Will Immigration Become an Issue?

Romney has attacked Giuliani for employing a landscaping company that employs illegal workers. Romney himself fired his own landscaping company last year. Shortly after firing the landscaper, Romney re-contracted the company. He said in a statement on Tuesday, "After this same issue arose last year, I gave the company a second chance with very specific conditions. They were instructed to make sure people working for the company were of legal status." The landscaper was fired once again when Romney discovered that the contract had been violated. Romney fired the landscaper for, assumingly, political reasons. But why would he jepordize himself and his political career by hiring the same landscaper? I think this was a poor decision on Romney's part and this may push the issue of immigration back into the spotlight. Immigration has remained out of the public eye, for the most part, since President Bush's Immigration Reform Act was defeated in the Senate in 2006. This may be an issue to watch in the coming months since immigration caused national tension back in 2006. click here for article.

Military Tribunals

What the heck are these review tribunals? According to the New York Times they constitute "panels of military officers who review the initial determination that an individual detainee has been properly labeled an enemy combatant." Opponents to this system say the tribunals limit access to evidence and witnesses and forbid defense lawyers from participating in hearings. Waxman, a lawyer for six Algerian detainees, asserts the current procedure fails to offer "even the most elemental aspects of an independent adversarial proceeding."

So here are my questions: 1. Are there any checks on these tribunals outside of the military? What about outside the executive branch 2. Are there any alternatives to using the federal court system as a checking device on these tribunals? 3. Who made up these tribunal rules? Is this common protocol? How often do these review tribunals actual acquit people? 4. Has the military not used tribunals before the War on Terror?

Bush and National Security

The Washington Post has an illuminating article on the Guantanamo case before the Supreme Court today. See here for background on military commissions.

We went into Afghanistan because of 9/11. Why did the intelligence community fail to foresee or prevent it? From the report of the 9/11 commission:

Commenting on Pearl Harbor,Roberta Wohlstetter found it "much easier after the event to sort the relevant from the irrelevant signals.After the event,of course, a signal is always crystal clear; we can now see what disaster it was signaling since the disaster has occurred. But before the event it is obscure and pregnant with conflicting meanings. ...With that caution in mind,we asked ourselves,before we judged others,whether the insights that seem apparent now would really have been
meaningful at the time,given the limits of what people then could reasonably have known or done. We believe the 9/11 attacks revealed four kinds of failures in:

• imagination (see bin Laden memo)
• policy (see NBC report)
• capabilities (see Washington Post on translators)
• and management (see map of intelligence community)

Our Monday class accurately predicted how the president would respond to the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran (full transcript here):

QUESTION: My question, sir, is are you feeling troubled about your standing here today about perhaps facing a credibility gap with the American people?

PRESIDENT: No. I'm feeling pretty spirited -- pretty good about life. And I made the decision to come before you so I could explain the NIE. And I have said Iran is dangerous. And the NIE doesn't do anything to change my opinion about the danger Iran poses to the world. Quite the contrary. I'm using this NIE as an opportunity to continue to rally our colleagues and allies. The NIE makes it clear that the strategy we have used in the past is effective.

Iran: New Intel...New Policy?

After the news that Iran's covert nuclear weapons program is inactive and has been since 2003, as reported in the NIE yesterday, many are asking: will the Bush administration's aggressive policy and rhetoric towards Iran change?

The New York Times published a couple interesting articles on this subject, see: the foreign policy debate,how the 2005 NIE was so wrong, and Bush's response.

President Bush held a press conference Tuesday and answered several questions on the new findings. It's interesting to see how Bush uses the NIE to support his current policy. Even though the intel community reported with "high confidence" that Iran halted their nuclear weapons program years ago, in direct opposition to the premise for the current foreign policy agenda towards Iran, Bush maintained that the information confirmed his current approach.

With the new intelligence, Bush seemed optimistic that the NIE could help him further his foreign policy objectives concerning Iran, saying:

"To me, the NIE provides an opportunity for us to rally the international community -- continue to rally the community to pressure the Iranian regime to suspend its program."

Bush spins the report in an effort to make it cohesive with his current approach--illustrating an intimate and difficult relationship between intelligence and policy.

Foreign Policy and National Security

As we approach the end of the course, think back on two familiar quotations:

• “Frequent war and constant apprehension, which require a state of as constant preparation, will infallibly produce [standing armies]. It is of the nature of war to increase the executive at the expense of the legislative authority.” -- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 8.
• "If the Union’s existence were constantly menaced, and if its great interests were continually interwoven with those of other powerful nations, one would see the prestige of the executive growing, because of what was expected from it and of what it did."-- Tocqueville, Democracy in America

JFK taped meetings on the Cuban Missile Crisis. On October 18, he and his advisers discussed the real possibility of nuclear war. (Text of this clip starts here at the bottom of p. 538). In October 1962, JFK discussed the Cuban Missile Crisis on national TV. As you reflect on JFK's decisionmaking, think about Peter Drucker's dictum: “The first rule in decision-making is that one does not make a decision without disagreement.”

A couple of years later, LBJ dealt with the Gulf of Tonkin.

Bad intelligence contributed to the US reaction in the Gulf of Tonkin. It also led to other problems in future decades. One "remedy" has been the reorganization of the intelligence community.

Monetary policy

In speaking today of the presidency and the economy, we discussed how the president doesn't control the Federal Reserve, but their actions affect the economy. Today, stocks surged over the mere speculation that the Fed will cut interest rates. A link to the article is here.

We spoke of how presidents don't control monetary policy, but it does affect them politically. The surge in the stock market won't help Bush, but may help the incumbents party (Republicans).

Economic Policy and the White House

Here are some basic graphs on economic policy, and the special case of aging and Social Security.

Does the executive control where the money goes? No, Congress earmarks money for projects. Here is one example (h/t Charlie Johnson).