Politics: Nuclear Weapons Anyone? Anyone?

The Washington Times is reporting a little bit of old and a little of new information. The Bush administration is prepared to tap into our nuclear aresenal if biological or chemical weapons are used on the field of battle.

This brings up an important point: While they are often (carelessly) lumped together in the Weapons of Mass Destruction category, nuclear weapons and chem/bio weapons are very different. They all represent an unquestionable threat to life, but nuclear weapons have been and should remain an absolute weapon of last resort. There is no way to calculate the devastation from a nuclear strike. A U.S. decision to use nuclear weapons if, say, Saddam Hussein were to use a chemical weapon, would lead to destruction on an enormous scale. Just like that. With the stroke of a pen. US policy is now to use nuclear weapons against a meaningless, well-contained dictator in the most politically and culturally sensitive region of the world. Nice.

Music: This One's For Oliver

Townes Van Zandt, a legendary singer-songwriter, died in 1997, but his impact has been huge. Steve Earle has said that Townes "is the best songwriter in the whole world, and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that." Well, here's some more. A friend of Townes' has unearthed his first ever recordings, from 1966, after he went to Nashville. The tracks have been cleaned up and will be released on April 22nd. Read about it here, in the otherwise lamentable Rolling Stone.

Politics: Pure, Unadulterated Evil

Nice to see that Dick Cheney celebrated his birthday yesterday with some real evil sons of b*tches.



According to this Post item, the Vice President's office (because bombing a country blind is one thing and bumper stickers are different) expressed extreme displeasure with the stickers available for sale yesterday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, including the one above and one that read "No muslims - no terrorists." Yeah, no war on Islam, that's for sure.

Politics: Take Back the Streets of Grand Rapids!

AP is reporting in a longish piece about how Bush hasn't given any information on his phantom Medicare reform plan that the people of Grand Rapids have risen in protest of the war in Iraq.

The money bit:

But outside, protesters thronged the streets of Grand Rapids, most of them demonstrating against possible war.

There were hundreds outside the hospital where he visited with health care workers and a Medicare beneficiary behind closed doors, and hundreds more at several other intersections. They lined virtually the entire route from the hospital to the site of Bush's speech.

Politics: Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The American Enterprise Institute has decided that feeding the hungry is killing them. Sometimes ultra-conservative efforts to draw down social programs is astounding. Perhaps the drive to increase SUV ownership is part of a campaign to eliminate the Department of Transportation.

Music: Weird

Last Plane to Jakarta has an advance review of the sophomore effort by The Strokes. The funny thing is, they get the award for being the first of every review of this record to somehow express the thought, "no matter what you think of the Strokes..." or "even people who refuse to bow to the hype..." Can't wait.

Politics: Of Discrimination

Any bets on whether or not Zacarias Moussaoui, Yaser Esam Hamdi or Jose Padilla get to while away the days in a minimum security prison near their parents in California?

Yeah. I didn't think so.

Politics: Just Terrible

Apparently, some college recruiters are subtly spooking parents of prospective women's basketball players by indicating that coaches at rival schools pursue "alternate lifestyles." Of all the things in the world to be worried about, terrorist bombs and airplanes hitting buildings, having your kid get an awful disease from the groundwater concentration of lead in your hometown, the neighbor kids playing with that fat moron's gun next door and everything else, is there really any time to be worrying about whether a lesbian basketball coach will jeopardize her program and its chances for success to "recruit" your old-enough-to-decide-for-herself daughter into the gay world? Give me a break.

The worst thing about this is that it represents the uncanny ability of one homophobe (or at least a recruiter willing to play a homophobe to enroll a six foot four high school senior) to identify the secret fears of another homophobe. If this were a tongue-in-cheek action movie, the recruiter would try his homophobic pitch with a mom who turns out to be lesbian and she would punch him while everyone else cheers.

Politics: Sputtering

Much of the posting wiped away yesterday was largely stammering attempts to explain feelings about the State of the Union address. I struggled with everyone’s opinion of the speech, and played with everyone’s new favorite phrase “the soft bigotry of low expectations,” but I wasn’t really happy with any of the results. I was alternating wildly between 1) spit-flying rants about how frightened I am to bring a child into this world with warmongering racists and 2) toxically sarcastic arms-length diatribes about how everyone is either stupid or being drugged by the government. Neither of these were really that impressive (though they may be resurrected later today, trust me).

Then I came across this piece by Boston University Education Professor Thomas Cottle. And he says a lot of good things. Read it.

Admin: Burned

The blog machine bit its master yesterday, as a long-winded post you all would have been marginally amused by disappeared with the click of a mouse. More today.

Politics: Exile on Main Street

Secretary of State Colin Powell is talking about sending Saddam Hussein into exile. Interesting point: Bush has said on numerous occasions (beginning here, on September 11th, 2001) that "anybody who harbors terrorists needs to fear the United States." And he has also talked himself blue about how much of a terrorist Saddam Hussein is (even though there is no proof, no matter what the editors of World Net Daily think). So what country would be willing to take Saddam Hussein?

I think the Bush administration may nominate France.

Pure Entertainment: Delicious, distilled, fast-burning amusement

A woman in Reno was discovered with 60 cats living in her house. Her name? Rita Katz. (This shouldn't be confused with the Oregon family discovered with 500 dogs in their house.)

Politics: Separation of Church and Bush

The New York Times has been the lone national voice mentioning that the Bush administration has launched another salvo in his war on the separation of church and state. In Friday's edition, Eric Lichtblau covered the announcement that Bush would allow churches and other religious institutions to take taxpayer money to construct buildings and houses as long as they promised they didn't use the buildings for anything other than social work.

This is so transparent it makes you wonder if the Bush administration actually thinks Americans are dumb as rocks. Comments by the administration's spokesman on the issue, HUD General Counsel Richard Hauser (I know, 'Housing Counsel Hauser') illustrates the lameness of their thinking: He asks, "There's no reason you can't have a cathedral upstairs and something that would look like any other room in the basement" for counseling.

Except how would you separate the funding for a basement from the building that sits on top of the freaking basement? It's impossible. And how would you guarantee forever that the structure funded by taxpayers would not be used for religious purposes? You couldn't. And what would you do if a church violated the separation? Religious institutions don't pay taxes and, with exceptions like the Catholic Church, don't have a large financial structure, so they couldn't pay back the grants.

Exactly. The Times continued its coverage today with an excellent editorial recounting, if you can't remember, the rest of the Bush attacks on the establishment clause.

And I was just wondering if the media is so liberal, why isn't anyone else mentioning this?

Politics: Trudeau, Alive and Kicking

This strip raises a good question.

Politics: Rummy Lurches Toward Oblivion

Apparently, SecDef Donald Rumsfeld is going for the Trifecta. First he pissed off Tom Brokaw's Greatest Generation by saying that the hundreds of thousands of draftees who figured out how to win both the World Wars and the Korean War offer "no value." Next he launched a salvo at two of our biggest allies (one of whom has a veto-endowing permanent seat on the UN Security Council, natch) dismissing their opposition to war in Iraq by calling them "Old Europe". Now, he's eating his own. The Washington Times got its hands on a memo wherein Rummy rips the Joint Chiefs of Staff for "spinning their wheels doing things we probably have to edit and improve."

Sheesh. Remind me not to get on Rummy's list.

Politics: A Voice of Reason Across the Aisle

With thanks to G. Beato at Soundbitten, I bid you check out this item on respectful Republican dissident Edward Hamm who thinks that President Bush's war in Iraq is a bad idea, and backed that up with a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal.

Politics:Thacker? I Hardly Know Her!

Jerry "gay plague" Thacker withdrawn as nominee on Presidential Advisory Council on HIV and AIDS.

Politics: Oops.

Slate this morning has a lengthy piece on Glenn Hubbard, Bush's chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. The AP however, is reporting that Hubbard is departing the White House to return to teaching. After waxing poetic about the power and force of the Council, Slate talks about how Hubbard has diminished the Council's value by serving as a Bush yes-man and pursuing the tax-cuts with absolute prejudice. The piece notes that this is something unexpected, because the CEA is supposed to be rational, and Hubbard has impeccable economic credentials. Instead of representing reasoned, conservative economic thought, Hubbard appears to have been entranced by Karl Rove's touch of evil, and converted into a tax-cut zombie with a blind eye for Bush's stinky economic policy. Read:

Hubbard's fierce advocacy of specific tax reforms—both within and without the administration—has made him increasingly willing to adopt the administration's politically expedient, rather than economically sound, justifications for its proposals. It's not fair to expect Hubbard to check his beliefs at the White House door, nor is it objectionable that Hubbard is a conservative economist—after all, he's been one for years. The problem is that his eagerness to enact his preferred legislation has made him willing to adopt the bad logic of the administration's talking points and spin. In Hubbard's book, the best policy is tax reform, not honesty.

Oddly, Slate also makes a weird prediction about Hubbard's future:

Interestingly, despite all Hubbard's influence in the Bush White House, the press continues to chatter about rumors that he's heading to the Treasury Department as deputy secretary. It's a great idea—the Treasury Department is supposed to lobby for specific administration proposals. From there, Hubbard could push for his vision of tax reform to his heart's content. He could be, as Fred Barnes approvingly wrote, "a player" and "a lot more than an economist." And the White House could have a real CEA chairman again.

But they're pretty much totally wrong on that. The AP piece (citing a report in the Wall Street Journal, AKA the unlinkable paper) says that White House officials emphasized that Hubbard wasn't being forced out like Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. I guess being a yes-man can be tiresome.

Politics: You Know Something's Wrong When...

Libya has been tapped as the next nation to chair the United Nation's Human Rights Commission. Everybody hear that right?

Politics: Thanks for the Advice

Best single-page website ever.

'Nuff said.

Politics: Too Many Dr. Evils

I have had entertaining conversations with friends about which member of the Bush administration should be designated Dr. Evil. There's John Poindexter, convicted but rap-beating Iran-Contra felon who now runs the Office of Total Information Awareness. There's obvious evil contenders like John Ashcroft and Dick Cheney. Why there's even evil Bush administration honorary members like real Dr.-Senator-Majority Leader Bill Frist.

There's also John Graham, administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. As Reece Rushing from OMBWatch details in this excellent Tompaine.com item, OIRA is an obscure entity within the Office of Management and Budget that essentially serves as a regulation czar for the White House. What John Graham has used the position for is to weaken, deter, defer and discount every regulation he meets. He has run roughshod over dozens of Clinton-era environmental, health and safety regulations in the past two years. Read:

Graham previously served as head of the mostly corporate-funded Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, where he was a consistent and reliable ally of almost any industry seeking to hold off regulation, once telling the Heritage Foundation, "Environmental regulation should be depicted as an incredible intervention in the operation of society." At the time of his contentious confirmation in the summer of 2001, consumer groups, public health advocates, and environmentalists warned that Graham would use his regulatory review authority (all major rules must receive OIRA approval) to thwart important new protections -- a forecast that turned out to be dead on.

As a matter of fact, Graham once stated in a scientific panel that Dioxin should be categorized as both causing and preventing cancer. Read the whole piece at Tompaine.com. They got him good. Perhaps he is Dr. Evil.

Politics: Gun and Identity Control

In a past position, I worked on the question of violence prevention and gun control. I am fiercely opposed to guns and I believe their proliferation in this country is a crime against all future generations. Just ask the nine or ten folks killed each day by guns.

Anyhow, there is obviously a huge community on the internet and in the academic community that debates the gun issue to no end. Points are made and refuted, research disputed, personalities formed. One of the most prominent researchers/academics to rise in the past few years on the gun issue is John Lott, Jr. The darling of the right, funded through dodgy links to the NRA, and one of America's most ardent supporters of the belief that more armed regular citizens means less crime, Lott has managed to gain a stature most academicians go their whole lives without.

Within the community, there are questions about Lott that go unanswered: How did he lose his position at Yale (Lott departed the academic world in 2001, becoming a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute)? What is the status of a 1997 survey he now claims to have conducted himself on US opinions on guns?

Recently, as this post explains Lott admitted to roaming the internet's world of blogs and usenet lists under an alias, passionately defending his own work and attacking his critics without the accountability that such actions would require if he acted in his own name. Sharp-witted blogger Julian Sanchez noticed an inconsistency in a note from Lott's alias, did some research and discovered that emails from "Mary Rosh" and Lott both originated with the same IP address. At the bottom of the post, Lott confirms that he is "Mary Rosh."

Sanchez does state that this is not academic misconduct, and he is right. But it is lying. It is playing with facts, and misrepresenting the truth to protect oneself. It's dishonest, and it calls into question whether Lott, who uses an alias to defend himself, should be trusted selling America on a heavily armed and very dangerous future.

Politics: Intra-List Resolution

Oliver's point on the protests this weekend in Washington requires a leap of faith I may have been too skeptical to see at first. But I think it is probably true, that the thousands and thousands who attended this event departed energized and perhaps took the action I spoke of, phone banking and informing people in other ways about the importance of avoiding a war for oil. I probably need to be more optimistic, but optimism is a precious commodity in this town sometimes.

Politics: I'm with Kos

In this post from yesterday the Daily Kos makes an eloquent and personal statement about the value of protests and rallies. In the world of people who do this sort of thing, these events are generally lumped together under the heading "direct action." I am with Kos. I dislike direct action. (As with Kos' post, it should also be noted that I am virulently opposed to the war in Iraq, and feel with absolute conviction that the principle goal of the White House is to obtain oil drilling rights and win elections.)

I will write more extensively on the subject, but Kos' points about the damage done to the anti-war perspective by the attitude and associations of many of the 'direct activists' on the Mall this weekend are well-founded. To paraphrase a better man before me, I would defend to the death your right to have a rally, but I'm just not going.

Kos also points to Nathan Newman's comments that, if the hundreds of thousands on the Mall had instead wrote letters to their policy makers or run phone banks, for instance, they could have magnified their impact even more.

Politics:What's At Stake, Part I

In the first of many, here's an answer when somebody asks what difference it makes and says that politicians are all the same: Today's Los Angeles Times piece called "Resurgence in War on Roe."

Politics: On the American Holiday Celebrating the Birth and Work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

From Stride Toward Freedom, by Martin Luther King, Jr, 1958:

"Every crisis has both its dangers and opportunities. It can spell either salvation or doom. In the present crisis American can achieve either racial justice or the ultimate social psychosis that can only lead to domestic suicide. The democratic ideal of freedom and equality will be fulfilled for all -- or all human being will share in the resulting social and spiritual doom. In short, this crisis has the potential for democracy's fulfillment or fascism's triumph; for social progress or retrogression. We can choose either to walk the high road of human brotherhood or tread the low road of man's inhumanity to man."

and, later:

"The shape of the world today does not permit us the luxury of a faltering democracy. The United States cannot hope to attain the respect of the vital and growing colored nations of the world unless it remedies its racial problems at home. If America is to remain a first-class nation, it cannot have a second-class citizenship."

then, finally:

The third way open to oppressed people in their quest for freedom is the way of nonviolent resistance... Nonviolence can touch men where the law cannot reach them...Today the choice is no longer between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence."

Happy Holiday.

Politics: Nose Brown Enough For Ya?

Has anyone noticed that Washington D.C.'s newspaper of record, the Washington Post has been nursing an unbelievable hard-on for new Republican Maryland Governor Bob Ehrlich since about June 2002? Is it just me?

Perhaps the rah-rah tone of the Post's coverage of Ehrlich's new budget didn't clue you in. Maybe the laudatory coverage of Ehrlich's inauguration, where it took six paragraphs to mention that Ehrlich's major pre-inauguration action was vowing to lift the moratorium on Maryland's racially imposed death penalty. Perhaps your eyes had already glazed over before you reached this mealy-mouthed puff piece accessory to the aforementioned boner-for-Bob cover story (don't miss the pot-shot at Kathleen Kennedy Townsend). It would have been easy by then to skip the adulatory editorial where the only mention of any minor quibble (Ehrlich had pre-fired thirty career [non-political] employees in a clear bloodbath in the days before his inauguration) occurred only four lines from the end.

If you skipped the entire A-section that day, and flipped to Style in the hopes of seeing something cynical or newsworthy, then you couldn't possibly have helped noticing the cover piece where Republicans were greeted like prodigal sons, welcomed back into the Post's open arms. By then, with misery on your face from the heaping helping of unbelievable bias, you would be forgiven if you didn't check out this little number on Ehrlich's dirty money juggernaut, which manages to work in Maryland GOP Chairman John Kane's fundraising pitch, but somehow omits any mention of Democratic fundraising.

How is it that the Post has shifted so far to the right? Why is this type of bias permitted to tarnish the current persona of one of America's great newspapers? The answer may well be in that fundraising piece. Many of the people giving money and turning up at the Ehrlich inauguration are newcomers to GOP events. They have spent the last few decades buying access with their campaign money from Democrats. Well now they need to start shopping in GOP-ville. I believe that the Post, in a disturbing role for a news organization, has decided to essentially build a reserve of goodwill with Ehrlich through these pieces (sort of like the enormous honeymoon President Bush has enjoyed with hundreds of news organizations, including and especially the very same Washington Post).

It may be good politics but stinks of rank disservice to readers. How much does that home-delivery subscription to the New York Times cost?

Politics: More on the Occult in Africa

Having thoroughly documented the growing problem of vampires in Malawi, our attention now turns to the growing scourge of childhood witchcraft in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

This piece, by the BBC, offers some interesting insight into this issue. Apparently, children are accused of witchcraft, and brainwashed into believing that they are in fact practicing sorcery, when something bad happens to their parents. In classic BBC fashion, they subtly indicate that lots and lots of bad things happen, and the impulse to scapegoat leads to about 20,000 kids turned out of their homes as witches.

Oddly, a troupe of former street kids turned musicians have recorded a song to somehow shed light on the problem. I'm not sure how that's going to work out. But they probably shouldn't turn to the open minds at this church for support. Perhaps the crazy bastard who was part of the territorial government in Greenland can help out.

Music: Simple Twist of Brilliance

Late last year, Sony put out a delicious two-cd Bob Dylan set entitled "The Bootleg Series Volume 5: The Rolling Thunder Revue." This collection captures 22 tracks from Bob Dylan's remarkable 1975 tour. The Rolling Thunder Revue, in my opinion, is one of those things I would honestly have loved to experience in person. Bob and his band (which included at times Joan Baez, Roger McGuinn of the Byrds, Mick Ronson, T. Bone Burnett and Scarlet Rivera among many others) were performing at the height of a live band's powers. The Rolling Thunder Revue performed a pile of reimagined work from Bob's catalog as well as a slew of new songs from Bob's best albums of the 70s, "Blood on the Tracks" and "Desire." For a Bob Dylan fan (who hasn't delved into the voluminous archive of actual bootleg material) this work is a revelation.

Another thing aficionados have noticed in this live collection is Bob's tinkering with song lyrics as he puts them through their paces. Now each "if," "a" or "uh" certainly doesn't require analysis. But I've noticed one track on the Rolling Thunder Revue which has a drastically different set of lyrics. The song, "Simple Twist of Fate," would have only been a year or so old, but could easily be overlooked because of the stunning series of revisions undergone by it's record-mate "Tangled Up In Blue." "Tangled" is on the Rolling Thunder Revue album as well, and its minor changes fit into the general arc of revisions that Bob put the song through during the recording. (the original is available on the first Bootleg release from Sony, and a subsequent live version is available on Dylan's 1984 "Real Live" release.)

However, "Simple Twist of Fate" undergoes a tremendous change which gifts the slight story of a chance encounter between two lovers with a new depth and beauty. The original song is colored with only a hint of regret. Rather, the song seems to rue the fickleness of chance, not the mis-steps of the song's protagonist. In the revision performed on the Rolling Thunder Revue disk, the narrator is sad and introspective, and tastes a hint of bitterness for the beauty that he has lost.

People tell me it's a crime/
to know too much for too long a time/
She should have caught me in my prime/
She would have stayed with me/
'stead of going off to sea/
And leaving me too many times/
upon that simple twist of fate

This post is already too long, but check out the original lyrics of this final verse of "Simple Twist of Fate" and contrast the voice and tenor. The difference is amazing, and Dylan's continued work on the song is a reward for his fans.

Politics: Less Can Be More

Sorry so quiet lately, I took myself out for some dental surgery.

Progressive thought is showing a pulse in the Senate! Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold will reportedly introduce a bill to halt the Total Information Awareness program that DARPA has been working on under the careful criminal eye of John Poindexter.

Huzzah! No, seriously.

Politics: First Good News We've Had All Day

According to the Charlottesville Daily Progress, a partner in a law firm and a 23-year veteran of the bench (he was a part-time district court judge) has resigned his judicial position so he can speak out against the pending war in Iraq.

The judge, Ronald R. Tweel, sent a copy of his resignation letter to his congressman and senators. In it he calls an invasion of Iraq "one of the biggest foreign policy mistakes of my lifetime."

Well said, Judge.

Politics: Home Run

Following up on Oliver's post of yesterday about George W. Bush looking in the mirror and seeing George Herbert Walker Bush's reflection, Maureen Dowd in today's New York Times hits the nail on the head, taking note of W's dwindling poll numbers and the factors that tripped up Bush the First's reelection.

One item Oliver failed to mention when he compared the two administrations that Dowd does include is both Bush's schizophrenic foreign policy. To wit:

It's equally hard to fathom the president's bipolar approach to nuclear threats. Yesterday he hurled new ultimatums at Saddam Hussein. "I'm sick and tired of games and deception," he said, even as he responded to Kim Jong Il's games and deception with pleas and promises to send food and oil to Pyongyang. There are inspectors in Iraq who are not finding nuclear weapons, while inspectors have been kicked out of North Korea, which has admitted to a nuclear weapons program.

So what's the message here? If Saddam had already developed nukes, we'd send him a fruit basket? But since he hasn't, we'll send him Tomahawk missiles. We know Saddam's weak, but we're pretending he's strong so America can walk tall by whupping him.

North Korea used its own version of our pre-emptive strike doctrine to blackmail us, and make the administration's global swaggering look suspiciously selective.

And where in the name of Rummy is Osama?

Read the whole thing. You'll be glad you did.

Politics: Shocking.

MIT and the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business have announced the results of a study finding that, "it helps to have a white-sounding first name when looking for work." White sounding names received 50% more responses -- calls, letters or emails -- than black sounding names.

"The professors analyzed birth certificates in coming up with what names to use. The white names included Neil, Brett, Greg, Emily, Anne and Jill. Some of the black names used were Tamika, Ebony, Aisha, Rasheed, Kareem and Tyrone."

I, for one, am stunned at this development.

Politics: Slow News Day

The New York Times and Reuters are both reporting an odd story about vampires in Malawi.

Sometimes, I just think these things should be noted.

Politics: Liberal Media My Ass

The Washington Post takes the time to fellate the Georgia Republican party and its first governor since reconstruction. Odd that the Post's bias is so carefully measured. Anyone notice any big, windy items on the Democratic triumph in Illinois? (Dems strengthened their position in the legislature and took the Governor's mansion.) I didn't think so.

While we're at it, the Post did manage to take note of new Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich's bloody purge of career employees. I can only think of one reason that a governor would gut employees at this level: can you say political patronage?

Politics:Lieberman Does Impressions

Tompaine.com has a great Robert Borosage piece pointing out how much Joe Lieberman resembles George W. Bush (in the headline, Joe is called ‘Bush Lite’). Borosage is dead on in his analysis: Lieberman is more enamored of war than even the president, supports education vouchers, has an alarmingly moralistic streak that borders on the close-minded, and as president would rival this administration with his ties and friendliness with major corporations. Unfortunately, that last item could make him a strong fundraiser.

I think I, like most progressives, would prefer to see a 2004 match-up that includes two candidates actually representing different viewpoints. While the Gore-Lieberman ticket may have left some of us cold, there is no doubt that the popular vote-winner in 2000 would have us in a very different world right now. Sadly, many move forward (including Mr. Lieberman) in the belief that looking, acting, and even talking like Bush will be the only way to win in 2004. They will be mistaken, I predict.

Politics: Where's Osama bin Laden's Presidential Citation?

The FBI agent who stymied field office attempts to investigate Zacarias Moussaoui has been rewarded with a presidential citation and a cash bonus.

Remember now that, potentially, had the FBI not had its head up its ass, they could very well have followed up on information retrieved in AUGUST 2001 -- BEFORE THE AIRPLANES HIT THE BUILDINGS -- and potentially stopped those terrible events.

But instead, the unit led by Marion "Spike" Bowman (his actual nickname) screwed around with the Minneapolis field office's request. Read:

Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, the senior Republican on the Intelligence Committee during its oversight investigation of the FBI, complained last month - just days before Bowman won the award - that Bowman's law unit provided ''inexcusably confused and inaccurate information'' to FBI investigators in Minneapolis during the Moussaoui case.

Shelby said in an 84-page report that the FBI unit's advice turned out to be ''patently false'' and led agents in Minnesota on a ''wild goose chase for nearly three weeks.''

Kind of leaves you speechless. Bowman received a presidential citation and a bonus equal to 20-30% of his salary.

Politics: Oh, Great.

I like trees as much as the next guy. I guess I just get annoyed when attention gets spent on things like the latest exploits of tree-guy while actual, world-shaking events determining the course of our nation for decades to come are sitting around like end tables in an antique shop. To tree-guy I say, "Get out of the tree. It's a bummer they want to cut it down, but they will cut it down. If you didn't want it cut down, you should have bought the land."

Politics: That's the Spirit

Dick Gephardt and another Missouri lawmaker are showing a little creative backbone on the judicial front:

From CQ:

DEMOCRATS ASK BUSH TO PICK RONNIE WHITE FOR APPEALS COURT

Two Democratic lawmakers from Missouri have asked President Bush to renominate Ronnie L. White, whose bid for a seat on the U.S. District Court was rejected in a party-line Senate vote in 1999. Citing Bush's Jan. 7 renomination of two controversial candidates -- Charles W. Pickering Sr. and Priscilla Owen -- Reps. Richard A. Gephardt and William Lacy Clay asked the White House to tap White again, this time for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals. "Such action would be entirely consistent with your stated goal of realizing the promise of America for all our citizens, regardless of race," they wrote in a letter to Bush. The battle over White's nomination, made by President Bill Clinton in 1997, had racial overtones. White, the first black on Missouri's Supreme Court, was the first lower court nominee rejected on the Senate floor. Gephardt and Clay's request is not likely to be embraced by Bush. White's main opposition on the Senate floor came from Attorney General John Ashcroft, then a senator from Missouri.

It's about time somebody pointed out these inconsistencies.

Politics: Clobberin' Time

Can you believe this guy?

This joker writes about all the misery and suffering that he has been forced to endure in order to reach his lifelong goal of being a member of the top tax bracket. He (without a touch of irony, mind you) goes on and on about how much he has missed in his life so that he could become this rich, put-upon figure whose paycheck is "devoured" by Medicare, Social Security and state and federal taxes.

Oddly, he begins by recounting how much he has lost to become "a member of the so-called rich." The hardest thing about reading this is that he's clearly miserable, but flaunting his wealth because he thinks everyone objecting to President Bush's tax plan is secretly saying (his words), "You have it, I want it, and you owe me."

Guy (his name is Larry Paquette), you're crazy. Some people actually believe in justice and fairness. You can't stand there in Fresno (that's where he works) and tell me that any criticism of the plan is motivated solely out of laziness by people who don't want to work as hard as you. I don't know if you've ever looked around, Mr. Paquette, but there are plenty of people in Fresno and everywhere else in this entire country who don't have the opportunity you've had. You worked hard all your life, missing birthday parties and family gatherings at a job someone was willing to give you. Many don't get that chance. You put yourself through a college that was willing to accept you. Look at the institutionalized racism, the economic opportunism, the gender gap, the benefits of political favoritism and a dozen other factors and then tell me that everyone has a fair shake.

Your taxes, Mr. Paquette, finance the life you've lived and allow millions of others who don't have opportunities like you to seize a chance. They finance the environmental regulations someone named Larry Paquette seems to support in an August 2002 letter to the editor of the Fresno Bee. Your taxes support the schools your kids may attend, the roads you may drive on, the corporation for which you work and a million other things. Americans have freedoms like no-one else in the world. We can travel nearly anywhere in our country, visit stunning national parks, drive polluting vehicles, fly in our own airplanes, run for office and more. All of this is made possible by taxpayers. I don't think people opposing President Bush's tax plans want your money, Mr. Paquette. But I can't deny that they would love to have your opportunities.

Politics: Segregation, Mississippi and Judge Charles Pickering

Now that President Bush has re-nominated Judge Charles Pickering to the federal appeals court, Atrios has, with a little help from Conason, assembled an excellent dip into the segregationist past of the Magnolia State and this friend of Trent Lott, Charles Pickering.

Politics: More on Lincoln Chafee

Reprinted from CQ's mid-day update (normally found here, but available from CQ by email):

CHAFEE FIRST SENATE REPUBLICAN TO OPPOSE BUSH TAX PLAN
Senate Democrats gained a Republican ally today in their effort to block President Bush's 10-year $674 billion tax cut plan: Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island. Chafee and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., unveiled a proposal that would derail part of Bush's plan by blocking the reduction in the top income tax rate unless there is a budget surplus. The rate of 38.6 percent is set to be reduced to 37.6 percent in 2004 and to 35 percent in 2006 under the 2001 tax cut law (PL 107-16). Bush's proposal would accelerate the scheduled rate reductions. Chafee, a moderate who frequently strays from his party, was one of only two Republicans who voted against Bush's 2001 tax cut. "My fears have been born out: Our government is in deficit, and we have large, expensive challenges ahead," Chafee said. Chafee and Feinstein said their proposal would reduce the deficit by $88 billion between 2003 and 2011.

Lincoln Chafee...COME ON DOWN!

Politics: Bill Frist’s Short Leash Leads to Karl "Dr. Evil" Rove

An item in today’s Washington Post demonstrates the media lifespan (less than a single news cycle) of an independent thought in the head of newly-installed Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. Frist appeared to exhibit some PR savvy in resisting immediately announcing his firm support for Bush federal judicial nominee, Charles Pickering, Sr.

Remember, Pickering was voted down by the Senate Judiciary Committee last year for several reasons, not least of which was his decision to attempt to reduce the sentence given to a man convicted of burning a cross at the home of a mixed-race couple. Pickering went so far as to call the U.S. Justice Department to express his concern about the harsh sentencing given in response to this racist act.

Here’s the chunk from the Post that counts (if you read closely, you can hear Rove’s head snap round in the return between the first and second graphs):

While Pickering appeared to be "extraordinarily qualified" and to have a "long commitment to promoting civil rights," Frist said he wanted to "look at the information and the facts" before coming to a conclusion about any of the 30 judicial nominations that Bush sent to the Senate on Tuesday.

A Frist aide said later that Frist supports Pickering's nomination.

Now if we could get some serious coverage of this and Frist's little feline problem, that would be something.

Politics: Justice Lag of America

Ironically, a few news items concerning the American justice system should be demanding the attention of the American people this week, but instead we’ll be talking about all the wars we are and aren’t having, along with a $600 billion dollar tax cut for people who don’t need it.

First up (though in no particular order), is a disturbing item in the Washington Post about the application of the death penalty in the Maryland.

It seems that prosecutors in the “Free State” are far more likely to seek the death penalty when a black offender’s victim is white. Essentially, Maryland has created two classes of murder: killing a white and killing one of their own. Sadly, the piece indicates that this disparity is mirrored around the nation.

Here’s the money bit:

"Offenders who kill white victims, especially if the offender is black, are significantly and substantially more likely to be charged with a capital crime," the report states. The probability is "twice as high as when a black slays another black."

Elsewhere, research by the Boston Globe revealed that in an examination of 750,000 traffic stops, black and Hispanic drivers are fifty percent more likely to have their car searched for drugs. Meanwhile, whites are more likely to actually face drug charges after a search. That means that police in Massachusetts are searching cars for some reason other than a dependable statistic. They appear to be searching cars belonging to blacks and Hispanics because those drivers are, simply put, the wrong color.

The story in Massachusetts hews close to the findings of an analysis the LA Times discussed in this piece published this week. While the LAPD doesn’t appear to profile drivers in the actual pulling over of traffic violators (the number of drivers pulled over matches the proportional population breakdown of LA), that parity ends once the police officer gets a look at the driver.

Seven percent of white drivers are asked to step out of their cars. 22 percent of black drivers and 22 percent of Latinos get the same treatment. Once out of the car, still a higher proportion of black and Latino drivers are patted down or have their cars searched.

Finally, last night President Bush renominated 30 judicial candidates who didn’t get confirmed last year. Two of those were rejected by the Senate Judiciary Committee last year owing to concerns over their respect for civil and women’s rights. One nominee, Charles Pickering, Sr., is a good friend of Senator Trent Lott, has a documented record of hostility towards plaintiffs in civil rights and civil liberties claims, openly opposes a woman’s right to choose, and has been cited as dangerously mixing religion and jurisprudence.

American justice is in dangerous decline. Despite the evidence of dangerous disparity, Maryland’s incoming Republican governor, Robert Ehrlich, will immediately lift the outgoing Democratic governor’s moratorium on the death penalty. In Massachusetts, further analysis revealed that police officers statewide are conveniently leaving out race information when they complete their accounts of traffic stops, essentially to stymie efforts to adequately analyze their racial profiling techniques. A follow-up piece in the LA Times includes countless Angelenos recounting their profiling history, including one black man who says that a key profiling technique is to target a black man driving a late model, large body American car, “Cutlasses, Caprices, Monte Carlos, Regals, basically anything you can put dub [20 inch] rims on” are profiled by police.

Is it 2003 or 1933?

Politics: Yes, You Can.

Today, Tapped opines on a potentially new debate regarding the reinstatement of the draft: “The point is that one cannot object to compulsory military service solely on the basis of whether the war being fought is just or unjust.”

Yes, you can.

The very principle of just war doctrine underpins the freedom each of us have to use our consciences to determine whether or not we participate in a war. A just war, for instance, doesn’t include pre-emptive war (a just war must be fought to redress an injury, not an imaginary future injury like Iraq’s pending weapons of mass destruction creation and deployment).

If the government or nation that would be served by soldiers in a draft is committed as a matter of policy to fighting unjust wars, than it is perfectly legitimate for anyone to oppose the institution of compulsory national military service. Tapped compares the WWII draft to some future draft here. Even though history has been somewhat whitewashed, we know that the U.S. involvement — heroic, fierce and dogged — in that war came after a deadly attack. That was the wrong suffered, and our entry into WWII was our redress. Draftees in WWII were compelled to service within the framework of just war.

Today, our government has adopted as matters of policy several items which violate the just war doctrine. A just war cannot target civilians, for instance. Look at almost any action by the U.S. since the Vietnam War, and you will see standard operating procedures which involve civilians as targets. Service to these policies cannot be justified, and compulsory service cannot be accepted with these policies in place.

In the post, Tapped quotes Calpundit singing the praises of some sort of hybrid national compulsory service plan that sounds more like Americorps, the Civilian Conservation Corps or the Works Project Administration than compulsory military service. While it is quite romantic to dream that a draft could send you off to scrub graffiti in Compton or teach best practices to small business owners in Peru, the reality is that we’re involved in a war on terrorism that our leaders have set up as a war without end. When legitimate targets (like the Taliban and al Qaeda) are gone, we’ll just move on to bogus targets like Iraq and who knows who else. Just war doctrine says get who got you, and fight for peace. We've lost focus on Afghanistan and we're gearing up for war in Iraq for all the wrong reasons. Until Iraq attacks us, that war will never be just.

Politics: With Friends Like These

An interesting conflict is brewing. The U.S. has asked Israel (for the second time in as many years) to halt a sale of military equipment to China. The U.S. is committed to Israel, but we're also committed to Taiwan, and we've set up (understandably) a fairly rigid standard for selling arms and whatnot to China which could be used to threaten Taiwan. This little tiff is effectively a growing pain in what will be the long road to normal relations with China.

I'm a fan of pointing out that U.S. policy towards China is duplicitous because if they didn't have a billion potential customers, and if every U.S. corporation wasn't salivating wildly at the prospect of selling them billions of lattes and khakis and hard drives and logo-imprinted performance fleece pullovers, they would just be regarded as another Communist country (read: Cuba) and would be embargoed and maligned in the press, etc, etc. This is because they have a lot of human rights abuses, religious persecution, et al. However, they do have a billion potential customers, so we treat them with kid gloves.

So when our best friend in the world Israel wants to sell them some weapons systems, we're in a bit of bind. However, since broad media attention is conveniently focused elsewhere, this will probably slip by and Israel will be 'encouraged' to forgo the sale, like last time. Nevertheless, as this article states, Israel is enjoying its role as a commercial partner for military hardware with China (the US is forbidden from selling these products to China now, though we may be able to later). That could cause problems in the future.

One more mild irritant: the United States and Ukraine are on the cusp of a serious falling out because we believe that Ukraine sold radar systems to Iraq. Look for Ukraine's U.S. international aid portfolio to drop in the years ahead. Ukraine's president, Leonid Kuchma, is regarded largely as a bad man (oppressing student demonstrations, more human rights violations), but it took a radar system for the U.S. to cut him off. Of course, the military equipment Israel was going to sell to China in the deal that was halted two years ago? Radar systems.

Politics: Whaaaa?

Why is the Toronto Star the only newspaper reporting this? An attorney for one of the two pilots facing court martial in the friendly fire incident that killed some Canadian troops alleges that U.S. fighter pilots are encouraged to use amphetamines when flying missions where they drop bombs on people and stuff. And the Air Force admits they encourage the use of the drugs! Here's the money bit:

...Umbach's (one of the two pilots) lawyer, David Beck, said he will prove at a Jan. 13 hearing on whether to court-martial the pilots that the U.S. air force routinely pressures pilots to take dexamphetamine, a prescription drug also known as "go pills." He said the drug can impair judgment and is not recommended for people operating heavy equipment.

The U.S. air force prevents pilots from flying if they refuse to take the pills, Beck said.

U.S. air force spokeswoman Lieut. Jennifer Ferrau acknowledged the pills are used as a "fatigue management tool" to help pilots stay alert through long missions. But she said the use of the pills is voluntary, and that their effects have been thoroughly tested.

Hello? Anyone? Why isn't this front page news? Why doesn't this schlocky Washington Post piece include any mention of compulsory drug use in the military?

Politics: Fishing for Dick

This morning's Washington Post included a story which should complete your 2002 scrapbook for breathtaking rollback of environmental regulations by the Bush Administration. It seems that the Department of Commerce has decided that we should change the standard for so-called 'dolphin-safe' tuna. It once was that you couldn't use tuna fishing methods that threaten dolphins if you wanted to call you tuna dolphin safe and send it to the US. Under the new, relaxed rules, tuna fishers only need to avoid actually killing dolphins. How they do it (and if they do it, frankly) is up to the fishermen. Apparently, the rules state that observers on board the tuna vessels can attest that no dolphins were killed or seriously wounded in the tuna fishing. (I can only imagine who pays the observers.)

The problem isn't necessarily that dolphins might still get killed, because we've got bigger fish to fry (forgive the pun). It's that the whole rule was devised to discourage fishing techniques that use dolphins as targets to identify and fish schools of tuna. This is the methodology that leads to dead dolphins, as the nets encircle the fish and the mammal. Now that minor obstacle is gone. Even if the observers on the boats actually exist, the fishing operations will simply work like this: Killed no dolphins, sell these fish to the U.S. Oops, killed some dolphins, we'll sell these fish to somebody else. We shift from a policy which hopes to perpetuate something positive (less dolphin death in tuna fishing) to a policy which is designed only to technically achieve a very limited outcome (less actual tuna served in the U.S. which was caught alongside dead dolphins).

That tuna will carry the 'dolphin-safe' label in the U.S.