Politics: Onion-y Goodness

Good Onion this week. My favorite in the Operation Revise Freedom department:

CIA: Syria Harboring More Than 15 Million Known Arabs

"It's practically an open secret these days," Tenet said. "Syrian television brazenly shows Arabs in military uniforms carrying guns, or delivering political speeches to other members of the group. Walk into any house of worship in the country, and you'll see people reading the Koran and bowing their heads in prayer toward Mecca. It's almost like they're daring the United States to get involved."

"Disturbingly, more than 90 percent of these Arabs have been linked to the practice of 'Islam' -- a defiantly non-Western system of faith whose core principles are embraced by none other than Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein," Tenet added. "If this is true, and we do consider this information to be correct in all particulars, then this is troubling at best."

Politics: You're Kidding, Right?

I don't understand how Attorney General John Ashcroft can claim America is safer. Saying that we're a safer country because we can lock people up without charging them with a crime or because we can invade a country that represents no threat is like saying that the Soviet Union was safe because the KGB did such a good job at law enforcement and the Soviet Army didn't shy away from a fight. Ashcroft may have made America safer for white Christians, but the endless cycle of enemy-making will eventually come back to roost. It always does.

Politics: Asshole Alert!

Serene in expression but clearly evil Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said something in the Washington Times that will really endear him to all the Arab and Muslim people of the world. Get a load of this prick:

"I think that already to some extent the magnitude of the crimes of that regime and those images of people pulling down a statue and celebrating the arrival of American troops is having a shaming effect throughout the region," Mr. Wolfowitz said in an interview with The Washington Times.

Presumably, toppling one government and shaming the others into obeying our rule without question hopefully sets the pace for the other rambunctious youngsters, to whom its necessary to set an example. Like the Dread Pirate Roberts said, "I can't afford to make exceptions. Once word leaks out that a pirate has gone soft, people begin to disobey you, and then it's nothing but work, work, work, all the time."

Then Wolfowitz went off the reservation, or rather, off the script and onto the truth:

He specifically mentioned Syria and Iran, both U.S.-designated state sponsors of terrorism, as places where political reform is needed. He said Iran has the potential for a democratic revolution, but he sees less of a chance in Ba'athist-ruled Syria.

"In terms of the larger picture, I think they're like several other countries on a sort of dead-end course," he said. "They're less immediately threatening to us than some of those countries, but I think they're going to have to face that opportunity."

By "opportunity," of course, he means have hundreds of their civilians and thousands of their soldiers killed by American troops, right? Isn't that what he means by "face that opportunity?" Does this guy just make the rules himself? Isn't there someone in charge who doesn't want to topple every county within 500 miles of Israel?

Politics: Rules? What Rules?

The US Agency for International Development awarded Stevedore Services of America a delicious contract for $5 million worth of port work, and then noticed that SSA doesn't have security clearance to work in a war zone. SSA's lack of clearance violated USAID contracting regulations.

Did USAID retract the award, and return to the bids to find someone actually qualified to take the work, operating the Umm Qasr port in southern Iraq?

No, instead, USAID deleted the requirement. "The U.S. Agency for International Development justified the change by deciding the situation in Iraq made the clearance unnecessary for seaport rebuilding work." So, hostilities were pretty much over when this happened, you might think, right? Wrong. The award was made on March 24, the first week of the war.

Politics: Orrin to Rick: Step off the Polygamists

Thanks to the Congressional Quarterly's mid-day update, I can bring you the comments of Senator Orrin Hatch, who, the Salt Lake Tribune helpfully points out, "didn't compare talking points" with Senator Rick Santorum before leaving for their spring recess (completed today).

Hatch, you see, has been called "peculiarly tolerant" of polygamists in the Beehive State, even though the practice is outlawed, even within the Mormon religion.

In a chat with constituents on April 18th, Hatch stepped into a bizarre conflict with Mr. Santorum. According to the Salt Lake Tribune:

In a response applauded by polygamous leaders and blasted by anti-polygamy activists, Hatch responded: "I'm not here to justify polygamy. All I can say is, I know people in Hildale who are polygamists who are very fine people. You come and show me of evidence of children being abused there and I'll get involved."
A few days later in an interview with The Associated Press, Santorum used polygamy as an example of the kind of "deviant" sexual behavior that would be legalized if a Texas statute prohibiting consensual homosexual sex is ruled unconstitutional in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
"If the Supreme Court says you have the right to consensual [homosexual] sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to do anything," said Santorum.

Later in the same item, the Tribune's Christopher Smith completes the one-two matching Hatch's "blind spot" to an excellent example from a polygamy-opponent (LDS=Latter Day Saints, a common term for the Mormon faith):

Having Hatch, a member of the LDS Church, intimate that many Utah polygamists are upstanding citizens while his GOP colleague Santorum categorizes polygamy as one of the sexual practices that "undermines the basic tenets of our society and the family" reinforces perceptions that some Utah politicians have a moral blind spot.
"All the time you hear Mormon politicians like Orrin Hatch and [Gov.] Mike Leavitt say if it wasn't for polygamy, they wouldn't be here because their ancestors were polygamists," said Tapestry Against Polygamy co-founder Rowenna Erickson, who lived in the Kingston polygamous clan for 34 years before becoming one of Utah's leading contemporary voices against the practice. "Well, if you were conceived out of rape would you go around condoning rape? My hair is still standing on end over what Orrin Hatch said. He's totally ignorant of what goes on in polygamy."

I don't even think I need to say anything else.

Politics: Don't Move

Scroll down in the same Kamen item, and you will find an interesting segment about one of Bush's recess appointments from the spring break that lawmakers just took.

The White House made a number of recess appointments last week as Congress fled for spring break. One was April H. Foley, a "homemaker," according to campaign contribution disclosure documents, from South Salem, N.Y. She was named to the board of directors of the Export-Import Bank. The appointment is good until Congress adjourns next year.

So why a homemaker for this job? Well, "early in her career," the White House announcement says, she was director of business planning for corporate strategy with PepsiCo Inc. and director of strategy for Reader's Digest Association. More recently, she was president of the United Way of Northern Westchester County, N.Y. Not all of it, just the northern part.

Still not locked in on the merits? Did we mention she used to date George W. Bush when both were at Harvard Business School and has remained friends with him?

First and foremost, I am not complaining about the "homemaker" career item, though Kamen does hit it a little hard. Ms. Foley's other qualifiations don't raise her to the level of a board position on the Export-Import Bank any more than mine do. But can anybody imagine what kind of response he could have been guaranteed if Bill Clinton recess appointed an old girlfriend to a Senate confirmation position? It would have been like Armageddon. But I bet that would seem unpatriotic now.

Politics: "Idiot." I couldn't have said it better

In this morning's In the Loop column, Al Kamen takes note of the response by career diplomat A. Elizabeth Jones, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs and former ambassador to Kazakhstan to bombastic and ill-timed comments by Newt Gingrich. Gingrich last week told the American Enterprise Institute that the State Department was a failure and his pals at DoD were going to have to overhaul the whole thing.

Jones told a Portugese daily newspaper, "What Gingrich says does not interest me. He is an idiot and you can publish that."

Can I get a "Hell, yeah!"

Politics: Africa in Our Future

I know SARS is the darling of the media and everything (naturally, SARS has been giving better video than anything else lately, since our war ended and all), but a distressing report about another disease got me going earlier today.

Riddle me this. Where can you find

40% of people with AIDS, and

46% of new AIDS cases, and

18 of the top 25 metropolitan areas hit hardest by AIDS, and

the only region with growing (as opposed to declining or steady) AIDS rates?

Think it's Africa? You're dead wrong.

The American south has 40% of America's AIDS cases, 46% of the nation's new diagnoses, and hosts 18 of the United States' 25 metropolitan areas hit hardest by AIDS.

I couldn't help but wonder, as the AIDS epidemic thrives here and abroad, if the new American moralism didn't somehow play a role in this. The report cited in the Atlanta J-C piece above shows that the African-American population is a high-risk group with more than half of the AIDS infections, even though they represent only 20% of the population of the American South. Isn't it possible, I mused, that all of the little defeats progessivism has suffered on the question of morality (sex ed, condoms, needles) were now coming home to roost?

Talk about a Southern Strategy. Consider this: It seems that the Radical Right/Republican strategy to continually block any progressive legislation that views the world in 21st century terms has been a huge success. The poorest people are suffering (and in this case, dying), and they are generally African Americans (who don't usually vote for the GOP). But the people who love the idea of not giving condoms to people having sex, and not teaching future adults about what sex is, and not teaching ways to prevent transmission of deadly diseases, are not dying, of course. They are showing up at the polls, healthy and happy.

So what's the moral? Is abstinence only education going to continue to grow in popularity, and will the kids with the lowest income, even in this, the most developed country in the world keep getting AIDS or pregnant? Wouldn't a crazy person (not yours truly) draw some frightening conclusions from the fact that a mostly-white folks led movement (the abstinence only education movement) would be contributing to a frightening increase in the mortality rate of black Americans?

I'm just asking.

Politics: More Justice for Tulia

If the story of Tulia, Texas has escaped your radar, it's an interesting one. A one-man drug task force, in the form of the wildly unreliable freelance policeman named Thomas Coleman, had rounded up nearly a tenth of the black population of Tulia using mostly trumped up evidence, shoddy note-taking (Coleman famously scribbled descriptions and information in marker on his bare leg) and a big old pile of hearsay. Interestingly, very little cash and almost no drugs were seized in his so-called investigation.

Last month, a judge overturned all of the convictions stemming from his efforts, and yesterday, a grand jury in Swisher County, Texas, indicted Coleman for perjury. The three perjury counts are based on a different investigation, but it appears that the Swisher County DA isn't done with Coleman yet.

If you've had a chance to read any of the Tulia columns by Bob Herbert (also of the New York Times), you'll know about the case. Herbert did an excellent job of raising the Justice for Tulia banner, especially noting that many African-Americans in the town pled guilty (those pleas were also tossed out) rather than face a jury, even though they all held that the charges were false.

Politics: Some GOP Members Line Up Against Santorum

Senators Snowe and Chafee come out (no pun intended) against Santorum's comments.

Also, interestingly, Pennsylvania is not one of the states with a sodomy law on the books. So, while Santorum is in step with the voters of, say, Alabama, he appears to be out of step with the voters of his home state.

Politics: And Now the News, from the FBI

The FBI confirmed yesterday that several months ago, its agents confiscated a package sent by one AP reporter to another. The package contained an unclassified FBI document that the reporter had obtained in researching an article.

The FBI also said that it's Office of Professional Responsibility had opened an inquiry into the seizure, which took place without a warrant and without notification of the parties involved. Federal Express, who was carrying the package, reported originally that it must have fallen off a truck.

Reminder: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

Politics: And the Hates Keep Coming

The Muslim Public Affairs Council is reporting another campus hate crime. Remember last month, Yale experienced an incident of hate speech (followed by a colorful burst of intimidating dissenters). Muslims who use a chapel at UCLA found pig blood splattered over prayer mats, and a compass they use to determine the direction of Mecca was missing. This after numerous copies of the Qu'ran were stolen from the same facility.

Don't forget, of course, the toy store attack of a Muslim woman in Brooklyn.

Can anyone tell me how anti-Muslim hate speech doesn't inspire this type of bahavior? I didn't think so.

Politics: Keeps Your Shi'ites to Yourself

The United States has warned Iran that it will not tolerate Iran sending agents over to organize the Shia majority in Iraq. According to Agence France Presse, Ari Fleischer wouldn't directly address a New York Times report that US officials had confirmed infiltration by Irani agents into the Shi'ite population in Iraq, which may explain the remarkable organized activities by those groups.

What none of it explains is how any of this comes as a surprise to war-planners or war-mongers or "liberation-mongers," as they may wish to be called. For decades, the Shi'ite population in Iraq has been brutalized, degraded, terrorized and attacked under the Iraqi regime. Their lifetimes of horror can represent nothing but a coiled spring, bring crushed down further and further with each inhuman act, each incident of mass killing, each loved one disappeared forever.

Now, that spring is a huge mass of kinetic energy. Only once before was any of this energy ever released, when the Kurds and Shia rebelled with American encouragement during the first Gulf War before being abandoned to slaughter. And that mass of kinetic energy is exploding all over Iraq, whether our soldiers are there or not.

We claimed to bring liberation to the people of Iraq, but we're forbidding them from talking to their neighbors. We're barring Shia who have been oppressed for decades from dealing directly with other Shia for the first time in many of their lives.

I'm not claiming that Iran should have free rein to foment rebellion and lay the groundwork for a theologic state in Iraq. But it does appear in case after case that there is a limit to the type of liberation we are interested in bringing to the people of Iraq. Liberated people should be allowed to talk to whomever they want, even if we don't agree with the conversations.

Politics: Santorum's Brother in Harms

Rick "The Homophobe" Santorum has found an ideological partner in right-wing judicial nominee and Alabama Attorney General William Pryor. Sam Heldman has done excellent work on noting the good sources of opposition to Pryor's nomination. Remember, Santorum compared gay sex to bigamy, polygamy and incest. Pryor asks, 'Why stop at incest?' In Alabama's amicus brief to the Supreme Court on the Texas Sodomy Law case, Pryor wrote, "a constitutional right that protects 'the choice of one's partner' . . . must logically extend to activities like prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia..."

Why is it that these two conservative whackos can't stop thinking about child porn, incest and pedophilia? If you read the relevant sections of the interview, Santorum even freaks out the reporter by bringing up "man on dog" sex. These guys give me the willies.

Politics: It Says Here You're A Terrorist (2)

Back on April 4, I wrote about Aafia Siddiqui, a Boston housewife and mother of three who holds a doctorate in neurological science and degrees from Braindeis University and M.I.T. Apparently, the FBI decided that Siddiqui is some sort of 'fixer' and that she, along with a couple of guys in Miramar, FL and her estranged husband were all wanted for questioning.

Not surprisingly, Siddiqui, uninterested in disappearing into a Padilla-hole, took off. She isn't an American citizen, see, and she knows even American citizens have no rights when Arabs, Muslims or terrorism is concerned. Nowhere did I intimate then, nor do I state here, that Siddiqui wasn't perhaps involved in some nefarious activity. But the case against her based on the AP story I read in early April and this item about her capture recently in her native Pakistan is almost non-existent. The government sources who confirmed that Siddiqui has been in Pakistani custody (being tortured, I don't doubt) explicity don't claim that she is a member of al Queda. In the AP stories both early this month and now, Siddiqui's primary transgression appears to be a zealous belief in her religion:

During Siddiqui's years in Boston, neighbors and acquaintances remember her as a dedicated student who also spent much of her time preaching the Muslim faith. Politics did not seem to interest her, they said.

Siddiqui is listed on an Internet site maintained by an umbrella group of Muslim student organizations as one author of a guide on how to run a successful association, including how to distribute religious information.

In 1999, Siddiqui formed the nonprofit Institute of Islamic Research and Teaching Inc., which had offices in a mosque in Roxbury, Mass. She was the institute's president and her husband its treasurer, records show.

So why haven't we rounded up Ashcroft, Santorum and every other super-religious nutjob who's ever tried to convert you at a cousin's beach party? Because they're Christian silly, and they don't mean you any harm.

The lazy reporting method on these FBI warnings is kind of comic-book derivative. Apparently, everyone who is wanted by the FBI is hanging out together, in some super-criminal hideout on the outskirts of town. In fact, there is no connection between Siddiqui and Adnan El Shukrijumah, the man from Miramar, FL who the FBI also wants to talk to. There is no link between these people made in the story, but the impression, in the post-Laci Peterson haze of American news-consumption, is that we got the terrorists on the run.

Siddiqui is being held by Pakistani authorities. Earlier reports that she was captured as far back as early April may be true, and the information is only being left to leak now. In any case, you can be assured that American authorities won't be standing up for this mother of three young children as Pakistani police seek to please their newest masters by punishing Siddiqui. Who's running this war on terror anyhow?

Politics: So Goes the Hatchet Job

Colin Powell's days at State are numbered, and no frank-faced denials can reverse that simple fact. Read today's telling story in the Washington Post about the plan for Defense Policy Board member Newt Gingrich to savage the State Department in a speech before a conservative think tank today, doing the wetwork that Rumsfeld commands, regardless of the impact on the United States.

The State Department has a long history of handling America's affairs in a manner that kept us largely out of trouble (and wars) and protected the interests of America and her citizens. Often, the execution of this mission relied on long-range vision instead of greedy short-term motivations. For this reason, the Department of Defense will set its sights on Foggy Botton, determined to launch a proxy war against which Colin Powell is too out-manned and classy to respond. (Remember the Powell Doctrine: Respond with overwhelming force only when you can win; the State Department hasn't had the force to respond and win since he took his oath.)

Instead, like his own descent into obscurity writ large, the State Department will become what Rumsfeld, Perle, Cheney (remember the SecState during the first Gulf War? I didn't think so, and that's how Dick likes it), and Wolfowitz have long envisioned: the weak, in-name-only diplomacy office inside the vast, powerful and forcefully destructive Department of Defense.

Count up the losses: The Iraq war in general? DoD all the way. The battle to involve the UN? A draw, but DoD won the tie breaker. The fight to avoid crowning Ahmed Chalabi the next King of Iraq? DoD, without much of a struggle.

But Gingrich sees these as losses for America, not just the State Department. To this end, he wants the State Department to be scrutinized in Congressional hearings, overhauled and reorganized.

At the heart of many of the disputes are complaints by conservatives inside and outside the administration that the State Department bureaucracy is thwarting President Bush from carrying out a forceful agenda to stop terrorism and confront enemy states -- a point that former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), a member of a Pentagon advisory committee who is close to Rumsfeld, plans to make in a speech this morning at the American Enterprise Institute.

Gingrich said he plans to call for major overhaul of the State Department, including hearings on Capitol Hill and an examination of the department by a task force of retired foreign service officers. He said he wanted to contrast the success of a transformed Defense Department with the "failure of State," which he described as "six months of diplomatic failure followed by one month of military success now to be returned to diplomatic failure to exploit the victory fully."

Gingrich, in an interview, said, "The story of diplomatic defeat is a bigger and more profound story" than the U.S. military victory. Among other things, he cited the failure to win Turkey's approval to accept U.S. troops, the French campaign against the war and the inability to win a U.N. resolution authorizing force.

The diplomatic efforts before the war were a period of "unrelenting defeat," Gingrich said. "For 120 days we were losing ground worldwide."

It goes without saying that this process will end up with Colin Powell taking home a box of mementos and some ordained-by-the-DoD former general with at least one documented statement providing irony (a la Spencer Abraham's vote two years before he took over the agency to abolish the Department of Energy) taking his seat in Foggy Bottom.

What's most terrifying about this process is that America is already tired of it. Taking a page from the playbooks of the Soviet Politboro and Mao's Party politics, this administration has built a mythology of failure for the State Department by asking it to perform unbelievable, unreasonable and impossible tasks. "Rove says we need to attack Iraq or we'll lose in 2004. Get me international backing." Is anybody surprised that the coalition of the willing was so lame and bought-off?

Of course not. And nobody will be surprised when Powell makes the hard decision. Keep taking the beatings or go home and stay. I think he's heading home soon.

Politics: Freelancing at the DoD

A disturbing item from this morning's New York Times discusses the role that the Department of Defense has created for itself in what should be the exclusive province of the State Department. I have argued before that the off-the-reservation behavior of the Defense Department are all attempts to control every aspect of our international relations: they want to pick enemies, outline the concerns of the United States, set the terms for victory, and build the team that makes the big plays.

As the Times' piece makes clear, the North Korean situation is another place where the DoD has decided it wants to run things.

Just days before President Bush approved the opening of negotiations with North Korea over its nuclear program, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld circulated to key members of the administration a Pentagon memorandum proposing a radically different approach: the United States, the memo argued, should team up with China to press for the ouster of North Korea's leadership.

What David Sanger's item doesn't spell out exactly is how the State Department responded to this offensive shot across their bow. Rumsfeld's memo essentially counter-proposed diplomatic actions to whatever was coming out of the State Department. And the State Department was pushing for some kind of talks, which are supposedly taking place soon. As Sanger writes: 'But the memo's main argument, that Washington's goal should be the collapse of Kim Jong Il's government, seems at odds with the State Department approach of convincing Mr. Kim, in the words of one senior administration official, "that we're not trying to take him out."'

The U.S. Department of Defense has participated in -- and in some cases instigated -- an incredible emasculation of U.S. diplomacy, the work of the State Department and SecState Colin Powell. Throughout the buildup to the Iraq war, Powell's position, his ability to command attention in the White House, and his dignity have been steadily eroded by the relentless work of hawks in the Department of Defense like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith along with Dick Cheney. This has created a de facto shadow Diplomacy shop inside the Pentagon, which writes memos, advocates policy and at times executes policy (notice how Powell disappeared from view as his attempts to head off an actual war in Iraq became meaningless). The DoD's mini State Department is the foreign policy night-time fantasy of all the neo-cons who engineered so much of the Bush presidency. In this world, diplomacy is something you do while you get ready for war. Black and white are the only colors.

Sanger's piece contained a frightening element which may play into Rummy's hands: 'On Friday, in its first explicit comment on the Iraq war, North Korea said it had learned something from the fall of Mr. Hussein. "The Iraqi war teaches a lesson that in order to prevent a war and defend the security of a country and the sovereignty of a nation," North Korea said in a statement, "it is necessary to have a powerful physical deterrent."'

So the work of our Defense Department has taught North Korea that it must build nuclear weapons and be prepared to use them, or we will surely invade and over-run them. Next, our Secretary of Defense advocates in a secret memo leaked to the press that regime change in North Korea should be our course of action. How is the real State Department supposed to function under these conditions?

It isn't.

Politics: Logic 2, Pipes 0

The Dallas Morning News has joined the Washington Post in sensibly opposing the nomination of racist, hatemongering, anti-Islamist "superhawk" Daniel Pipes to the Board of Directors of the United States Institute of Peace.

You can find out what to do to oppose the Pipes nomination by reading this Liquid List post. And you can find out how loathesome he is here, here, and here.

Politics: Defending the Constitution

The Washington Post this morning features a well-drawn profile of a progressive city council taking bold steps to oppose the USA Patriot Act. The initiative in Arcata, Ca. passed the council by a 4-1 vote and is extremely popular with the townspeople. More importantly, 89 cities have passed similar resolutions or laws, some making it illegal to voluntarily comply with the USA Patriot Act, and others simply noting the municipality's opposition to the law. In each case, the locality acts in response to the grave threat the USA Patriot Act poses to the constitutional freedoms of the town's citizenry.

The Arcata freshman city council member who authored the legislation is named David Meserve. As the Post tells it, he's a dyed in the wool true patriot, speaking out when the Constitution is threatened by the irresponsible actions of our government in the post-September 11th era: "Meserve, a weather-worn builder and contractor in his fifties who wears a ponytail and flannel shirts, hasn't felt so popular since he won his council seat running on the platform, "The Federal Government Has Gone Stark, Raving Mad." "The ordinance went through so easily that we were surprised," he said. "We started going up to people asking what they thought. They thought, 'great.' It's our citywide form of nonviolent disobedience."

To learn more about the national effort to coordinate this type of action and educate localities on what they can do if they are concerned about the civil liberties under threat, check out The Bill of Rights Defense Committee.

Politics: The Usual Suspects, Bound for Damascus

Tompaine.com rounds up how the regular cast of neo-cons -- along with the addition of noted racist Bush nominee to the board of the U.S. Institute for Peace Daniel Pipes -- has had Damascus in the U.S. sites for a while, just waiting for an opportunity to knock on Assad's door.

It turns out that before the Bush family restored the monarchy in 2000, Pipes' organization, the Middle East Forum, issued a paper entitled "Ending Syria's Occupation of Lebanon: The U.S. Role." Pipes co-chaired the body producing the report, and the final document was signed by "Elliott Abrams, the senior Middle East policy-maker under Bush; Douglas Feith, currently the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy; Paula Dobriansky, the current Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs; and Michael Rubin and David Wurmser, who during the past year have worked at the Pentagon and State Department, respectively, on Iraq policy and previously worked on Middle East issues at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Also signing the 22-page report were Richard Perle, the powerful former chairman [and still member] of the Defense Policy Board; former U.N. Ambassador (and currently U.S. Representative to the U.N. Human Rights Commission) Jeane Kirkpatrick; and Frank Gaffney, director of the right-wing Center for Security Policy (CSP)."

Now, does anybody have any doubt that a powerful cabal of right-wing nutjobs who all share a dangerously antagonistic antipathy toward the Arab world and Islam enjoy an enormous amount of power in our current government? I didn't think so.

Politics: Justice in Cold Irons Bound

This morning's Salon.com has an excellent item by Tim Grieve recapping the threats to liberty imposed under the USA Patriot Act and the power grabs that have occurred since. Of course, Senator Orrin Hatch's attempt to eliminate the sunset clauses on the USA Patriot Act (20 months before they expire) is mentioned as a surefire way to end any and all oversight of the government's actions. FAS' Steven Aftergood calls Hatch's proposal a "direct assault" on Congress' ability to monitor the Justice Department. "If it goes through, we might as well go home. The administration will have whatever authority it wants, and there won't be any separation of powers at all."

Numerous references have been made to Orwell's haunting vision of the future, but the sickness overtaking our reality is almost too on point to not seem a parody of 1984. America is precariously teetering on the brink of a horrifying future. As this Salon piece outlines and the earlier-referenced Alternet item (on corporate discrimination encouraged by government zealousness about treating Muslims and Arabs as second-class citizens) demonstrates, we are about to lose the diverse, free, independent spirit of America. It would seem we've lost our way.

Never has there been a more frightening time. Right wing pundits and the White House continually reinforce a message about our international foes in the endless war on terror: "They hate us because of our freedom." But the freedom they supposedly hate us for is being squandered. The "us" in that statement should not just be white Americans without foreign-sounding last names, but everyone. When I read about the American citizens born in Pakistan who lost their American Express cards because of "security concerns", I half-grinned because American Express "hates them because of their financial freedom."

How can the American government not think it is moving backwards? How can we be sanctioning racist mistreatment of American citizens, locking American citizens up for indefinite periods of time, illegally stealing constitutional rights from American citizens and not believe we're creating more enmity, not less. What is the final phase of this incredibly racist government's policy? When does the war on terror, which is really a war on freedom, end?

Does it end when our movie stars and newspaper editors don't question the policy of the government? Is the war over when the White House doesn't have to pressure a federal judge, but instead has any lawsuits questioning its behavior dismissed without pressure? Is it over when no Muslims or Arabs feel free in America? How does our government presume to separate the dangerous from the millions who represent no threat?

Looked at one way, it seems clear that the government (without completing a single major trial) has decided that every Muslim is a suspect and could therefore be subject to indefinite detention. Why would Muslims think that this is a life worth living? How can this nightmare for Americans (who happen to be Muslim) end?

In our recent history, we've endured a similar nightmare, and its end is still in dispute, but the critical progress made so far has been bloody, and exacerbated by race-baiting, lies, and violent absolutism like Ashcroft's amazing intimidation of religious minorities today.

If the American government continues to inspire and exemplify hatred against Muslims and Arabs, then we may be headed to a period of turbulence, mistrust and violence similar to the civil rights era in America. There are many differences; Blacks in America were more uniformly oppressed, living remarkably poor in America's rural south or shuffled into inner-city slums, left with garbage for schools, and essentially told that drug life was their only way out. Meanwhile, Arabs and Muslims were buying businesses in these neighborhoods, taking advantage of a knee-jerk American reaction to treat anyone better than they were treating African Americans.

Now the Arabs and Muslims are subject to detentions and extreme justice actions, like the African Americans then. They are lumped together, uniformly feared, and routinely intimidated. White people shout "Go home, terrorists" when they see them. Every day in America, a Muslim family is subject to some hateful behavior. A Muslim student is called names at school, a person in line behind a Muslim at a convenience store mumbles, "fuckin' Arabs" under his breath. And things get worse. The government pays lipservice to the efforts by Muslim and Arab public interest organizations to remedy these violations, all the while tacitly informing the populace that suspicion of everyone -- and action against Arabs and Muslims -- is perfectly acceptable, and even encouraged.

Think of the perilous words of Alabama Governor George Wallace: "I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say, segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." How long do Arabs and Muslims wait with this oppression before we hear these words from Christian evangelists who serve as the defacto voice of the Bush administration on cultural issues?

While the millions of Arabs and Muslims who live in America have enjoyed freedoms for a long time, all that seems to be changing. No civil rights movement for America's Arabs and Muslims will rise like that of the middle of the 20th century in America, but some endpoint must be reached. America can't continue like this. The assault on the freedoms of a few of us only presages the loss of liberty for us all.

Politics: American Express: Don't Leave Home Unless You're a White Non-Muslim

American Express has been harassing customers in good standing, demanding extensive (3 years) documentation including tax returns and pay stubs, refusing to send these requests in writing and then cancelling customer accounts. The catch? Almost all of these customers are Muslims, especially Pakistani Muslims. It's a sick endgame of the amazing atmosphere of fear and discrimination created by the United States government since the September 11th terrorist attacks. Hilary Russ at Alternet has the goods, and it's just about bad enough to make you nauseous.

Say that you are one of those fortunate people who manage to pay off most of their credit cards every month. Then imagine your surprise when one of your cards is cancelled for no apparent reason. That's exactly what Farooq Firdous experienced. Last summer, Firdous, a Pakistani who got his green card in 1997 after 11 years of legal residence in the U.S., received a phone call from an American Express representative regarding a credit card he held. The rep requested that he send the company a mountain of paperwork: three years of tax returns, six months of bank statements and a job verification letter.

His wife, Yasmin Khan, who is Indian, received a separate phone call that same day for her own AmEx credit card. In each case, the rep told them they had 15 days to submit the paperwork or their cards would be cancelled. Firdous and Khan called back later – twice – to ask reps if they could send the request in writing. They refused.

Firdous and Khan were confused because they always paid off their cards on time. Firdous called the company back again. "I told them strictly, 'You're probably discriminating against minorities with Muslim names,'" he recalls. He and his wife refused to submit the documentation, which on at least three different occasions company reps said they needed for "security reasons."

A few weeks later, each received a letter saying his or her credit card was cancelled: "You did not provide the banking information, financial statements, income tax return, and/or identification documents requested." The letters also stated that the reasons for cancelling the account included "information received from a consumer reporting agency," hinting that credit problems might be to blame.

But Firdous' credit is excellent, according to the credit report he subsequently obtained. (After his AmEx card was cancelled, he immediately applied for and received a Citibank Mastercard.) The status of his closed AmEx account reads "Paid/Never late."

The government's post-9/11 infringements on civil liberties have been well documented and debated. But what happens when private companies take the fight against terrorism into their own hands? If you're Pakistani, or Muslim, or both, you might just find your credit cards cancelled, despite the good credit you've worked hard to build.

Politics: Speaking the Truth

A brave Ohioan named Dennis McWilliams speaks truth to power from the letters page of the Zanesville (OH) Times-Recorder:

A recent letter stated, "It has also brought to light some serious flaws in the moral fiber of our country. Much of that is reflected in the hideous display of disrespect to the office of the president and the man who now occupies that office." This writer remarkably equates our constitutionally guaranteed freedom of political dissent with "serious flaws in the moral fiber of our country." Strange!

On the contrary, I suggest someone study a little American history. George Washington was called a "jackass" in a number of opposition newspapers. Every president since has been called names a lot worse than "jackass." To say that the president should be beyond criticism is both absurd and un-American. Contrary to some of his partisans' wishes, George II is not our king nor does his touch heal disease. In addition, contrary to the belief of some of the members of his cult, George W. Bush is not anointed by God.

Politics: What do you mean, team player?

A federal judge wondered why the White House wants so desparately to end the inquiry into Dick Cheney's energy lobbyist circle-jerk. Even through the case was moving forward normally, apparently, the White House appealed to the federal panel midway through the case and asked that the case be blocked. Apparently, leaning on these judges wasn't a workable strategy, though, since one of the judges flatly told a government attorney, "you have no authority" to ask the appeals court to intervene in the middle of the lawsuit, according to the article.

A federal appeals court Thursday questioned the Bush administration's request to stop a lawsuit delving into Vice President Dick Cheney's contacts with energy industry executives and lobbyists.

Appeals Judges Harry Edwards and David Tatel suggested the White House had no legal basis for asking them to block a lower court judge from letting the case proceed.

The Bush administration took the unusual step of coming to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the midst of the case.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan has ruled that the Sierra Club and Judicial Watch may be entitled to a limited amount of information about the meetings Cheney and his aides had with the energy industry in formulating the White House's energy plan.

These judges better be careful, or they may end up with a horse's head in the bed soon.

Politics: Red-Faced

The Wisconsin Republican party has withdrawn a cartoon that portrayed a deal the state made with an Indian tribe as "scalping" taxpayers.

The state Republican Party dropped a cartoon from its Web site that claimed taxpayers were "scalped" by the governor's new gaming compact with an Indian tribe after complaints it was racist and derogatory.

The cartoon depicted a tomahawk flying through the air at a Wisconsin taxpayer. The voiceover said: "As taxpayers, we got scalped."

"We do not consider the cartoon to be offensive; it certainly wasn't our intent," Republican Party spokesman Chris Lato said.

Idiots.

Politics: Callous Disregard

Agence-France Presse is reporting that a wide-ranging investigation is underway into allegations that Russian soldiers participated in the "disappearance" of hundreds of Chechen civilians during the last year and a half. The war in Chechnya has continued, largely out of view of the western media. All the news coming from the one-time breakaway republic is filtered through a remarkably oppressive political and military regime being advanced by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The disgusting thing about the Chechen war is that is reflects a huge serving of unresolved racism in Russia. Muslims, largely, are regarded as a lower form of life in Russia. In the big cities, people who look like they are from the Caucusus are immediately suspected, and are treated like they have already committed a crime. They are routinely discriminated against in housing, retail, dining and other everyday experiences of Russian life. They are subject to round-ups and often end up living in dirty, sprawling ghettoes, or getting involved in the mafia, which only serves to further diminish their image for slavic Russians.

The Chechen War has lingered for years, despite the death of thousands of young Russian soldiers and unbearable conditions under which their living colleagues continue to serve. The Russian government has managed to win (or at least fight to a stalemate) the public relations war on the Chechen conflict, and they were aided by a series of mysterious and still unsolved bombings a few years back, soon after Putin came to power. Putin blamed the bombings on Chechen rebels, though some believed that they were either linked to the Russian mafia or intentionally committed by people backed by the government to help turn public sentiment further against the Chechens. To read an excellent analysis of how Russians have been manipulated into this position by the government read The Disconnect in How Russians Think about Human Rights and Chechnya: A Consequence of Media Manipulation from the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Politics: War's Prosperity

Jobless claims shot way up last week.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that new applications for jobless benefits rose by a seasonally adjusted 30,000 to 442,000 for the work week ending April 12.

That increase pushed claims to their highest point since March 29, when claims hit 443,000, the highest level of the year.

For nine straight weeks, claims have been above the 400,000 mark, a level associated with a stagnant job market. Thursday's figures were weaker than economists were expecting.

Politics: Traditional Minorities

One way you can tell if Rep. Tom DeLay is being deceitful is by checking his lips. If they're moving, he's probably screwing you. The latest example comes in the form of Mr. DeLay's plan for redistricting Texas. As Democrat Martin Frost said, "It's very clear what Tom DeLay is trying to do. He is trying to eliminate five Democratic congressmen from office while at the same time not increasing the number of Hispanics and the numbers of blacks in office."

But DeLay's folks had an answer for that. Apparently, DeLay's plan targets traditionally under-represented groups, though the logic isn't quite there.

[Jim Ellis, who heads DeLay's Americans For Republican Majority political action committee] said DeLay's office has submitted several maps to state lawmakers. He said others have submitted maps as well. He disputed Frost's assessment of the map and said it does create another minority district.

"There's no final map on any of this, but we believe the court map is deficient because it under-represents Hispanics and African-Americans and Republicans. That's what we're trying to fix," Ellis said.

I'm excited to see DeLay's plan to boost representation of Republicans, as well as African-Americans and Hispanics.

Politics: Hazard Pay

Politics: Patriot Act Just Keeps on Giving

The truly evil antics of the Justice Department never fail to amaze. In February, you remember, someone over there leaked a draft of a sweeping piece of so-called anti-terrorism legislation known as the "Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003." Immediately after the leak, the DOJ disavowed the law, claiming that the routing memo explaining that it had been sent to VP Dick Cheney and House Speaker Denny Hastert was meaningless and that nobody had really reviewed the draft legislation.

Of course, there is no reason why a memo saying "send this to Cheney and Hastert" should be seen as anything other than evidence of how high the draft was circulated. Justice Department spokeswoman Barbara Comstock claimed that the whole thing was a big mistake. Ha ha ha.

A week before all that, Justice Department officials had assured House members that they weren't hard at work on some sweeping new anti-terror legislation. They were being asked about this because the USA Patriot Act, when it came out of Justice, was slid through Congress like a hot knife through butter, leapfrogging all the relevant committees, and pissing off a lot of members, even though they were too trembly with the spirit of America to voice any concerns at the time.

Since then, Justice has continued to demonstrate that their true commitment is to the utmost of secrecy, deception and an almost pathological desire to abridge the constitutional liberties of most Americans in service of whatever excuse they can come up with. (Worse yet, tremendously evil senatorial song-bird Orrin Hatch has introduced legislation -- two years early -- to lift the sunset provisions on a very limited number of powers in the Patriot Act. These meager limits were about the only thing any members of Congress were able to stop singing God Bless America long enough to add to the biggest blow to civil liberties since CoIntelPro.) But the Justice Department's mule-like obstinance since 9/11 has kept many members of Congress pissed at them, including usual suspects like Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT).

But interestingly, a usual 'team-player' who happens to chair the House Judiciary Committee has continually butted heads with the Justice Department and Supreme Overlord Ashcroft. R. James Sensenbrenner has joined with Conyers, his Democratic counterpart on the House Judiciary Committee, to demand from the Justice Department an explanation of how often the Patriot Act has been used, how it has been applied, and what sort of impact it has made on the rights and freedoms of ordinary Americans. As this item demonstrates, Sensenbrenner is still interested in finding out what's going on with the first Patriot Act, and hopefully will be a Republican anchor against efforts to ram through an extension of the Patriot Act in the future. In this morning's AP item, a Justice Department official confirms that 1/3 of the unbelievably rights-abusing Patriot Act II draft legislation will be introduced "soon." Principled opposition to this legislation from people like Sensenbrenner are the only chance Americans have to avoid being forced into Ashcroft's vision of a perfect world: where freedom is outlawed, and only the outlaws enjoy freedom.

Politics: Victory! Kind of.

I'm trying to understand how Bush and co. got away with claiming that our offensive ass-kicking of Iraq somehow convinced North Korea to drop their demand for one-on-one talks about their ongoing nuclear weapons project. Because I don't feel like a meeting between N.K. and the United States with only China squeaking a chair awkwardly to the table meets the U.S. demand for "multilateral" talks, as Josh Marshall pointed out in his post yesterday.

But the administration calling this a victory -- and worse yet the media joining them in that characterization -- is foolish to say the least. This Post item, while never calling the U.S.'s bluff, admits that the Chinese are serving as host, as well as participant.

North Korea and China, who have all along been the two loudest international voices decrying the U.S. position opposing bilateral talks between us and Pyongyang, got exactly what they wanted, and got it on what amounts to North Korea's non-starving, non-delusional home turf (as opposed to anything that would happen inside N.K.). And the U.S., as best as I can see, got fleeced. Our demand was simple: we wanted every country that could possibly have a stake in a nuclear North Korea at the table. That means Japan, South Korea, Russia (and incidentally, should mean Taiwan, but I'm not even going to touch that) as well as China and North Korea. Our demand wasn't met, and it's being called an administration triumph, and is being un-subtly linked to the victory in Iraq.

Give me a break.

Politics: Up Against the Wall, You So-Called Journalists

According to an AP dispatch, Marines have raided the Palestine Hotel, kicking in doors and rounding up people even if they identify themselves as journalists.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- U.S. Marines looking for hardcore Iraqi fighters searched rooms early Tuesday in the hotel that serves as headquarters for most foreign journalists in Baghdad, apparently taking some people into custody.

The Marines had keys to the rooms, but in cases where the doors were bolted, they kicked them down, rousting journalists from their beds and pointing M-16s in their faces, footage from Associated Press Television News showed.

Marines were seen guarding suspects in a hall; interrogating a man who claimed to be a cameraman; and breaking down a door to get to the roof.

Four Iraqi men who did not have proper identification were detained in the raid that began at about 7 a.m.

The Marines had information that Fedayeen paramilitary fighters might be hiding there, military officials said. Arms were also believed to be hidden there.

"This building wasn't 100 percent safe and we're making sure it is," Marine Sgt. Jose Guillen said. "There weren't any gunshots or anything, but intelligence thought it wasn't 100 percent safe."

The raids hit the 16th and 17th floors, where journalists with CNN, Turkish TV, Japanese TV and other networks were staying. It was unclear how many rooms were searched in the 18-story hotel overlooking the Tigris River.

A CNN producer, Linda Roth, said she opened her door to find armed Marines, who ordered her to get down while they searched the room without explanation.

I'm sure there is a valid security reason for this, just as I'm sure there was a valid security reason for firing a tank round at the Palestine hotel last week. But wouldn't a reporter have, say, mentioned it if Iraqi nationals were storing weapons and harboring militants in their damn hotel?

Politics: Look Familiar?

Read about our plans for Syria. Then read what we had to say about Iraq last February.

The clock is ticking, Assad.

Politics: Hentoff

Nat Hentoff asks some good questions about what Americans don't know but what can hurt them. And he asks why the media doesn't care.

But the media, with few exceptions, are failing to report consistently, and in depth, precisely how Bush and Ashcroft are undermining our fundamental individual liberties.

For example, in writing here about the Justice Department's proposed sequel to the Patriot Act (titled inoffensively the Domestic Security Enhancement Act), I noted that it had been kept secret from Congress. A week before it was leaked by an understandably anonymous member of Ashcroft's staff, a representative of the Justice Department even lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee about its very existence.

A few sections in that chilling 86-page draft were briefly covered in some of the media. But as I predicted after providing more details here ("Ashcroft Out of Control" and "Red Alert for the Bill of Rights"), these invasions of the Constitution were only a one- or two-day story in nearly all of the media.

How many Americans know that if the bill is passed (and Bush certainly won't veto it), they can be stripped of their citizenship if charged with giving "material support" to a group designated by the government as "terrorist"? Sending a check for the outfit's lawful activities—without knowing why it landed on Ashcroft's list—could make you a person without a country and put you behind bars here indefinitely. As Chief Justice Earl Warren said, "you lose the right to have rights" when you lose your citizenship.

Politics: Sleight of Hand

There are days like the two we've just had here in Washington that make it almost possible to forget the slime and sh*t that is pooling all around us. The weather was magnificent, with a bright sun piercing a cloudless sky, like clarity erupting for the first time. But clarity, for those of you who could drag yourselves inside and wade into the cesspool of television news or brought a newspaper out onto the deck, is long from here.

The most revolting news of the weekend came in the form of President Bush's assertion that our sound trouncing of a tiny country with no command and control (and almost no air force, FYI) somehow led the nuclear armed and absolutely insane Kim Jong Il to accede to multilateral talks on his little proliferation problem. The very thought that President Bush was somehow executing some grand vision by attacking Iraq, that he was planning all along to ignore North Korea and used his war in Iraq to demonstrate by example what NK should be afraid of is vomitous. It is clear by the nature of our reconstruction plan in Iraq that we aren't exactly running this show with both oars in the water. Take our plan to quell the nonstop civil unrest: Paul Wolfowitz thought we would recruit Iraqi civilians from within the former government and see if they would be "acceptable" at keeping the peace. Presumably, the rest of the Iraqis will just hack to death anybody who they find unacceptable.

So a big plan this wasn't. No, its much more likely that the Bush administration was cruising through the preparations for this war with blinders on about the whole nuclear mess in North Korea. (And has everyone forgotten that Iran has a bustling nuclear program that our whole intelligence apparatus missed? I have a feeling these idiots ought to start looking for new jobs, perhaps as spy-hunters at the FBI.) The fact that the North Korean situation took a single step closer to what Bush wanted isn't the result of good policy, it's dumb luck, like being the governor of Texas or the son of a former president. Bush's whole plan to resist unilateral talks with North Korea was just a badly-executed knee-jerk interpretation of the old SWAT team standby of "I don't negotiate with terrorists." I have no information to back this up, but I am fairly confident that Colin Powell wanted to engage, negotiate, move the conflict back from the brink, but the hawks in the White House (who only let Powell out of his little box if he promises to badmouth Syria and make a joke about how everybody in the White House hates him) put the kibosh on that sh*t bigtime. Seriously, if anyone believes that Colin Powell endorsed a plan to ignore a lunatic with a million troops and nuclear weapons thirty miles from Soeul, I've got a bridge for sale.

But this is the mythology of the Bush presidency. They don't plan, they act. They don't even muse about what will happen next (they know some nervous bastard on some weblog will do all that thinking for them). They just come up with cockamamie ideas, and do them with a straight face, like a drunken superhero on a bender. They don't think two steps ahead about much of anything, except executing their evil plans, and even then, their planning seems unbalanced at best. ("Okay, so we get elected talking about an education bill, get it passed, and then underfund it by billions while slamming through a tax cut that burns all the money we saved by underfunding education.... Later we'll get into a huge war requiring an $80 billion war-supplemental that nobody will say boo to because we're in a war. After we win the war, we'll ram through another tax cut so we can't afford to take care of the countries we've had wars in. Then we'll have a war in Syria...")

Instead, what began as an administration that seemed to avoid all of the Clinton administration pitfalls has defined a new and astounding set of mistakes to make. The Clinton administration's mistakes were often made within the confines of attempting to do the right thing. They overthought, they analyzed, they anticipated the reactions, and tried to generate a response to those reactions, and then imagined what opponents would say next, and attempted to create a response to those reactions. They often seemed paralyzed, and too frequently let the faithful down in service of a narrow slice of the populace whose long term potential for supporting their efforts was dubious at best. But the Bush administration is making mistakes the Clintons wouldn't dream of. They basically think of nothing. No thought at all. They rely solely on the force of their convictions and a threadbare ultra-hawkish playbook to move things forward.

This sort of fringe behavior has always worked for rinky-dink office holders in both parties. Jim Traficant served nearly nine terms based on being crazy but saying that everybody who said "you're crazy, Jim" was really the crazy one. Everybody's favorite race-baiting congresswoman Cynthia McKinney should have been out on her ear before last November, but she just kept on keeping on, accusing anybody who wondered if she was seriously qualified of racism, and using the same "distract and dodge" school of leadership that Ari Fleisher peddles every day, and that Wolfowitz was chomping down on all the talk shows these last two weeks. And don't get me started on Marion Barry or Buddy Cianci or still-not-called-on-it Carol Mosely Braun.

But the Bush administration has elevated this prestidigitation to high science. It's Karl Rove, of course. Rove isn't some evil genius. He's just evil. And he wins whatever way he can. And he lies and cheats and steals and deceives to do it.

There is a story about Rove that I heard in a radio interview with Lou Dubose, I believe, who wrote the first in a limited edition series of Rove books called "Boy Genius."

The author was talking about how Rove was that kid who wore a tie to his public junior high, and pretty much made him out to be the classic nerd, which is fine (I have strong and enduring fashion and opthamological connections to the nerd lineage, thanks). But there was this debate tournament. And to prepare for the debates, the students would gather information (about the issue, or the country they were supposed to represent, or whatever) on index cards. And Rove and his partner had a plan to intimidate the other team by bringing in a huge stack of index cards. The intimidating image of the massive stack of cards created the impression of a vast and comprehensive knowledge of the subject at hands. If the other team had two stacks of cards, Rove had four. If they brought four, Rove brought eight. In the end, his partners were so intimidated and shaken by his monstrous knowledge of the issue, he rarely had to actually debate.

But 90 percent of the cards were blank. It was all a ruse to get the upper hand without deserving it. That works fine for debate club, and probably in Texas politics. But Americans are losing their lives, and their shirts behind this nonsense. This is an untenable policy. In 99 percent of U.S. politics, the no-plan, lead by pretending you know what you're doing school of leadership doesn't survive at this level. Straw candidates don't generally make it through so much crap to get all the way up here. North Carolina Senator Lauch Faircloth was like that, just an empty shirt with handlers who figured an old white guy has a good a chance as anybody to win a Senate seat. Mosely Braun isn't empty, she's just poisoned. Unfortunately, the good heart of Jean Carnahan wasn't enough to overcome the fact that she had a tough race and she wasn't quite up to the task.

Bush's candidacy should have been pruned back by thoughtful, reasoned (or half-crazy) conservatives like John McCain. But there never was an honest competition of ideas about the future of America, in the Republican or Democratic primaries, or in the national election. It was disgustingly about the person who could lie the hardest, and the candidate who only alienated people they didn't need, and the handlers who made the fewest stupid mistakes. So now, somehow, we've got the kid who won at debate club by deceiving instead of debating running the country. And he's going to run it into the ground.

Politics: Masked Wrestler For Congress!

"The Great Sasuke," a masked Japanese wrestler, has won a seat in the Japanese parliament. Sasuke, whose real name is Masanori Murakawa, has vowed not to remove his mask even when he is sitting in the legislature.

Politics: Foxy

Roger Alpert in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz discusses the unique combination of Fox News and Israeli audiences. The item, titled Foxa Americana, makes a strong argument about Fox News' position as America's unofficial propaganda organ, and how this threatens the Israeli marketplace of ideas:

Fox looks like the media arm of the superpower mentality, indifferent to any perspective that is not American and alienating vast portions of the world. Its war coverage is as governmental as that of Iraqi TV. This is American TV.

For some reason, ever since Fox showed up on Israeli cable, the other foreign networks have become unnecessary. CNN was nearly removed, BBC World has been thrown out of the cable package, and both are suspected of hostility to Israel. Fox, for whom Israel's enemies are "the bad guys," is the perfect alibi for the new fashion of censorship. Who needs BBC when there's Fox? That has dangerously narrowed the horizon of thinking available to the viewers of foreign news stations in Israel.

Politics: Next.

Rummy! Take five, fatty. You're getting a little greedy, big fella.

Politics: That was Unexpected

There haven't been any reports of Iraqis identifying members of the Baath party, or the military and killing them. However, this disturbing bit of news has just surfaced.

A crowd rushed two Islamic clerics and hacked them to death in this holy city Thursday, witnesses said. An unknown number of people were injured.

"People attacked and killed both of them inside the mosque," said Ali Assayid Haider, a mullah who traveled from the southern city of Basra for the meeting.

Sheesh.

Politics: Outraged Out

I'm spastic these days. I can't focus on anything, because everywhere I turn, I'm getting pissed. I feel like I did when the Supreme Court gave Bush the White House, or when the Democrats in the Senate laid down like dogs and gave Bush a blank check to declare war on any country with a letter Q, or at least one Muslim, or any natural resources, including Alaska.

I'm dealing with this as best I can, but it's nearing impossible. There isn't even one 'latest thing.' It's about a hundred latest things. They're moving too fast on too many fronts and the reasonable people (that I have to believe exist) aren't seeing what's happeneing, blinded as they are by the haze of happy Iraqis gleefully looting the homes of Baathists and toppling statues of Saddam Hussein. (Just to let everybody know, there is no solid relationship between knocking down statues of evil leaders [or even killing the real thing] and any sort of economic success afterwards. Take the example of Romania, who famously tossed the super-evil Ceausescu out of power and into a hasty grave after killing him mob-style. In the past seven years, Romania has experienced hyperinflation [exchange rate soaring 1500%], average wage sinking, foreign debt soaring, and better than 10% unemployment up from 6% seven years ago. While nobody wants Ceausescu back, it certainly can't be said that street-dancing and statue-dropping is a viable national recovery method.)

The reasonable people (as opposed to the American electorate, or rather the 25% who actually get to pick the leaders owing to most races coming down to very close 50-50 splits and only about 50% of the eligible voters bothering to phone in a vote or anything) are paralyzed. They want to feel great about the happy, shoe-banging, bank-looting, soldier-hugging people of Iraq. Their ingrained tendency toward schmaltz and over-simplified views of complex concepts like freedom makes it almost impossible for them to resist choking up slightly at the thought of a bunch of dirty, hungry Iraqis, miserable after a dozen years of war and a dozen more of crushing sanctions, finally celebrating something, and being free to think about, well, looting.

But the reasonable people need to take heed. The American electorate (with which I am out of step, obviously, and which should be regarded as code, from me at least, for all those SUV-driving pieces of sh*t with W-2004 bumper stickers) and their string-pulling right wing political servants are getting away with murder up here in Washington.

They're continuing the unbelievable march of evil theocrats committed more than anything to making America a Christian country. To this end, President Bush has nominated a judge to the 11th Circuit Appeals Court who believes Jesus put him on earth to protect the courts from, uh, the separation of church and state, I guess. And the Education Secretary endorsed religious schools, apparently over the public schools, of which he is in charge. Well, I didn't really have a lot of faith in ol' Rod Paige. What do you expect from a guy who said that the federal government should play a "limited role" in education. "Check out your business card, Paige, you're the EDUCATION SECRETARY fer Chrissakes!"

Don't look this way, reasonable people, because you might notice that, after the oil industry (which I think does the housecleaning over at Cheney's place), the American chemical industry is tightest on the ass of the Bush White House. "You Dupont fellas want to spew toxins all over the place for pregnant women and young children to breathe in? Great! Promise me you won't write anything down about it that will get us both in hot water, 'kay?"

Look, away, reasonable people, for you may be inspired to show up in droves at the polls next November (who am I fooling?) if you look closely at the nasty goings-on being committed in your name by your chosen (and not-so-chosen) servants/masters here in DC. You might see that a bill to supposedly fund the war effort (uh, didn't somebody just say the war's over?) has been so larded up with stinky Republican pork pie (as well as friendly Democratic kolbassi) that the whole works might just collapse under the weight.

Don't look this way, responds the International Monetary Fund, meeting this week right here in Washington, because the news is all bad. In fact, the IMF's chief economist, who is frankly pleased not to have to wade through a couple hundred bad-smelling white kids with dreads and large form puppets to get to the damn meeting, called the Bush administration's plan for a new round of $726 billion in tax cuts "awkwardly timed," given that it would further worsen a federal budget deficit that is already ballooning because of the costs of the Iraq war. Nice.

Yes, just keep your eyes focused on the breathless adoration of the Fox News correspondent as he reports on President Bush's stunted speech to the Iraqi people, so nobody notices that we are are intent on installing a U.S.-friendly exiled leader who hasn't lived in Iraq since he was a boy and who is wanted for fraud in neighboring Jordan. (That ought to make for an unusual state visit.) Pay no attention to the rest of that interim government, replete with string-pulling masters like Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz and on-the-ground nutsos like Michael Mobbs (whose devotion to keeping Jose Padilla in a brig is second to none), and former CIA Director James Woolsey, who apparently thinks this war is the beginning of WWIV, which is more than a little disconcerting.

See. It's almost impossible to maintain any kind of meaninful commitment to outrage in this environment. It all comes at such a brisk pace, without fail, without hesitation, and without even the hint of a belief that it is anything but the right course of action that so many of those reasonable people, looking right into the face of deception, don't see the lies.

Maybe this'll help. I doubt it.

Politics: Stupidity Reigns

The Baseball Hall of Fame has cancelled an (admittedly dumb) event to mark the 15th anniversary of the movie "Bull Durham." Why? Because the movie starred Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, and their controversial anti-war views "ultimately could put our troops in even more danger," according to the Hall of Fame's president, Dale Petroskey, who was an assistant press secretary under President Reagan, if you can believe that.

Politics: Action on Pipes

As the nice people over at CAIR always advise, please be polite and respectful when you contact the members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension committee and ask them to oppose the nomination of racist, hate-spewing bigot Daniel Pipes. The Republican chair of the committee is New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg, and the ranking Democrat is Ted Kennedy. The link above takes you to the page listing the members of the committee, including links to their sites. If you've got a home-state senator on the list, please consider writing and asking him or her to oppose Pipes' nomination.

Your local neighborhood Muslim community will thank you for it.

Music/Entertainment: Funny Yugoslavian Guy!

This afternoon, Ira Kaplan from Yo La Tengo did an online chat with fans through the Washingtonpost.com site. Alert reader AB sent me his favorite exchange, which demonstrates how simply pure and goofy a music fan can be in the presence of one of his favorite bands. You can read the whole chat here, but I've excerpted Skoca from Belgrade's question and Ira's answer below.

Belgrade, Yugoslavia: Hello, buddy, I am Skoca, I'm 25, I live in this country and I'm listening Y.L.T. last six years. My own top list of albums from the 90's begins with "Nevermind". "I Can Hear Heart.."is the second. HELL OF AN ALBUM! Actually, Nirvana is for books and history, and you are for the memories to remember when I become grandfather.

Right now,I'm saving my money to go to Barcelona in May, to watch your gig (although I got fired last week, I'll save it somehow). Man, tell me who to contact to organize your gig here in Belgrade if it's possible. I will sell my flat in order to do that, if I have to. Really, except you, Velvet Underground, Jim O'rourke, Pharoah Sanders and The Beatles no one means much to me.

"Let's Be Still" is your best song since "Center of Gravity" (to me). I hope your next album is gonna be even more jazzy.
Best regards to you,Georgia & James
Skoca
P.S.Are the lyrics of Nothing But You and Me corny on porpoise?

Ira Kaplan: The lyrics to Nothing But You and Me are not corny on purpose, but I'm not (and wasn't) afraid of them being corny by accident. For booking information write to us at info@yolatengo.com. See you in Barcelona. Good luck with that flat-selling thing you're working on!

"...corny on porpoise..." This guy kills me.

Politics: We Hate Al-Jazeera

Bomb me once, shame on you. Bomb me twice, shame on me.

RIP: Nando Times

The owner of the Nando Times has decided to pack in the venerable internet nameplate after nine years as one of the pioneering websites for news. I had a Mac LC in 1994 and 1995, living in a dorm in Northwest DC, and before the New York Times or the Washington Post had viable news websites, Nandotimes was delivering 24-hour access to information right through my 10-base-T network card. My memory of the front page then is tainted slightly by the fact that I had a black and white (!) monitor, but the Nandotimes has remained a funny little footnote for my internet lifetime.

The McLatchy Co, which owns the Raleigh News and Observer (from which the Nando Times was born), has decided to cease operations at the Nando Times in about ninety days.

Politics: Follow That Pamphlet

The Florida State Department of Health pulled from circulation an AIDS education publication that cited scripture in its attempt to inform about the disease. This updates an earlier item on the brochures.

Politics: Oddly Touching

Business Week's Frederik Balfour, who usually reports from their Hong Kong bureau, filed this nuanced and kind-hearted item on the final days of NBC News Correspondent David Bloom, who died over the weekend of a pulmonary embolism while embedded with the Third Infantry Division in Iraq.

Politics: We May Dump the UN, But We Better Keep the Apartment

The U.S. ambassador to the U.N., John Negroponte, is spending $600,000 to renovate the kitchen in the ambassador's residence in the Waldorf Astoria hotel. The kitchen is 10x17 feet, which, with a little math, means that taxpayers are spending $3,529 to renovate each of the 170 square feet in the current kitchen.

No mention of Negroponte would be complete without a reference to his incredibly seedy past. Negroponte was the U.S. ambassador to Honduras in the eighties, where he tolerated, and at times worked with the death squads run by Gustavo Alvarez Martinez. Negroponte and Alvarez coordinated Honduras' role as a base of operations for the Contras, who were getting U.S. weapons to fight the Sandanistas in neighboring Nicaragua. Negroponte's evil deeds continue from there.

Let's buy this guy a new kitchen!!

The whole thing is, if you have an ambassador somewhere, say, Paris, France, then you install them in the residence there. Unfortunately, the U.N. ambassador is treated like a regular ambassador position, with a deluxe joint to live in. Negroponte is from New York, and his private residence prior to his nomination was in New York City. He certainly doesn't need to have a suite with a super-mod kitchen in the Waldorf-Astoria. I guess it's a nice plum, but I think it's a waste.

Politics: Advances in the War on Longshoremen

Police using non-lethal bullets to quell some sort of shipping-related anti-war protest (?), apparently missed their target and ended up pelting nearby longshoremen with the projectiles. One of the injured dockhands said, "I was standing as far back as I could. It was very scary. All of that force wasn't necessary."

You're telling me, man.

Politics: Cross Burning Stays Banned

The Supreme Court upheld the ban on cross burning.

The court split 5-4 to rule that the ban does not violate the constitutional guarantee of free speech, but the vote was 6-3 to uphold the ban overall.

Justice Clarence Thomas, the court's only black member, agreed that cross burning is abhorrent but said the court didn't even have to consider the First Amendment implications because the state had a right to bar conduct it considered "particularly vicious."

"Just as one cannot burn down someone's house to make a political point and then seek refuge in the First Amendment, those who hate cannot terrorize and intimidate to make their point," he wrote.

At issue was a 50-year-old Virginia law that makes it a crime to burn a cross as an act of intimidation. A lower court ruled the law muzzled free speech.

"While a burning cross does not inevitably convey a message of intimidation, often the cross burning intends that the recipients of the message fear for their lives," O'Connor wrote. "And when a cross burning is used to intimidate, few if any messages are more powerful."

Politics: By Jingo

Here's a little follow-up on the smelly little man who is pushing a non-sensical bill through Florida's state legislature to ban state aid to students from countries on the State Department's terrorism list. Oddly enough, as I wrote last week, the bill excuses Cuba from the list. Also, the bill, which was envisioned by state rep Dick Kravitz soon after 9/11, doesn't block aid to students from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, UAE or Egypt, where the 9/11 hijackers were from.

Quick thinking there, Dick.

Politics: Observe the Parallels

Laura K. Donohue covers in vivid detail how the United Kingdom has gradually redacted many of its freedoms for the chimera of 'security' over the course of the troubles in Ireland. I began this post by thinking I would quote some of the piece, but the whole thing is excellent so just go read it. But here's the conclusion:

The question "What should we do to respond to al Qaeda?" is important. But al Qaeda isn't the only threat the United States faces, and it ought to be secondary to what should be our main concern: How do we protect our basic values from attack?

Like Britain, the United States today faces the charge that it does not respect individual rights. Its response to the terrorist attacks -- shifting the presumption of innocence, conducting assassinations, limiting due process, engaging in inhumane behavior and sanctioning torture -- does little to prove otherwise.

Politics: The Commonwealth

Virginia Tech restored its affirmative action/civil rights program last night. About a month ago, in a stealth move by one of the members of the governing body of Tech, the board basically removed all admissions rules that would create opportunities for diversity at the institution. Tech didn't accept black students until 1953, and still only has an African American population of 5%, while the commonwealth of Virginia is 20% black.

Politics: More On Pipes

The Washington Post, which continues to take a condescending tone toward anyone the ed-board doesn't agree with, runs a cutesy little piece about Daniel Pipes' nomination today. "Isn't it adorable that Muslim groups think Pipes is a rabidly anti-Islamic, hate-mongering bigot!? They're so precious!" Crikey.

Also, here is the item where Pipes claims that 10-15 percent of Muslims "must be considered potential killers." Real sweet. He's a doozy. Call your Senators. Call the White House. Don't just sit there.

Politics: In the Club

This is tough to follow, but important. The Guardian is reporting that several officials have been named as part of a U.S. provisional government in a post-war Iraq. One of those officials is a character called Michael Mobbs. Mobbs is the special assistant to the undersecretary of defense in charge of writing a few words on a piece of paper and permanently removing the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens like Jose Padilla and Yasser Esam Hamdi. (Another potential official for post-war Iraq in the item is former DCI James Woolsey.)

Mobbs has been in charge of certifying through his poisonous "Mobbs Declaration" that the government doesn't believe the Constitution actually applies to everybody, and that judicial review of this absurdist notion isn't worth poo. Here's the hard part: Mobbs worked in the Reagan administration at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, where he became good friends with Richard Perle, who was an assistant SecDef. After leaving the Reagan administration, Mobbs joined Douglas Feith's lawfirm. Feith is now Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, and did an excellent job of pushing Perle's vision of a war in Iraq. Feith and Perle worked together in 1996 preparing a strategy document for Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu called "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm." The authors and architects of the document joined with Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz to launch the "Project for a New American Century"

In open letters to Clinton and GOP congressional leaders the next year, the group called for "the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power" and a shift toward a more assertive U.S. policy in the Middle East, including the use of force if necessary to unseat Saddam.

And in a report just before the 2000 election that would bring Bush to power, the group predicted that the shift would come about slowly, unless there were "some catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor."

Then came 9/11, and almost all of these players were in power in the United States. And here we are.

Politics: Double Standard

This item does the explaining. It sounds like a double standard to me. If an Arab American were discovered with 30 explosive devices, light-armor rockets, hand grenades, a 5-gallon gasoline bomb, .50-caliber machine guns, sniper rifles and a typed list of 50 synagogues with plans for their destruction in his house, I have a strong hunch that he would be charged with violating the USA Patriot Act, RICO, jaywalking statutes and abducting the Lindbergh baby. Then, of course, he would be locked up tight and left to rot without an attorney, a judge, or a trial, citizen or not. Somehow, this guy in Florida gets 12½ to 15. The impression is clearly left that targeting Muslims is somehow not as much of a crime. Just like it used to be okay to beat on a black man in the South.

Now 12½ to 15 is no slap on the wrist. It is roughly equivalent to the plea bargain deals obtained by members of the Lackawanna, NY terrorists. But it isn't anything like Jose Padilla's permanent incarceration.