Uncle

I feel exactly as I did in November 2004. My very first blog post is as relevant now as it was then. The feeling of impending doom is stronger now, as the end is that much closer. The Dark Ages I prophesied then are just about upon us.

Digby is among the many singing "Tomorrow." He even quotes stirring words from RFK who, need I remind you, was assassinated and didn't actually accomplish much as I recall. He has far-reaching influence and lots of readers; he is probably doing the responsible thing for a leader to do. I don't. I'm with one of his commenters:

It's over, folks. The democratic experiment is finished. The Democrats in Congress now are just trying to hold onto their jobs, and they see that the only way they can is to not get in the Republicans' faces too much. They don't want to call attention to themselves, they don't want to make trouble. They'll make a speech to the base every once in a while, "Yeah, ain't it awful what those bad Republicans are doing!?!", but once back in D.C., they keep out of the way. It's a paying job, with plenty of benefits, and they'll never have to face the people back home when they finally do leave congress. They don't go back to their home districts. They stay in D.C., become lobbyists or lawyers for lobbyists, or lobbying interests.

This isn't going to get repaired in D.C. by those in Congress. It's not going to get repaired at the ballot box come next election.

Are we really going to keep flapping our gums around here as if it's just a matter of getting more people to the polls to vote Republicans out? We did that already. At least twice.

Congress is taking the Patriot Act up again next week, and with the bounce that Bush is sure to get from the SOTU tomorrow and the high that Bush and the Repubs will be on from getting Alito through, new laws will be in place criminalizing all kinds of protest actions. Even what we're all doing here, "slandering" while not using our real names.

Once Alito is sworn in and the SC declares that a Pres can do anything at all in a time of war (self-declared, unending), we won't even be able march on the White House with torches. They'll be able to (they can do it now) pick American citizens up off the street, not inform anybody, not even our families, and ship us off to a black prison, no lawyer, no habeas corpus, no trial, just all torture, all the time. They've already done it; Padilla is an American.

I give up, at least for now. I need to take a few days to decide whether to keep fighting, folks. I look at the efficient evil that has taken over, and the incompetent, spineless and rudderless fools that I invested my hopes with, and I keep thinking of the old saying about wasting your time teaching pigs to sing. All these hours, all these words, all this passion. All for naught. And I feel dirty.

I was going to read Larry Diamond's "Squandered Victory" next, but it no longer seems important. At the top of my reading list now are more relevant texts -- "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" and "The Myth of Sisyphus."

I can barely choke back the bile right now. We are indisputably, irrevocably fucked. The final FUBAR, in fact -- Fucked Up Beyond All Redemption.

Yeah, this is all our fault

Every now and again, I stumble upon Kevin Drum's site, and damned if he doesn't invariably remind my why he's not a regular stop. Today's distortion in logical thinking:

I'm glad the filibuster took place, because even in failure it puts a marker down for future court fights. Still, even given the amateurish way that Senate Dems handled it, I expected it to get more than 25 votes. So here's today's assignment: In 5,000 words or less, what does this say about the influence of the lefty blogosphere?

I'm pretty sure the full credit answer here is "We're a bunch of impotent, marginalized loons." Well, have it your way, Kevin, but I still like our act a lot more than the farce staged by the thumb-sucking buffoons (Teddy K and a few others excepted) who we relied upon to poke holes in the nuttiest, most dangerous SCOTUS nominee since Bork. We got something going, however short-lived it may have been. So a better question is: What does this whole fiasco say about the Senate Democrats?

Barack Obama, rising star of the Democratic Party? Fuck me.

Thanks for nothing, Senator

Liberal Democrats waged an eleventh-hour attempt Monday to block Samuel Alito's Supreme Court confirmation, arguing that he would tilt the high court further to the right.

GOP Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island also announced that he would vote against Alito's confirmation. Chafee, a self-described "pro-choice, pro-environment, pro-Bill of Rights Republican," is the only member of the Republican Party so far to announce that he will vote against the conservative judge.

Chafee refused to support the Democrats' filibuster attempt, however. "How are we going to get anything done if we can't work together?" Chafee asked.

Senator Chafee playing the all too familiar game of being the independent-minded moderate in situations where his vote is absolutely meaningless. Go ahead, Senator. Your good friend Mr. Whitehouse is going to shred your unprincipled ass on this, and nobody is going to buy your "But I voted against him!" bullshit.

Update: Of course, you can fool some of the people all of the time. NARAL tells Jane at FDL that they see no reason to pull their endorsement of Chafee.

Arrogant wankers

There is a poll up on MSNBC here about media, political attitudes and such. I thought I'd give it a try and vote in favor of the newer media. Then I poppoed a gasket when I saw question #6:


6. Where do you generally get your news information?
-National print media
-Local print media
-National TV
-Cable TV
-Local TV
-Talk Radio
-National Public Radio

Cluelessness in a nutshell -- setting up a poll on the Interntet, at a purported news site, and ignoring the possibility that the respondents might actually get news ... perish the thought -- on the Internet!

Hate to break it to you, fools, but the only reason I ever watch TV news in general and your tripe in particular (Olbermann excepted) is to see how badly you fuck up the stories I already know more about than your reporters seem to.

Wankers.

Completely beside the point

Aravosis joins Obama and Biden in complaining that this is not a perfect scenario for a filibuster, that it might backfire, that we didn't do it right, etc.

You folks are totally missing the point. If Alito makes it onto the court, there won't be a next time. All of the progress you might think we are making in terms of turning public opinion against Bush will not matter. The scandals you think we will tie like tin cans to his bumper will not matter. The nation's disgust with the quagmire in Iraq will not matter. All that will matter is the dictatorship that will have been allowed to take over on our watch. Once that happens, whatever dry powder you still have will be confiscated, and you will not have to concern yourself about the outrages that follow.

Filibuster because it your last chance to fight back. Filibuster because it is better to go down swinging. Filibuster, Senators Obama and Biden, because you sound like Karl Rove's caricature of a Democrat when you take dull blades to your own nutsacks like that.

Speaking of coincidences

Caught parts of two nuclear-Armageddon-narrowly-avoided movies on TV this weekend. In the first George Clooney plays a very Republican man of action thwarting terrorists in "The Peacemaker." About the only thing interesting about this Hollywood blow- 'em-up (other than the movie's politics relative to Clooney's own) was the fact that a bit part was played by Goran Visnjic, who in effect became the new Doug Ross on "ER."

The other was "Crimson Tide," which though also a typical Hollywood thriller, at least suggests that men of conscience can stand up to power and stop the madness. There are a couple of now-famous actors who I did not recognize the first time I saw it -- James Gandolfini and Viggo Mortensen.

I do try to turn off my brain once in a while.....

Nope, no global warming here...

I'm sure it is a complete conicidence that my cherry tree is blooming. In January.

Complete the sentence

We don't negotiate with terrorists:

(a) except when we do.

(b) unless it is in our interest to do so.

(c) because it is sound policy never to negotiate against yourself.

What did you do to save the Republic today?

I created a simple fax:

"Don't let our three branches become one branch and two fig leaves: Filibuster!"

I tried faxing it to every Dem in the Senate. Got through to about 25 of 'em.

Futile? Doomed to failure? Pissing up a rope?

Sure, probably. If you have a better idea, I'm all ears.

Contempt of court

TalkLeft has a sterling example of the way the Bush cabal is now in full affrontal assault on the judiciary and the Constitution in a chilling twofer: in a terror-related case, they sought the disqualification of a judge who showed bias by writing an article stating that "it was the duty of judges to protect individual rights in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks."

What a quaint old anachronism, that Bill of Rights.

We get results

As the Poor Man once said. Two days ago I called Senator Feinstein a "stalwart milquetoast" for her unwillingness to filibuster Alito. Yesterday she announced she would support the move.

I won't take credit. I can't even claim my calls to her office did it: I never got through because the line was constantly busy, which suggests how much pressure we collectively brought to bear.

But just in case:

Blanche Lambert Lincoln (D- AR), 202-224-4843 -- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
Joseph I. Lieberman (D- CT), 202-224-4041-- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
Thomas R. Carper (D- DE), 202-224-2441-- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
Daniel K. Inouye (D- HI), 202-224-3934-- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
Tom Harkin (D- IA), 202-224-3254-- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
Barack Obama (D- IL), 202-224-2854-- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
Evan Bayh (D- IN), 202-224-5623-- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
Barbara A. Mikulski (D- MD), 202-224-4654-- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
Paul S. Sarbanes (D- MD), 202-224-4524-- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
Carl Levin (D- MI), 202-224-6221-- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
Mark Dayton (D- MN), 202-224-3244-- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
Max Baucus (D- MT), 202-224-2651-- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
Frank Lautenberg (D- NJ), 202-224-3224-- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
Robert Menendez (D- NJ), 202-224-4744-- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
Jeff Bingaman (D- NM), 202-224-5521-- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
Jack Reed (D- RI), 202-224-4642-- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
Lincoln D. Chafee (R- RI), 202-224-2921-- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
Patrick J. Leahy (D- VT), 202-224-4242-- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
Maria Cantwell (D- WA), 202-224-3441-- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
Patty Murray (D- WA), 202-224-2621-- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
Herb Kohl (D- WI), 202-224-5653-- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
John D. Rockefeller, IV (D- WV), 202-224-6472-- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
James M. Jeffords (I- VT), 202-224-5141-- you are a stalwart milquetoast.

Filibuster Opponents - silent & scared

Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D- DE) , 202-224-5042 -- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
Bill Nelson (D- FL), 202-224-5274 -- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
Daniel K. Akaka (D- HI) 202-224-6361 -- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
Mary Landrieu (D- LA) 202-224-5824-- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
Byron L. Dorgan (D- ND) 202-224-2551-- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
Olympia Snowe (R- ME) 202-224-5344-- you are a stalwart milquetoast.

Filibuster Opponents - loud & proud

Mark Pryor (D- AR), 202-224-2353 -- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
Ken Salazar (D- CO) , 202-224-5852 -- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
Kent Conrad (D- ND) (1,), 202-224-2043 -- you are a stalwart milquetoast.

Alito Supporters

Ben Nelson (D-NE) 202-224-6551 -- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
Tim Johnson (D- SD) , 202-224-5842 -- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
Robert C. Byrd (D- WV) , 202-224-3954 -- you are a stalwart milquetoast.
Ted Stevens (R- AK) , 202-224-3004 -- you are a stalwart milquetoast.

Ancient wisdom, revised

My fortune cookie tonight said something to the effect of "ignorance is never the answer to any problem."

Would that they were right. In Bushworld, ignorance is the answer to all problems.

Ford plant bans competitors' cars from lot

Dearborn manager says employees can only park if they drive a Ford

The parking lot at Ford Motor Co.'s Dearborn Truck plant just got a little more exclusive.

Plant manager Rob Webber announced Monday that, starting Feb. 1, the parking lot may be used only by employees who drive vehicles built by Ford or one of its subsidiaries.

Webber's move came the same day Ford announced a restructuring plan under which it will cut up to 30,000 jobs and close 14 facilities by 2012. Ford said the plan is designed to make the company's North American division, which lost $1.6 billion last year, profitable by 2008.
...
Jerry Sullivan, president of United Auto Workers Local 600, which represents about 2,600 workers at the plant, applauded Webber's move.

"Everybody's in this together. (We need) to buy the products we make and support the company," Sullivan said. "This is a good place to start."

Beauty. Company shitcans 30K jobs; pointy-haired middle manager issues parameters for positive environmental alterations that will synergize with corporate missions and enhance workers' mindfulness of core competencies. Smiley-faced coffee mugs, anyone?

And I liked the union president's response. If he keeps up the good work, he may land a gig at the DLC.

The Bill of Rights (revised, Bush ed.)

Jesus' General has the new and improved Constitutional Amendments 1-10. For example:

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law without the expressed approval of the executive or his deputy chief of staff. respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Not too long ago, this might have been funny. Now it is merely accurate a little ahead of the curve.

More Alito Realpolitik

A Daily Kos diarist reports that Colorado Senator Ken Salazar has agreed not to support a filibuster to get James Dobson to stop calling him names.

Jack Abramoff may not have been an equal opportunity money machine, but it does seem that we have bedwetters on both sides of the aisle.

Hamas transforms from resistance movement to governing party

The political earthquake that swept Hamas to power in Wednesday's parliamentary elections has been rumbling below the surface of Palestinian life for nearly two decades.
...
Now, as Hamas faces the demands and responsibilities of governing, is it the same organization it was at birth or will the desire to participate in politics mean that its leaders will steer a more moderate course?

"Hamas faces the difficult task of adjusting from a resistance movement to a political party in the system," said Ziad Abu Amr, an independent Palestinian lawmaker who ran for office with Hamas' backing.

"What is it going to do with militants who made resistance a career? How is it going to deal with issues that matter to its voters: corruption, internal order, the peace process? It is much easier to be in the opposition and criticize mistakes," Amr said.

Hamas "has translated those mistakes into power," he said. "Now it has to translate power into change."

...

Spreading its ideology through mosques and social-service programs, Hamas provided medical care and free food programs, pressured women to dress modestly, attacked stores that sold liquor and killed those who were suspected of collaborating with "the Zionist entity."

During the campaign, Hamas leaders had hinted that they'd be content to be a strong force in the opposition rather than enter the government, a stance that allowed them to dodge questions about whether they'd recognize Israel if bilateral negotiations ever were revived.

But the group's landslide victory may force it to take clearer positions on key issues, including whether to renounce violence or revise its charter. For the moment, that seems unlikely.

Peace with Israel "is not on our agenda," Mushir al-Mari, a Hamas lawmaker-elect from the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun, said in an interview Thursday.

Arguably out of complete ignorance, I was less surprised by the results than the media mavens who professed to be nothing less than shocked by the outcome of the elections. A lot of the reports in the run-up featured interviews with Angry Palestinians on the Street, followed by commentary to the effect that Fatah was really, really going to have to get their act together this time. All of the commenters know a hell of a lot more than I do about the situation over there, but boy, those Palestinians sure sounded pissed.

Anyway, my first reaction to the headlines today was "checkmate." And I'm still not sure who's trapped who.

Update: Juan Cole has the real deal.

Ground Zero

Daily Kos: WV-Sen: Byrd supports Alito

88-year-old Senator Robert Byrd, a man who believes talked like he believed more deeply in the Senate as an institution than anyone alive, has announced he will support Alito's nomination.

And why?

A multimillionaire businessman entered the GOP race to challenge Sen. Robert C. Byrd on Wednesday, hoping to deny the 88-year-old incumbent Democrat a record ninth term.

John Raese, 55, said he would campaign on a platform touting free enterprise and reduced regulation, among other issues. "What I'm going to run on is a rebirth of capitalism," he said.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee heralded the filing by Raese, a former state GOP chairman who has sought office before.

Though four other Republicans are running in the party primary, the GOP committee called Raese "the first financially credible opponent Byrd has faced since 1982."

You could argue that the Republic was already dead man walking before Byrd's announcement. You could argue that the blood of our Constitution is on many hands. But for the "conscience of the Senate" to abandon all principle to preserve his office for a ninth term is perhaps the most symbolic betrayal -- the one that history will point to a hundred years from now after this new American Empire finally falls. And his venality will be known as ground zero in the end of our Republic.

Timing is everything

There is a great old joke that goes like this:

Dude1: What's the most important thing in comedy?

Dude2: I dunno. what is the most impor...

Dude1: Timing!

Over the weekend I was feeling very depressed about my own trivial impact on the course of politics, and generalized to the blogosphere's general lack of effect in the context of a really good Glenn Greenwald post that I said would have little effect.

Splendid time to throw a hissy fit Glenn's way.

Glenn's heroic piece on the NSA hypocrisy has broken through to the mainstream in a very big way, and they generally seem to be giving him credit.

I stand humbly corrected, and offer Glenn props for a job very well done.

Like I said....














Timing.

R.I. Senate: Does Chafee's Future Hinge on Alito Vote?

From WaPo's The Fix:

With the confirmation vote on Samuel A. Alito Jr. nearing, Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R) faces a Hobson's choice that could dramatically affect his reelection campaign this November.

Chafee remains the most high-profile undecided senator on Alito, and regardless of which side he eventually chooses, he can expect to be bashed for it.

Chafee faces a primary challenge from Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey(R). Should he get through that race, he will face off against either former state Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse(D) or Secretary of State Matt Brown (D) in a state that went for the Democratic presidential candidate by 20 points in 2004.

A Chafee vote for Alito will make for considerable fodder for either Brown or Whitehouse. But a vote against Alito could give Laffey the GOP nomination.

Asked about the seeming conundrum, Chafee campaign manager Ian Lang said that "from a purely political standpoint this is a lose-lose situation." Lang said Chafee will put aside political interests, however, and make a decision that is in the "best interests of the country and the best interests of Rhode Island."
...
Chafee, perhaps the most moderate Republican in the Senate, must be cognizant of the Republican base as he weighs how to respond to Laffey's primary challenge. All registered Republicans are eligible to vote in the Sept. 12 primary, as are registered independents. Democrats must re-register in order to vote in the Republican primary -- an unlikely proposition given that Brown and Whitehouse are staging their own competitive primary.

So in order to win the GOP primary, Chafee must not only convince a cavalcade of independents to support him but also take a chunk of traditional Republican votes. With that calculation in mind, one source close to the Chafee campaign said the the senator "can survive a 'yes' [on Alito] vote a lot easier in the general election than he can survive a 'no' vote in the primary election."

Chafee will certainly take a beating by Laffey if he votes against Alito's confirmation, but I don't agree with that last assertion at all. Every semisentient Republican voting in the primary, however pissed off they may be at Chafee, will know that putting Lafeey into the general election is tantamount to putting Whitehouse in the senate. And Whitehouse will beat Chafee to death with the Alito vote in the general election, particularly if Stripsearch Sammy delivers a high profile, constitution-busting vote in the coming months. RI may not be a bastion for the prochoice movement, but there are plenty other reasons why we hate him here.

Parenthetically, Whitehouse v. Brown will not be competitive, and from what I can see, the only reason Democratic voters will change affiliations to vote in the primary will be to vote for Laffey, not Chafee--thereby guaranteeing Blue next fall.

No tomorrow ... today

OK, it is still slightly bollixed up, but at you can at least get the flavor of my latest at The Raw Story.

$%#!!!$*

My latest editorial is up, sort of, at Raw. Sort of, because it currently appears without the last 500 words or so of the piece, for reasons opaque to me. Without its conclusion, you'll see no link from me. And my tongue shows increasingly painful evidence of my overbite.

I guess if I am lucky the second half of my column, called "No Tomorrow," will run ... tomorrow.

Self-negation: the Democratic way.

Caution! DSCC at Work

Chuck Shumer's pick to unseat Senator ManOnDog, Bob Casey, Jr., is looking more and more like a distinction without a difference. Vent your spleen at Booman's--after you unload on the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

Well can we ask them about 9/11?

Senators: White House Stalls Katrina Probe - Yahoo! News

The White House is crippling a Senate inquiry into the government's sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina by barring administration officials from answering questions and failing to hand over documents, senators leading the investigation said Tuesday.

In some cases, staff at the White House and other federal agencies have refused to be interviewed by congressional investigators, said the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. In addition, agency officials won't answer seemingly innocuous questions about times and dates of meetings and telephone calls with the White House, the senators said.
...
"No one believes that the government responded adequately," said Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn. "And we can't put that story together if people feel they're under a gag order from the White House."

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the committee's Republican chair, said she respects the White House's reluctance to reveal advice to President Bush from his top aides, which is generally covered by executive privilege.

Still, she criticized the dearth of information from agency officials about their contacts with the White House.

"We are entitled to know if someone from the Department of Homeland Security calls someone at the White House during this whole crisis period," Collins said. "So I think the White House has gone too far in restricting basic information about who called whom on what day."

She added, "It is completely inappropriate" for the White House to bar agency officials from talking to the Senate committee.

... Lieberman said the Justice and Health and Human Services departments "have essentially ignored our document requests for months" while HHS has refused to allow interviews of its staff. He described the Homeland Security response as "too little, too late."

I have this strange feeling I have seen this movie before.

Greenwald nails it again

The Administration's new FISA defense is factually false

In a fit of pique a few days ago I semi-dissed Glenn - -not for being wrong, which so far he hasn't been, but for wearing a white button-down to a mudfight in the sense that logic is a language neither the actors nor the audience understand.

Glenn politely commented on my tantrum, and responded to my email. And he keeps hammering away, bless his tireless heart.

This new post of his is so logically compelling and devastating in its marshalling of fact and law that it would effectively end the current circle jerk of a debate if only a couple of MSM meat puppets would copy and paste it into their teleprompters.

Read and disseminate.

Newspeak justice

susanhu @ Booman Tribune picks up on the yet another depressing juxtaposition in Bushworld: The military interrogator who tortured and killed an Iraqi prisoner gets no jail time, while the peace activist who injured no one in a protest at a recruiting station gets six months.

Code Red

No jail time for officer charged in death of Iraqi general

A military jury on Monday ordered a reprimand but no jail time for an Army interrogator convicted of killing an Iraqi general by stuffing him headfirst into a sleeping bag and sitting on his chest.

Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer Jr. also was ordered to forfeit $6,000 salary and was largely restricted to his barracks and workplace for 60 days.

Welshofer, 43, had originally been charged with murder and faced up to life in prison. But on Saturday he was convicted instead of negligent homicide and negligent dereliction of duty.

...

After hearing the sentence reached by the jury of six Army officers, Welshofer hugged his wife. Soldiers in the gallery — many of whom had worked with Welshofer and who had testified as character witnesses — broke into applause.

...

Prosecutors said Welshofer put a sleeping bag over the head of Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, sat on his chest and used his hand to cover the general's mouth while questioning him at a detention camp in Iraq in 2003.

Prosecutors said the general suffocated.
...

The defense had argued a heart condition caused Mowhoush's death, and that Welshofer's commanders had approved the interrogation technique.

Prosecutors described Welshofer as a rogue interrogator who became frustrated with Mowhoush's refusal to answer questions and escalated his techniques from simple interviews to beatings to simulating drowning, and finally, to death.

Lessee...ordered to stuff his head in a sleeping bag or loose cannon? Ah, who knows--we'll just split the difference and send him to his room for a couple of months. I would imagine that a few Iraqis will be upset by this, but once we send them all copies of A Few Good Men, they'll be cool with this. Of course, we'll have to edit out the part at the end where Kevin Bacon reads Jack Nicholson his Article 31 rights, cuz that ain't gonna happen...

Our very own Geheime Staatspolizei

Patriot Act Renewal Includes Creation of a Federal Police Force - TalkLeft:
Here's what we can look forward to here in George's Reich:

"A permanent police force, to be known as the 'United States Secret Service Uniformed Division,'" empowered to "make arrests without warrant for any offense against the United States committed in their presence" ... "or for any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States if they have reasonable grounds to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing such felony."

I wonder what the uniforms will look like....

A new 51st state?

I have been meaning to ask a question for a couple of days now. My understanding of international law is very limited, but I am pretty sure about this: one of the fundamental tenets is that when country A launches a military strike (soldiers, bombs, etc.) on the soil of country B, that attack constitutes an act of war. At any rate, that is sure how Fearless Leader has justified our War on Terrah in the aftermath of 9/11.

So why wasn't our January 13th aerial bombardment of Damadola, Pakistan which killed at least 18 Pakistani civilians, an act of war?

Here's the answer, from the Pakistan Daily Times, which claims to get it from Time:

Washington has an understanding with Islamabad that allows the US to strike within Pakistan’s border regions, providing the US has actionable intelligence and Pakistan cannot take firm action, according to a report in US weekly magazine Time.

The source of the report is a Peshawar-based Pakistani intelligence official. “Pakistan’s caveat (to the agreement) is that it would formally protest such strikes to deflect domestic criticism. Some ranking Pakistani officials deny such an agreement exists,” says the report headlined ‘Can Bin Laden be caught?’

This will not go down well with the man on the street in Pakistan. Pervez Musharraf was generally seen as far too cozy with the Great Satan even before we treated his country as another Vieques (only with people). So now that question #1 seems to have been answered, here's question #2: What did we promise Pakistan's weakening strongman to get him to make a mockery of his country's sovereignty?

No 'Wing,' no prayer

NBC Cancels 'West Wing' After 7 Seasons

The new president on "The West Wing" will be a real short-timer: NBC announced Sunday it was pulling the plug on the Emmy-winning political drama in May after seven seasons.

NBC, struggling to regain its footing after the worst season in its history, also outlined several midseason schedule changes — including the moves of popular dramas "Law & Order" and "Las Vegas."

"The West Wing" announcement wasn't much of a surprise. Although this season's story line with a presidential campaign involving a Democrat played by Jimmy Smits and Republican portrayed by Alan Alda has been strong critically, ratings have sunk with its move to Sunday nights.

West Wing was, when on its game, both the best writing on TV by a country mile and a reminder of the distance between what is and what could have been. I despise most network programming, but for several years West Wing was my only gotta see TV. Then the quality dropped off. It got better again recently, but for me the context had changed, and watching it was almost unbearably painful. There was a cruel, taunting quality to seeing the ghost of the precious thing that has been ripped from our grasp flicker across the screen.

Well, at least the transcriptionist has some sense

Hadn't noticed this error in the Press the Meat transcript when I posted it earlier:

The specific problem of inviting lobbyists in who have bundled huge sums of money to write legislation, having the oil and gas company companies come in to write energy legislation, having drug companies come in and write the Medicare prescription drug bill—which we now see is not working for our seniors—those are very particular problems of this administration and this Congress. And I think Jack Abramoff and the Case Freak Project, that whole thing is a very particular Republican sin.

I'm pretty sure Barack said "the K Street Project," but I like this version more. The transcriptionist (or machine?) is more willing to call bullshit than the senator. Sad.

Barack, we hardly knew ye

Wonderkind plays footsie with Pumpkinhead:

MR. RUSSERT: When you ran for office back in September of ’04 you said this about Iraq. You—and I’ll read it on the screen from the Associated Press. “Democratic senator candidate Barack Obama who opposed invading Iraq, but pulling out now, he said, would make things worse. A quick withdrawal would add to the chaos there and make it an extraordinary hotbed of terrorist activity. He said it would also damage America’s international prestige and amount to a ‘slap in the face’ to the troops fighting there.” Is that still your position?

SEN. OBAMA: It remains my position that we have a role to play in stablizing the country as Iraqis are getting their act together. But I have to emphasize that there is a cost for our presence there. We are an irritant, and we help spur the insurgency even as we are defending a fledgling Iraqi government against that insurgency. And so, we have this difficult balance that has to take place, but the critical point is that Iraqis have to take responsibility now that the final election has taken place. They have a legally constituted government. It is time for them to arrive at the peaceful accommodations that can drain away some of the impetus behind the insurgency, and it’s time for Iraqis to take seriously institution-building.
...
MR. RUSSERT: Will George Bush be considered one of the worst presidents in history?

SEN. OBAMA: Well, you know, that’s a tough standard to meet. We’ve had some pretty bad ones. So, I, you know, I don’t prognosticate in terms of where George Bush will place in American history.
...
MR. RUSSERT: You’ve been appointed, selected as the Democrats’ point man on lobbying reform in the Senate. I want to talk about Jack Abramoff and the scandal now in terms of lobbying and potential reform. According to the Center for Responsive Politics and The Washington Post, Mr. Abramoff and his clients and his associates gave about $3 million to Republicans, about $1.5 million to Democrats. Is this a bipartisan scandal?

SEN. OBAMA: Well, I think the problem of money in politics is bipartisan. I think that all of us who are involved in the political process have to be concerned about the enormous sums of money that have to raised in order to run campaigns, how that money’s raised, and at least the appearance of impropriety and the potential access that’s given to those who are contributing. That’s a general problem with our politics. The specific problem of inviting lobbyists in who have bundled huge sums of money to write legislation, having the oil and gas company companies come in to write energy legislation, having drug companies come in and write the Medicare prescription drug bill—which we now see is not working for our seniors—those are very particular problems of this administration and this Congress. And I think Jack Abramoff and the Case Freak Project, that whole thing is a very particular Republican sin.

MR. RUSSERT: No sin for the Democrats?

SEN. OBAMA: Well, with respect to how Tom DeLay consolidated power in the House of Representatives, invited lobbyists like Abramoff in to help write legislation, leveraging those lobbyists and telling them that they can only hire Republicans, manipulating the rules of the House and the Senate in order to move forward legislation that was helpful to special interests. There is a qualitative difference to what’s been happening in Washington over the last several years that has real consequences. It means a prescription drug bill that doesn’t work for our seniors. It means an energy policy that does nothing to help relieve high gas prices at the pump. These aren’t just abstractions, these are problems that have very real consequences to the American people. And my hope is is that, on a bipartisan basis, we can come up with a solution that returns some semblance of responsiveness to Washington.

The sponteneity and courage of Hillary married with the clarity of Kerry. Zombierific!

Feh.

Glenn Greenwald scores major rhetorical points by pointing out the incoherence of the Osama-talks-like-Michael Moore tripe.

Feh.

The Bush storm troopers flunk Rhetoric 101. BFD. They continue to kick our sorry asses on the playground every lunch hour.

If the Murkun people had even a passing acquaintence with logic, we wouldn't be here. Unless and until the MSM sheeple call them on this, logic is irrelevant. And since the MSM sheeple continue to parrot such nonsense, it is absurd to expect them to call bullshit on their own sycophantic behavior.

Peak oil: done deal

From Reuters.com:

OPEC producer Kuwait's oil reserves are only half those officially stated, according to internal Kuwaiti records seen by industry newsletter Petroleum Intelligence Weekly (PIW).

"PIW learns from sources that Kuwait's actual oil reserves, which are officially stated at around 99 billion barrels, or close to 10 percent of the global total, are a good deal lower, according to internal Kuwaiti records," the weekly PIW reported on Friday.

It said that according to data circulated in Kuwait Oil Co (KOC), the upstream arm of state Kuwait Petroleum Corp, Kuwait's remaining proven and non-proven oil reserves are about 48 billion barrels.

Officials from KOC were not immediately available for comment to Reuters.

I am just one of a large number of folks who have been talking about peak oil for some time. Until now, those apocalyptic visions have been countered in general circulation by the kind of mythology Kuwait was perpetrating, and no one wanted to pay attention.

But this process of restating reserves is now past trickle, and well on its way to torrent. Recall that Shell admitted in 2004 that its reserves were overstated by 20%. It is widely believed that Saudi Arabia has been deep fat frying its reserve numbers as well. The Saudis claim to have 25% of the world's reserves. If the fudge factor in their numbers is anything close to Kuwait's, we are in deep, deep doo-doo. We are screwed either way, of course, but the price shock will be inconceivably violent if Saudi Arabia is revealed to have half the oil we think they do.

So the good news is that when unleaded hits $6 a gallon you will be able to get a helluva deal on a Hummer. The bad news is that the economy will crash so hard you will have to put it up on blocks and live in it.

Well of course

Writer Claims HealthSouth CEO Scrushy Bought Favorable Press Coverage During Fraud Trial

Makes perfect sense to me. After a half-dozen columnists are exposed as having taken corporate or government, the boundaries of what newspaper folks think they can get away with are effectively moved. That means two things: (a) we'll find out about cash buying favorable "straight" news, and (b) some chutzpah-enhanced, ethically challenged presstitute will go after a john for welching.

E&P presents:

Throughout the six-month trial that led to Richard Scrushy's acquittal in the $2.7 billion fraud at HealthSouth Corp., a small, influential newspaper consistently printed articles sympathetic to the defense of the fired CEO.

Audry Lewis, the author of those stories in The Birmingham Times, the city's oldest black-owned paper, now says she was secretly working on behalf of Scrushy, who she says paid her $11,000 through a public relations firm and typically read her articles before publication.

Documents obtained by The Associated Press show The Lewis Group wrote a $5,000 check to Audry Lewis on April 29, 2005 -- the day Scrushy hired the company. The head of the company, Times founder Jesse J. Lewis Sr., is not related to Audry Lewis.

The firm wrote another $5,000 check that day to the Rev. Herman Henderson, who employs Audry Lewis at his Believers Temple Church and was among the black preachers supporting Scrushy who were present in the courtroom throughout.

Audry Lewis and Henderson now say Scrushy owes them $150,000 for the newspaper stories and other public relations work, including getting black pastors to attend the trial in a bid to sway the mostly black jury.

Damned blogger ethics....

Neither will I, darlin'

Molly Ivins: I will not support Hillary Clinton for president

I'd like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president.

Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone This is not a Dick Morris election. Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges.
...
What kind of courage does it take, for mercy's sake? The majority of the American people (55 percent) think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should get out. The majority (65 percent) of the American people want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor raising the minimum wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing Bush's tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The majority (66 percent) wants to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.

The majority (77 percent) thinks we should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent) thinks big oil companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax. That is the center, you fools. WHO ARE YOU AFRAID OF?

I listen to people like Rahm Emanuel superciliously explaining elementary politics to us clueless naifs outside the Beltway ("First, you have to win elections"). Can't you even read the damn polls?

...
You sit there in Washington so frightened of the big, bad Republican machine you have no idea what people are thinking. I'm telling you right now, Tom DeLay is going to lose in his district. If Democrats in Washington haven't got enough sense to OWN the issue of political reform, I give up on them entirely.

Thanks, Molly.

The Grenada of Terror

ABC News: 11 Indicted in Eco-terror Arsons

Eleven people have been indicted in recent weeks in connection with a series of arson attacks, including the 1998 fire at the Vail Ski Resort in Colorado that has been linked to the radical environmental groups Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front.

The announcement of the indictments and the arrests of eight of the people charged was made today at a news conference with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, FBI Director Robert Mueller and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Director Carl Truscott.

Got that? The top two or three law enforcement officers in the country focusing all that energy on ecology extremists.

The FBI has called radical environmental groups the most serious domestic terrorism threat, and estimates the Earth Liberation Front's attacks alone are responsible for damages totaling more than $100 million since the mid-1990s. The fire at an expansion project at Vail caused $12 million in damages, and an August 2003 arson at a San Diego apartment construction project that Earth Liberation took responsibility for did $50 million worth of damage.

$100 million. Over the last ten years or so, that's about $10M a year. And, as far as I know, not a single death attributable thereto.

While we're talking about monetary losses, would you paragons of prosecutorial virtue care to comment on your efforts to go after the folks who walked off with the $8.8B of our taxpayer money that has disappeared in Iraq? Or perhaps the $1M per month overcharges by Halliburton for laundry services? Or the $1B in questionable Halliburton charges?

Or, if you are really feeling your oats, how about how telling us about how you are going to get the folks who actually killed thousands of people on 9/11?

Of course not. History must repeat.

Oh, that Tim Kaine

Digby points out how utterly ass-backwards the "Wingnut-lite" strategy prominently featued in a new TAP article is. He's right, of course. But here's something timely he didn't mention: The TAP article's exemplar of the winning Democratic message is Tim Kaine:

Incoming Democratic Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, a former Christian missionary in Latin America, learned the importance of cultural appeals early in his campaign. Kaine, Virginia’s first Catholic governor and one of the two major Democratic electoral success stories of 2005, had worked as a court-appointed attorney for inmates on death row while a young attorney. This, he knew, would be a major strike against him in his bid to run a state whose citizens overwhelmingly support the death penalty, and in a contest against the state’s attorney general, who would inevitably accuse him of being soft on crime and a bleeding-heart liberal.

In the spring of 2005 Kaine’s pollster, Peter Brodnitz, of the polling firm Benenson Strategy Group, decided that the campaign needed to develop a strategy to handle such charges. It convened a focus group of white, conservative, religious voters, and explored different ways Kaine could reach out to them. The result was startling. Brodnitz found that once Kaine started talking about his religious background and explaining that his opposition to the death penalty grew out of his Catholic faith, not only did charges that he was weak on crime fail to stick, but he became inoculated against a host of related charges that typically plague and undermine the campaigns of Democratic candidates. “Once people understood the values system that the position grew out of, they understood that’s he’s not a liberal,” says Brodnitz. “We couldn’t even convince them he was a liberal once we’d done that.”

And you know what? It turns out that he's the same Tim Kaine the Democratic leadershit has "tapped" to rebut Dubya's SOTU speech, as opposed to, say, designated spear catcher Jack Murtha. You know, the guy whose website is long on God and church and the NRA, but utterly devoid of any military or foreign policy cred. Which might matter if we were involved in, like, a war or something.

Small world.

Please don't beat me

Minority Leader Reid Apologizes to GOP

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid on Thursday apologized to 33 Republican senators singled out for ethics criticism in a report from his office titled "Republican Abuse of Power."

"The document released by my office yesterday went too far and I want to convey to you my personal regrets," Reid said in a letter.

"I am writing to apologize for the tone of this document and the decision to single out individual senators for criticism in it."

Reid came under attack Wednesday over the report, which was issued by his staff on Senate letterhead, even as he and fellow Democrats released ethics overhaul proposals.

I'm all for a wide variety of support programs and legal protections for battered wives. I just wouldn't ask them to lead the battle to save our Constitution while so obviously traumatized by the experience.

Give 'emGo to hell, Harry. Maybe you can co-organize a group hug for your colleagues with Dick Durbin.

Jesus' General nails it

Not cynical, just prescient. Go look at Jesus' General's dead-on prediction of what next month's WaPo online will look like.

Losers

Walter Shapiro:

Typical was my lunch discussion earlier this week with a ranking Democratic Party official. Midway through the meal, I innocently asked how the "Big Brother is listening" issue would play in November. Judging from his pained reaction, I might as well have announced that Barack Obama was resigning from the Senate to sell vacuum cleaners door-to-door. With exasperation dripping from his voice, my companion said, "The whole thing plays to the Republican caricature of Democrats -- that we're weak on defense and weak on security." To underscore his concerns about shrill attacks on Bush, the Democratic operative forwarded to me later that afternoon an e-mail petition from MoveOn.org, which had been inspired by Al Gore's fire-breathing Martin Luther King Day speech excoriating the president's contempt for legal procedures.

Typical--a "ranking DP official" who is annoyed by the netroots, can't be bothered to tease apart "national security" from "violations of law and civil liberties," and prefers to follow polls rather than shape opinion. Loser, loser, loser.

Dems pick Kaine to respond to SOTU

Arianna has the ugly details here.

Meet the new boss...

Italy to Withdraw Troops From Iraq by Year's End

Italy will withdraw its nearly 3,000 troops from Iraq by the year's end, the defense minister saidtoday amid a fiercely fought general election campaign in a nation where the Iraq war is not popular.

"This is not a retreat, a word that is not part of our vocabulary," the minister, Antonio Martino, told a parliamentary commission. Rather, he called it a "dignified and just return."

It was the first formal announcement of Italy's plans in Iraq, though the center-right government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi signaled the move months ago to Italy's voters and to its allies in Washington. Mr. Berlusconi is trailing in the polls, and the decision would seem to ease some pressure on a particularly sensitive issue.
...
Polls show most Italians oppose the presence of their troops in Iraq, both in general opposition to the war and the fear that it makes Italy more vulnerable to a terror attack. The center-left opposition, led by former Prime Minister Romano Prodi, strongly opposes Italy's involvement in Iraq, though its leaders have recently said that, if elected, they would not endanger stability there by pulling out immediately.

Italy has the fourth-largest contingent of troops in Iraq. While the Italian presence is not large in numbers, the Bush administration, eager to show the effort in Iraq as a shared burden among allies, reacted with some anger last year when Mr. Berlusconi first broached withdrawing troops.

Today, however, the White House called Italy's announcement "an indication of progress" that Iraqi troops were increasingly able to take over.

Oh, of course it has to do with pushing up Berlusconi's poll numbers--how can Lil' Scottie deliver the WH spin with a straight face? The only real issue is how much it has to do with Italy's growing realization that when the Bush Assministration says "coalition," they really mean "sfruttamento," not "alleanza."

Bin Laden Reclaims Top Billing

From Time.com:

Osama bin Laden's latest message is most notable for the long silence that preceded it — the audiotape broadcast Thursday on al-Jazeera is the Qaeda leader's first direct communication with his public in a little over a year.
...
Despite directly addressing Americans, its primary purpose may nonetheless be to remind Arab and Muslim audiences of his existence, and to reiterate his claim to primacy among the Jihadists. Bin Laden last message was released in December 2004, although the movement's Number 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has continued to release occasional videotaped missives from his hideout in the wilds of western Pakistan.
...
But in the year of Bin Laden's silence, he has begun to be supplanted as the media face of global jihad by Musab al-Zarqawi, whose grisly exploits in Iraq grab headlines week after week.
...
The other radical Islamist competitor for the mantle of U.S. Public Enemy Number 1 has lately been Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, who has garnered attention for his bristling hostility to the U.S. and his threat to wipe out Israel, all in the context of his defiance of the West over Iran's nuclear program. The attention paid to Zarqawi and Ahmedinejad has moved Bin Laden to the margins of Western news coverage, but his strategy for building al-Qaeda, as the single umbrella organization of global jihad, with himself as its "Sheikh," has been premised on his being recognized among the radically-inclined Muslim youth as America's most feared enemy. So, whether or not it is followed up by any of the actions it threatens, Thursday's taped message has at least succeeded in, however briefly, restoring Bin Laden to what he imagines is his rightful place in the headlines.

Bin Laden's ego and the infighting among the various radical groups and personalities is well documented, but I thought this was a little weird; it strikes me as pretty unlikely that OBL is going to put something like this out just because he's worried about losing Simon's and Paula's votes on Jihadist Idol. Leave it to the Em Ess Em to reduce the interrelationships among jihadists to a horse race.

Speaking of "in" colors...

Orange seems to have made a dramatic exit from the Department of Homeland Security's palette since, oh, fall of 2004 or so. From the DHS website:

Threat Advisories, Bulletins, Memoranda (cleared for public release)

April 19, 2005 – Information Bulletin – Unauthorized Peer to Peer (P2P) Programs on Government Computers (PDF, 4 pages - 50 KB)

August 3, 2004 – Memorandum – Suspicious Activity Reporting Criteria for Infrastructure Owners and Operators (PDF, 3 pages – 252 KB)

August 1, 2004 - Advisory - HSAS Increased to Orange for Financial Institutions in Specific Geographic Areas (PDF, 2 pages - 49 KB)

July 30, 2004 - Information Bulletin - Potential Threat to Homeland Using Heavy Transport Vehicles (PDF, 7 pages - 89 KB)

July 22, 2003 - Information Bulletin - Potential Terrorist Use of Official Identification, Uniforms, or Vehicles

July 1, 2003 - Information Bulletin - July 4th General Awareness

March 17, 2003 - Advisory - National Threat Level Raised, Statement by Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge

May 30, 2003 - Advisory - Homeland Security Advisory System Lowered to National Level YELLOW

May 20, 2003 - Advisory - Homeland Security Advisory System Increase to National Level ORANGE

April 16, 2003 - Advisory - Homeland Security Advisory System Lowered to National Level YELLOW

Call me a cynic, but I suspect that the looming midterm elections will soon bring out prominent retro fashionistas again displaying large swaths of orange.

Torture: the new black

New evidence demonstrated in 2005 that torture and mistreatment have been a deliberate part of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism strategy, undermining the global defense of human rights, Human Rights Watch said today in releasing its World Report 2006.

The evidence showed that abusive interrogation cannot be reduced to the misdeeds of a few low-ranking soldiers, but was a conscious policy choice by senior U.S. government officials.

Human Rights Watch World Report 2006 (Human Rights Watch, 18-1-2006)

Your arrogant scribe, November:

Thus the new calculus: the insurgents become suicide bombers; we level cities the insurgents have already abandoned. The insurgents behead; we waterboard and crucify. The insurgents plant roadside bombs; we incinerate civilians with white phosphorus. For every indiscriminate, random horror they perpetrate, we offer our own in response.

This hypothesis is horrifying in its implications, and it is only a hypothesis. But it is a hypothesis that solves a lot of mysteries about our leaders. It explains why they are undaunted by the consensus that torture will not yield useful information – they don’t expect to get any. It explains why they are so insistent on holding tens of thousands of prisoners whether or not there is a reasonable basis for their incarceration – they are not making any attempt to separate combatants from the bystanders. It explains the horror of white phosphorus unleashed on civilians, and aerial bombardment of our supposedly democratic client – tactical military concerns are secondary at best. The randomness of the violence, abuse and destruction is not an unavoidable byproduct of an otherwise sane policy; the randomness is itself the very object of the policy.

And of course, our descent into such unspeakable tactics explains another, shameful mystery: why the evil we fight has become so difficult to distinguish from the evil we have become.

Today's history lesson

This authorization is a vital tool in our war against the terrorists. It is critical to saving American lives. The American people expect me to do everything in my power under our laws and Constitution to protect them and their civil liberties. And that is exactly what I will continue to do, so long as I'm the President of the United States.

...

"...(T)his program is conscious of people's civil liberties, as am I. This is a limited program designed to prevent attacks on the United States of America -- and I repeat: limited."

American chief executive, December 17, 2005 and January 1, 2006, urging support of warrantless domestic spying, vesting de facto legislative and judicial power in the executive.

"The government will make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures...The number of cases in which an internal necessity exists for having recourse to such a law is in itself a limited one."

German chief executive, March 23, 1933, urging passage of the "Enabling Act," which vested all power in the executive.

But, but, Mr. Luskin, it's a philosophy course

Looks like my question about the limits of the Dover decision will have to wait for another day. As Discovery Institute counsel Casey Luskin makes clear, the ID folks don't want their cover blown by folks who, to their credit, are at least honest enough to own up to their core beliefs:

Intelligent design is very different from young earth creationism. We at the Discovery Institute believe that intelligent design is constitutional to teach as a science. I understand that Americans United probably disagrees with that. But the fact is that this course originally mixed up intelligent design with the young earth creationist viewpoint. I want you to know that we support your efforts to present different views about biological origins in this philosophy course. We also applaud your efforts to remove the legally problematic creationist materials from the course. But the fact of the matter is that even if this course has been changed and improved, its past history as originally having been formulated to promote Biblical creationism as scientific fact makes this case legally problematic. Unless you get a very sympathetic judge, this course will be struck down as unconstitutional because of its problematic history.
...
But if you do not cancel this course, and if you let this lawsuit go forward, you are going to lose and there will be a dangerous legal precedent set which could threaten the teaching of intelligent design on the national level. Such a decision would also threaten the scientific research of many scientists who support intelligent design.

Because of the young earth creationist history of this course, this course is not legally defensible and it should be cancelled. Thank you.

Shorter Luskin: "Pay no attention to that theory behind the curtain! We are the Great and Scientific Intelligent Design!"

(Link via the Great, Scientific and Humble PZ Myers at Pharyngula)

Capital "L" loyal; small "o" opposition

Senate Democrat backs Alito

Ben Nelson of Nebraska on Tuesday became the first Senate Democrat to announce his support of conservative Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, who is expected to be confirmed later this month by the full Republican-led Senate.

"I have decided to vote in favor of Judge Samuel Alito," Nelson, a moderate, said in a statement issued by his office.

"I came to this decision after careful consideration of his impeccable judicial credentials, the American Bar Association's strong recommendation and his pledge that he would not bring a political agenda to the court," Nelson said.

I hereby submit the following recommendation: as part of the reform movement now sweeping Washington, the name of the Democratic Party should be changed to more accurately reflect reality: I suggest the "Gullible Party." In the alternative, the "Palace Eunuchs" would also be acceptable.

Thanks again, Ralph

As I wallow in the imminent disaster of the Alito confirmation, and the 287th Democratic meltdown of the last 12 months, and contemplate abandoning these sorry-assed losers, Eric Alterman reminds us that the man who just offered that stirring speech yesterday would have been President but for Ralph Fucking Nader.

Now what?

Osama bin Laden, non-cartoon edition

Good discussion of Peter Bergen's The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda's Leader underway at the TPM book club. I'm about a quarter of the way through the book, which I can already recommend, and the discussion at TPM has already produced a lot of thoughtful comments.

Well, at least we know how he got his nickname

Mass Gov. Ham Hands "Mitt" Romney honors MLK, Jr. yesterday morning:

Governor’s remarks irk King crowd: Romney rips into teachers unions at tribute breakfast

Mitt Romney, who invoked the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King while blasting teachers unions for blocking education reform efforts, drew jeers yesterday at Boston’s annual breakfast honoring the slain civil rights leader.

Romney, who said the persistent achievement gap between white and minority students is the biggest civil rights issue facing citizens, called for minority leaders to back his education reform package, which includes lifting the cap on charter schools.

“Sad to say that the teachers union and their supporters will fight these answers with every tool they have,” Romney said to the largely black crowd of roughly 1,000 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.

“They will distort and deprive, they will torture and twist, but don’t forget, to them, it’s first about compensation and jobs. To you, it’s about kids and their future,” he said.

Romney’s comments were met with both loud boos and polite applause. Other speakers, including Attorney General Tom Reilly and Mayor Thomas M. Menino, were met with enthusiastic applause.

Boston Teachers Union President Richard Stutman, who was in the audience, said Romney’s comments were divisive and inappropriate at an event honoring a man who stood for unity.

“I think it’s the ultimate hypocrisy to invoke the name of Dr. Martin Luther King and criticize teachers unions in the same breath,” Stutman said.

Gee, sounds like he might be running for something.

And one more thing...

For those who have put forth the well-meaning but wildly wrong-headed hypothesis that the Dems aren't going to filibuster Alito because they see no net change on the court with President Abrasion's appointments, I read the news today, oh boy:

Supreme Court Upholds Oregon Assisted Suicide Law

The Supreme Court upheld Oregon's assisted-suicide law today, declaring that the Bush administration had exceeded its authority in trying to undo the statute by punishing doctors who help people end their lives.

In a 6-to-3 decision, which would apply to other states if their people chose to follow Oregon's lead, the court held that former Attorney General John Ashcroft went well beyond his authority and expertise when he ruled in 2001 that doctors would lose their federal prescription privileges if they prescribed lethal doses of medications for patients.

Today's ruling allows the state of Oregon to continue to follow the practice of the Netherlands, which in 2002 became the first country to legalize euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide in limited circumstances. It could also portend agonizing debates elsewhere in the United States, as medicine advances and people continue to wrestle with questions of life and death.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority today, acknowledged that the long-running battle over the Oregon law is part of a "political and moral debate." But the issue for the court, he noted, was a more technical, down-to-earth one: Did the attorney general go beyond his powers under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970?

Clearly, he did, Justice Kennedy wrote, in an opinion joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer. The Controlled Substances Act "gives the attorney general limited powers, to be exercised in specific ways," the court ruled.
...
Justice Antonin Scalia, in a sharp dissent, asserted that the attorney general did indeed have the authority to issue his 2001 ruling, regardless of the majority's reading of events. "If the term 'legitimate medical purpose' has any meaning, it surely excludes the prescription of drugs to produce death," Justice Scalia wrote.

Also dissenting were Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Clarence Thomas. Chief Justice Roberts, whose conservative judicial philosophy was widely discussed during his confirmation hearings last year, had indicated skepticism about the arguments advanced by the State of Oregon when the case was argued in October.

Yeah, that's Chief Justice John Fucking Roberts joining Fat Tony and Silent Clare at the end of the bench. You know, Roberts--the more moderate of Bush's appointees. Paying attention yet, DiFi?

Extraordinary circumstances: who would they filibuster?

Definitely:



Bernard Kerik



Shakes the Alcoholic Clown



Jack Torrance

Laurence Tribe

Earl Warren

Kip


Maybe--what does Lindsay Graham think?:



Robert Bork (poorly prepared for confirmation hearings)




Q (Contemptous attitude toward any executive, much less unitary executive)



Torquemada (Spent hearings on diatribe about "slackers" running Abu Ghraib)



Ahmad Chalabi (insists on throwing kickback money at intelligence community rather than congress)

Fair and balanced

Shakespeare's Sister points out that the number of Americans who support impeaching the Chimp (52%) is exactly double the number of people who favored Clinton's impeachment.

Not that that matters.

Whaaaaaaa?

The ACLU is suing the Bush junta over domestic spying -- no surprise there. Larry DIamond of the Hoover Institute, who trashed the administration for its failures in Iraq, is a named plaintiff -- no surprise there either. But get this, from the Times via Americablog:

Also named as plaintiffs in the A.C.L.U. lawsuit are the journalist Christopher Hitchens...

That's right -- one of the leaders of the bedwetter brigade is biting the hand that diapers him.

No friggin' idea what this means, but it seems inconsistent with all known natural laws.

Maybe if I assume Digby is right

... I won't be as bitterly disappointed when it comes to pass just as he says:

Here's what's going to happen. The Republicans will carefully plan and coordinate their strategy. Guys like Jeff Sessions will be in charge of fear-mongering and ad hominem attacks on dissent. Huckleberry Graham will express grave concerns about liberty only to be convinced by the end of the hearing that the gravest threat to the nation is Democratic rudeness. Gonzales will then say this is nothing but a high tech illegal deportation across the Rio Grande. Sam Brownback will offer objections to abuse of presidential power but will concede that it is necessary since godless abortionist terrorists are trying to kill us all in our sleep. His wife will inexplicably start crying and run out of the room. Everyone will agree that Alberto Gonzales has been remarkably forthcoming. Arlen will concede that the constitution does indeed provide for a King.

The Democrats, meanwhile, will take a much needed week long vacation before the hearings. They'll meet up in the mens room just before they begin, to discuss a strategy. (Dianne will watch the door.) Kennedy will suggest that he attack Gonzales on presidential power and Shumer will snap that he's sick of Kennedy getting all the good attacks and insists that Kennedy takes that boring Unitary Executive bullshit this time. Biden will request that he lead the questioning which will make Pat Leahy tell him to go fuck himself. Joe will remind the whole group that he once had a phone call overheard in college so he's been the victim of warrantless wiretapping and can bring the personal touch to the hearings. Feinstein will ask, "what are these hearings about again?" In the end the Democrats will strongly object to Arlen's conclusions that the constitution provides for a King.

Then we can move on to fulfilling Atrios' prophesy.

So what

I read Al Gore's speech. I watched the clips on the web. I was moved.

But if a formerly wooden politician makes an important speech, and the press isn't there to hear it, does he make an effective sound?

Sadly, no. I don't know what it takes to have an impact today on the old media, but this is ridiculous.

Mission Accomplished

The States Step In As Medicare Falters

Two weeks into the new Medicare prescription drug program, many of the nation's sickest and poorest elderly and disabled people are being turned away or overcharged at pharmacies, prompting more than a dozen states to declare health emergencies and pay for their life-saving medicines.

Computer glitches, overloaded telephone lines and poorly trained pharmacists are being blamed for mix-ups that have resulted in the worst of unintended consequences: As many as 6.4 million low-income seniors, who until Dec. 31 received their medications free, suddenly find themselves navigating an insurance maze of large deductibles, co-payments and outright denial of coverage.

Yesterday, Ohio and Wisconsin announced that they will cover the drug costs of low-income seniors who would otherwise go without, joining every state in New England as well as California, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, New Jersey, North Dakota, South Dakota and New Jersey.

"This new prescription drug plan was supposed to be a voluntary program to help people who didn't have coverage," said Jeanne Finberg, a lawyer for the National Senior Citizens Law Center. "All this is doing is harming the people who had coverage -- America's most vulnerable citizens."

Heckuva job, Georgie.

Senator Chamberlain to the rescue

Feinstein Warns Against Alito Filibuster

A Democrat who plans to vote against Samuel Alito sided on Sunday with a Republican colleague on the Senate Judiciary Committee in cautioning against a filibuster of the Supreme Court nominee.

"I do not see a likelihood of a filibuster," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. "This might be a man I disagree with, but it doesn't mean he shouldn't be on the court."

She said she will not vote to confirm the appeals court judge, based on his conservative record. But she acknowledged that nothing emerged during last week's hearings to justify any organized action by Democrats to stall the nomination.

"If there's a filibuster of this man based on his qualifications, there would be a huge backlash in this country," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. He is one of 14 centrist senators who defused the Senate's showdown over judicial filibusters last year, saying such a tactic is justified only under extraordinary circumstances.
...
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., would not rule out a filibuster, saying committee Democrats were still going through the hearing transcripts and awaiting answers to written questions.

"It's premature to say anything till we fully assess the record," said Schumer, who appeared with Graham on "Fox News Sunday."

But Feinstein, who said she was concerned about Alito's conservative record on abortion rights and deference to executive power, acknowledged the 15-year appellate judge had the legal credentials to serve on the Supreme Court.

"I was impressed with his ability to maintain a very even demeanor," she said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

The utter, fatal wrongheadedness on display here leaves me virtually speechless with rage.

Even demeanor? At least the men who will inter our Constitution will sound nice.

Not extraordinary? Sure, just the end of our form of government.

Apt choice of words, Dr. Bloor, but I will not talk you back into this fold. I now officially include myself out of the most costly and important fold since Chamberlain signed the Munich Agreement.

RIP, American republic
1788-2006

More unpatriotic defeatism from those nasty, fact-addicted realists

The centerpiece of the current U.S. strategy is to rely on a people whose military the United States twice humiliated on the battlefield to destroy an insurgency it did not create. "The ultimate goal," Boylan told me, "is that we work ourselves out of a job. The Coalition is not going to be the ones who win this. The Iraqis will be the ones who win this, because they're the only ones who can."

Boylan believes that the polls have slipped because the media shows only one side of the conflict. He points to the 3,000 schools that have been renovated, the construction of water plants and other pieces of infrastructure, the 26,000 new Iraqi businesses that have been established. But much of this progress has been annulled by the security situation. Many parents keep their children out of school: "If you love your children, you won't send them to school here because we will kill them," one insurgent flyer posted in the city of Tal Afar read. Journeying four miles from Bagdhad's airport to the Green Zone can take the better part of two days, and wandering two hundred yards beyond the wire of any U.S. base requires a full military escort. The Marines are forced to travel four hours out of their way to avoid a particularly dangerous highway between [Camp] TQ and Fallujah. "The most powerful army in the history of the world," one soldier told me, "cannot keep a two-mile stretch of road open."

--From Tom Bissell's "Improvised, Explosive and Divisive," in this month's Harpers.

"Our whole military is based on the idea of overwhelming firepower put on targets," says William S. Lind, a noted military theorist who has written extensively on asymmetric warfare. "But that doesn't work in this type of conflict. We are fighting an enemy that has made himself untargettable." Therefore, Lind says, the insurgents can continue fighting the American military in Iraq indefinitely--regardless of how many U.S. troops are deployed or how quickly they are massed.
...
For Lind and other military theorists, the IED problem in Iraq is insoluble no matter how much time or money is spent. "If we can't engage the enemy," he says, "what do we do? The answer is, we lose."

--From Robert Bryce's "Man Versus Mine," in this month's Atlantic.

Not that any of this might lead a reasonable person to believe that the best course of action is to get our troops out of the fucking shooting gallery.

Duck and Cover Dems

ReddHedd has a good post on the Alito fiasco over at Firedoglake. So whattaya gonna say to talk me back into the fold after this one, Bluememe?

Gonna take away their their web access, too?

via Raw Story: New York Times 'disconnects' public e-mail addresses for its columnists

Months after moving its Op-Ed columnists behind a "paywall," the New York Times will now 'disconnect' columnists' public e-mail addresses, RAW STORY has learned.

The Times has advised papers which receive their news content to remove any old e-mail addresses which they may have published alongside Op-Ed columns.

"The New York Times no longer provides public e-mail addresses for its Op-Ed columnists," a memo obtained by RAW STORY asserts. "With the advent of the paper's online program TimesSelect, subscribers are invited to contact columnists from within The Times' Web site, nytimes.com."

I'm beginnning to think that we should stop referring to the world of fishwrap journalism as "mainstream media" and start calling them "ostrich media." The WaPo old guard seem to resent their own Froomkin's web cred; the Times seems to be intent on responding to the threat bloggers pose by doing their best to pretend we don't exist.

Times Selective goes a long way toward accomplishing "speak no evil": by moving his columnists behind the wall, Pinch Sulzberger has essential purchased the electronic silence of MoDo, the Shrill One, Bob Herbert and and Frank Rich, whose work now is only rarely commented on in the blogosphere. (Bobo the Clown, being the token conservative, seems to have little difficulty scoring serious TV face time.) Now the "hear no evil" component is in place as well. Only a matter of time before Pinch and Bill Keller order them to stop looking at the Internet as well.

Yo, Pinch-- why don't you just cut to the chase , do what the LA Times did with Robert Scheer and fire their asses? It'll make your East Hampton dinners with the Queen of Iraq so much more pleasant, and maybe the Preznit will stop calling you on the carpet for your apostacy.

Atrios puts on his Carnac hat

...and makes some chilling predictions about how the Adminstration will pull the bedwetter lever about Iran to tilt the midterms. I don't even feel the urge to argue against his cynicism -- it really could, and probably will, go down this way.

I think they need to tweak their eavesdropping software

A Protest, a Spy Program and a Campus in an Uproar - New York Times

The Pentagon has been spying on student protestors at the University of California at Santa Cruz, calling a protest there a "credible threat." I guess it serves those militant youngsters right -- after all, no good could come from a school whose mascot is the fearsome banana slug.

Note to the guys programming the telephone keyword scanning in the Pentagon IT department: you need to increase the resolution on the voice recognition software a bit. The mistake was understandable, but do you really want to go through this every time somebody talks about having a "bong"?

Sneak preview: 2006 Iraq war strategy

Pakistan on Saturday condemned a purported CIA airstrike on a border village that officials said unsuccessfully targeted al-Qaida's second-in-command, and said it was protesting to the U.S. Embassy over the attack that killed at least 17 people.

Thousands of local tribesmen, chanting 'God is Great,' demonstrated against the attack, claiming the victims were local villagers without terrorist links and had never hosted Ayman al-Zawahri.

Two senior Pakistani officials told The Associated Press that the CIA acted on incorrect information in launching the attack early Friday in the northwestern village of Damadola, near the Afghan border.

Citing unidentified American intelligence officials, U.S. news networks reported that CIA-operated Predator drone aircraft carried out the missile strike because al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, was thought to be at a compound in the village or about to arrive.

'Their information was wrong, and our investigations conclude that they acted on a false information,' said a senior Pakistani intelligence official with direct knowledge of Pakistan's investigations into the attack."

Remember Sy Hersch's prediction that as our ground forces buckle under the stress of over-commitment in Iraq, we would (a) shift to aerial bombardment as the tool of choice and (b) thereby become vulnerable to the mistakes and divergent motives of those on the ground who become our spotters?

This story will give you a good sense of how well that is going to work out for us.

Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.

Separated at birth?

It seems many crime family bosses take a hands-on approach to managing their troops.



And yes, the goomba doing faking the Vulcan mind meld on the right is Dubya.

(Update: as reader Fred points out, it takes two minds to do a meld.)

Enough already

If I hear one more conservative talk about how Alito deserves to be a Supreme because "he keeps an open mind and decides cases based on the facts and the law," I am going to go kick somebody's puppy.

It is very rare that a case reaches an appellate court unless both sides can marshall superfically compelling arguments that weave together fact and law. What the judge has to do is decide which law and which facts to treat as the more important ones. And where one set of considerations favor individual rights and the other favor the government, Alito consistently supports the government.

So Alito doesn't have to foam at the mouth or babble like a Michelle Malkin to be dangerous. He can sound as reasonable and level-headed as you please. All he has to do is choose to accept the legal theories advanced by the police state he will slowly ensconce into the space our Constitution once covered.

It never ends

California Parents File Suit Over Origins of Life Course

A group of parents are suing their small California school district to force it to cancel a four-week high school elective on intelligent design, creationism and evolution that it is offering as a philosophy course.

The course at Frazier Mountain High School in Lebec, which serves a rural area north of Los Angeles, was proposed by a special education teacher last month and approved by the board of trustees in an emergency meeting on New Year's Day. The 11 parents are seeking a temporary restraining order to stop the course, which is being held during the session that ends on Feb. 3.

...
In their suit, the parents said the syllabus originally listed 24 videos to be shown to students, with 23 "produced or distributed by religious organizations and assume a pro-creationist, anti-evolution stance." They said the syllabus listed two evolution experts who would speak to the class. One was a local parent and scientist who said he had already refused the speaking invitation and was now suing the district; the other was Francis H. C. Crick, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, who died in 2004.

A course description distributed to students and parents said, "This class will take a close look at evolution as a theory and will discuss the scientific, biological and biblical aspects that suggest why Darwin's philosophy is not rock solid."
...
Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United, said, "This is apparently the next wave of efforts to bring creationism to schools, and that's why we want to dry it up immediately."

I'm no attorney, but this actually strikes me as a legitimate test of the limits of the Dover decision last month; I'd be interested to know what real legal eagles think. In the meantime, and in the ID/creationist spirit of teaching all viewpoints, I will be happy to follow up their elective with a four week module on Nihilism. The school board can meet in a secret emergency meeting on Easter Sunday to approve it.

More Republican ethics

Time to convene another panel on blogger ethics, preferably those duplicitous librul bloggers:

A Columnist Backed by Monsanto

Scripps Howard News Service announced Jan. 13 that it's severing its business relationship with columnist Michael Fumento, who's also a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute. The move comes after inquiries from BusinessWeek Online about payments Fumento received from agribusiness giant Monsanto (MON ) -- a frequent subject of praise in Fumento's opinion columns and a book.

In a statement released on Jan. 13, Scripps Howard News Service Editor and General Manager Peter Copeland said Fumento "did not tell SHNS editors, and therefore we did not tell our readers, that in 1999 Hudson recieved a $60,000 grant from Monsanto." Copeland added: "Our policy is that he should have disclosed that information. We apologize to our readers." In the Jan. 5 column, Fumento wrote that St. Louis-based Monsanto has about 30 products in the pipeline that will aid farmers, "but also help us all by keeping prices down and allowing more crops to be grown on less land."

...
"YOU SHOULD CONTRIBUTE." In his career at Hudson, Fumento has carved out a specialty debunking critics of the agribusiness and biotechnology industries. In 1999, he says, he solicited $60,000 from Monsanto to write a book on the business. The book, entitled BioEvolution was published in 2003. A spokesman for Monsanto confirmed the payments to the Hudson Institute.

Fumento, Scooter Libby...my, but the D.C. version of the Hudson Institute is really giving that other distinguished institute associated with the name Hudson a run for its money.

Pentagon to families: Go ahead, laugh

When the stress of the war in Iraq becomes too severe, the Pentagon has a suggestion for military families: Learn how to laugh.

With help from the Pentagon's chief laughter instructor, families of National Guard members are learning to walk like a penguin, laugh like a lion and blurt "ha, ha, hee, hee and ho, ho."

No joke.

"I laugh every chance I get," says the instructor, retired Army colonel James "Scotty" Scott. "That's why I'm blessed to be at the Pentagon, where we definitely need a lot of laughter in our lives."

What do we need the Onion and the Daily Show for? Assclown Central does all the heavy lifting for them.

I wonder how many flak jackets the Army could buy with what it pays Colonel Scott.

Personally, I think there is far too much laughter in the White House and the Pentagon these days. What is missing is any sense that they take their jobs seriously.

Ugh.

MoDo

Since the advent of Times Selective, the opinion pieces from Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich, Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert have largely vanished from the blogosphere. (Great job, Pinch. Now the spotlight is squarely on the stellar job you have been doing with the news. How is that working out for you?)

But every once in a while, some brave soul mirrors something from The Shrill One, or from the Queen of Snark, and I get to remember the good old days. So it was nice to see MoDo get her licks in on Hangin' Sammy, as reproduced by topplebush.com.

Makes me nostagic for the days when logic and consistency counted for something.

Because we value individual rights

Ex-Gitmo chief takes military 5th on abuse

The former commander of the Guantanamo Bay detention center, who has been tied to the prisoner abuse scandal, is declining to answer questions in two courts-martial cases involving the use of dogs during interrogations.

Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller invoked the military's version of the Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate himself, a move that was defended Thursday by the military's top commander.

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Pentagon reporters that while he expects military leaders to do the right thing, that does not mean they should lose their constitutional rights.

Pace said officers should "tell the truth as they know it." He added, "We expect our leaders to lead by example. But we do not expect them to give up their individual rights as people."

Yes indeedy. Because defending individual rights is what Gitmo and Abu Ghraib and the military and King George are all about.

Army to begin officially astroturfing blogs

From William M. Arkin - washingtonpost.com via da Poorman:

Word comes from RL that the Army has hired PR firm Hass MS&L of Detroit to offer "exclusive editorial content" to blogs willing to run government propaganda.

"The Army believes that military blogs are a valuable medium for reaching out," account executive Charlie Kondek has written to a number of pro-military blogs in a January 6 Email.

"To that end, the Army plans to offer you and selected bloggers exclusive editorial content on a few issues you’re likely to be interested in," Kondek says. The Email has been mentioned in Black Five, One Hand Clapping and Fuzzilicious Thinking.

I guess we now know where the folks who until recently were propagandizing in Iraq all ended up.

Are they calling the operation Pajamas Media?

Good to see that Armstrong WIlliams has landed on his feet.

Thank you, thank you very much. I'll be here all week.

John has some numbers...

Following up on cellphonerecordgate, John at Americablog managed to obtain the phone records for some guy named, um, Wes Clark. Among the catches on the call records was a call between Clark and a reporter for the WaPo.

I dunno how quickly the pols will be to act on this, but I'll bet the press starts beating the drum double-time. That reporter's cell number is worse than useless now, and I'll bet his sources won't be eager to call him anytime soon...

Uh oh

I don't know how many more of those wonderful corners our military can bear to turn:

U.S. Military Predicts That Violence in Iraq Will Increase As Results From Election Are Released

The U.S. military predicted Thursday that violence would increase around Iraq as final results from last month's elections are released and political groups forge ahead with forming a new government.

Meanwhile, one of Iraq's top Sunni Arabs rejected a Shiite politician's declaration that there would be no substantive changes to the country's new constitution, calling that a divisive stance.

Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition force, said a series of "horrific attacks" that killed at least 500 people since the Dec. 15 elections were an indication that insurgents were trying to take the opportunity of the transition to a new government to destabilize the democratic process.

"As democracy advances in the form of election results and government formation, and as the military pressure continues, and the pressure generated by political progress increases, we expect more violence across Iraq," he said at a news briefing.
...
Alston said that as a new government starts coming together, "those committed to seeing democracy fail will see this time of transition as an opportunity to attack the innocent people of Iraq."

He said the recent attacks were part of an "attempt to discredit and derail the progress of the Iraqi people"
...
All the attacks, Alston said, had an aim "to incite fear and create doubt in the people of Iraq in an attempt to suffocate progress toward a better future for Iraq."

He added that "many innocent Iraqis were undeniably targeted by terrorists. The increase in attacks across Iraq this past week clearly indicates that al-Qaida and others terrorists still have the capability to surge."

Alston denied allegations by leading Shiite politicians that the United States had restricted the ability of Iraqi security forces to deal with insurgents.
...
Alston said al-Zarqawi's bloody tactics were alienating him from the homegrown insurgency.

"We have not seen sustained collaboration between Zarqawi's elements and other elements in Iraq. We have seen occasional marriages of convenience for limited objectives," Alston said. "But Zarqawi has fewer and fewer friends in Iraq."

Alston said that al-Zarqawi's targeting of civilians was turning "the people of Iraq against his cause."

Are these talking points printed on the toilet paper at the Pentagon or something? Seems so, because they don't even bother trying to vary the soundbites everytime they put this bullshit story out. What a sick fucking joke.

The Crying Game

Wolcott is among the many looking askance at Mrs. Alito's tearful exit from the hearing room yesterday. I join the pooh-pooh parade, though I think trying to hang the blame on Lindsay Graham is pyschologically unsound -- it is sometimes when a sympathetic friend offers a shoulder that we cry, not during the trauma itself.

The thing I have not seen anyone comment on is the fact that just before Mrs. Alito dashed, the young woman to her left leaned over and said something to her. Who is that woman? I can't find her name anywhere -- but I am quite sure she is the same woman I saw interviewed on Monday or Tuesday. She is part of the Adminstration's team of Alito handlers and spinmeisters. Which raises the question: what did she say? Did she tell the Missus to walk out? It sure looked like cause and effect from here.....

Update: Eagle-eyed reader Adam informs us that the apparent acting coach is Rachel Brand, from the Attorney General's office. Wonkette has the 411.

Update #2: Yes, commenter Jeff. Using the nice lady's emotions for political gain would indeed be a reprehensible thing.



Oh, and I hope that the "Organization for the Bettement of Student Life" starts with remedial spelling, which would make life "bette" for all of us. (OTOH, props for avoiding anonymous trolling.)

Borkalito

Glenn Greenwald nails it again about the Alito hearings: though his style is less confrontational (and thus less honest) than Bork's was, there is little doubt that his philosophy and likely positions once he gets to the Court will be indistinguishable from his.

1910, here we come.

The Republican Senator from Connecticut

Lieberman Has Big Lead, Especially With Republicans, Quinnipiac University Poll Finds; Connecticut Voters Give Bush, Iraq War Low Marks

Despite strong opposition to the war in Iraq and low approval ratings for President George W. Bush, Connecticut voters approve of U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman 62 - 24 percent and say 64 - 24 percent that he should be reelected, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

Republicans say give Democrat Lieberman another term 75 - 18 percent, while Democrats favor his reelection 59 - 29 percent and independent voters back him 61 - 24 percent, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds.
...
"Sen. Joseph Lieberman's overall approval rating has dropped 11 points in the last year, but a 62 percent approval is a good place for an incumbent to be as he starts his reelection year," said Quinnipiac University Poll Director Douglas Schwartz, Ph.D.

...

"While Sen. Lieberman has lost support among some Democrats, probably because of his strong support for the war in Iraq, he helps make up for it with support from Republicans," Dr. Schwartz added.
...
While only 41 percent of Connecticut voters agree with Lieberman's support for the war in Iraq, and 51 percent disagree, only 24 percent of voters disagree strongly enough to vote against the incumbent on just that issue.

Going to war in Iraq was the wrong thing to do, voters say 60 - 35 percent, the lowest Connecticut support for the war in Iraq measured by Quinnipiac University.

Connecticut voters disapprove 61 - 35 percent of the job President Bush is doing, his lowest approval in the state, and disapprove 64 - 32 percent of the way the President is handling the war in Iraq.

I understand that there are lotsa rock-ribbed Republicans in CT along with a bunch of publicly-liberal, well-monied types who may or may not go Blue in the privacy of the voting booth, but only one in four voters are persuaded that his complicity with an illegitimate war is reason enough to toss him out on his ass? What are these people thinking?

The only encouraging note is the response to a question buried in the data suggesting that Democrats--presumably even some that approve of Lieberman's performance--are open to trading up. His Asshattedness had a thin majority to the question "Would you like to see the Democrats nominate Joseph Lieberman for United States Senator or would you rather see the Democrats nominate someone else?" (52%, v. 39% against and 9% Don't Know/ Undecided). A viable alternative needs to step forward pretty quickly before the Return of the Joementum comes back to bite the Dems on the butt this time.

Laffey supports cuts in federal spending

Stephen P. Laffey yesterday unveiled a three-pronged approach to solving the federal government's budget ills, a plan he dubbed "The Road to Fiscal Sanity."

"We want to get the United States back on the right road so that more Americans have a chance at the American dream," the Cranston mayor and Republican candidate for U.S. Senate said in a news conference at his campaign headquarters.

Laffey assailed his opponent, Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee, for voting in favor of the $286.5-billion transportation bill last year, and President Bush for not vetoing it.

The bill, which contained scores of so-called pork projects, "may be a nice headline for incumbent senators at election time, but it's a lousy deal for Rhode Island taxpayers," Laffey said.

In response to the argument that a senator can't get support for projects in his own state unless he agrees he'll also support items such as Alaska's infamous "bridge to nowhere," which would connect the town of Ketchikan (population 8,000) to a nearby island with a population of 50, Laffey proposes separating each earmarked project for an individual vote, and requiring a two-thirds majority vote to attach an earmark.

Laffey is such a dedicated iconoclast that he occasionally trips across some good ideas just to stick his fingers in the eyes of "The Man" (usually Linc Chafee)--for example, he'll happily call "bullshit" on pet projects like Alaskan bridges, no matter who pushed the project, and a few weeks ago he came out in favor of tax credits for renewable sources of energy like solar and wind.

Regardless of the quality of his ideas, though, the man is plainly unsuited for the Senate. While I'm not thrilled with the excess of going-along-to-get-along that can characterize Congress at times, he comes across as a Mr. Smith with a God complex--someone who thinks the Senate will run just fine once he tells his colleagues what they're doing wrong. I can see it now--"Excuse me, Senator Stevens? I've given this a lot of thought, and I really think it's in everyone's best interests to make ANWR drilling contingent on a two-thirds majority." Please.

Fighting for the little guy

IRS Froze Refunds for Lower Income Taxpayers

Criminal investigators at the Internal Revenue Service froze more than 120,000 taxpayers' refunds last year on suspicion of fraud without notifying the taxpayers or giving them a chance to respond, the national taxpayer advocate said in a report released yesterday.

The advocate's office, which is part of the IRS, looked at a sample of taxpayers who complained that they never received their refunds. In two-thirds of those cases, there was no evidence of fraud. Many of the returns were filed by low-income workers, including some who claimed the earned-income tax credit, which sometimes entitles filers to a cash payment on top of their refunds.

The median adjusted gross income of taxpayers who were found to have committed "no fraud" was $13,330, and the median income of those who claimed the earned-income tax credit was $11,956. The median refund received was $3,685, which represented significant income for the taxpayers involved, said Taxpayer Advocate Nina E. Olson in her annual report to lawmakers on problem areas in tax administration.

Based on data from fiscal 2004, the Taxpayer Advocate Service estimated that as many as 1.6 million refunds have been frozen by the IRS's Criminal Investigation (CI) division over five years.

"At a minimum, this procedure constitutes an extraordinary violation of fundamental taxpayer rights and fairness. In our view, it may also constitute a violation of due process of law," said Olson of the IRS's freezing of refunds without giving taxpayers notice or the opportunity to defend themselves.

So to all the salt of the earth types who still think you'd like to have a beer with Dubya -- best hope he pays for your Budweiser, and try not to think about whose money he's using.

Ask the right *&!%% questions!

I watched/listened to a bunch of the Alito charade today. And I suspect that by the end of the process I will be so frustrated with the inability of the Democrats to get answers to the right questions that I will be ready to be fitted for a white jacket with extra-long sleeves.

Russ Feingold asked a fun question about who had been involved in prepping Alito for the hearings, but never followed up after Alito danced around it without answering. Here is a bit of advice, folks: be a bit more persistent. If the witness bobs and babbles, say "OK, but that wasn't my question. My question is ..." Repeat as needed.

Several Dems asked if he would agree that the Preznit is not above the law. He agreed, but the Senators seemed oblivious to the position now taken by the monarchists -- that the President can ignore statutory law and still follow their absurd, monarchist interpretation of Constitutional law. In other words, he (and they) define "the President is not above the law" as a tautology: in their view, it is impossible by definition for the President to break the law.

So, don't ask if the President is above the law: ask if the President is ever free to ignore or violate statutes passed by Congress. Ask for specific examples of ways in which a President would violate the the law as he defines it in the way he conducts a hypothetical war. If he answers a different question, ask again. If he dances and weaves, ask again. And keep asking until he friggin' answers.

A rare bit of candor

I was listening to the Alito hearings this afternoon and heard this from Lindsay Graham as a segue into his questioning and in apparent reference to Alito's convenient lapses of memory (not a perfect quote, but close):

"And I hope that if any of us come before you in the future and say we don't remember Abramoff, they you will also give us the benefit of the doubt."

He broke the place up. I give him double bonus points for honest gallows humor about his party's thievery, and the quid pro quo charade being run before our eyes.

More details here.

Not that it matters or anything, but...

A dKos contributor reported a few days ago on an interview with the Florida State prof who recently published a book about the 2000 debacle in that state. And guess what: Gore won Florida by 30,000 votes.

There were 175,000 votes overall that were so-called "spoiled ballots." About two-thirds of the spoiled ballots were over-votes; many or most of them would have been write-in over-votes, where people had punched and written in a candidate's name. And nobody looked at this, not even the Florida Supreme Court in the last decision it made requiring a statewide recount...The write-in over-votes have really not gotten much attention.
...
Those votes are not ambiguous. When you see Gore picked and then Gore written in, there's not a question in your mind who this person was voting for. When you go through those, they're unambiguous: Bush got some of those votes, but they were overwhelmingly for Gore. For example, in an analysis of the 2.7 million votes that had been cast in Florida's eight largest counties, The Washington Post found that Gore's name was punched on 46,000 of the over-vote ballots it, while Bush's name was marked on only 17,000.
...
One of the things I found that hadn't been reported anywhere is, if you look at where those votes occurred, they were in predominantly black precincts. And (when you look at) the history of black voting in Florida, these are people that have been disenfranchised, intimidated. In the history of the early 20th century, black votes would be thrown out on technicalities, like they would use an X instead of a check mark.

So you can understand why African Americans would be so careful, checking off Gore's name on the list of candidates and also writing Gore's name in the space for write-in votes. But because of the way the vote-counting machines work, this had the opposite effect: the machines threw out their ballots.

Bastards.

Heading for the exits

China Set To Reduce Exposure To Dollar

China has resolved to shift some of its foreign exchange reserves -- now in excess of $800 billion -- away from the U.S. dollar and into other world currencies in a move likely to push down the value of the greenback, a high-level state economist who advises the nation's economic policymakers said in an interview Monday.

As China's manufacturing industries flood the world with cheap goods, the Chinese central bank has invested roughly three-fourths of its growing foreign currency reserves in U.S. Treasury bills and other dollar-denominated assets. The new policy reflects China's fears that too much of its savings is tied up in the dollar, a currency widely expected to drop in value as the U.S. trade and fiscal deficits climb.

China now boasts the world's second-largest cache of foreign exchange -- behind only Japan -- and is on pace to see its reserves climb past $1 trillion later this year. Even a slight diminishing of the dollar as a percentage of those holdings could exert significant pressure on the U.S. currency, many economists assert.

In recent years, the value of the dollar has been buoyed by major purchases of U.S. Treasury bills by Japan, China and oil-exporting countries -- a flow of capital that has kept interests rates relatively low in the United States and allowed Americans to keep spending even as debts mount. Some economists have long warned that if foreigners lose their appetite for American debt, the dollar would fall, interest rates would rise and the housing boom could burst, sending real estate prices lower.

I saw this reported a few days ago, but never got around to blogging it.

There is a sense in which China and the U.S. are scorpions in a jar -- a huge percentage of China's GDP heads to the big PX, but we in effect have been buying it with a credit card issued by the merchant -- that is, by China. By moving their reserves into Euros and Yen, China is sending a strong "no confidence" message in their biggest customer. They know full well that dumping dollars could have the effect of tanking our economy, which will ripple back to hurt their own economy. So they must be pretty convinced that the end is near to be willing to endanger the open bar that has kept the party going for so long.

How's this for an analogy?

Mark Schmitt @ TPMCafe points out that the rush by Republicans to reform lobbying is a very convenient bit of misdirection:

That's the other side's frame. This is not a lobbying scandal. It's a betrayal-of-public-trust scandal. Lobbyists have no power, no influence, until a public servant gives them power. That's what DeLay and the K Street Project was all about. What they did was to set up a system by which lobbyists who proved their loyalty in various ways, such as taking DeLay and Ney on golf trips to Scotland, could be transformed from supplicants to full partners in government.

Abramoff did lots of terrible things and should go to jail, but never forget that every single criminal and unethical act of his was made possible by a public official. On his own, Abramoff had no power. At another time -- say, 1993 -- he would have been a joke.

But every time we say "lobbying reform," we reinforce the idea that it is only the lobbyist who is the wrongdoer.

Indeed. If you react to the purchase of Congressmen by going after the folks who buy them, why attack the original form of prostitution by arresting the hookers?

And why exactly isn't that newsworthy?

Robertson Out Of The Club?

One of the top stories on CBSNews.com today concerns Pat Robertson's comments about Ariel Sharon. Robertson suggested Friday "that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke was divine punishment for 'dividing God's land,'" as the story puts it. Robertson, who has been a figurehead of the evangelical movement since he powered onto the national scene as a presidential candidate in 1988, has garnered attention recently because of controversial comments, such as his suggestion that disaster may strike a small Pennsylvania town because residents "voted God out of your city" and his call for the United States to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Presently he controls a television network, the Christian Broadcasting Network, and hosts its flagship show, "The 700 Club."

...
I asked "Evening News" host Bob Schieffer for his thoughts on Robertson and whether he thought there were others who better represent evangelicals.

Schieffer, who considers himself a religious person, has covered Robertson and interviewed him several times in the past, and says "at the beginning he represented a particular point of view, and articulated it quite well." But he's reluctant to cover him now.

"I think we have to be very careful about quoting Robertson, because I'm not sure who he represents anymore," he said. "His comments have gone beyond interesting and into bizarre." The "Evening News," he points out, has not covered Robertson's recent comments.

So who does he think is a better representative of evangelicals? Jim Wallis, who Schieffer calls "very compelling." (It's worth noting that many consider Wallis to be left-leaning, unlike most evangelical leaders.)

I can understand that Schieffer and CBS might not use Robertson as their fundie go-to guy anymore. But I wasn't aware that they weren't covering his recent nuttiness, which is an interesting decision given his former standing in the network's eyes. I could be wrong, but if most other political figures who "represented a particular point of view" (and Robertson is a politcal figure) impressed the networks as being a little frayed at the edges, I'm pretty sure it would get some coverage. Just ask Howard Dean.

SCOTUS kabuki

The entracte for the final phase of the Alito confirmation process took place today. The Judiciary Committee blowhards wasted an entire day pontificating, rather than asking questions. Yet all of them asserted the importance of what has become a total charade. Senator Schumer got on the tube afterwards and claimed that how Alito answers question this week is the key to whether he will be confirmed.

Bullshit.

After Robert Bork was rejected for telling the truth, the standard for conservative Supreme Court nominees has been somewhere between soft-shoe obfuscation and full-bore bullshitting. Alito is going to face some tough questions, all of which have been telegraphed well in advance. And the chances that Alito will answer them honestly approach zero.

So he will be asked if he would vote to overturn Roe, and he will stonewall. He will be asked if he believes there are limits to executive power, and he will prevaricate. He will be asked about the agenda obvious in his writings, and he will claim he no longer has one. Because he is a made man, a monarchist, and a throwback to the Lochner era -- all of which would disqualify him if he said so -- he will put on face paint and ill-fitting raiments and pretend to be the judge most Americans want.

In short, for this elaborately scripted stage show, Alito will present himself as a judge of a species utterly unrecognizeable based on all that has come before, and all that will come after. He will tell stories that would send him to the same scrap heap where Harriet Meiers now lives if the religious right believed them. But the religious right knows that the Alito being paraded before the cameras is not the real Alito. They know that the bait-and-switch is how conservatives make it to the Show.

The whole confirmation process is based upon a fundamental premise: that the nominee will tell the truth. That's why they are sworn in. But that premise no longer holds. Lying and misleading are now the rule rather than the exception. And the disembowling of the Constitution will be the result.

Bolton v. World

When Bolton was nominated in March 2005, the Bush administration seemed invincible at home and abroad. Having won an election based on his handling of a war to which the UN had refused to grant its imprimatur, Bush started his second term with a self-proclaimed mandate to impose his aggressive doctrine to the far reaches of the globe. Flying high, Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney sent Bolton, a combative State Department official and longtime Cheney confidant, to do to the UN what their two previous ambassadors to Turtle Bay could not: make the world body a wholly owned subsidiary of Bush foreign policy.

That was the plan. But over the past 10 months, Bush’s poll numbers have plummeted while Iraq has taxed every ounce of American diplomatic and military resources. Bolton, meanwhile, never seems to have gotten the memo that times have changed; he remains a fire-breathing caricature of Bush’s first-term, “shoot first, do diplomacy later” outlook. And that approach is no longer sustainable. At least one comparatively saner Bush administration official knows this. And so the tension between Rice and Bolton has grown dramatically in several areas, most notably with regard to Syria: The Prospect has learned that Bolton was the source of an October leak to the British press that submarined sensitive negotiations Rice was overseeing with that country.

A good article by Mark Leon Goldberg in this month's The American Prospect about how Bolton is even worse than we feared. In just a few short months, he's demoralized the U.S. mission to the UN, alienated allies, given leverage to adversaries, and, just to prove that there's a little good in everyone, gotten Condi's panties into a bunch on a number of occasions. Worth a read.

Because we're on the side of truth and beauty

Yeah, yeah, every blogger and his hard-copy-bound gramma has already posted on Dean v. the Beard yesterday, but I just want to extend my thanks to the good doctor and encourage y'all to stop by C&L if you haven't seen it/read the transcript yet. It's worth it to see Wolfie looking all like a bearded schoolmarm when Dr. Dean insists on coloring outside the lines of conventional wisdom.

Let's hope Howard gets a piece of Joe Klein sometime soon.

That's why

Birds of a feather

The article is chock full of White House spin ("Tom who?), but TIME.com helpfully includes a wonderful picture to the contrary:



This one should be in heavy rotation from now until November.

Short DeLay fuse?

Booman Tribune collects a few of the shivs in Tom DeLay's back for easy reference. And there are so many -- maybe comparisons to Il Duce swinging on the meathook sixty years ago are more appropriate.

All of which has me thinking about the Newtonian mechanics here. Physics tells us that when you push against an object, the object pushes back. Will DeLay go quietly into that good night, or will there be an equal and opposite reaction to the trashing he is now taking?

Right now DeLay seems to be in a no man's land between singing star Abramoff, whose new best friends all have offices at the DOJ, and the former friends now trying to shove him into the trunk of the Republican Party's Cadillac. The Republican dons largely held their tongues after Scooter took the fall, and they seem to have found him a nice cushy think-tank couch to sleep on while they count on him to keep his yap shut. If they don't find a similar way to take care of DeLay, he could take all of Washington down with him.

And wouldn't that be a crying shame?

Turning back the clock, Ch. 23,947

Cannabis: Can it really drive you mad?

It is the world's oldest euphoric drug, long viewed by any liberal worth their salt as a victim of unfair drug laws. The notion that a spliff is a safer, sweeter means of relaxing than a pint has over the years spread way beyond its traditional student constituency to every corner of society. But two years after the Government listened to these voices and the law was relaxed, its safety is under question as never before. A report to be published within the next few weeks is expected to confirm what some psychiatrists have been warning for years. That cannabis, reputedly taken by Queen Victoria to banish her period pains, may be driving its users - many of them children - insane.

Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, indicated last week that following the report from the the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, he is planning a U-turn on David Blunkett's reclassification of cannabis in 2004. Clarke is expected to take cannabis from Class C back to Class B status, with tougher penalties for possession. But is cannabis really so dangerous?

...

Robin Murray, professor of psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, has sounded the loudest warnings about cannabis, but even he says: "It is obviously ridiculous to say everyone who smokes cannabis is going to become psychotic. Even in our studies of adolescents, 90 per cent of those who smoked cannabis did not go on to develop psychosis."

...

Professor Murray says that overall, results from a number of studies suggest that smoking cannabis raises risk of psychosis by two to four times - increasing the incidence from one in 100 to up to four in 100. In south London, where he works, the incidence of schizophrenia has doubled since 1964. Although this is partly accounted for by immigration - schizophrenia is higher among Afro-Caribbeans - the rate is also up within the white population.

...

Trevor Turner, consultant psychiatrist at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, and vice president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said there were three reasons why the case against cannabis remains to be proved: "First, there has been no increase in schizophrenia in this country despite a massive increase in cannabis smoking. Second, there is no evidence that cannabis-growing populations such as Jamaica have a higher incidence of psychosis. Third, you can show an association [between the drug and the illness] but you can't show a cause."

Patients with schizophrenia often have long-standing prior problems of depression, withdrawal, school refusal and behavioural difficulties before they are diagnosed.

Once the Home Secretary addresses the dangers of tobacco, alcohol and the typical British diet with proper vigor, this will be a fine issue for him to focus on.

Recovering civil liberties, one (backward) step at a time

Ruling affirms right to share feelings through mooning

This week, a suburban judge ruled that mooning is a cheeky yet legitimate form of communication -- but then, Chaucer and Mel Gibson taught us that long ago.
...
"He was showing his disapproval. ... It was intended to offend, in the sense of being critical," said attorney James Maxwell, speaking of his client, Raymond McNealy, 44, of Germantown, Md.

Last June, exasperated by a feud involving a homeowners association, McNealy felt moved to moon his neighbor Nanette Vonfeldt, a member of the association's board, who was accompanied by her 8-year-old daughter. McNealy was put on trial for indecent exposure and found guilty last fall. His misbegotten moon could have cost him three years in prison and a $1,000 fine. After an automatic appeal, the verdict was reversed.
...
As Circuit Court Judge John Debelius III said in the acquittal, the act is "disgusting" and "demeaning." McNealy may have experienced a different judicial outcome, added the judge, if he had been on trial for "being a jerk."

At a time when some say civil liberties are being restricted (the Patriot Act is silent on mooning), it may be comforting that the right to moon has been affirmed. But the implications are staggering.

When the masses come to petition the legislature for their favorite causes, will they dispense with the formalities and just drop their pants? Can citizens moon judges, police officers, the governor?

"I don't think that mooning the governor -- I'm not suggesting it's a nice thing to do -- would be any worse in terms of violation of criminal law than thumbing your nose," Maxwell said.

He considered his court victory a nice bit of legal reasoning: "With hard work, we cracked the case, no buts about it."

Not so fast, said Montgomery County State's Attorney Doug Gansler: "This is not a blanket permission slip to moon in Maryland."

Here the lawyers fall into an arcane back-and-forth. While Maxwell said the judge ruled that buttocks are never "private parts" to fit the crime of indecent exposure, Gansler said he'd prosecute again if an alleged mooner intended his act as a crime.

But who moons with criminal intent?

"If exposure of half of the buttock constituted indecent exposure, any woman wearing a thong at the beach at Ocean City would be guilty," Debelius said.

Bravo to the judge, for getting it right in dark times, and bravo to the author of the article for working a reference to Chaucer into an article on shining. Now if we can only regain our right to wear clothing.

And the state attorney's threat to prosecute future flashers based on intent does create a huge gray area. In addition to thongs at the beach, mentioned in the article, it completely overlooks the crucial issue of pressed ham in the workplace:

Remaindered

A revived No More Mister Nice Blog enjoys a bit of schadenfreude over the slow sales of the "Bush Family Cookbook."

No one should be surprised that a cookbook based on such exotic ingrediants moves slowly. I mean, how many of us have access to a supply of stuff like Colin Powell's testicles? And I'd love to cook up some of their famous intelligence puree', but I can't afford a Doug Feith Intelligence Proccessor.

What were they thinking?

A disturbance in the Force

When I lived in Orange County, California, the amount of energy required to push back against the pervasive and appalling me-first, fuck-the-poor conservatism was considerable. It was like a psychological equivalent of the physical burdens that make New York so challenging. Sure, the sun shines (through a patina of smog, to be sure) upon an endless sea of red tile roofs, but the sense of entitlement and lack of empathy seemed other-worldly to me. In the coastal areas where I lived, the last time a Democrat won at any level was, well, never.

The official stenographer to the landed gentry there was the Orange County Register. So imagine my surprise at this, from the access-restricted Register via The Smirking Chimp:

Lawyers for the estate of George Orwell have announced their intention to sue President Bush for plagiarism.

"We have long believed that this administration has stolen much of its policy from Mr. Orwell's writings," said attorney Will Bilyalotz. "Expressly, '1984' and 'Animal Farm.' In some cases, like the illegal surveillance of its own citizens, this administration has lifted the passages word for word from '1984.' Just changing the year doesn't protect the president from copyright laws."

White House spokesman Scott McClellan, while refusing to comment directly because of the "ongoing investigation," reminded reporters that the Patriot Act had given the president the power to suspend copyright laws and, anyway, "No one can own words."

Legal experts believe proving copyright infringement will not be easy. "Even if he is guilty, the president's propensity for adapting Mr. Orwell's '1984' newspeak is so effortless, as if he made up the words himself," said law professor Sue Yu Atdropohat. "Illegal borrowing of words or even fictional characters from published works has a high threshold of proof. The producers of the film 'Being There' have had their lawsuit against the Bush campaign tied up in court since 2000. After all, one man's outright theft of ideas is another man's malapropos."

"Personally, I think this so-called intelligentsia is just jealous," said Newt Gingrich. "Orwell could have only dreamed of great terms like 'defeatist' and 'evil-doer.'"

Bilyalotz differs. "The president's comments like, 'This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous. And having said that, all options are on the table,' is plain and simple, Mr. Orwell's 'doublethink' (the power to hold two completely contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously and accept both of them)."

The president has regularly pointed out that he will do whatever it takes to defeat terrorism, and that those who want to hamstring his ability to steal written material are only aiding the enemy. "9/11 has made us look at our plagiarism in a different way," said the president. "As long as I am president or king, the American people expect me to do everything in my power under our laws and Constitution to protect them and their civil liberties. And if that takes dissolving the Constitution, then so be it."

"It was Mr. Orwell in '1984' who first came up with 'Victory Mansions' and industrial-grade 'Victory Gin.' Now the president calls his book, a 'National Strategy for Victory in Iraq.' The president doesn't go 10 seconds without using the word 'victory.' One doesn't have to be a math whiz to put two and two together. Our greatest concern is not that the president uses Mr. Orwell's words," Bilyalotz said, "but that he's actually using '1984' as a governmental guidebook, and I'm afraid the president hasn't read how it ends."

I wouldn't blink at this coming from Maureen Dowd. But its appearance in the OC Register suggests there has been a fundament rift torn in the space-time continuum.

Read the whole thing.

I know how to fix this one...

Your phone records are for sale

The Chicago Police Department is warning officers their cell phone records are available to anyone -- for a price. Dozens of online services are selling lists of cell phone calls, raising security concerns among law enforcement and privacy experts.

Criminals can use such records to expose a government informant who regularly calls a law enforcement official.

Suspicious spouses can see if their husband or wife is calling a certain someone a bit too often.

And employers can check whether a worker is regularly calling a psychologist -- or a competing company.
...
To test the service, the FBI paid Locatecell.com $160 to buy the records for an agent's cell phone and received the list within three hours, the police bulletin said.

John @ Americablog tried it, and it works just as advertised.

How to we put a stop to this? Piece o' cake. Anybody have Karl Rove's cell number? Alberto Gonzales'? Condi's?

DeLay Abandons Bid to Remain House Leader

Tom DeLay on Saturday abandoned his bid to remain as House majority leader, clearing the way for leadership elections among Republicans eager to shed the taint of scandal.

In a letter to rank-and-file Republicans, DeLay said, "I have always acted in an ethical manner."

At the same time, "I cannot allow our adversaries to divide and distract our attention," the Texas Republican wrote.

Hey, sounds like a ringtone to me.

Sure looks like progress to me

As IEDs in Iraq become more effective, a new arms race is taking place. The Pentagon is now starting to deploy the "Cougar" from a company called Force Protection, Inc. Take a gander:


That smart, post-modern look just says "progress and democracy," doesn't it? And check out these impressive specs:

Weight: 37,000 pounds
Horsepower: 330

Those numbers should allow it to do a scorching 0-60 of approximately "never." The Cougar is essentially a slow-moving bunker. The only thing a vehicle that heavy can do is resist being hit. It will likely be doing a lot of that, since it will be unable to drive its way out of very many problems. To give a sense of scale, here it is compared to the Hummer you may have seen clogging up the freeway at the hands of some manhood-challenged wanker:



The Hummer is a mere 7000 pounds in civilian guise, perhaps 11,000 in up-armored trim. This new rolling Green Zone may protect its payload against IEDs, but in an urban context I predict it will be worse than useless. They will end up trapped in narrow alleys, crippled with blown-out tires, waiting for rescue by what -- another Cougar?

We are responding to the asymmetry of urban guerilla warfare by becoming less mobile.

I guess we measure progress by the measures needed to allow our troops to survive. At this rate, Iraq will soon be as safe as the moon.

Oh, and the design isn't new -- South Africa used very similar trucks to enforce Apartheid way back when. Some of the engineers who designed them now work for Force Protection, Inc., the U.S. contractor building these. How Werner von Braun-ish.

Seniors encounter problems with Medicare drug benefit

Many of Medicare's poorest and most sickly patients are going without their medications because of administrative glitches, misinformation and confusion surrounding the new Medicare prescription drug benefit.

Experts had warned that many of the 6.4 million low-income people who get benefits from Medicare and Medicaid could miss out on their life-sustaining medicines when their drug coverage shifted on Jan. 1 from Medicaid to private plans sponsored by Medicare. In interviews, advocates for the elderly as well as lawmakers and seniors themselves indicated that that's happening.

Some, such as Deborah King of New York, were placed automatically in new drug plans that don't cover their medications. Others were getting stuck with extra out-of-pocket fees because their new enrollment status couldn't be verified.

Medicare's contingency plan for patients who aren't enrolled in drug plans also is proving problematic. The agency wants pharmacists to give these customers short-term refills at no cost and bill Medicare later. But some pharmacists don't know about the agreement, and others are balking because they fear they won't be reimbursed.

"There's almost nothing that isn't going wrong," said Jeanne Finberg, an attorney for the National Senior Citizens Law Center in Oakland, Calif. "People are crying. They're calling their legislator's office in tears."

...
Earlier this week, Medicare's senior policy adviser Larry Kocot urged Medicare/Medicaid enrollees like King to contact their regional Medicare office when similar problems arise. Kocot said "bumps in the road" are inevitable, but he appealed for patience and added that he was "very, very pleased" with implementation of the new benefit so far.

I didn't see anyone calling this in the inevitable flood of "Predictions for 2006" articles last week, presumably because it's not much fun to predict a sure thing. At least Mr. Kocot is happy.

Our strange bedfellows

According to this online Poll (which certainly could have been freeped), 58% of the folks over at the John Birch Society want Shrub impeached. (via Buzzflash.)

A story that needs to be told

from BBC NEWS, of course -- the My Lai hero you never heard about.

Hugh Thompson Jnr, a former US military helicopter pilot who helped stop one of the most infamous massacres of the Vietnam War has died, aged 62.
Mr Thompson and his crew came upon US troops killing civilians at the village of My Lai on 16 March 1968.

He put his helicopter down between the soldiers and villagers, ordering his men to shoot their fellow Americans if they attacked the civilians.

"There was no way I could turn my back on them," he later said of the victims.

Mr Thompson, a warrant officer at the time, called in support from other US helicopters, and together they airlifted at least nine Vietnamese civilians - including a wounded boy - to safety.

He returned to headquarters, angrily telling his commanders what he had seen. They ordered soldiers in the area to stop shooting.

But Mr Thompson was shunned for years by fellow soldiers, received death threats, and was once told by a congressman that he was the only American who should be punished over My Lai.

The killing machine can be stopped. When good men stand up, call evil by its name, and say "no more," they eventually have an effect.

Thompson's story needs to told, especially now.

Like a damned fiddle

Zawahiri tells Bush to admit Iraq defeat

"Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri called on US President George W. Bush to 'admit defeat' in Iraq, saying any future US troop withdrawal would be a 'victory' for Islam, in a video broadcast by Al-Jazeera.

'Bush, you must admit that you have been defeated in Iraq and that you are being defeated in Afghanistan and that you will soon be defeated in Palestine, with the help and strength of God,' said Zawahiri, sitting with an assault rifle at his side.

'Today I congratulate and bless the Islamic nation for the victory of Islam in Iraq,' he said. 'You remember, my Muslim brothers, saying to you more than a year ago that the departure of Americans from Iraq was only a matter of time.'"

If Al Qaeda actually wanted to change the status quo -- the one in which they are kicking our ass, tying us up in knots, recruiting with ease, and finding lots of Iraqis who might not like them, but like us even less -- do you really think they would be stupid enough to flap their red capes in front of our bull-stupid Preznit? Of course not. They want us to stay, and they know that this kind of provocation is tailor-made to push Lord Numbnuts to go that way.

As I argued some time ago, we are the ones caught in the flypaper now, and Al Qaeda enjoys our predicament very much.

But if I were a teensy bit more of a conspiracy theory type, I would try to argue that Dubya dialed up his friend in Tora Bora and said, "O-Ben, good buddy, I'm havin' trouble keeping folks scaird enough lately. If them Cindy Sheehan-types force us to hightail it out of Iraq, we both lose. So howsabout you help me whip up a good 'ol shitstorm here, and we can keep this square dance goin' another coupla years?"

Attack of the 60-foot bedwetters

How are the rabid monarchist fearmongers reacting to the recent disclosures about illegal domestic spying? Glenn Greenwald ventured into the belly of the beast, and witnessed some ugly hissy fits.

Dean Ismay charges treason, and just to make sure it isn't interpreted as a mere rhetorical flourish:

When I say "treason" I don't mean it in an insulting or hyperbolic way. I mean in a literal way: we need to find these 21st century Julius Rosenbergs, these modern day reincarnations of Alger Hiss, put them on trial before a jury of their peers, with defense counsel. When they are found guilty, we should then hang them by the neck until the are dead, dead, dead.

No sympathy. No mercy. Am I angry? You bet I am. But not in an explosive way. Just in the same seething way I was angry on 9/11.

These people have endangered American lives and American security. They need to be found, tried, and executed.

Sounds like somebody needs a new nappy.

You go, Mrs. Limbaugh

A few minutes ago, Daran Kagan interrupted the wall-to-wall West Virginia miner health coverage to tell us about the latest in the Jose Padilla case. Only she pronounced his name -- twice -- to rhyme with gorilla.

Do you think her gaffe was a Rush-esque racist put-down, or that she really is that desperately clueless?

Here, Bullet

...is a collection of poems by Brian Turner--or, I should say, Sergeant T, who spent a little time in Iraq at the behest of George I. I missed the release publicity but caught a follow-up story on the radio, and bought the book. Powerful stuff.

But this is all an act of the imagination,
a means of dealing with the obscenity
of war, what loss there is, the inconsolable
grief, the fact that Thalia Fields is gone,
long gone, about as far from Mississippi
as she can get, 10,000 feet above Iraq
with a blanket draped over her body
and an exhausted surgeon in tears,
his bloodied hands on her chest, his head
sunk down, the nurse guiding him
to a nearby seat and holding him as he cries,
though no one hears it, because nothing can be heard
where pilots fly in black-out, the plane
like a shadow guiding the rain, here
in the droning engines of midnight.

--From AB Negative (The Surgeon's Poem)

Confirmation

New column up @ Raw Story, despite my AWOL muse.

A Lousy Day in D.C.

Doug Mills/ The New York Times

An impressive photo, except, of course, for President Stalin McDraftdodger inserting himself into it--the effect is sort of what you'd get if you photoshopped Lawrence Welk into A Great Day in Harlem.

Although judging from the Times report, a photo-op may have been all that Chimpy wanted to get out of the meeting:

But if it was a bipartisan consultation, as advertised by the White House, it was a brief one. Mr. Bush allowed 5 to 10 minutes this morning for interchange with the group - which included three veterans of another difficult war, the one in Vietnam: Robert S. McNamara, Melvin R. Laird and James R. Schlesinger. Then the entire group was herded the Oval Office for what he called a "family picture."

I guess listening to very smart people who know you're a messianic boob is hard work.

And it counts!

This Modern World

Robertson 'said Sharon being punished by God'

Via Rawstory:

Rev. Pat Robertson has claimed the deteriorating health of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is divine punishment for a soft stance on Israel. Sharon, who turns 78 next month, is currently believed to be in critical condition following a cerebral hemorrhage.

Robertson also pointed to the November 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin as further evidence that God is punishing leaders willing to divide Israel.

In related news, Rev. Robertson added that Mother Teresa's death at the age of 87 was God's punishment for living a hedonistic, self-centered existence.

We can only speculate who God was sending his message to in Texas. So many candidates to choose from.

N.Y. Governor's Speech Looks Beyond State

Gov. George Pataki, considering a possible run for president in 2008, used his final State of the State address Wednesday to push for tax cuts, business incentives and more use of renewable energy sources such as wind power and ethanol.

"Let's aim high, let's have the courage and foresight to envision the ideal that should shape our actions here in Albany," the lame-duck Republican governor said.
...

Pataki, who took office in 1995, is not seeking a fourth, four-year term this year. He is considering a bid for the White House in 2008, though he did not mention that in his address and told The Associated Press in an interview before the speech that it was not aimed at a national audience.

The address was peppered with Republican-friendly language but a veteran GOP strategist said it did little to raise Pataki's profile within the party.

"He's such an insignificant player on the national stage, a plodding speech praising JFK and discovering tax cuts won't do much to enhance his stature," said Nelson Warfield, who helped run Robert Dole's unsuccessful 1996 presidential campaign.

I can't imagine anyone going for Gov. Dynamo either after his Alfalfaesque appearance at the GOP convention last year--remember this?--


--but give him credit, at least he knows when he's worn out his welcome.

Big Brother reaches out

Next time some monarchist stooge repeats the nonsense about how Fearless Leader is only on the trail of Al Queda and similar Bad Men, remember this: the fuckers put the author of "Bush's Brain" on the no-fly list.

And remember the Niemöller poem.

Pretty soon you're talking real money

via TPMCafe: The Cost of The War:

A new study by two leading academic experts suggests that the costs of the Iraq war will be substantially higher than previously reckoned. In a paper presented to this week’s Allied Social Sciences Association annual meeting in Boston MA., Harvard budget expert Linda Bilmes and Columbia University Professor and Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz calculate that the war is likely to cost the United States a minimum of nearly one trillion dollars and potentially over $2 trillion.
...
“Shortly before the war, when Administration economist Larry Lindsey suggested that the costs might range between $100 and $200 billion, Administration spokesmen quickly distanced themselves from those numbers,” points out Professor Stiglitz. “But in retrospect, it appears that Lindsey’s numbers represented a gross underestimate of the actual costs.”

What's an order of magnitude among friends, eh?

Got a feeling I've been here before
Watching as you cross the killing floor
You know you'll have to pay it all
You'll pay today or pay tomorrow
You fasten up your beaded gown
Then you try to tie me down
Do you work it out one by one
Or played in combination
You throw out your gold teeth
Do you see how they roll

(Note cost of war counter added to right sidebar)

Greenwald nails it

Guest blogging on Hullabaloo, Glen G. rises to the challenge, and makes the hypocrisy of the monarchists inescapable.

What we really have from these paragons of Judicial Restraint trying to defend George Bush is everything except plain language and original intent – the very tools of construction which these "conservatives," when not concocting legal defenses for the President, claim that they believe in. That’s because the plain language of the law is crystal clear ("A person is guilty of an offense if he intentionally— (1) engages in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute") and leaves no doubt that George Bush broke it.

The clarity of this law is why the Administration is reduced to peddling legal theories which, no matter how they are sliced, amount to a claim that George Bush has the right to break the law. And to argue that he has that right, they are employing on George Bush's behalf the very legal theories which advocates of "judicial restraint" have spent the last two decades ridiculing and attacking.

Remember when hypocrisy was still a bad thing?

Cheney strongly defends US eavesdropping in speech to ACLU

Nah, just kidding. He spoke at the Heritage Foundation.

They must have some big honkin' honorarium. Big Dick just can't get enough of them, can he?

The new front in the real war

Not that I expect it to make much difference, but I sure hope somebody on the Judiciary Committee presses Alito on this travesty:

As a young Justice Department lawyer, Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. tried to help tip the balance of power between Congress and the White House a little more in favor of the executive branch.

In the 1980s, the Reagan administration, like other White Houses before and after, chafed at the reality that Congress's reach on the meaning of laws extends beyond the words of statutes passed on Capitol Hill. Judges may turn to the trail of statements lawmakers left behind in the Congressional Record when trying to glean the intent behind a law. The White House left no comparable record.

In a Feb. 5, 1986, draft memo, Alito, then deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel, outlined a strategy for changing that. It laid out a case for having the president routinely issue statements about the meaning of statutes when he signs them into law.
...
President Bush has been especially fond of them, issuing at least 108 in his first term, according to presidential scholar Phillip J. Cooper of Portland State University in Oregon. Many of Bush's statements rejected provisions in bills that the White House regarded as interfering with its powers in national security, intelligence policy and law enforcement, Cooper wrote recently in the academic journal Presidential Studies Quarterly.

The Bush administration "has very effectively expanded the scope and character of the signing statement not only to address specific provisions of legislation that the White House wishes to nullify, but also in an effort to significantly reposition and strengthen the powers of the presidency relative to the Congress," Cooper wrote in the September issue. "This tour d' force has been carried out in such a systematic and careful fashion that few in Congress, the media, or the scholarly community are aware that anything has happened at all."

I went to law school. I took a course specifically about analyzing statutory law. We talked at length about "legislative intent," but I don't recall spending any time discussing executive intent. (We did talk about the scope of administrative power to interpret in the writing of regulations that implement the law, but that power is unambiguously secondary to Congressional intent.) Laws are written and passed by Congress, and the President's decision tree when a bill hits his desk is binary: sign or veto. Beyond that, what he thinks the law means simply does not figure into its interpretation when somebody challenges the law in court.

That is how it has worked since Justice Marshall penned Marbury v. Madison more than 200 years ago: Congress makes 'em, courts interpret 'em (with some deference to congressional intent), and the executive enforces 'em. The NSA domestic spying scandal exposes the overthrow of the judiciary by this Administration. Bush's naked attempt to eviscerate the ban on torture is a takeover of the legislative function. Nobody -- not even Nixon -- had the stones to assert the right to usurp both of those powers to the executive until now.

What Bush wants, and Alito is happy to deliver, is an absolute monarchy -- exactly what the Founding Fathers fought hardest against. What these duplicitous evil men do sub rosa is completely at odds with the form of government Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton created to prevent such accumulation of power. And these traitors to the very causes they espouse are happy to write legal fiction on a truly astounding scale in order to get it.

This mindboggling sophistry is part of the real war now being fought: Caesar is marching on Rome, and the republic is under seige. If Alito is confirmed, the emperor-in-waiting will have a another monarchist dismantling the "least political branch" from within, and the coffin of our democracy will want for one less nail.

The third world-ing of New Orleans, part II

When we saw the devastation wrought by Katrina, and the suffering of the people there in the aftermath, many of us thought we must be seeing footage from some distant, corrupt and poverty-striken land, only to realize that it was in fact shot in our own corrupt and poverty-striken country. But in the same manner in which our government has docked soldiers killed in Iraq for the pay received before the military figured out they were dead, the Feds now seek to collect from Louisiana a fair chunk of the cost of FEMA's own incompetence.

AP: Louisiana gets its first FEMA bills, totaling $156 million

Louisiana's first bills from FEMA for its share of federal hurricane recovery efforts arrived over the holidays, and they were a doozy: $155.7 million, with a 30-day due date before interest starts accruing.

And more bills are expected to arrive in the coming months as federal officials tally their costs after hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

States are required to pick up part of the cost for certain types of disaster aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, including repairs to state infrastructure, efforts to minimize future damage from storms and some assistance for individuals.

Louisiana's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness received collection statements from FEMA on Dec. 29 for $139.7 million in aid for Hurricane Katrina and $16 million for Hurricane Rita.

State officials don't know how they're going to pay for the first bills or any others. They have been working with federal officials on possible payment plans, but a November estimate projected a daunting price tag that Louisiana ultimately could owe FEMA more than $3 billion.

Perhaps Louisiana could approach the IMF for a bridge loan. Then in a few years maybe Bono could convince the IMF to cancel their debt, as he as for so many other third world debtors.

I know why the caged bird tweets

AMERICAblog explains at least one reason why Mediamatters' "Misinformer of the Year" Chris "Tweety" Matthews has made such an ass of himself about the Abramoff scandal: he helped raise money for one of Happy Jack's sham charities.

Small world, ain't it?

Update: what Wolcott said.

Something else to scare the wee out of you

The Cunning Realist looks at the Fed's latest move (jacking up the money supply to the highest level in four years) and sees The Reckoning fast approaching.

Read it. And marvel at yet another of the 31 flavors of looming Armageddon.

Well of course Rove's spin wins

As Dr. Bloor just noted, the press coverage of the Abramoff plea has been rife with "Dems did it, too" spin, despite the obvious fact that Jack was a made man in the hard-core conservative wing of the Repug party, and all the big fish solidly tied thereto (Safavian, Ney, DeLay) have been from the party in power.

How could it be otherwise? The Rove machine is designed for exactly this kind of situation, and the clueless, rudderless media are unable to resist in the absence of a strong countervaling force. Assume for the moment that the Dems could, in the right context, mount such a campaign. (A ridiculous assumption, I know, but work with me here.) Imagine that you are Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid. Do you want to be the one hung out to dry for your assertion that only Republicans are dirty when it comes out that some Blue Dog idiot took $500 to swing a close vote? Do you really believe Karl wasn't smart enough to smear a bit of his feces on a few obligingly stupid Democrats in preparation for exactly this eventuality?

The answer, of course, is "hell, no." So it should come as no surprise that the Democrats have walked off the field, yet again. While I agree that the orange jumpsuits are overwhelmingly reserved for Republicans, I think Karl is right about the value of spin here -- the same rubes who seem to still believe that Saddam masterminded 9/11, that we found WMDs, etc. will happily believe that their favorite Bible-thumping redneck hypocrite of a Congressman is just doing a little of what all them evil librul Democrats do all the time.

The judges who will put a few of these crooks in jail are unlikely to be spinnable. The judges who elected those crooks, and will re-elect them if given the chance, would much rather be spun than have to question their own beliefs. Unfortunately, the spin matters.

Quelle Surprise

FDL, Atrios and a bunch of folks posted today on the shocking news that the Corpowhores Formerly Known as the Media are sticking close to Unca Karl's (baseless) talking points about the Abramoff scandal: Democrats too! Democrats too!

To which I say, Whatever.

Although it goes without saying that there can only be One True Fitz, it's a pretty sure bet that the federal prosecutors on this gig don't much care what Tweety, et al think is going on. At the end of the proceedings, they're going to have a bunch of asses in their briefcases, and the story that the convictions and pleas tell will be pretty much unspinnable. Let the games begin.

You're in the Army now

What's that, homey? You say you needed to join the military for financial reasons, but you figured you could make sure you would make it home to use that scholarship money they promised yuou by joining the Air Force instead of the Army? In the immortal words of a famous pseudo-Marine, "Surprise, surprise, surprise!"

U.S. airmen are increasingly on the ground in Iraq, driving in convoys and even working with detainees — a shift in the Air Force's historic mission that military officials call necessary to bolster the strapped Army.

The main aerial hub for the war in Iraq has 1,500 airmen doing convoy operations in Iraq and 1,000 working with detainees, training Iraqis and performing other activities not usually associated with the Air Force, said Col. Tim Hale, commander of the 386th Air Expeditionary Wing.

"Every one of us has learned that we are in a nontraditional state in our armed forces," he said, standing outside an auditorium at an air base in Kuwait.

The dangers of the new roles were highlighted when the expeditionary wing lost its first female member in the line of duty in Iraq. Airman 1st Class Elizabeth Jacobson, 21, was killed in a roadside bombing while providing convoy security in September near the U.S. detention center at Camp Bucca in southern Iraq.

"More and more Air Force are doing Army jobs," said Senior Master Sgt. Matt Rossoni, 46, of San Francisco. "It's nothing bad about the Army. They're just tapped out."
...
The Navy is seeing the same trend, using its fighter aircraft to escort convoys and protect oil infrastructure and sending sailors in boats to contact fishermen from Saudi Arabia and even Iran for tips on terror suspects.

Welcome to Rummyworld, where it just doesn't matter if you are a Private, an Airman or a Midshipman. You're all fungible fodder units, and once the folks who signed up for Army jobs get used up, well you just have to suck it up and get up close and personal with the world of IEDs, your expectations (and the recruiting promises that created them) be damned.

Exactly

Glenn Greenwald: What are Democrats so afraid of?

Greenwald has been consistently on-target in his discussions of the NSA scandal. In this post he castigates the confederacy of candy-asses that run the Democrats in Washington. And the remarkable point he makes is this: why is it easier to find Republicans (Bruce Fein, Bob Barr) who will come right out and say Bush broke the law than it is to find Dems who will?

An excellent and troubling question.

Strayhorn changes teams again

Texas GOP Comptroller Runs As Independent

Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn turned her back on the Republican Party and announced Monday she will run for governor as an independent.

The move allows Strayhorn to escape a potentially ugly primary battle against Gov. Rick Perry. The GOP primary is set for March 7.
...
"I am a Republican," she said. "But I know we must set partisan politics aside and do what's best for Texas. That is why I am running for governor as a Texas independent."

Robert Black, a campaign spokesman for Perry, said the party switch is an admission that Strayhorn could not win the GOP primary, and he called the move "transparent political opportunism."
...
Both Strayhorn and Perry are former Democrats who switched to the GOP in the 1980s as the party rose to political dominance.

One of Strayhorn's sons, Scott McClellan, is President Bush's press secretary, and another son, Dr. Mark McClellan, is administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Black may well be right, but no matter. This promises to be one butt-ugly contest that should be great fun to watch. If she can split the Republican vote and put a Democrat in the Gov's mansion, she'll almost be forgiven for giving birth to Lil' Scottie.

And I'll bet Scott had fun breaking the news to Andy Card. Looks like a steady diet of stand-ins will be declining to comment on ongoing investigations as Mr. Credibility uses up his leftover vacation days...

STFU, please

Listening to Tom Ashbrook's On Point show today on NPR, when one of his experts on the economic outlook for the coming year responded to a caller's concern that health care costs bust the family's and corporate America's budget. Said expert casually discouraged implementing something like the Canadian model here, because they hate their system. His evidence? He has relatives there who think it stinks.

Not all of those crazy Canadians agree. In fact, very few do.

And if you're interested in seeing how universal care might work in the U.S., register at JAMA and read this.

Chucklehead.

Pinkerton's mega-wankery

Columnist James Pinkerton is hard at work pushing absolute monarchy in his latest OpEd tome, You choose: Civil liberties or safety?

Here is the fantasy world he inhabits:

This will be remembered as the year in which mass surveillance became normal, even popular.

Revelations about the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping rocked the civil liberties establishment, but the country as a whole didn't seem upset. Instead, the American people, mindful of the possible danger that we face, seem happy enough that Uncle Sam is taking steps to keep up with the challenges created by new technology.

Never mind that polls (other than that ridiculous Rasmussen travesty) seem to indicate a very different story -- people are pissed. Never mind that the issue Pinkerton goes on (and on) about is a complete red herring, and that he resolutely avoids acknowledging the elephant in the room. The extent to which these quivering cowards are wiling to ignore the fact that their godhead willfully and knowingly violated a federal statute beggars belief.

And he enlists an interesting ally in his war against imaginary enemies:

Some say that these new government actions are taking us closer to "1984." But, in fact, the key year was 1651. That's when the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes published "The Leviathan," a hugely influential political science tome that laid the intellectual groundwork for a strong central government. Hobbes wrote that in a state of nature, without benefit of law and law enforcement, life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

Hobbes believed in strong government, but he was no totalitarian. Instead, he was reacting to the Wars of Religion that had raged across Europe for the previous century-and-a-half, in which Catholics and Protestants enthusiastically burned and butchered one another by the millions. In addition, Hobbes' own country had just been wracked by a decade-long civil war.

Clearly, a powerful state was needed - a regime that, as he put it, would possess a monopoly of force within the society. Would people lose some of their freedoms? Sure they would, and among the freedoms lost was the freedom to hack to death the deviationist next door.

But Pinkerton's reading of distant history is as flawed as his reading of current events. Hobbes is generally seen as the father of the political theory known as the "social contract," but it is utterly false that he "laid the intellectual groundwork for a strong central government." Europe was chockablock with monarchies in Hobbes' time, and they were generally plenty strong. What was new with Leviathan was the idea that the monarch's power came from the people.

It is true that Hobbes thought that civil society required an absolute ruler. But social conract theory did not stand still after Hobbes. Far more influential on our founding fathers was John Locke, who wrote fifty years later. And Locke rejected exactly this absolutist view. Locke talked at length about the limits of executive power, and the right of the people to overthrow tyrants:

Sec. 218. Why, in such a constitution as this, the dissolution of the government in these cases is to be imputed to the prince, is evident; because he, having the force, treasure and offices of the state to employ, and often persuading himself, or being flattered by others, that as supreme magistrate he is uncapable of controul; he alone is in a condition to make great advances toward such changes, under pretence of lawful authority, and has it in his hands to terrify or suppress opposers, as factious, seditious, and enemies to the government: whereas no other part of the legislative, or people, is capable by themselves to attempt any alteration of the legislative, without open and visible rebellion, apt enough to be taken notice of, which, when it prevails, produces effects very little different from foreign conquest. Besides, the prince in such a form of government, having the power of dissolving the other parts of the legislative, and thereby rendering them private persons, they can never in opposition to him, or without his concurrence, alter the legislative by a law, his conse power, neglects and abandons that charge, so that the laws already made can no longer be put in execution. This is demonstratively to reduce all to anarchy, and so effectually to dissolve the government: for laws not being made for themselves, but to be, by their execution, the bonds of the society, to keep every part of the body politic in its due place and function; when that totally ceases, the government visibly ceases, and the people become a confused multitude, without order or connexion. Where there is no longer the administration of justice, for the securing of men's rights, nor any remaining power within the community to direct the force, or provide for the necessities of the public, there certainly is no government left. Where the laws cannot be executed, it is all one as if there were no laws; and a government without laws is, I suppose, a mystery in politics, unconceivable to human capacity, and inconsistent with human society.

Or, in modern English:

When the executive power of a government devolves into tyranny, such as by dissolving the legislature and therefore denying the people the ability to make laws for their own preservation, then the resulting tyrant puts himself into a State of Nature, and specifically into a state of war with the people, and they then have the same right to self-defense as they had before making a compact to establish society in the first place. In other words, the justification of the authority of the executive component of government is the protection of the people’s property and well-being, so when such protection is no longer present, or when the king becomes a tyrant and acts against the interests of the people, they have a right, if not an outright obligation, to resist his authority. The social compact can be dissolved and the process to create political society begun anew.

Boatloads of evidence as to whether Jefferson and friends were believers in the the absolutism of Hobbes or the conditional view of Locke, may be found in places such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Or look here, here or here if you are the kind of monarchist who prefers to stay as far as possible from the definitive source material that would provide real answers to the questions you pretend to ask.

For folks who claim to be all about following the original intent of the framers, these wankers sure do have a hard time finding it.

Because I'm supposed to get my "bloggy ass" in gear

Because cat dander is what makes great blogs go.

Because she's much cuter than Dick and George gettin' down with the Village People (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Because she was extremely gracious about being shut out of the guestroom by Mr. and Mrs. Bluememe.

Google yer Wheat Thins

Can I possibly be ready for the old folks' home at forty-six? Sure feels like it.

Could they really be that deluded?

The US and Iran: Is Washington Planning a Military Strike? - SPIEGEL ONLINE

It's hardly news that US President George Bush refuses to rule out possible military action against Iran if Tehran continues to pursue its controversial nuclear ambitions. But in Germany, speculation is mounting that Washington is preparing to carry out air strikes against suspected Iranian nuclear sites perhaps even as soon as early 2006.

German diplomats began speaking of the prospect two years ago -- long before the Bush administration decided to give the European Union more time to convince Iran to abandon its ambitions, or at the very least put its civilian nuclear program under international controls. But the growing likelihood of the military option is back in the headlines in Germany thanks to a slew of stories that have run in the national media here over the holidays.

The article in Der Spiegel goes well beyond idle speculation, and is worth a close reading. The circumstantial evidence they bring together is deeply troubling.

As I discussed here months ago, even if it has no nukes, Iran is a far more difficult opponent than was/is Iraq. If we try to attack Iran, we are completely and utterly fucked: the Iranians have Russian-made anti-ship missiles that make Exocets look like spitballs. Our entire naval presence in the Persian Gulf could be sunk within minutes after we launched an attack on suspected nuke sites in Iran. The only way an attack against Iran does not end in an unambiguous and immediate military disaster for us is if we launch an all-out nuclear strike that kills most of the 68 million people in the country and renders a major oil producer uninhabitable for hundreds of years -- a prospect that Commander Codpiece may relish, but I harbor a small hope that our military will refuse to carry it out. If Bush tries to take us down that road, a military coup might well be our best option.

C'mon, Unca Dick.... sing it with me...

"Stay at the Y... M-CA! Y... M-CA!"

How many times?

A spokesman for embattled Rep. Tom DeLay on Saturday disputed any assertion that donations to a nonprofit group linked to the congressman influenced his legislative agenda.
Those donations, to a now-disbanded nonprofit group called U.S. Family Network, came from interests close to indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to a story in Saturday's Washington Post.

In an e-mail, DeLay spokesman Kevin Madden said the donations were not a factor in the congressional activities of the Texas Republican and former House majority leader.

"Mr. DeLay makes decisions and sets legislative priorities based on good policy and what is best for his constituents and the country. Any suggestion of outside influence is manipulative and absurd," Madden said. "Mr. DeLay has very firm beliefs and he fights very hard for them."

How many times are mainstream news folks going to print such utter nonsense? How many politicans are going to be given an unchallenged megaphone to offer up the stock "sure, I took their money, but they didn't actually get anything for it"? How often will the press regurgitate tripe like Republistooge Dana Rohrbacher's "Words like bribery are being used to describe things that happened every day in Washington and are not bribes"?

Yes, it goes on every day, and yes, it is bribery plain and simple. Money buying votes. Cash turned into contracts and tax breaks and all manner of corporate welfare on the cheap. It all stinks to high heaven, and I am tired of seeing the Fourth Estate transmit such wankery as if it could actually be true.

Singing the unsung hero

One of the most interesting developments in the last few days is the report that John Ashcroft's number two at Justice, James Comey, refused to OK the violation of FISA desired by the White House.

From the Times via Jane @FDL:

With Mr. Ashcroft recuperating from gall bladder surgery in March 2004, his deputy, James B. Comey, who was then acting as attorney general, was unwilling to give his certification to crucial aspects of the classified program, as required under the procedures set up by the White House, said the officials, who asked for anonymity because the program is classified and they are not authorized to discuss it publicly.

I am beginning to think we will need to make a spot for Mr. Comey in the pantheon where we will be lionizing Patrick Fitzgerald. We now know of three hugely important moves that Comey made, against what must have been horrific pressure to knuckle under to the Borg. In addition to refusing to participate in the defacto repeal of the Constitution in the FISA scandal, Comey made sure Fitz had the broadest possible mandate, and of course appointed Fitz in the first place. And when he left the DOJ, Comey made sure Fitz would report to someone who would not pull the plug. If we somehow save our republic from the thugs who now hold it hostage, it will be because of Comey and Fitz.

As Jane knows far better than most, this is playing out like a melodramatic Hollywood intrigue: a handful of brave, incorruptible men save the nation against overwhelming odds from cartoonish villians.

I remember thinking when I saw the footage of the second plane hitting the WTC that I would never have guessed that a real-world collision would create exactly the sort of massive fireball Hollywood loves to give us in its endless "All Blow'd Up" retreads. Score another for the fantasists of Hollywood, I guess -- real life is shaping up as a more improbabe story than anything Tinseltown has greenlighted since Frank Capra checked out.