge and future U.S. administration will have to follow.
Weekly Mulch: Why the Senate Climate Bill is Doomed
by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), though down one man, finally released their stab at climate legislation this week. One of the most crucial sections in the bill covers off-shore oil drilling, an issue that was supposed to help solve the tricky math of reaching 60 votes. But since the Deepwater Horizon rig sank in the Gulf of Mexico, drilling has become a wedge issue.
Just a few weeks ago, off-shore drilling could have been a point of compromise around which Senators could rally votes to pass the climate bill; now the bill had to strike a new balance to mollify both potential allies who oppose drilling, like Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), and those who support drilling, like Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA). The draft that Sen. Kerry and Sen. Lieberman released this week allows for expanded drilling but gives states veto power over new projects.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who worked on the bill, said that he had not seen the changes his two colleagues had made since he dropped out of the drafting process-but he looked forward to reviewing their work. Although Sen. Kerry says he thinks the bill can pass, without support from Sen. Graham or another Republican, chances are slim.
Next steps
Now that the two Senators have released the bill, the only work that remains is to pass it.
"There's not enough time for a bill to go through the committee process, get passed by the Senate, sent to conference, amended, and then passed by the full Congress before the midterms, and after the midterms Democrats will probably be reduced to 53 or 54 members in the Senate."
Not everyone agrees that the bill's chance are so dire, though.
"I think the chances are roughly as good as they've ever been in the Senate: low but non-trivial," says Grist's David Roberts.
Kerry's argument
But should green-minded politicos root for the bill's passage at all? Sen. Kerry and Sen. Lieberman worked closely with energy companies while drafting the bill, and the resulting legislation balances the need to reduce carbon emissions with the interests of prime polluters. The bill includes incentives for old energy industries like coal and natural gas, for instance, and exempts farmers from carbon caps.
On Wednesday, Sen. Kerry made his case to left-leaning environmentalists. "A comprehensive climate bill written purely for you and me - true believers - can't pass the Senate no matter how hard or passionate I fight on it," he wrote for Grist. The bill they have, he wrote, can pass, and that victory outweighs the compromises in the legislation.
Responses from the left
On Democracy Now!, Phil Radford, the executive director of GreenPeace USA, said that most environmental groups have given the bill little more than a "tepid endorsement." Radford squared off on the show with Joseph Romm of the Center for American Progress, who supports the bill.
"This will be the first bill ever passed by the Senate, if it were to pass, that would put us on a path to get off of fossil fuels," Romm said.
The two men were also divided over issues like the impact the climate bill could have on international negotiations.
They agreed, though, there is room for improvement; the only question is whether the politics of climate change will allow for the passage of a stronger bill any times soon. As Kevin Drum wrote, "If you think this year's bills are watered down, just wait until you see what a Congress with a hair-thin Democratic majority produces."
Coal and natural gas
Tripping up environmentalists now, though, are the hand-outs to dirty energy industries. The coal and natural gas industry could both benefit from the provisions of the Senate bill, for instance.
On GritTV, Jeff Biggers, a writer and educator who covers the coal industry, explained his frustration:
"The climate bill is a nice first step and a very well meaning effort for someone like Sen. Kerry who's been working on this issue for 20 years. But at the same time, because of the massive big coal lobby that has poured millions of dollars into lobbying congress on this climate legislation...there are all sorts of little panders and loopholes and exemptions."
"What we see in this bill is that Sen. Kerry and Lieberman want to ensure coal's future," he said.
The booming natural gas industry also had a hand in shaping the bill and benefited from it. Environmental groups like the Sierra Club favor natural gas as an energy source over coal, and as Kari Lydersen reports in Working In These Times, the industry is driving job growth at a time when the economy needs a boost.
But as Alex Halperin reported last month for The American Prospect, in the places where drilling is occurring, like Ithaca, NY, activists are arguing that the environmental risks could outweigh those economic benefits.
Drill or be drilled
That devil's bargain-risking natural resources for jobs in the energy industry-went the wrong way for the Gulf Coast, and states like Louisiana, Alabama, and Florida are paying the price even before the oil hits shore.
As I report in AlterNet, the Gulf's economy could lose billions of dollars and is suffering already from the misconception that its beaches are tarred with oil. With this catastrophe still fresh in voters' minds, the Senate climate bill proposes pushing new drilling initiatives 75 miles offshore and giving affected states veto power over these projects.
Depending on how long the memory of the Deepwater Horizon spill lasts, politicians could have a good reason to veto drilling. Public News Service reports that 55% of Floridians now oppose off-shore drilling, "almost a complete reversal from one year ago."
Blame game
Certainly no one is stepping up to take responsibility for the explosion off the coast of Louisiana, as the Washington Independent reports. At a hearing this week, officials from British Petroleum, which was operating the well, Transocean, which owns it, and Halliburton, which was doing contract work that may have caused the problem, all denied wrongdoing and pressed the blame on each other.
It's starting to look Halliburton played a key part. "The focus is increasingly shifting to the role of Halliburton, which poured the cement for the rig, as well as for another operation that spilled oil off the coast of Australia last August," writes Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones. The company apparently did not place a cement plug that would have kept gas in the well before emptying it of the mud that was holding in the flammable gas.
Anyone living in a state that could have new drilling off their coast should keep this catastrophe in mind if their politicians are given the option of vetoing new projects.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
As the government continues to pursue the case of Omar Khadr, it's becoming clear why the administration chose to try this case in a military commission rather than a regular civilian federal court: a civilian federal court judge would likely throw the case out.
Anti-immigrant fervor could be more costly than Arizona lawmakers expected. Thanks to SB 1070, a new law that requires immigrants to carry papers at all times to prove their legal status, the state has become the focal point of the national immigration debate. The bill and the buzz surrounding it illustrates a desperate need for a federal fix to the broken immigration system.
President Barack Obama publicly condemned the measure shortly before Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed the bill on April 23, while human rights groups and immigration reform supporters are threatening national boycotts and lawsuits.
SB 1070 makes it possible for local police to racially profile Latinos by allowing them to check a person's immigration status if there is "reasonable suspicion" that they might be undocumented. It elicits memories of South Africa under apartheid, when blacks were forced to carry passbooks or otherwise risk incarceration. For a good historical perspective of immigration in Arizona, check out Jessica Pieklo's blog for Care2.
Hidden costs
Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive magazine, joins many bloggers and immigrant rights supporters in calling for a boycott. "Arizona Representative Raul Grijalva is urging a boycott of his own state. San Francisco has already announced its intentions to boycott Arizona," Rothschild writes. "The response from the Latino community has been instant and outraged. And the upcoming May Day rallies are sure to be huge."
If threats to boycott simmer down, lawsuits could overturn the bill. At RaceWire, Julianne Hing writes that "Legal challenges to Arizona's [new immigration law] are coming from all sides. Both the [American Civil Liberties Union] and [the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund] are planning legal action."
Hing adds that "Phoenix mayor Phil Gordon announced on Friday that his city would bring a lawsuit against [the law]" and that he is joined by "Sara Presler, the mayor of Flagstaff, whose city is exploring its legal options as well."
Arizona will need to amp up its law enforcement arm to put the bill in action. That won't be cheap-the state budget is facing a $2 billion shortfall. As William Fisher reports at the Inter Press Service, "In one Arizona county alone, Yuma County, the sheriff estimates that law enforcement agencies would spend between $775,880 and $1,163,820 dollars in processing expenses. Jail costs would run between $21,195,600 and $96,086,720 dollars, and attorney and staff fees between $810,067 and $1,620,134 dollars."
The ripple effect
Ironically, Arizona lawmakers' attempts to crackdown on immigrants have galvanized Latinos and immigration reform supporters on a national level. As Suzy Khimm reports in Mother Jones, "In light of the passage of Arizona's draconian immigration law, advocates have been ramping up the pressure on the Democratic leadership to demonstrate some concrete sign of progress by May 1, when nationwide immigration reform rallies are scheduled."
At the Washington Monthly, Steve Benen notes how SB 1070 has also created a political quandary for Republican lawmakers in Congress. "So far, only two GOP members -- Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart of Florida and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina -- have been willing to criticize the state law," writes Benen. "If the issue is a test of Republicans' political and moral seriousness, it appears most of the party caucus on the Hill is content with an 'incomplete.'"
The anti-immigrant backlash
Immigration reform supporters also know that punitive laws won't go away until Congress moves to pass reform. Already, as Jason Hancock at the Iowa Independent reports, "a Republican candidate for congress in Iowa's 3rd District calling for microchips to be installed in immigrants."
Pat Bertroche, the candidate, is quoted by Hancock comparing undocumented immigrants to "dogs," saying "I think we should catch 'em, we should document 'em, make sure we know where they are and where they are going. I actually support microchipping them. I can microchip my dog so I can find it. Why can't I microchip an illegal?"
Meanwhile, the National Radio Project reports on the lives of gay and lesbian immigrants who live in the United States without papers. Un Jung Lim, a U.S. citizen whose partner was deported after living in the United States for 18 years on a worker visa, tearfully said "We've been separated for five months and we hope to be reunited soon, but we don't know when that's going to be."
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulse. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee today urged Attorney General Eric Holder to stick to his initial determination that the alleged 9/11 plotters should be tried in civilian court, and not bow to partisan politics on what should be a legal determination.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), started a hubbub among comprehensive immigration reform advocateslast week when he expressed to members of the Capitol press corps that progressive immigration legislation was "dead" for 2010 due to the contentious passage of health care reform. But the battle isn't over yet. In an interview with Sandip Roy at New America Media, Frank Sharry, the executive director of DC-based immigration organization America's Voice, says, "I think we have a good chance of seeing a bipartisan bill being introduced in April."
Graham's declaration mirrors similar antics that happened around the health care debate-where insurance reform was pronounced dead countless times by a wide array of pundits and lawmakers. In fact, Seth Freed Wessler of ColorLines reports that Graham, who has been working with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on an immigration reform bill for a year later changed his tune, stating that he would continue to craft a bipartisan bill.
The Battle in the Senate
Gabriel Arana with The America Prospect questions just how the GOP lawmakers will react to the upcoming immigration debate, arguing that, "Even for those Republicans who are willing to publicly support immigration reform, partisan rancor all but ensures it won't go anywhere."
And outside the Capitol? As Laura Flanders of GRITtv points out, the immigration debate, "has the potential to be far, far messier-and more violent-than the health care battle," and will likely galvanize those with xenophobic tendencies on the far Right to become even more unhinged.
On top of that, providing a pathway to citizenship for the 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States will most likely be dead in 2010 if a bill isn't proposed in the Senate this Spring. There needs to be time to debate the issue before the end of the year, and more importantly, before election season kicks off in the Fall. While there's already an immigration bill in the House of Representatives, a timeline for when one will actually be introduced in the Senate is unknown.
Immigration agents go rogue
Combined with the uphill battle for immigration reform, AlterNet reports on a government memo revealing that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has set quotas to initiate more deportations of undocumented immigrants, targeting those who had committed no crimes. The memo was in stark contrast to the Obama administration's stated goal to focus on deporting criminal offenders with violent histories, and prompted immigration rights groups to question the White House agenda.
At the same time, anti-immigration activists are also trying to label all immigrants as criminals. As the Colorado Independent documents, the shooting death of an Arizona rancher near the Mexican border has influenced former Colorado lawmaker Tom Tancredo and his followers to demand that the National Guard be sent the border-even though the death has not even been tied to an undocumented immigrant at this time. (The Department doesn't have jurisdiction over the National Guard to begin with.)
The Inter Press Service also reports on the results of such criminalization, as human rights abuses in immigration detention continue to increase each day. "More abuses in the U.S. immigration detention system came to light last week," notes the media outlet, writing that "It was revealed that two mentally disabled men continue to be held in detention while facing possible deportation for criminal assault convictions, despite having already served their time." The inmates were later released after the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California filed legal petitions against federal government.
Woo-hoo. The healthcare bill is done. People will see many of the provisions go into place immediately and then they can decide how they feel about these reforms based on reality instead of frenzied, uninformed rhetoric. Let's just take a moment to recognize this historic occasion.
The Wall Street Journal is absolutely right that Lindsey Graham is tossing up an embarrassing air ball. Graham's effort to get the administration to abandon legitimate federal court trials for suspected terrorists in exchange for the funding needed to close Guantanamo Bay is headed nowhere fast, predicts the Journal.
Sens. John Kerry (D-MA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) met with industry groups Wednesday evening to discuss their much anticipated tripartisan climate legislation. Based on leaks from the meeting, it sounds like the climate bill will be incredibly industry friendly, which may mean that the bill does little to help the environment.
A syncing feeling
According to reports from sources in the meeting room, the bill calls for greenhouse gas curbs across multiple economic sectors, with a 2020 target of reducing emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels and an 80 percent reduction by 2050. Power plant emissions would be regulated in 2012, other major industrial sources will be phased in during 2016.
But the bill contains major concessions to the industry, according to Aaron Wiener at The Washington Independent. The senators' proposal would halt dozens of state climate laws and regulations and preempt U.S. EPA climate regulations under the Clean Air Act.
The head lobbyist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Bruce Josten, told reporters after the meeting that he believes the bill will be 'largely in sync' with what most industry types would like to see. The Chamber, of course, has been one of the most formidable foes of climate legislation to date. In addition to the Chamber, the senators also met with the Edison Electric Institute, American Petroleum Institute, and Portland Cement Association.
A climate bill that syncs up with organizations opposed to climate legislation. Really? But, like Sheppard writes, although these leaks from the meeting don't sound too great in terms of climate, "Kerry had already scaled back expectations on that front."
The fears
Kerry, Graham and Lieberman have argued that an "energy-only" bill, which would focus on wider financial support for low-carbon energy projects, a national renewable electricity mandate, and allows wider oil-and-gas drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, among other measures, would be easier to pass than a comprehensive bill.
As David Roberts writes for Grist, this refers to the American Clean Energy Leadership Act (ACELA), which passed last year. But unlike the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) that passed the House, with substantial parts devoted to directly supporting clean energy and boosting energy efficiency, ACELA "sucks," according to Roberts. He writes:
As a standalone bill, it does virtually nothing for renewables, boosts efficiency a middling amount, and dumps a bonanza of subsidies on offshore drilling, nuclear power, tar sands, oil shale, and natural gas. It also weakens the Renewable Fuel Standard. It's a minor deviation from the awful energy status quo and would be a depressing end indeed to the year-long Obama-era effort to finally address America's energy problems.
The real bill
Many details of the forthcoming legislation are still unclear, and the real bill isn't expected to be released for another few weeks. Environmental groups who attended a meeting with Kerry yesterday to discuss details of the bill were close-mouthed about their reactions, and stressed that the bill is still in draft stages and may change significantly, as Sheppard writes at Mother Jones.
Let's hope the final bill will offer real solutions to fight global warming and curb greenhouse gas emissions. National Radio Project talked with several climate change activists who discussed the steps needed to make significant change following the less-than-concrete outcomes from Copenhagen. It's definitely worth a listen.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Given Senator Lindsey Graham's military background, one would think he would push hard for the trial and conviction of all terrorists. After all, U.S. federal courts have successfully tried more than 195 terrorists since the terrorist attacks of September 11. But for the past five years, Graham has instead repeatedly obstructed the effort to try and convict the 9/11 detainees.
The Washington Post reports today that President Obama's advisors are planning to recommend that the administration reverse its decision to try the September 11 suspects in federal court and instead opt for military commissions. That's more than just disappointing, given the overwhelming consensus of military and legal experts that civilian courts are more effective for prosecuting terrorists. If the president were to heed that advice, it would also be astonishingly bad politics.
Climate legislation is returning to the Senate's docket, and leaders on Capitol Hill are hoping that this version, a compromise bill spearheaded by Sens. John Kerry (D-MA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT), can pass without getting caught in the morass of money and politics that has delayed action so far.
A long, long time ago...
Remember, there was a time when Congress was going to pass climate legislation before the international climate change negotiations in Copenhagen. President Barack Obama was going to show up with a bill in hand and lead the world towards a better climate future. After the House passed its climate bill in June 2009, the Senate began discussing climate change, and a first stab by Sen. Kerry and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) went nowhere. Now, Kerry has turned to less liberal colleagues to draft an alternative that would appeal to moderates and even Republicans.
Now the Massachusetts senator is promising that climate change isn't dead. A new bill is coming-more information may be in the offing as early as today, as Kate Sheppard reports at Mother Jones.
Third time's the charm
Sen. Kerry is trying a new tactic to pass climate legislation. He's waiting to release his plan until he knows the bill has the 60 supporters it needs to circumvent a filibuster. The details have not been hammered out yet, and even the Senators who've been in talks with Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman don't seem to have a clear sense of what will be in the version that will emerge.
In the House, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, released an ambitious draft of the legislation, let lobbyists and members of Congress fight over it, and passed a much-changed edition months later. Sen. Kerry tried a similar plan on his side of Capitol Hill (that was the Kerry-Boxer bill), but it did not work.
With this piece of legislature, Sens. Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman are working out the compromises before they release the legislation. Both reporting and speculation about their bill say that it will abandon the cap-and-trade system passed in the House. Cap-and-trade restricts carbon emissions across the economy; a variation on that policy that the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman bill may favor will limit the system to a few sectors.
Will it work?
Kerry's expected bill may be a much weaker plan than any proposed so far, yet it is still not certain that the Senate will support it. The lead authors of the bill have been meeting with conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans, as Sheppard reports, but those targets have not promised support yet. Coming out of a meeting, Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) told reporters: "There were some interesting things that were discussed in there and like everything else in the United States Senate, the devil is in the details."
From a distance, banner-day climate legislation still seems possible. Environmental groups like the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Foundation, and the National Resources Defense Council believe that they will see a bill this year that caps carbon. These green groups would be able to live with the incentives handed to industry groups so far, according to Campus Progress' Tristan Fowler.
"There are compromises [that can go] too far. Fortunately, I don't think we're getting near that territory at the moment," Josh Dorner, a spokesman for the Sierra Club, told Fowler.
Sickly green
Before getting too excited about stamping a green seal of approval on Congress' legislation, consider Johann Hari's testimony in The Nation about the relationships between environmental groups and the industries that they oppose.
Hari has reported on climate change issues for years, and at first, he "imagined that American green groups were on these people's side in the corridors of Capitol Hill, trying to stop the Weather of Mass Destruction. But it is now clear that many were on a different path-one that began in the 1980s, with a financial donation."
Hari argues that as environmental groups began to reach out to polluters, handing them awards for green behavior and accepting support from their deep pockets, they learned to compromise too readily and accept political excuses for delaying action on climate change. While in other realms these compromises might fly, when the stakes are as high as they are on environmental issues, that behavior turns the stomach.
"You can't stand at the edge of a rising sea and say, 'Sorry, the swing states don't want you to happen today. Come back in fifty years,'" Hari writes.
The green future
When Kerry, Lieberman and Graham do release the compromised bill, watch for a tsunami of money and influence that could pack the bill with prizes for specific industries-or derail it altogether. Just this week, the natural gas industry's lobbyists told The Hill, a D.C.-based newspaper, that they were ready to fight with the coal industry over incentives in the Senate bill. At AlterNet, Harvey Wasserman writes that the nuclear industry spent $645 million in the past decade to get back into the energy game, according to a new report from American University's Investigative Reporting Workshop. (Hint: that $645 million is working in their favor.)
In the Senate, the influence of oil companies will play an important role, according to David Roberts at Grist.
"While coal has a lot of power in the House, oil has enormous power in the Senate, particularly over the conservadems and Republicans needed to put the bill over the top," Roberts explains.
No matter what legislation passes and what incentives it contains, environmentalists need to continue putting pressure on their representatives in Congress and on national environmental groups to push back against polluting industries and work to fix the world's climate.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
I grew up in the rural parts of Kentucky and Pennsylvania, two relatively conservative areas. Most of my friends and family are tried-and-true Republicans so it was assumed that I would follow suit. When I started working for a Democratic Congressman in college, one very prominent male figure in my family explained the oddity with a shrug (channeling Churchill) saying "If you are a Republican when you are in college, you have no heart. But if you are a Democrat when you are older, you have no mind."
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) likes to tout his experience as a former military lawyer. Graham apparently thinks this makes him sound more convincing when he goes around advocating military trials for all suspected terrorists, as he's been doing lately. Graham's now trying to get that idea signed into law in a bill he's introduced in the Senate. A similar provision is likely headed to a vote today in the House of Representatives.
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