OpenCongress.org goes live

Boingboing.net points out the new website OpenCongress.org. The site bills itself as bringing "together official government data with news and blog coverage to give you the real story behind each bill."

It is basically aggregates congressional information from across the web and presents it in a nifty web 2.0 format. It takes "all the bills, Members of Congress, votes, committee reports, issue areas, and more" from Thomas, the website of the Library of Congress and combines it with Congressional news articles from google news, blog posts from Technorati and campaign contribution information from OpenSecrets.org.

-Dippold

Political Online Reputation

White House Gets "Significant Win" on Gitmo

A federal appeals court ruling Tuesday denies Guantanamo detainees trial in U.S. civilian courts -- to challenge their detention -- except for appeals.

In a 2-1 ruling the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the Military Commissions Act, or MCA, that says U.S. civil courts don't have the authority to consider whether the military is illegally holding foreigners any more.

The MCA, which Bush pushed through Congress last year bars detainees from the U.S. court system. Instead, the act sets up an alternative system of trying the Gitmo detainees in military proceedings.

Deputy press secretary Dana Perino hailed the court's decision as a "significant win" for the Bush administration and added the MCA provides "sufficient and fair access to courts for these detainees."

But most criticized, primarily by Democrats and civil libertarians, is that habeas corpus -- the fundamental right to ask a judge for release from unjust imprisonment -- appears to be suspended for the detainees.

Benjamin Tuttle at Ben's Blog disagrees, stressing the detainees' lack of citizenship:

. . . the idea that habeas corpus is being removed is proposterous. Those detained at Gitmo are not US citizens. This seems to be so difficult for many Leftists to understand who are so angry at President Bush that they can’t make a rational decision. If President Bush actually removed habeas corpus from an American citizen, I would agree completely with the ACLU and would join protests and petitions to get that law changed. The problem is that the detainees, since they are not citizens, don’t even HAVE the right of habeas corpus. Why is that difficult?

I appreciate the ideas of those that think that all individuals should be entitled to certain rights that happen to be in our Constitution. Maybe instead of trying to warp the laws, they could introduce a Constitutional Amendment to that affect, saying that “rights herein apply to all humans the United States interacts with” or something to that affect. Though I think that would be proposterous, it would at least be honest. Smearing the administration with more screaming over a non-issue, because once again detainees are not United States citizens and therefore do not have our rights, is dishonest and does not contribute to the process.

Katharine at Cut to the Chase is of a different mind saying habeas corpus does not only apply to U.S. citizens:

I have been meaning to write about Tuesday's really B-A-D federal appeals court decision FOR Bush's terror kangaroo court system and against detainees. While I am NOT a constitutional lawyer, I have been back and forth over it today and before and I do not see that its tenets are limited exclusively to American citizens. And that's not even arguing the never-never-land of limbo Bush has put many of these folks into at Gitmo and in secret prisons the world over!

This ruling is likely to be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court.

-Dippold

Political Online Reputation

Airline Ticket Tax Could Vanish

The Bush administration and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will unveil a plan Wednesday to pay for a new air traffic control system by eliminating the passenger ticket tax while raising other costs for fliers such as a higher tax on fuel.

The announcement is likely to set off a debate among airlines, who support the plan, and private and corporate jet owners who will -- under the proposal -- pay more to fly in national air space.

Although FAA Administrator Marion Blakey hasn't said exactly how much a modernized control system will cost, he did say a new digital system which utilizes satellites should replace a WW II era radio and radar based one.

Blakey also said the 7.5 percent passenger ticket tax currently paying for air traffic control won't raise enough money to replace the aging system because of the growth of low cost airlines and because the average plane has gotten smaller -- it costs just as much to track a small airplane as it does a jumbo jet.

Thus, the FAA is asking congress to charge fees that reflect the actual cost of flying such as raising the passenger facility charges tax (an existing tax which pays for airport improvements) and more than tripling fuel tax for corporate and private aircraft.

The Air Transport Association, an airline lobbyist, says that airlines pay for 93.7 percent of the air traffic control system, but use only 68.1 percent of it while military, corporate and recreational aircraft use the remaining 31.9 percent.

On the other hand, National Business Aviation Association president Ed Bolen says it's the hub-and-spoke system created by large airlines that puts a heavy load on the air traffic control system. He calls the proposal a "toxic mix of higher taxes, new fees and airline control." And added, "It would give them [airlines] a massive tax cut, to be paid for largely by a 'general aviation' industry that serves many of the nation's small and mid-sized businesses and their communities."

"We've got a system in the U.S. that's the largest, safest, most efficient in the world," Bolen said. "It's been funded through user taxes for 40 years, it's worked. We don't need to set up a new bureaucracy."

-Dippold

Political Online Reputation

U.S. sent pallets of cash to Baghdad before handover

According to what lawmakers said Tuesday, the Federal Reserve sent more that $4 billion in cash to Baghdad on large pallets aboard military planes a short time before the U.S. gave governmental control back to the Iraqis.

The money, being held by the U.S., came from Saddam Hussein regime's refrozen assets, surplus funds from the U.N. backed oil-for-food program and from Iraqi oil exports.

On December 12, 2003, $1.5 billion was shipped to Iraq. Then came more than $2.4 billion on June 22, 2004, and $1.6 billion three days later. The Coalition Provisional Authority turned over sovereignty to Iraq on June 30.

L. Paul Bremer in charge of the CPA, which ran Iraq after initial combat operations ceased, said the Iraqi minister of finance requested the huge shipments of cash.

There is also concern that insurgents got their hands on some of the total $12 billion in Iraqi money that Bremer and the CPA disbursed for reconstruction -- by falsifying names on the government payroll.

Stewart Bowen, special inspector general for Iraqi reconstruction, noted in a January 2005 report that $8.8 billion was unaccounted for after funds had been given to the Iraqi ministries.

The Gun Toting Liberal, writes of Bremer:

The fact is, BILLIONS of tax dollars are missing in “The Desert”, and this guy was left in charge of them. When pressed on the wherabouts of those THREE HUNDRED, THIRTY-SIX TONS of tax dollars under his care, he counters by whining about how “tough” and “chaotic” it was at the time, and how it made more sense to just keep on doing whatever he FELT like at the time with those BILLIONS of dollars of our tax money. Just because the man worked for the United States Government doesn’t give him a pass, should this man ever stand trial for losing BILLIONS of dollars of other people’s money.

Brent at A Dakota Democrat calls for more oversight:

Somehow according to a report by the special Inspector General for Iraq, $8.8 Billion of reconstruction funds have been mysteriously lost. So, our government shipped pallet loads of US money into Iraq, dispersed it by stuffing it in duffel bags in the back of pickup trucks, and now is saying we don't know where it is. Boy, I am glad that there has been oversight over the money that we have sank into this war. Nothing like having over 10% of the money spent by congress on this war being missing.

Significant time on Technorati provided no defense for this act. Bloggers appear to overwhelmingly condemn sending 363 tons of cold hard cash into a war zone. Maybe they needed the money instantly and an efficient way to distribute it was in the form of greenbacks? Who knows?

-Dippold

Political Online Reputation