Politics: Tribunal-Worthy

The Pentagon has a list of crimes you can commit that will get you a military tribunal. They're horrible. Interestingly, the list was based on the internationally-recognized definition of a war-crime. Of course, the United States doesn't participate in the International War Crimes Tribunal, but at least we can crib from their notes.

Politics: Whistling Dixie

The Associated Press had an interesting item floating around this week about how the drive to bring back a lot of the symbols of the Confederacy could stand to harm the American South in a lot of ways. My wife and I have interesting discussions on the subject, as she's a southerner and I'm a Yankee-Arab, which is analogous to 'dirt' for some jokesters in the South.

There was an example of what my wife would call the first problem. The American South is already saddled with a constant bad-rap, because of red-neck jokes and NASCAR jokes and everything else that people just throw at the South because it's funny. The reality, she asserts, is that there is racism and evil all over the USA, and you certainly don't need to cross the Mason-Dixon line to discover some. She is correct.

But I was making the point the other day that the South has a lot on the line these days, and getting out from under those assumptions and mental short-changes of the South is a big part of what's at stake. The South has made huge strides, has represented America on the world stage, has become a center of banking and commerce, and has challenged much of the north for dominance in American politics and life. Culturally, the capitals of the South compete handsomely against non-niche (non-NYC or LA) cities in the rest of the US. And the South was significantly handicapped economically by the Reconstruction, which was essentially a public policy bombing into the stone age by the north.

But by the early part of the 20th century, the South was experiencing a revitalization. It grew steadily, and endured well because it wasn't yet so business dependent when the Great Depression struck. The next challenge for the South was the civil rights movement, and this is where I think an important thing occurred. The South had seen itself move forward at a certain rate of progress, race-relations-wise. This rate was beginning to intimidate the White establishment in the South, and the action they took, especially in response to Brown v. Board of Education, was to readopt a lot of the symbols of the Confederacy.

This action had the surprising effect of undermining any argument that the Confederate battle flag was an important symbol of cultural heritage. By legally re-adopting the CSA battle flag onto their state flags in response to desegregation, Southern states were conceding that the stars and bars were meant to tell blacks that they aren't welcome in the schools, restaurants, buses, etc. Any valid comparison to an American with English heritage flying the Union Jack was stripped -- regardless of the particular flyer's intent -- when the states endowed the flag adoption with the weight of racial backlash and Jim Crow.

Fast forward to today. The civil rights movement wasn't deterred by the adoption of the CSA battle flag. Instead, the rate of integration accelerated, continuing with spasms of violence, and fits of enormous understanding. As the AP piece positions it:

While other Southern cities exploded in violence, Atlanta came through the civil rights era with remarkably little strife. Civic leaders used to boast that Atlanta was the city "too busy to hate."

But now that image is in jeopardy over a symbol of the Old South.

Gov. Sonny Perdue, Georgia's first Republican governor in 130 years, has proposed a referendum on bringing back the old state flag next year with its big Confederate emblem.

Exactly. The return of this 'symbol' will do nothing but cast Georgia, Sonny Perdue and his right-wing supporters as Jim Crow nostalgists with an amazing inability to grasp what kind of damage this action has. No 'racial reconciliation' can come of this action. The Stars and Bars may very well have represented the southern cultural heritage before the Ku Klux Klan in the 20s and 30s and the segregationist movement in the 40s, 50s and 60s replaced all the flag's meaning with acrid hatred. Atlanta -- long regarded as a city on the civil rights vanguard and a powerful center of banking and industry in the American South -- could lose some of its stature and much of its revenue over Perdue's dubious maneuver to bring back the rebel flag.

Politics: Hello Nino and Clarence

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has refused to reconsider the ruling last year that the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional. This is a slap at the Bush administration which strenuously urged the court to revise the ruling of a three-judge panel of its members last year. It also clears the way for a trip to the Supreme Court.

Of course, I support the ruling, if only because it is one of the things that lingers in our society reminding some of the newest members that they weren't here at the beginning, and we're not exactly okay with their Allah-worshipping or polytheistic faiths.

Speaking of faith, new Alabama Governor Bob Riley is holding Christian bible study in the state capitol, if anybody cares. Anybody? I didn't think so.

Politics: Pakistan is Slipping

Today's attack on the U.S. Consulate in Karachi should serve as a reminder of how precarious the situation is in Pakistan. This month marks the one year anniversary of the revelation that Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was killed by Pakistan-based terrorists. Seymour Hersh revealed on Bill Moyer's Now that a Pakistani exodus from Konduz during a U.S. Special Forces siege allowed many of the al Queda forces to escape. The Pakistani troops were probably trapped in Afghanistan because they were there working with Taliban forces.

A full-on attack by al Queda could topple Pakistan, endangering millions with an out-of-control nuclear program. India's surging fundamentalist movement will only provoke this outcome, as will the impending U.S. attack on Iraq. If he's smart, Pervez Musharraf is back-channel begging the U.S. to find another way, and probably beseeching Russia to veto the U.N. Security Council vote. But I don't know if he's smart.

Politics: A River in Egypt

I don't know if anyone had a chance to read the Washington Post's monstrous editorial on why they love the bomb, but there were some interesting tidbits in it.

Most distressingly, the Post did in this long editorial what they have done throughout the Editorial Page's treatment of this war: they have selectively included some facts while eliding over others at will. In the entire document, the words 'North Korea' never appear. Even places where the Post walks right up to some obvious point, they make an abrupt turn (always to the right) and ignore the obvious again and again.

For example, the Post (as if to cite their stellar record of backing the right horse) says that it supported Bush's incursion into Afghanistan in October 2001. But when an opportunity to directly address a complaint about the new war in Iraq, that it would distract from our very unfinished duties in that destroyed and destitute nation, the Post takes a pass. United States and its allies stay focused on Afghanistan and its reconstruction.

Like a set of talking points from America's war party, the item repeats inane falsehoods as if they were facts. Take "Given what we know about how containment erodes over time..." America's big experiment in containment, that whole Cold War, was something of a success. The piece lauds Clinton for talking big on Iraq in 1997 and 1998, but then chastises efforts to deal with Saddam Hussein which apparently didn't feature a long-term war against a non-aggressive and fully-contained Middle Eastern state.

For instance, the piece attempts to compare the U.S. campaign in Kosovo and the first Gulf War to this one, conveniently omitting that in both cases, an actual hostility had occurred before U.S. involvement did. Clear evidence has demonstrated that Slobodan Milosevic was executing a plan to eliminate ethnic Albanians from Kosovo. Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. What did Hussein do this time? The Post doesn't explain that part.

Like the redundant parodies we hear from the right-wing, the Post editorial bashes France, claiming that Iraq rearmed and defeated sanctions with French "support." Oddly, the editorial doesn't mention Iraq's neighbors who were far more complicit in Iraq's continued health by working with the black market to get oil out of the country.

The editorial pays exactly no attention to the fact that far more lives will be on the line if a greater terror war is triggered by an American invasion of Iraq. No mention whatsoever of the danger of radical Islamists capturing the government in Pakistan and automatically possessing the weapon we have no proof Iraq has ever held. As a matter of fact, the word "Pakistan" doesn't appear at all.

The Post editorial is portrayed as a response to readers who are amazed that the ed page can continue to ring the war bell without cringing at the horror. At the outset, a reader is quoted as saying "It is truly depressing to witness the depths Washington Post editors have reached in their jingoistic rush to war." The editorial then takes on "rush to war," but leaves "jingoistic" un-addressed.

Think, then about all that the editors didn't address: The real threat of North Korea's actual nuclear weapons program, the precarious position of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, the potential loss of life from new terrorism events, the potential un-balancing of the entire Arab world and more. More importantly, why did it not speak to readers concerns that the war drums were taking on an increasingly jingoistic tone? And why does the Post not perceive the painful drift that the "War on Terror" is undergoing? What should readers of the Washington Post conclude?

Unfortunately, the Post editorial page doesn't have enough room to answer those unimportant questions. Instead, it just continues America's march to war, the proud descendent of America's yellow press.

Sniff: Bye, Neighbor

Admin: Blogged Out

Had dentistry this morning, then blogger was down for a while. More blog soon.

Politics: Notice a Trend?

The Consumer Confidence Index plunged this month to its lowest point since 1993. That's a drop of 15 points. Here are some relevant bits:

This month's confidence readings paint a gloomy picture of current economic conditions, with no apparent rebound on the short-term horizon," [Lynn] Franco [director of the Conference Board's Consumer Research Center] said.

As part of the Present Situation Index, consumers who rated current business conditions as bad rose to 30.7 percent from 26.7 percent. The number who said business conditions are good declined to 13.2 percent from 15.0 percent.

And consumers aren't pinning much hope on the economy getting better in the next six months.

Those surveyed who believe business conditions will turn even more sour increased to 19.0 percent from 14.0 percent. The percentage of consumers who believe conditions will improve dropped to 15.3 percent from 17.7 percent.

The number of consumers who said jobs are hard to get rose to a 9-year high of 30.1 percent from 28.9 percent, while those who said there are plenty of jobs decreased to 11.2 percent from 14.5 percent. Looking six months down the road consumers were more pessimistic, with the number saying they expect there to be fewer jobs available jumping to 28.4 percent from 21.2 percent. The number expecting more jobs fell to 12.7 percent from 14.2 percent.

It continues to amaze me that Americans can respond honestly in these situations. The Consumer Confidence Index isn't some fly-by-night project. It appears to honestly reflect that Americans are worried about the economy, and believe that their worries won't be alleviated for months and months. And yet, the Bush administration plunges ahead with a war that will cost billions of dollars and a tax cut that will leave us with billions more in deficits for decades to come. How can the American people tell the Consumer Confidence board that they are worried about the future, that jobs are hard to get and that there will be fewer jobs in the future, and still support this war?

I want to believe that they don't support this war. These poll findings hint that they are willing to wait, because the idea of a unilateral, pre-emptive attack on even a leader as bad as Saddam Hussein isn't something any country should just be doing. 56% said that we should wait for the UN to opt-in. I want to believe that they are being frightened and intimidated by war mongers and are also being slowly convinced of reality by honest dealers from across the ideological spectrum.

I want to think they've got the guts and the brains to stand up when they suspect that someone they admire (whether I agree with them or not) is lying. A lot of Americans support President Bush, because he seems to be a plainspoken guy that slightly less than half of those who bother voted for. They like him because they seem to think that rallying around a person is a good thing to do when we're scared or shocked, as opposed to rallying around something abstract like freedom or peace. But I think (or maybe I want to believe) that these consumer confidence numbers, and these thoughtful questions show that Americans are slowly waking from a slumber. They may come around slowly, but I have to believe that they'll come around.

Politics: Now Is the Time For Your Tears

A grand jury failed to indict two white police detectives who shot a handcuffed black man to death in Louisville, KY.

Read the whole thing, but here are some lowlights:

LOUISVILLE, Kentucky (AP) --A grand jury on Monday declined to indict a Louisville police detective who fatally shot a handcuffed black man in December.

James Taylor had been handcuffed behind his back in his apartment when Michael O'Neil shot him 11 times. Police said O'Neil fired after Taylor lunged at him with a boxcutter, an account disputed by some witnesses.

The jury considered several charges against O'Neil, including murder. It also considered but did not approve charges against O'Neil's partner, Bryan Luckett. Both detectives are white.
...
A coroner's report said Taylor, 50, died within a minute of being shot. The victim had a history of mental illness and drug addiction, and an extensive criminal background, including 10 years in jail for manslaughter.

Dr. Richard Greathouse, the former Jefferson County coroner, said at the time that in his 29 years as coroner he had never before seen a handcuffed suspect being "riddled with bullets."

"The circumstances are very troubling, to say the least," said Greathouse, who has since retired.

Dave Stengel, the commonwealth's attorney whose office presented the case to the grand jury, said he agreed with Monday's decision. "Every person in Kentucky, whether citizen or police officer, has the right of self-defense," he said.
...
Since June 2000, Louisville police officers have fatally shot six men, five of them black. No charges were brought against any of the officers.
...
An FBI investigation of the shooting was forwarded to the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, which confirmed Monday that the case is under review.

Politics: Mixed Loyalties

Apparently, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales didn't realize how silly he would sound saying that Miguel Estrada was given the ABA's highest rating in interviews this weekend, considering that Bush-Cheney operative Fred Fielding -- do you mean Fred Fielding from the Bush-Cheney transition team? Yes I do -- was a member of the so-called "non-partisan" standing committee that the ABA uses to evaluate presidential nominees. Fielding also helped to create C. Boyden Gray's GOP judicial right-winger hit-squad the Committee for (in)Justice.

Gonzales, who I believe is a principled conservative, must have problems with this type of assignment from the Bush White House. He, like Colin Powell, came to this White House seeing promise and bringing with them a lot of respect from both sides of the aisle. Powell has seen his dignity and respect crucified on the increasingly farcical question of justification of the Iraq war. Sadly, Gonzales, who has kept his name out of the headlines through much of the White House's effort to stack the federal bench with right-wingers, had to go on to Fox News spewing this crap about double standards and whatnot. No doubt Karl Rove sent Gonzales because he's Hispanic, and Estrada's nomination has split the Latino interest groups. But Rove and everybody else had to know that Fred Fielding was both an ABA recommender and an employee of the transition team. So Gonzales gets hung out to dry, like Powell on Rove's election-winning war in Iraq strategem.

With hope, some of the principled but conservative thinkers will see the disastrous course this totally political White House has set the nation on. With hope, they will speak out, and America won't have to endure what will surely be an economic, international relations, civil rights and civil liberties disaster if the Bush White House's political plans are all implemented.

But you've got to admit, that's going to require a lot of hope.

Politics:How Much We Can Stand To Lose?

TalkLeft's Jeralyn Merritt, guesting for Eric Alterman over at Altercation lays out a good impact analysis of the indictments John Ashcroft announced yesterday. The point is well made that this series of arrests stems from Ashcroft's pioneering use of intelligence information that was previously off-limits to domestic law-enforcement. While the domestic law enforcement agencies can't go spying, listening in on phone calls and whatnot, the intelligence services have no such restrictions. Essentially, the handing-off of this information between intelligence gatherers and law enforcers renders the ban on using US intelligence resources against American citizens for law enforcement purposes moot. Welcome to a new era of domestic spying.

There has to be a limit, doesn't there? I don't think there are any better ways to raise the red flag on this. America's leaders are acting as if they enjoy unchecked freedom to threaten, intimidate, arrest, deport, jettison and terrorize people based on a lunatic guiding force of good that is derived from their Sunday-school prayer breakfasts. They employ a passive level of racism far more invasive and frightening than the Jim Crow nightmare America should be working to leave behind right now. They are destroying the freedoms America is supposed to represent for people who come here expecting more of us. These are the rights of people who are very much like us: A college professor from Florida who has lived in this country for 25 years. A Canadian loan officer who was harassed and threatened by U.S. INS agents at O'Hare airport then sent to India instead of home to Toronto. The president of a non-profit organization from Chicago.

They are all 'catches,' it seems, in the view of modern crusader John Ashcroft. It is his racist narrow-mindedness, patronizing religiosity, and his capacity to bend the truth when it suits his needs that makes him such a formidable foe. In the end, because of bigots like Ashcroft who don't have the ability to see the error of their ways, America will be consumed in a devastating spasm of race-baiting, ethnic violence and institutionalized racism. If there is another terrorist attack in these United States, it will be over for law-abiding Americans who happen to be Arab descendents. There will be camps, or more mass registration drives backed up with the heavy hand of Ashcroft's thugs, or new powers to spy on every Arab based on the belief that we're all terrorists until proven otherwise.

Ashcroft will see that this disastrous future comes to pass because he is driven by an amalgam of a personal and flawed view of Christian doctrine, combined with evangelical beliefs, neo-conservative dogma, confederate revisionism and just plain stupidity, He, like President Bush, believes that there are simple lines between good and evil in the world. Ashcroft honestly thinks that every time he can bring together some racist hunches, some illegal snooping and a couple of white lies to make a connection between enough dots to land someone on the wrong side of that line, he's got an 'evildoer' and that's that.

But nobody ever asks the questions about good and evil that will drop Ashcroft like a rock. Somehow, for years, he has managed to avoid answering these questions. Try them on for size:

1. Is slavery evil, Mr. Ashcroft?

2. During an interview in Southern Partisan magazine, you praised the publication and said that it "helps set the record straight." You then added, "You've got a heritage of doing that, of defending Southern patriots like Lee, [Stonewall] Jackson and Davis. Traditionalists must do more. I've got to do more. We've all got to stand up and speak in this respect, or else we'll be taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda." Did you mean that there was something wholesome and true about defending the right of millions of white folk to own, buy, sell, beat and kill black people solely on the basis of their skin color?

3. Should black public school students be allowed to attend the same schools as white public school students?

4. So why did you fight a federal order to desegregate St. Louis public schools when you were Missouri Attorney General? Why, exactly, were you threatened with a contempt charge for failing to comply with federal orders to file a desegregation plan for two urban school districts?

5. Should African Americans be allowed to hold public office alongside white people?

6. So why did you work so hard and expend so much capital to ensure that the Senate rejected the federal court nomination of Missouri's first African American supreme court justice?

7. What about inter-racial dating? Should that be allowed?

8. So, when you accepted an honorary degree from Bob Jones University, a school that lost its tax-exempt status because it refused to abandon its racist policies, were you endorsing those racist policies?

9. Should people be free of intimidation and exclusion in the workplace on the basis of their religious beliefs?

10. So how do the Muslim, Hindu and Jewish staff members of the Justice Department feel about your Christian prayer meetings on federal property, inside the Department of Justice? Is there any chance that your position as the nation's top law enforcement officer should preclude you from engaging in activity which could violate the establishment clause of the Bill of Rights?

There are ten questions for Attorney General Ashcroft. I'll be glad to take more. But the point of this is not what John Ashcroft has been willing to do. Bad people do bad things. What is at issue here is how much this country can stand to lose. How much progress on equal respect and treatment can we sacrifice to this bloodless madman's crusade? How much racism are we willing to see written into our nation's laws? How can we maintain a single shred of dignity with men like this at the ship's helm?

Bob said it: "So many roads, so much at stake / So many dead ends, I'm at the edge of the lake / Sometimes I wonder what its gonna take / To find dignity"

Politics: All Hail The Charm City Sun!

The Baltimore Sun today delivers a brilliant editorial on why John Ashcroft should step down as Attorney General and leave our rights alone. The whole thing is dead on the money, but here's a nice excerpt:

He is the nation's chief law enforcement officer, but seems intent on bending both the law and the Constitution to his will.

He has run roughshod over his own federal prosecutors, directing them to seek the death penalty in specific cases rather than use their own discretion.

He has ignored his promise not to impose his religious views on others by seeking to overturn the assisted suicide law in Oregon and by prosecuting Californians who participate in a state program authorizing the medical use of marijuana.

Worst of all, he has taken advantage of the fearful American climate in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks to chip mightily away at American freedoms.

Yes. It's all true, every word of it. In the final graph, the editorial refers to Ashcroft's 2000 Senate defeat at the hands of the late Mel Carnahan and delivers the crushing blow: "Now it's time to retire Mr. Ashcroft from government, as Missouri voters intended." Indeed.

Politics: Things Get Tricky

The story on Sami Al-Arian is tough to figure out. He's obviously very politically active, but I can't shake the belief that he has been forced out of his job and now arrested because the US government and others have nothing more than a bad feeling about his views. His brother in law was arrested and held by Janet Reno's Justice Department for three years on secret evidence. I guess it didn't pan out, because he was released. Then he was arrested again soon after the September 11th attacks and deported, but not charged with any actual crime. Al-Arian was forced out of his job after the attacks, but for the last 17 months, no action has been taken against him, until today.

Again, I can't help believing that these guys (whose extremely outspoken style doesn't really jive with the standard "sleeper cell" terrorist M.O.) are being locked up, deported and deprived of a livelihood because they say things that most people don't want to hear, and advocate for a group of people who most Americans (even before September 11, 2001) fear and hate without any thought.

But don't take my word for it. Learn for yourself in this Salon.com article, or in the faculty union's grievance about al-Arian's unlawful termination, or at this site about his story. You can also read Counterpunch's excellent piece on Dr. al-Arian and his brother. I don't know for sure if al-Arian isn't a terrorist. But I don't know that about anybody.

Politics: Democrat. Dem-Oh-Crat. Sound it Out, Zell

Zell Miller is rapidly gaining momentum for his leap on to the List of Those Who Are Despised. (We need a better name for this thing. We were talking about "People We Hate," but I think somebody has done that, possibly the kid in "Boondocks.")

Hatred: An Introduction

Oliver and I have launched a new initiative here at the Liquid List. As Oliver once explained when he founded the current incarnation of this site, there aren't many actual lists associated with it. The Liquid List, while bad-ass as far as domains go, isn't really as much about making lists as it is about speaking freely.

To that end, we're launching with this post an elaborate new ongoing campaign: People We Despise. Being despised is sometimes worn as a badge (presumably by people like Karl Rove), but we think that being despised is something to be avoided, like the Ebola Virus or Ann Coulter. So if you get on Liquid List's Despised Hall of Shame, know that it's a bad thing.

Oliver's got some strong thoughts on this, but to get the ball rolling, I thought I would helpfully point out someone who has pissed me off about a hundred times already this week, and who generally functions in such an utter state if idiocy that I wonder if he and his colleagues haven't been lobotomized: Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority General Manager and CEO Richard White.

What has Mr. White done to deserve this dubious honor? Well, if you happen to dwell in the National Capitol Region and ever need to travel by mass transit, you already know. The overall strategy of Metro is puzzling: For surface transit (buses) it appears to be designed to reach as few riders as possible, with an elaborate series of confusing bus routes, poorly marked and managed bus stops, surly drivers and vexing tardiness which inevitably leads to ghetto-izing bus usage, because anyone who can afford to get there any other way, does.

The subway, meanwhile, is managed about as well as a third-grade science project where all the hamsters die. So while the stations are very clean, they are also cold, slippery, and since bizarro-post-9/11 regulations requiring the removal of all in-station trash receptacles have gone into effect, are gradually becoming littered with kleenexes and newspapers. When the stations were built nearly 30 years ago, they chose some sort of tile that appears to offer as much traction as Calphalon commercial non-stick cookware. As a result, people are falling down like an army of town drunks. And don't even get me started on the drunks.

But White doesn't get this award for just these choice items. No, he deserves this special recognition because of the management of Metro, plain and simple. Riders throughout the system complain, during regular service (not the snow emergency we've been wrestling with, which I will get to in a minute), of short-sighted, half-cooked, lazy policies. There should be no four car trains during rush hour or other periods of high ridership. While ridership has steadily grown for years, Metro hasn't committed to all six-car trains all the time. Ridership surveys are also a joke: Metro employees stand by stations and note on a clipboard what time a train arrives, how long it is in the station, and when it leaves. They don't capture the number of riders on the train, how effective the driver announcements are, what the station experience is like, if the elevators and escalators work or anything else. Of course, overall ridership is reflected by farecard turnstiles. However, when stations serve more than one train line (like all the stations between Rosslyn and Metro Center, for instance) there is no way to count which color train riders are boarding.

In normal times, Metro sports all the hallmarks of an unmanaged behemoth, with a bunch of stupid things happening that everyone knows are stupid, but nobody bothers to make a policy about. A few years ago, a lady died walking up an escalator because the only working escalator was set to carry passengers down into the station. After that happened, Metro announced that whenever escalator outages brought a station down to one escalator, it would carry passengers up. Shouldn't that have been common sense?

Every day, riders deal with this stupidity. One day all the escalators at the Dupont Circle station's North exit were out of service. If you didn't want to walk up about 230 steps, you had to cross the station to the South side, ride the escalator up and then walk across the circle. I don't have a problem doing this, but presumably some of Metro's very young, very old, or in poor health riders were screwed that day. Routinely, escalator maintenance work (the escalators are always getting worked on) causes entry paths for Metro to be blocked, obstructed or closed all together. Workers leave open dangerous trap doors in the middle of the sidewalk, poorly inform riders of the changes to come, and spend an awful lot of time standing around looking at the two guys who are working.

Management problems go all the way to the top. In the last seven years, Metro has purchased and installed new escalators in several of the highest ridership stations, only to have those escalators revealed as flawed. The new escalators have been totally replaced at enormous cost, while the older escalator systems have continued chugging away at other stations. A massive order of Metro train cars was discovered to be badly flawed, and the cars that replaced those ones were found to also have a flaw (which was revealed when a rider was almost dragged into a station wall). All of these and a dozen other snafus have forced Metro to continually fret about runaway costs and make noises about raising fares, presumably while White and the rest of the gang sit around with their fingers in their ears so nobody points out that the skyrocketing budget got up there because we've had to do about a hundred things twice. Station quality has decreased and though capacity has held steady, it is far outpaced by ridership levels. About the only thing Metro has done right is add the smartcard system to all the stations. Of course, adding it to the buses has so far only happened on some of the vehicles serving about a dozen lines in Arlington County. The rest of us, it appears, will still have to grab a transfer and produce a quarter, scare up a dollar and a dime, or wait in terrible long lines to buy tokens from the mean women in the booths at Metro Center, or pay an extra fee to buy them from one of Metro's pitifully staffed "Commuter Stores."

Of course, Metro this week has been spectacular in its failings. Again they demonstrated no foresight: a huge storm was forecast and the cars required to meet the capacity of the weekday ridership levels are stored above ground. Why not keep the cars in the system so they are available when riders need them after the storm (when ridership will surely be up because the roads are so treacherous)? Metro seemed to answer: "Nope, Let's keep them in the snow, so we can't reach them. Then we'll run mostly four-car trains, at fifteen to twenty minute intervals, serving customers at 50-60% capacity and not serving the people on the inner stations at all because all the trains will be totally packed." Metro didn't run empty trains through outer stations so that riders closer to town had a train to board. Instead, it just kept running trains from Vienna, Franconia, Shady Grove, Glenmont and New Carrolton, and they filled up and took on no passengers for three to five stations until the big downtown exits like McPherson Square and Dupont Circle. This from the nation's second-largest transit service.

So for these reasons, The Liquid List of Despisal's inaugural mention goes to Metro Chief Executive Officer and General Manager Richard White, along with his staff, including Lem Proctor. But here at the Liquid List of Despisal, we like to give you something to do. Here's Metro's "Contact Us" page. More importantly, Metro's Board of Directors is made up of County Board or City Council Members from Maryland, the District and Virginia. These are your elected representatives, and they pretty much have to listen to you rant and rave. Give them a call:

Arlington County, VA

Fairfax County, VA

Alexandria City, VA

Montgomery County, MD

Prince George's County, MD

The District of Columbia

Finally, I hate to end a rant like this without something uplifting, or at least sight-gag funny. So when you visit Metro's front page, take note in the upper left hand corner of the screen. For some reason, Metro chose as the emblem of its web presense, its look-and-feel anchor, a Photoshop-hack job of one of DC's dear pandas swelled to the scale of Godzilla and about to eat the White House. You can click on the image below to bring up Metro's front page and see it for yourself.

Politics: Anti-War Message Creep

I read Amos Oz's piece in the Times about the anti-war sentiment and how it becomes anti-US and often anti-Israel (or more pointedly anti-Jew). As a not-political voice, Oz captures something that has been simmering since the protests began surfacing last year.

AB sent the piece over along with a quick note:

Amos Oz is great at articulating the views of many. I think, by the way, that many American Jews are turned off by the anti-Zionist protest signs that consistently appear at the recent wave of protests. This is a community who would naturally be against this war, but circumstances and prejudices (and ignorance) have turned them into an island. Mainstream American Jews (read: not Wolfowitz) cannot stand with the mainstream protesters (equating Israel with colonial states, Zionism with racism, terrorism, etc) and they cannot stand with Bush (Republican policy, war for unknown reasons, pro-peace in the Middle East, etc).

(Incidentally, AB also raised the question of putting someone in jail for 15 years for being an accessory to the murder of 3,000 people.)

I think this is one of the deepest divisions in the current anti-war movement. The whole ANSWER vs. Rabbi Lerner thing has really highlighted it. (And this piece by David Corn from the Nation does a good job of identifying some of the problem.) More than anything, it's caused many on the left to look again at the ANSWER people, and how strongly they feel about certain outcomes. The blogosphere is aflame with all sorts of people who dislike ANSWER but defend marching in protests and others who think that any direct action in the protests strengthens the hand of the nut-jobs who run ANSWER. Much of the debate also centers on whether right-wing claims that a protest is invalid because ANSWER is crazy have any validity. (The right wing is also busy saying that speaking out against the war, especially with ANSWER, is essentially providing aid and comfort to the enemy.

The amazing thing that many in the younger generation on the left do not understand is that America's progressive Jews are the heart of liberalism. The liberal tradition, especially in the fields of civil rights and civil liberties, was born from activists and attorneys who saw a moral duty in protecting those most in need in the American south during the 50s and 60s. America's Jews have been America's conscience for a long time.

Within the left, the anti-ANSWER forces have struggled to make this point. The ANSWER folks still don't understand it. What they see is a series of connections. As they articulate these connections, the validity of each degree strains credulity. It is acceptable that an un-provoked war against a Muslim country could spark a worsening of the geopolitical situation in the Middle East. It is acceptable that a redoubling of efforts to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict would be a better commitment of US resources. To some, it may even be acceptable that the US policy towards Israel could be doing damage to the overall situation in the Middle East. But connecting the effort to prevent the United States from starting a pre-emptive war against Iraq to the call for Israel to withdraw from the Occupied Territories doesn't benefit anyone. What it does do is perpetuate a lot of hatred and villainy, which is something we have plenty of already.

I think the fulcrum of morality when it comes to dissent and protest should always be grounded in humanity. For me that means: I want my opponents to see things my way, but I don't want them to die. I am disappointed, shocked and angered at the conduct of President Bush and the rest of America's leaders, but I don't hate America. I disagree with the politics and policies of Ariel Sharon, but I don't hate Jews or Israelis.

Normally, deviating from this humanism is a mistake reserved for the right wing. They believe that hating US policies means hating the US (and they accuse the left of just that). They equate dissent with defection. But right now, the ANSWER people are painting America's Jews into an untenable corner by requiring as a condition of membership in the coalition against pre-emptive war in Iraq allegiance to something fairly close to an anti-semitic position. Therefore, American Jews don't feel comfortable acting on something they believe in (opposing the war in Iraq) because it could also mean they are supporting something they don't believe in (the elimination of Israel, or whatever it is that ANSWER believes).

This is one case where something that doesn't necessarily kill the anti-war effort definitely won't make it stronger.

Music: Agreement and Disagreement

Pitchfork Media, which consistently delivers insight on the independent-ish music scene has a middling review of Steve Earle's "Jerusalem" this week. I don't agree much with the review, because "Jerusalem" became a better record after I listened to it about a dozen times, which is something a reviewer sometimes doesn't have the time to do. But the reviewer, William Bowers, does slam in one of the most crushing and dead-on definitions of what passes for country music these days. He calls it "the committee-written popaganda leaking from the bowels of whatever lunkhead cowboy or smiley slutloaf got corralled into sing-slinging it." You are correct, sir!

Politics: Huh?

I have neither analyzed the evidence nor followed the trial (which went largely un-covered in the U.S. press, as Atrios points out), but how does 3,000 counts of accessory to murder only get you 15 years in prison?

Crazy: Trapped Like a Rat

Hello all. Blogging slowly these past few days as Washington, D.C. attempts to emerge from underneath a 22 inch blanket of snow. Federal goverment, every school in the land and just about everything else is closed. Presumably, my esteemed editor Mr. Oliver G______ is stranded somewhere between here and North Carolina's triad. I, however, have had the mixed blessing of being trapped inside my house, like a tiny mammal with nothing more than a brain stem and instincts. I have consumed Scrabble, I have made plans to break out of the house but had them foiled, I have made Jell-O, butterless brownies, assisted in the preparation of home-made tomato sauce (pounds of which are sitting, batched in our freezer as I type), painstakingly rebuild a shattered box of jumbo shells and stuffed them with a cheese mixture. I've attempted to retrieve a car from the ice-pack, and I've borrowed (and nearly broken) two snow shovels (mine is long gone). Yesterday, in desperation I, along with some neighbors, worked like marooned space-travellers committed to their last chance on a long-disregarded seven horsepower snowblower that was buried under 3 feet of blown and drifted snow behind a home in our community. We rigged up an elaborate extension-cord electric starter mechanism, revealed our collective non-knowledge about what a choke does on a four-stroke engine, and we pressed some emergency-room clothing-removal shears to obliterate the old tarpaulin that shrouded the snowblower.

Please, someone, anyone, send help. We've eaten through many of our provisions, and I'm down to only one box of Cheez-it.

Will post more as sanity ebbs.

Politics: Overload

I guess I just can't take it. The plastic sheeting and the duct tape and the orange alert based on lies! lies! lies! and everything else. Something just snapped. I don't care if Mohamed el Baradei and Hans Blix told the UN that Saddam Hussein killed JFK. I don't. And I can't follow it anyhow: Blix report mixed, says the New York Times. CNN says "The US doesn't care". The Washington Post says that several countries responded to the Blix report by saying we need more inspectors, and that this was a "blow" to Bush. On ABCNews.com, Colin Powell (who must be a polyglot, because he never wears a UN translation device in photos) says that Iraq is playing tricks on the UN inspectors.

Honestly, how is anyone supposed to make sense of this? This is what happened right before the elections, you see. The Bush administration moved the war so far to the forefront, bulldozed over every other issue at play in each state race, and then pushed it one notch further. Everything just snapped. Everybody was in favor of war! Everybody hated terrorism! Nobody wanted to listen to anything else, we just wanted to be left alone.

Well today, it happened for me, so I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't affecting a lot of other people. We've been sent to the Home Depot for tape, told not to bother with the tape, told we'll suffocate if we use the tape, told we should probably still use it anyhow, and made fun of for buying tape and now we're fed up.

I think the media will be both victim and accomplice of this overload. Most notably, you will see very little coverage of the massive protests planned this weekend for New York and San Francisco as well as about three hundred other towns here and around the world. In the United States, the war protests are irrelevant, because for the media the war is a done deal. Media people don't think about timelines the way regular people do. The quarter of a million people who protested in Melbourne, Australia today (which is tomorrow there, natch) obviously don't believe that the war is a done deal. But the media people are regular people, too, so they could (and often do) fall prey to their own version of overload, where they are jaded about the new news because the only news that matters is the old news, presented over and over and over again.

So what do we do? I can't tell you. I wish there was a way to shear through the madness. And I know there are people who are un-affected by this stuff. But the relentlessness isn't our fault. The constant stream of information, the shifting sands of perspective always tilted toward war war war weren't built by us. Maybe it's time to declare a blackout. V-chip your MSNBC and your CNN and your Fox News Channel! Cancel your subscription to the newspaper (there isn't anything new anymore)! Manage the information that goes into your gourd, protecting yourself from the insanity. Force yourself to the surface of this morass and think for yourself!

Happy Valentines Day.

Politics: Whoops

The AP is reporting that our current state of hysterical fear-causing and terrorism-related dreams-inciting orange alert status is largely the product of a fabrication. The government found this out when they gave some prisoners lie-detectors, or something. I can't really recall, because I've just relaxed my entire body for the first time in 56 hours.

Politics: Australian for Ally

Since hitting the nail on the head is a tradition in Australia, it will surprise no-one that an opposition leader there called Australia's pro-Iraq war Prime Minister an "arselicker" of the Bush Administration.

Money bit:

[Australian Prime Minister John] Howard conceded that he had been a little embarrassed by the fervour of Mr Bush's endorsement, knowing that it would probably spawn a new generation of invective from Opposition figures such as Mark Latham, who already accused Mr Howard of being an "arselicker" of the Bush Administration and described this visit as "a conga line of suckholes" heading to Washington.

John Ashcroft immediately responded that if Mr. Latham ever brought his little act to this side of the globe, he would be permanently detained.

Politics: Wolverines!

Politics: All for Ollie

"The Maine House of Representatives has approved a resolution urging the United States to disarm Iraq through the United Nations and without military intervention." Mainer-in-Residence and TLL's fearless leader Oliver Griswold will be proud.

Politics: Wyden 1, Poindexter, 0

Adam Clymer in the New York Times says that the House-Senate Conference Committee working on the Omnibus Spending bill has decided to keep Senator Ron Wyden's amendment putting some conditions on the Pentagon's Office of Total Information Awareness.

House floor travel-hog Representative John Murtha (D-PA) has a great quote. He is talking about his Republican counterpart in the House Defense Approps Subcommittee, the humorously-named Representative Jerry Lewis (R-CA): "Jerry's against it, and I'm against it, so we kept the Senate amendment." Of the Pentagon, he said, "They've got some crazy people over there."

The Wyden Amendment compels the executive branch to report on how TIA won't attack privacy, and other reports, or the funding gets yanked.

Politics: Egypt's Future?

This weekend, in a first, Egypt sent presidential son Gamal Mubarak to Washington D.C. in the slot normally occupied by President Hosni Mubarak.

Jackson Diehl, in a Post op-ed, wrote about the fairly safe belief that Mubarak the elder was positioning his son as heir apparent. This is tricky in a so-called democracy.

I don't know why, but my instinct is to think the worst about this. I've not been impressed with Bashir Assad in Syria or King Abdullah in Jordan, and I don't expect to be impressed with Mubarak.

But in any case, Diehl left out the true hitch of Egypt's so-called democracy: The Mubaraks' plan is already a go because if/when Gamal Mubarak runs because there won't be any meaningful opposition. It's sort of a Chinese puzzle (the sort of which US policymakers encounter and generally ignore all the time): Take the badly-elected next guy and hope for the best or take the badly-elected current guy and hope he repairs the election system so he's the last badly-elected guy.

The problem with Egypt is that we've taken the current guy for ever and ever, and he's taken about 2 billion bucks a year for as long (that's not an exaggeration, of the $8.7 b of US aid expended in an average year, Egypt gets about $1.9b.) So we lose the opportunity to judge him, and that generally pushes us onto the next guy.

The other point Diehl misses here is that the US doesn't really care if Egypt has a democracy. He makes the mistake of seeming to link 'democracy' with what they really want. What they really want is economic openness, compliance with various international trade agreements and 'safety,' which is code for a happy populace and a government's willing participation in the US's role in the region. Mubarak the younger may provide that, and in exchange we won't mind him ruling under less than ideal democratic conditions. We do it now a million times a day in several dozen countries. Our best pal in Pakistan is a military dictator who staged a coup and made himself president. We have staggeringly low standards sometimes.

There may be a chance that Gamal (incidentally, that's also Nasser's first name) Mubarak will make Egypt a free, open, economically viable partner for the United States in the Middle East. But I wouldn't bet on it.

Politics: Disappointed

The Washington Post's gruesome editorial today really affirmed the Washingtonian item about the Post's position as the nation's official newspaper of Hawkdom. What's terrible is that this newspaper has taken a disturbing tactic of the Bush administration and rolled it right into their editorial. More and more, the Bush administration has shown that it believes conversation, debate, dissent and discussion are somehow un-American. By their actions and their statements, they have demonstrated that they don't believe people should talk about things.

They don't think the Senate should debate sweeping changes to the law enforcement infrastructure in America. They don't think our lawmakers should even have a chance to know and discuss the beliefs of a potential federal court judge. They don't believe that accused criminals should have their day in court, and they apparently don't even think that some people should have a chance to discuss a day in court with their lawyers.

Sadly, the Bush administration has also proven that they don't believe any of the international institutions that America helped create are worth their spit. They practically had to be dragged to the UN to justify Karl Rove's election-winning gambit/war. So they went, rigged the resolution and pretty much walked away thinking they wouldn't have to deal with the UN ever again.

But now they want NATO to join in their reindeer games, sign on for the bombing and the killing and whatnot, and make plans in case things go badly, because even President Bush would like someone else to revel in the gore, and let's face it, it's going to be tough to shake that 'cowboy' image if you just go out there alone. But they don't want NATO to be an international organization with several countries and several different opinions. They want NATO to function as they want everything to function: echo our voice, our call for war, our condemnation of differentness, our thinly veiled racism and warmongering. Echo it all, because we're right and we don't need you.

And the Washington Post has joined in. The Washington Post writes today that the members of NATO who are blocking war-preparations and instead are seeking more arms inspectors and possibly peacekeeping troops are causing "the enfeebling of both NATO and the United Nations."

The Post's assertion is based on the belief that this valuable work by Germany, France and Belgium is in fact just a smoke-screen to block the onrushing war. Apparently, the entire Post editorial board failed to notice that France can veto the next UN resolution to go to war if it doesn't want it passed. That would seem to be a silver bullet obviating the need for obstructionist tactics like the Post believes these ones are. They aren't leaving room for the possibility that France and the others actually believe more inspectors could resolve unanswered questions about Iraq's weapons program. Nor are they admitting the possibility that these three countries and NATO "Partner for Peace" Russia actually in the UN's mission to inspect and require Iraqi compliance is a mission worth seeing through. The Post doesn't appear to understand that not everyone shares Karl Rove's belief that if you started a war to win an election, you have to have the war or people might figure out that you were bluffing all along.

The American people -- and the Post's readers -- may be interested in reading a newspaper's editorial board assertion that Iraq hasn't complied with UN Security Council Resolution 1441. But no one is ever served by a newspaper attacking the principle of debate. The Post does a grave disservice to its readers when it portrays the painful deliberations before an attack that will cost hundreds of allied lives and thousands of Iraqi lives as unimportant. Indeed, nothing is more important than thinking before action. I wouldn't expect President Bush to understand that. But I once believed that the Washington Post did.

Politics: Shocking!

The Washingtonian has recognized that The Washington Post is the nation's most hawkish newspaper.

The Washington Post issued a clarion call for war against Iraq in a February 5 editorial, thus becoming the nation’s most hawkish major daily newspaper.

While most major newspapers have published editorials demanding more proof that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction or have suggested that United Nations inspectors be given more time, the Post has enthusiastically adopted the Bush administration’s call to arms.

Splendid.

Politics: Rule of Law

Jonathan Turley in today's LA Times lays out another sound argument in the compelling and growing case that Attorney General John Ashcroft has something other than the country's best interests at heart. In fact, Ashcroft's behavior is much more analogous, Turley points out, to a recently State Department decried action by China against an accused terrorist of its own.

As Turley explains, Ashcroft has moved the trial of Zaccarias Moussouai to Virginia to ensure both a death penalty and that penalty's speedy application. It proceeded with the case against Moussouai, inserting their allegations that much-closer-to-real-life Al Queda bigwig Ramzi bin Al-Shibh was the puppet master for 9/11 and Moussouai.

There's only one problem: Moussaoui's crazy, and when we caught bin Al-Shibh, he told us as much.

Here's a good bit:

From the beginning, however, there was doubt that Moussaoui was ever a part of the conspiracy, and there is growing agreement that he is a barking lunatic. Now the Justice Department is facing the prospect of losing all or part of its high-profile case to a hate-spewing, rug-chewing maniac. Worse still, the government's growing disaster is of its own making.

Lacking any meaningful evidence linking Moussaoui to the 9/11 plot, the government wrote an indictment that reads like a bad dime-store novel, describing shadowy figures and loosely imputing their actions to Moussaoui. A central character in this criminal novelette is alleged 9/11 mastermind Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who figures so prominently in the indictment that the government named him an unindicted co-conspirator.

That made Bin al-Shibh a material witness in the case, but the Justice Department was not concerned about his being called to confirm these facts because Bin al-Shibh was at large and believed to be possibly dead. That changed last September when a very much alive Bin al-Shibh was arrested in Pakistan.

Under interrogation, Bin al-Shibh has reportedly given the CIA some valuable information, but also one highly unwelcome tidbit: Al Qaeda thinks Moussaoui is as crazy as we do.

Now the judge in the case, Leonie Brinkema -- who has been going nose to nose with this whack-job since day one -- has granted Moussaoui permission to cross-examine bin Al-Shibh, since the Justice Department has leaned so heavily on Mr. Al-Shibh for their prosecution of Moussaoui. (She, unlike Mr. Ashcroft, hasn't forgotten the sixth amendment which includes "...to be confronted with the witnesses against him...") Ashcroft is now threatening to take his terrorist trial out of the civilian court and into a military tribunal where he can get the lethal justice he's so excited about, without having jump through all these hoops. That's what the Constitution really is for him, isn't it? Just hoops to jump through.

Politics: Here They Go Again

Bill Moyers' PBS show Now featured an interview last night with Chuck Lewis of the Center for Public Integrity. CPI has obtained a Justice Department analysis of a new piece of legislation to curtail your freedoms. The legislation, tentatively called the "Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003" will drill right through whatever the USA Patriot Act left behind in October 2001. This includes granting Attorney General John Ashcroft power to strip any American of their citizenship without the opportunity to face their accusers, review the evidence against them or defend themselves in court.

(Perhaps Mr. Ashcroft could use a little backup in the old bill of rights department. Here's a refresher. Amendment VI: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense. )

As a matter of fact this piece of legislation, if adopted as written, will diminish judicial oversight of the U.S. law enforcement infrastructure on such a massive scale that we will be, more than I've ever thought possible, destroying many of America's fundamental rights on the pretext of protecting them. Judges won't be able to oversee surveillance investigations, people will be identified through covert surveillance, stripped of citizenship and deported all without a hearing, and much more. Right to know is gone. More blocking of Freedom of Information Act requests. Congressional oversight is minimized. And the power concentrated around the position of U.S. Attorney General is astounding. This makes the federal law enforcement infrastructure into a massive KGB-type domestic espionage agency.

The staggering thing about this is that the analysis was leaked. But that is clearly part of the plan. There are 40 sections in this overview of the bill, and almost every one contains a whopper: one restricts judges from requiring reports on surveillance they authorized, another deletes sunset clauses on some USA Patriot Act provisions, so they remain in effect indefinitely, one even creates a legal advocate to argue on behalf of the government if the FISA Court ever again (as it did for the first time in May last year) decides to decline authorization for a surveillance request. Out of the 40 items floated in this 'leak,' Ashcroft, Viet Dinh and the rest of those craven dogs over at Justice will be ecstatic to get half of them through. So they leak this, on a snow-covered Friday at 5 o'clock (though Center for Public Integrity could have had the document longer), weather a weekend response (overshadowed by the next Gulf War and the new terror alert status), roll back a couple of provisions here and there, and then through it goes. A couple of Senators whine, they get called traitors in the press and bam, you've got KGB 2.0 on the shores of the Potomac.

Just remember, you read it here first.

Politics: He's Definitely an Expert

With all the other very important things to worry about now that the Republican Party controls the House, Senate, White House and Supreme Court, it was easy for people to miss the enormous environmental impact the new Senate leadership will have. So, if you needed a reminder, it comes this week from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, courtesy of Congressional Quarterly. John Shanahan, who was air quality director for National Mining Association (check out their press release decrying the ban on mining with CYANDIDE) has been tapped to handle clean air issues for EPW Committee chairman James Inhofe (R-Okla.).

The money bit here is the note from National Mining Association President Jack Gerard congratulating Shanahan on the move. The note was circulated by the Clean Air Trust and included some ominous language about how Shanahan's new position "signaled great progress for the industry" as it continues to "educate the administration and Congress on the importance of coal in meeting our nation's future energy needs."

Good thing this guy is definitely committed to serving the interests of the American people.

Politics: One More Sign

The State Department has issued a warning of heightened terror activity for Americans abroad. They distinctly mention the possibility of chemical or biological weapons. Nice touch, tipping everyone off to impending war and all.

Incidentally, for the next two weeks, Muslims will be making their traditional pilgrimage to Mecca, the Hajj.

Politics: Hatch Has Heart

During the debate over remarkably tight-lipped judicial nominee Miguel Estrada, Senator Orrin Hatch made the following statement, attesting to his own heartfelt affection for the Latino people:

"Lest anybody think I am just saying these things because I am supporting Miguel Estrada, I have spent most of my Senate career working very closely with the Hispanic community in the United States, getting to know the issues and addressing the community's concerns through legislation. In fact, in 1986, I started the U.S. Senate Republican Conference Task Force on Hispanic Affairs to ensure that the Hispanic community had a strong voice in the Senate. Over my lifetime, I have grown to love the Hispanic culture, their people, and their history. I believe their values and culture have infused and invigorated the American dream. The Latinos I have come to know over the past 26-plus years tell me it is all about heart. It is the 'corazon.' Frankly, I have come to feel like I personally have a Latino heart beating in my breast. That is how important this community is to me. That is how close I feel to my Hispanic brothers and sisters. I have the credentials to make that case. I happen to know Miguel Estrada. He, too, has 'corazon'"

I remember when I was coming up in the barrio, (my nickname was Pepito), oftentimes I would sit on the stoop with Orrin Hatch as he worked the corner, buying all the neighborhood kids papusas and teaching us multi-part harmonies to his remarkably accessible Christian tunes. I felt then that Hatch was a Latino at heart, except that he spoke fluent English, lived in Utah, was a lawyer, and once ran for president. And I remember thinking, as Hatch and Arlen Specter mercilessly attacked Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings that I could almost feel Hatch's 'corazon' shrivelling up like a prune.

Politics: Pretty Sneaky, Sis

Buried in the mountains of minutiae that make up the George W. Bush budget is a sneaky and parliamentarily dubious plan to advance drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Thank goodness such widely read media sources as "Oil and Gas International" are carrying this important story about the potential violation of the last, pristine temperate rain forest we have. At least the word will ring out far and wide.

Politics: Clarity

Colin Powell’s speech may have done its job for many luminaries of the world. It may have convinced the Washington Post Editorial Board (though that isn’t exactly shocking) and Bill Safire. Hell, it appears to have wooed over Mary McGrory (which is disappointing), but I think it requires some clarity.

What Colin Powell proved beyond a shadow of a doubt yesterday in his speech was that the unbelievably low threshold for “material breach” that America forced through in its UN Security Council resolution of last year had clearly been met. That’s all it did. Apply those standards to just about anybody and they would all be in material breach. Our closest ally, Israel, maintains an utterly un-secret nuclear weapons program whose 20-year history of clandestine development would clearly pass the threshold established by UN SC resolution 1441. There’s a good chance that Iran and Syria have all reached or passed the threshold. There’s no question that North Korea, Pakistan and India have all breached that threshold, and have functional weapons to show for it. (Additionally, North Korea is a communist nation, which was once all you needed to be to get your ass kicked by the United States.)

So Powell didn’t go to the UN to convince Mary McGrory and Bill Safire (and just about every other American too lazy to read a newspaper, vote, or think for him- or herself) that Iraq wasn’t happy about having the US go through it’s dirty laundry. Pretty much everyone knew that already. I haven’t been sitting here thinking all along that the Iraqi government was a peaceful idyll where Saddam Hussein and his fearful bootlicks killed thousands because they were misunderstood. Everyone knew Hussein was a bad man. Hussein killed lots of people. Hussein bombed Israel during the first Gulf War, gassed Kurds, slaughtered the Marsh Arabs, hunted Shiites, all of it. And he is hiding weapons, no doubt, because that’s what people do when they have weapons. They hide them.

But why now? Why are we going to war with Iraq now? Why didn’t US Ambassador to the UN John Negroponte make the presentation yesterday? Why doesn’t anyone ask these questions?

Thomas Friedman makes a case in this column that going to war in Iraq will lead to a wonderful future for the Middle East. The logic is tortuous. Friedman says that the threat isn’t Iraq, or any other nation really, but the un-nationalized and undeterrable young people who feed into the belly of terrorism by providing its hands, its eyes and its legs for traversing the world. But, Friedman argues, the only way to stop the seemingly endless flow of these young men into the terrorism machine is to “transform these Arab states — which are also experiencing population explosions — to create better governance, to build more open and productive economies, to empower their women and to develop responsible media that won't blame all their ills on others…” Otherwise, Friedman reasons, “we will never begin to see the political, educational and religious reformations they [the Arab States] need to shrink their output of undeterrables.”

Bravura reasoning, Mr. Friedman. Interesting that this handsome goal has never been elucidated by a member of the Bush administration. Intriguing that the President’s least-liked media outlet is the only source for this thought-provoking argument.

Interesting, also, that I don’t for one second believe that anyone in the Bush administration has offered this level of thought to the Iraq question. Instead, they are functioning now as they have all along. As DiIulio said, “What you’ve got is everything — and I mean everything — being run by the political arm.” This is Karl Rove’s war. It helped President Bush beat the dreaded mid-term retreat in Senate and House seats that has haunted every president for decades. Every single thing that happened in America from July 2002 onward was tainted by the fact that questioning the administration, demanding any kind of explanation, demonstrating any kind of backbone was construed as weak on the war on terror and soft against the imaginary threat of Iraqi aggression.

But Rove won the elections, and still had a war on his hands. What to do now? Sell the war. Sell it harder than before, because there is no way to go back now. That’s why widely-respected Secretary of State Colin Powell makes the pitch at the UN, doubtlessly only days before we wade into battle. Negroponte is a schlub occupying a patronage position like so many Bush appointees. He covered up stunning human rights abuses and fronted for the men who executed the illegal arms sales that become the lynchpin of the Iran-Contra affair. He, like many of the people in this administration, doesn’t have or deserve any credibility in the world’s eyes.

So there is Colin Powell, finding it increasingly difficult to hold on to his ever-shrinking mote of dignity. He didn’t go to the UN and lie. He just passed on the lies that Karl Rove, George Bush, Dick Cheney and everyone else has been repeating since day one.

But the proof will come later. We will invade Iraq, without a doubt. We will bully the UN, threaten the French, whatever it takes, but the invasion force will still be 99 percent US and UK. We will go to Baghdad, we will kill Saddam Hussein (though his body won’t be found), we will secure the capitol and the nation’s oil fields. Iraq will fulfill its long-standing international obligations, and the oil will flow within a few years, to the Russian, British and American companies that have still-valid contracts with the nation of Iraq.

There will be massive, bloody conflict in the northern part of the country between rival Kurdish factions and possibly between Kurds and Turks. There will be old and ghastly atrocities revealed. There will be new ghastly atrocities engaged in. The Shiites in the south will slaughter Iraqi soldiers who are trying to retreat from the US air assault. Bombs will fall where they aren’t supposed to, and alongside weapons depots and intelligence ministries, hospitals and orphanages will be destroyed. Mobs will kill hundreds in cities where heavy armaments are the only American things that touches the ground. Massive statues of Saddam Hussein will be pulled down, in media moments that Rove and Cheney will want played again and again on Fox News Channel, and they will be.

But check on Iraq later. After we’ve grown frustrated with the infighting and essentially hand-picked the interim president. After we’ve shrunk our force in Iraq because new elections are looming and nobody wants to talk about 50,000 Americans occupying a new country. After a string of European/Central Asian/South Asian terrorist attacks triggered by opportunists who don’t care about Iraq but know that their message of hate will sell regardless. After at least one poorly executed but ultimately embarrassing Congressional inquiry into something or another that happened during the fighting in Iraq. After Iraq has become essentially identical to the Afghanistan of right now, early 2003. The cities outside of Baghdad will be in chaos or controlled by warlords who hoard food aid and menace aid workers. Religious fundamentalism will find new inroads in a land peculiarly denied access to any god other than “the Great Uncle” Saddam Hussein. The cost in American life will be small, but the cost in America’s budget will be staggering. As a result, we will abandon much of Iraq, like we have abandoned much of Afghanistan already.

Maybe then, people will vote. Maybe we’ll ask the hard questions. Maybe we’ll notice the resounding lack of credibility that all our leaders seem to share. Maybe we’ll demand that our newspapers focus on reporting information we should know rather than telling us what they think we want to know around the department store ads and touching stories of dog rescues and inexplicable news coverage of reality programming. Maybe we’ll wake up and realize that democracy is a hands-on game and everything you do, every word you speak, is and should be a celebration of the freedom democracy delivers us every day. And maybe, just maybe, people won’t have write this story again and again.

But frankly, I’m not holding my breath.

Politics: Here's a Good Reason to Lock 'Em Up

Republican Congressman from North Carolina Howard Coble has joined the ranks of marginally bigoted speech previously inhabited largely by Louisiana Rep. John Cooksey. Remember Cooksey said, following the terrorist attacks, that sheriffs in Louisiana should just look out for anyone with a diaper on their head and lock 'em up. Well, Coble was quoted as agreeing with FDR's plan for interning Japanese Americans. His reasoning is dubious, and leads to a muddled and totally baseless endorsement of both the WWII-era belief that there were actual Japanese Americans out to get us and the current paranoia that every Arab-American is a terrorist waiting to happen.

According to the AP:

He didn't agree with the caller, but said he did agree with President Franklin Roosevelt's treatment of Japanese-Americans. Coble said: "We were at war. They (Japanese-Americans) were an endangered species…For many…it wasn't safe for them to be on the street…Some probably were intent on doing harm to us…just as some of these Arab-Americans are probably intent on doing harm to us."

Want to know what's even better? Coble has been selected to be chairman of the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security that supervises the U.S. Department of Justice, including laws aimed at preventing terrorism. Well, this is definitely the guy I want in there making sure that the Justice Department isn't leaping to any conclusions about Arab-Americans.

Politics: Astroturf Grows Enemies

The GOP astroturf phenomenon has warranted a response from the Boston Globe’s Ombudsman. (To learn more about this campaign to plant letters to the editor in hundreds of newspapers, visit a fairly exhaustive list here.) The Ombudsman column, written by Christine Chinlund and carried on Sunday in the Globe, explained thusly:

Four times since mid-October the Globe has unwittingly published letters that were written not by the local folks who signed them, but by the Republican National Committee. The same letters, all praising President Bush, also appeared verbatim (or nearly so) in papers across the country, each signed by a person in that paper's area.

And

''Readers have a right to assume that what they read on the letters page is not canned public relations material,'' she says. Thus, she has instituted a new policy to confirm original authorship on any letter that could be part of an organized campaign.

The Internet may be part of the problem, but it can also be part of the solution; I'd suggest adding regular online searches of key phrases in any suspect letter, to quickly identify already-published duplicates.

Good for them. Unfortunately, people in the non-profit public interest world as well as those in the big smelly universe of political outreach know that astroturfing will continue as a practice. They also know, if they have been paying attention, that the most common form of electronic outreach, where your constituents fill out a form to send some nice pre-written email to their policymaker, is rapidly declining as policymakers learn to put less stock in that kind of constituent mail. The astroturf to the editor system has been in use for years as well, and hopefully, the attention generated by the “genuine leadership” email will return the world of constituent mail and letters to the editor to the people actually committed to typing a letter up, signing it and sending it to their newspaper or Senator through the regular mail.

Politics: Maybe the Mansion Makes You Crazy

Following in the footsteps of another loonie Georgia governor (you know my predilection with this state), Sonny Perdue has announced that in addition to cutting the budget, he wants to cut the waistlines of state workers. From the CQ mid-day update:

Perdue is challenging the 103,000 state employees to join him in a weight-loss program. "The governor has said for a long time the state needs to go . .. on a financial diet, but it also needs a healthy diet," Perdue spokesman Erin O'Brien told the Atlanta Constitution. "High health care costs are part of what's driving the state budget [shortfall]." The 56-year-old Perdue, a former college football player who O'Brien said is 5-foot-11 and tips the scales at 220, wants to shed 20 pounds himself. The Republican governor also is extending the challenge to department heads, state legislators, constitutional officers and Capitol reporters. Those who accept will receive a packet with an as-yet-undisclosed diet plan with weekly weigh-ins.

Remember, then-Governor and now Senator Zell Miller read a report that babies learn better if they listen to classical music in the womb, so he launched a program (gladly aided by some record label or another) to send expectant mothers in the state recordings of Mozart symphonies.

Can any of these guys focus on governor things like traffic and taxes or whatever? Just asking.

Politics: Wee Little Bump

The traditional State of the Union poll bump appears to have been short lived for President Bush's single-minded march to war against official president-named-Bush-punching-bag Iraq. The Los Angeles Times polled 1,385 Americans and asked if we should roll over Iraq without the the backing of the UN Security Council. Only 30 percent said yes. 65 percent said we shouldn't. Otherwise, the President's poll numbers seemed okay except for one other:

On his handling of the economy, 45 percent of Americans approved and 47 percent disapproved. Just 12 percent said they believed Bush's economic plan will be very effective in reviving the economy.

Okay, now Democrats? What do we do with this information? Do we:
1) look all confused until President Bush shows 'genuine leadership'?
2) pounce on this opportunity (despite American attention-span fatigue over the Columbia disaster) and pound away at Bush's crazy budget and sky-rocketing deficits?
3) neither.

I think we all know the answer.

Politics: Is Don King Promoting These City Council Meetings?

Following her ouster by a recall effort, the mayor of South Gate, a town outside of Los Angeles, slugged another city official at a packed meeting. Read:

Less than 15 minutes into the meeting, with the overflow crowd already jeering Mayor Ruvalcaba, She tried to bar a resident from addressing the council, saying that she did not have a formal request to speak from him. The resident, Bill DeWitt, produced a date-stamped document indicating that he had filled out a speaker's card. The city attorney informed the mayor that he should be allowed to speak.

As the crowd yelled: "Let him talk! Let him talk!" Ruvalcaba banged her gavel, called a five- minute recess and headed into closed chambers with DeWitt's document in hand. At that point, Gonzalez attempted to intervene, reaching for the document and telling Ruvalcaba to give it back to DeWitt.

The crowd watched as the two officials struggled and then erupted in screams and shouts when Ruvalcaba threw a punch. The mayor then rushed into the back room as several uniformed South Gate police officers pursued her, jumping the wooden railing separating the council members and the crowd.

"Arrest the mayor! Arrest the mayor!" the crowd chanted. Noting the video cameras in use by some, a practice instituted by council critics in response to the city officials videotaping the crowd, someone called out: "Let's go to the replay."

"Unbelievable," said off-duty South Gate Police Officer Tony Mendez. "Did you see that? She just popped him."

"It's crazy," said Ken Louie, the city's director of finance. "Just when you thought you'd seen it all."

Politics: I'm running out of funny things to say about Evil

Sometimes it takes the fresh voice of the totally insane to let you understand just how evil someone can be. WorldNetDaily, a totally insane super-far-right website slapped together by Joseph Farah and a bunch of other loons has a column by a conservative AM-radio talk DJ named Barbara Simpson, who calls herself "the Babe in the Bunker." Today, she writes a column on President Bush's out-of-the-blue decision to fund AIDS research in Africa. Here's a high(low)light:

And now, we're going to give $15 BILLION to poverty-ridden countries for mostly-illiterate people whose culture doesn't discourage random sex.

and

I remember an old remedy using money to prevent sexual activity. Put a dime between your knees, and keep it there.

Yep, just let 'em die. That's a good idea.

Music: Let it Be Better

This one is for me: Rapidly-fading-in-stature music mag Rolling Stone is reporting (in an ongoing torrent of Beatles-related news) that the final Beatle record "Let It Be" will be released without the bloated string arrangements added after the band abandoned the project to the hands of gun-nut wall-of-sound producer Phil Spector. Pitchfork Media has a nice piece on it, which we'll point to since RS has been so stinky of late (like since 1997). Spector's strings, long-derided by Beatles fans and Paul McCartney, will be lifted out of the title track, "Across the Universe" and, of course, "The Long and Winding Road."

Politics: Worst State Ever

The Associated Press is reporting that Bob Barr might run for Congress again. Meanwhile, Newt Gingrich's unremarkable Republican replacement in Georgia's sixth district Johnny Isakson hopes to make an unremarkable contribution in the Senate in 2004, running for the seat being abandoned by no-help-at-all Democrat Zell Miller. That would open a seat for Barr to run in, presuming he has moved to Marietta, Ga. All of this evil string pulling (possibly even Miller's decision to step down, who knows) is being performed by none other than Georgia Republican Party Chief Ralph Reed.

Apparently, Georgia is tired of everyone thinking that Florida is the worst state in the union.

Politics: Science Should Win

The New York Times is reporting on a professor who won't give a recommendation to a student who cannot "truthfully and forthrightly affirm a scientific answer" to the question of how the human species originated. Basically, this professor is enforcing a theory of evolution litmus test.

Well, good for him.

Stand up, Dr. Michael L. Dini, because you're the next contestant on "You're Damn Right." On our show, we cast the bright light of actual, scientific information across the vast wasteland of closeminded religious dogma and hysterical intellectual blindness. Today on our program, a professor from Texas (like you couldn't have guessed that) is sued by some student who didn't even take his class because the student was offended by the instructor's refusal to recommend to medical schools students who insist on wallowing in 17th century beliefs about God plucking humankind from the dust of the cosmos on the sixth day or whatever.

As a friend wrote to me (and this article doesn't make crystal clear), I hope Texas Tech is backing this professor with the full force of the university's legal team.