Crooked Timber: Life Imitating Art

I like blog posts that connect seemingly disparate data points, facts, exoeriences, etc., and thus put both into a more meaningful context. Kinda like this one.

More taxpayer-funded SS propaganda

U.S. Newswire : Releases : "New Report Details the Politicization of Social Security"

Jeff Gannon and Armstrong Williams may be gone, but the propaganda machine rolls on.

Today Reps. Henry A. Waxman, Rep. Charles B. Rangel, and Rep. Sander M. Levin, along with Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, and Reps. Obey, Miller, and DeLauro, released a new report that shows how the Social Security Administration has modified its communications strategy to undermine public confidence in Social Security.
...
The report provides detailed, side-by-side examples of the changes in Social Security Administration documents during the Bush Administration. These changes include:

-- "The Future of Social Security" booklet -- which used to begin: "Will Social Security be there for you? Absolutely" -- now begins: "Social Security must change."

-- Agency press releases on the solvency of Social Security have grown more dire even as the projections of the program's long-term solvency have improved.

-- Agency presentations have eliminated statements that assure beneficiaries that "there is no immediate financial crisis."

-- The annual Social Security statement sent to Americans has dropped the assurance that Social Security will "be there when you retire" and no longer encourages Americans to think of Social Security as a "foundation on which to build your financial future."

Wankers.

Excommunicate him.

Josh Marshall reports that Joe Lieberman is about to supply yet another in an endless stream of "bipartisan" fig leaves to a rapacious Bush Administration by becoming the first Democrat to publicly back the Administration's plan for the destruction of Social Security.

At this point I believe such an absurdity is entirely within the realm of possibility. His sins provide ample precedent in kind, though the maginitude of his breaking ranks here might be unprecedented.

I assume that it is impossible to discipline him. Dr. Bloor has informed me that he thinks Killer Joe's constituents actually like the idea of having a DINO -- they get the selfish benefits of a Republican Senator AND the balm against guilt that comes with voting for Democrat.

The party leadership is thus left with only one way to maintain unity on this, the most important issue Congressional Democrts now face -- and perhaps to put a real Democrat in his seat: excommunicate him. Toss him out of the party. Force him and his constituents to resolve the profound cognitive dissonance his very existence perpetuates. If he is going to act like a Republican, make him run as one. And let a real Democrat run against him.

More of the Plame Iceberg

The U.S. Special Counsel has dismissed more than 1,000 whistleblower cases in the past year, according to a letter from the Bush-appointed Special Counsel released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The Special Counsel appears to have taken action in very few, if any, of these cases and has yet to represent a single whistleblower in an employment case.

In a letter dated February 14, 2005 and addressed to U.S. Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA), Special Counsel Scott Bloch defends his stormy 13 months in office by pointing to a sharp drop in backlogged whistleblower cases.

“Everyone agrees that backlogs and delays are bad but they are not as bad as simply dumping the cases altogether,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that this letter is the first account that Bloch has released of his tenure and that his office’s report for FY 2004, which ended in October, is overdue. “If the Office of Special Counsel under Scott Bloch is not helping whistleblowers then there is no reason for the office to continue to exist.”

According to the figures released by Bloch, in the past year the Office of Special Counsel—

Dismissed or otherwise disposed of 600 whistleblower disclosures where civil servants have reported waste, fraud, threats to public safety and violations of law. Bloch has yet to announce a single case where he has ordered an investigation into the employee’s charges. Bloch says that 100 disclosures are still pending; and
Made 470 claims of retaliation disappear. In not one of these cases did Bloch’s office affirmatively represent a whistleblower to obtain relief before the civil service court system, called the Merit Systems Protection Board. Bloch says that another 30 retaliation cases remain in the backlog.

In order to speed dismissals, Bloch instituted a rule forbidding his staff from contacting a whistleblower if their disclosure was deemed incomplete or ambiguous. Instead, OSC would simply dismiss the matter. As a result, hundreds of whistleblowers never had a chance to justify why their cases had merit.

If you start from the hypothesis that the last thing anyone in the Bush Administration wants to hear is the truth, the Plame case, the WMD outrage, Gannongate, Armstrong Williams, and now this -- it all makes such perfect sense.

Think we would ever have heard of Linda Tripp under these clowns?

real world distractions

Actual work intrudes, taking me away for several days. I will be offline for long periods until next Wednesday. I'm jonesin' just thinking about it.

Have fun storming the castle.

Gannongate evolves: Guckert's new website

Hunter S. Thompson said that when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

The star of hotmilitarystud.com seems to have turned pro some time ago, but the weird is getting weirder.

When the excrement hit the impeller a few weeks ago, Guckert/Gannon vacillated between hiding in a dark recess and offering bizarre, incomplete and contradictory public statements. His "work" at Talon was scrubbed off. Then Talon itself went dark.

Now Mr. Gannongate is back with his own website. There's a sizeable army on our side pushing to get to the bottom of Gannongate. I don't imagine that he is going to be getting a whole lot of top-level help (witness the atrocious grammar and proofreading), and reasonable people could question the number of cards in the deck he is playing with. So this should be quite entertaining.

When hero met zero

"He knew who I was, at that time, because I had a reputation as a writer. I knew he was part of the Bush dynasty. But he was nothing, he offered nothing, and he promised nothing. He had no humor. He was insignificant in every way and consequently I didn't pay much attention to him. But when he passed out in my bathtub, then I noticed him. I'd been in another room, talking to the bright people. I had to have him taken away." --Hunter S. Thompson, on meeting George W. Bush at Thompson's Super Bowl party in Houston in 1974

Talon is no more

The Ashlee Simpson of news reporting throws in the towel:

The recent public focus on Talon News, while much of it malicious, has indeed brought some constructive elements to the surface. It has also brought many kind messages of support, and for that we are extremely grateful.

In order to better serve those readers across the country who enjoy Talon News content and look forward to receiving it each day, we feel compelled to reevaluate operations in order to provide the highest quality, most professional product possible.

Thus, Talon News will be offline while we redesign the web site, perform a top-to-bottom review of staff and volunteer contributors, and address future operational procedures.

We look forward to bringing an even better product to our readers in the future.

Yeah, Sure.

Writer who secretly taped Bush wants to give tapes to president

The US writer who secretly recorded telephone conversations with George W. Bush in the late 1990s wants to give the tapes to the US president, a US cable network said.
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In the tapes, which Wead recorded between 1998 and 2000 while Bush was the governor of Texas and a presidential candidate, the future US leader appears to strategize about the best way to answer potential campaign-trail questions about marijuana and cocaine.

"I wouldn't answer the marijuana question. You know why? Cause I don't want some little kid doing what I tried," Bush is heard telling Wead.

Wead's just-released book, "The Raising of a President," draws on the recordings, which were made without Bush's knowledge.

Wead had told The New York Times that he recorded the conversations because he viewed Bush as a historic figure, but he said he knew that the president might regard his actions as a betrayal.

"Contrary to a statement that I made to the New York Times, I have come to realize that personal relationships are more important than history," Wead wrote to MSNBC.

"I am asking my attorney to direct any future proceeds from the book to charity and to find the best way to vet these tapes and get them back to the president to whom they belong. History can wait," he wrote.

Anybody seen Mr. Wead's kneecaps lying around anywhere?

That sure was fast. Unless you have deposited copies of those tapes with your attorney, along with instructions for their broadcast upon your mysterious disappearance, I would expect that history isn't going to have to wait very long for you, Mr. Wead.

Pro Wrestling Republican Coalition

No, this isn't a parody, at least as far as I can tell.

Bobby Eberle, Mr. Talon News, is also a part of the Pro Wrestling Republican Coalition, which, according to their FAQ, "is a grass-roots initiative organization promoting the principles of the Republican Party. The PWRC is made up of wrestling fans, wrestlers, promoters, merchandisers, vendors and wrestling journalists. We strongly believe and support the basic tenent of the Republican Party; Lower Taxes and No Tax Increases, and we will work to achieve that goal."

Perfect. It makes perfect sense that folks who think pro wrestling is a real sport would think Dubya is a real President.

No News is Talon News: Update

Still not a byte changed since last Thursday... It is as if Dan Rather stepped down, and CBS News went dark.

Why Gannongate Matters

New piece up @ Raw Story.

Nice HST tribute

From Salon.com | The Duke of Hazard:

This is a day when writers can get away with imitiations. Read the whole thing, but I liked this part:

I think it is improper and disrespectful to whine about this suicide. Thompson was in the game for a very, very long time, and I think it is a safe bet that he was never comfortable. This was a profoundly tortured guy, the smoke from whose ears always made a whole lot of exciting colors that we all enjoyed. It was a great brain to watch but you wouldn't want to live in it, I'd aver. He was a butch motherfucker and I'd bet cash he stuck it out significantly longer than he really wanted to. Let's face it, HST was not one for the nursing home -- he'd have just stolen everyone else's barbiturates and hurt people trying to arm-wrestle.

TNR Online: debunking more Social Security nonsense

Noam Scheiber takes on Charles Krauthammer's incoherent argument about the allegedly non-existent SS trust fund.

Unfortunately for Krauthammer, the logic of preemptively defusing the Social Security crisis only makes sense if you believe in the Social Security trust fund, whose existence he just spent all that ink refuting. If you don't believe in the trust fund, it makes no difference whether you start cutting benefits today or in 2018, the first year Social Security pays out more in benefits than it receives in payroll tax revenue. The size of the benefit cut or the tax increase you'd need to eliminate the red ink in 2018 would be the same either way.

Think about it this way: Social Security is going to run a surplus every year between today and 2018. Those surpluses accumulate in the trust fund. The only thing you'd accomplish by cutting benefits or raising taxes today is to increase the size of Social Security's annual surpluses, which would increase the size of the trust fund.

Now, if you believed in the trust fund, you'd agree that this additional money could be used beginning in 2018 to keep paying full benefits to all retirees. But Krauthammer doesn't believe in it. He wants us to tighten our belts today in order to run a surplus that, according to him, we would then flush right down the toilet.

Now you know why they feel the need to slime the AARP -- with logic like that, smear campaign and misdirection are about all that is left.

Talon News Watch

Talon News claims to be running a serious 24/7 news organization. It even claims that "Talon News focuses on those stories often overlooked by other media outlets." But I guess nothing newsworthy has happened in the last five days, since the last story posted on their site is dated 2/17. In fact, a grand total of 12 postings have been put up over the last nine days.

The only bar lower than the one for getting a press pass to the White House seems to be the one for getting elected to it.

Religious group challenges 'traditional' history

Presidents’ Day is when many Americans honor the country’s past commanders-in-chief. At the Christian Heritage Center in Fishersville, Thomas Jefferson was not on the list of honorees Monday. It was the day a call to arms went out, to Christians everywhere, to band together and fight religious persecution they encounter even today.

It was the day to recognize the perpetrator, that “enemy of the Gospel” - Jefferson, according to Christian Heritage officials.
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(Christian Heritage officials) cited examples to suggest Jefferson was the enemy of Christians and that Washington was a model Christian, who walked the walk - even begging forgiveness from God when his prayers were not fervent enough.

“Jefferson came disguised as an angel of light by appealing to reason instead of faith - to works instead of the cross,” Humphries said.

Ina strange way this is actually encouraging. I see so much nonsense about how America was founded as a Christian nation, and all of the Founding Fathers were indistinguishable from the Disciples. This is hogwash, and it is good to see acknowledgement of the faulty premise. Jefferson, the primary author of the documents that established our nation, was the guy who said:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God; that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship; that the legislative powers of the government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should `make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State.

The problem, of course, is that rather than admit that perhaps Jefferson's wall is a good idea, they prefer to paint Jefferson as a rogue and a charlatan. But he was in good company:

"The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity." --John Adams

"Lighthouses are more helpful than churches."--Benjamin Franklin, _Poor_Richard_, 1758

"Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and all of which facilitates the execution of mischievous projects. Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded project."--James Madison

"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian, or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."--Thomas Paine, _The_Age_of_Reason

"One of the embarrassing problems for the early nineteenth-century champions of the Christian faith was that not one of the first six Presidents of the United States was an orthodox Christian."--The Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1968, p. 420

Gannongate Deja Vu

iapprovethismessiah.com has the goods on a gay prostitution scandal from the Reagan White House. It made page 1 of the Moonie Times back then.

You, too, can obtain a White House Press Pass

Just sign up here.

Charles and Camilla not welcome in White House

George Bush has banned Camilla Parker Bowles from the White House - because she is a divorcee.

The unprecedented snub has effectively sabotaged Charles's plan to take his bride on a Royal tour of America later this year.

The trip would have been the pair's first official tour as a married couple.

But the US President - a notoriously right-wing Christian and reformed alcoholic - told aides it was "inappropriate" for him to be playing host to the newly-weds, who are both divorcees.

OK, all you new Memians -- help us put together a list of other divorced folks who should also be kept out of the idealogically pure White House. There's Newt Gingrich, of course, and a handful of others listed here like Susan Molinari, George Will, Bob Dole, and of course Rush Limbaugh. But what juicy bits can we dig up on current White House denizens?

Whiskey Bar: The Creation of Gannon

So many doctored images of Jeff Gannon and the tool of his trade have popped up on line that I wouldn't be surprised if Gannongate doesn't measureably spike sales of Photoshop. Many are amusing. This one is inspired. Also a bit disconcerting. Also see the full-sized work here.

Gonzo Obit

Hunter S. Thompson, the hard-living writer who inserted himself into his accounts of America's underbelly and popularized a first-person form of journalism in books such as "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," has committed suicide.

Thompson was found dead Sunday in his Aspen-area home of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, sheriff's officials said. He was 67.

Hunter Thompson might just have been the most influential American writer of the last few decades. Changes he wrought were both good (new subjects, a flowering of new styles of reporting, and a willingness to explore deeper meaning in places beyond the explicit assignment) and bad (his insertion of himself into his stories has in other hands often simply become lazy narcissism, and the rules he broke were generally there for a reason, so as with free jazz, lesser talents could claim to be "New Journalists" when they were really just making noise). And then, of course, there were the drugs.

I saw Thompson speak once, in 1985 or 1986. He had been booked as a speaker at Stanford. He showed up late, then rambled incoherently, a bottle of bourbon under his chair. He graciously accepted the joint a student handed him onstage. I couldn't tell if he was playing his self-caricature, or if I was simply seeing the logical consequence of his adoption of Dr. Johnson's statement that "He who makes a beast of himself avoids the pain of being a man." My sense at the time was that perhaps he really did do all the things his books said he did, though I wondered how he could possibly fire up enough synapses to be the guy who wrote about them.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was sort of the Catcher in the Rye for my generation. Even if his life served in some ways as a "this is your brain on drugs" warning about the consequences of his choices, he was a warts-and-all icon, and writing about politics and popular (sub)culture is forever different because of him.

Vaya con dios, you rat bastard.

Update: Thanks to the reader who caught my $%$##! typo -- it is indeed "beast," not best.

Doing well by doing good

Clear Channel adopts liberal programming on growing number of stations

The day before President Bush's inauguration, listeners tuning in to the Detroit sports station WXDX-AM were suddenly greeted by the sound of braying donkeys. By the time Bush was taking the oath of office, the radio station had new call letters and a full schedule of liberal talk shows.

WXDX-AM -- now known as WDTW-AM -- is one of 22 stations owned by Clear Channel Communications Inc. that have switched to a liberal talk format in the last year. This month, KTLK-AM in Los Angeles became the latest Clear Channel station to adopt the format.

Those who track broadcasting trends say there's money to be made in liberal talk radio. Todd Webster, a consultant for Washington-based liberal talk show producer Democracy Radio, said Clear Channel is expected to introduce the left-leaning format on 20 more stations by the end of the year.

"There is a tremendous appetite out there for progressive talk," he said.

Webster said that even as recently a year ago, no one thought Texas-based Clear Channel, a media conglomerate that owns 1,200 stations -- including Twin Falls radio stations KEZJ-FM, KLIX-AM and KLIX-FM -- would ever become partners with upstart liberal talkers.

"There has been a tectonic shift in the industry from all of the big brains and the head honchos saying, 'Nobody wants to listen to a bunch of whiny liberals on the radio,"' Webster said.

The partnership might seem surprising because of Texas-based Clear Channel's conservative reputation. Clear Channel CEO Lowry Mays and his wife gave $65,000 to the Republican National Committee in the last election cycle, and two-thirds of the company's federal donations went to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

I just love irony.

Freepers Creepers

It might be possible to garble the message more than this, but off the top of my head I can't imagine how:

The D.C. Chapter of Free Republic, an independent grassroots organization, will be holding a demonstration at the White House this evening in support of former Talon News White House Correspondent Jeff Gannon and the rights of other reporters to do their jobs without fear of being destroyed by the political establishment.

The group will also be bringing attention to several First Amendment-related issues pertaining to the current imbroglio. Among them are the unconstitutional efforts of Democratic congressmen to determine who is a reporter and efforts by the establishment media to shut out Internet-based news sites from having access to government press conferences.

Yeah, boys, that's it -- we're all about shutting out the blogs. And could someone point me to the place in the Constitution where it prohibits Congress from asking who gets passes to the White House press room?

I sometimes try to get a peek at the Freeper parallel universe. This satisfies my need for rubbernecking for a while.

Ick.

Gonzales Seeks to Reinstate Obscenity Case

from Yahoo:

The Bush administration said Wednesday it would seek to reinstate an indictment against a California pornography company that was charged with violating federal obscenity laws. It was Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' first public decision on a legal matter.

Billed as the government's first big obscenity case in a decade, the 10-count indictment against Extreme Associates Inc. and its owners, Robert Zicari, and his wife, Janet Romano, both of Northridge, Calif., was dismissed last month by U.S. District Judge Gary Lancaster of Pittsburgh.

Lancaster ruled prosecutors overstepped their bounds while trying to block the company's hard-core movies from children and from adults who did not want to see such material.

The Justice Department said it will appeal the ruling to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. While acknowledging the importance of the constitutional guarantee of free speech, Gonzales said selling or distributing obscene materials does not fall within First Amendment protections.

You gonna prosecute the publisher of these obscene pics, too? If not, expect to see them from the attorneys for the defense, Mr. A.G.

MoDo on Gannongate: Bush's Barberini Faun

I am very impressed with James Guckert, a k a Jeff Gannon.
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It's hard to believe the White House could hit rock bottom on credibility again, but it has, in a bizarre maelstrom that plays like a dark comedy. How does it credential a man with a double life and a secret past?

"Jeff Gannon" was waved into the press room nearly every day for two years as the conservative correspondent for two political Web sites operated by a wealthy Texas Republican. Scott McClellan often called on the pseudoreporter for softball questions.
...
I'm still mystified by this story. I was rejected for a White House press pass at the start of the Bush administration, but someone with an alias, a tax evasion problem and Internet pictures where he posed like the "Barberini Faun" is credentialed to cover a White House that won a second term by mining homophobia and preaching family values?

Thanks, MoDo, for hitting on the real issue -- not the fundamental issue (why he was really there, and called on), but the crowbar that we all need to stand on to crack open the real scandal.

Frank Rich takes on Gannongate today, too. While it is good to see the MSM finally touch this story, the profound weirdness here is this: The normal course has been that the regular "news sources" break stories and the blogosphere reacts and comments. In this case that chain of causation has been inverted: The news desk seems to be leaving it to us to do the heavy lifting, and OpEd clucks and scolds. There was some of this in the Dan Rather imbroglio, but that one made the front page and got abundant coverage, so I count this one as different.

If FOIA requests still worked, we could do their entire job, and I might never have to read a newspaper again.

Toyota claims No 2 automaker spot

Japan's Toyota Motor Corporation said on Monday the group sold 6.78 million vehicles worldwide in 2003, putting it above Ford Motor to become the world's second largest automaker by sales for the first time.
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The Toyota figures compare with 6.72 million vehicles sold globally last year by Ford, which had long maintained the number two spot behind General Motors Corp.

While Ford has struggled to benefit from its acquisition of Sweden's Volvo, Toyota has posted higher profits and plowed them into North America, China and Southeast Asia, boosting output and sales.

General Motors is the world's top automaker with sales of 8.59 million vehicles in 2003.


When gasoline in the U.S. starts costing $3 or 4 bucks a gallon -- and it will -- GM is going to find selling Hummers and its other dreadnaught-class barges about as easy as selling cancer. That is when hybrid-intensive Toyota will slide right past them into the number one slot, finishing the revolution they helped start in 1973.

I'm certain there are at least a handful of folks at GM who are smart enough to know about peak oil and how utterly unprepared they are for another hike in oil prices. But their leaders are content to burn Rome while America plays. And they seem to have been taking lessons from the tobacco companies in their approach to global warming. So I will have sympathy for their employees when the end comes, but will shed no tears for their shareholders or management.

And to those who cling to "buy American" slogans -- do you mean the Ford from Mexico, the Honda from Ohio, the BMW from South Carolina, or the Pontiac from Canada?

Damn near official: Privatization is dead

From The Hill:

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) waded into Republican territory yesterday, releasing a whip count of 29 Republicans he says are on record opposing “all or major parts of President Bush’s plan” for Social Security reform.

Given the GOP’s 14-vote margin in the House, Hoyer reasons that Republicans will need to initiate a more serious conversation with Democrats if they are nursing any hopes of passing a plan this session.

Hoyer’s cross-aisle whipping is indicative of the Democrats’ swelling confidence that the Social Security debate cuts in their favor and tracks with Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rahm Emanuel’s (D-Ill.) strategy. He has been attempting to brand vulnerable GOP lawmakers who appear open to the president’s proposal, despite their stated opposition to privatization, as “flip-floppers.”

Last week, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told her colleagues in a closed-door meeting that Democrats should not “shoot until we see the whites of their eyes,” according to a leadership aide.

Republicans acknowledged that there are divergent views in their party but disputed Hoyer’s whip count, arguing the he had tied generic statements opposing “privatization” with blanket opposition to allowing some younger workers to divert a small portion of their payroll taxes into personal accounts.

“If Steny Hoyer did more complete research, he would find a lot more than 29 that are against privatization,” said Carl Forti, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

This is no time to let up, but I am just about ready to call this fight.

It has been so easy, and I am so used to the good guys being out-thought out-hustled that I am starting to wonder what we are missing. Was the whole thing some subtle Trojan horse? Was Karl Rove beating us at yet another game we didn't know we were playing?

Some ownership societies are more equal than others

from TheDeal.com - Carlyle doubles return to investors

The Carlyle Group returned $5.3 billion to investors last year, more than double the $2.1 billion it returned the previous year, according to a summary the firm released Monday, Feb. 14, of its investment activities for 2004.

"It was our best year ever," said William Conway Jr., the Washington-based private-equity group's co-founder and managing director.

Who is the Carlyle Group? Take a look.

And how do they make so much long green? They would prefer that you don't look, but you might want to sneak a peek.

I guess it is kinda like rooting for a sports team -- the rest of us are supposed to just bask in the reflected glory while our heroes take home the spoils.

Ohio government seeks to control college course political content

From ACLU-Ohio:

The Ohio Senate is considering a bill that would censor Ohio colleges and universities. The so-called “Academic Bill of Rights” is truly as a misnomer, as it is really an “academic bill of restrictions.” The ACLU of Ohio opposes passage of this bill because it could be used to curtail academic freedom and to encourage thought policing in our institutes of higher education. The bill would have a chilling effect on freedom of inquiry on Ohio’s campuses. For example:

· The bill forces the board of trustees, of both public and private schools, to adopt policies about what can and cannot be taught.

· Under the bill, faculty would be discouraged from teaching anything “controversial” – a vague term that could pertain to any number of topics including evolution, history, or religion.


I hope they will make "Brave New World" required reading, because if they are going to make this level of Newspeak --calling direct governmental control of college-level academic content a "bill of rights" -- part of the DNA of this brazen attempt to control education, everyone ought to at least know something about its origins.

Ohio is home to both the right-wingnuts who apoplected about Mapplethorpe's photos in Cincinnati and a few very progressive colleges, like Oberlin. The country's most restrictive anti-gay ballot initiative passed in Ohio in November, but that was merely the opening shot in a long-term pogrom. The goal seems to be to drive the infidels out of the state entirely.

I'll have more to say on the far right's assault on academia in a future column.

Missile test failed, but Alaska's role 'flawless'

The news (via New Scientist) is bad.

A test of the controversial US missile defence system failed on Sunday - the second time this has happened in recent months. The failure has once again drawn condemnation of the programme from critics.

An interceptor missile sited on an island base in the Pacific Ocean was meant to obliterate a test ballistic missile in mid-flight, but it failed to launch, officials from the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) revealed on Monday. "Preliminary indications point to a fault with the ground support equipment, not the interceptor missile," it says.

The target missile, carrying a mock warhead, did launch from Kodiak, Alaska at 0922 local time. But the interceptor missile - a rocket carrying a "kill vehicle" that detaches and homes in on the target - failed to get off the ground at the Ronald Reagan Test Site on Kwajalein Island in the central Pacific.

It will take 60 days to ready another test. Reuters reports that Bush's 2006 budget proposal would slash spending on ballistic missile defense, the single largest U.S. research and development project, by $1 billion to about $8.8 billion.

So, your multi-billion dollar shoot-down-bullets-wth-bullets system fails, yet again. How's a free-spending big-government team keep their chin up? Remember Reagan's favorite joke about how the kid finds a pile of turds in the barn and begins smiling because there must be a pony in there somewhere? Here's a little of that old-fashioned sunny-side-upism for you:

It was a failure, but the Alaskan Command says its part in a U.S. missile defense system test Sunday was flawless.

Members of the Legislature’s Joint-Armed Services Committee were briefed on military issues Tuesday in Juneau. Sunday evening a missile was successfully launched from Kodiak as part of a test of the missile defense system. However, military officials say an interceptor missile in the central Pacific did not launch.

Officials blamed a malfunction with ground-support equipment.

“I would tell you that we have had flawless target launches from Kodiak complex, and you read the newspaper concerning the interceptors over the last two attempted tests. I would anticipate that those tests will continue in the near future,” said Carrol Chandler, commander of the Alaska Command.

The test launches cost $85 million each. Sunday marked the second failure in the last few months.

Let your smile be your nuclear umbrella.

Federalist Society teams up with Swift Smear media firm

from the Moonie Times, believe it or not:

Supporters of President Bush's judicial nominees have hired the same media firm used by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth for their efforts to defend the next nominee for any upcoming Supreme Court vacancy.

The aggressive media style of Creative Response Concepts (CRC) will be met by a "war room" already set up by the liberal People For the American Way (PFAW) on the other side, indicating that the next Supreme Court fight is likely to be one of the nastiest in history.
...
CRC made a splash in the summer promoting the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the group that questioned the legitimacy of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry's war medals, his claims about his Vietnam War service, and his anti-war stance upon returning to the United States.

The group has been hired into the judicial battle by the Federalist Society, the influential conservative judicial organization from which many of Mr. Bush's nominees have been picked.

The Federalist Society, as Boyden Gray intoned on Fresh Air this morning, is a "debating society." So how come a friendly little group dedicated to the art of balanced verbal pugilism needs to hire the bare-knuckle team that helped to bring you "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth?"

Perhaps it is because the Federalist Society ain't your ordinary debate club. The Federalist Society is to debating as Tony Soprano is to "waste management." You can get a bit of the flavor on these folks here. Their membership list -- Scalia, Bork, Starr, etc.-- tells you what these guys are about. They are deadly serious about turning the courts upside down with a very specific agenda. And they are very, very close to the tipping point. When they are done, everything you believe about what courts are supposed to do and the very idea of justice will be as quaint as a hoop skirt.

CRC's public client list is here. It includes paragons of virtue such as Regnery Publishing (Swift Smear, Michelle Malkin), the RNC, the Christian Coalition, and the Contract on with America.

Maya Keyes Interview

@ yubanet:

As you may know, Alan Keyes has a gay daughter. Unlike that old softie, Dick Cheney, he seems none to pleased about it. And unlike Mary Cheney, Maya Keyes, who was planning to enter Brown University as a freshman, is loud, proud -- and homeless. Dad threw her out.

Maya these days is currently residing with individuals affiliated with PFLAG, or Parents, Friends, and Family of Lesbians and Gays. She was able to keep a bag of her belongings at a friend's house. She's been using library computers to communicate.

Coming out of the closet to her parents was more of a process, however, than an event, she recalls. "My parents have known I was queer for a couple of years now. They were in denial about it. They thought I was just queer in a phase. And after a while they said, we can't support the decisions you're making. It's not just that I was queer that was a problem, but that I was willing to talk about it."

Well, Mr. Keyes, the Lord works in mysterious ways. Enter The Point Foundation.

On Thursday, the Point Foundation, a Chicago-based charity that provides scholarships to students "who have been marginalized because of their sexual orientation," decided to pay Maya's expenses so she can begin her studies at Brown. "Many of the students we support have been disowned by their families because they've been honest about who they are," said the foundation's executive director, Vance Lancaster. "Maya's situation is especially poignant because of her father's position, but it's a situation that happens every day to hundreds of kids across the country." This year, Point has received more than 1,200 applications for about 40 scholarships.

Maya Keyes is looking for answers to all those conservatives who e-mail her about how she's going to burn in hell and to all those liberals who e-mail her about how she's a traitor because she won't disavow her father. And then there are the people who think she's a whiny brat, "that I'm immature for thinking that I want my parents to talk to me."

So quick, who is exemplifying family values here?

Judge Sentelle delivers

Home run, BushCo.

A U.S. appeals court ruled on Tuesday that two journalists must testify before a federal grand jury about their confidential sources in an investigation into a leak that exposed the identity of a covert CIA operative.

The three-judge panel ruled that New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper of Time Magazine must comply with a subpoena from a grand jury investigating whether the Bush administration illegally leaked the officer's name to the news media.

The decision upheld a ruling by a federal judge that Miller and Cooper were in contempt of court and should be jailed for refusing to testify about their confidential sources. Miller and Cooper each face as much as 18 months in prison.

No decision that puts Judith Miller on ice can be all bad, but the overall impact here is devastating, and exactly what our ruling cabal wanted when they set this Kabuki theater production in motion.

If reporters are forced to reveal sources, those sources dry up. Which means, of course, that whatever pathetic remnant of actual reporting the press still does will be reduced even further. Intimidating sources has always been at the heart of Bush's MO here.

Lest you think that this is a principled decision and that the courts are somehow above the fray, consider that this decision was handed down by none other than Judge David Sentelle. Read about how he made his conservative bones here and here -- just so happens he was the guy who (a) overturned the Iran-Contra convictions that would have put Poppy Bush in a world of hurt if the convicted underlings had flipped and (b) put the boil known as Ken Starr on Bill Clinton's ass.

The world is filled with the most amazing coincidences.

One Week Later, Gallup Says Bush Approval Rating Has Fallen From 57% to 49%

Last week we picked up the Left Coaster's reporting on that absurdly biased Gallup poll that showed Bush's popularity soaring -- as did every major media outlet (leaving out the biased sample part, natch).

The Left Coaster read the fine print, and appeared to have generated enough heat to force them to cheat a little less the next time, which sends the results tumbling to earth:

A week after the most recent Gallup Poll for CNN and the USA Today claimed that Bush’s approval rating shot up to 57%, using a sample that had a 9 percentage point advantage for the GOP over Democrats (37% GOP, 28% Democrats), Gallup came out with its own poll last Friday. This poll, not done for CNN or USAT, and not bull-horned through the media and seemingly lost in the late Friday news dump, shows that Bush’s approval rating plummeted in one week to 49%, with his disapproval rating now up to 48%. As yet, I do not have the party ID breakdowns from Gallup on the Friday poll, but I suspect they will show something less than a 37% GOP-28% Democratic breakdown.

How often is there a 16% swing in a public opinion poll in one week?

The answer is never, of course, and L.C. explains why these results are so utterly bogus. What he can't explain is why this poll, which is based on an accurate sample, is getting nowhere near the press play as the one that preceded it. Couldn't be media bias....

UK - Victory for "McLibel" duo in European court

From the Financial Times of London:

Two environmental campaigners who fought an epic legal battle against the US-based McDonald’s fast-food chain have emerged victorious from the European Court of Human Rights.


The Strasbourg-based court on Tuesday declared that their "fair trial" and "freedom of expression" rights had been breached by the UK court process, which resulted in them facing damages claims of £76,000.

Helen Steel and David Morris were members of a small environmental and social campaign group which targeted McDonald's in the mid-1980s. In the course of this, a six-page leaflet was produced and distributed, called "What's wrong with McDonald's?".

The US-based fast-food chain, however, countered by suing the couple for libel. This, in turn, paved the way for the longest trial in English legal history, lasting from June 1994 to December 1996.

The two defendants - who denied publication, and put forward a range of libel defences - were refused legal aid, and so represented themselves with some help from volunteer lawyers. McDonald's, by contrast, had a qualified legal team.
...
"Given the enormity and complexity of (the trial process), the Court does not consider that the correct balance was struck between the need to protect the applicants' rights to freedom of expression and the need to protect McDonalds' rights and reputation," it concluded.

"The more general interest in promoting the free circulation of information and ideas about the activities of powerful commercial entities, and possible "chilling" effect on others are also important factors to be considered in this context, bearing in mind the legitimate and important role that campaign groups can play in stimulating public discussion," it added.

The Court awarded Helen Steel E20,000 and David Morris E15,000 for non-pecuniary damage and just over E47,300 for costs and expenses.


Though there are a number of ways in which our British friends seem more evolved than we are, freedom of expression ain't one of them. This case got massive publicity when it was crawling through the British courts a decade ago, and I thought it had ended, badly for the folks speaking out against McFood. Now a higher court has effectively reversed. Welcome to federalism, Governor Blair.

US supports guerilla war -- in Iraq

via Asia Times Online::

If true, this is a remarkable story:

To head off this threat of a Shi'ite clergy-driven religious movement, the US has, according to Asia Times Online investigations, resolved to arm small militias backed by US troops and entrenched in the population to "nip the evil in the bud".

Asia Times Online has learned that in a highly clandestine operation, the US has procured Pakistan-manufactured weapons, including rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, ammunition, rockets and other light weaponry. Consignments have been loaded in bulk onto US military cargo aircraft at Chaklala airbase in the past few weeks. The aircraft arrived from and departed for Iraq.

The US-armed and supported militias in the south will comprise former members of the Ba'ath Party, which has already split into three factions, only one of which is pro-Saddam Hussein. They would be expected to receive assistance from pro-US interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's Iraqi National Accord.

A military analyst familiar with strategic and proxy operations commented that there is a specific reason behind procuring arms from Pakistan, rather than acquiring US-made ones.

"A similar strategy was adopted in Afghanistan during the initial few years of the anti-USSR resistance [the early 1980s] movement where guerrillas were supplied with Chinese-made AK-47 rifles [which were procured by Pakistan with US money], Egyptian and German-made G-3 rifles. Similarly, other arms, like anti-aircraft guns, short-range missiles and mortars, were also procured by the US from different countries and supplied to Pakistan, which handed them over to the guerrillas," the analyst maintained.

The obvious reason for this tactic is to give the impression that the resistance acquired its arms and ammunition from different channels and from different countries - and anywhere other than the United States.

So it plays out like this: We invade and overthrow the government. After all our other rationales (ties to Al Qaeda, WMDs) turn out to be wrong, we claim the reason we killed as many as 100,000 Iraqis and leveled their infrastructure was to bring them democracy. We trumpet their election as a resounding success. And when they choose leaders not to our liking, we begin arming some of the folks we overthrew in the first place in order to help them get back in power.

Can I have my lobotomy now, please?

Talon News Front Page 3 days old

Everybody knows that the Gannongate shitstorm led Jeff Guckert/Gannon to resign from Talon News. And we know that Talon positions itself as a legitimate news service.

So how come their web page hasn't been updated since Friday the 11th? Was Gannon/Guckert the last "reporter" out the door, and did he turn out the lights?

2/15 Update: OK, so the website has now been updated -- somebody's still there. But the content is laughable -- no way there is even a single full-time reporter there. If these guys are a legitimate news organization, so are we.

Most excellent explanation for value of blogs

from Plaid Adder @Democratic Underground Forums - Ethos vs. Blogos (the Jeff Gannon story):

As I was reading the Americablog thing, it occurred to me that one mechanism at work here is the tradeoff between ethos and logos. For those of you whose memories of rhetoric and comp are mercifully dim, the three basic modes of rhetorical appeal are ethos, pathos, and logos. Pathos is the appeal to emotion, logos is the appeal to reason, and ethos is the appeal based on trust. In other words, in order to get someone to buy your argument, ideally you want it to be factually accurate and logically coherent (logos), emotionally powerful (pathos) and articulated by someone credible (ethos). However, if your argument is very long on one, it can afford to be short on one or two of the others. For instance, if you pour on enough pathos, nobody will notice that your logos is crap. THe right wing is extremely good at that kind of argument, for instance.
...
Increasingly, in our media culture, "ethos" is really about branding. People have identified certain news outlets as trustworthy and continue to trust them whether or not their reporting actually validates that trust.
...

But here's the problem: because these MSM outlets are used to skating by on ethos and pathos, they are really falling down on the job when it comes to logos. They already have the public trust, and they are very good at manipulating emotion (especially broadcast journalism). These things are now easy for them. Logical argument based on factual evidence is difficult--and more important, it's difficult to sell, because it takes longer for people to process. So that's really not what they're into any more.

In the blogosphere, where new blogs are being born every day and nobody knows who's paying for these people or where they come from, most everyone is starting from zero when it comes to ethos. Certain blogs are now well-known enough to be 'branded,' but most of them aren't. You're not going to believe a story just because you found it on a blog *unless* it comes attached to hard evidence. That's why that Americablog spends more time dumping all the evidence than it does on analysis (or, as he admits up front, proofreading)--because he knows that unless he comes across with evidence, nobody is going to buy it. If he were Wolf Blitzer, he wouldn't have to care; but since he's not, he does.

And that's why the blogosphere is taking over. Bloggers HAVE to use evidence if they want to be credible.

I cop to being a logos-driven guy, so I appreciate it when I am given a simple framework that explains so neatly my abandonment of tradtional news sources.

The whole thing is worth a read.

Gannongate gets interesting(er)

from Raw Story:

Gannongate is just the sort of scandal that Raw Story sinks its editorial teeth into. While much of the uproar has focused on the salacious aspects, I have been focused on the ways it tarred the Administration for letting him into the Press room and giving him such prominence. I was worried that the tabloid aspects would crowd out the more important story. Now there's this tying them back together:

Some question whether Gannon may have leveraged a personal intimate relationship with someone at the White House to gain access to President Bush. Guckert also says he was given access to an internal memorandum which named then-covert CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Such leveraging of personal relationships have seen increased scrutiny after the resignation of former New Jersey Governor James McGreevey, who admitted to having an affair with a male staff member.

Sources have intimated possible relationships with members of the White House staff.

RAW STORY has been told that the White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan visited a gay bar in Austin, Texas, on March 19, 1995. The date was placed exactly as a local memorial service was held on the same day.

The source, who would only comment on condition of anonymity, reserved comment on whether McClellan was actually gay, but said he was frequently seen at gay clubs. Another source also confirmed this account.

“He was often seen in gay clubs in Austin, Texas and was comfortable being there,” the Texan said. “He’s been seen in places that normal people who are looking for heterosexual relationships are not seen alone.”

If true, this could turn into the biggest story of the year, though I am again concerned that the gay angle will crowd out the bigger stories of access for hire, manufactured pseudonews, etc. But if Gannongate becomes a story about how Guckert slept his way into the White House, we are in for one wild ride.

CNN's Nuke Plant Photos Identical for Both Iran and N. Korea!

This is too, too precious.

Brad Friedman catches CNN doing their Jeff Gannon/Judith Miller White House conduit thing a bit too obviously.

Two stories posted in the last week on the CNN website, one on nukes in Iran last Wednesday, and another on nukes in North Korea on Saturday, both use the same aerial photograph of the same purported nuclear power plant!

But one is supposed to be in Iran and the other is supposed to be in North Korea!

A Fox by any other name would smell as putrid.

More of Digby's spleen

I'm a relative newcomer to Digby's Hullabaloo, but becoming a convert. I often find that when I want to give righteous, sarcastic voice to my indignation, Digby is already there. Witness his take on the discomfort on the right with the sexual angle on Gannongate:

We don't know that the reason Guckert "resigned" was because of the personal stuff. It's just as likely he was asked to leave because he had brought attention to himself and embarrassed the White House. Who knows?

But I think we all can agree that publicly discussing people's sex lives, really should be out of bounds. Sexual witch hunts are wrong. I just don't know what's come over people.

Digby then quotes from a few of the naughty bits in the Starr report.

I Heart Barbara Boxer

Barbara Boxer is my hero. She gave a speech Friday at a San Francisco senior center. She hit it out of the park. Read the whole thing; forward it to your Senators and Congresspersons; memorize it. It is as good a summary, call to arms and indictment of the president's plan as you are going see.

Have we ever faced a similar Social Security challenge before? Yes. During the Reagan presidency in 1983. Working together, Democrats and Republicans, we resolved the challenge then just as we can do now. So why would an otherwise optimistic George Bush turn into a prophet of pessimism on Social Security?

Because, his initiative is not about meeting the challenges of Social Security to keep it sound; it is not about bringing together Democrats and Republicans as Ronald Reagan did to ensure that full benefits will be there for all Americans. It is about one thing and one thing only: destroying Social Security.

How do I know that? Am I being partisan? Am I being unfair by stating in a very clear way that I believe the true goal here is to destroy Social Security? Not at all. I am simply telling the truth as told by this very White House.

On January 6, 2005, the White House wrote a Social Security memo. Although marked “not for attribution,” fortunately, we have it.

The most telling sentence in the entire memo is this: “For the first time in six decades the Social Security battle is one we can win – and in doing so, we can help transform the political and philosophical landscape of the country.”

Imagine: for six decades – that’s 60 years – the right wing has been after Social Security.

The memo also lays out the first priority for the White House and that is to “establish an important premise; the current system is heading for an iceberg” – thus explaining the use of the words “crisis,” “bankruptcy,” and “collapse.” By the way, he has also used the phrase “train wreck.”

Lots more good stuff. Read it.

Bush Says Wants Ideas on Retirement Overhaul

via Reuters:

President Bush promised to listen to "any good idea" for fixing Social Security on Saturday as he sought to coax reluctant lawmakers into joining his effort to overhaul the retirement program.

But Democrats signaled little interest in working with Bush unless he scraps the centerpiece of his plan -- allowing workers to shift up to 4 percentage points of their payroll taxes into private stock and bond accounts.

"I will work with members of Congress and listen to any good idea that does not include raising payroll taxes," Bush said in his weekly radio address.

"But we cannot pretend that the problem does not exist," he said, as he repeated his warning that Social Security was headed for bankruptcy.
...
Transition costs for the private accounts would be required because the government would need to make up the difference between payroll taxes that are diverted into the accounts and those needed to pay benefits of current retirees.

In an interview on Thursday in USA Today, South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said the trillions that would need to be borrowed for the private accounts were the "Achilles heel" of Bush's Social Security program.

Don't believe for a second that Bush actually wants to listen to anything remotely resembling reason. But even pretending to listen is a very un-Dubya move, and speaks volumes about the degree to which they know that they have overplayed their hand on Social Security.

Credit is due to the lefty websites that have crunched numbers, framed arguments and generally helped to keep pressure on the Democrats in Congress to close ranks. I am more encouraged by how the Democrats and the blogosphere have worked this than I have been about anything political in months. I figure another month or so of this and the battle will be largely won. They won't admit defeat, of course, but you are going to hear Social Security come up about as often as that other "one that got away" -- Osama bin Laden.

Backing Howard Dean

As you wish, Doc.

Wanna help support Howard Dean's DNC?

Contribution amount: $

Farmers shaken by Bush proposal to cut farm subsidies

From AP: President Bush, in his budget plan released Monday, is proposing to cut farm subsidies by 5 percent this year, cap them at $250,000 per farm and reduce overall spending by about one-third over across the next decade.

"I expect when it's all said and done the rice industry will sustain cuts. The question is how much?" said Rehermann, who along with 5,300 other rice growers in Northern California received $260 million in federal crop subsidies in 2003.

From North Dakota wheat country through the Midwest Corn Belt to the South's cotton fields, farmers who considered their government payments guaranteed are worried.
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In many farm states that helped re-elect Bush in November after never hearing any campaign talk about cutting their payments, there is a sense of betrayal.

"I'm not happy. I voted for George Bush," said cotton grower John Rife of Ferriday, La.
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By proposing such cuts, Bush has reignited a long debate in farm communities and urban America about the government's Depression-era practice of subsidizing what are now the world's most productive farms.

Critics say the subsidies benefit mostly large agribusiness corporations rather than small family farms, contribute to excessive federal spending and act as a barrier to free trade. An EWG analysis found that 10 percent of recipients get 72 percent of the nation's farm aid.

Personally, I agree with the "critics" referenced above that, however noble farm subsidies may once have been, they are now corporate welfare, and should largely be phased out. I must also admit that Shrub's specific proposal actually sounds rather progressive.

But the schmuck the AP quoted? Mr. Rife, if you are a struggling working or middle class guy and expected Dubya to cover your ass; if you thought he somehow shared your "values" and are thus the living embodiment of Thomas Frank's What's the Matter With Kansas; if you bought the Republican con about how they were your friends -- then I am only sorry that your comeupance has such dire costs for the rest of us.

Bush budget boosts funding for faith-based initiatives

While President Bush is proposing budget cuts to many domestic programs, he's seeking more funding for his faith-based initiatives.

Jim Towey, who heads the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, says Bush has asked for an additional 150 million dollars -- a 63-percent increase -- for five programs. The money would be used for maternity group homes and programs for drug treatment, prisoner re-entry into society, mentoring the children of prisoners and the Capital Compassion Fund.

Towey says the increases reflect Bush's belief that the initiatives -- many of them in partnership with religious charities -- provide effective service and more options to those in need.

As we have already seen with Shrub's support of abstinence programs, Bernard Kerik, etc., not to mention his "belief" in WMDs in Iraq, what this fool believes is highly correlated with the objectively false. So despite the existence of a "reality-based" scoring system created for the express purpose of finding out which programs really work, the Administration makes decisions based on Dubya's intuitions.

I am sure it is just a conincidence that his inuition results in the transfer of millions of tax dollars to his political base, and away from agencies with unionized civil servant workers.

U.S. Refuses One-On-One North Korea Talks

Arguing it was burned before in one-on-one talks with North Korea, the United States said Friday it had no interest in resuming direct discussions on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program.

The White House said it continued to support a six-nation process designed to negotiate the elimination of the communist country's nuclear armaments.

But with that process stalled, administration officials were beginning to discuss the possibility of referring the issue to the U.N. Security Council as an alternate approach.

The objective there would be to impose international sanctions to persuade North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to abandon his weapons program.

WTF?

Kim wants bilateral. Bush wants six-ulateral. Nobody blinks, nobody talks. A splendid start to Condi's resurrection of diplomacy.

So here's U.S. proliferation policy in a nutshell: if you don't have nukes, but the Neocons see the mark of the devil on you, we attack and invade you unilaterally. We claim the U.N. is useless, archaic, inept, toothless.

If you do have da bomb, the U.N. is magically rehabilitated, and the U.S. finds religion in equivocation, stalling and de-emphasis.

Sounds like a pretty powerful incentive to develop WMDs, eh?

Gannongate Gannongate Gannongate!

If the serial ass-whuppins Democrats have been getting at the national level haven't convinced you we need to work on our use of language, nothing will. George Lakoff has been transmitting, but not enough of the right people are receiving.

Well here's a chance to make some headway, dropped into our laps like hot military manna from heaven.

Referring to the Talon/Gannon/Guckert thing as "the Gannon story" or the like is lame. Hasn't anyone been paying attention to how the Republicans do this?

If Dan Rather can be driven off the air with a -gate consisting of nothing more than bradcasting a story that (a) was indisputably accurate, (b) used documents that were undisputed in their content but were (c) of questionable provenance, this surely rises to that level.

Gannongate! If we all speak in one voice and hang the -gate suffix, now synonymous with scandal, we add legs to this vital story. So come on and get with the meme program...

Putting the Gallup/Gannon Poll in context

A couple of days ago, I pointed to the The Left Coaster's dismantling of the recent Gallup Poll that claimed Dubya's approval numbers were soaring.

Here's what the reality-based polling community thinks:

The public's confidence in President Bush's job performance and the nation's direction has slipped in the opening weeks of his second term, particularly among people 50 and older, according to an Associated Press poll.

Adults were evenly divided on Bush's job performance in January, but now 54 percent disapprove and 45 percent approve. The number who think the country is headed down the wrong track increased from 51 percent to 58 percent in the past month.

The survey wasn't all bad for the Bush administration: People are slightly more optimistic about the possibility of a stable, democratic Iraq (news - web sites).

The poll, conducted for the AP by Ipsos-Public Affairs, was taken after the president's State of the Union address and the elections in Iraq and at the start of a heated debate over creating personal Social Security accounts.

How Gallup can get away with such nonsense is beyond me.

Tom Friedman, bootlicker

This Just In The Progressive magazine

I had the misfortune of watching Tom Friedman and Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation” Sunday, Feb. 6, letting Donald Rumsfeld box them around the ring.

Friedman was especially defensive. He has three Pulitzer Prizes, and he’s the leading foreign policy columnist for the leading paper in the country, and yet he acted like Rumsfeld’s little boy.
...
Finally, and most damning of all, Friedman let Rumsfeld get away with murder—or at least torture. Friedman asked him about the Geneva Conventions, and Rumsfeld said: “The Geneva Conventions have a perfectly sensible purpose. And the purpose is—and it’s not very well understood, but one of the key purposes was to try to get people to fight conventionally and to wear uniforms and to carry weapons if they have weapons that are invisible.”

Friedman failed to note that the Geneva Conventions’ primary purpose is outlawing the kind of torture that Rumsfeld has been countenancing. But Friedman didn’t ask a word about Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo or Bagram Air Force Base. Nor did he ask Rumsfeld about why he signed off on brutalizing techniques or why he hid detainees from the Red Cross.

Here was the Secretary of Defense, one of the most powerful people in the country, in a rare Sunday face off with a bigwig of the Fourth Estate, and he got off untouched.

Friedman, return your prizes.

This is what it has come to. Top reporters from top newspapers helping war criminals play t-ball on purported news programs.

I think I'll stick to the blogosphere, thank you very much.

Wingnut poll: Nobel Peace Prize for Dubya?

Yup. They seem to be seriously asking the question, Does George W. Bush deserve the Nobel Peace Prize?

Their answer appears here:

Nobel Peace Prize for Bush urged
Geopolitical expert Jack Wheeler says 'W' most deserving by far

Dr. Jack Wheeler writes, "There is only one individual among all humanity who has brought actual real freedom and democracy to tens of millions of people in our day, and who has both the capacity and determination to bring actual real freedom and democracy to tens and tens of millions more. It is, quite frankly, ludicrous to suggest that there is anyone on this planet more deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize than George W. Bush."
..
Wheeler's subscribers-only piece goes on to describe what is being done to prepare Iran for freedom.

"Iran has already begun to swarm with small teams of CIA (together with British MI6 and Israeli Mossad), Delta Force and other SpecOps," writes Wheeler. "U.S. fighter jets violate Iranian air space constantly now, luring Tehran to turn on air defense radars so they can be 'templated' in order to develop in the words of one Pentagon official, 'an electronic order of battle' to take out the nuclear facilities."


Silly me. I was holding onto anachronistic ideas about peace and war being antonyms.

Perhaps they could get previous winner Henry Kissinger to hand the award to him.

The horror... the horror

Wrong Kurtz, perhaps. But WaPo's Howard is about as trustworthy as his namesake when it comes to Gannongate.

His defense of Gannon to fellow shill Wolf Blitzer has been widely covered. But he rushed to Gannon's aid a few days ago as well.

It was hard not to notice the question at last month's presidential news conference.

Invoking Hillary Rodham Clinton and Harry Reid, reporter Jeff Gannon said: "Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the U.S. economy. . . . How are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?"

Gannon writes for Talon News, a Web site whose reports also appear on another site, GOPUSA, whose self-declared mission is "Bringing the Conservative Message to America".

But White House spokesman Scott McClellan says President Bush didn't know who Gannon was and that it's "nonsense" to suggest the president was trying to get a sympathetic question. Gannon got a day pass to the White House, available to any journalist, commentator or blogger who writes for an audience. "I don't think it's the role of the press secretary to get into the business of being a media critic or picking and choosing who gets credentials," McClellan says.

Anybody see anything remotely resembling reporting in those 'graphs? "Ah, yup, yup, yup... Scottie says it was on the up and up, and that's good enough for me!"

We report accept without question whatever crap the White House shovels, you decide. And that's the way it is, on Cable Foxington Post.

Speaking of awkward questions...

Second Lady and paragon of virtue Lynne Cheney was interviewed on Fresh Air with Terry Gross today. I didn't get to hear the whole thing, but I did catch the fun bit.

Cheney, who seems to fancy herself a historian, was there to sell her new children's book about Washington crossing the Delaware. Terry Gross had a slightly different idea of what to talk about, however.

When Terry asked Cheney about her views on gay marriage, Cheney was steadfast in refusing to take the bait. As I was listening, I kept shouting at the radio, "Ask her about Sisters! Damnit, ask her!" -- though I would have bet long green that Cheney's advance people had laid down strict guidelines before they agreed to the appearance. And I saw exactly zero chance they would agree to questions about Cheney's 1981 girl-on-girl bodice ripper.

She asked anyway.

I can't remember the exact question Terry asked, but there's no question that Cheney categorically denied that there was even a single lesbian character in the book. Terry let the claim slide because she said she had not read the long-out-of-print and suprressed book.

What a shame that her staff never headed over to www.whitehouse.org, which has posted some of the racy bits. And so I quote:

The women who embraced in the wagon were Adam and Eve crossing a dark cathedral stage -- no, Eve and Eve, loving one another as they would not be able to once they ate of the fruit and knew themselves as they truly were. She felt curiously moved, curiously envious of them. She had never to this moment thought Eden a particularly attractive paradise, based as it was on naivete', but she saw that the women in the cart had a passionate, loving intimacy forever closed to her. How strong it made them. What comfort it gave.

And there is this missive from one female character to another:

Let us go away together, away from the anger and imeratives of men. We shall find ourselves a secluded bower where they dare not venture. There will only be the two of us, and we shall linger through long afternoons of sweet retirement. In the evenings I shall read to you while you work your cross-stitch in the firelight. And then we shall go to bed, our bed, my dearest girl...

Read it yourself here.

No wonder fictional reporter Jeff Gannon fit in -- there seems to be deep institutional support for denying homosexuality in all forms in the Bush White House, even among fictional characters.

Yesterday's Gallup Poll Showing Bush Approval At 57% Had 9% More Republicans Than Democrats

from The Left Coaster:

You can't take your eyes off these bozos for a second.

On the heels of the Iraqi election, and with the White House needing a boost in Bush’s image and approval ratings as he tries to ram through a terrible budget and Social Security privatization plan to a wavering GOP, much was made yesterday about the most recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll done over the weekend. This poll, bull-horned through the media and rightwing blogosphere, showed an incredible jump in Bush’s approval rating to 57%, a five-point jump from the polls done in early January. Yet even those earlier January polls it turned out were suspect because, you guessed it, they were based on a sample that had more Republicans in it than Democrats (37.2% GOP, 35.6% Democrat, and 27% Independent).

So is this recent poll, showing Bush with a growing and mandate-building approval rating of 57% a clear sign of emerging Bush strength?

Hardly. The poll trumpeted far and wide yesterday by CNN, USAT, and the right wing blogosphere was based on a sample constructed by Gallup that contained 37% Republicans, 35% Independents, and only 28% Democrats.

Maybe it should be renamed the Gannon Poll....

Why Gannongate is important

As exhaustively covered on Americablog, we have a full-fledged situation here. Gannongate has jumped to the mainstream media, and is likely to be spun and counterspun for a few cycles. It is unlikely to have the impact of Rathergate, for obvious reasons, but as stories airing conservative dirty laundry goes, this one has legs.

I think it is worth the churning it is getting, though not (primarily) for the obvious reasons.

It isn't newsworthy because there is something reprehensible about a "reporter" running a gay escort service. It isn't merely because he was a shill -- if that sin got you tossed from the White House press room, it would look like The Staples Center in the 4th quarter of a blowout Lakers loss. And it isn't because, a la David Dreier, Gannon/Guckert/whatever is a world-class hypocrite, though it sure as hell ought to be.

It is vitally important that we keep making a stink about this because making Gannon an object of ridicule may be one of the few effective ways available to shame other reporters, who have been only slightly less shameless in their obsequiousness to the Bush machine, into doing their jobs. We need to embarass them back into the world in which reporters make their bones by asking tough questions and standing up to power rather than sucking up to it.

Today, the press corps is motivated primarily by fear of la famiglia Bush. If we can escalate a countervaling fear -- the fear of being exposed as a RINO (reporter in name only), we just might be able to make their pathetic herd mentality work for us rather than against us for a change.

Rice: Iran Can't Delay Nuke Accountability

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) put Iran and Europe on notice Wednesday that their negotiations over Tehran's nuclear program cannot go on forever.

Nearing the end of a fence-mending tour of European allies, Rice said the United States had set no deadline on the Iran talks, but she also said the Bush administration had not changed its view that the United Nations (news - web sites) should step in to get tougher on Iran.

In Washington, President Bush (news - web sites) said the Iranians needed to know that the free world was working together to send a clear message: Don't develop a nuclear weapon.

"And the reason we're sending that message is because Iran with a nuclear weapon would be a very destabilizing force in the world," Bush said.

"I think the message is there," Rice said at a news conference at NATO (news - web sites) headquarters. "The Iranians need to get that message," she said, adding that Tehran should know that "there are other steps" the international community can take.

And so ends the kinder, gentler US foreign policy. We are serving notice that our exit strategy from Iraq is not to send the troops home, but to Iran.

Good Old Fashioned Book Burning

ALA | Parents censor high school literature and are allowed to burn books they find offensive

Recently [story posted Thursday, February 3, 2005] a book that was being used as part of an English assignment was confiscated from freshmen at Norwood [Colorado] High School due to references of paganism and an alleged magnitude of profanity.

Here in Norwood, a small group of parents sent letters to Superintendent Bob Conder, expressing their concern over, "Bless Me, Ultima," a book being used in the classroom as a literature book. Conder said the books, about 2 dozen in total costing $6.99 each, were pulled from the classroom, and designated to be destroyed. The parents approached the superintendent and asked that they be able to burn the books instead of the school janitor destroying them.

Conder granted them their request, as he has the right to dispose of them. Conder informed the School Board in a letter after the fact.

This is frightening on so many levels. I guess I am not surprised that there are folks out there this narrow-minded -- that people feel there is a need to prevent their kids from even seeing stuff like this. But I have trouble imagining that there are people out there who actually think book burning is a good thing.

Pentagon to broadcast to millions of U.S. homes

The U.S. military is to beam its own news coverage to millions of Americans.

Moving on from its phase of embedding journalists, or as some would say, 'a policy of restricting and contolling the flow of information,' the Pentagon will now produce and disseminate the news itself. It will be beamed to the public at no charge. The service will emanate from what is known as the Pentagon Channel, an internal public relations television unit within the Department of Defense. It was set up nine months ago.

The government-run TV service will be channeled to the public through EchoStar Communication's Dish Network which will offer the Pentagon Channel to its more than 11 million viewers on a no-cost basis. Programming will appear on the network's public interest channels and will operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week.


As if the military was not getting enough spin control as it is.

Will they call it Pravda or Izvestia?

Saturday Night Massacre Redux

Special Counsel Staff Handed Pink Slips; Seven Fired for Refusing Moves to Dallas and Detroit

The U.S. Special Counsel has handed out termination papers to seven headquarters staff members who refused involuntary reassignment to a proposed new office in Detroit and an existing office in Dallas. The seven were given one week – the minimum period allowed – to change their minds or be removed from the federal service in 30 days, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

Last month, Scott Bloch, the Bush-appointed Special Counsel, abruptly ordered 12 headquarters employees, on penalty of removal, to relocate to Dallas, Oakland and a newly created Detroit field office. Originally, five employees accepted the reassignments; with four of those five indicating that their acceptance was under duress. One of the four who accepted the reassignment under duress has found a position outside OSC and has submitted a letter of resignation. The remaining seven staff members declined the involuntary transfers and now are being removed.

The 12 reassigned employees represent more than a fifth of the Special Counsel headquarters legal and investigative staff. Bloch did not consult beforehand with the people he selected for relocation nor did he ask for volunteers who might be willing to move. All 12 are career employees hired before Bloch became Special Counsel, an agency with the mission of protecting federal whistleblower and merit system rights.

I am not a big believer in the cradle-to-grave civil service job security thing. But (a) I do think government employees, especially at the levels where they are taking a big hit in earnings power by taking a public sector gig, are entitled to some procedural rights, and (b) it is pretty damned obvious how this is a logical consequence of the fox-in-the-henhouse view of white-collar crime in this White House.

A Breathtaking Budget

from the washingtonpost.com:

Exhibit "A" for the case that "reality" and "conservative" have become antonyms:

To meet its claimed target of cutting the deficit in half by 2009, the new budget omits the cost of the war in Iraq; the cost of the president's proposed private accounts for Social Security; and the cost of correcting the alternative minimum tax, which is hitting growing numbers of middle-class taxpayers rather than the rich it is intended for.

To make its already unaffordable tax cuts permanent, the administration wants to change the budget-scoring rules so that the cuts show up on the score card as cost-free. In fact, making them permanent would cost $1.1 trillion over the next 10 years. To obscure the real-world consequences of its unrealistic spending caps for discretionary programs, the administration has neatly avoided the inconvenience of specifying where, in future years, the necessary cuts would be made. It eliminated the traditional tables from the budget documents showing what spending would be in those programs beyond next year.

Can someone explain to me how this is diferent from me leaving my mortgage, car payments and credit card bills out of my personal budget?

'Faith-based' ... in big government

via the Augusta Free Press : 'Faith-based' ... in big government:

OK, here goes. I'm going to get in trouble for saying this, but I don't care. As a card-carrying member of the Christian Right, it is my responsibility to be an unbiased critic when my friends go off reservation.

With that caveat, allow me to express my shock at the conservative pundits who are attacking fellow commentators Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher for accepting $240,000 and $41,000, respectively, in bribe money from the Bush administration to support White House programs on education and marriage. Such criticism represents the height of hypocrisy.

A couple months ago, it was reported that the Bush administration, through its Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, has doled out millions of dollars to conservative Christian organizations. Pat Robertson received $1.5 million. Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship Ministries was one of four groups selected to receive a $22.5 million grant. Catholic Relief Services, World Vision and the Salvation Army have all received pork from Uncle Sam; and Campus Crusade for Christ, Samaritan's Purse (Billy Graham's son's ministry) and other evangelical organizations have applied for access to the government trough.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love supporting crises pregnancy centers and other charities that promote abstinence and counsel women against having abortions. I donate to them regularly. But I don't see any provision in the U.S. Constitution that gives the president of the United States the right to direct billions of dollars of taxpayer money (our money) to the charities of his choice.

Perhaps the most frustrating fact about this faith-based fleecing of American taxpayers is that the gate-keepers of much of this government pork are the very organizations and individuals who sought to de-fund leftist groups during the Reagan, Bush and Clinton administrations.

A Freedom of Information Act request revealed that the Bush administration hired independent experts to review grant applications for one of its abstinence programs. Reading the list of grant reviewers is like reading off a list of who’s who in the Religious Right. Summit Ministries, Turning Point, the Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, the Christian Coalition, the Traditional Values Coalition and Paul Weyrich's Free Congress Foundation are all gate-keepers in President Bush's faith-based welfare program.


OK, so that's one honest, principled winger. Any others?

Kinsley parses Bush

in The Thinker (washingtonpost.com):

The strangest aspect of President Bush's new War on Tyranny is the connection he draws between tyranny and terrorism. It's not the connection you would suspect, or the one Bush was making during his first term. When Saddam Hussein was still in charge of Iraq, it was enough to say that bad guys are bad guys. A sadistic dictator is just the type of person who would also harbor terrorists and stockpile weapons of mass destruction.

But now Bush says that terrorists are actually the victims of tyranny. In his inaugural address, this seemed like a bit of transitory, use-once-and-discard highfalutinism. But Bush returned to the theme in his State of the Union address Wednesday. "In the long term," he said, "the peace we seek will only be achieved by eliminating the conditions that feed radicalism and ideologies of murder. If whole regions of the world remain in despair and grow in hatred, they will be the recruiting grounds for terror, and that terror will stalk America. . . . "

The legendary anarchist writer Emma Goldman said much the same thing in a 1917 essay, "The Psychology of Political Violence." It is "the despair millions of people are daily made to endure" that drives some of them to acts of terror. Can one question the tremendous, revolutionizing effect on human character exerted by great social iniquities?"

If any of this was more than rhetorical salad dressing, intended to mask the shit they really want us to swallow, it might suggest a bit of intellectual growth, as Kinsley hints. I remain a skeptic.

Iraqi women find election a cruel joke

I am an Iraqi woman, and I am boycotting the elections. Women who do vote will be voting for an enslaved future. Surely, say those who support these elections, after decades of tyranny, here at last is a form of democracy, imperfect, but democracy nevertheless?

In reality, these elections are, for Iraq's women, little more than a cruel joke. Amid the suicide attacks, kidnappings and U.S.-led military assaults since Saddam Hussein's fall, the little-reported phenomenon is the sharp increase in the persecution of Iraqi women. Women are the new victims of Islamic groups intent on restoring a medieval barbarity and of a political establishment that cares little for women's empowerment.

Having for years enjoyed greater rights than other Middle East women, women in Iraq are losing even their basic freedoms -- the right to choose their clothes, the right to love or marry whom they want. Of course women suffered under Saddam. I fled his cruel regime. I personally witnessed much brutality but the subjugation of women was never a Baath Party goal. What we are seeing is deeply worrying: a reviled occupation and an openly reactionary Islamic armed insurrection taking Iraq into a new dark age.

Every day, leaflets are distributed across the country warning women against going out unveiled, wearing makeup or mixing with men. Many female university students have given up their studies to protect themselves against the Islamists.

In an even slightly less imperfect world, the chowderheaded neocons trumpeting elections as a panacea would give a rat's ass about this stuff. In the real world, you will hear very little about it.

Budget director gymnastics

From It Affects You:

White House budget director Joshua Bolten should be a contender for Atrios' "Wanker of the Day" based on this:

Describing why costly items were left off the budget:

"The budget went to bed . . . before the president's proposals were announced."

Or sometimes:

"But, it wouldn't be responsible for us to take a guess at what those costs are."

In the same briefing, describing why proposals which add revenue or reduce costs were added to the budget (and the amounts guessed):

"Well, the budget is the right place to present the entirety of the president's policies, so all of his proposals are reflected in there."

Tool.

Why not just call their budget scripture and cut to the chase?

Kay Warns U.S. Not to Repeat Iraq Mistakes in Iran

The U.S. official who declared the White House's hunt for illicit weapons in Iraq to be a failure driven by faulty intelligence has warned the Bush administration against repeating its mistakes in the current war of words with arch-foe Iran.
"There is an eerie similarity to the events preceding the Iraq war," David Kay, who led the search for banned weapons of mass destruction in postwar Iraq, said on Monday in an opinion piece in The Washington Post.

"Nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran would be a grave danger to the world. That is not what is in doubt," he wrote.

"What is in doubt is the ability (of) the U.S. government to honestly assess Iran's nuclear status and to craft a set of measures that will cope with that threat short of military action by the United States or Israel," Kay added.

David, David, David. Your warning will fall on deaf ears. If they don't think there were any mistakes made, they will not be interested in hearing about how they shouldn't repeat them. Iraq ihas been a spectacular success -- where have you been?

Tapes Show Enron Caused Rolling Blackouts in California

via t r u t h o u t:

In the midst of the California energy troubles in early 2001, when power plants were under a federal order to deliver a full output of electricity, the Enron Corporation arranged to take a plant off-line on the same day that California was hit by rolling blackouts, according to audiotapes of company traders released here on Thursday.

The tapes and memorandums were made public by a small public utility north of Seattle that is fighting Enron over a power contract. They also showed that Enron, as early as 1998, was creating artificial energy shortages and running up prices in Canada in advance of California's larger experiment with deregulation.

The tapes provide new details of market manipulation during the California energy crisis that produced blackouts and billions of dollars of surcharges to homes and businesses on the West Coast in 2000 and 2001.

In one January 2001 telephone tape of an Enron trader the public utility identified as Bill Williams and a Las Vegas energy official identified only as Rich, an agreement was made to shut down a power plant providing energy to California. The shutdown was set for an afternoon of peak energy demand.

"This is going to be a word-of-mouth kind of thing," Mr. Williams says on the tape. "We want you guys to get a little creative and come up with a reason to go down." After agreeing to take the plant down, the Nevada official questioned the reason. "O.K., so we're just coming down for some maintenance, like a forced outage type of thing?" Rich asks. "And that's cool?"

"Hopefully," Mr. Williams says, before both men laugh.

The next day, Jan. 17, 2001, as the plant was taken out of service, the State of California called a power emergency, and rolling blackouts hit up to a half-million consumers, according to daily logs of the western power grid.



A President of all the people would demand a large number of heads on sticks for this, and would personally see to it that Ken Lay's was one of them. This President will say "screw 'em, they vote blue."

And let no one forget that one of the consequences of this outrage was the recall of Gray Davis and the installation of the Gropenator.

If the Republicans are the party of wealth and prosperity, how come they seem to rely on poverty and destruction?

Jesus' General reviews Dobson @ Amazon

Patriotboy is a subversive little weasel, and never seems to break character. Here he gives a review on the Amazon site of Dobson's paean to corporal punishment, "The Strong-willed Child."

While I agreed with Dr. Dobson when wrote that parents should beat their kids with sticks or paddles rather than with bare hands, I wondered why he didn't mention electrical cords, catte prods or stun guns. I like to call the latter, "Jesus' Thunder." Nothing get's a kid's attention faster than 50,000 volts of electricity arcing between two contacts.

Go here to see his takes on Lynne Cheney's girl-on-girl bodice-ripper "Sisters," The pro-slavery book by Douglas Wilson, and a few other classics.

Author Now Suspects 'Deep Throat' Was -- Drumroll, Please -- George H.W. Bush

The author of the 1993 biography of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, “Deep Truth,” today named George H.W. Bush the new chief suspect as famed Watergate source Deep Throat.

The “outing” was timed to the opening of the two reporters’ Watergate archives at the University of Texas.

The author of several books for major publishers, Adrian Havill says his claim is based on recent events and his own research at the the National Archives. He announced the “finding” in a letter posted at the Romenesko site at the Poynter Institute.
...

“Did Bush have motivation? You bet,” Havill wrote. “It was Richard Nixon who urged Bush to leave a safe seat in Congress, hinting there would be a position as assistant Secretary of the Treasury waiting for him if he failed to win a Senate seat held by Ralph Yarborough. When Bush lost, Nixon reneged and asked him to take the U.N. slot instead but teased him by hinting he would be the replacement for Spiro Agnew in 1972. Instead, he was given the thankless task of heading the Republican National Committee in 1973. The elder Bush got his revenge in the end, by standing up at a cabinet meeting in August of 1974 and becoming the first person in Nixon's inner circle to ask the President to resign.

If you think of the exposure of Nixon as an act of conscience, I would never suspect anyone named Bush, since they seem to lack that gene. But this is an intriguing way of viewing Deep Throat's motivation: simple revenge. It is like one mob family turning state's evidence on another -- doing the right thing for the wrong reason.

Bush White House to EPA to kids: Drop Dead

Literally.

The Bush administration overlooked health effects and sided with the electric industry in developing rules for cutting toxic mercury pollution, the Environmental Protection Agency's inspector general said Thursday.

The agency fell short of its own requirements and presidential orders by "not fully analyzing the cost-benefit of regulatory alternatives and not fully assessing the rule's impact on children's health," the agency's internal watchdog said in a 54-page report.

Nikki L. Tinsley's report said the EPA based its mercury pollution limits on an analysis submitted by Western Energy Supply and Transmission Associates, a research and advocacy group representing 17 coal-fired utilities in eight Western states.

The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to set the limits based on the most advanced pollution controls used by industry. Tinsley said agency workers were instructed by "EPA senior management" to develop a standard compared with other regulations and a White House legislative plan, "instead of basing the standard on an unbiased determination" of the limits.
...
Mercury from power plants settles in waterways and accumulates in fish. The toxic metal can cause neurological and developmental problems, particularly in fetuses and young children. It also is being studied for risks associated with cardiovascular diseases.

Sen. Jim Jeffords and six Democratic senators asked Tinsley in April to investigate how the EPA put together the mercury rule it proposed in December 2003.

"Unfortunately, this report confirms that the administration's proposal to regulate mercury compromises children's health for the benefit of corporate profits," said Jeffords, an independent from Vermont.

The Food and Drug Administration has warned that high levels of mercury in some fish, including albacore tuna, can pose a hazard for children and for women pregnant or nursing.

The EPA estimates that about 8 percent of American women of childbearing age have enough mercury in their blood to put a fetus at risk.

An even harsher indictment of the EPA approach comes from, believe it or not, Chemical & Engineering News


The Clean Air Act requires that emissions standards be based on “maximum achievable control technology” for each regulated pollutant, the report notes, and EPA was supposed to set the mercury standard based on how much is removed from smokestacks by the top 12% of the cleanest burning coal-fired power plants.

The report recommends that EPA reanalyze its data on the least polluting power plants before finalizing the rule, which is expected in March. EPA strongly disagrees and intends to move ahead and finalize the mercury regulation, it says in comments. Utility groups and some in Congress also criticize the report, saying the OIG lacks sufficient expertise and has become politicized.

States and environmental groups have said all along that the EPA proposal is flawed. They point to research showing that reductions twice those cited by the EPA proposal were obtainable by the top 12% of power plants.

Coal-fired power plants emit 48 tons of mercury annually and are the largest U.S. source of anthropogenic mercury. Federal agencies estimate that 600,000 U.S. children born each year have learning deficits from mercury exposure.