Politics Archive

On Monday, Barack Obama gave a speech on Patriotism. I just finally finished reading it. It's impressive. I encourage anyone who comes to this site to read the text in full (the whole speech is below the fold). In our political discourse, patriotism has all too often been defined too narrowly to include blind support for the government. "My country, right or wrong", is the expression. Obama's rather elegant speech puts paid to that mindless line of thought. Hopefully the ideas that he lays forth in this speech will resonate in the body politic and put and end to the use of patriotism as a bludgeon with which pummel your political opponents. Probably won't, but it's a nice thought.

For a Democracy to be healthy, there needs to be a thriving, strong, and adversarial media that forces truth out from the dark corners of the government and keeps the people informed so they are capable of making educated decisions about who should be running the country (and, notably, who shouldn't). Our current media establishment has failed in this regard. You want proof? Go no further than that many people in this country still think Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11. If the media was doing it's job, any myths which the government tries to peddle would be scoffed at and debunked immediately. Instead they fester like open sores on the body politic and are perpetuated by a broken, corrupt system that instead of questioning the powerful, allows itself to be coddled by it.

If you want to keep up with latest stories of our corrupt media, the best place is Glenn Greenwald's Unclaimed Territory on Salon.com. Greenwald, a former constitutional law and civil rights lawyer, writes with rapier like precision about the failings of our media, the corruption and lawlessness of our government and the hypocrisy of our leaders. Most of the stories he covers are completely ignored by the mainstream media, so if you want to stay informed about these topics which the media talking heads want to ignore or wish away, Greenwald is the best place to start. I've linked to some of the more recent media critiques below the fold.

This is from an ad for a Mexican newspaper. More uses of the image of Bush from around the world here.

Love this. Since we know, sadly, that this election will not be decided on anything resembling issues, but instead on personality and themedia "Freak Show", McCain will have to be marginalized as too old and out of touch to be president. Unlike the smears propogated against Democratic candidates over the last 2 decades, these traits happen to true. Just ask Bill Maher.

Take Bill's Advice; Vote for Obama.

Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class boeuf bourguignon: If you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are not likely to do it very well.

— Alan Wolfe, Why Conservatives Can't Govern

Today, the Olympic Torch Relay for the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics has come to San Francisco. Right now, a few hundred yards from where I'm writing this, the torch is traveling down the Embarcadero.

During lunch I went down to justin Herman plaza which is where the relay iss scheduled to end and there's a sea of people, media trucks and protestors.

Look, I understand that many people in the world have problems with the way the Chinese operate. I do. I want Tibet to be free as much as anyone (outside of the Tibetans and Richard Gere, I suppose) and I think the Chinese human rights record and its treatment of the environment is abysmal.

However, this is the Olympics and the Olympic ideal is that the participants put aside their problems with each other to compete. It's about athletics and the spirit of competition, not politics. Certainly if the ancient Greeks could lay down their arms (see below) and have a cease fire so that athletes could travel to and from Olympia in safety, we can put aside our differencse so that the athletes who have worked so hard, dreaming of competing in the Olympics can go to Beijing.

George Bush loves to say current opinions about his administration don't matter. That history will be the true judge and we won't know until everyone here is dead whether his policies were a success or not, for example:

"As far as history goes and all of these quotes about people trying to guess what the history of the Bush administration is going to be, you know, I take great comfort in knowing that they don't know what they are talking about, because history takes a long time for us to reach."

— George W. Bush, Fox News Sunday, Feb 10, 2008

But not so fast. There's a new report about a poll by historians, 61% of whom rate the Bush presidency as the worst ever.

Frontline's most recent 2-part documentary on the Iraq War was yet another look into how George Bush got us into the fucking mess we are in the Middle East. The how of it well known, but it's interesting to see it again. Every time I watch one of these things (like No End in Sight), I just can't believe it. I can't believe how fucked the whole situation is. How imminently avoidable the whole situation was and how this fucking war is going to haunt us for generations, even more so than Vietnam because of the nature of the geopolitics of region.

I first heard about the memorial on NPR and it was just strange to hear a news story about something so close in a town I pass all the time. The jist of the storaty was not that the memorial was that, but that it was causing contoversy. I don't really see it. Maybe it's because I was against this war from the beginning, like most sensible people who saw it for what it was. But it seem to me that if you're against this war memorial, you'd have to be against every war memorial. You'd have to be against the WWII memorial on the National Mall, and the Viethnam memorial and the Korean War Memorial in the same place, and, well, all of Arlington National Cemetary which is essentially a massive war memorial. You get the point.

The controversy stems not from the memorial itself. It doesn't take ad absurdum logic to see that. The ontroversy is because of the poltical viewpoint of the people who erectred the memorial. See, it's ok to put u
p a memorial, but only if you support the war being memorialzied.

I have more photos of the memorial on Flickr

I finally saw Al Gore's movie this weekend. It was everything I expected. Depressing, disturbing and maddening. Clearly we have a problem, but it seems as though if we act collectively, we can change the disasterous course that we're currently headed down. And what I kept thinking about while I was watching the movies was there's going to be a point, sometime in the not too distant future, where it's going to be too late. We might act, try to change our behavior, but we have passed the tipping point and all efforts will be futile.

The other thing that I always think about when these stories come up, when there's a debate about the science or I hear our morornic president say that the jury is still out on climate science or how he won't sign the Kyoto Treaty because it will be bad for business is that we have a two choices, do something or nothing and there are two possibilities, that the climate is getting warmer, we're causing and it's a problem or the climate is not getting warmer, we're not causing it and there's no problem.

From here you can build a basic four box matrix where there's a problem and we do nothing or we do something and where's there's not a problem and we do nothing or we do something. Or if you look at it another way, we can do nothing and there's either a problem or no problem or we can do something and there's either a problem or no problem.

It seems to me that looking at this matrix, that the benefits of doing something far outweigh the costs of doing something or doing nothing. There is no benefit to doing nothing, even if bamboozlers like Senator Inhofe are right and there's no problem. Regardless of whether or not there is a problem, the efforts that we would make to reduce greenhouse gasses, reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and general become better stewards of the environment, would greatly improve our quality of living. And while there is no real debate amongst experts as the the cause of Global Warming, there is great debate about the cost or benefit to the economy of acting.

The head in the sand crowd would have you believe that placing environmental restrictions, improving fuel efficiency, and seeking out alternative sources of energy are going to be detrimental to economy. The truth is the exct opposite. Change is inevitable and there is going to be a new paradigm for living beyond petroleum and coal. Either we are going to stick to our guns or we're going to lead the way. New technologies are coming whether we like it or not. Are we going to be the innovators and bring new technology to the world or is the rest of the world going to innovate and bring us along kicking and screaming? That's the really the only question that matters at this point.

We have a huge opportunity as a country to lead the way, investing in new technology and change the way we live. We need leadership that recognizes this fact and challenges the country to find solutions and solve problems. Sadly, we lack that leadership. This brings the Inconvenient Truth story back to the messenger. Who out there thinks that the US and the world wouldn't be better off if the Supreme Court didn't install the current president in the White House and we'd had someone with the heart, the work ethic and the morality of someone like Al Gore, jr. leading this country and the world?

I'm going to write more about this amazing election in the days to come, but let me just say that this was a watershed election in so many ways and a breath of fresh air for people around the world who beleive in honest government and the rule of law. I'm still still stunned at the results. It's everything I could have hoped for an more.

One of my greatest concerns about the Bush administistation, and there are so many, was their ability to leave a legacy lasting far beyond the damage they inflicted on America, the world and the Constitution in their 8 long years in office, by nominating and confirming ideologue judges to the federal bench and the Supreme Court. They've already been able to foist Roberts and Alito on us for what will likely be 30 years of decisons made with the interests of corporations and not the American people in mind. In the next two years, Bush will have many more opportunities to appoint judges to the highest courts in the country and with Justice Stevens just this side of 90, might have the chance to replace another supreme in his final two years. Justice Stevens might yet retire or tragically pass away, but with the Democrats in control of the Senate and Pat Leahy the chairman of the Judciary Committee instead of Arlen Spector, it's a whole different story. We won't see another Alito or Roberts. It vwill have to be someone everyone can accept or the nomination won't see the floor of the Senate. It's the sort of thing that can make an athiest thank god for.

The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

- Donald Rumsfeld, Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

So long, Donald Rumsfeld. I think history will judge you very harshly. For whatever successes you might have had at transforming the military or the initial invasion of Iraq, they will be more than offset by your arrogance, obstinence and multiple failures including but not limited to letting Afghanistan slide into chaos, running roughshod over the State Deptartment, ignoring adivce from your generals, sending the troops into harm's way without proper protection, not recoginizing the America had too few troops in Iraq to create stability, allowing the looting after the fall of Baghdad and creating a sense a lawlessness that pervades to this day, not recognizing the insurgency, not recognizing the civil war, not leaving successful commanders in the field, hunkering down in the green zone, firing General Shinseki, firing Jay Garner, giving happy talk to the American people, deceiving Congress and on and.

Then again, as you know, you go to war with the Secretary of Defense you have. ... not the Secretary of Defense you might want or wish to have at a later time.

One thing America knows: we don't want you. I suppose that makes it a known known. Thanks so much for the memories. Good fucking riddence.

What an amazing night. Democrats have taken the House, have a majority of the governorships in the country and are poised to take the Senate. If Tester can hold on in Montana and Jim Webb survives the inevitable recounts and the media cirucs that Virginia is about to become, this will be an historic victory and a complete repudiation of everything the Bush administration stands for. Finally, the American people get it.

Time to get some sleep. More on this momentous election tomorrow.

One of the major issues of this election are the electronic voting machines and their susceptibility to fraud. It's a huge problem because it undermines the faith of the electorate in voting process. Why vote if your vote won't be counted or, worse, will be counted for someone or some thing you voted against? Hard to believe this is happening in 2006 in the so-called greatest Democracy on Earth, but the facts are plain for everyone to see.

I'm against touch screen voting machines. Far too dangerous. What I prefer is an optical scanning system that leaves no room for doubt and an incorruptible paper. There are hanging chads or other detritus of 19th century voting technology. Instead you have a a series of arrows for every election on the ballot. Each arrow is broken in the middle. Simply connect the arrow for the candidate you want by filling in the space between the head and the tail of the arrow. Clear as day.

This ballot is then fed into an optical scanner. The voter receives instant confirmation of a vote cast and counted. Even if there is a problem with the scanner, as there was at my voting place this morning, ballots can be held until the scanner is repaired or taken to another voting place to be scanned.

The time for each state to develop its own system is clearly over. We need a national standard and that standard should be optical scanners. End of story.

from Rolling Stone:

The Worst Congress Ever

How our national legislature has become a stable of thieves and perverts -- in five easy steps

There is very little that sums up the record of the U.S. Congress in the Bush years better than a half-mad boy-addict put in charge of a federal commission on child exploitation. After all, if a hairy-necked, raincoat-clad freak like Rep. Mark Foley can get himself named co-chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, one can only wonder: What the hell else is going on in the corridors of Capitol Hill these days?

These past six years were more than just the most shameful, corrupt and incompetent period in the history of the American legislative branch. These were the years when the U.S. parliament became a historical punch line, a political obscenity on par with the court of Nero or Caligula -- a stable of thieves and perverts who committed crimes rolling out of bed in the morning and did their very best to turn the mighty American empire into a debt-laden, despotic backwater, a Burkina Faso with cable.

To be sure, Congress has always been a kind of muddy ideological cemetery, a place where good ideas go to die in a maelstrom of bureaucratic hedging and rank favor-trading. Its whole history is one long love letter to sleaze, idiocy and pigheaded, glacial conservatism. That Congress exists mainly to misspend our money and snore its way through even the direst political crises is something we Americans understand instinctively. "There is no native criminal class except Congress," Mark Twain said -- a joke that still provokes a laugh of recognition a hundred years later.

But the 109th Congress is no mild departure from the norm, no slight deviation in an already-underwhelming history. No, this is nothing less than a historic shift in how our democracy is run. The Republicans who control this Congress are revolutionaries, and they have brought their revolutionary vision for the House and Senate quite unpleasantly to fruition. In the past six years they have castrated the political minority, abdicated their oversight responsibilities mandated by the Constitution, enacted a conscious policy of massive borrowing and unrestrained spending, and installed a host of semipermanent mechanisms for transferring legislative power to commercial interests. They aimed far lower than any other Congress has ever aimed, and they nailed their target.

"The 109th Congress is so bad that it makes you wonder if democracy is a failed experiment," says Jonathan Turley, a noted constitutional scholar and the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington Law School. "I think that if the Framers went to Capitol Hill today, it would shake their confidence in the system they created. Congress has become an exercise of raw power with no principles -- and in that environment corruption has flourished. The Republicans in Congress decided from the outset that their future would be inextricably tied to George Bush and his policies. It has become this sad session of members sitting down and drinking Kool-Aid delivered by Karl Rove. Congress became a mere extension of the White House."

[More here]. Now go out and vote. Please.

I haven't been writing much lately. I have been reading and observing and thinking and getting angry. I think that our country, and by extension the world, is at a very dangerous crossroads. The path we take is in large part going to be determined by what happens in tomorrow's election. There's a great deal at stake.

I want to be optimistic but it's very difficult. The simple power of Republican electioneering and Democratic incompetence makes that impossible. If you listen to the pundits, they'll tell you that Democrats are likely to pick up enough seats in the House to take over. They need 15. They'll likely get 20-30. The pundits will tell you that the Dems have an outside shot at capturing the Senate where they need 6 six seats, but pretty much have to run the table in Rhode Island, Montana, Missouri and Virginia. I don't know. I'm not so certain.

What I think is that Republican suppression efforts combined with their indefatigable get out the vote drive in an atmosphere poisoned by hundreds of millions of dollars spent on the most divisive negative advertising and pestering "robo-calls" could prove the pundits wrong, make a genius of Karl Rove (yet again), and undermine the pre-election polling suggesting a Democratic wave across the country. I hope I'm wrong.

It comes down to this. If the Democrats can take over one or both houses of Congress, the people will be able to hold this current administration, an administration that came into office promising humility after being installed into office by the Supreme Court, an administration that lied to launch a pre-emptive war against a country that did not threaten us, an administration that has flushed the Constitution down to the toilet, to account. That's all we can really hope for. The Republicans are doing everything to hold on dear life. There's nothing they fear more than having to answer to the American people for their actions. Nothing.

Pundits will tell you this election is a referendum on Iraq or on George Bush or the economy or whatever. But this really is a referendum on the intelligence of the American people. If we, collectively do not kick the Republicans out of office after Iraq, Katrina, Jack Abramoff, endless fear mongering, Mark Foley, Tom DeLay, Don Rumsfeld, signing statements, ending Habeas Corpus, Abu Ghraib, Bob Ney, Duke Cunningham, tax cuts for the rich, subsidies for oil companies making billions in profit, ignoring science, unilateralism, defense of marriage, denying global warming, ballooning deficits, abstinence only education, outed CIA agents, undermining the media and politicizing everything, then we are the fucking backward, retarded faith-based country that everyone outside our borders thinks we are and we deserve whatever our fate is to be. We deserve to be locked up without charges. We deserve to be hated, feared and derided. We deserve to be a debtor nation. We deserve to be addicted to oil. We deserve to be fucked.

The fact that more than half of Americans will not even bother to get their obese asses out of bed and go to the polls tomorrow and vote says much about this country. The fact that many of them will vote Republican despite what we and the world have been subjected to the last 6 years speaks even louder.

I hope I'm wrong. I hope my pessimisism is missplaced. I go to sleep tonight dreaming of defeat for Santorum, Burns, Allen, Talent, Corker, Kyl, Musgrave, and dozens of other self-righteous cocksuckers who currently run this country into the ground. Nothing will make me happier tomorrow. I will also dream of the dozens of Iraq War vets who returned home only to run as Democrats elected to the House. If anyone can set this country on the right path, is they.

North Korea detonated a nuke early this morning. The only real question now is who is responsible. I'm pretty sure it's either Bill Clinton or George Soros.

Why does it seem strange to me that seemingly the only member of the national media who is willing to take the Bush administration to task day in and day out is Keith Olbermann? Maybe it's because he used to be the local sports guy on Channel 5 in LA when I was in high school, but, fuck, at least someone is doing it. His show-ending commentaries are about the only "must see TV" on the air. His comments tonight about Gerorge Bush's mendacity over the last few days are particularly noteworthy. Here's Olbermann:

The president of the United States - unbowed, undeterred and unconnected to reality - has continued his extraordinary trek through our country rooting out the enemies of freedom: the Democrats.

Yesterday at a fundraiser for an Arizona congressman, Mr. Bush claimed, quote, "177 of the opposition party said, 'You know, we don't think we ought to be listening to the conversations of terrorists.'"

The hell they did.

One hundred seventy-seven Democrats opposed the president's seizure of another part of the Constitution.

Not even the White House press office could actually name a single Democrat who had ever said the government shouldn't be listening to the conversations of terrorists.

President Bush hears what he wants.

Tuesday, at another fundraiser in California, he had said, "Democrats take a law enforcement approach to terrorism. That means America will wait until we're attacked again before we respond."

Mr. Bush fabricated that, too.

And evidently he has begun to fancy himself as a mind reader.

"If you listen closely to some of the leaders of the Democratic Party," the president said at another fundraiser Monday in Nevada, "it sounds like they think the best way to protect the American people is - wait until we're attacked again."

The president doesn't just hear what he wants.

He hears things that only he can hear.

It defies belief that this president and his administration could continue to find new unexplored political gutters into which they could wallow.

Yet they do.

It is startling enough that such things could be said out loud by any president of this nation.

Rhetorically, it is about an inch short of Mr. Bush accusing Democratic leaders, Democrats, the majority of Americans who disagree with his policies of treason.

But it is the context that truly makes the head spin.

Just 25 days ago, on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, this same man spoke to this nation and insisted, "We must put aside our differences and work together to meet the test that history has given us."

Mr. Bush, this is a test you have already failed.

If your commitment to "put aside differences and work together" is replaced in the span of just three weeks by claiming your political opponents prefer to wait to see this country attacked again, and by spewing fabrications about what they've said, then the questions your critics need to be asking are no longer about your policies.

They are, instead, solemn and even terrible questions, about your fitness to fulfill the responsibilities of your office.

That's the crux of it, but it's worth reading the whole thing.

As I write this, the Senate is debating a bill that will give the president essentially carte blanche to designate any person in this world, resident aliens or foreigners, citizens of this country, you or me even as an "Enemy Combatant" and throw them into prison without trial, right of appeal or access to legal counsel. The same bill codifies the administration's ability to engage in activity, as the New York Times puts it, "normal people consider torture", and to interpret the Geneva Conventions as he sees fit.

I watched this morning on C-Span as senators voted down Senator Spector's amendment that would remove the elimination of Habeas Corpas, or the right of appeal, from the bill on what was more or less a party line vote. I had to leave for work before I could hear "debate" on other amendments, but I suspect that they will all be voted down and the bill will pass as written by the administration.

All of this is being done in our names, by our representatives with little or no debate on a time schedule demanded by political expedience. The Republicans, who fear losing control of one or both houses of Congress in the upcoming election, want to put the Democrats on record on voting against this bill. They seem to think voting against this bill will allow them to say that Democrats are soft on terrorism, that they don't want to give the administration all the powers necessary to prosecute this war. Democrats must believe this, because they are not putting up much of a fight. It's disgusting to me that we live in a political climate where the majority party thinks that Americans will support any bill or any person who votes for a bill that legitimizes torture. I thought we were a "Christian Nation". But that seems to be the case. Sadly, our fears have trumped our values.

If any bill should be fillibustered, it should be this one. This bill is unconstitional on its face. If it ever challenged in a federal court, it will be defeated. Everyone knows that. More than that this bill will do nothing to protect us from harm. It only protects the president and his cronies from litigation retroactively giving them cover for torture already administered and false imprisonment already committed. It will erode our moral authority to project our values and our system of government to the rest of the world. It will severely hinder our ability to win hearts and minds which is key to our ability to eliminate the threats we now face.

That said, maybe I'm missing the point. The president has said repeatedly that the terrorists hate us for "our freedoms". When we have no freedoms left there will be nothing left to hate and the trouble will be over. QED.

In this place where valor sleeps, we are reminded why America has always gone to war reluctantly, because we know the costs of war. We have seen those costs in the war on terror we fight today. These grounds are the final resting place for more than 270 men and women who have given their lives in freedom's cause since the attacks of September the 11th, 2001.

-- George Bush, Honors Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery, 29 May 2006

Reluctantly? Does he seriously think that anyone believes him when he says that? Yes, we releuctanly went into war with Iraq. Reluctantly. That's the word I'd use. We reluctanly invaded the country only after we'd exhausted all diplomatic channels. We relunctantly invaded because Iraq had links to al Qaeda. And we reluctanly invaded because Saddam was going to nuke us. And we reluctanly invaded because people of the Middle East deserve freedom, the Almighty's gift to everybody who lives in the world (unless your country isn't sitting on a pile). Reluctant. Indeed. Reluctant.

If you want to keep up to date with the all the legal machinations of the Bush Administration and the twisted logic of his one-eyed defenders, there is no better place than Glenn Greenwald's Unclaimed Territory. Glenn's insightful commentary rooted in his remarkably deep understanding of constitutional law and keen eye for hypocrisy makes for some of the best reading on the web.

His entries are not short, so you'll need to devote some amount of time to keep up, but it will be time well spent, because a few years from now when our rights and the democracy that we are so proud of and zealously try to "export" are appreciably eroded, you'll wonder how it happened. But only if you do not read Glenn religiously, like so many people who are worried that our country is headed in a radically wrong direction.

If you like what you read there and want to support him, pick up a copy of his recently published book, How Would A Patriot Act?. I ordered from Amazon. It just came. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but I will very shortly and let you know what I think.

The official team bus to be used by the United States during the World Cup will not bear a flag for security reasons.

The 32 official buses were presented Thursday in Frankfurt and the other 31 buses have large national flags of the their teams painted on rear sides.

German and U.S. security officials came to the conclusion to leave the flag off the U.S. team bus, an official of the German organizing committee said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the topic.

Get that? Of all 32 teams that made it to the World Cup Finals in Germany this year, only the United States has to move its players around in stealth and not proudly show off the American flag because of fear of a terrorist attack. This is what happens when you sqaunder the good will of world and everyone hates you. It's pathetic.

Most Americans couldn't give a shit about this. Only a tiny fraction even carry passports and have little or no interest on what goes on outside our borders. But as some ne who travels, who has traveled extensively in muslim countries around the world, I find this profoundly disturbing.

The whole stoy is below the fold.

Congress must keep the Internet free and open by voting for meaningful and enforceable Network Neutrality--the Internet's First Amendment.

If you interested in preserving Net Neutrality, sign the petition.

I've been saying this for a long time now offline, and it's finally time to say it online. This political season for the 2006 midterm elections is going to be ugliest we have ever seen in our lifetimes and possibly ever in this country. Why? There is just so much at stake. If either one of the two houses of Congress changes over from Republican to Democratic control we're going to see one investigation of the Bush Administration after another as the Dems wield their subpoena power to uncover all the crap that the White House has been trying to bury under a miasma of secrecy and privilege. With Bush's approval ratings at historical lows and sinking and the Republican Congress faring even worse in the eyes of the American public, all signs are pointing towards a shift in power that would spell disaster for BushCo. They are going to do everything they can to avoid what more and more is seeming like an inevitable conclusion. The Republicans are mired in scandal from Abramoff, to the NSA to Iraq, but the Democrats are not going to win simply by default as an alternative. They have to prepare themselves for millions upon millions of dollars spent on nothing but negative advertising. They have to be prepared to defend themselves against attack. They have to prepare to be swiftboated. And the American public has to prepare for all this too because, like I said, it's going to be ugly.

This is really unbelievable. It heard about it on the radio on the way home. What does this mean? What's the end result? Don't know. But one thing's for sure is that this is going to raise the impeachment debate to the national level. Pretty stunning development.

The Illinois General Assembly is about to rock the nation. Members of state legislatures are normally not considered as having the ability to decide issues with a massive impact to the nation as a whole. Representative Karen A. Yarbrough of Illinois' 7th District is about to shatter that perception forever. Representative Yarbrough stumbled on a little known and never utlitized rule of the US House of Representatives, Section 603 of Jefferson's Manual of the Rules of the United States House of Representatives, which allows federal impeachment proceedings to be initiated by joint resolution of a state legislature. From there, Illinois House Joint Resolution 125 (hereafter to be referred to as HJR0125) was born.

Detailing five specific charges against President Bush including one that is specified to be a felony, the complete text of HJR0125 is copied below at the end of this article. One of the interesting points is that one of the items, the one specified as a felony, that the NSA was directed by the President to spy on American citizens without warrant, is not in dispute. That fact should prove an interesting dilemma for a Republican controlled US House that clearly is not only loathe to initiate impeachment proceedings, but does not even want to thoroughly investigate any of the five items brought up by the Illinois Assembly as high crimes and/or misdemeanors. Should HJR0125 be passed by the Illinois General Assembly, the US House will be forced by House Rules to take up the issue of impeachment as a privileged bill, meaning it will take precedence over other House business.

The Illinois General Assembly joins a growing chorus of voices calling for censure or impeachment of President Bush including Democratic state committees in Vermont, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Nevada and North Carolina as well as the residents themselves of seven towns in Vermont, seventy Vermont state legislators and Congressman John Conyers. The call for impeachment is starting to grow well beyond what could be considered a fringe movement. An ABC News/Washington Post Poll Conducted April 6-9 showed that 33% of Americans currently support Impeaching President Bush, coincidentally, only a similar amount supported impeaching Nixon at the start of the Watergate investigation. If and when Illinois HJR0125 hits the capitol and the individual charges are publicly investigated, that number is likely to grow rapidly. Combined with the very real likelihood that Rove is about to be indicted in the LeakGate investigation, and Bush is in real trouble beyond his plummeting poll numbers. His cronies in the Republican dominated congress will probably save him from the embarassment of an impeachment conviction, for now, but his Presidency will be all but finished.

This piece in New Yorker about the secret investigation the Bush administration untook regarding the the decision-making within Saddam Hussein's dictatorship is really unbelievable. Here's a sample of the devastating threat that we went to war with to protect American from mushroom clouds:

The study portrays the Iraqi President as a fading adversary who felt boxed in by sanctions and political pressure. Saddam's former generals and civilian aides-such as his principal secretary, Lieutenant General Abed Hamid Mahmoud, and the former Iraqi foreign minister, Tariq Aziz-describe their old boss as a Lear-like figure, a confused despot in the enervating twilight of a ruthless career: unable to think straight, dependent upon his two lunatic and incompetent sons, and increasingly reliant on bluff and bluster to remain in power. Saddam lay awake at night worrying about knotty problems, and later issued memos based on the dreams he had when he drifted into sleep. As the invasion approached, he so feared a coup that he refused to allow his generals to prepare seriously for war. Instead, he endorsed a plan for the defense of Baghdad that essentially instructed his generals to talk with no one, think rousing thoughts, and await further orders. The generals knew that to question their leader or his sons was suicide, so they just saluted. "We're doing great!" the Minister of Defense wrote to his field commanders on April 6th, as Baghdad fell.

Good thing we didn't bankrupt the country trying to oust this guy from power, right?

It's rare that I find myself sgreeing even a little bit with the likes of Pat Buchanan, but in some respects in in the same camp with him when it comes to immigration, at least a little immigration.

Let me pregace this by saying that I think immigration is the backbone of this country. My dad's parents arrived here from Eastern Europe in the 30s and my mom's grandparents arrived from Soviet Union around the turn of the century. If it wasn't for immigration I, and likely anyone reading this wouldn't be here. Immigration from all corners of the world must continue. We need the smartest and most ambitious students to come to our universities. We need hard working people to pick our fruit and labor in our fields. And we need people to work across the country as nurses, doctors, and almost every high tech field you can imagine. But all these people need to and will come to this country legally.

The United States is a country of laws. When laws are broken and there's no enforcement, it undermines the rule of law. Illegal immigration unmines the rule of law and needs to be stopped. If that was the only reason, we would have or should have enough of an impetus to stop it. But it's also a huge security. We have no control over our border. We don't know who is coming across. And if we're really at war, it's an asymmetric war and the way anyone is going to attack the US is by coming here illegally across the Mexican border. It's just insane that 5 years on from 911 this issue is still plaguing us.

So what have got to do?

1) We need to shut down the border. Plain and simple. If we can't stop people from coming into our country, if we can't know who or what is coming across, what is the point of even having a border? What's the point?

2) We need to enforce laws against hiring illegal aliens. If we enforce the laws and the penalities are stiff, there will be no work to draw people to risk their lives to come here.

3) We need to do everything we can to improve the Mexican economy

4) We need to face the fact that we have something like 12 million illegal immigrants here now. These people have broken the law and they are criminals. They might have families here. They might be working essential jobs. They might be obeying the laws and paying taxes. But they are criminals. However, we're not going to round them up and send them home. It would cost billions and billions of dollars. We need to find a way to bring these people into society, but make them pay a price that a) they can live with and b) that we can live with.

5) We need to have an immigration policy that is not odds with the needs of the economy.

I don't claim to have all the answers. I don't even know if these 5 things will have any effect. But we have to do something because the status quo is patently unacceptable.

George W Bush's approval ratings have plumetted post State of the Union to a low of 39%. Basically that means that just about everyone in the country who isn't a wide eyed Cult of Personality devotee has serious questions about him. The NYT editorial page thinks it knows why:

Glenn Greenwald has another excellent post, this one entitled "Do Bush followers have a political ideology?" on understanding the George w. Bush Cult of Personality. He articulates many of the thoughts that I have had about Bush followers over the last 5 years, only with much more depth and insight that I will ever be able to muster.

Here's the central premise of his argument.

Now, in order to be considered a "liberal," only one thing is required - a failure to pledge blind loyalty to George W. Bush. The minute one criticizes him is the minute that one becomes a "liberal," regardless of the ground on which the criticism is based. And the more one criticizes him, by definition, the more "liberal" one is. Whether one is a "liberal" -- or, for that matter, a "conservative" -- is now no longer a function of one's actual political views, but is a function purely of one's personal loyalty to George Bush.

...

People who self-identify as "conservatives" and have always been considered to be conservatives become liberal heathens the moment they dissent, even on the most non-ideological grounds, from a Bush decree. That's because "conservatism" is now a term used to describe personal loyalty to the leader (just as "liberal" is used to describe disloyalty to that leader), and no longer refers to a set of beliefs about government.

That "conservatism" has come to mean "loyalty to George Bush" is particularly ironic given how truly un-conservative the Administration is. It is not only the obvious (though significant) explosion of deficit spending under this Administration - and that explosion has occurred far beyond military or 9/11-related spending and extends into almost all arenas of domestic programs as well. Far beyond that is the fact that the core, defining attributes of political conservatism could not be any more foreign to the world view of the Bush follower.

As much as any policy prescriptions, conservatism has always been based, more than anything else, on a fundamental distrust of the power of the federal government and a corresponding belief that that power ought to be as restrained as possible, particularly when it comes to its application by the Government to American citizens. It was that deeply rooted distrust that led to conservatives' vigorous advocacy of states' rights over centralized power in the federal government, accompanied by demands that the intrusion of the Federal Government in the lives of American citizens be minimized.

Is there anything more antithetical to that ethos than the rabid, power-hungry appetites of Bush followers? There is not an iota of distrust of the Federal Government among them. Quite the contrary. Whereas distrust of the government was quite recently a hallmark of conservatism, expressing distrust of George Bush and the expansive governmental powers he is pursuing subjects one to accusations of being a leftist, subversive loon.

Indeed, as many Bush followers themselves admit, the central belief of the Bush follower's "conservatism" is no longer one that ascribes to a limited federal government -- but is precisely that there ought to be no limits on the powers claimed by Bush precisely because we trust him, and we trust in him absolutely. He wants to protect us and do good. He is not our enemy but our protector. And there is no reason to entertain suspicions or distrust of him or his motives because he is Good.

The post has generated quite a fire storm of response and you can read Glenn's noteworthy follow-up here.

"Tim, we can do what we have to do to prevail in this conflict. Failure's not an option. And go back again and think about what's involved here. This is not just about Iraq or just about the difficulties we might encounter in any one part of the country in terms of restoring security and stability. This is about a continuing operation on the war on terror. And it's very, very important we get it right. If we're successful in Iraq, if we can stand up a good representative government in Iraq, that secures the region so that it never again becomes a threat to its neighbors or to the United States, so it's not pursuing weapons of mass destruction, so that it's not a safe haven for terrorists, now we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11. They understand what's at stake here. That's one of the reasons they're putting up as much of a struggle as they have, is because they know if we succeed here, that that's going to strike a major blow at their capabilities."

--Dick Cheney, Meet the Press, September 14h, 2003

The senator has got his facts wrong. I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11

--Dick Cheney, The Cheney-Edwards Vice Presidential Debate, October 5, 2004

The past not only changed, but changed continuously. What most afflicted him with the sense of nightmare was that he had never clearly understood why the huge imposture was undertaken. The immediate advantages of falsifying the past were obvious, but the ultimate motive was mysterious.

--George Orwell, 1984

'Well, what we now have that's developed since you and I last talked, Tim, of course, was that report that -- it's been pretty well confirmed that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack. Now, what the purpose of that was, what transpired between them, we simply don't know at this point, but that's clearly an avenue that we want to pursue.

--Dick Cheney, Meet the Press, December 9th, 2001

Borger: "Well, let's go to Mohamed Atta for a minute, because you mentioned him as well. You have said in the past that it was, quote, 'pretty well confirmed.' "

Cheney: "No, I never said that."

Borger: "Okay."

Cheney: "Never said that."

Borger: "I think that is . . . "

Cheney: "Absolutely not. What I said was the Czech intelligence service reported after 9/11 that Atta had been in Prague on April 9th of 2001, where he allegedly met with an Iraqi intelligence official. We have never been able to confirm that nor have we been able to knock it down."

--Dick Cheney, Talking to CNBC's Gloria Borger, June 17, 2004

I will tell you this: that after five years of war, there is a need to make sure that our troops are balanced properly, that threats are met with capability. And that's why we're transforming our military.

The things I look for are the following: morale, retention and recruitment. And retention's high, recruitment is meeting goals and people are feeling strong about the mission.

But I also recognize that we've got to make sure that our military is transformed. And that's what's taking place right now, we're transforming the United States Army so that capability and the threats are better aligned.

--George Bush, White House Press Conference, January 26st, 2006

It is no secret to Congress that the Army, which is fighting the brunt of the war in Iraq, is facing a severe personnel crisis. A Pentagon-commissioned report by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments leaked last week warned that prolonged deployments and recruiting problems were "breaking" the Army. A chapter of that report, titled "A Recruiting and Retention Crisis?" goes so far as to say that the grind of war on the Army -- rather than any political imperatives from Washington -- will accentuate the pace of military withdrawal from Iraq.

--Mark Benjamin, Out of Jail, into the Army, February 2nd, 2006

Winston sank his arms to his sides and slowly refilled his lungs with air. His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.

--George Orwell, 1984

Here at home, America also has a great opportunity: We will build the prosperity of our country by strengthening our economic leadership in the world.

Our economy is healthy and vigorous, and growing faster than other major industrialized nations. In the last two-and-a-half years, America has created 4.6 million new jobs -- more than Japan and the European Union combined. (Applause.) Even in the face of higher energy prices and natural disasters, the American people have turned in an economic performance that is the envy of the world.

--George Bush, State of the Union Address, January 31st, 2001

'Comrades!' cried an eager youthful voice. 'Attention, comrades! We have glorious news for you. We have won the battle for production! Returns now completed of the output of all classes of consumption goods show that the standard of living has risen by no less than 20 per cent over the past year. All over Oceania this morning there were irrepressible spontaneous demonstrations when workers marched out of factories and offices and paraded through the streets with banners voicing their gratitude to Big Brother for the new, happy life which his wise leadership has bestowed upon us. Here are some of the completed figures. Foodstuffs----'

The phrase 'our new, happy life' recurred several times. It had been a favourite of late with the Ministry of Plenty. Parsons, his attention caught by the trumpet call, sat listening with a sort of gaping solemnity, a sort of edified boredom. He could not follow the figures, but he was aware that they were in some way a cause for satisfaction. He had lugged out a huge and filthy pipe which was already half full of charred tobacco. With the tobacco ration at 100 grammes a week it was seldom possible to fill a pipe to the top. Winston was smoking a Victory Cigarette which he held carefully horizontal. The new ration did not start till tomorrow and he had only four cigarettes left. For the moment he had shut his ears to the remoter noises and was listening to the stuff that streamed out of the telescreen. It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be REDUCED to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it. Parsons swallowed it easily, with the stupidity of an animal. The eyeless creature at the other table swallowed it fanatically, passionately, with a furious desire to track down, denounce, and vaporize anyone who should suggest that last week the ration had been thirty grammes. Syme, too--in some more complex way, involving doublethink, Syme swallowed it. Was he, then, ALONE in the possession of a memory?

--George Orwell, 1984

On September 17, Bill Maher, host of ABC's Politically Incorrect, took issue with Bush's characterization of the hijackers as "cowards," saying that the label could more plausibly be applied to the U.S. military's long-range cruise missile attacks than to the hijackers' suicide missions. Maher, a hawk on military issues, intended his comment as a criticism of Bill Clinton's emphasis on air power over ground troops, but major advertisers, including Federal Express and Sears, dropped their sponsorship, and several ABC affiliate stations dropped Maher's show from their lineups (Washington Post, 9/28/01).

Commenting at an official news briefing, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer called Maher's remark "a terrible thing to say," adding, "There are reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do, and this is not a time for remarks like that; there never is." The White House's transcript of Fleischer's remarks mysteriously omitted the chilling phrase "watch what they say," in what White House officials later called a "transcription error" (New York Times, 9/28/01).

--FAIR, Patriotism & Censorship, 2001

There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live--did live, from habit that became instinct--in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

--George Orwell, 1984

The eureka moment is two reasons why the output-based standard should be adopted: common sense and accountability. Input-based standards don't encourage energy diversity; they don't create any incentives; they don't produce solar, hydro, nuclear. As a result, companies are actually penalized if they use the cleanest fuels, and it doesn't make sense. It's not substance; it's language. And when they heard the language that they wanted to hear and they were able to apply it to an idea that at least they were open to, you watched a marriage of good communication and good policy. That was the eureka moment: I watched people nod their heads; I watched them look to each other, and they were willing at this point to fight for this position. Now I'll be able to walk to this electricity company on Monday and be able to say to them, "Your policy makes sense, and here's the language to explain it."

And the amazing thing was, it explained a very complicated policy. That's the job of language; that's the job of English. This is not about politics; this is not about selling soap. This is taking very traditional, simple, clear-cut words of the English language and figuring out which words, which phrases to apply at which opportunities, which times.

--Frank Lunz, Repbulican Wordsmith, Frontline Interview

'Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we're not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak,' he added with a sort of mystical satisfaction. 'Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?'

--George Orwell, 1984

Russ Feingold, Senator from Wisconsin, took to the Senate floor and delivered an eloquent and harsh condemnation of the administration's illegal wiretapping activity at the NSA:

The President issued a call to spread freedom throughout the world, and then he admitted that he has deprived Americans of one of their most basic freedoms under the Fourth Amendment -- to be free from unjustified government intrusion.

The President was blunt. He said that he had authorized the NSA's domestic spying program, and he made a number of misleading arguments to defend himself. His words got rousing applause from Republicans, and even some Democrats.

The President was blunt, so I will be blunt: This program is breaking the law, and this President is breaking the law. Not only that, he is misleading the American people in his efforts to justify this program.

How is that worthy of applause? Since when do we celebrate our commander in chief for violating our most basic freedoms, and misleading the American people in the process? When did we start to stand up and cheer for breaking the law? In that moment at the State of the Union, I felt ashamed

Congress has lost its way if we don't hold this President accountable for his actions.

Powerful. Mostly ignored by the media. The whole speech is below the fold, if you care to read it.

It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution, in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositories, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern; some of them in our country and under our own eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary as to institute them. If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for, though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed. The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefitwhich the use can at any time yield.

--George Washington, Farewell "Address" to the Nation, September 19, 1796

Glenn Greewald, one of the most astute political bloggers out there, breaks down the NSA scandal for mass consumption:

Thus, to compel the Administration to face real consequences for their unlawful actions, Bush opponents must do something they virtually never do -- agree on a limited set of clear, focused and principled points, and then activate every instrument of public persuasion which exists, and invent new ones which do not exist, to convey the formulated argument in a coordinated fashion. If that is done, Americans can be convinced that the actions of the Administration and the theories of presidential power they have embraced are deceitful and dangerous, and that these actions constitute a profound assault on the political values on which America was founded and which has made our country both unique and great for the last 225 years.

The war over this scandal is not going to be won in the comfort of courtroom arguments as part of some litigation, nor is it going to be won because some Republican Senators decide - for the first time in five years - that their loyalty to the law or to the country outweighs their loyalty to George Bush. The Administration will be held accountable for its illegal conduct here if and only if Americans becomes convinced that the Administration's actions were wrongful and deserve punishment. And that, in turn, will happen only if Bush opponents formulate an effective and coordinated strategy for making this case directly to Americans, and then articulate those principles aggressively and passionately.

The whole post is lengthy, just shy of 3,000 words, but it is well worth your time to get a handle on why this matters. You should read it.

The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.

The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.

The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions.

The existence and locations of the facilities -- referred to as "black sites" in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents -- are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.

The CIA and the White House, citing national security concerns and the value of the program, have dissuaded Congress from demanding that the agency answer questions in open testimony about the conditions under which captives are held. Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long.

While the Defense Department has produced volumes of public reports and testimony about its detention practices and rules after the abuse scandals at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at Guantanamo Bay, the CIA has not even acknowledged the existence of its black sites. To do so, say officials familiar with the program, could open the U.S. government to legal challenges, particularly in foreign courts, and increase the risk of political condemnation at home and abroad.

But the revelations of widespread prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq by the U.S. military -- which operates under published rules and transparent oversight of Congress -- have increased concern among lawmakers, foreign governments and human rights groups about the opaque CIA system. Those concerns escalated last month, when Vice President Cheney and CIA Director Porter J. Goss asked Congress to exempt CIA employees from legislation already endorsed by 90 senators that would bar cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoner in U.S. custody.

Although the CIA will not acknowledge details of its system, intelligence officials defend the agency's approach, arguing that the successful defense of the country requires that the agency be empowered to hold and interrogate suspected terrorists for as long as necessary and without restrictions imposed by the U.S. legal system or even by the military tribunals established for prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.

--Washington Post, November 2, 2005

Some time after their release Winston had actually seen all three of them in the Chestnut Tree Cafe. He remembered the sort of terrified fascination with which he had watched them out of the corner of his eye. They were men far older than himself, relics of the ancient world, almost the last great figures left over from the heroic days of the Party. The glamour of the underground struggle and the civil war still faintly clung to them. He had the feeling, though already at that time facts and dates were growing blurry, that he had known their names years earlier than he had known that of Big Brother. But also they were outlaws, enemies, untouchables, doomed with absolute certainty to extinction within a year or two. No one who had once fallen into the hands of the Thought Police ever escaped in the end. They were corpses waiting to be sent back to the grave.

--George Orwell, 1984

Republican Who Oversees N.S.A. Calls for Wiretap Inquiry

By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, Feb. 7 - A House Republican whose subcommittee oversees the National Security Agency broke ranks with the White House on Tuesday and called for a full Congressional inquiry into the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping program.

The lawmaker, Representative Heather A. Wilson of New Mexico, chairwoman of the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence, said in an interview that she had "serious concerns" about the surveillance program. By withholding information about its operations from many lawmakers, she said, the administration has deepened her apprehension about whom the agency is monitoring and why.

Ms. Wilson, who was a National Security Council aide in the administration of President Bush's father, is the first Republican on either the House's Intelligence Committee or the Senate's to call for a full Congressional investigation into the program, in which the N.S.A. has been eavesdropping without warrants on the international communications of people inside the United States believed to have links with terrorists.

The congresswoman's discomfort with the operation appears to reflect deepening fissures among Republicans over the program's legal basis and political liabilities. Many Republicans have strongly backed President Bush's power to use every tool at his disposal to fight terrorism, but 4 of the 10 Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee voiced concerns about the program at a hearing where Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales testified on Monday.

Ms. Wilson is the latest of the increasingly large number of Republicans who have made the brave decision to put the Constitution and the rule of law ahead of party politics. It must have taken some serious balls to come out and says this, to demand a full and comprehensive inquiry, while Karl Rove is stalking the halls of Capitol Hill threatening to cut off campaign funding to any Republican Senator on the Judiciary Committee who votes against President Bush.

More here.

I just spent the last hour or so watching Mayor Jerry Sanders speak and take Q&A from the students at Hoover High School in San Diego. If you're interested, you can watch the video here:

http://www.studentsandleaders.org/sandiego/speakers/jerry_sanders.asp

A hopeful society has institutions of science and medicine that do not cut ethical corners, and that recognize the matchless value of every life. Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research: human cloning in all its forms, creating or implanting embryos for experiments, creating human-animal hybrids, and buying, selling, or patenting human embryos. Human life is a gift from our Creator -- and that gift should never be discarded, devalued or put up for sale.

--George Bush, State of the Union Address, January 31st, 2001

The puma was resting to heal that day; but Moreau, who was singularly solitary in his habits, did not join us. I talked with Montgomery to clear my ideas of the way in which the Beast Folk lived. In particular, I was urgent to know how these inhuman monsters were kept from falling upon Moreau and Montgomery and from rending one another. He explained to me that the comparative safety of Moreau and himself was due to the limited mental scope of these monsters. In spite of their increased intelligence and the tendency of their animal instincts to reawaken, they had certain fixed ideas implanted by Moreau in their minds, which absolutely bounded their imaginations. They were really hypnotised; had been told that certain things were impossible, and that certain things were not to be done, and these prohibitions were woven into the texture of their minds beyond any possibility of disobedience or dispute.

--H.G. Wells. The Island of Doctor Moreau

Everything you need to know to understand the background of the current NSA domestic wiretapping scanal courtesy of Shane Harris of Issues & Ideas and The Washington Note.

Our own generation is in a long war against a determined enemy -- a war that will be fought by Presidents of both parties, who will need steady bipartisan support from the Congress. And tonight I ask for yours. Together, let us protect our country, support the men and women who defend us, and lead this world toward freedom.

--George Bush, State of the Union Address, January 31st, 2001

Since about that time, war had been literally continuous, though strictly speaking it had not always been the same war. For several months during his childhood there had been confused street fighting in London itself, some of which he remembered vividly. But to trace out the history of the whole period, to say who was fighting whom at any given moment, would have been utterly impossible, since no written record, and no spoken word, ever made mention of any other alignment than the existing one. At this moment, for example, in 1984 (if it was 1984), Oceania was at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia. In no public or private utterance was it ever admitted that the three powers had at any time been grouped along different lines. Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.

The frightening thing, he reflected for the ten thousandth time as he forced his shoulders painfully backward (with hands on hips, they were gyrating their bodies from the waist, an exercise that was supposed to be good for the back muscles)--the frightening thing was that it might all be true. If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, IT NEVER HAPPENED--that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death?

The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed--if all records told the same tale--then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control', they called it: in Newspeak, 'doublethink'.

--George Orwell, 1984

It is said that prior to the attacks of September the 11th, our government failed to connect the dots of the conspiracy. We now know that two of the hijackers in the United States placed telephone calls to al Qaeda operatives overseas. But we did not know about their plans until it was too late. So to prevent another attack -- based on authority given to me by the Constitution and by statute -- I have authorized a terrorist surveillance program to aggressively pursue the international communications of suspected al Qaeda operatives and affiliates to and from America. Previous Presidents have used the same constitutional authority I have, and federal courts have approved the use of that authority. Appropriate members of Congress have been kept informed. The terrorist surveillance program has helped prevent terrorist attacks. It remains essential to the security of America. If there are people inside our country who are talking with al Qaeda, we want to know about it, because we will not sit back and wait to be hit again.

--George Bush, State of the Union Address, January 31st, 2001

Outside, even through the shut window-pane, the world looked cold. Down in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals, and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no colour in anything, except the posters that were plastered everywhere. The black-moustachio'd face gazed down from every commanding corner. There was one on the house-front immediately opposite. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said, while the dark eyes looked deep into Winston's own. Down at street level another poster, torn at one corner, flapped fitfully in the wind, alternately covering and uncovering the single word INGSOC. In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the police patrol, snooping into people's windows. The patrols did not matter, however. Only the Thought Police mattered.

--George Orwell, 1984

Joshua Micah Marshall of Talking Points Memo found a 2003 photo of Abramoff and Bush on the site of a company called Reflections Photography, among numerous archived Republican political photos. Marshall identified the URL where the pic was supposed to be, but found it gone. All the other pics were there, numbered in sequence, but the Bush-Abramoff photo was missing.

When Marshall called Reflections, the helpful woman answering the phone set out to find the photo for him, but to no avail. Because certain photos can only be obtained on a CD, Marshall asked if it was possible to get the Bush-Abramoff photo that way. Most obligingly, the woman pulled the CD, and then, according to Marshall, with a note o astonishment in her voice, said the photo of Bush and Abramoff "was deleted.'' Marshall asked why, and the woman said sometimes that happened because the White House wanted a certain photo removed from the file.

--The Village Voice, January 27th, 2006

As soon as Winston had dealt with each of the messages, he clipped his speakwritten corrections to the appropriate copy of 'The Times' and pushed them into the pneumatic tube. Then, with a movement which was as nearly as possible unconscious, he crumpled up the original message and any notes that he himself had made, and dropped them into the memory hole to be devoured by the flames.

What happened in the unseen labyrinth to which the pneumatic tubes led, he did not know in detail, but he did know in general terms. As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of 'The Times' had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead. This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs--to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance. Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place. The largest section of the Records Department, far larger than the one on which Winston worked, consisted simply of persons whose duty it was to track down and collect all copies of books, newspapers, and other documents which had been superseded and were due for destruction. A number of 'The Times' which might, because of changes in political alignment, or mistaken prophecies uttered by Big Brother, have been rewritten a dozen times still stood on the files bearing its original date, and no other copy existed to contradict it. Books, also, were recalled and rewritten again and again, and were invariably reissued without any admission that any alteration had been made. Even the written instructions which Winston received, and which he invariably got rid of as soon as he had dealt with them, never stated or implied that an act of forgery was to be committed: always the reference was to slips, errors, misprints, or misquotations which it was necessary to put right in the interests of accuracy.

--George Orwell, 1984

If we have any hope of turning the tide against the extreme direction this country is headed in and change paths in a more progressive and honest direciton , we need someone like Russ Feingold in the Oval Office.

I know it's a long way out and we have at another year (or more) before the presidential political season starts in earnest. And I know that senators traditionally get blown away by governors in national elections However, it seems likely at this point that we will have two senators battling for the White House from either side of the political spectrum. Feingold vs. Clinton on the Democratic side. And McCain vs. Allen on the Republican side. Of course there will be others thrown in the mix. Former Viriginia governor Mark Warner will probably throw his hat in the ring. Jeb Bush will probably do the same. Bill Frist will run, but he is so dogged by corruption and his foolish long distance diagnosis of Terri Schiavo that his candidacy will go nowhere. Bill Richardson, Al Gore, John Kerry and Wesley Clark could all possibly be in the race for the Democratic nomination. Guiiani and Pataki are possibilities for the Republican nod, but I doubt they will go anywhere.

I know there's a lot of support behind Hillary Clinton. She's going to sweep back into the Senate in November without much of a fight and will be able to raise tons of cash. But she is such a polarizing figure it's going to be very hard for people in the middle of the political spectrum to support her. Feingold on the other hand is relatively unknown, but he's most famous for the well intentioned McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform (wouldn't it be interesting to see those two run against each other? - we might have the most civil presidential campaign in the history of the country and be able to focus on clear policy differences rather than partisan mudslinging).

Feingold, one of the few faces of honest government, is exactly the perscription this country needs to get heathly after 8 years of cancer inflicted by the current administration. He has great credentials. He's on the Judiciary Committee, the Foreign Relations committee and the Senate Select Intelligence Commitee. He is articulate. He is intelligent. He is progressive. And he will make a great president.

Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.

--George W. Bush, President of the United States, April 20, 2004

One tool that has been especially important to law enforcement is called a roving wiretap. Roving wiretaps allow investigators to follow suspects who frequently change their means of communications. These wiretaps must be approved by a judge, and they have been used for years to catch drug dealers and other criminals. Yet, before the Patriot Act, agents investigating terrorists had to get a separate authorization for each phone they wanted to tap. That means terrorists could elude law enforcement by simply purchasing a new cell phone. The Patriot Act fixed the problem by allowing terrorism investigators to use the same wiretaps that were already being using against drug kingpins and mob bosses.

--George W. Bush, President of the United States, April 20, 2004

The Patriot Act helps us defeat our enemies while safeguarding civil liberties for all Americans. The judicial branch has a strong oversight role in the application of the Patriot Act. Law enforcement officers need a federal judge's permission to wiretap a foreign terrorist's phone, or to track his calls, or to search his property. Officers must meet strict standards to use any of the tools we're talking about. And they are fully consistent with the Constitution of the United States.

--George W. Bush, President of the United States, July 20, 2005:

Why don't we hear about this shit on in the mainstream media. Remember when Clinton was impeached? You couldn't watch a newscast without hearing his quote, "I did not have sex with that woman." Clearly the stakes here are far higher. We're talking about a President's pecker versus our civil liberties. No contest, right?

When you're talking about an essentially disconnected country, where 4 out of ten eligible voters don't even bother to show up for presidential elections, that gets the bulk of its news from the National Enquirer, US magazine or, if we're lucky, the Daily Show, is going to be far more interested, and the media is going to get substantially higher ratings, when following reportage about sex versus the erosion of civil liberties and the abuse of presidential power, which for most of America, might as well be reports of the movements of glaciers.

I even know from the response I get on this site, that people don't want to read about politics. Don't want to comment on it, don't want to discuss it, don't want to think about it. But if I post something funny about one of my cats, they are all over it. Unscientific, I know, but it suggests a larger apathy that afflicts this country and which conservatives who are anything but apathetic exploit in every day in every way.

Beyond that, the media in this country has been cowed so effectively by the conservatives who have been "working the refs" shouting "liberal bias" at the top of their lungs for 30 years to the point that people in the media are so afraid to be appear non-biased that they bend over backwards to appear objective, but in doing so, they give voice to absurdist arguments made by conservatives to throw sand in the eyes of the American people and obfuscate the truth. It makes it impossible to have a real debate about anything in this country.

The New York Times, perhaps making ameds for previous errors and lapses of judgement in covering the current administation seems to be pulling out all the stops to cover the NSA wiretapping, domesic survelliance scandal. This morning, there's an editorial online that does a fine job of ditilling out the bullshit you're hearing from the administration and right wing pundits and lays out the facts. It's not long. It's worth a few minutes of your time to understand the issues and how we got where we are.

Spies, Lies and Wiretaps

A bit over a week ago, President Bush and his men promised to provide the legal, constitutional and moral justifications for the sort of warrantless spying on Americans that has been illegal for nearly 30 years. Instead, we got the familiar mix of political spin, clumsy historical misinformation, contemptuous dismissals of civil liberties concerns, cynical attempts to paint dissents as anti-American and pro-terrorist, and a couple of big, dangerous lies.

The first was that the domestic spying program is carefully aimed only at people who are actively working with Al Qaeda, when actually it has violated the rights of countless innocent Americans. And the second was that the Bush team could have prevented the 9/11 attacks if only they had thought of eavesdropping without a warrant.

Sept. 11 could have been prevented. This is breathtakingly cynical. The nation's guardians did not miss the 9/11 plot because it takes a few hours to get a warrant to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mail messages. They missed the plot because they were not looking. The same officials who now say 9/11 could have been prevented said at the time that no one could possibly have foreseen the attacks. We keep hoping that Mr. Bush will finally lay down the bloody banner of 9/11, but Karl Rove, who emerged from hiding recently to talk about domestic spying, made it clear that will not happen — because the White House thinks it can make Democrats look as though they do not want to defend America. "President Bush believes if Al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they're calling and why," he told Republican officials. "Some important Democrats clearly disagree."

Mr. Rove knows perfectly well that no Democrat has ever said any such thing — and that nothing prevented American intelligence from listening to a call from Al Qaeda to the United States, or a call from the United States to Al Qaeda, before Sept. 11, 2001, or since. The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act simply required the government to obey the Constitution in doing so. And FISA was amended after 9/11 to make the job much easier.

Only bad guys are spied on. Bush officials have said the surveillance is tightly focused only on contacts between people in this country and Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Vice President Dick Cheney claimed it saved thousands of lives by preventing attacks. But reporting in this paper has shown that the National Security Agency swept up vast quantities of e-mail messages and telephone calls and used computer searches to generate thousands of leads. F.B.I. officials said virtually all of these led to dead ends or to innocent Americans. The biggest fish the administration has claimed so far has been a crackpot who wanted to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch — a case that F.B.I. officials said was not connected to the spying operation anyway.

The spying is legal. The secret program violates the law as currently written. It's that simple. In fact, FISA was enacted in 1978 to avoid just this sort of abuse. It said that the government could not spy on Americans by reading their mail (or now their e-mail) or listening to their telephone conversations without obtaining a warrant from a special court created for this purpose. The court has approved tens of thousands of warrants over the years and rejected a handful.

As amended after 9/11, the law says the government needs probable cause, the constitutional gold standard, to believe the subject of the surveillance works for a foreign power or a terrorist group, or is a lone-wolf terrorist. The attorney general can authorize electronic snooping on his own for 72 hours and seek a warrant later. But that was not good enough for Mr. Bush, who lowered the standard for spying on Americans from "probable cause" to "reasonable belief" and then cast aside the bedrock democratic principle of judicial review.

Just trust us. Mr. Bush made himself the judge of the proper balance between national security and Americans' rights, between the law and presidential power. He wants Americans to accept, on faith, that he is doing it right. But even if the United States had a government based on the good character of elected officials rather than law, Mr. Bush would not have earned that kind of trust. The domestic spying program is part of a well-established pattern: when Mr. Bush doesn't like the rules, he just changes them, as he has done for the detention and treatment of prisoners and has threatened to do in other areas, like the confirmation of his judicial nominees. He has consistently shown a lack of regard for privacy, civil liberties and judicial due process in claiming his sweeping powers. The founders of our country created the system of checks and balances to avert just this sort of imperial arrogance.

The rules needed to be changed. In 2002, a Republican senator — Mike DeWine of Ohio — introduced a bill that would have done just that, by lowering the standard for issuing a warrant from probable cause to "reasonable suspicion" for a "non-United States person." But the Justice Department opposed it, saying the change raised "both significant legal and practical issues" and may have been unconstitutional. Now, the president and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales are telling Americans that reasonable suspicion is a perfectly fine standard for spying on Americans as well as non-Americans — and they are the sole judges of what is reasonable.

So why oppose the DeWine bill? Perhaps because Mr. Bush had already secretly lowered the standard of proof — and dispensed with judges and warrants — for Americans and non-Americans alike, and did not want anyone to know.

War changes everything. Mr. Bush says Congress gave him the authority to do anything he wanted when it authorized the invasion of Afghanistan. There is simply nothing in the record to support this ridiculous argument.

The administration also says that the vote was the start of a war against terrorism and that the spying operation is what Mr. Cheney calls a "wartime measure." That just doesn't hold up. The Constitution does suggest expanded presidential powers in a time of war. But the men who wrote it had in mind wars with a beginning and an end. The war Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney keep trying to sell to Americans goes on forever and excuses everything.

Other presidents did it. Mr. Gonzales, who had the incredible bad taste to begin his defense of the spying operation by talking of those who plunged to their deaths from the flaming twin towers, claimed historic precedent for a president to authorize warrantless surveillance. He mentioned George Washington, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt. These precedents have no bearing on the current situation, and Mr. Gonzales's timeline conveniently ended with F.D.R., rather than including Richard Nixon, whose surveillance of antiwar groups and other political opponents inspired FISA in the first place. Like Mr. Nixon, Mr. Bush is waging an unpopular war, and his administration has abused its powers against antiwar groups and even those that are just anti-Republican.

If the Bush Administration can ignore laws, write statements that they intend to ignore other laws, and deny constitutional rights to American citizens, all in the name of national security under the guise of "The War on Terror" that will last for the remainder of our lifetimes, if not longer, are we not in a state of de facto martial law?

This still remains the big question about the NSA domestic, um, terrorist surveillance program run by the administration over the last 5 years. Why? I speculated on the reason a few weeks back and I would have suspected that the truth would have come out by now, but the story seems to boggled down in a political muddle.

The administration wants you to believe that they are only monitoring terrorists and that if you are against this program, say like a Democratic leader, you are unpatriotic or possibly a traitor.

But if we are only monitoring terrorists, why make an end run around the FISA court? Surely they would rubber stamp the wiretapping of any evenly closely questionable requests. They almost never turn down a request.

The answer the administration gives is that the needed to move fast, but this is an unsatisfactory answer because FISA allows for retroactive warrants as long as they are brought to the court within 24 hours.

Then there is this post on Unclaimed Territory from the amazing Glenn Greenwald:

So as of June, 2002 -- many months after the FISA bypass program was ordered -- the DoJ official who was responsible for overseeing the FISA warrant program was not aware (at least when he submitted this Statement) of any difficulties in obtaining warrants under the FISA "probable cause" standard, and for that reason, the Administration would not even support DeWine's amendment. If - as the Administration is now claiming - they had such significant difficulties obtaining the warrants they wanted for eavesdropping that they had to go outside of FISA, surely Baker - who was in charge of obtaining those warrants - would have been aware of them. And, if the Administration was really having the problems under FISA, they would have supported DeWine's Amendment. But they didn't.

You really should go over to Glenn's site and read the whole post, but the gist of it is that the administration's oft repeated justifications for their FISA bypass program are being undermined, not surprisingly, by facts.

Sadly, this story is too nuanced for the media to cover. The media has fled headlong into Bush's black and white, right or wrong, with me or against world, in which, in order to kowtow to an increasing ignorant audience, they distill stories like this to the lowest common denominator, allow comment from both sides to pass through the airwaves without being challenged, even when those comments are patently false and basically render themselves meaningless.

There are so many good reasons to dislike our current president, but this is one that absolutely drives me insane. It's the president's need to rephrase something that he has just stated and preface it with "in other words" as if no one could possibly understand his hifalutin' rhetoric and he needs to dumb it down for the masses like you and me to digest. I hear it when he gives speeches. I see it when I read the damn transcripts. It infuriates me.

Here's the lastest expample:

"First, I made the decision to do the following things because there's an enemy that still wants to harm the American people. What I'm talking about is the intercept of certain communications emanating between somebody inside the United States and outside the United States; and one of the numbers would be reasonably suspected to be an al Qaeda link or affiliate. In other words, we have ways to determine whether or not someone can be an al Qaeda affiliate or al Qaeda. And if they're making a phone call in the United States, it seems like to me we want to know why.

Anyone else bothered by this nonsense? Here are a few more gems:

Look, there's a series of things that cause the - like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate - the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those - if that growth is affected, it will help on the red."
Explaining his plan to save Social Security, Tampa, FL, Feb. 4, 2005

"A couple of things that are very important for you to understand about the Patriot Act. First of all, any action that takes place by law enforcement requires a court order. In other words, the government can't move on wiretaps or roving wiretaps without getting a court order," he said. "What the Patriot Act said is let's give our law enforcement the tools necessary, without abridging the Constitution of the United States, the tools necessary to defend America."
Explaining the requirements for warrants, Fond Du Lac, WI, July 14, 2004

There are countless other examples on the Internets.

It iis a whole different animal when this rhetorical device is used by, say, The Rude Pundit in his post, George W. Bush, Proud Masturbator For Freedom:

"This is a -- I repeat to you, even though you hear words, 'domestic spying,' these are not phone calls within the United States. It's a phone call of an al Qaeda, known al Qaeda suspect, making a phone call into the United States. I'm mindful of your civil liberties, and so I had all kinds of lawyers review the process. We briefed members of the United States Congress, one of whom was Senator Pat Roberts, about this program. You know, it's amazing, when people say to me, well, he was just breaking the law -- if I wanted to break the law, why was I briefing Congress?"

In other words, he's gonna jack off as much as he wants, no matter how many sores or calluses end up on his dick, no matter how much it interferes with the functioning of his daily life. Motherfucker, the President of the United States says spyin' is necessary and no fuckin' Constitution is gonna tell him otherwise: "Congress gave me the authority to use necessary force to protect the American people, but it didn't prescribe the tactics. It's an -- you've got the power to protect us, but we're not going to tell you how. And one of the ways to protect the American people is to understand the intentions of the enemy. I told you it's a different kind of war with a different kind of enemy. If they're making phone calls into the United States, we need to know why -- to protect you."

Which is not unlike saying that if your parents give you permission to go out for the night and the keys to the car, and you snort coke off a she-male hooker's tits while drivin' and the car plunges into the neighbor's pool, taking out the hedges, the garden gnomes, and the neighbor's schnauzer, as well as causing the she-male hooker to need stitches in her tits 'cause you bit 'em when the car leaped off the road, you shouldn't be punished because your parents didn't tell you not to snort coke off a she-male hooker's tits while drivin'.

See what I mean?

The Nation is featuring an article by former Congreswoman Elizabeth Holtzman who layed a key role in House impeachment proceedings against President Richard Nixon entitled The Impeachment of George W. Bush.

Like many others, I have been deeply troubled by Bush's breathtaking scorn for our international treaty obligations under the United Nations Charter and the Geneva Conventions. I have also been disturbed by the torture scandals and the violations of US criminal laws at the highest levels of our government they may entail, something I have written about in these pages [see Holtzman, "Torture and Accountability," July 18/25, 2005]. These concerns have been compounded by growing evidence that the President deliberately misled the country into the war in Iraq. But it wasn't until the most recent revelations that President Bush directed the wiretapping of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Americans, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)--and argued that, as Commander in Chief, he had the right in the interests of national security to override our country's laws--that I felt the same sinking feeling in my stomach as I did during Watergate.

As a matter of constitutional law, these and other misdeeds constitute grounds for the impeachment of President Bush. A President, any President, who maintains that he is above the law--and repeatedly violates the law--thereby commits high crimes and misdemeanors, the constitutional standard for impeachment and removal from office. A high crime or misdemeanor is an archaic term that means a serious abuse of power, whether or not it is also a crime, that endangers our constitutional system of government.

The framers of our Constitution feared executive power run amok and provided the remedy of impeachment to protect against it. While impeachment is a last resort, and must never be lightly undertaken (a principle ignored during the proceedings against President Bill Clinton), neither can Congress shirk its responsibility to use that tool to safeguard our democracy. No President can be permitted to commit high crimes and misdemeanors with impunity.

High crimes and misdemeanors? Clearly. Impeachment? Probably not. Discuss?

This is from the ABC News website:

NSA Whistleblower Alleges Illegal Spying

Former Employee Admits to Being a New York Times Source By BRIAN ROSS

Jan 10, 2006 — - Russell Tice, a longtime insider at the National Security Agency, is now a whistleblower the agency would like to keep quiet.

For 20 years, Tice worked in the shadows as he helped the United States spy on other people's conversations around the world.

"I specialized in what's called special access programs," Tice said of his job. "We called them 'black world' programs and operations."

But now, Tice tells ABC News that some of those secret "black world" operations run by the NSA were operated in ways that he believes violated the law. He is prepared to tell Congress all he knows about the alleged wrongdoing in these programs run by the Defense Department and the National Security Agency in the post-9/11 efforts to go after terrorists.

"The mentality was we need to get these guys, and we're going to do whatever it takes to get them," he said.

Tracking Calls

Tice says the technology exists to track and sort through every domestic and international phone call as they are switched through centers, such as one in New York, and to search for key words or phrases that a terrorist might use.

"If you picked the word 'jihad' out of a conversation," Tice said, "the technology exists that you focus in on that conversation, and you pull it out of the system for processing."

According to Tice, intelligence analysts use the information to develop graphs that resemble spiderwebs linking one suspect's phone number to hundreds or even thousands more.

Tice Admits Being a New York Times Source

President Bush has admitted that he gave orders that allowed the NSA to eavesdrop on a small number of Americans without the usual requisite warrants.

But Tice disagrees. He says the number of Americans subject to eavesdropping by the NSA could be in the millions if the full range of secret NSA programs is used.

"That would mean for most Americans that if they conducted, or you know, placed an overseas communication, more than likely they were sucked into that vacuum," Tice said.

The same day The New York Times broke the story of the NSA eavesdropping without warrants, Tice surfaced as a whistleblower in the agency. He told ABC News that he was a source for the Times' reporters. But Tice maintains that his conscience is clear.

"As far as I'm concerned, as long as I don't say anything that's classified, I'm not worried," he said. "We need to clean up the intelligence community. We've had abuses, and they need to be addressed."

The NSA revoked Tice's security clearance in May of last year based on what it called psychological concerns and later dismissed him. Tice calls that bunk and says that's the way the NSA deals with troublemakers and whistleblowers. Today the NSA said it had "no information to provide."

Breathtaking. More about this here.

Back in October, before the 2004 election, I wrote about what I thought was the most important issues of the campaign, one that was being ignored, one which should have had more prominence. Here what I wrote:

We've got a serious problem coming up in the next 4 years. Many members of our aging Supreme Court could retire. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, 80, has more than hinted at his desire to leave jurisprudence prudence behind and hit links. Justice Stevens is 84. O'Connor is 74. Ginsberg, a cancer survivor, is 71. All but one, Clarence Thomas is over 65.

Now George W Bush has already said that his nominees to the court will be in the mould of Scalia and Thomas, strict constructionalist and arch-conservative. Replacing Rehnquist with another conservative will have little or no affect on the many 5-4 decisions that the court has brought down in recent years. But in replacing progressives Stevens and Ginsburg and moderate O'Conner, Bush could swing the balance of the court to the right in a way that will affect decisions for years to come and put in jeopardy cases like Roe v. Wade, amongst others.

We're seeing this exact scenario played out in the Judiciary Committee as senators grill Judge Samuel Alito over his qualifications for the Supreme Court. Typically opinions fall along party lines. Republican senators think he's most qualified Supreme Court nominee in 70 years. Democratic senators think he's an ethically challenged, less than forthcoming jurist who's patently dishonest about his ultraconservative leanings and his desire to dismantle a woman's right to choose piecemeal.

The confirmation hearings started yesterday, but that was just opening statements and nothing much was said, The real fireworks started this morning with the questioning of Alito. It's early (8:19) and we've only seen 3 senators (Spector, Leahy & Hatch) question Alito but some trends are starting to emerge. One is that Alito is clearly less than comfortable being questioned on his views after 15 years on the bench when he in charge of the questioning. Two is that Hatch and the rest of the conservative Republicans are going to lob softballs at Alito while Kennedy and the Democrats are going to lob spitballs and knucklers trying to trip Alito up or get him to respond in an impolitic fashion, which could easily happen seeing Alito's unease at the questioning table. There is the fact that Alito, while more forthcoming than Roberts who was an expert evader, just seems like a liar.

Kennedy is up now. He's grilling Alito about his pledge to the Judiciary Committee to recuse himself from any case involving Vanguard, with whom he had large holdings, and his subsequent non-recusal of a case involving Vanguard. Like all the other Democratic senators, he's going to ask Alito about the balance of protecting security and civil liberties and what are the limits of executive power. They are going to ask about Roe v. Wade, which I believe, despite Alito's claim to have an open mind, will vote to overturn at the first chance he has. They are going to ask about the rights of privacy. They are going to ask about strip searching 10 year girls. They are going to ask about protecting corporate interests at the expense of individual rights. They are going to peer into everything he has said, done and written and rightly so for such an important position as the Supreme Court which is a lifetime appointment..

Unless there is some remarkable revelation or outburst, chances are Alito will be confirmed and the court will swing to the right for a quarter of a century (Alito is only 57). This is one of the direct consequences of the ascendancy of George Bush. Knowing that his fingerprints are going to be on major decisions that affect millions of Americans for years to come is less than comforting and it's why elections matter, why all citizens should pay attention to politics and why everyone who can should vote.

With more revelations that's Bush secret spying program conducted by the NSA has ensnared domestic calls and emails and Tom Daschle coming out and saying that, contrary to administration claims, Congress never authorized the program of warrantless surveillance of Americans, it's interesting to read the following:

Americans expect NSA to conduct its missions within the law. But given the inherently secret nature of those missions, how can Americans be sure that the Agency does not invade their privacy?

The 4th Amendment of the Constitution demands it... oversight committees within all three branches of the U.S. government ensure it... and NSA employees, as U.S. citizens, have a vested interest in upholding it. Respecting the law is only a part of gaining Americans' trust.

The American people need to know, within the bounds of operational security, what NSA does and why they do it, and how they work within the Intelligence community and the Department of Defense to protect the Nation's freedom.

With each new day, NSA is writing new and unexpected chapters. The missions have never been clearer. The challenges have never been greater. The stakes have never been higher.

That pretty much settles the issue, right? And where did this statement come from? It's from the NSA's own website.

The big question now is what is the country, and by country I mean our elected representative who have the power to investigate this, going to do now that George Bush has admitted to violated the 4th Amendments rights of U.S. citizens guaranteed in the Constitution which he took an oath to protect.

What I, along with everyone else who's been following this story, really want to know, is what the fuck is going on here. If the President, under FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Survellience Act, can authorize warrantless surveillance of Americans as along as he gets retroactive approval from the FISA court within 72 hours, (mind you this court is a to surveillance target as a grand jury is to a ham sandwich) why not get the retroactive warrants?

Why not get the warrants unless the subjects of the spying were not terror subjects as they would have us believe, but something else entirely. Something like politicians, policitical activists, journalists or anything one else that the courst might look at speciously and question the legality of such activity. Unless it's just pure hubris of this executive not believing that any entity has the right to oversee their activities, which could be true, what else could it be?

Once again, Bilmon nails the story with the perfect analogy over at the Whiskey Bar:

Bush declined to discuss the domestic eavesdropping program in a television interview, but he joined his aides in saying that the government acted lawfully and did not intrude on citizens' rights.

"Decisions made are made understanding we have an obligation to protect the civil liberties of the American people," Bush said on "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer."

Washington Post
December 2005

Citizens of the U.S.S.R. are guaranteed inviolability of the person. No person may be placed under arrest except by decision of a court or with the sanction of a procurator.

The inviolability of the homes of citizens and privacy of correspondence are protected by law.

Constitution of the USSR
December 1936

It has to be quite the thrill ride to be a Republican these days. I'm not talking fun-filled, exciting, blow your top, throw your hands in the air amusement park coaster. I'm talking, nauseating, I'm going to throw up, Jane, get me off this crazy thing treadmill. The scandals are mounting. Every day it seems a new story comes out about some sort of malfeasance or other involving top level officials, congressmen and lobbyists. Libby, Abramoff, Scanlon, Rove, Frist, DeLay. And it's just the tip of the iceberg.

Today Randy "Duke" Cunningham, who represents my buddy Peter in Rancho Santa Fe near San Diego, plead guilty to among other things accepting 2.4 million dollars in bribes. 2,400,000 dollars. Get your head around that figure. That's just what the Feds found out about and he admitted to. For those playing at home, here's the plea agreement, here are the charges against the congressman, here's his statement on resigning, and you can see video of him here. Here's his official website. No mention of any wrong doing or resignation. It won't be long for this world, at least outside of Google Archives and the Way Back Machine, so check it out while you can.

Here's what the Dukster has to say for himself:

When I announced several months ago that I would not seek re-election, I publicly declared my innocence because I was not strong enough to face the truth. So, I misled my family, staff, friends, colleagues, the public -- even myself. For all of this, I am deeply sorry.

The truth is -- I broke the law, concealed my conduct, and disgraced my high office. I know that I will forfeit my freedom, my reputation, my worldly possessions, and most importantly, the trust of my friends and family.

I suspect this will become a common refrain (can't blame a partisan prosecutor because he was being investigated by Bush's Justice Department) as investigations into the wrongdoings of other reps and senators, such as Bob Ney of Ohio and Conrad Burns of Montana, not to mention Katherine Harris of Florida and god knows who else will get caught up in the dragnet, have to face the music and admit guilt in the most humiliatingly public way. And then serve time.

Hopefully all the guilty parties, even Democrats, especially Democrats (are you listening William Jefferson?) will be brought to justice. Not that I think it's going to do much to stop the corruption that is our national government, but at least it might out the breaks on it for while as heretofore untouchable legislators watch their colleagues being marched off to the federal pen.

Key Bush Intelligence Briefing Kept From Hill Panel

EXCLUSIVE: Bush Plot to Bomb His Arab Ally

But he was talked out of it at a White House summit by Tony Blair, who said it would provoke a worldwide backlash.

A source said: "There's no doubt what Bush wanted, and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it." Al-Jazeera is accused by the US of fuelling the Iraqi insurgency." [more]

This country needs more Republican leaders like Chuck Hegel and fewer politicans like the ones currently in power who are running a perpetual campaign.

The Iraq war should not be debated in the United States on a partisan political platform. This debases our country, trivializes the seriousness of war and cheapens the service and sacrifices of our men and women in uniform. War is not a Republican or Democrat issue. The casualties of war are from both parties. The Bush Administration must understand that each American has a right to question our policies in Iraq and should not be demonized for disagreeing with them. Suggesting that to challenge or criticize policy is undermining and hurting our troops is not democracy nor what this country has stood for, for over 200 years. The Democrats have an obligation to challenge in a serious and responsible manner, offering solutions and alternatives to the Administration's policies.

Vietnam was a national tragedy partly because Members of Congress failed their country, remained silent and lacked the courage to challenge the Administrations in power until it was too late. Some of us who went through that nightmare have an obligation to the 58,000 Americans who died in Vietnam to not let that happen again. To question your government is not unpatriotic - to not question your government is unpatriotic. America owes its men and women in uniform a policy worthy of their sacrifices.

You can read the whole speech delivered to the Council on Foreign Relations here.

If you realy want to understand why Iraq is such a fucking mess, read this article in Harper's about how the neconservative wet dream visions of a free market utopia in Iraq led directly to the trouble the country is experiencing now.

The honey theory of Iraqi reconstruction stems from the most cherished belief of the war's ideological architects: that greed is good. Not good just for them and their friends but good for humanity, and certainly good for Iraqis. Greed creates profit, which creates growth, which creates jobs and products and services and everything else anyone could possibly need or want. The role of good government, then, is to create the optimal conditions for corporations to pursue their bottomless greed, so that they in turn can meet the needs of the society. The problem is that governments, even neoconservative governments, rarely get the chance to prove their sacred theory right: despite their enormous ideological advances, even George Bush’s Republicans are, in their own minds, perennially sabotaged by meddling Democrats, intractable unions, and alarmist environmentalists.

Iraq was going to change all that. In one place on Earth, the theory would finally be put into practice in its most perfect and uncompromised form. A country of 25 million would not be rebuilt as it was before the war; it would be erased, disappeared. In its place would spring forth a gleaming showroom for laissez-faire economics, a utopia such as the world had never seen. Every policy that liberates multinational corporations to pursue their quest for profit would be put into place: a shrunken state, a flexible workforce, open borders, minimal taxes, no tariffs, no ownership restrictions. The people of Iraq would, of course, have to endure some short-term pain: assets, previously owned by the state, would have to be given up to create new opportunities for growth and investment. Jobs would have to be lost and, as foreign products flooded across the border, local businesses and family farms would, unfortunately, be unable to compete. But to the authors of this plan, these would be small prices to pay for the economic boom that would surely explode once the proper conditions were in place, a boom so powerful the country would practically rebuild itself.

The fact that the boom never came and Iraq continues to tremble under explosions of a very different sort should never be blamed on the absence of a plan. Rather, the blame rests with the plan itself, and the extraordinarily violent ideology upon which it is based.

Sometimes you stick your head too far into the honey pot and it gets stuck. If you don't believe me, just ask Pooh.

The Prez hit the stump again today to lash out at war critics in a vain attempt to regain some credibility and pull up his poll ratings which have sunk below 40%. Here's the kernel of his speech:

While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began. Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war. These critics are fully aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments related to Iraq's weapons programs.

Here's the problem: While Bush claims that a "bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure" the truth that so-called bipartisan investigation run by Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas has yet to even investigate the motivation that might or might not have lead to faulty intelligence. This is the so-called Phase II of the investigation which, until recently, Mr. Roberts was stonewalling saying there wasn't really anything to investigate. That was until Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid forced the Senate to meet in a closed session to compel discussion of Phase II.

So either the President is less aware of events in Congress than I (hard to believe) or he's lying again to cover more lies. It's sad and pathetic and I'd be laughing at him if I didn't feel that this president is responsible for irreparable harm to the country.

You have to love those online sign generators. (Thanks to my sister for this shot).

... in March, 2003, Bush, in perhaps the greatest strategic blunder in U.S. history, invaded an Arab nation that had not attacked us, did not want war with us, and did not threaten us-to strip it of weapons we now know it did not have.

Result: Shia and Kurds have been liberated from Saddam, but Iran has a new ally in southern Iraq, Osama has a new base camp in the Sunni Triangle, the Arab and Islamic world have been radicalized against the United States, and copy-cat killers of Al Qaida have been targeting our remaining allies in Europe and the Middle East: Spain, Britain, Egypt and Jordan. And, lest we forget, 2055 Americans are dead and Walter Reed is filling up.

True to the neoconservative creed, Bush launched a global crusade for democracy that is now bringing ever closer to power Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria, and Shia fundamentalists in Baghdad and Basra.

Democratic imperialism is still imperialism. To Arab and Islamic peoples, whether the Crusaders come in the name of God or in the name of democracy, they are still Crusaders.

A dose of straight talking from the isolationalist conservative. It's strange when I find myself nodding my head in agreement to Pat Buchanan, but man, is it fun to watch the GOP implode and start eating its young.

How Cool!

My first cousin (by marriage) is now the Mayor of San Diego. Congratulations to Jerry and Rana and best luck fixing that fiscal mess. If anyone can do it, Jerry can.

If you read through Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's indictment of Scooter Libby, besides the charges, you'll see a comprehensive chain of events and you'll also see this passage (I. b.) right at the top:

b. In connection with his role as a senior government official with responsibilities for national security matters, LIBBY held security clearances entitling him to access to classified information. As a person with such clearances, LIBBY was obligated by applicable laws and regulations, including Title 18, United States Code, Section 793, and Executive Order 12958 (as modified by Executive Order 13292), not to disclose classified information to persons not authorized to receive such information, and otherwise to exercise proper care to safeguard classified information against unauthorized disclosure. On or about January 23, 2001, LIBBY executed a written "Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement," stating in part that "I understand and accept that by being granted access to classified information, special confidence and trust shall be placed in me by the United States Government," and that "I have been advised that the unauthorized disclosure, unauthorized retention, or negligent handling of classified information by me could cause damage or irreparable injury to the United States or could be used to advantage by a foreign nation."

Why mention this if you're not going to make charges related to leaking classified information? Is this simply to lay the groundwork for furhter proceedings? Lawyers care to weigh in? Anyone? Beuller?

Libby indicted on five counts: perjury X 2, false statement X 2, obstruction of justice X 1.

The big question: Is this just the tip of the iceberg or the end of the story?

Word on the street is that somewhere in the neighborhood of 1-5 indictments are in the offing in the Plame CIA outing case which is coming to an end after what seems like an endless two year investigation by Patrick Fitzgerald. I want indictments to be handed down. I want justice meted out. I want the scumbags that have been running our country and started a disastrous war with Iraq to be sent up the river.

I haven't written anything about this (I don't recall), but I have been following the story closely, reading all the news sources, following the few and far between leaks, pouring over blogs, television reports, editorials, basically anything I can get my hands on because I really think that when all the facts come to light, this is going to be a generational story the way that Watergate was 30 years ago.

There's a lot of ins, a lot of outs, a lot of what have yous, I want to a root cause analysis, but it's too damn complex and cicular.

So the basic story, for those of you who have not been playing at home, is about 2 years ago (July 14) a few months after the invasion of Iraq, Robert Novak publishes the name of Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA agent, in an article about her husband Joe Wilson's trip to Niger. How did this come about?

Well, Wilson was sent to Africa by the CIA (possibly at the behest of the Vice President) to investigate claims that Iraq was trying to purchase uranium from Niger. Wilson delivered an oral report to the CIA saying there was no evidence to support the claim. Bush made the claim in the 2003 State of the Union Address anyway. Wilson wrote an op-ed in the New York Times debunking the Niger-Iraq uranium connection. Novak then writes the article outing Plame. And the CIA requests an investigation from the Department of Justice.

There are so issues here at the nexus of the story. You have the outing of an undercover CIA agent. An act of treason if it was done deliberately, an act of extreme negligence, if not. Tied up in this story, you have the entire rationle for the war in Iraq. The Administration tried to sell the war on weapons of mass destruction. Wilson was a visible threat to their house of cards and they tried to undermine his credibility (aka destroy him) by claiming his fact finding mission was "boondoggle" set up by his wife, who, oh by the way, is a covert CIA operative in weapons of mass destruction, the exact type of intelligence asset needed to fight the war on terrorism. Oops. If that isn't interesting enough, for the first 2-3 months of the investigation, John Ashcroft, the former Attorney General, was in charge. What did the administration have to fear from him? So they concocted this story that they heard the name (Plame) from reporters and not viceversa. Their hubris making them think they wouldn't get caught because Ashcroft wouldn't persue the case and the reporters wouldn't spill the beans because they would do everything to protect their sources. They would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling kids, and by meddling kids I mean Patrick Fitzgerald.

Ashcroft was forced to recuse himself because of a conflict of interest and Fitzgerald, a zealous non-partisan prosector was assigned to the case. Bush, Cheney et al must have shit a brick, because many of them had already testified in front of the grand jury and had made it easy for Fitzgerald to bring cases of Perjury and Obstruction of Justice even if he couldn't prove that anyone intentially outed a CIA officer. Then he started jailing reporters, forcing testimony, turning witnesses and widening the scope of the investigation to include such things as the forged documents that were presented as a proof of the Niger-Iraq connection.

Anyway, I'm tired. I had a whole day of general manufacturing compliance training today with another half day to come tomorrow. I just wanted to get something on the record before the indictments come down. I hope Fitzgerald has the evidence to indict on the outing charges. I'd be surprised if he didn't, but I expect at least Rove and Libby to be charged with perjury and obstruction of justice, maybe conspiracy, if not something even more serious. Maybe someone else? Ari Fleischer? Steven Hadley? Maybe even an unidicted co-conspirator?

If that happens what can you expect? Who knows? I would have thought the President and the VP would have severed ties with their staffers long ago. But maybe they are neck deep in this scandal themselves. They certainly have not been forthcoming despite public statements to the contrary and Scott McClellan, the White House Press Secretary is on record as saying that it was ridiculous to assert that Rove and Libby had anything to do with it before he wised up and started to refuse comment an ongoing investigation.

Certainly the Republican hyenas will be out in force attacking Fitzgerald which will be an excercise in futility or making light of the charges, as they've been doing all along. The net result, I think, will be to paint the Republican party as an institution willing to excuse treason in a time of war to defend their own and will ultimately destroy the party.

When I read things like this , it makes me a) realize that that 2000 election will go down as one of the greatest tragedies in American history and b) wonder with great curiosity what W would be doing with his life if he wasn't installed in the White House by Supreme Court fiat.

I'm just a bill
Yes, I'm only a bill
And I'm sitting here on Capitol Hill
Well, it's a long, long journey
To the capital city
It's a long, long wait
While I'm sitting in committee
But I know I'll be a law some day
At least I hope and pray that I will
But today I am still just a bill.

Okay, the process is a bit more complicated, but still, Schoolhouse Rock did introduce hundreds of thousands of kids to the basic innerworkings of government. Damn liberal television! Wanting kids to learn shit and stuff.

Personally, I like the Simpsons version better:

I'm an amendment-to-be
yes an amendment-to-be,
And I'm hoping that they'll ratify me.
There's a lot of flag-burners
Who have got too much freedom
I want to make it legal
For policemen to beat'em.
'Cause there's limits to our liberties
At least I hope and pray that there are
'Cause those liberal freaks go too far.

Now that we have that little piece of education behind us, take a look at how legislation actually gets passed in this article from Rolling Stone by Matt Taibii. It ain't pretty.

Here's but one juicy nugget about how your government is run under one of the most currupt regimes in the history of this country:

The Rules Committee is supposed to wait out a three-day period before sending the bill to the House, ostensibly in order to give the members a chance to read the bill. The three-day period is only supposed to be waived in case of emergency. However, the Rules Committee of DeLay and Dreier waives the three-day period as a matter of routine. This forces members of Congress to essentially cast blind yes-or-no votes to bills whose contents are likely to be an absolute mystery to them.

Thankfully, we're exporting our version of "democracy" around the globe.

You're probably not following the San Diego's Mayoral race. Who can blame you? You probably don't live in San Diego and maybe wouldn't care that much anyway.

However, San Diego city politics has been in deep shit lately and even got worse today as Michael Zucchet, who became interim mayor over the weekend, was just convicted, yes, convicted (not indicted or accused), but convicted of taking payoffs from a strip club owner to help repeal a "no-touching" law at nude clubs. (Just for the record, I'm against the "no-touching" law too, but then again, I'm a man and can't be trusted to be impartial).

Why do I bring this up? Well, because I have a horse in the race. My cousin Rana is married to the former San Diego Chief of Police who's not only running for Mayor, but just got a ringing endorsement from the SD Union Tribune.

It's interesting that the Houston Chronicle, a newspaper that endorsed Bush in 2004, is now calling on his administration to fully explain "the source and content of the Downing Street Memo". Here's the whole story:

June 9, 2005, 7:52PM

MEMORANDUM OF INTENT

The Bush administration should explain why Americans should not be disturbed by a secret British memo on the runup to the Iraq War

Weeks after it dominated front pages in Europe, the so-called Downing Street Memo finally has bored its way into the U.S. press. The 2002 document describes comments by Britain's intelligence chief, Richard Dearlove, concerning talks with U.S. officials eight months before the invasion of Iraq. Identifying Dearlove as "C," the leaked memo summarizes his report: "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Intelligence agents' observations can be inaccurate. The head of the CIA at the time, George Tenet, erroneously thought the case for Iraqi WMD was a slam dunk. But the Downing Street memo accurately foresees the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the administration's attempts to link Saddam to al-Qaida and weapons of mass destruction - links that were found after the invasion not to exist. The memo's observation that U.S. intelligence would be shaped to policy might be mistaken, but the administration did wind up using flawed analysis to justify its war policy to the American people.

An independent panel investigated the use of U.S. intelligence before the Iraq War. It concluded that President Bush and his administration did not manipulate the intelligence. The panel supported the administration's claim that it relied on faulty intelligence.

In a Tuesday press conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush responded directly to the Downing Street Memo's content for the first time, saying, "there's nothing further than the truth." He added that his administration had worked hard to avoid sending troops to war. "Nobody," Bush said, "wants to commit military into combat. It's the last option."

Like Blair, Bush reasonably points out that Saddam would never have changed his spots and, left to his own devices, would have endangered his neighbors and U.S. interests. But that argument, absent WMD and terrorist ties, was not what moved Congress to authorize military action.

In the interest of the nation and the administration, the source and content of the Downing Street Memo need to be fully explained.

I doubt this will be the start of any watershed reporting from the cowed media, any Congressional investigations or any mea culpa from a president who's reportedly said that "as a leader, you can never admit to a mistake," but it's thought provoking. Read this is you want more background on the latest news.

A few weeks back I become curious about who represented me and I went to the House website where you can type your zip code into a box and find out who your congressperson is. Since I only moved to Alameda after the election, I had no idea. I found out that it was Pete Stark, I went to his webpage and found out that he was holding a town hall meeting in San Leandro, about 10 miles south of where I live. I decided I wanted to go and check it out, more out of curiosity that anything.

I hadn't gone to see a politician speak in over a decade. The last time, in what turned out to be a complete waste, was way back in the 92 election when I went with some friends to Orange County to hear Ross Perot.

How is it even conceivably possible that George Bush, Tom DeLay and the rest of the "Culture of Life" crowd can denounce stem cell research at the same time that we, and by we I mean America, are systematically torturing detainees at Gitmo, Bagram and who knows where else and "creating a network of supplicant nations to 'sub-contract' illegal detention and mistreatment" all in the name of freedom?

The prevailing conventions used to be that politics stopped at the water's edge. Now apparently the "Culture of Life" has taken it's place along our shores.

Guantanamo Guards Accused of Mistreating Koran

Newly Released FBI Documents Detail Allegations
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 25, 2005; 4:54 PM

Nearly a dozen detainees at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba told FBI interrogators that guards had mistreated copies of the Koran, including one who said in 2002 that guards "flushed a Koran in the toilet," according to new FBI documents released today.

The summaries of FBI interviews, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union as part of an ongoing lawsuit, also include allegations that the Koran was kicked, thrown to the floor and withheld as punishment and that guards mocked Muslim prisoners during prayers.

The release of the new FBI documents comes in the wake of an international uproar over a now-retracted story by Newsweek magazine, which reported that an internal military report had confirmed that a Koran was flushed down a toilet. The retracted story has been linked by the Bush administration to deadly riots overseas.

Nearly all of the hundreds of pages of documents consist of FBI summaries of detainee interrogations, and therefore do not generally provide corroboration of the allegations. At least two detainees also conceded that they had not personally witnessed mistreatment of the Koran but had heard about incidents from other inmates, the records show.

But the records, many of which were heavily edited by the government, further underscore the widespread nature of allegations related to the Koran and Islam among detainees at Guantanamo. Red Cross investigators in 2002 and 2003 documented what they considered reliable allegations of Koran mistreatment at the facility, and some detainees have made similar allegations through their attorneys.

A Defense Department spokesman was not immediately available for comment today. Pentagon officials have said previously that detainee allegations about the Koran have not been considered credible, although authorities have launched an internal review in the wake of the Newsweek controversy.

Amrit Singh, an ACLU attorney, said in a press release that "the United States' own documents show that it has known of numerous allegations of Koran desecration for a significant period of time."

"The failure to address these allegations in a timely manner raises grave questions regarding the extent to which such desecration was authorized by high-ranking U.S. officials in the first place," Singh said.

The new documents include other allegations of questionable treatment at Guantanamo, including two reports of beatings by guards and a report that a female guard told a prisoner she was menstruating and then "wiped blood from her body on his face and head."

The latter incident, which would be considered highly offensive to a Muslim man, is similar to a claim made by Erik Saar, a former Army translator at Guantanamo who has written a book about mistreatment of detainees there. The government has said two female interrogators have been reprimanded, including one for smearing fake menstrual blood on a captive.

Following the reports of Koran mistreatment by the Red Cross and others, the Pentagon issued rules in January 2003 governing the handling of the book and forbidding its placement on the floor, near a toilet or in other "dirty/wet areas."

I don't suppose Scott McClellan and the right wing pundits will issuing an apology to Newsweek and the world journalism community.

President Bush has a classic Michael Kinsley moment (in which a political figure commits a gaffe by telling the truth) today at one of those Social Security bamboozle stops:

I like the idea of somebody saying, here's your asset and you can leave it to whomever you want. And the more people are able to do that in our society, the better off society is. See, I think government ought to promote an ownership society. We ought to encourage more people to own their own home, encourage entrepreneurs to be able to take risk and own their own business -- and in this case, encourage Americans from all walks of life, if they so choose, to manage their own retirement account. And I say, manage it -- you know it's your money; you're going to have some choices to make when it comes to a personal savings account. You can't take it to the lottery, by the way. You notice I've been stressing conservative mix of bonds and stocks, because we want this account to grow and be a part of a modern safety net for you in your retirement. And so there will be some guidelines.

And I can predict to you that it works because a lot of other people have watched their money grow in the same kind of accounts, including people who work for the federal government. See, we have got in Washington what's called a Thrift Savings Plan. And members of the United States Senate, for example, can choose, if they so desire, to set aside some of their own money in a personal savings account, a voluntary personal savings account. And a lot of people like it.

I think -- I was doing one of these events with Senator McCain, who told me that his rate of return on his money was, like, 7 percent over the last 20 years. That's a lot better than the 1.8 percent we now get for you in the Social Security system. And so my attitude about this issue on thrift savings plans when I speak to members of the Congress is pretty simple -- if the idea of taking some of your own money and setting it aside in a conservative mix of bonds and stocks is good enough for you, Mr. Senator, it is good enough for workers all across the United States of America. (Applause.) You'll be happy to hear Senator McCain agrees with me, because he's seen his money grow.

Now, a personal savings account would be a part of a Social Security retirement system. It would be a part of what you would have to retire when you reach retirement age. As you -- as I mentioned to you earlier, we're going to redesign the current system. If you've retired, you don't have anything to worry about -- third time I've said that. (Laughter.) I'll probably say it three more times. See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda. (Applause.)

I guess he hasn't realized yet that inclusive personal accounts are a non-starter and that his entire agenda on Social Security is pretty much dead in the water. You also have to love that line recieved applause, as if a town meeting comprising an actual representative sampling of Americans instead of hand-picked party hacks would applaud a president who's approval ratings are sinking faster than the Titanic who's coming out for catapulting propaganda.

Focus on the Family Action Chairman Dr. James C. Dobson today issued the following statement, upon the announcement by members of the U.S. Senate that a "compromise" had been reached on the filibuster issue:

"This Senate agreement represents a complete bailout and betrayal by a cabal of Republicans and a great victory for united Democrats. Only three of President Bush's nominees will be given the courtesy of an up-or-down vote, and it's business as usual for all the rest. The rules that blocked conservative nominees remain in effect, and nothing of significance has changed. Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Antonin Scalia, and Chief Justice William Rehnquist would never have served on the U. S. Supreme Court if this agreement had been in place during their confirmations. The unconstitutional filibuster survives in the arsenal of Senate liberals.

"We are grateful to Majority Leader Frist for courageously fighting to defend the vital principle of basic fairness. That principle has now gone down to defeat. We share the disappointment, outrage and sense of abandonment felt by millions of conservative Americans who helped put Republicans in power last November. I am certain that these voters will remember both Democrats and Republicans who betrayed their trust."

If the wingers are this mad, I suppose it's a win for the good guys. I've also heard that, according to the compromise, of the 3 nominees that will pass cloture (Owen, Brown & Myers) and have up or down votes, one will be voted down. I'm guessing it's going to be Brown because she's the most egregious ultraconservative activist and would otherwis be headed to the influential 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in DC, but we'll see.

I'm not totally happy with the outcome here, but that's the nature of compromise. What I am happy about is that the center held on this explosive issue. I'm curious what will come of it, whether or not these 14 Senators, moderate Republicans and Democrats, are going to be able to stick together and control the debate in the Senate. If they can, it will be an amazing feat, keeping extremism on both sides at bay, something great for the country.

The problem is that the psycho wing of the Republican party is already calling for the scalps of John McCain(AZ), Mike DeWine(OH) and Lindsey Graham(SC). The "base" of the party feels betrayed. Radical cleric Dobson has even gone after Trent Lott. I wonder how long these divisive attacks can continue before the party splinters. Hopefully not too long.

I'm listening now to a press conference with Harry Reid about a compromise that has been reached by Senate moderates to subvert the will of the conservative majority and allow several judges to receive up or down votes (and most likely be confirmed) while maintaining the right of the minority to filibuster future nominees. This is great news. It's great news for everyone except a small minority of intractable extremists led by majority leader Bill Frist.

The big question is what this will do to any future Supreme Court nomination battles which certainly are forthcoming. I think this battle is going to happen all over again, but who knows. Chances are this just delyed the fight for another day over more important judicial decisions. It might pave the way for a more moderate nominee. Probably wishful thinking.

Bill Frist is now talking on the floor of the Senate talking more crap about his constant refrain of "up or down" vote. It looks like Owen, Prior and Brown, some of the most egregious of the nominees and few others that were previously turned down by the Senate and were resubmitted by President Bush are going to see the floor of the Senate. Henry Saad will not. William Myers will not. Frist does not want to give up, but he's beholden to the Christian right for his presidential aspirations, so even though moderate Republicans have undermined his leadership with the compromise, he still needs to carry the fight to appease his rabid paymasters. It's really disgusting when he or any other senator on either side of the aisle is so blatantly in the pocket of one interest group or another.

Frist, of course, is now asserting his right to exercise what he calls the "Constitutional Option" at any time in the future. Great. It's too bad Frist is leaving the Senate after this term ends because I'd love to see him face the possibility of being the Majority Leader with a Democratic President and having to defend his "Up or Down" mantra.

First it was then White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer post 9/11 saying in a press briefing that people "need to watch what they say, watch what they do." Then we had a high school kid in Kentucky arrested for writing a story of fiction about a high school attacked by zombies. Now once again, we have a member of the current administration warning people to watch their tongues. This time it's SecDef Donald Rumsfeld who in reponse the Newsweek story about the Koran flushing said, "People are dead, and that's unfortunate. People need to be very careful about what they say just as people need to be careful about what they do."

Am I the only one who finds these activities and this sort of rhetoric ominous? Nevermind that the head of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers told reporters at the Pentagon May 12 that he has been told that the Jalalabad, Afghanistan, rioting was related more to the ongoing political reconciliation process in Afghanistan than anything else. That would require a modicum of respect for the truth.

It appears to me that these statements and the ideology that belies them combined with the undermining of the traditional media and the current Republican judical power grab that is occurring in the Senate at the behest of the White House and the religous right is a very toxic brew for democracy.

There are two editorials in the NYT today about addicitions of the United States and their political ramifications. Paul Krugman writes about our addiction to low interest loans from China and how they affect the US economy while Tom Friedman takes on our addiction to Middle East Oil vis a vis the riots in Afghanistan and the administration's response. Both are worth a read.

Here's what Krugman writes in the
The Chinese Connection:

Over the last few years China, for its own reasons, has acted as an enabler both of U.S. fiscal irresponsibility and of a return to Nasdaq-style speculative mania, this time in the housing market. Now the U.S. government is finally admitting that there's a problem - but it's asserting that the problem is China's, not ours.

And there's no sign that anyone in the administration has faced up to an unpleasant reality: the U.S. economy has become dependent on low-interest loans from China and other foreign governments, and it's likely to have major problems when those loans are no longer forthcoming.

Here's what I think will happen if and when China changes its currency policy, and those cheap loans are no longer available. U.S. interest rates will rise; the housing bubble will probably burst; construction employment and consumer spending will both fall; falling home prices may lead to a wave of bankruptcies. And we'll suddenly wonder why anyone thought financing the budget deficit was easy.

Suddenly I feel pretty good about not owning a house (not really). But how far off is the scenario that Krugman lays out? Who knows. Might happen tomorrow. Might happen in three years. Might never happen. But truly we should not allow ourselves to fall into a this kind of economic morass where our options are limited and our economic security is in the hands of another country.

Krugman concludes:

We've developed an addiction to Chinese dollar purchases, and will suffer painful withdrawal symptoms when they come to an end.

I'm not saying we should try to maintain the status quo. Addictions must be broken, and the sooner the better. After all, one of these days China will stop buying dollars of its own accord. And the housing bubble will eventually burst whatever we do. Besides, in the long run, ending our dependence on foreign dollar purchases will give us a healthier economy. In particular, a rise in the yuan and other Asian currencies will eventually make U.S. manufacturing, which has lost three million jobs since 2000, more competitive.

But the negative effects of a change in Chinese currency policy will probably be immediate, while the positive effects may take years to materialize. And as far as I can tell, nobody in a position of power is thinking about how we'll deal with the consequences if China actually gives in to U.S. demands, and lets the yuan rise.

In The Best P.R.: Straight Talk, Tom Friedman takes on the administration's reaction to the Newsweek Koran flushing story. Here he posits how the president should have responded to the story and the riots.

Instead of sending Mr. McClellan out to flog Newsweek, President Bush should have said: "Let me say first to all Muslims that desecrating anyone's holy book is utterly wrong. These allegations will be investigated, and any such behavior will be punished. That is how we Americans intend to look in the mirror. But we think the Arab-Muslim world must also look in the mirror when it comes to how it has been behaving toward an even worse crime than the desecration of God's words, and that is the desecration of God's creations. In reaction to an unsubstantiated Newsweek story, Muslims killed 16 other Muslims in Afghanistan in rioting, and no one has raised a peep - as if it were a totally logical reaction. That is wrong.

"In Iraq, where Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni Muslims are struggling to build a pluralistic new order, other Muslims, claiming to act in the name of Allah, are indiscriminately butchering people, without a word of condemnation coming from Muslim spiritual or political leaders. I don't understand a concept of the sacred that says a book is more sacred than a human life. A holy book, whether the Bible or the Koran, is only holy to the extent that it shapes human life and behavior.

"Look, Newsweek may have violated journalistic rules, but what jihadist terrorists are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan - blowing up innocent Muslims struggling to build an alternative society to dictatorship - surely destroys the Koran. They are the real enemies of Islam because they are depriving Muslims of a better future. From what I know of Islam, it teaches that you show reverence to God by showing reverence for his creations, not just his words. Why don't your spiritual leaders say that? I am asking, because I want to know."

Friedman is right, however for this president to utter these or similar words would require leadership, something the current commander in chief is sorely bereft of.

Friedman concludes:

The greatest respect we can show to Arabs and Muslims - and the best way to help Muslim progressives win the war of ideas - is to take them seriously and stop gazing at our own navels. That means demanding that they answer for their lies, hypocrisy and profane behavior, just as much as we must answer for ours.

Hopefully more journalists and opinion analysts will take up this call for accountability on all sides.

I've been watching the goings on the Senate floor on C-Span. It's really instructive.

On the one side, you have the Democrats arguing to keep to the filibuster because it not only protects minority rights but also maintains the delicate balance of powers by not turning the Senate into a rubber stamp for the Executive when the Executive and the Legislature are of the same party.

On the other side, you have the Republicans who are speciously arguing that the filibuster has never been used to block judges (it has. see Abe Fortas) and that what they are attempting to (i.e. the "Nuclear Option" has constitutional precedent, which, of course, it does not. (by the way, it's amazing to me how Senators can flat out lie on the floor of the Senate - John Kyl of Arizona just said that he wasn't concerned when Democrats said that the filibuster is something they might want to reserve for a future when they are in the minority and there is a Democratic president and he said it wasn't an issue because they, the Republicans, didn't even think of the filibuster as a tool at their exposal, conveniently forgetting Abe Fortas and Richard Paez. Amazing.)

It's on the point on getting boring listening to Senators on both sides bloviate all day. There were the incredible statements of Rick Santorum equating what the Democrats are doing, by preventing this powergrab to the actions of Adolph Hitler after he occupied Paris which will raise some eyebrows in the left wing blogs but will be ignored by the media in general. But that was the only really exciting moment of the day.

I've been waiting to hear from Hagel or McCain or Snowe or Collins or one of the handful of moderate Republicans Senators who might speak out against this unprecedented power grab, but I have so far been disappointed. I bet the squeeze is being put on them so tight by K street lobbyist and the Majority Leader that when this whole thing is over McCain et al will be able to join the Vienna Boy's Choir.

As I listen to Alabama Senator and Judical Committe member Jeff Sessions debate the nomination of Janice Rogers Brown, a member of the California Supreme Court and a Bush nominee to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in DC, I'm reading an article by conservative Norman J. Ornstein published on the conservative American Enterprise Instirute website that puts forth a very persuasive argument against employing the "Nuclear Option".

These Five Senators Know Better Than to Go Nuclear. Don't They?

By Norman J. Ornstein
Posted: Wednesday, May 4, 2005

The fate of the Senate now rests in the hands of a handful of Republicans who have been great figures of the Senate, custodians of its traditions and its essence. They will soon come to a crossroads on the "nuclear" option and the filibuster.

A few are uncommitted on the question; others are presumed to be aligned with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). All, I believe, know better, and each will be judged by history on their choice in this matter. They include Dick Lugar of Indiana, Ted Stevens of Alaska, John Warner of Virginia, Thad Cochran of Mississippi and Pete Domenici of New Mexico.

In 1976 and 1977, I served on the staff of a Senate select committee charged with reorganizing the Senate's committee system. Following the customary practice, the 12 Senators on the panel were evenly divided between the two parties. The assignment was the fifth or sixth committee for each of the members, ensuring that few of the 12 spent any time at all on the panel's work. But one who did was Domenici, then a freshman.

One late evening as we worked, I turned to Domenici and asked him why he was spending so many hours on a thankless task like ours. After all, his constituents would never notice, and any changes we recommended for committee numbers and jurisdictions were likely to be opposed vigorously by the committee chairmen and other power-brokers. He replied that service in the Senate was the highest honor he could receive, and he was determined to leave the place a better institution than when he arrived.

Through most of his 32 years in the body, Domenici has fulfilled that promise of being an institutionalist. But now comes the real test.

The Senate is on the verge of meltdown over the nuclear option, an unprecedented step that would shatter 200 years of precedent over rules changes and open up a Pandora's box of problems in the years ahead. The shaky bipartisanship that holds the Senate together--in a way that is virtually absent in the House--could be erased. Major policy problems could be caught up in the conflict. The Senate itself would never be the same.

Let us put aside for now the puerile arguments over whether judicial filibusters are unprecedented: They clearly, flatly, are not. Instead, let's look at the means used to achieve the goal of altering Senate procedures to block filibusters on judicial nominations.

Without getting into the parliamentary minutiae--the options are dizzying, including whether points of order are "nested"--one reality is clear. To get to a point where the Senate decides by majority that judicial filibusters are dilatory and/or unconstitutional, the Senate will have to do something it has never done before.

Richard Beth of the Congressional Research Service, in a detailed report on the options for changing Senate procedures, refers to it with typical understatement as "an extraordinary proceeding at variance with established procedure."

To make this happen, the Senate will have to get around the clear rules and precedents, set and regularly reaffirmed over 200 years, that allow debate on questions of constitutional interpretation--debate which itself can be filibustered. It will have to do this in a peremptory fashion, ignoring or overruling the Parliamentarian. And it will establish, beyond question, a new precedent. Namely, that whatever the Senate rules say--regardless of the view held since the Senate's beginnings that it is a continuing body with continuing rules and precedents--they can be ignored or reversed at any given moment on the whim of the current majority.

There have been times in the past when Senate leaders and presidents have been frustrated by inaction in the Senate and have contemplated action like this. Each time, the leaders and presidents drew back from the precipice. They knew that the short-term gain of breaking minority obstruction would come at the price of enormous long-term damage--turning a deliberative process into something akin to government by the Queen of Hearts in "Alice in Wonderland."

Rule XXII is clear about extended debate and cloture requirements, both for changing Senate rules (two-thirds required) and any other action by the Senate, nominations or legislation (60 Senators required). Ignored in this argument has been Senate Rule XXXI, which makes clear that there is neither guarantee nor expectation that nominations made by the president get an up-or-down vote, or indeed any action at all.

It reads: "Nominations neither confirmed nor rejected during the session at which they are made shall not be acted upon at any succeeding session without being again made to the Senate by the President; and if the Senate shall adjourn or take a recess for more than thirty days, all nominations pending and not finally acted upon at the time of taking such adjournment or recess shall be returned by the Secretary to the President, and shall not again be considered unless they shall again be made to the Senate by the President."

By invoking their self-described nuclear option without changing the rules, a Senate majority will effectively erase them. A new precedent will be in order--one making it easy and tempting to erase future filibusters on executive nominations and bills. Make no mistake about that.

The precedent set--a majority ignoring its own rules to override longstanding practice in one area--would almost inexorably make the Senate a mirror image of the House, moving the American system several steps closer to a plebiscitary model of government, and the Senate closer to the unfortunate House model of a cesspool of partisan rancor.

I know that Lugar, Stevens, Cochran, Warner and Domenici know better. (I know that Orrin Hatch (Utah), Bob Bennett (Utah), Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) and Elizabeth Dole (N.C.) know better as well, but they are lost causes.) I also know that any of these five can withstand the heat that would come if they bucked their party leaders on this issue. Pete, remember what you said to me in 1977. Leave the Senate a better place. Please.

Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at AEI.

If you're at all worried about this country, if you're concerned about the undermining of the media, if you're concerned about the right wing religious takeover of our instituions, and especailly if you're concerned about the future of our independenat judiciary you'll be paying attention to what's playing out on the floor of the Sentate (which you can watch on C-SPAN 2).

Unless you've been living in a cave you'll know about the battle over a few extreme judges that has been brewing in the Senate in the last five years. I'm not going to rehash all the details but if you want a good timeline of events, you can find it here.

The basic deal is this. President Bush has nominated something more than 200 judges to the federal bench, both to the circuit courts and the appellate courts. 95% of his nominations have been approved. A handful who have been earmarked as extreme, 7 or 10 depending on who you ask, have been blocked by the minority Democrats using the threat of a filibuster, which is their right.

However, the right wing doesn't want any of its judges blocked. They want a complete and total victory. Therefore they have been talking up what Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi had long ago dubbed the "Nuclear Option." It is called the Nuclear Option because it so explosive that it is going to rip through and destroy the comity of the Senate that was created by the framers of the Constitution as a deliberative body that respected the rights of the minority.

That same Constitution gives the Senate the role of Advice and Consent on judical nominees. The document says nothing other than that, however it gives the Senate the responsibility to make it's own rules. One of those rules is that the Senate can change its rules, but to avoid power grabs like this one that is going on, must do so with a supermajority of 67 votes. The Nuclear Option would bypass the normal rules of the Senate. The Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee who is the ring leader of this morass is going to ask Dick Cheney, in his role as the President of the Senate, to rule on the constitutionality of the filibuster. Cheney is going to deem the filibuster unconstitutional. The Senate will then vote to accept or deny Cheney's position which requires only a simple majority. This vote will change over 200 years of Senate tradition that has granted the filibuster to the minority in order to prevent exactly what is going on now, packing the court with clearly partisan and unnacceptable jurists who serve on the bench for life. For life. Forever.

I don't know what's going to happen here. I do know that the 44 Democratic Senators and Jim Jeffords, indenpendent from Vermont will vote together in a bloc. Therefore there only needs to be 6 Republican Senators to jump the aisle and vote with the Democrats to retain the filibuster. GOP Sens. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, John McCain of Arizona, Olympia Snowe of Maine, John Warner of Virginia and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island have either said they oppose changing the rules or have declined to promise to support the change. A few others like Dick Lugar of Indiana and Pat Roberts of Kansas are on the record about dangerous this move is and how uncomfortable they are with it.

In the end I don't believe it will pass, but it will serve it's purpose, empowering Bill Frist in the eyes of the religious right as he seeks the GOP nomination in 2008.

A letter to White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan from Congressman John Conyers:

Mr. Scott McClellan
Press Secretary
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. McClellan:

I write to express my profound disappointment and outrage about comments you made about a matter involving Newsweek magazine, which smacks of political exploitation of the deaths of innocent and a shameless attempt to intimidate reporters from critically investigating your Administration's actions. Your comments are contradicted by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and stand in stark contrast with your actions involving the "Downing Street Memo." I urge you and your counterpart at the Pentagon to immediately retract the comments made yesterday, and - at long last - provide a full accounting of the Administration's actions in the lead up to the Iraq war.

As you are aware, a May 9th Newsweek report indicated that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba flushed the Koran down a toilet as part of an interrogation. Newsweek has since retracted the story. However, as the magazine was reevaluating information received from its sources, it appears you opted to exploit the situation for partisan political gain by falsely laying blame on Newsweek for recent deaths in Afghanistan.

Specifically, at 11:23am yesterday, you declared in a public statement: "his report has had serious consequences. It has caused damage to the image of the United States abroad. It has -- people have lost their lives. It has certainly caused damage to the credibility of the media, as well, and Newsweek, itself." The Pentagon spokesman, Larry DiRita, made similar comments. Referring to Newsweek's source, he said "People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said." The clear implication of these statements is that the Newsweek report had caused a loss of life in Muslim nations, presumably referring to the recent riots in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

First, this attempt to tie riots to the Newsweek article stands in stark contrast to the assessment of your own senior military officials. On May 12th, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Of Staff had reported on his consultations with the Senior Commander in Afghanistan about whether there was a causal relationship between the Newsweek story and the riots thusly: "[h]e thought it was not at all tied to the article in the magazine." The only conclusion that can be reasonably drawn is that, in contrast to career military officers, political operatives sought to score cheap political points by spreading falsehoods about Newsweek. The appropriate course of action is clear: you and Mr. DiRita should immediately retract your exploitative comments.

Second, there is - of course - a sad irony in this White House claiming that someone else's errors or misjudgments led to the loss of innocent lives. Over 1,600 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis have lost their lives in the Iraq war, a war which your Administration justified by falsely claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. To date, your Administration has consistently blocked Congressional inquiries into whether such claims were the result of intentional manipulation of intelligence or, as you assert, a mere "failure."

Moreover, your loquacious response to this matter stands in stark contrast to your response to a recently released classified memo comprising the minutes of a July 22 meeting of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his cabinet which calls into question the credibility of assertions made by your Administration in its drive to war. Among other things the memo indicates that Administration officials were working to ensure that "the intelligence and facts were fixed around the policy," implying that intelligence was deliberately manipulated to prop up the case for war. The memo also indicates, contrary to contemporaneous statements to the American people and the Congress that the President had already "made up his mind to take military action." When asked about this memo, you claimed that you "don't know about the specific memo" - two and one half weeks after its release and ten days after receiving a letter detailing its contents from 89 Members of Congress (which has still not been answered).

Third, the public deserves to know what precisely the White House is asserting with respect to the mistreatment of the Koran by interrogators: are such reports categorically false or are they, in the words of one publication, "manifold?" For example, a May 1st New York Times report indicated that a Koran was thrown into a pile and stepped on at the Guantanamo detention facility and "[a] former interrogator at Guantanamo, in an interview with the Times, confirmed the accounts of the hunger strikes, including the public expression of regret over the treatment of the Korans." The incident where a Koran was allegedly thrown in a toilet was also recounted by a former detainee in a March 26, 2003 article in the Washington Post, and corroborated by another detainee in a August 4, 2003 report by the Center for Constitutional Rights. The question is: are you categorically denying that the mistreatment of the Koran occurred, or are you simply denying the Newsweek report is accurate on hyper technical grounds?

Mr. McClellan, the American people have grown tired of the venomous partisanship and lack of candor on the part of this Administration. When taken to task for wrongdoing, a pattern has emerged of this Administration viciously attacking its accusers. The cornerstone of our democracy is an open and accountable government, and the American people deserve answers - not distractions -- today.

Sincerely,

John Conyers, Jr.

The word that Newsweek has possibly blown it's story about the how US interrogators flushed a Koran down the toilet at Gitmo is disturbing. I have little doubt that these other similar and even worse atrocities have occurred in American detention centers. And that's bad enough. It's pretty clear that there are elements within the US military that have a little respect for other cultures as they have for the rule of law. But what's really disturbing to me is this is yet another blow to the tender flanks of professional journalism.

You see, whether Newsweek is right or wrong, there are many people in this country who will assume that Newsweek was wrong and more than that, deliberately published this story in an unpatriotic attempt to bring down the administration. Therefore anything else the magazine publishes from here on out will not be credible. Don't believe me? Just read this and you'll understand.

Newsweek, for it's part has issued a statement of regret for having caused violence with its reporting, but it sticking by their story, refusing to retract. Here's the statement in it's entirety:

Did a report in NEWSWEEK set off a wave of deadly anti-American riots in Afghanistan? That's what numerous news accounts suggested last week as angry Afghans took to the streets to protest reports, linked to us, that U.S. interrogators had desecrated the Qur'an while interrogating Muslim terror suspects. We were as alarmed as anyone to hear of the violence, which left at least 15 Afghans dead and scores injured. But I think it's important for the public to know exactly what we reported, why, and how subsequent events unfolded.

Two weeks ago, in our issue dated May 9, Michael Isikoff and John Barry reported in a brief item in our Periscope section that U.S. military investigators had found evidence that American guards at the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had committed infractions in trying to get terror suspects to talk, including in one case flushing a Qur'an down a toilet. Their information came from a knowledgeable U.S. government source, and before deciding whether to publish it we approached two separate Defense Department officials for comment. One declined to give us a response; the other challenged another aspect of the story but did not dispute the Qur'an charge.

Although other major news organizations had aired charges of Qur'an desecration based only on the testimony of detainees, we believed our story was newsworthy because a U.S. official said government investigators turned up this evidence. So we published the item. After several days, newspapers in Pakistan and Afghanistan began running accounts of our story. At that point, as Evan Thomas, Ron Moreau and Sami Yousafzai report this week, the riots started and spread across the country, fanned by extremists and unhappiness over the economy.

Last Friday, a top Pentagon spokesman told us that a review of the probe cited in our story showed that it was never meant to look into charges of Qur'an desecration. The spokesman also said the Pentagon had investigated other desecration charges by detainees and found them "not credible." Our original source later said he couldn't be certain about reading of the alleged Qur'an incident in the report we cited, and said it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts. Top administration officials have promised to continue looking into the charges, and so will we. But we regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst.

Sure, Newsweek should have had more than one anonymous source on a story so inflammatory, but I have little doubt that it happened just as they reported and whose to say that those riots in Afghanistan wouldn't have happened anyway? Afghanistan is a total economic and security disaster because we left it without proper resources to succeed when we rushed off to face down Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction.

Just to make matters worse, you have White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan saying, "The report has had serious consequences. People have lost their lives. The image of the United States abroad has been damaged." And he's absolutely right, but are we supposed to take him seriously that the reputation of the US has been damaged more by a poorly sourced story in a weekly news magazine than by bringing was to the Islamic world on false pretenses using manufactured intelligence or systematically torturing Muslim detainees?

Come on, now.

***UPDATE*** 2:57PM - ABC reports Newsweek has retracted it's story. Poor, poor Newsweek. Once so relevant, now you can adios your credibility.

If it wasn't clear before, there is now irrefutable evidence that President Bush was determined to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein as far back as the summer of 2002 and fixed the intelligence and facts relevant to WMD to ensure that U.S. intelligence data supported his policies.

Here's an except from the "Downing Street Memo" that was leaked to the British press during their recent election:

There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

You can read the whole memo here.

If this doesn't make you angry, nothing will and there's clearly something wrong with you.

If you're a conservative, you should be outraged that leaders you voted into office have led us down this path. You should demand answers and accountability. Progressives are already outraged enough. U.S. Representative John Conyers is one of 89 members of the House of Representatives to send a letter to the White House demanding an explanation. The White House, naturally, has not yet responded to the congressional letter and most likely will not.

For those of who thought this war was folly to begin with, this is not any big surprise, but it disturbing for so many reasons. Clearly we now have an exact analogy to Vietnam. The country was mislead into war. The war was intended to intimidate our enemies through "Shock and Awe" but clearly failed and emboldened the same foes we were trying to cow. Citizens and most of the world no longer trusts intelligence or military decisions made by this government. We can't admit that the war was a mistake in fear of alienating military families who lost sons & daughters for no real reason. We are pinned down in a country with no real exit strategy. We can't leave Iraq because the resulting violence would be our responsibility. Our military is stretched thin and it's questionable whether we'd be able to muster the resources to fight a concurrent war against a real threat. It's bad news all around.

Who's going to take the fall for this? No one unless the American people make known their displeasure by going to polls and voting the people who supported this war out of office. But is it going to happen? Porbably not because there is massive cognitive dissonance in this country that keeps people from reacting to major issues like this while spending most of their political efforts on social issues such as abortion and sex education that are so very minor in comparison.

You know, this is the sort of thing that makes me want to tear my hair out.

MODERATOR: New question. How would you go about as president deciding when it was in the national interest to use U.S. force, generally?

BUSH: Well, if it's in our vital national interest, and that means whether our territory is threatened or people could be harmed, whether or not the alliances are -- our defense alliances are threatened, whether or not our friends in the Middle East are threatened. That would be a time to seriously consider the use of force. Secondly, whether or not the mission was clear. Whether or not it was a clear understanding as to what the mission would be. Thirdly, whether or not we were prepared and trained to win. Whether or not our forces were of high morale and high standing and well-equipped. And finally, whether or not there was an exit strategy. I would take the use of force very seriously. I would be guarded in my approach. I don't think we can be all things to all people in the world. I think we've got to be very careful when we commit our troops. The vice president and I have a disagreement about the use of troops. He believes in nation building. I would be very careful about using our troops as nation builders. I believe the role of the military is to fight and win war and therefore prevent war from happening in the first place. So I would take my responsibility seriously. And it starts with making sure we rebuild our military power. Morale in today's military is too low. We're having trouble meeting recruiting goals. We met the goals this year, but in the previous years we have not met recruiting goals. Some of our troops are not well-equipped. I believe we're overextended in too many places. And therefore I want to rebuild the military power. It starts with a billion dollar pay raise for the men and women who wear the uniform. A billion dollars more than the president recently signed into law. It's to make sure our troops are well-housed and well-equipped. Bonus plans to keep some of our high-skilled folks in the services and a commander in chief that sets the mission to fight and win war and prevent war from happening in the first place.

--First Presidential Debate, October 3, 2000

Word is that Al Franken is considering a run for a Minnesota Senate seat in 2008 against Republican Norm Coleman. It's a long way off and who knows if he can win, but it would be great for Minnesota and for the country.

Coleman, a former Democrat, who garners great support from Bush, Cheney & Co. would never have even been a senator had extremely popular incumbent Paul Wellstone not died in a plane crash just 11 days before the 2002 election. If Franken could unseat him, it will go a long way to returning the Senate to the hands of the Democrats.

If you get a kick out political cartoons like I do, you'll want to check out the work of Nick Anderson from the Louisville Courier-Journal.

Anderson won the Pulitzer Prize for a series of 20 scathing cartoons about current events including abuses of power, the quagmire in Iraq and the missteps of the present administration, which, I suppose, are all the same thing. He beat out Garry Trudeau for the $10,000 prize, so you know his stuff is good. His cartoons are richly drawn with beautiful color and reveal not only biting satire, but also potent wit while elucidating serious problems that deeply affect this country.

You can find all his cartoons here. If you want to read more cartoons by other editorial artists, Slate.com has a great archive.

However, on religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in 'A,' 'B,' 'C,' and 'D.' Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of 'conservatism.'

Who do you think spoke those words? Some wild-eyed Democrat? Some hellbound atheist? Not quite. It was Senator Barry Goldwater, torch bearer of the Republican party and it's nominee for the presidency in 1964. Would he recognize the GOP today? Would he be accepted within its ranks? Doubtful.

This morning I was listening to a debate right now on KQED about whether or not pharmacists have a right not to fill legal prescriptions based on their personal morals and values. Basically this topic has come up because there have been some pharmacists not filling birth control prescriptions and not selling people condoms. Some of these pharmacists have even harassed their customers and even withheld the actual prescription so that it could be fulfilled elsewhere. This is totally outrageous.

Pharmacists should not be substituting their "professional judgment" for the that of the doctor and the patient. They have no fucking business doing any such thing no matter what their conscious tells them. Their job is ensure that legal prescriptions are filled accurately and in a timely fashion. Anything short of that should be grounds for decreditation. As long as these drugs are legal and deemed to be safe by the FDA they have an obligation to provide them to anyone with a prescription. If they have a problem with that then they shouldn't be pharmacists. Period. End of story.

It's shocking to me that this is even an issue. Democrats in the Senate are dancing around it by trying to work both sides, granting pharmacists their "rights" not to fill any Rx's they find morally objectionable while holding that the pharmacy itself is responsible for making sure that the Rx gets filled. This is silliness.

Something really needs to be done to end the empowerment of the faith based community that manifests itself in harassing 16 year old girls trying to obtain birth control pills. Hopefully this is just another example of the right going way to far that the left will be able to bludgeon them with in the mid term elections. Terri Schiavo, refusniks pharmacists, anti-abortionist bombers. It's enough to drive an atheist insane.

There's an interesting article Rolling Stone called
The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler about the coming peak in oil production that will signal the start of the long decline of our petroleum based economy. The article is somewhat alarmist and seems to posit a future where the great innovators in this world will not be able to find a suitable replacement for our energy needs, which I doubt will happen. However it is an interesting read and brings up a number of good points, notably that something needs to be done and the sooner we get started the better. (Thanks, as always, to Jason to forwarding this along.)

"I'll trust people and I'll trust people to make decisions for their own lives."
-- George Bush, Hypocrite

I've been wanting to stay above this whole Terri Schiavo business, but I can't any longer. I'm a firm believer in euthanasia, so my feelings about this might be skewed because of what I see as hypocrisy from the right about the whole sordid matter, but here I go anyway.

For longest time Republicans have been the party of States' Rights. This philosophy hit a road block in the Gore v. Bush election where a Republican majority on the Supreme Court overruled the Florida State court simply because they didn't like the verdict. The jurists invoked the equal protection clause, which is a joke, because if the Supremes were serious, you'd to have invalidate the entire election based on lack of equality. That obviously didn't happen. What did happen was an abrogation of Republican States' Rights ideals in favor of a preferable judicial outcome.

This is the exact same thing that is going on in the Terry Schiavo case. Forget that this woman deserves to die. Forget the utter selfishness of the parents. Forget the paradox of the right to lifers who fight vigorously for the death penalty and yet oppose the right to die with dignity. Look only at the States' Rights issue.

Congress has no business getting involved in this. The President has no business getting involved in this, let alone turning around from a vacation (did he really need another vacation?) and waking up in the middle of the night to sign legislation that moved the Schiavo case from the state court to the federal court for no other reason than he didn't like the result of the state court ruling.

Despite the efforts of our esteemed legislature and executive branch, it looks as though Terri will finally be able to drift off into the sweet hereafter. The biggest problem I have with this whole thing, is here we have this great opportunity as a country to benefit from the tragedy of this family by having a national discussion about death, about dignity, about euthanasia and about the rights of our citizens. But will we have it? Of course not. Because we are children. And like children, we will take the lowest road possible. Mrs. Schiavo will be used a political tool to divide people instead of a loadstone to unite them.

As for me, if I'm in a persistent vegetative state, I don't want to live. If I need a feeding tube or a respirator to survive, I don't want live. If I have no brain function and am on life support, I don't want to live. I don't want suffer that way. I don't want to be burden on my family or the health care system. I just want to be cremated and have my ashes dumped into sea at Port Campbell on Great Ocean Road in Victoria, Australia.

Anyway, don't listen me. I'm a fool. Listen to the good people at Get Your War On. At least then you can have a laugh while you ponder the utter stuipity of this whole damn fucking thing.

... The Clinton administration was paying a male whore to throw softball questions in the White House Press Room. [LINK]

...The Clinton administration was paying commentators with your tax dollars to shill for pet projects.
[LINK]

...The Clinton administration was trying to throw journalists who didn't support their agenda into jail. [LINK]

The republicans would have been going apeshit. They went apeshit over everything else, imagined and drummed up. So, what the fuck is going on here? Who is holding this administration to the fire while it turns this country into a republican Orwellian fantasyland?

This might take some of the edge off the thought of four more years.

The George W Bush 2005 State of the Union drinking game

What you will need:

# Four taxpayers: including 1 white guy wearing a suit, 2 people wearing normal clothes (one wearing a blue shirt, the other in a red shirt) and 1 dressed as an old person. (Note: shawls are nice)

# A shot glass per person. Everybody brings one, group them on table. White guy in suit gets first choice, red shirt picks second and blue shirt gets third choice.

# Bowl each of guacamole and chips.

# 5 bucks. Everybody antes.

# Much beer. Senior citizen gets cheapest crap you can find, like Old Milwaukee Lite: white guy in suit drinks import of choice and everyone else chips in to buy it; the other two fight it out over Bud and Miller Lite.

Rules of the game:

1. Whenever President Bush uses the words: "tax relief," "mandate" or "bipartisan," drink a shot of beer.

2. Whenever George W mispronounces "Allawi," "nuclear" or "terrorism," last person to knock on wood drinks two shots of beer.

3. If he mispronounces "shiite": first person to stop laughing exempt from drinking three shots.

4. If the President says the word "Texas," last person to give the longhorn sign and yell "Yeehah!" has to drink two shots of beer.

5. Whenever George W talks about saving social security, senior citizen takes a shot of beer. First time the President uses the word "personalization," take two shots. Add another shot for each additional "personalization."

6. If Vice President Dick Cheney is caught napping on camera, white guy in suit has to drink a whole beer.

7. Whenever George W Bush talks about the evils of abortion or the sanctity of marriage, last person to fall to their knees drinks two shots of beer.

8. Whenever George W mentions the liberty or freedom of the Iraqi people, stand up, salute with your right hand and drink a shot of beer with your left hand. If he's talking about the liberty or freedom of the American people, stand up, salute with your left hand and drink a shot of beer with your right hand. First person to mess up has to drink two more shots. White guy in suit is exempt from mistakes.

9. The first time George Bush uses the phrases "activist judges," and "trial lawyers," first person to stand up and yell, "I'm out of order? You're out of order," is exempt from having to drink three shots of beer.

10. If only half of televised audience gives George W a standing ovation, red shirt and white guy in suit have to drink shots of beer for duration of applause. If either Teddy Kennedy, Hillary Clinton or John Kerry are shown not standing, blue shirt and senior citizen take over till Bush resumes speaking. Double time if Senators are not applauding.

11. If George W Bush mentions "Halliburton," "exit strategy" or his inability to find Weapons of Mass Destruction or Osama bin Laden, white guy in suit has to drink a shot of everybody else's beer out of their shot glass, and they get to wipe their glass clean on his jacket.

12. Whenever George W mentions the phrase "prescription drug plan," take a shot of beer. The first time this happens, last person to finish has to drink two more shots of beer and take out the trash during the Democratic Response. White guy in suit and red shirt need not recycle.

Political comic Will Durst will be playing this game with friends. Needs a red shirt.

Andrew's Rule: Whenever W says "ownership society", skull a beer.

Obvious hyperbole, yet despite the article's title, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts has penned as elegant a critique of the present administration (only a few months too late, I might add) as anyone I have seen. And he's a conservative. He'll certainly take a lot of heat from the faith based realm for this.

Thanks to Jason for sending around this article.

End-Timers & Neo-Cons

The End of Conservatives

by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during 1981-82. He was also Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review.

I remember when friends would excitedly telephone to report that Rush Limbaugh or G. Gordon Liddy had just read one of my syndicated columns over the air. That was before I became a critic of the US invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration, and the neoconservative ideologues who have seized control of the US government.

America has blundered into a needless and dangerous war, and fully half of the country's population is enthusiastic. Many Christians think that war in the Middle East signals "end times" and that they are about to be wafted up to heaven. Many patriots think that, finally, America is standing up for itself and demonstrating its righteous might. Conservatives are taking out their Vietnam frustrations on Iraqis. Karl Rove is wrapping Bush in the protective cloak of war leader. The military-industrial complex is drooling over the profits of war. And neoconservatives are laying the groundwork for Israeli territorial expansion.

The evening before Thanksgiving Rush Limbaugh was on C-Span TV explaining that these glorious developments would have been impossible if talk radio and the conservative movement had not combined to break the power of the liberal media.

In the Thanksgiving issue of National Review, editor Richard Lowry and former editor John O'Sullivan celebrate Bush's reelection triumph over "a hostile press corps." "Try as they might," crowed O'Sullivan, "they couldn't put Kerry over the top." There was a time when I could rant about the "liberal media" with the best of them. But in recent years I have puzzled over the precise location of the "liberal media."

Not so long ago I would have identified the liberal media as the New York Times and Washington Post, CNN and the three TV networks, and National Public Radio. But both the Times and the Post fell for the Bush administration's lies about WMD and supported the US invasion of Iraq. On balance CNN, the networks, and NPR have not made an issue of the Bush administration's changing explanations for the invasion.

Apparently, Rush Limbaugh and National Review think there is a liberal media because the prison torture scandal could not be suppressed and a cameraman filmed the execution of a wounded Iraqi prisoner by a US Marine. Do the Village Voice and The Nation comprise the "liberal media"? The Village Voice is known for Nat Hentoff and his columns on civil liberties. Every good conservative believes that civil liberties are liberal because they interfere with the police and let criminals go free. The Nation favors spending on the poor and disfavors gun rights, but I don't see the "liberal hate" in The Nation's feeble pages that Rush Limbaugh was denouncing on C-Span.

In the ranks of the new conservatives, however, I see and experience much hate. It comes to me in violently worded, ignorant and irrational emails from self-professed conservatives who literally worship George Bush. Even Christians have fallen into idolatry. There appears to be a large number of Americans who are prepared to kill anyone for George Bush.

The Iraqi War is serving as a great catharsis for multiple conservative frustrations: job loss, drugs, crime, homosexuals, pornography, female promiscuity, abortion, restrictions on prayer in public places, Darwinism and attacks on religion. Liberals are the cause. Liberals are against America. Anyone against the war is against America and is a liberal. "You are with us or against us."

This is the mindset of delusion, and delusion permits no facts or analysis. Blind emotion rules. Americans are right and everyone else is wrong. End of the debate.

That, gentle reader, is the full extent of talk radio, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal Editorial page, National Review, the Weekly Standard, and, indeed, of the entire concentrated corporate media where noncontroversy in the interest of advertising revenue rules.

Once upon a time there was a liberal media. It developed out of the Great Depression and the New Deal. Liberals believed that the private sector is the source of greed that must be restrained by government acting in the public interest. The liberals' mistake was to identify morality with government. Liberals had great suspicion of private power and insufficient suspicion of the power and inclination of government to do good.

Liberals became Benthamites (after Jeremy Bentham). They believed that as the people controlled government through democracy, there was no reason to fear government power, which should be increased in order to accomplish more good.

The conservative movement that I grew up in did not share the liberals' abiding faith in government. "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Today it is liberals, not conservatives, who endeavor to defend civil liberties from the state. Conservatives have been won around to the old liberal view that as long as government power is in their hands, there is no reason to fear it or to limit it. Thus, the Patriot Act, which permits government to suspend a person's civil liberty by calling him a terrorist with or without proof. Thus, preemptive war, which permits the President to invade other countries based on unverified assertions.

There is nothing conservative about these positions. To label them conservative is to make the same error as labeling the 1930s German Brownshirts conservative.

American liberals called the Brownshirts "conservative," because the Brownshirts were obviously not liberal. They were ignorant, violent, delusional, and they worshipped a man of no known distinction. Brownshirts' delusions were protected by an emotional force field. Adulation of power and force prevented Brownshirts from recognizing implications for their country of their reckless doctrines.

Like Brownshirts, the new conservatives take personally any criticism of their leader and his policies. To be a critic is to be an enemy. I went overnight from being an object of conservative adulation to one of derision when I wrote that the US invasion of Iraq was a "strategic blunder."

It is amazing that only a short time ago the Bush administration and its supporters believed that all the US had to do was to appear in Iraq and we would be greeted with flowers. Has there ever been a greater example of delusion? Isn't this on a par with the Children's Crusade against the Saracens in the Middle Ages?

Delusion is still the defining characteristic of the Bush administration. We have smashed Fallujah, a city of 300,000, only to discover that the 10,000 US Marines are bogged down in the ruins of the city. If the Marines leave, the "defeated" insurgents will return. Meanwhile the insurgents have moved on to destabilize Mosul, a city five times as large. Thus, the call for more US troops.

There are no more troops. Our former allies are not going to send troops. The only way the Bush administration can continue with its Iraq policy is to reinstate the draft.

When the draft is reinstated, conservatives will loudly proclaim their pride that their sons, fathers, husbands and brothers are going to die for "our freedom." Not a single one of them will be able to explain why destroying Iraqi cities and occupying the ruins are necessary for "our freedom." But this inability will not lessen the enthusiasm for the project. To protect their delusions from "reality-based" critics, they will demand that the critics be arrested for treason and silenced. Many encouraged by talk radio already speak this way.

Because of the triumph of delusional "new conservatives" and the demise of the liberal media, this war is different from the Vietnam war. As more Americans are killed and maimed in the pointless carnage, more Americans have a powerful emotional stake that the war not be lost and not be in vain. Trapped in violence and unable to admit mistake, a reckless administration will escalate.

The rapidly collapsing US dollar is hard evidence that the world sees the US as bankrupt. Flight from the dollar as the reserve currency will adversely impact American living standards, which are already falling as a result of job outsourcing and offshore production. The US cannot afford a costly and interminable war.

Falling living standards and inability to impose our will on the Middle East will result in great frustrations that will diminish our country.

Naturally the common people don't want war. But after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.

--Hermann Goering, Hitler's Reich Marshall, at the Nuremberg
Trials after World War II.

A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt...If the game runs sometime against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake.

--Thomas Jefferson, 1798

I have a knot in my stomach today that won't go away for some reason. I think it might be that my soul is trying exit my body through my bellybutton.

It's going to take a lot of convincing to get me to believe that our current president is not a complete scumbag, but it doesn't help when he barfs up garbage like this in a Washinton Post interview:

We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 elections. The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me.

For one thing, the insinuation that the entire election was about Iraq is absurd. It had more to do with the fact that so many Americans are Evangelical Christians and vote in a unified Republican block than anything else. Voters came out strong for Bush in spite of his Iraq policy, not because of it. So to insinuate that the election ratified the president's policy is crazy.

More importantly, the idea that a president, any president, can do anything in the first term with impunity as long as the re-election campaign is a sucess is not only asinine, it's offensive. It might be different if the president's Iraq policy has widespread bipartisan support, but it doesn't.

Tom DeLay hasn't even been indicted and yet the House Republicans have changed the rules to protect their corrupt leader from the clutches of the "partisan" attacks of DA Ronnie Earle who's investigating Delay's role in illegal fund raising for Texas legislative candidates. This is the sort of thing American's can expect from the "values" coalition that now runs all three branches of government.

Fortunately, not all Republicans are like minded. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, part of the 1994 Republican Revolution leads a handful of like-minded conservatives who voted against the rule change.

We took a strong stand in 1994 to make clear the Republican conference would live by a higher standard than our Democratic colleagues. This was instrumental in winning a Republican Congress for the first time in 40 years and the driving force behind passing the Congressional Accountability Act in the historic 104th Congress. Today, I spoke out against the amendment and voted against it because I believe it is a step in the wrong direction.

Not that it did any good, but at least he's out there on record standing up for ethics over corruption.

What I want to know is about the possibility of conviction. Several of DeLay's associates have already been indicted so that seems a likely possibility for DeLay as well. However, it's one thing for political leaders to fight through an indictment, but another entirely if they are convicted of a felony. What happens if DeLay is convicted on felony charges? Certainly the Republicans are not arrogant enough to change the rules to allow a convicted felon to remain in the leadership, are they?

Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo is doing yeoman's work in uncovering which Repubs voted for the rule change in their secret meeting.

Not like it was any big surprise, but Colin Powell resigned as Secretary of State after his 4 year run. In 2000 Powell was certainly one of the most respected public figures of our time but he leaves office in a cloud of uncertainty. As the nation's top diplomat he was often hamstrung and on the wrong side of the fight against Cheney and Rumsfeld.

Probably the moment that Powell will be most remembered for is his appearance at the U.N. during which he delivered "intelligence" about mobile biological labs, amongst other things, that turned out to be false. This was supposed to be the Bush Administration's Stevenson Moment, but it turned out to be the undoing of Colin Powell.

Who knows what really happened. Was he duped? Did he take one for the team? I don't suppose we'll ever know, even when Powell's book (and who doubts that one is forthcoming?) is released.

Personally, I think he was miscast as Secretary of State. He should have been Secretary of Defense. And he should have been listened to within the halls of the Bush echo chamber. Were Powell listened to I believe that we either would not have invaded Iraq or if we had, we would have established the occupation and been out of there a long time ago. Instead Donald "Stuff Happens" Rumsfeld ignored the "Powell Doctrine" of using overwhelming force in favor of his 21st Century fewest troops necessary method that has got us stuck in the quagmire that we're in at the moment and for the foreseeable future.

Even with all the problems, Powell served as a counterweight within the administration that allowed alternate policy decisions to filter down from Foggy Bottom to the media and through them to us. With Powell gone, and Rice taking his place at State, there will be no one to openly question the ill-advised foreign policy of the Bush Administration and to place something of a check of unbridled use of American power.

I'd love to just be able to say, it's sad to see him go. It's frightening.

Some Angry Northern Blue Stater fights back:

Fuck the South. Fuck 'em. We should have let them go when they wanted to leave. But no, we had to kill half a million people so they'd stay part of our special Union. Fighting for the right to keep slaves - yeah, those are states we want to keep.

It's only going to get worse.

Full text below:

It's hard to believe but there's some wingnut out there writing for Human Events, a right-wing fringe group that would like turn American into a pseudo-Edward Scissorhands white-bread suburbia (minus Edwards Scissorhands or anything else remotely distasteful) where no one has sex before marriage (or even thinks of sex before marriage or has sex for anything other than procreation), where everyone actually believes the world was created in six days (and might still be proven flat), and god damn it, there are no fucking homos (‘cept two pretty ladies going at it on DVD), who wants to forcibly kick out "Blue" states from the union.

Here are some of the gems mined from Mr. Thompson's stellar monograph:

As a class, liberals no longer are merely the vigorous opponents of the Right; they are spiteful enemies of civilization's core decency and traditions.

John Kerry represents 48-49% (a cancer, I know) of the voting electorate who are "enemies of civilization's core decency and traditions." Sounds right to me. I feel really bad for anyone with a progressive thought who lives in a "Red" State. We'll miss you.

The truth is, America is not just broken--it is becoming irreparable. If you believe that recent years of uncivil behavior are burdensome, imagine the likelihood of a future in which all bizarre acts are the norm, and a government-booted foot stands permanently on your face.

There's no problem with government-booted foot on faces as long as those faces are not white. Non-whites aren't really Americans anyway, right?

If the so-called "Red States" (those that voted for George W. Bush) cannot be respected or at least tolerated by the "Blue States" (those that voted for Al Gore and John Kerry), then the most disparate of them must live apart--not by secession of the former (a majority), but by expulsion of the latter.

Thus, a modest proposal. Breathtaking.

I find it incredible that anyone from the "Red" side could claim, as Mr. Thompson does, the liberals are so denigrating the conservatives that their only recourse is to kick them out of the nation. Conservatives control all four branches of government. They are hardly a downtrodden minority constantly on the defense against unwarranted and insidious attack from the left.

Personally, I have thought for years, only jokingly though, that California should cede from the nation and if Oregon, Washington, and the rest of the prosperous so-called "Blue" states want to join, so be it. Then Mr. Thompson and his ilk can live in their backwards, impoverished uber-utopia and see if they like the view minus all the tax dollars that "Blue" states send to Washington (which would be part of the "Blue" state solution, incidentally) and then onto "Red" states.

We know, however, that this is not going to happen. And we know that people like Mr. Thompson represent such a tiny fraction of the populace that it's hardly worth a response. However, such people exist and must be dealt with.

BUSH USA is predominantly white; devoutly Christian (mostly Protestant); openly, vigorously heterosexual; an open land of single-family homes and ranches; economically sound (except for a few farms), but not drunk with cyberworld business development, and mainly English-speaking, with a predilection for respectfully uttering "yes, ma'am" and "yes, sir."

Now we get to the point. White. I guess all the non-whites in the red states would be deported. And what's this vigourously business? What does he mean by that? "Not drunk with cyberworld business development." It's drunk with any business development. It's not drunk period. It's a very sober place where much time is spent in denial of reality, facts, logic and common sense.

I love that Mr. Thompson says that the 12 countries that he deems worthy of being kicked out of the union could petition the UN and EU for foreign aid. Does he not know that California on it's own would be the 5th largest nation in the world by GDP? We produce the most agriculture in the country. We have Silicon Valley. We have Hollywood. We have Napa Valley. We have the defense industry. If we succeed. This new America will actually be defended by spitballs.

GORE/KERRY USA is ethnically diverse; multi-religious, irreligious or nastily antireligious; more sexually liberated (if not in actual practice, certainly in attitude); awash with condo canyons and other high-end real estate bordered by sprawling, squalid public housing or neglected private homes, decidedly short of middle-class neighborhoods; both high tech and oddly primitive in its commerce; very artsy, and Babelesque, with abnormally loud speakers.

Oooooh. Ugly, indeed. Sounds like a horrible place.

I'm beginning to think I understand. Mr. Thompson lives in, oh, I don't know, some white suburb of a major southern city, let's say, Charlotte, for kicks. Never ventures outside the small circle that encompasses his white-picket-fenced house, his office and the country club. He gets all of his information about "Blue" states and liberals from Rush Limbaugh and first hand research watching MTV, making sure to turn his head quickly so as not to be poisoned by scantily clad teenagers. He's never met or had a conversation with anyone who isn't completely like him. He has no black friends. He has no latino friends. He's never met a Jew. He's never talked to a homosexual, that he’s aware of. He's never traveled outside the USA, especially not to France, land of socialism. In short, he's an insulated, intolerant prick whom Jesus would bitch slap were Jesus capable of violence.

But don't take my word for it. Read the entire article is all its glory yourself.

The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved.

Feel safer now?

The full text of the Ashcroft resignation letter is below.

Exit polls have been vilified in American elections since 2000 and it's a curious problem that has very serious and intelligent people scratching their heads and wondering what is going wrong. I have my theories.

Exit polls are often wrong in very close elections like this one and 2000 because so many votes get "spoiled" and are not counted, unbeknownst to the voter. So when voters are approached by exit pollsters and tell them how they voted they have no idea whether or not their vote was counted or not. There's something like a 1-2% spoilage rate, higher in places like Ohio where they still use punch card ballots and that has a huge effect on the results.

I have two general feelings about this. One is that we need to do everything to possible to reduce spoiled votes. No one should wait in the kind of lines we have in this country, vote and then not have their vote counted because the system doesn't work right. Two is that I think the exit polls might be more accurate than they are given credit for. If you look at Florida in 2000, the exit polls called it, accurately in the estimation of many independent observers, for Gore. If not for Jewish grandmothers voting for Buchanan and the large number of spoiled votes in predominantly Democratic counties, Gore would have won.

The same (minus the Buchanan votes) might be true for Ohio and New Mexico this time around. There's no way to know for sure. But if you look at the evidence which is that exit polls called these states one way with the actual result the opposite and the number of spoiled votes is larger than the difference, it's compelling.

Of course, while further evaluation of the votes in Ohio and New Mexico might swing those states blue, it does nothing to address the larger issue of 3 million more people in this country voting for Bush than Kerry which Democrats need to come to terms with.

Back the subject at hand, it's unfortunate that we as a country seem unable or unwilling to do anything about the massive electoral problem in the USA. You would think that after Florida 2000 we would have done something to prevent the same problems from recurring, but he haven't. Changes have been made for sure, but not nearly enough. There's too much at stake and the country is too closely divided not to do something to ensure a more perfect election. Provisional ballots are a nice idea in theory, but in practice they are a joke. Computerized balloting is rife for fraud. And will someone please tell me why we still use punch cards in this country?

It was hard to watch the returns come in last night. Really hard. After leaving work in such an optimistic mood, seeing the actual results came as a shock. It's one thing for the Republicans to retain the White House, but to do it with such a huge margin in the popular vote, a difference of 3% and more than 3 millions votes, that's disconcerting. And the race for the White House was only half the story.

What's really bothersome is that a) the Republicans increased the margin in the House and it looks to me that the Democrats might not have control of the House again in my lifetime b) the Republicans increased the margin in the Senate and it looks to me that the Democrats might not have control of the Senate again in my lifetime and c) Bush got more than 50% of the vote and will perceive a huge mandate along with a more agreeable Congress to put forth his radical conservative agenda which means more tax cuts, regressive changes in social programs, rolling back environmental protection, faith-based decision making, and extremely conservative court nominees including at least one and as many as four Supreme Court judges that will change the face of the law in this country not for four years, but maybe for forty.

Democrats across the country have some serious soul searching to do. It's obvious that we cannot win with the current strategies, most notably in the South and across the Midwest. When we go into an election with so many states unwinable it makes the margin for error dangerously small. I had hoped that a Kerry presidency would make efforts to bring people together in "Red" states in a way that Bush has failed to do in the "Blue" states, but that's not going to happen now.

Democrats are in a very precarious position, it seems to me. Only a major disaster in the country is going to shift the balance of power. And while there are some psycho-liberals who would welcome something catastrophic to happen in America, I am not one of them. I want our country to succeed. I want our country to be strong. I just want it to happen in a more progressive fashion.

Life will go on.

This morning at 7 o'clock I walked out of my apartment, down the stairs, onto the sidewalk where fallen yellow leaves rested in pools of water, around the corner and down the street to the local home of the Army National Guard where I was to cast my vote.

There were maybe 20 folks in line ahead of me and several more already in the 7 booths set up for voting. I had my camera and took pictures while I waited patiently for my turn to cast my ballot.

When I got to the front of the line, I was asked my name. I told them. But they couldn't find me on the list. Typical. I registered late because I wasn't sure where I was going to be living, but I called the election office yesterday to ensure that I was on the rolls. They confirmed that I was.

I didn't want to be a voter using "one of those other ballots", but what could I do? I figured I would cast my provisional ballot and then call the elections board and find out what was going on.

I filled out the pink affidavit of eligibility. When I gave it back to the bald man with the green jacket, he took one look at my name and thought he recognized it. He pulled out the supplemental voter list and, lo and behold, there I was. I was given a traditional optical ballot and went off to the booth to perform my civic duty.

Why this supplemental list wasn't in the hands of the first two people who were checking people off the rolls I'll never know. It was no big deal. There was a problem, but in the end, they got it right. It seems to me to be apt metaphor for America.

I came back to bald guy with the green jacket, gave him my ballot and he stuffed it into the ballot box which was nothing more than a cardboard box, taped around the edged for "security" with a slit on the top. It seemed so simple, way too simple. But what can you do? As long as my vote gets counted, I'll be happy.

IF I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene
and show,

'Twould not be you, Niagara - nor you, ye limitless prairies - nor
your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,

Nor you, Yosemite - nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic
geyser-loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,

Nor Oregon's white cones - nor Huron's belt of mighty lakes - nor
Mississippi's stream:

- This seething hemisphere's humanity, as now, I'd name - the still
small voice vibrating - America's choosing day,

(The heart of it not in the chosen - the act itself the main, the
quadriennial choosing,)

The stretch of North and South arous'd - sea-board and inland-

Texas to Maine - the Prairie States - Vermont, Virginia,
California,

The final ballot-shower from East to West - the paradox and conflict,

The countless snow-flakes falling - (a swordless conflict,

Yet more than all Rome's wars of old, or modern Napoleon's:) the
peaceful choice of all,

Or good or ill humanity - welcoming the darker odds, the dross:

- Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify - while the heart
pants, life glows:

These stormy gusts and winds wait precious ships,

Swell'd Washington's, Jefferson's, Lincoln's sails.

--Walt Whitman

To-day, of all the weary year,
A king of men am I.
To-day, alike are great and small,
The nameless and the known;
My palace is the people's hall,
The ballot-box my throne!
The rich is level with the poor,
The weak is strong to-day;
And sleekest broadcloth counts no more
Than homespun frock of gray.
To-day let pomp and vain pretence
My stubborn right abide;
I set a plain man's common sense
Against the pedant's pride.
The wide world has not wealth to buy
The power in my right hand!

--John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)

If you want to see what the pundits are predicting, mostly so you can laugh at them after the election, have a look at Real Clear Politics Pundit Prediction Round-up.

I love that Bill Kristol is calling Bush 348 Kerry 190. I can understand that he wants Bush to win. He might even looks at the polls and think Bush is going to win. But how the hell could he see 348 EV for Bush? It's just not going to happen. I will be first to email him when I hear the words "President-elect Kerry".

I didn't get my registration in until a few days before the deadline on the 18th of October because I wasn't sure where I was going to be living on election day. I called on the 18th to see if the registration made it through and the nice woman at the elections board told me that they were so overwhelmed entering newly registered voters in the system, that the only way for me to ensure I that I was able to vote was to send in another registration card. I decided not to and to trust that the system would take care of me.

I just found out that my trust was not misplaced and that I am in fact registered. (And the Crowd Went Wild!!!) So I guess I should take a look at the issues and figure out who I'm going to vote for.

Yet another GOP man has come out in support for Kerry. This time it is Bob Smith former senator from New Hampshire who lived at the far right of the GOP and even once left the Republican Party at one point because he considered it too moderate.

Here's what he has to say about John Kerry:

As someone who worked with you daily for 12 years as a United States Senator, I am acutely conscious of the fact that we disagree on many important issues. Despite our differences, you have always been willing to engage in constructive debate in an effort to forge sound public policy.

I deeply respect your commitment to our nation and your patriotism which, I believe, was forged when you-like I-proudly wore the uniform of the United States Navy in Viet Nam...

Because of the courage and character you demonstrated in Vietnam, I believe you when you say that you'll do a better job than President Bush to win the peace in Iraq, as well as to win the war against terrorism.

And that coming from a hard-card prolifer pretty much says it all, doesn't it?

Here are more porminent Republicans endorsing John Kerry:

• Elmer L. Andersen, former Republican Governor of Minnesota (1961-63) -- Oct. 13
• Tim Ashby, director, Office of Mexico and the Caribbean, U.S. Commerce Department under Reagan and Bush I -- Oct. 14
• Jack Bogle Founder of the Vanguard Mutual Fund.
• David Catania, Republican (now Independent) Councilman from Washington, D.C. -- Sept. 29
• Steve Chapman, conservative syndicated columnist, Chicago Tribune -- Oct. 24
• Mike Cobb, former Republican Mayor of Palo Alto, California -- Sept. 8
• George Comstock, Mayor of Portola Valley, California -- Sept. 1
• Marlow Cook, former Republican Senator from Kentucky (1968-74) -- Oct. 20
• David Durenberger, former Senator from Minnesota (1978-95) -- Oct. 27 (endorsing Kerry health plan over Bush's)
• John Eisenhower, son of former Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower -- Sept. 9
• John A. Galbraith, former Republican Ohio General Assemblyman -- Sept. 28
• Peter Gillette, former Republican Commissioner of Trade for Minnesota (1991-95) -- Oct. 20
• Lee Iacocca, former Chrysler Chairman -- June 25
• Anne Morton Kimberly, widow of Rogers C.B. Morton, former Republican Representative from Maryland -- Oct. 14
• Steve May, former Republican state legislator from Arizona -- Sept. 10
• Pete McCloskey (editorial here), former Republican Representative from California -- Sept. 8
• Ballard Morton, son of Thruston Morton, former Republican Senator from Kentucky -- Oct. 14
• Clay Myers, Republican Secretary of State (1967-77) and State Treasurer (1977-84) for Oregon -- Sept. 1
• Clyde Prestowitz, counselor to Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Commerce -- Oct. 6
• Rick Russman, former Republican State Senator from New Hampshire -- Oct. 7
• William Milliken, former Republican Governor of Michigan (1969-82) -- Oct. 18
• Charley Reese, conservative columnist/journalist, Orlando Sentinel (1971-2001) -- May 17
• Bill Rutherford, former Treasurer of Oregon and Chair of the Oregon Investment Council -- Sept. 1
• Richard Schmalensee, former Council of Economic Advisers member for President George H. W. Bush -- Oct. 12
• Jon Silver, former Republican Mayor of Portola Valley, California -- Sept. 24
• Gail Slocum, former Republican Mayor of Menlo Park, California -- Sept. '04
• Bob Smith, retired Republican Senator from New Hampshire -- Oct 28
• Andrew Sullivan, conservative columnist, former editor of The New Republic -- Oct. 26 (on Jul. 25 he announced he wouldn't vote for Bush)
• Russell E. Train, (interview) EPA chief under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford -- Jul. '04
• Jude Wanniski, former associate editor of The Wall Street Journal, coined term "supply side economics" -- Oct. 27
• Marshall Wittmann, former communications director to Arizona Republican Senator John McCain -- Oct. 7
• Various Republican Business Leaders -- Aug. 5

And some Republicans who stop short of endorsing Kerry, but will not vote for George W. Bush

• Basil Akers, 1992 RNC NM delegate for George H. W. Bush and U.S. Army intelligence analyst in Vietnam, Oct. 25
  
• Bob Barr, former Republican Representative from Georgia (1995-2003) -- Oct. 14

• Robert L. Black, retired Republican judge of the Ohio First District Court of Appeals -- Oct. 13
  
• John H. Buchanan, former Republican Congressman from Alabama -- Oct. 4
  
• Lincoln Chafee, Republican Senator from Rhode Island -- Oct. 4
  
• John Dean, former White House Counsel to former Republican President Nixon -- Apr. '04
  
• Paul Findley, former Republican Representative from Illinois -- Apr. '04
  
• A. Linwood Holton, former Republican Governor of Virginia (1970-74) -- Aug. 29
  
• Log Cabin Republicans -- Sept. 8
  
• Paul O'Neill, former Treasury Secretary to Republican President George W. Bush -- Jan. '04
  
• Richie Robb, mayor of South Charleston, WV (and 2004 Electoral College WV Republican elector) -- Sep. '04
  
• William Saletan, "liberal Republican" columnist for Slate -- Sept. 1
  
• Karl W. B. Schwarz, very conservative Republican from Arkansas -- Oct. 20 (see also [1])
  
• Walter Olson, Bush 2000 campaign advisor -- Oct. 26

Kerry will win.

"The President needs to get all the facts before jumping to politically motivated conclusions."

-GWB at a rally today

Does he think no one was paying to attention when he took us to war with mistaken intelligence based on politically motivated conclusions? That bubble must be cutting off oxygen circulation to his brain.

"It is clear that minority turnout is a wildcard in this race and represents a huge upside for Sen. Kerry and a considerable challenge for the President's campaign. If one assumes minority turnout exceeds their 2000 election levels, then it appears a number of these states would tip to Sen. Kerry."

This comes directly from a report entitled, It Can't Get Any Closer in the Battleground States Minority Turnout is Kerry Key, from Republican polling firm Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates, Inc. The report concludes that when the data is weighted to reflect minority turnout based on the 2000 exit polls, Sen. Kerry leads by 3.5% and if minority turnout is weighted to census levels Sen. Kerry's lead expands to 5.2%.

So there should be no doubt as to why the GOP is engaged in a concerted effort to challenge minority voters in battleground states. It's the only way they can win.

Wes Clark on George Bush's recent remarks about Kerry's lack of competence to be Commander in Chief:

Today George W. Bush made a very compelling and thoughtful argument for why he should not be reelected. In his own words, he told the American people that "... a political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your Commander in Chief".

President Bush couldn't be more right. He jumped to conclusions about any connection between Saddam Hussein and 911. He jumped to conclusions about weapons of mass destruction. He jumped to conclusions about the mission being accomplished. He jumped to conclusions about how we had enough troops on the ground to win the peace. And because he jumped to conclusions, terrorists and insurgents in Iraq may very well have their hands on powerful explosives to attack our troops, we are stuck in Iraq without a plan to win the peace, and Americans are less safe both at home and abroad.

By doing all these things, he broke faith with our men and women in uniform. He has let them down. George W. Bush is unfit to be our Commander in Chief.

Mr. President, I couldn't agree with you more.

Lawrence O'Donnell, the moderate Democratic commentator, was on Scarborough Country with Swift Boat front man and long time Kerry adversary John O'Neill and just comlpetely slammed him.

You can see the video on the Daily Recycler, but what's more interesting is to read through the 200+ comments from the readers, most of whom are conservative. There's some quality stuff in there. The vitriol is heavy on both sides.

It doesn't matter what the story is or what the facts are, partisans on either side are quick to back whatever version of whatever story is being pumped that day that supports their view. I'm definitely guilty of this myself sometimes, but at least I make an effort to absorb as much media from all sides as possible in order to make an informed decision.

from The Atlantic (subscription)

Letter to a Republican
The case against a vote for Bush
by Jack Beatty

A vote for George W. Bush will make you an accomplice after the fact in the death of thousands and the maiming of thousands more—an infliction of suffering unexcused by justice or necessity. As theologians argued before the invasion of Iraq, preventive war is justified only on grounds of self-defense. But we know now, through the President's own inspector, Charles Duelfer, that Iraq posed no threat to the United States, or to its neighbors. In saying he would launch the war knowing everything he knows now, President Bush has endorsed a principle that most Americans would denounce if other countries espoused it: Might makes right.

Bush could (but doesn't) claim he was misled by bad intelligence into believing that Saddam possessed WMD. But you know better. In voting for Bush now, you would be taking a position you would not have taken before the war—that even if Iraq had no WMD and no connection to 9/11, the U.S. should invade and occupy it; that even without justification, we should kill from ten- to twenty-thousand Iraqis; that even though self-defense does not require it, we should will the death of over 1,000 U.S. servicemen and women and the wounding of 7,000 more. Bush is stuck with that position. He is a politician; you are not. He is asking you to endorse all that has happened knowing that none of it was necessary. Won't that be worse than endorsing what the Pope called the war before it began—"a defeat for humanity"? Won't it be more like endorsing a crime against humanity?

But, you say, Saddam is in jail. His regime is gone. The Iraqis are free. Toppling his regime, however, was not an end in itself but a means to the end of securing Iraq's WMD. Which did not exist. Such threat—faint, almost notional—as Iraq posed was contained before the war. And now? Osama Bin Laden wanted to provoke Western intervention in an Arab country and Bush played into his hands. How much will Iraq help Bin Ladenism? We can't know. But, from the point of view of U.S. security, the cost of removing Saddam exceeds the short-term benefit, and weights the odds against realizing any long-term gain by way of "democracy" in Iraq.

As for the Iraqis, they are free of Saddam, but at what cost? Put it this way. The U.S. population is roughly twelve times Iraq's. How would you feel if, in liberating us from an oppressive government, a foreign invader killed 120,000 Americans? If your son or daughter was among those killed, your loss would be absolute; beyond balance by any future gain for the country. That is how it is for many of the Iraqis we have "liberated." Life was hard under Saddam, but it was life nonetheless. Saddam was not perpetrating genocide, which would have given the intervention a humanitarian justification, allowing us to claim we killed thousands to save hundreds of thousands. But you know better.

A vote for Bush promises the absolution of denial—and that, I think, explains his otherwise inexplicable hold on the electorate. The President cannot face the truth, but his moral blindness won't excuse yours. Our soldiers have done their duty. No dishonor attaches to them. It attaches to Bush; and it will attach to you if you vote for him.

Not that I put much stock in this, but Kerry has hit the 50% mark in the latest WaPo tracking poll.

To me, this means that Kerry will garner something like 52-53% based on what I think will be huge voter turnout including a large chunk on newly registered voters who hate George Bush.

A four point spread in the national polls should translate to something around 300 Electoral Votes for Kerry. I think he will win Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida (unless Gov. Bush can pull a rabbit out of the hat). Kerry should also take Michigan and Minnesota. New Mexico, Iowa and Wisconsin, which Gore took in 2000 by small margins are in jeopardy, but it won't matter if Kerry wins OH, PA, FL, MN and MI.

There's still a week to go and a terror alert at the last minute can swing the balance of the electorate in the wrong direction, but it seems to me at least, the good guys are finally headed in the right direction, so to speak.

Go Team!

And thank the good lord for that. This constant barrage is draining. I suppose I could turn off the TV, unplug the radio at work and stop surfing the web, but I can't stop. To me this campaign is like a car wreck on the side of the road. I don't want to look, but I have to.

The rightwing nuts and the leftwing nuts all think their guy is going to win in a landslide. Me. I'm cautiously optimistic. I think Kerry is edging away slightly in important swing states, most notably Ohio and Pennsylvania (both states where Nader is off the ballot, incidentally) and will win if everyone who plans on voting is able to vote and their votes are counted.

Bush is not polling over 50% in any swing state or nationally which is great news for the Kerry camp as undecideds trend towards the challenger at the end of an election cycle. The Democrats have also registered far more voters than the Republicans and I don't think that is being accurately reflected in the polls.

That said, there's a week left and so much could happen. I just hope that whatever the result is, that we know it on November 3rd. I don't think anyone wants to have to go through another 2000 experience again.

As a citizen of this crumbling republic, I consider the right to vote as precious as any right that I have. It bothers me that people don't take this seriously. I don't understand why more people don't vote. I understand the reasons, but I don't really understand the mentality.

It should be the case that regardless of what party you support (I'm an Independent supporting John Kerry), we as a country should be doing everything in our power to make sure as many people as possible vote. Registration should be an easy simple process. Voting should uniform across the country. Every effort should be made to make sure that everyone who wants to votes and all votes are counted accurately.

This is why it's so disturbing to see anyone or any party do anything to try to stop, intimidate or deny people from voting. I had a problem with the Gore campaign not wanting to count some military absentee ballots and not asking for a complete recount in Florida instead of just in a few key counties. I had a problem with Kathryn Harris dereliction of duty as an election official. And I have a real problem with what the NYT reported over the weekend about the GOP's plan to challenge voters at the polls in Ohio:

Republican Party officials in Ohio took formal steps yesterday to place thousands of recruits inside polling places on Election Day to challenge the qualifications of voters they suspect are not eligible to cast ballots.

and the BBC report of voter intimidation plans in Florida:

A secret document obtained from inside Bush campaign headquarters in Florida suggests a plan - possibly in violation of US law - to disrupt voting in the state's African-American voting districts

When it's obvious that one party is doing everything they can to register new voters and the other party is doing everything they can to deny people the right to vote, you have wonder why anyone of conscious would stand up for the party of subversion. If the Republicans can only win by minimizing turnout and keeping people away from the polls, then what is the point of being a citizen in this so-called democracy?

Paul Waldman at the Gadflyer has an article about Bush's continuous slamming of Massachusetts that I've been talking about offline for a long time, albeit much less eloquently. This overblown charge goes unanswered by both the media and the Kerry campaign.

My questions about this are many:

a) how does the media let Bush get away with this?
b) why doesn't the Kerry campaign say something?
c) can you imagine the firestorm if Kerry said the same thing about Texas?
d) why don't people in MA stand up and say something?

Seriously, where is the backbone of the people from Massachusetts? If California was getting slammed by the president the same way, people here would be up in arms. My personal feeling is that the country would be a hell of a lot better off if the more states were like MA (I'm talking to you, Kentucky), but that's besides the point.

The real point is not why the good people of the Bay State are not speaking up, but why Kerry and his campaign isn't saying anything. Waldman puts it succinctly.

John Kerry knows that if he criticized one state or one region of the country, the press and the Republicans would come down on him like a ton of bricks, charging him with being a Northeastern elitist who doesn't want to be the president of all Americans.

But the rules are different on the other side of the aisle. In today's politics, it is acceptable for Republicans to traffic in ugly stereotypes and assert outright that people who come from some areas of America are not really American. Some might remember the ad to which I referred, aired by the conservative Club for Growth, which said, "Howard Dean should take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont, where it belongs."

...Please Shut Up!

from Mark Twang:

They told us we were shooting a Greenpeace commercial!
--The Wolves

This is the Bush Campaignistration's answer to Reagan's "Bear in the Woods" ad from 1984. It's not clear whether the wolves in the ad represent liberals or terrorists, but it is clear that the Bush ad people don't care, as long as you come away with a negative opinion of John Kerry.

I have only seen the ad online and on news programs. Precious little national political advertising is on the California airwaves. I have no idea what affect, if any, it might be having in the various battleground states. Personally, I think the ad is weak and won't work.

Whatever the president does or says, it remains true that his approval rating is below 50% and that's a death knell for an incumbent politician. Traditionally undecideds break in favor of the challenger, 4-1. If Kerry can keep it close, he will win. If Democrats can parlay their sizeable advantage in new voter registration to Kerry votes, he might win, well, maybe not a landslide, but by more than a handful of electoral votes. This is my preferred outcome because the larger the victory, the less likely this election will be decided in the courts.

The get the skinny on the ad, take a gander at the story from FactCheck.org

A report from the Program on International Policy Attitudes graphically illustrates how the support for President Bush regarding the war in Iraq is based largely on innaccurate information. Big surprise, considering much of Bush support is not rooted in anything close to reality.

Here's how the report begins:

Even after the final report of Charles Duelfer to Congress saying that Iraq did not have a significant WMD program, 72% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq had actual WMD (47%) or a major program for developing them (25%). Fifty-six percent assume that most experts believe Iraq had actual WMD and 57% also assume, incorrectly, that Duelfer concluded Iraq had at least a major WMD program. Kerry supporters hold opposite beliefs on all these points.

Possibly even more interesting is when asked if the United States should have gone to war with Iraq if US intelligence sources had agreed that Iraq was not making WMD or providing support to al Qaeda, 58% of Bush supporters said the US should not have, and 61% assume that in this case the President would not have. Therefore, the only way for them to continue to support the president is through a cloud of cognitive dissonance that shields them from having face difficult facts aka reality.

And you wonder why the country is so divided?

Read the entire report from the Program on International Policy Attitudes.

It's no big suprise that the New York Times has come out with an endorsement for John Kerry. I doubt highly that it will change any minds not already made up, despite being the most influencial newspaper in the country (or most hated if you're one of those who decries the "liberal" media bias". However, the piece makes a powerful case that Kerry will make a better president and how and where George Bush has failed. Here's one example

The president who lost the popular vote got a real mandate on Sept. 11, 2001. With the grieving country united behind him, Mr. Bush had an unparalleled opportunity to ask for almost any shared sacrifice. The only limit was his imagination.

But the president asked for no sacrifice. He missed the opportunity to take a galvinized population to support a cause, any cause that would have benefited the United States or the world. Instead he called for more tax cuts and told people to go about their lives as normal, and above all, don't stop spending.

This missed opportunity will be the crux of how Bush's failed presidency is remembered after he is gone, whether he wins a second term or not, despite the president's assertion (as detailed by Bob Woodward) that we won't know how history will judge him because we will all be dead. He's as wrong about that as he is about anything from stem cell research to the war in Iraq.

Read the whole editorial from the New York Times

[File this under funny if it weren't so damn scary]

There's this extraordinary story on CNN where the founder of the U.S. Christian Coalition Pat Robertson describes a conversation he had with George Bush prior to the start of the war in Iraq in which he delivers the following anecdote:

"You remember Mark Twain said, 'He looks like a contented Christian with four aces.' I mean he was just sitting there like, 'I'm on top of the world,' " Robertson said on the CNN show, "Paula Zahn Now."

"And I warned him about this war. I had deep misgivings about this war, deep misgivings. And I was trying to say, 'Mr. President, you had better prepare the American people for casualties.' "

Robertson said the president then told him, "Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties."

Then Robertson went on to say, "I mean, the Lord told me it was going to be A, a disaster, and B, messy. I warned him about casualties."

Now, who are we to believe here? Is "God" speaking to Robertson or Bush? Is he speaking to both but giving them opposite and contradictory information?

Based on this limited information it would appear that Robertson has the ear of "God" while Bush is still getting disinformation from the Almighty. What I want to know is has "God" told Robertson who is going to win Game 7 between the Yanks and the Sox?

It doesn't get any more personal than this:

Bush Relatives for Kerry

Michigan's former Republican Governor William Milliken has come out with a statement of support for John Kerry that eloquently dams current administration policy on everything from Iraq to fiscal policy to the environment and just about everything in between in a way that Kerry doesn't seem to be able to. Here's one example:

"My Republican Party is the party of Michigan Sen. Arthur H. Vandenberg who helped forge a bipartisan foreign policy that served this nation well and produced strong alliances across the globe. This president has, in a highly partisan, unilateral way rushed us into a tragic and unnecessary war that has cost the lives of more than 1,000 of our young men and women. In this arrogant rush to war, he has alienated this nation from much of the world.

What's worse, the basic premises upon which we were taken to war proved to be false. Now, we find ourselves in the midst of an occupation that was largely unplanned and has become a disaster from which we cannot easily extricate ourselves."

I believe that there are many people of conscience on the Republican side who feel exactly the same way as Mr. Milliken does, but are afraid to speak out. I don't think his statement is going to affect the race in Michigan which is going to fall in the Dems column comfortably, but maybe it will convince likeminded people to come out declare for Kerry.

Read the full statement below.

There's two weeks to go an anything can happen in the campaign for the Presidency. If you follow the polls, the race is either a dead heat or Bush has a marginal lead. But that's in the national poll, or the "popular vote", which as we know, doesn't mean squat. Bush is making up ground in large states like New York and California and new Democrat registrants are undercounted which skews the national polls towards him, but he is behind in the Electoral College, if you believe the results on electoral-vote.com, the only thing that matters.

What I don't want is a situation like 2000 where Kerry wins the Electoral College and Bush wins the Popular Vote. Hopefully it won't happen like that, but you never know. Then we'll really see the true colors of the conservatives. If they let it go, they'll seem honorable. If they contest the election on that basis, we'll know what they are truly made of.

However, what's even more scary is the chance for a contested election in any of the close battleground states, Florida or otherwise, that will throw the result to one party or the other. Then we will have a recipe for chaos.

Sinclair Broadcasting Group (SBGI), the conservative publicly traded owner of over 60 local television stations which plans to air the anti-Kerry film "Stolen Honor", is getting hammered in the market, down yet again, and trading at or near 52-week lows. SBGI is suffering from a multi-pronged attack from stockholders and institutional investors, from the progressive blogosphere which is going after advertisers and from the inside with Jonathan Lieberman, their Washington Bureau chief (that is until yesterday when he was canned), bravely criticizing his employers for not offering equal time to the opposition.

The stock has lost more than 100 million in market cap since the decision to air the film, which is looking worse by the day, was made a few weeks ago and stirred up a hornet's net of controversy. The closest SBGI market to me is in Sacramento, so if SBGI decides to go ahead with the plans to air the film, I won't be able to see it, but their network of stations, the largest in the nation by the way, reaches 25% of the American public, many in the so-called battleground states.

This story raises so many issues, about election law, about the public airwaves and broadcaster responsibility, but most importantly and frightening, if you believe that the Sinclair's obvious agenda to see Bush re-elected is not merely ideological, is the problem of media conglomeration. Personally I think the large scale media holdings in the hands of fewer and fewer companies is dangerous. Right now the law, which I believe is damaging enough, allows for a single corporation to own no more than 2 stations in any given market. I don't think they should be able to own more than one. Clearly, SBGI was hoping to help swing the election towards Bush who is in favor of less government central and weaker regulations.

Hopefully, the downward trends of the stock and other efforts will stop Sinclair in its tracks. Right now the market cap has been driven so low, beneath 300 million, that someone like George Soros could come in and buy the damn company and stop this madness.

According to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, there is no health crisis. Apparently he hasn't been watching the news lately. Or maybe he has and doesn't care, since like President Bush, every they say is gospel, up is down, black is white, we're making progress in Iraq and the economy is turning the corner. Uh-huh. I'm right there with you Mr. Thompson, except, when I say I'm right there with you, I mean I'm not right there with you. See how this works?

Here are two articles that everyone should read before you go to polls on November 2:

Without a Doubt
by Ron Suskind

Remember the Alamo: How George W. Bush reinvented himself
by Nicholas Lemann

Take a look at this. It's a cease and desist letter to Rock the Vote from RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie trying to get them to stop discussing the possibility of draft with a threat to remove their status as a non-profit (as if he has the power to do that).

To defend his point, Gillespie qoutes members of the adminstration like, well, the president:

""We don't need the draft. Look, the all-volunteer force is working..."

What the hell else is he going to say? Gillespie goes on to write that claims that the draft could be instituted is tantamount to "malicious intent and a reckless disregard for the truth." I suppose that's one way to squelch healthy debate in America.

The oddest thing is that at the end of the letter Gillespie tries to make nice by saying that "the Republican National Committe shares the goal of your organization to encourage voter registration and "empower yonug people to change the world." I think what he meant to say was the RNC values younger voters so long as they take their political ques from Brittany Spears.

If you're at all bothered by the impact of media conglomeration in this country and want to see an example of how it is being abused in the 2004 campaign, then the story brewing about the Sinclair Broadcast Group and their plans to run an anti-Kerry documentary has got your blood boiling.

So much has been written about this already that I'm just going to point you to a very well written piece by Jay Rosen that covers the spectrum of the SBG issue:

Like Agnew with TV Stations: Sinclair Broadcast Group Takes On Kerry and The Liberal Media

This fake Cheney family outrage about John Kerry referencing their daughter in a response in the 3rd debate to a question about homosexuality is really bothering me, not because I think it's going to the Democratic campaign any harm, but because Lyn Cheney's charge of a "Cheap and tawdry political trick" is so hypocrital it's beyond funny.

The irony is that Cheney's fake outrage is exactly the sort of the "Cheap and tawdry political trick" that takes the focus away from W getting trounced in the debates, away from real issues, and focuses attention on something meaningless, which, for whatever reason, voters are drawn to like moths to the light. Seriously, who, other than me, is going to question a mother of a lesbian when she pretends to be outraged?

I'm not just pulling this shit out my keister. The reason I think this is because I watched the VP debate when this issue was brought up, not by John Edwards, but by Gwen Ifill. The exchange is really telling.

IFILL: The next question goes to you, Mr. Vice President.

I want to read something you said four years ago at this very setting: "Freedom means freedom for everybody." You said it again recently when you were asked about legalizing same-sex unions. And you used your family's experience as a context for your remarks.

Can you describe then your administration's support for a constitutional ban on same-sex unions?

Here, Cheney could have showed outrage to the moderator at bringing up his family in reference to homosexuality, but he didn't. He answered what must have been a tough question for him because he obviously disagrees with the president on this issue.

CHENEY: Gwen, you're right, four years ago in this debate, the subject came up. And I said then and I believe today that freedom does mean freedom for everybody. People ought to be free to choose any arrangement they want. It's really no one else's business.

That's a separate question from the issue of whether or not government should sanction or approve or give some sort of authorization, if you will, to these relationships.

Traditionally, that's been an issue for the states. States have regulated marriage, if you will. That would be my preference.

In effect, what's happened is that in recent months, especially in Massachusetts, but also in California, but in Massachusetts we had the Massachusetts Supreme Court direct the state of -- the legislature of Massachusetts to modify their constitution to allow gay marriage.

And the fact is that the president felt that it was important to make it clear that that's the wrong way to go, as far as he's concerned.

Now, he sets the policy for this administration, and I support the president.

When it came time for John Edwards to respond, he brought up Mary Cheney in the same way that Kerry has been lambasted for in the 3rd debate.

Now, as to this question, let me say first that I think the vice president and his wife love their daughter. I think they love her very much. And you can't have anything but respect for the fact that they're willing to talk about the fact that they have a gay daughter, the fact that they embrace her. It's a wonderful thing. And there are millions of parents like that who love their children, who want their children to be happy.

Did Cheney respond with outrage. How dare you bring my daughter into this. No. Quite the opposite.

IFILL: Mr. Vice President, you have 90 seconds.

CHENEY: Well, Gwen, let me simply thank the senator for the kind words he said about my family and our daughter.

I appreciate that very much.

IFILL: That's it?

CHENEY: That's it.

Was the VP being disingenuous when he thanked Edwards for the "kind words he said about my family and our daughter?" I don't think so. It was one of the VP's only human responses of the evening. So how can we justify the difference in the two responses following each debate except to say that the Cheney outrage is the exact kind of "Cheap and tawdry political trick" that they are accusing John Kerry of. The Cheney's were tripping over themselves to launch yet another (undeserved) character attack on Kerry.

**UPDATE**

Activist accuses GOP of 'attacking gays'
Head of gay GOP group Log Republicans lashes out

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The head of the nation's largest gay and lesbian Republican group slammed fellow Republicans Friday for "feigning outrage" over comments by Sen. John Kerry, and called on President Bush to "stop attacking gay families on the campaign trail." [more]

It should be obvious to anyone who knows anything about the president that his "support" of the Assault Weapons Ban is a joke. There's just no excuse with a Republican House and a Republican Senate to credibly say that he's for the bill while it's being quashed in Congress.

But then he said something in the meat of his response that is so at odds with his approach to terrorism that I can't make heads of tails of it.

But the best way to protect our citizens from guns is to prosecute those who commit crimes with guns.

Not only do I fundamentally disagree with the premise of this statement I find it shocking in it's implicit alignment with 2nd amendment wingnuts. Why isn't it just as important to "pre-emptively" act to stop gun crimes as it is to stop terrorism?

Dan Froomkin over at the Washington Post has made a fascinating observation about a tendencency of George Bush's to preface remarks that appear questionable with "Of Course".

Here's every instance of "of course" from last night:

• "Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations. Of course we're worried about Osama bin Laden."

• "Of course we're meeting our obligation to our veterans, and the veterans know that."

• Regarding his Social Security plans: "And we're of course going to have to consider the costs."

Read the whole article for more examples both inside and outside of the debates.

One of the most annoying parts of the last debate is that again and again, when faced with a question he could not or would not answer, President Bush didn't and instead went on to talk about education or legal reform or anything else that would take people's mind off the fact that he has an indefensible record. Here are some examples:

SCHIEFFER: Mr. President, I want to go back to something Senator Kerry said earlier tonight and ask a follow-up of my own. He said -- and this will be a new question to you -- he said that you had never said whether you would like to overturn Roe v. Wade. So I'd ask you directly, would you like to?

BUSH: What he's asking me is, will I have a litmus test for my judges? And the answer is, no, I will not have a litmus test. I will pick judges who will interpret the Constitution, but I'll have no litmus test.

That was Bush's entire two minute response. It confused Kerry so much that he had had to ask for clarification as to how much time he had to respond.

On the minimum wage:

Actually, Mitch McConnell had a minimum-wage plan that I supported that would have increased the minimum wage.

But let me talk about what's really important for the worker you're referring to. And that's to make sure the education system works. It's to make sure we raise standards.

On the assault weapons bad:

Actually, I made my intentions -- made my views clear. I did think we ought to extend the assault weapons ban, and was told the fact that the bill was never going to move, because Republicans and Democrats were against the assault weapon ban, people of both parties.

I believe law-abiding citizens ought to be able to own a gun. I believe in background checks at gun shows or anywhere to make sure that guns don't get in the hands of people that shouldn't have them.

on Affirmative Action:

Well, first of all, it is just not true that I haven't met with the Black Congressional Caucus. I met with the Black Congressional Caucus at the White House.

And secondly, like my opponent, I don't agree we ought to have quotas. I agree, we shouldn't have quotas." (Bush only met with the "Black Congressional Caucus" when they showed up at the White House and demanded to meet with him after he repeatedly refused.)

Again, if you missed the debate, you can read the entire transcript at the many sites including the Washington Post.

SCHIEFFER: New question, Mr. President, to you.

We are talking about protecting ourselves from the unexpected, but the flu season is suddenly upon us. Flu kills thousands of people every year.

Suddenly we find ourselves with a severe shortage of flu vaccine. How did that happen?

BUSH: Bob, we relied upon a company out of England to provide about half of the flu vaccines for the United States citizen, and it turned out that the vaccine they were producing was contaminated. And so we took the right action and didn't allow contaminated medicine into our country.

We're working with Canada to hopefully -- that they'll produce a -- help us realize the vaccine necessary to make sure our citizens have got flu vaccinations during this upcoming season.

My call to our fellow Americans is if you're healthy, if you're younger, don't get a flu shot this year. Help us prioritize those who need to get the flu shot, the elderly and the young.

The CDC, responsible for health in the United States, is setting those priorities and is allocating the flu vaccine accordingly.

I haven't gotten a flu shot, and I don't intend to because I want to make sure those who are most vulnerable get treated.

We have a problem with litigation in the United States of America. Vaccine manufacturers are worried about getting sued, and therefore they have backed off from providing this kind of vaccine.

One of the reasons I'm such a strong believer in legal reform is so that people aren't afraid of producing a product that is necessary for the health of our citizens and then end up getting sued in a court of law.

But the best thing we can do now, Bob, given the circumstances with the company in England is for those of us who are younger and healthy, don't get a flu shot.

First, Since I work for Chiron, the company in question, which, as I know since I'm currently sitting here in our corporate offices, is not an English company, but one based in Emeryville, CA, that the President is wrong when he says this is a an English company. It's an American company with a manufacturing plant in the U.K.

Second, if we're working with Canada to help produce more flu vaccine and that is obviously "safe", then importing prescription drugs from Canada should also be deemed safe.

Third, Bush said "'We took the right action and didn't allow contaminated medicine into our country", which is not true, since it was English regulators who shut down the plant.

Finally the reason that companies like Chiron don't want to produce the flu vaccine has nothing to do with "manufacturers .... worried about getting sued", but has everything to do with an unstable market from year to year. Companies are reluctant to produce the vaccine because they have no idea whether or not it will sell. If it doesn't they have to throw away millions of vials because the vaccine doesn't keep from year to year. It has nothing to do with litigation, frivolous or otherwise.

SCHIEFFER: Anything to add, Senator Kerry?

KERRY: Yes. When the president had an opportunity to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, he took his focus off of them, outsourced the job to Afghan warlords, and Osama bin Laden escaped.

Six months after he said Osama bin Laden must be caught dead or alive, this president was asked, "Where is Osama bin Laden?" He said, "I don't know. I don't really think about him very much. I'm not that concerned."

We need a president who stays deadly focused on the real war on terror.

SCHIEFFER: Mr. President?

BUSH: Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations.

Of course we're worried about Osama bin Laden. We're on the hunt after Osama bin Laden. We're using every asset at our disposal to get Osama bin Laden.

The problem is Kerry wasn't exaggerating at all. (I think maybe Bush forgot that he was running against the serial flip-flopper and confused him with Gore, the serial exaggerator). Back in a March 2003 news conference, Bush was asked then by Kelly Wallace of CNN why he so rarely mentioned bin Laden, and whether bin Laden was, in fact, dead or alive.

Bush's answer: "Well, deep in my heart, I know the man is on the run if he's alive at all. Who knows if he's hiding in some cave or not? We haven't heard from him in a long time. And the idea of focusing on one person is -- really indicates to me people don't understand the scope of the mission.

"Terror is bigger than one person. And he's just -- he's a person who's now been marginalized. His network is -- his host government has been destroyed. He's the ultimate parasite who found weakness, exploited it, and met his match. He is -- as I've mentioned in my speeches, I do mention the fact that this is a fellow who is willing to commit youngsters to their death, and he himself tries to hide -- if, in fact, he's hiding at all.

"So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you. . . . I truly am not that concerned about him."

I think I'll just let that stand for itself.

I didn't realize this until watching the 3rd presidental debate (again at the Parkway Lounge in Oakland), but apparently the No Child Left Behind legislation that President Bush signed is going to solve all the problems that this country faces.

Almost every time the president was uncertain how to answer a question he returned to the No Child Left Behind Act.

about jobs:

"Listen, the No Child Left Behind Act is really a jobs act when you think about it."

about partisanship:

"The No Child Left Behind Act"

about everything:

"The No Child Left Behind Act"

This was part and parcel of an issue that the President had all night. Again and again, he chose not to answer the question asked and instead went off on some tangent.

This is one of the most telling responses:

In one of the oddest responses in a series of debates where President Bush has looked downright uncomfortable, he responded to Kerry's defense of his health plan by saying:

In all due respect, I'm not so sure it's credible to quote leading news organizations about -- oh, nevermind.

I listened hard afterward to commentators on CNN, MSNBC, NPR and Fox and not one mentioned this very strange moment.

You can find the transcript of the entire debate at the washingtonpost.com

the full text of that part of the debate follows:

Maybe this is why W has such a hard time defending his record when he pressed by an articulate opponent. He beleives his own propoganda.

There's also a new column by Tom Friedman which is very revealing about some of the problems that afflict this administration that is well worth reading.

Before the debates, the New York Times Editorial Page runs questions for both candidates. I've read it a few times and only marginally been impressed with what was being proffered until today. In the questions for Bush, Alan Ehrenhalt, the executive editor of Governing magazine, poses a few burners that would great to hear at the debate*. One can only hope that Bob Schieffer reads the paper.

Mandate Madness

As a candidate in 2000, you argued in favor of compassionate conservatism and a restoration of decency and moderation to the national government. Those of us who voted for you took this seriously. But your personal demeanor as president has been belligerent and dismissive of virtually anyone who opposes your policies. You state flatly that anyone who is not with you is against you, and at least imply that disagreement is equivalent to disloyalty. You refuse to admit making mistakes, even when it is obvious that you made them. You all but invite attacks on the country with "bring it on" taunting that makes you sound more like a gang leader than a responsible head of state. What happened to your promise of compassion? Have you concluded that moderation and decency are not useful qualities in a president?

When you were governor of Texas, you complained about the long list of mandates that Washington was imposing on the states without supplying the money to pay for them. You criticized the Republican Congress for ignoring legitimate state complaints. "Mandates are mandates, regardless of the philosophical bent of the person doing the mandating," you said in May 1998. "It starts at the White House." But your administration has imposed billions of dollars in mandates without even a pretense of offering sufficient money for states to meet them. Did your concern for fairness to Texas and the 49 other state governments simply evaporate when you moved into the White House?

* That would be if the candidates actually were responsible to answer the questions asked of them

I'm an atheist so maybe you can understand why I can't justify the "conservative" position on abortion, stem cell research and the death penalty. Presumably they all come from the 6th Commandment, Thou Shall Not Kill. I get that. And if there was a consistent position, I could at least disagree respectfully. But how can you, on the one hand, be pro-life and say abortion is murder, and be against stem cell research and say killing embryos is murder, and yet be for the death penalty?

On the other hand one can easily see how the argument could be made against the death penalty (it doesn't work) or for stem cell research (if an embryo is life then all the people who use fertility clinics are murders) or for abortion.

My argument for abortion is based on rational thinking which goes like this. Whether you are for abortion or against it, you have agree that legislating against will not decrease the demand. Instead it will criminalize women and doctors and put the health of poor women at stake because they can't fly off to Europe or Canada or anywhere else where abortion is legal. That's why it continues to be and should always be legal.

If you don't get to chance to or want to watch the last presidential debate tonight, I'll give you a run-down on what you will miss. Kerry is going to make reasoned arguments about why his plan is better and why Bush's plan has not worked and Bush is going to say "Liberal" as loudly and as often as possible, as if "Liberal" means "baby-killer".

Did anyone out there see the Frontline documentary, The Choice 2004, last night? The movie rather brilliantly, I think, juxtaposed the history of the two candidates starting from their days at Yale up to the race for the presidency. It was a startling contrast between the two candidates in so many substantive ways. If you missed the 2-hour long program, it should be on again on a PBS station near year or you can watch it online. It's well worth the 2 hour investment just to become a more informed citizen.

For me, the most interesting aspect of the film was when they showed a tiny part of Kerry's speech on the floor on the Senate during the debate on going to war in Iraq.

David Brooks has penned an opinion article, The Report That Nails Saddam, in the New York Times that toes the administration line on the Duelfer Report about WMDs in Iraq. I was disappointed because I feel like Brooks is one of the only reasonable voices of the right out there in our political horserace. I was so bothered by this article that I emailed him, which is something I never, ever do.

Oh come on David. You can't possibly believe your own words here. I've been watching you on the News Hour long enough to know that you are a reasonable individual who makes observations and develops opinions based on facts and thoughtful analysis. You can't possibly sell this story that the Duelfer Report justifies anything other than redoubling our efforts to reinforce the sanctions. You're telling me that our country was so weak diplomatically, which you can't, since after 9/11 and before the Iraq, America had unprecedented support in the rest of the world, that our only option was to invade and remove Saddam by force.

We had two-thirds of the country dominated by a no-fly zone. We had sanctions in place that were working despite what the President repeatedly says. Obviously if the sanctions weren't working, how can you explain the absence of weapons? It's nonsensical.

Now we find ourselves in a situation where we have an occupation force in a no-win situation with our diplomatic status around the world crumbling further endangering our struggle against fundamentalist Islamic factions and you are a stooge for administration misdirection of the truth. It's very sad.

I didn't want to watch the Second Presidential Debate alone, either on C-Span at my desk here at work or on my couch in Walnut Creek, so after work I headed down to the Parkway Theater in Oakland. I left the office at 5:10pm, forced my way through rush hour traffic, found a lucky parking space within a few hundred yards of the theater, but when I got there the auditorium was full and they weren't letting in more people. So I watched next door at a dive bar. It was also full, I had to stand at the bar, but it was fun to be around other people, see their reactions, have a Negra Modelo, and take in the debate.

I suppose the debate was basically a tie. I find most of the President's answers unbelievably, especially his "I've been a good steward of the environment", but the bar is so low for his performance, especially after the disaster of the first debate, that many of his supporters will be buoyed. On the other hand Kerry did nothing to undercut the Republicans assertion that he is unfit to be commander-in-chief, so his momentum should continue. I think he missed some really valuable opportunities to slam the door on the President, most notably the final question where Bush was unable to come up with even a single mistake of consequence to reflect on. Kerry needs to hammer home a few things about Bush's lack of response. One is that the President is so obviously out of touch with the facts both in Iraq and in working-class America that he doesn't see that there are any problems and if there are no problems, they can't be fixed. An obvious paradox. The other is that President, as Bush so notably pointed out in the debate, is human, and makes thousands of decisions during the course of a term. It is unconceivable that every decision is going to be correct. Therefore it is essential that the President recognize these mistakes so as to learn from then going forward. This is the hallmark of great character, which Bush so obviously lacks.

Thank you, W. Wrong again.

What's even more fascinating is that in the same speech in very next line after President Bush made his statements about the smoking gun mushroom cloud, he quoted President Kennedy from 1962 as follows:

"Neither the United States of America nor the world community of nations can tolerate deliberate deception and offensive threats on the part of any nation, large or small."

Wow. Talk about a boomerang. Hopefully the United States of America will not tolerate it and well throw Bush and his ilk out their collective asses in November.

Incidentally, I don't understand how Bush or anyone in the administration can still make the case that Iraq had to disclose, disarm or face the consequences when there was nothing to disclose or disarm. When Scott McClellan repeatedly says in defense of our attack, "we know that he failed to comply with the demands of the international community." What demands? Disarm? Disarm what? It's mind blowing to me. But I bet they still say it again and again until November.

There's one thing that fans of Harry Shearer can all agree on. He's wickedly funny. For those who love his work on The Simpsons and in movies like This is Spinal Tap might not even know that he does a weekly radio show. But, I'm here to tell you, he does.

Le Show is a variety program on NPR affiliate KCRW-FM in Santa Monica where Shearer satirizes everything from Johnnie Cochrane to George Bush and anything in between. You can download old shows on the site which is how I'm spending my morning, productively, I might add.

I'm not a huge fan of John Kerry. I think he'll make a decent president. He'll certainly do a better job than what we've had for the last 3 + years. However, the reason that it's crucial that he win this election is simple. The Federal Courts.

We've got a serious problem coming up in the next 4 years. Many members of our aging Supreme Court could retire. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, 80, has more than hinted at his desire to leave jurisprudence prudence behind and hit links. Justice Stevens is 84. O'Connor is 74. Ginsberg, a cancer survivor, is 71. All but one, Clarence Thomas is over 65.

Now George W Bush has already said that his nominees to the court will be in the mould of Scalia and Thomas, strict constructionalist and arch-conservative. Replacing Rehnquist with another conservative will have little or no affect on the many 5-4 decisions that the court has brought down in recent years. But in replacing progressives Stevens and Ginsburg and moderate O'Conner, Bush could swing the balance of the court to the right in a way that will affect decisions for years to come and put in jeopardy cases like Roe v. Wade, amongst others.

Both Kerry and Bush would love to be first president to nominate an Hispanic American to the bench. If Bush is re-elected his choice could be Alberto Gonzales. Gonzales is the legal mind behind the memos circulated in the corridors of power about how the Geneva Conventions didn't apply in Iraq and Afghanistan. He set up the military tribunals. He's responsible for the decision to label American citizens as "enemy combatants", enabling the government to hold them indefinitely without charge or legal counsel. He's a scary individual and he's only 47 which means he could be levying his controversial brand of justice for 30 years or more, far beyond the limited years in which a president's policies can do damage. (Remember that Rehnquist was nominated by Nixon). Not a happy prospect. Another possibility is that he might replace Ashcroft at the Justice Department. But that would only leave a spot for someone equally conservative but less controversial to take his spot as Bush's nominee.

And even more dire problem is 4 more years of Republican nominees headed to the federal bench. Federal courts hear far more cases and can do much more damage to civil rights, the environment and other sensitive issues that the Supreme Court could ever dream of. 8 straight years of conservative court packing is going to leave this country in a sorry state.

I'm not sure why this issue isn't a major one on the campaign trail. Maybe the campaigns don't want to scare swing-voters, but I think it's sad that we can't have a discussion about this on a national level when the future of this country hangs in balance.

Gee, I wonder if this will come up in the debate tonight...

White House on Defensive After Bremer Talk

The White House staunchly defended its Iraq policy Tuesday as new questions emerged about President Bush's prewar decisions and postwar planning: An impending weapons report undercut the administration's main rationale for the war, and the former head of the American occupation said the United States had too few troops in Iraq after the invasion. Four weeks before Election Day, Democrat John Kerry pounced on the acknowledgment by former Iraq administrator Paul Bremer* that the United States had "paid a big price" for insufficient troop levels.

It's amazing to me that this administration can't admit a single mistake, not even something so obvious that we didn't have enough troops to maintain security, and then make the changes to fix the problem. Whether you were for or against the war or for or against this administration, you have to be for creating order from the chaos that Iraq has become. We're obviously not going to be pulling out and we're not getting the job done with the current troop levels. What option does that leave us?

Read more of Paul Bremer's statements on Iraq on the The Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers website.

*Note to Paul Bremer: Stay on Message.

Tom Friedman of the New York Times is back (and not a moment too soon) from his sabbatical and writing clear, common sense prose about Iraq. Iraq: Politics or Policy? states clearly where the Bush Administration has made the wrong choices in so many of the crucial steps on the road to the miasma that we are currently facing in Mesapotamia.

Kerry needs to pay attention to what Friedman is saying and start incorporating some of these charges into his stump speech.

*Iraq: Politics or Policy? is posted below because the NY Times website will archive it into the pay to read section in a week or two.

In surfing the net this morning for information on the debate reaction, I came across a story, Practice to Deceive by Joshua Marshall about the neoconservative agenda and the real reason behind our involvement in Iraq and the wider Middle East.

I've always felt that the neo-cons were misguided. These were the same guys, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Norman Podhoretz et al. who were warning of Soviet domination, that the intelligence was underestimating Soviet power when it fact the intelligence was grossly over exaggerated. The fact that they are Jewish and cloak many of their policies with the defense of anti-Semitism is even more disturbing for me, being Jewish and all.

But in the case of the Soviets, at least they were out in public making their case. These days they work in the shadows, keeping their policies and over-reaching agenda a secret from the American people. It would be bad if they were right, but since they seem to be so often wrong, it's downright frightening.

Ok, so that's not really fair, Lehrer is certainly a smart man, but I thought he was, once again, miserable as the moderator. I really like Lehrer as a newsman and I watch the News Hour regularly, but in these debates, he is seriously deficient when it comes to asking questions.

I'm still in shock that we had a 90 minute debate about foreign policy and there wasn't a single question about Israel and Palestine. Not one. Now, I understand that Iraq and the "War on Tara" have dominated the headlines, but if you don't think that resolving the Israel/Palestine issue will go a long way to aliening tensions around the world, you're fooling yourself. The Bush administration has made statements about what it would like to see, a Palestinian state, but it has done nothing substantive in 3 1/2 years, seriously dropping the ball after the efforts made by the Clinton administration came so close to a solution. What is Kerry's position on what our role should be in the peace process? I haven't a clue but he has never said anything about it and Lehrer didn't ask about it once.

Nor did he ask about so many fronts that he could have brought up to increase the breadth of the discussion including, our relationship with China or with Cuba, the problems of Pakistan, anything about NAFTA or other trade issues, anything about WTO, IMF and globalization, anything about the war on drugs, anything about our deteriorating relationship with our European allies, nothing about NATO, nothing about our unilateral decisions to back away from international treaties, nothing about the Geneva Conventions, nothing about human rights, and nothing, not one thing about our friendly pal, Saudi Arabia. It was disappointing to say the least.

Lehrer has moderated the last 4 presidential debates. It's time to put him out to pasture permanently. We need someone who is going to ask tough questions on a wide variety of subjects. Charles Gibson is up next in the town hall debates on domestic policy. Can he do better? I hope so, but I honestly don't know much about him.

I think the most uncomfortable people in the entire US last night had to be Bush and Republican surrogates who had to come out after the debates and defend their candidate who, by any measure, just performed miserably. Bush was so bad it was shocking. Not only did he seem unprepared for the attacks levied against him, but he was uncomfortable at the podium, he couldn't wait to get Jim Lehrer's attention to make a rejoinder, but then had nothing to say. It was really astonishing to watch him stammer, to constantly say "um" and to stare into the camera with long pauses when he was trying to, I think, collect his thoughts and respond. It was awkward and painful to watch. On the other hand, Kerry was calm, collected, and concise. He stood tall at the podium where as Bush was slouching and hunching. Kerry needed to come and look presidential and he did. So on style points, which seems to matter more to most Americans, Kerry clearly was victorious.

For the meat of the debate, each candidate made their case which basically comes down to change versus status quo. If you're happy with the way things are going, you'll vote Bush. If you think we're on the wrong track and need change, then you'll vote Kerry. People will have to make up their minds eventually. Of course it gets more complicated than that. Do you believe Kerry has the character to be president or does he send "mixed messages", which I suppose is the polite form of "flip-flopper"? Do you think Bush's approach to war is steady and measured or do you think his stay the course no matter what mentality is just a stubborn unwillingness to admit mistakes, adjust to facts on the ground and move forward? I know where I stand. Where do you stand?

I was surprised at a few things. I thought that Kerry missed many opportunities to turn the tables on Bush. He couldn't find a way to explain that his vote against the $87 billion which makes sense if you believe Kerry thought there were fundamental problems with that bill that another similar bill could address. Instead he apologized. Kerry also missed a really opportunity to turn the charges of flip-flopper against Bush with regards to the 9/11 commission, going to the UN, having Condi Rice testify and so many other events that the Bush administration has changed course on during his term of office. Since this has been the most damming attack by the Republicans, Kerry really ought to have addressed it with the same frequency and ferocity with which he was constantly charged as delivering mixed messages. He also missed the opportunity to demonstrate that world opinion about the US, which was at an all time high after 9/11, has reversed course completely to the point that we are more feared and hated than ever before. He missed the chance to talk about how our standing in the world affects our ability to win the "War on Tara". Since his campaign slogan is "Stronger at Home, Respected in the World", he really needed to take this opportunity to explain why it so important for America to be respected in the world, because so many people don't see why, and he blew it. Kerry missed the chance to talk not only about Bush, but about his administration, especially about the incompetence of Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the rest of the DOD. He missed a chance to talk about what difference did it make that he voted against the 87 billion because the DOD is so disorganized, it can't figure out how to spend the money. While he did a fine job, he could have done much, much better.

All in all, despite all the problems, the debate was fascinating. There was more give and take then the rules suggested there might be. Hopefully many Americans watched and won’t rely on news outlets to distill the debate into packaged sound bytes.

I guess I can't help myself. On the eve of the 1st debate of the 2004 election, I feel compelled to look at the transcripts of the 2000 debates. There are so many things that George W Bush said that are at odds with how he and his administration has proceeded. Here's one of them:

MODERATOR: Should the people of the world look at the United States, Governor, and say, should they fear us, should they welcome our involvement, should they see us as a friend, everybody in the world? How would you project us around the world, as president?

BUSH: Well, I think they ought to look at us as a country that understands freedom where it doesn't matter who you are or how you're raised or where you're from, that you can succeed. I don't think they'll look at us with envy. It really depends upon how our nation conducts itself in foreign policy. If we're an arrogant nation, they'll resent us. If we're a humble nation, but strong, they'll welcome us. And it's -- our nation stands alone right now in the world in terms of power, and that's why we have to be humble. And yet project strength in a way that promotes freedom. So I don't think they ought to look at us in any way other than what we are. We're a freedom-loving nation and if we're an arrogant nation they'll view us that way, but if we're a humble nation they'll respect us.

There are a lot of questions about these three upcoming debates, like since the candidates can't address each other and rebuttal times are limited, are they in fact debates, or just another chance to make stump speeches. Hopefully Jim Lehrer will ignore the 32 pages of rules that the Commission on Presidential Debates arranged and the candidates agreed to and we can have a real debate on the issues. What could the consequences be? The American people deserve a real debate.

The other question that keeps pooping, at least me, is the nature of "winning a debate." It's been said again and again that neither John Kerry nor George W. Bush has lost a debate. But what does that mean? If it means each candidate never lost an election following a debate, which it seems to mean when the talking heads say it, then I guess they are right. But since elections are far more complicated animals, it's very a simple minded definition.

I think by any measure, Al Gore killed Bush in their 3 debates. Gore understood what he was talking about, had a grasp of the issues, understood his plan and his opponents. He was dominant. And if the popular vote is anything to judge by, he won the debates.

I don't know why there hasn't been much emphasis in the press about this, but if you look at what W said in the debates and contrast them to his record in office, on defense, on judicial appointments, on taxes and on and on, he suffers heavily in the balance. Here's one sharp example from the first debate in 2000.

MODERATOR: New question. How would you go about as president deciding when it was in the national interest to use U.S. force, generally?

BUSH: Well, if it's in our vital national interest, and that means whether our territory is threatened or people could be harmed, whether or not the alliances are -- our defense alliances are threatened, whether or not our friends in the Middle East are threatened. That would be a time to seriously consider the use of force. Secondly, whether or not the mission was clear. Whether or not it was a clear understanding as to what the mission would be. Thirdly, whether or not we were prepared and trained to win. Whether or not our forces were of high morale and high standing and well-equipped. And finally, whether or not there was an exit strategy. I would take the use of force very seriously. I would be guarded in my approach. I don't think we can be all things to all people in the world. I think we've got to be very careful when we commit our troops. The vice president and I have a disagreement about the use of troops. He believes in nation building. I would be very careful about using our troops as nation builders. I believe the role of the military is to fight and win war and therefore prevent war from happening in the first place. So I would take my responsibility seriously. And it starts with making sure we rebuild our military power. Morale in today's military is too low. We're having trouble meeting recruiting goals. We met the goals this year, but in the previous years we have not met recruiting goals. Some of our troops are not well-equipped. I believe we're overextended in too many places. And therefore I want to rebuild the military power. It starts with a billion dollar pay raise for the men and women who wear the uniform. A billion dollars more than the president recently signed into law. It's to make sure our troops are well-housed and well-equipped. Bonus plans to keep some of our high-skilled folks in the services and a commander in chief that sets the mission to fight and win war and prevent war from happening in the first place.

The story of Iranian world champion judoka Arash Miresmaeili has been bothering me immensely since it broke at the beginning of these games. What's bothering me is not that this guy, the world champion by the way, disqualified himself by showing up overweight rather than face an Israeli competitor. That's a perfect example of the stupid stunts that Iran has been up to for years. What's bothering me is that there isn't more international outrage over this.

There hasn't seemed to have been much talk about this, but you couldn't help but notice that North and South Korea marched together in the Olympic opening ceremonies. Soon afterward, in an unrelated albeit not inconsequential move, President Bush announced a global troop realignment that would bring home thousands of soldiers who are currently guarding the 38th parallel. There has also been talk of North and South Korea competing at a single team at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

I think this is a fantastic development. If, perhaps, this is the start of a reunification of the two Koreas, and who knows whether it is or not, then this will definitely make the world a safer place. Who knows what motivates North Korea, but on some level they have to realize that remaining a world pariah is not anyone's long term interest.

Just in case you don't know or have had you're head buried in the political sand, the Senate is in the progress of debating the FMA, or the Federal Marriage Amendment that would protect marriage from the current assault. Here's how it reads:

Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman.

Here's the problems I have with this:

You know, like Ralph Nader. Whether you approve of his tactics or not, you have to respect his long and distinguished history of consumer advocacy. Despite all the problems associated with his candidacy in this current election, you have to admire someone who is actually willing to talk about issues that neither of the two major party candidates have any desire to discuss.

It's not my place to tell anyone not to run for president. That is Nader's business. But what purpose is he serving? If he really wants to affect some change, bring his agenda to the fore and make a difference in the national debate, he'd be far better served by running for Congress. In the legislature, he might be a small cog in large law-making body and not be able to fashion debate and the direction of the country were he president, but a) he's never going to be president and b) even one legislator can make a massive difference in close votes and c) he would do far more to advance the cause of third parties.

Getting trounced in a national election, getting barred from national debate, meanwhile accepting money and political support from groups who's only desire is to prop up a candidate that will take votes away from the party most closely aligned with your own beliefs doesn't do anybody any good.

I feel sorry for the television watching public in battlegrounds states because the quantity of the adverts on the air here in California is almost overwhelming and the race here isn't exactly close. I can imagine what the folks in Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida, Oregon and New Mexico are suffering through.

I watch the ads very closely. I'm fascinated this election year by the new rule forcing candidates to state who they are and that they approved the ad. What is interesting to me is that in the Bush ads, Bush introduces himself and makes his statement of approval at the beginning of the commercials, while Kerry does so at the end.

Significantly, at least in California, the tone of the political ads from the Republicans is negative against Kerry, while all the Democratic ads are positive. And then there's this interesting difference in when the candidate announces approval of the ad, before or after.

If I were running a campaign, and making use of the negative ads as the Bush campaign is, I too would get the approval over with at the start in the hopes that the viewer might forget the association when the negative attack ends, rather than draw attention and allow people to make the connection between Bush's approval of going negative. On the other hand, if I were in the Kerry campaign, and running mostly if not all positive ads, I would have the candidate state his approbation at the end to reinforce the positive message just delivered.

What I'm curious to see is that as the campaign intensifies and the election draws near, will the Kerry campaign go negative (I think they will have to if the race stays this close) and then will they have their candidate change his approval so it appears at the start of his commercials instead of the end.

I know this is pedantic stuff, but since presidential races only happen every four years, and we're as divided as a country as we've ever been, plus the stakes are about as high as you could imagine, how could you not be fascinated? I can't help myself.

Bush's Erratic Behavior Worries White House Aides

When this story was sent to me, I initially thought it was from the The Onion, but it turns out not only not to be a joke, but also to be seriously alarming. I don't know much about the politics of Capitol Hill Blue, but it's slogan, "Nobody's Life, Liberty or Property is Safe While Congress is In Session" seems nonpartisan.

I would have pegged John Kerry as a skier, but perhaps he's more of a man of the people than I had suspected. He's even decent. Look at that form. Look at that edge he's on. And he's got a little snow flying off the board. Ok, so his ass might be sticking out a little far, but he's learning. Good for him.

A little recreation for the commander in chief is a good thing, just ask the surgeon general. As long as he doesn't spend a month a year in Sun Valley.

Barring a major surge from oddball socialist congressman Dennis Kucinich, Sen. Kerry looks like he'll take the Democratic nomination in the first step to returning democracy to this great land of ours.

Bush is going to spend millions painting Kerry as a Massachusetts liberal who waffles, but he's going to have a hard time avoiding his record on the economy, the enovironment and heis foreign policy gaffs. It's going to be a close race, of course, but all it's going to take is for one red state like Ohio or Missouri, to go blue and the Dems and Kerry will have enough electoral votes to see the end of the Bush Dynasty for good.

Good luck, John Kerry.

There's a story on the wire today about how the U.S. has already captured bin Laden, but the Bush administration is holding him to trot out right before the general election. Is it true? Who knows. Maybe. Maybe not. But the story has legs because this administration has no credibility and it's very easy to believe that if they could, they would pull off the exact thing that the story is alleging.

In a related story, I had a dream last night that I was at picnic fund raiser where Dick Cheney had picked his running mate for the 2008 election. I talked to Bill Press (where have you gone, Bill Press?) about whether or not there was a precedent for and running mate in one undecided election to have already picked his own running mate for a future contest, and of, course, he said no, The precedent is for the arrogance of this administration. It's either pretty funny or pretty damn scary.

Last night, as I was watching the returns come in from New Hampshire and seeing my candidate win a decisive victory that all but ensures him the nomination (no one seeking his party's nomiation has not gone onto the presidential race after winning both Iowa and New Hampshire since '52), I was struck by this recurring thought that I've been having ever since the current administration took office. I want someone, anyone to defend the record and the actions of George W. Bush.

The New Hampshire primary is tomorrow and once again I'm pulling for my man, John Kerry. I have no doubt that he is going to win. To me, the most interesting question is how far back Dean will fall. The next interesting thing to watch is where Clark and Edwards place in relation one another. Both are from the south and the results in NH should be a good indicator of the results in South Carolina which one of them should certainly win. I have a day off tomorrow so I'm probably going to be glued to CNN watching the "action". Especially if it's as cold (it was 4 at the top of mountain at 9 o'clock this morning) and snowy as has been.

The race in Iowa seems to have tightened up nicely over the weekend which means caucus goers are going to have a hell of a day of arguing and convincing ahead of them. I would be surprised if the 2004 caucus wasn't among highest turnouts in the history of the state. I'm pleased to see my favored candidates Kerry and Edwards surge while the Dean (supported in my family only by Mak) is slip-sliding away.

My hope is that Kerry will win the nomination, as he should, being the best candidate and all, and that Edwards will be his VP on the ticket. I think they would be very formidable come December.

Who knows what will happen. Iowa can mean so much, but it can also mean so little, especially with the race this close. And it's still so early. It will be interesting to watch.

Who thinks Howard Dean would make a great HSS secretary? I think so. I wonder if he doesn't win the nomination, and he might, if he would accept a position in another administration. I doubt it, but it's too bad because he would be a great asset.

Of course, I wonder the same about the other candidates. Would Clark be SecDef in a Dean Administration? Everyone says Edwards is angling to be on the ticket as the VP, and maybe he is. He could definately use the political capital that 4 years as veep could provide. Carol Moseley Braun clearly has her head screwed on right and her heart in the right place. America just is not ready for anything but another white male in the Oval Office. She'd make a great Secretary of the Interior though. Other than Edwards, none of the current congressmen look likely the do anything but return to their consituencies after the primary.

It's clear that we need some change in this country. Hopefully this election will be faithful to history and a president elected when losing the pooluar vote will be sent out on his keister when seeking relection. Nothing would make me happier than to see W give a concession speech come November.

There's a new book out called Why New Hampshire?. I'd really like to read it so I can have a better understanding of why New Hampshire and Iowa, two rather insignificant states, both in population and land mass, have so much influence in who runs for and eventually wins the presidency. It just doesn't make much sense to me.

Perhaps it's about making sure the little states get a say before the big, important states like California, New York and Texas weigh into the fray. But Why these two? Why not Rhode Island and Delaware? And why two in the north? Shouldn't the south and west, where most presidents seem to come from these days, have more of a say?

This feeling could come out of jealousy. Why should Iowans and people from New Hampshire (what do you call people from New Hampshire anyway?) have the opporunity to shake hands, meet with and talk to the next president of the United States? When are the cornfields of the 99 counties become the corridors of the brokers of power.

Sure, every state gets a time to hold it's primary, but so much emphasis is put on the ability of anyone candidate to win in these two states. In the debate on Sunday on CNN, the moderator even asked Carol Moseley-Braun how could the Iowa voters get behind her when she hasn't spent as much time in the state as some of the other candidates? God forbid a candidate waste a precious minute pressing the flesh with pig farmers in lieu of campaigning in a state like California that is the engine of the economy in this country. Have we gone mad?

You know what I say? With all due respect to the nice people of Iowa and New Hampsire, fuck Iowa and New Hampsire. You can take your 6 electoral votes and stuff it up your ass.

I saw my first political ad of the season. It was from "Wes" Clark and was about his ability as military leader (when did Wesley become "Wes"? Did I miss something?). The former general's ad wasn't negative, which was nice to see, but it foreshadows the explosion of democratic spots that are going to be bombarding the airwaves in Arizona and other battleground states between now and November.

I have a love hate relationship with politics. I love to follow what's going on. It's a fascinating spectacle. And I'm also truly concerned about many of the issues, most notably the future of the Supreme Court. However, I grow weary of the pettiness of the candidates and their agile sidestepping of questions. I just want someone straightforward and honest, which is probably too much to ask for.

From the files of it's never too early to go negative comes this site from the John Kerry for President camp.

Stop the Madness

Call me crazy, but I think Mr. Kerry needs to concentrate on his current opponents in the primary first and then deal with the present administration later. Not that I don't agree with everything he says. He’s right on the money. Also, we haven't elected a senator to the Presidency since the 60s whereas the last three elections all went to former governors. I’m not saying candidates like Kerry and Edwards need to pack it in already, but they should be aware of what they are up against. (I know both are avid readers of American Idle)