Politics: Follow Up

The New York Times' David Firestone broke the story on the tax cut screw job of 12 million kids yesterday, and he does an excellent job of following up today.

Politics: Idiot Watch

I am not in the habit of trawling through Ari Fleischer's briefings, but I heard Ari say something this morning on the NPR and sought out his response to questions yesterday about the screwing of 12 million poor kids by removing the increased child tax credit for families making between $10,500 and 26,625 annually. Ari has already avoided answering the question. If you read the whole section on the child tax credit in the briefing, you will note that Ari carefully doesn't answer the question about what happens to families who were denied this credit. He insists, instead on talking about people who have their taxes forgiven -- people earning less than the $10,500 cut-off for the tax credit.

So basically, families who make less than that pay no taxes. The families who earn $10,500-2$26,625 pay their regular taxes (about 1/4 of their income) but don't get an extra $400 per child tax credit. The families who earn more than $26,625 do get the $400 per child credit. So Ari keeps talking about the 3 million additional families who won't pay any income tax at all. But the reporters, see, they want to know about the 12 million kids of families who don't qualify for the credit and are living on less than 26 grand a year for a family of four. Listen to the logic get tortured:

Q Just to button this up, the President was satisfied with sacrificing this area in order to get the compromise and ultimately get the package, even though it would leave this particular group out?

MR. FLEISCHER: Well, as the President said, he doesn't get everything that he wants, and if this provision had been included, the President would have signed it. But the conferees did make that decision. The President would have signed it had it been sent to him.

Q You were a party to that conference, so it's not like it's an "us" versus "them." You were a party to that.

MR. FLEISCHER: I'm walking you precisely what happened.

Q So why did the White House conferees agree to drop these 11.9 million children from this benefit?

MR. FLEISCHER: Well, there were many decisions that were made that represented compromises in order to get something done. At the end, it still was a very close vote. You had the interesting position of a senator who advocated for this position, got it -- on the Senate Finance Committee -- and still voted against what she wanted. So different members of Congress made different decisions, based on the compromises that were made in order to still make progress. At the end of the day, the President determined it was still important enough to make progress, even though he was not getting everything he wanted in this bill.

Q Is it fair to say that the White House, not members of Congress, not senators, but the White House at the end of the day thought that to make progress, the benefit for these 11.9 million children should go in order to, in part, save the dividend benefit for investors?

MR. FLEISCHER: Keep in mind, investors are across-the-board in terms of income groups, include many senior citizens, whose only source of income is their investment, because they don't have an income since they retired. And that's aimed at creating jobs. And so there are a variety of economic factors that go into the tax bill in terms of giving it the oomph to create jobs, which is what this is about. And I think economists can argue, they will differ about which provisions help create more jobs. And that's a debate that will go on.

Q No, but you had to make a choice, and I just want to make sure that you are saying that the White House agreed to make the choice to leave these children behind.

MR. FLEISCHER: Many, many choices get made. For example, people of different income levels don't even get a child credit. There are many people who don't qualify because their income levels are too high to even get a dollar's worth of a child credit, and they pay considerable amount of income taxes. The President wanted to have a zero percent dividend exclusion. He got less of a dividend exclusion.

There are many different factors that go into it. There's still the permanent issue. These tax cuts were not made permanent as a result of the compromises that were made. And so, as always, the President has to make a judgment about whether sufficient progress is being made toward the achievement of a good tax bill that creates jobs and growth for the economy. In his judgment, this tax bill is a good tax bill that creates jobs and growth for the economy.

Throughout, Ari lies about the people who pay no income taxes. The people who didn't get the credit will pay income taxes, and they will be paying more since they didn't get the credit. Ari seems to conclude that those people were just going to be getting free money from the government. He actually villifies these people for wanting to get tax relief: "They still benefit from a host of programs that income taxes help them in their daily lives; yet they pay zero income taxes. In fact, they get back money from the Treasury which is in the form of public assistance, above and beyond income taxes."

Go straight to hell you lying bastard. Every night, 12 million American kids go to sleep hungry. With this lazy, callous, and stupid tax cut, and Ari's scum-sucking defense of this absolutely bloodthirsty omission, the Bush administration takes a hand in pushing hundreds across that line every single day. No Child Left Behind indeed.

Politics: Just FYI

Halliburton has billed -- not just been contracted for, but processed work orders for -- nearly $600 million in sole-source work related to the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

That $600 million is just for troop services and other related support work. The ceiling on the separate oil-field work that the Army Corps of Engineers no-bid awarded to Halliburton's Kellogg Brown & Root subsidiary is $7 billion, of which more than $70 million has already been billed.

Of course, nobody noticed when UNICEF's executive director had to beg for about about $165 million to keep children from starving to death in Iraq. I don't imagine a lot of Halliburton executives give to UNICEF. Maybe they should.

Politics: Our Military Infrastructure at Work

Robert Scheer at the LA Times put together some of the first stateside reporting on the farcical rescue of Pvt. Lynch, bringing the BBC's reporage to the dozens of Americans who still give a sh*t. In today's column, Scheer notes how the Pentagon responded, in addition to the usual slimebuckets like Fox News:

A fiery and disingenuous response from the Pentagon, however, was quite a bit more sobering.

Calling the column a "tirade," Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Victoria Clarke wrote in a letter to The Times that "Scheer's claims are outrageous, patently false and unsupported by the facts."

"Official spokespeople in Qatar and in Washington, as well as the footage released, reflected the events accurately," the Pentagon letter continued. "To suggest otherwise is an insult and does a grave disservice to the brave men and women involved."

Actually, what is a grave disservice is manipulating a gullible media with leaked distortions from unnamed official sources about Lynch's heroics in battle. That aside, it would have been easier to rebut the Pentagon if its spokeswoman had actually questioned any of the facts the BBC or this column reported. In particular, the Pentagon turned down the request by the BBC and other media to view the full, unedited footage of the rescue.

You know, Stalin could have learned a lot from these people. You don't need to go back and change history later if you never let the real thing get out in the first place.

Politics: Finally, Some Terrible News

If you weren't convinced that things were going from bad to worse and not the other way in Iraq, check out this recipe for disaster:

The commander of coalition ground forces in Iraq said Thursday he may soon send more troops to areas where U.S. forces have been attacked. But officers and senior enlisted men in the unit insist their equipment isn't battle ready, and say soldiers' lives may be needlessly put at risk.

Good thing this doofus declared victory and hasn't looked back, huh?

Politics: Methodist or Baptist? Southern Baptist?

From CAIR, we learn about American citizens in the Bay Area who receive a surprising amount of scrutiny when returning to the United States from international vacations. Several stories are out on the Internet about this, one in the Contra Costa Times, one in the San Jose Mercury News and another in the San Francisco Examiner. First from the Mercury News:

With the official start of the travel season, Bay Area Muslims gathered Wednesday to call attention to an interrogation practice at airports they say intrudes on their private and professional lives. [...]

Unlike the overall heightened scrutiny of many Muslim and Arab immigrants after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, however, many of those who are questioned at local airports include U.S. citizens, according to the San Francisco chapter of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

San Francisco resident Tarek Elaydi said he was asked about his faith last month when he returned from a trip to Ecuador.

``They treated me like the enemy with absolutely no understanding of who I am,'' said Elaydi, 35, who works as a software manager in Foster City. ``They assumed I was a threat because of my name.''

Then the Contra Costa Times picks up the story:

San Francisco resident Tarek Elaydi said he thought he would be exempt from such screening because he held a U.S. passport. Instead, he said, while entering the country last month through Houston's airport after a vacation in South America, he was asked whether he was a Muslim and then what sect he belonged to.

The immigration officer asked him whether he supported the Palestinian cause and whether he had traveled in Iraq, Libya or Yemen.

Of course, Customs doesn't know anything about this racial profiling:

Mike Fleming, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, said officials use a variety of criteria such as where a traveler is coming from to determine who deserves a "second enforcement," but he stressed that ethnicity is not a factor.

"It's not our policy to discriminate against people arriving," Fleming said. "And we intend to meet with the community at a mutually amenable time to discuss their concerns."

Of course, Mr. Elaydi (who, I know, shares my first name but isn't me, trust me) feels slightly different:

Fleming would not comment on the cases of Elaydi or any of the other men at the news conference. Elaydi, who was born in Palestine but came to the United States as a boy, said he understands the post-Sept. 11 need for extra security but says such "brute force" tactics hurt security.

"This does not differentiate between friend or foe," the 35-year-old man said. "In my case, they had no probable cause. They are just assuming I'm a threat because of my name."

I guess we just have to learn that American citizenship just isn't what it used to be.

Politics: Behind Closed Doors at the FCC...

Omitted from much of the coverage of Michael Powell's one-man crusade to ensure that independent media is a thing of the past is one factor that may have the most sway in the mind of the FCC Chairman: His long, fulfilling and ongoing intimate relationship with News Corporation Chairman Rupert Murdoch.

"Mr Murdoch and I have been close friends since I met him while he was touring the country and visited the Georgetown University Law Center, where I was studying," Powell confirmed this morning in an interview that did not occur. "But we became lovers while I was chief of staff at the Justice Department's anti-trust division."

"We joke that our trust is built on a foundation of anti-trust," Powell said, smiling, clearly in love.

Murdoch and Powell carried on an illicit affair: Powell has two young boys with his "wife" Jane, and Murdoch has maintained several relationships with Asian women, all of whom think he is "weird."

Powell and Murdoch were kindred spirits, often lounging together naked in one of Murdoch's Australian beachside mansions and discussing how critical it is for competing television stations to be owned by the same massive corporation.

"More than anything, Rupert and I sought each other's warm embrace and insightful counsel on media consolidation. Together, we realized that as FCC chair, I alone hold in my hands the power to ensure that Rupert's media empire -- and the media empires of other insanely rich and sexually agressive septugenarians -- is guaranteed media dominance for decades," Powell said in a late-night telephone call from a limosine in New York City.

Giggling, Powell then handed the phone off to a clearly drunken man with an Australian accent who identified himself as Murdoch. "Michael and I are in love, but more importantly, we are in agreement," the man slurred. "Unless I can own television, radio, newspapers --"

A moment of telephonic confusion, then Powell's voice: "--and baseball teams, don't forget baseball teams..."

Then the drunken Murdoch again. "Yes, unless I can own, ah, baseball teams and, careful, radio stations and television networks and newspapers all, oh God, mmmm, in the same marketplace, how can there be fair competition? See, the competition would come, oh yeah, from me owning everything, and other people competing to see how long they could oooh, oh, um, survive before they were swallowed ... swallow ... swallowed ... ah, up into my massive media juggernaut," the clearly relaxed Murdoch continued. "Isn't that right, Mikey, baby?"

A tinkle of champagne glasses was heard, and then the line went dead.

Powell and the FCC will vote next week on relaxing conditions which forbid single ownership of multiple media outlets in the same metropolitan area. Powell has said that he will vote to ease the rules, and that he is not bound by the input from millions of Americans none of whom apparently bring him the pleasure that Mr. Murdoch does.

As he really said in today's Washington Post, "You don't govern just by polls and surveys. We have to exercise difficult judgments and abide by the law. If all of our rulemaking was just a case of put them out and take a referendum, things would be a lot easier."

Politics: Church, Meet State

I am eternally stunned by the stupidity of some people. Americans will smile numbly, mildly amused by the Paul Revere story, and ignore the fact that the Bush administration is subtly, but surely, obliterating the wall between church and state. I know it sounds nice, and I agree that the Old North Church should be preserved, but literally thousands of churches raise money for renovations without directly controverting the founding goddamn fathers. In fact, there are rural churches that raise $20,000-$30,000 a week during peak times of fundraising. I have a lot of trouble believing that the people of Boston would allow the Old North Church -- which they are breathlessly declaring a crucial item of national historical significance -- to descend into total decrepitude for lack of $300,000.

No, the Old North Church certainly wouldn't have slid into crack-house oblivion. But the Bush administration -- which has already okayed federal grants for religious institutions that engage in discriminatory hiring -- is more than happy to blunt the potential for future criticism by having the Old North Church to point at until the sub-80 IQ mass of America moves on to the next dead Californio or missing white child. And nobody even thinks to ask the first question that occurred to me: If the Old North Church is so goddamn important, have the National Park Service buy the place. Toss out the congregation, fix it up nice, charge the people five dollars and you don't have a conflict. And you don't have a piece of American history steeped in the icky residue, making Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Zoroastrians and everybody else who doesn't love Jesus uncomfortable just for showing up to see the location of the lanterns that tipped Paul Revere off to the British Invasion.

One last thing. It's not available on the web as of yet, but this morning's piece on National Public Radio had several moments of adopting the groupthink. In the intro, Bob Edwards says that the bailout for the Old North Church is the reversal of a "Clinton-era policy." Later, Barbara Bradley-Hagerty in her report (andin the web-blurb about her story here), says Bush is reversing a 1995 policy that bars the government from giving federal funds to churches. I know that the Clinton administration took a stand on this issue, but I believe the policy was authored not during the Clinton era, but during the GODDAMN CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION. To wit: Amendment I: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion... Any questions? I didn't think so.

Politics: Catastrophic Converters

The New York Times this morning is also reporting on a disturbing trend at the "grass roots of evangelical Christianity:" training to convert Muslims.

I can't even begin to explain what is loathesome and vile about this enterprise, not to mention the travelling salesman aspects of the unidentified Christian preacher who is wandering the American south teaching the idle, heavyset and racist all about how Islam is evil and Christianity is good.

An interesting contrast is that in the Quran, the Prophet Mohammed makes it fairly clear that no-one is to attempt to convert people who are committed to other religions. I am, of course, fully aware that people of all religions, including Islam, proselytize. But there is a bigger point here. Read this passage from the Times piece:

At the grass roots of evangelical Christianity, many are now absorbing the antipathy for Islam that emerged last year with the incendiary comments of ministers. The sharp language, from religious leaders like Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Jerry Vines, the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, has drawn rebukes from Muslims and Christian groups alike. Mr. Graham called Islam "a very evil and wicked religion, and Mr. Vines called Muhammad, Islam's founder and prophet, a "demon-possessed pedophile."

In evangelical churches and seminaries across the country, lectures and books criticizing Islam and promoting strategies for Muslim conversions are gaining currency. More than a dozen recently published critiques of Islam are now available in Christian bookstores.

Arab International Ministry, the Indianapolis group that led the crash course on Islam here, claims to have trained 4,500 American Christians to proselytize Muslims in the last six years, many of those since the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The oratorical tone of these authors and lecturers varies, but they share the basic presumption that the world's two largest religions are headed for a confrontation, with Christianity representing what is good, true and peaceful, and Islam what is evil, false and violent.

What we're looking at here is policy by other means. All of this activity in the United States and abroad is driven by the maniacal belief that America and the whole world is supposed to be some goddamn Christian utopia. I have absorbed some of the Christian fundamentalist conversion dogma first hand from acquaintances and distant relations. The whole thing is terrifying. I wouldn't be any more or less concerned about these people than I would be if I started to hear similarly crazy noises from my Muslim relatives about Islam.

Fundamentalists on both sides are moving toward that big confrontation alluded to in the final paragraph of the passage above. That's because the ravenous, unstoppable aspects of fundamentalism are simply outdated and incompatible with modern life. America and the world are enormous containers of people. The very idea that one of the literally hundreds of faiths and belief systems at large inside that container should take as its duty the task of devouring all the other faiths, making everyone believe the same thing, is unacceptable.

But that's what this faith pursues, wildly, blindly. I am not alone in believing that there is no comeuppance for this type of behavior. The Bush administration is doing everything it can to insert these conversion-bombs into Muslim countries, bringing in fundamentalist Christian media corporations, fundamentalist Christian bigots, such as Franklin Graham, mentioned above, and permitting Army chaplains to trade baptisms for water.

Domestically, Bush has similarly ensured that religious institutions can use government funding and sanction to spread its dogma far and wide. Although some legislative attempts to relax religious discrimination laws have failed, Bush has continued to push other such laws, and has done a lot by executive fiat.

In the end, the religious right has captured the biggest convert of all in President Bush. All the end-time lunacy aside, there is a lot of money to be had from every converted Christian fundamentalist, running to about 10-15% of their income, and more importantly, the establishment of valuable churches and outreach for the machine to continue consuming people and their pocketbooks. That this sets up an endles confrontation where more violence will begat more conversions is not a coincidence. In fact, it might be the prime directive.

But it all starts somewhat benignly, it seems, with a preacher travelling from town to town, telling people that Islam is evil. A hate crime by any other name...

Politics: Priorities

The Bush administration, in an admirable demonstration of exactly how little it actually cares about the environment, has let the EPA's water pollution tracking system essentially turn to mush. According to the EPA's own inspector general, the system is "obsolete, full of faulty data and does not take into account thousands of significant pollution sources." Read on:

"The deliberate neglect of this project is a perfect example of the Bush administration's effort to dismantle the Clean Water Act with as little public awareness as possible," said Daniel Rosenberg, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

"Rather than investing in modernizing the system for tracking compliance and enforcing the law," Mr. Rosenberg said, "they are wasting money and resources on rewriting the rules to eliminate protections for tens of thousands of streams and wetlands, weakening essential programs and promoting various initiatives that range from useless to harmful."

I, for one, am shocked -- shocked! -- by the very intimation that the Bush administration ever planned to do anything about water pollution. Why, the very thought of it is absurd.

Politics: Friday's Lesson

I think it's only appropriate to start Friday off with some good old fashioned misappropriation of government resources. To wit, from today's Washington Post:

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) acknowledged yesterday that his office called both the Federal Aviation Administration and the Justice Department to help track down 51 Texas House members who fled the state to derail a GOP congressional redistricting plan.

The Texas Democrats left Austin on May 11 to prevent the state House from establishing a quorum and taking up the GOP plan, which would have created several new Republican-leaning U.S. House districts. Texas House Speaker Tom Craddick (R), trying to force the Democrats back to Austin, asked DeLay for help in locating the plane of former state House speaker Pete Laney (D), which some lawmakers used to reach Ardmore, Okla.

A DeLay aide gave the Laney airplane's tail number to the FAA, which subsequently reported where the plane had taken off and landed -- which is public information -- DeLay's office said yesterday. Craddick also asked DeLay to contact the Justice Department to see how the Republicans could force the lawmakers' return, DeLay staffers said.

Some Democrats have suggested DeLay improperly involved federal agencies in a partisan spat limited to one state. DeLay told reporters yesterday that he called the Justice Department to ask "about the appropriate role of the federal government in finding Texas legislators who have warrants out for their arrests."

Now I don't believe anyone has ever thought for one second that Tom Delay was anything other than a slimy, fork-tongued toady who gladly sell his mother to a white slavery ring if it meant one more filthy corporate donation in the NRCC's luxurious coffers. But here he is, a dirty man admitting a dirty, dirty crime -- misappropriation of government resources for petty personal gains, at the very least -- and there is no outrage. There is nothing. Let's move on.

Next on the Friday roundup, readers will be urged to skip a great deal of the pap served up in the Washington Post save the few articles profiled here, beginning with Dana Milbank's brave analysis, with Jim VandeHei, of exactly how much of a compromise President "Mr. Popularity" Bush had to make to get his own party to support his loathesome tax cut. Thankfully, Milbank and VandeHei point out exactly what a sh*t-eating liar pretty much anybody who calls this tax cut for the rich a victory for the president. Let's read together:

In brokering and celebrating a $350 billion tax-and-spending package he derided less than a month earlier, President Bush and top aides this week made the calculation that it was more important to have a tax cut than to stand on principle over its size and content.

In Ohio last month, Bush said senators "might have some explaining to do" for approving "a little bitty tax relief package" of $350 billion. "The package ought to be at least $550 billion in size over a 10-year period in order to make sure that the economy grows," he said.

But it was a different Bush who appeared in the Capitol yesterday to congratulate lawmakers for reaching agreement on a $350 billion plan with $318 billion of tax cuts over 10 years.

Harold Meyerson in this month's TAP pointed out some facts that bear repeating: Since the first Bush tax cut, which was advertised as a means to spur economic growth, America has lost 69,000 jobs a month. During President Clinton's term, American gained about 240,000 jobs per month. Immediately after that little gem, Meyerson gives us the gift of clarity, in a one-sentence paragraph I fell in love with as soon as I read it: "On the basis of no credible evidence whatsoever, the White House boasts that Bush's proposed tax cut would create 1.4 million jobs by the end of 2004. Even if it did, Bush would still have presided over a net loss of 1.3 million jobs during the 2001–2005 presidential term." Yes! Yes! Yes!

But let us turn our attention now to the matters of threats to the homeland, in the form, of course, of turf battles and undermining our efforts understand those threats. In this department, two entries. First, the Washington Post again, with another pre-Memorial Day starred entry from the Liquid List. New Panel, Independent of 9/11 Commission, Is Sought reads like a horror story for all of the weekend's travel plans. But why tell you, when I can show you?

Several prominent lawmakers, including two Democratic presidential contenders, yesterday urged an independent commission to forcefully investigate government shortcomings prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, including an aviation security system experts described as riddled with holes.
...
"The American people deserve to know the full and objective truth, as best it can be determined," Lieberman said. "We have not received that, unfortunately."

Graham, who helped lead last year's congressional review of intelligence issues related to the attacks, said the commission "should vigorously pursue the links between foreign governments and the September 11th hijackers," including U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia.

"Ignoring facts simply because they make some people uncomfortable or because it might stand in the way of short-term policy goals will prevent Americans from learning the truth about 9/11," Graham said.

The session featured other Bush administration critics. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) warned of "bureaucratic stonewalling"; Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) criticized funding levels for first responders; and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said a House-Senate intelligence inquiry last year was too limited.
...
Some of the sharpest criticism came from a Federal Aviation Administration whistle-blower, who testified that politics often trumped that agency's ability to address security lapses and said the terrorists' use of aviation was not surprising given well-known security loopholes.

"What I do know is if a terrorist wants to, [he] can get through the system," said Bogdan Dzakovic, a former member of the FAA's "red team," who spent years testing the nation's security screeners and equipment.

While some security measures have improved since the attacks, Dzakovic said he still does not feel safe enough to fly. He said the newly formed Transportation Security Administration, where he now works, needs to do a better job.

Several commissioners were visibly disappointed with answers from former FAA administrator Jane Garvey, who said intelligence reports indicating terrorist plans to use airplanes as missiles were viewed as not credible or considered applicable primarily overseas.

I really gave you pretty much the whole thing there, but Jesus, shouldn't somebody be caring about this right now? No? Oh. Okay.

While I would never call it good, I can tell you that the Post today is doing better than I expected. As such, I've got another piece, in which Attorney General John Ashcroft shows Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge the sole of his jackboot. It seems that Ridge and Ashcroft were having a little asshole-battle about exactly who would be able to oversee which parts of the remarkably inept war on terror. (In an aside, Tarek noted that it would make more sense if they were somehow battling over who would be forced to take responsibility for the war's failures; that was, however, not the case, since both men are of spectacularly low intellect.) Finally, Ashcroft boned Ridge out of the high-profile economic investigations component (which I assume includes lucrative Hezbollah cigarette smuggling prosecutions) of the war on terror. This is despite the fact that the Secret Service, which investigates these sorts of things, belongs now to the Homeland Security Department. In fact, the Secret Service has never been part of the Justice Department, and was previously part of the Department of the Treasury. And in fact again, the Justice Department and the FBI especially, should probably be on some sort of probation for how badly they f*cked up securing the homeland in the first place anyhow. But let's let the Secret Service Director explains how bad this is:

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge have settled a bitter dispute between their agencies, signing a truce that gives the FBI sole control over financial investigations related to terrorism. But many Homeland Security officials say the deal is a dangerous mistake.

W. Ralph Basham, director of the Secret Service, which is now part of Homeland Security, wrote a memo to Ridge after the agreement was signed last week complaining that it "would severely jeopardize thousands of ongoing investigations and could compromise the federal government's ability to effectively prevent future attacks against our financial and critical infrastructures."

Investigations are what we do best, aren't they? And here's another.

It appears that someone in the CIA has noticed something fishy going on these past ten months. I presume, then, that the world's preeminent intelligence gathering agency hasn't been examining such hard-to-find data sources as the New Yorker. But all that's about to change! Yes, the CIA has decided to look into the independent intelligence agency set up by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz inside the Defense Department. The CIA will review the possibility -- shocking! -- that this little shadow agency was designed to find (that's code for fabricate) connections that Rummy is certain exist between al Qaeda, Iraq, weapons of mass destruction, France, acid reflux disease, Hollywood liberals and anything else that would let us blow the f*ck out of any goddamn country we wanted. Yes, the CIA is certainly going to look into this:

The CIA review, coupled with the letter sent to Tenet by the House intelligence panel, follows criticism that the Defense Department, particularly a new Pentagon intelligence office, and other parts of the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to make the case for war in Iraq. Some members of Congress and intelligence officials are questioning the accuracy of the intelligence describing Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction and connections to al Qaeda.

Read all the way to the bottom that this article for the Defense Department's amazing rationalization for creating a separate intelligence agency that amazingly found reasons to drop bombs: Rumsfeld just wanted to "learn about the [intelligence] process, including the policymaker's role in it." Why doesn't he look at the cameras and say, "I'm just a caveman. I don't understand your mysterious intelligence-gathering ways."

Finally, let's quickly review this three-day weekend's homework assignment. I'd like everyone to read Molly Ivins column from yesterday, which includes this little tidbit:

Iraq is in chaos, and apparently the only way we'll be able to stop it will be to kill a lot of Iraqis. Just what Saddam used to do. The other day, we announced we were going to shoot looters, and when that produced nightmare scenarios of children dead for stealing bread, we had to cancel that plan. Now we're going to try gun control – that should have the enthusiastic support of the NRA. Meanwhile, the chaos in Iraq seems to be costing us whatever goodwill we earned for getting rid of Saddam Hussein, the one unmitigated good to have come from all of this.

Yes, ma'am. Class dismissed.

Media/Culture: More Evidence That I Am Out of Step With the American People

35 million people watched Fox's American Idol program last night, which, according to Lisa de Moraes hysterical retelling in the Washington Post, painfully spread over 2 hours the results of its season-long competition. Coming as no surprise to anybody, apparently, a great big guy named Ruben from Birmingham, Alabama won the contest.

In that final contest, 24 million Americans wasted their time and money voting. Who knows (Fox knows) how many millions of votes were cast over the course of the entire program.

For comparison value, about 75 million Americans bothered to vote in the last general election. Those numbers are too close together, you know. Ah, screw it. Lisa was funny:

So how exactly do you turn five minutes' worth of voting-results information into a two-hour special? With Prime-Time Padding.

You have Sugar Ray Leonard weigh in on the competition. Plus, Michael Chiklis, star of the drama series "The Shield." Why? Who knows.

You toss to Raleigh and Birmingham to talk to the little people in Ruben's and Clay's lives.

You have Kelly Clarkson perform her single "Miss Independent" -- again -- and trot out RCA Records CEO Clive Davis to give a "This Competition Is About Finding the Most Talented Blah Blah Blah" speech and to announce that Clarkson's album has sold 1.3 million copies, which means that only a fraction of the people who watched the first edition of "American Idol" bought it, which you don't mention.

You show a video of Simon and Paula having a romantic dinner, sharing a strawberry, swilling champagne and licking whipped cream off of each other's fingers. Paula says, "I love you, Cuddles" and kisses Simon, but Simon wakes up and it was all just a horrible dream, only it's worse, because he's in bed -- with Randy.

And you take all of the worst songs from the entire competition and make Clay and Ruben sing them, including Clay's version of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and Ruben's rendition of "Flying Without Wings."

And all the while, you're parceling out voting results in excruciating state-by-state dribs and drabs, as though daring young viewers to turn it off.

"Clay has won the state of Ohio!"

Who cares?

And the winner in Florida is -- Ruben Studdard!

Yawn.

After 1 hour and 48 minutes, you give the judges the opportunity to say a few final words to the two contestants.

Randy tells them they're both his "dawgs." Brilliant, Randy.

Paula races to pack her 30 seconds with as many cliches as possible, as though she's a contestant in a show called "Cliche Competition": "It's been an amazing journey," "Life is an audition," "Listen to what your mama told you," "No kid ever grew up wanting to be a critic." And so much more.

Politics: Texas Declares Earth Flat

These people are idiots, and they don't deserve commentary:

HOUSTON -- Texas approved one of the nation's most sweeping abortion counseling laws Wednesday, requiring doctors, among other things, to warn women that abortion might lead to breast cancer.

That link, however, does not exist, according to the American Cancer Society and federal government researchers, and critics say the law is a thinly veiled attempt to intimidate, frighten and shame women who are seeking an abortion. Proponents say they are merely trying to give women as much information as possible, and argue that research into the alleged link between abortion and breast cancer remains inconclusive.

After years of failed attempts to outlaw abortion outright, social conservatives across the nation are now finding success in limiting abortions by requiring so-called counseling of patients. Among the most aggressive tactics is the attempt to link abortion with breast cancer, a move that many conservative organizations have undertaken, but rarely with the success they have found in Texas.

"They don't care what science says," said Claudia D. Stravato, chief executive of Planned Parenthood of Amarillo and the Texas Panhandle. "It's like talking to the Flat Earth Society."

The bill's author, state Rep. Frank Corte Jr., a San Antonio-area Republican, titled the bill the Women's Right to Know Act.

"This is an issue that many folks see as something we need to do," Corte said. "We think these are standards that should be set."

This is one of those situations where I start to thrash about wildly, wondering if the whole damn world has gone insane, and if every single American except for the people I know are stupid mouthbreathing kneebiters.

Politics: Not a Team Player

Thirty months was just about enough. Christine Todd Whitman finally threw in the towel, resigning today as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. The story on Whitman's time there, and the battles she claims didn't happen between her and the Bush administration, remains to be written. But the damage that occurred under watch -- whether despite or because of her best efforts -- are truly a horrible legacy to give to our nation's children.

Admin: Vortex

Oliver and I will be in a most-of-the-day meeting for today, so blogging will be light until the late afternoon. We're attempting to cobble together some kind of democracy here in the United States, though, so don't rush us.

Thanks.

Politics: Orange Glo Alert

I can't believe that we went to Orange Alert again yesterday. I acknowledge that the sample is too small for a meaningful study, but it seems that every time things start to look even vaguely out of kilter for the Bush administration, the Homeland Security Grand Wizard starts talking about "chatter" and bumps the global alert level another notch.

Think about it: Alterman ran down a few papers over the weekend that noticed (shocking!) that the White House plan for Iraq appears to match closely what would happen if Lucy and Ethel got jobs at the Pentagon. Afghanistan looks worse. As I mentioned earlier, Howard Kurtz even spotted some chinks in the Bush family armor. Then Ari bolted, and - bam! - code Orange Glo, or whatever.

I guess we never going to have the discussion then about the whole fundamental problem with the terrorist event warning color code system. Presumably, if a terrorist event has taken place, we would need to go to code red, right? But there isn't anything between red and orange. So we're basically going to spend a lifetime between "there might be a terrorist attack today" and "there was a terrorist attack today." Would we ever go to code red without an actual ongoing attack? Would the belief that another attack would go on despite another foiled attack be reason to go to code red? Why is there even a code green? Is that for when we erect the big wall around the whole damn joint and throw away the key?

It may just be. It looks like we're preparing to fingerprint every foreigner who travels to the United States under a visa. That's a nice way of saying that if you're not in Western Europe, you're getting fingerprinted. Wait till somebody tells John Ashcroft that Zacarias Moussaoui and about a billion other Arabs live in France. He'll blow a gasket. I just hope somebody warns the French, because they aren't done getting crapped on by the Bushies.

Of course, the foreigners aren't the only ones we're worried about under our constant state of nausea-inducing code "constant fear" orange. The Office of Terrorist Information Awareness is now only sifting through the credit card receipts and phone records of terrorists. Incidentally, the new code word at the TIA office for "Americans citizens" is "terrorists."


But this is all fine with the president. Hopefully, the navel orange alert system is going to really start working for the people of Saudi Arabia and Morocco. Because President Bush, on the eve of Tom Ridge pulling that big orange cartoon handle at the temporary Homeland Security Department (located conveniently where the naked justice used to stand in the Justice department rotunda), had the unmitigated gall to spit on the still-warm graves of a few dozen bombing victims and say, "we've got al Qaeda on the run."

Yeah, the families of those dead people, they're probably thinking, "Oh yeah, those guys are on the ropes, pal. They're just about ready to throw in the towel."

Politics: Pay No Attention to the Terrorist Behind the Curtain

Even Howie notices that the war on terrorism isn't going so well.

So why is Bush walking around saying "We are, slowly but surely dismantling the al-Qaida operational network." I think there are a couple dozen dead people in Riyadh who think otherwise.

Politics: Total Snowjob Awareness

Time Magazine is reporting that the Pentagon plans on making changes to its now-congressionally restrained office of Total Information Awareness. The new entity will still be headed by retired and disgraced Admiral John Poindexter, and will now be called Terrorist Information Awareness.

This is such a stupid step, I don't know how to assail it properly. It demonstrates completely how disconnected from regular Americans the Bush cabal really is. Americans aren't afraid of the words Total Information Awareness, we're afraid of the government deciding that all of our credit card transactions, web browsing, emails, library rentals, bookstore purchases, and everything else are fair game for DARPA analysis. But the people running the so-called war on terrorism (and Iraq) live in a world where they have never been subject to discrimination, miscarriages of justice, or bigotry. They can't imagine that innocent people are afraid that someone looking at everything they ever did will try to pin something or another on them.

Go ahead and change the name again. Change it to the Office of Strategic Information Management or the ministry of funny walks. It won't matter. If you want to spy on the people, you're going to have to do it some other way, guys. This door is closed.

Politics: Brothers in Aren't

As explained in this post about an excellent LA Times commentary, the Saudi Royal Family hired Vinnell Corporation to teach its National Guard how to defend the family from internal threats (read: Islamic fundamentalists). Vinnell has done that job since 1975, including brutally suppressing a rebellion in 1979. Twice, including the Riyadh bombing last week, Vinnell has been the target of action by Islamic extremists. Now it is revealed that the very National Guard they were training may have had members working with al Queda prior to and as part of the same operation as the bombing last week.

I'm sure the boys at Vinnell (a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman, natch) know how to take a hint. The hint is, trust nobody.

Politics: The Plan

I have friends who I routinely spar with over how much of the Bush administration's evil is part of a huge evil plan, and how much is just evil people doing what comes naturally. (Yes, this is what we talk about. Directed evil vs. Random Evil.) But this item from Saturday's Washington Post was uniformly met with a chorus of voices agreeing with me that this evil is part of a big ol' evil plan. Here's the rub:

The U.S. executive selected by the Pentagon to advise Iraq's Ministry of Oil suggested today that the country might best be served by exporting as much oil as it can and disregarding quotas set by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. His comments offered the strongest indication to date that the future Iraqi government may break ranks with the international petroleum cartel.

That's right, breaking Iraq out of OPEC would be the first step towards OPEC's demise. It's common knowledge that some OPEC countries who aren't as rich as the Saudi royal family would like to pump and sell more oil than they are allowed under the OPEC quotas, because they want to get rich rich rich. So if Iraq breaks the quotas (essentially ending the nation's relationship with OPEC), then who's to say Algeria, Nigeria or Indonesia can't break the quotas?

Then we've got all the oil getting pumped and sold. And you know who buys and resells all that delicious crude oil, don't you? I think W and Dick do.

Politics: Give Us One More Chance. We Promise We Won't Screw Up This Time.

Can we please fire SOMEBODY for dropping the ball before September 11th?

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Nearly six years before the Sept. 11 attacks, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman was told by his senior staff that the FBI and other government agencies had missed warning signs about the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and were ill-prepared to prevent future domestic terrorist attacks, memos show.

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, whose committee oversees federal law enforcement, approved holding investigative hearings about the information, but they never took place, the memos show.

"The sharing of intelligence is lacking among federal law enforcement agencies," the December 1995 memo to Hatch stated, citing intelligence failures eerily similar to those exposed after the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide hijackings by al-Qaida terrorists.

The memo, obtained by The Associated Press, also told Hatch that committee investigators had uncovered evidence that federal law enforcement had prior hints about the 1993 World Trade Center terrorist attack in New York City but failed to piece them together.

"We have information that some instances, like the World Trade Center, could have been prevented if the relevant agencies had worked in concert with each other," the investigators wrote. "Simply stated, several different agencies had a small piece of the puzzle.

"If they had shared with each other, there is at least a strong possibility that they would have identified the World Trade Center as a target before the bombing."

Of course, the fact that it had been bombed eight years earlier should have been enough of a tip that the WTC would be a target again, but I guess it wasn't.

So, I say again, can we please fire somebody?

Politics: Death, Inc.

The target of the Riyadh bombings was Northrup Grumman subsidiary Vinnell Corporation. A Los Angeles Times commentary piece by Bill Hartung runs down the story on this shadowy entity and its questionable role as a proxy for proper U.S. foreign policy. Vinnell had 5,000 men on the ground in what one Pentagon source described as, "our own little mercenary army in Vietnam." Since 1975, Vinnell has been taking millions from the House of Saud to train, arm and support the royal family's own internal defense force in Saudi Arabia. This attack wasn't just on Americans, but on Americans who prop up the anemic, cancerous Saudi Royal Family. It's clear that Saudi Arabia can't be left to a rising fundamentalist Islam tide, the ongoing abuse of the nation and its resources by the King and his descendants only adds fuel to the fundamentalist fire.

So does Vinnell's U.S. owned and operated mercenary training and killing force. The bombers were executing an unsavory and illegal foreign policy by other means. Unfortunately, this is an example they learned from us.

Politics: I'm Going Where There's No Depression

You'll forgive me if I'm a little depressed today. I had been entertaining blissful ideas that President Bush wasn't going to get what he wanted, just once. Of course, the lay people may think that the tax cut got cut in half. However, as this surprisingly strong Washington Post editorial explains, the real bottom line is much more -- along the lines of $660 million. The Post takes Ohio Senator George Voinovich (and former person with a spine) to task about how he took a stand before:

Mr. Voinovich argued that he had kept his word and limited the cost of the tax bill to $350 billion through 2013. But that number can't be taken seriously. It rests on a grab bag of flimsy accounting tricks designed to mask the real cost of the cut while wedging in some version of the dividend tax cut so avidly sought by the administration. The "compromise" concocted by Don Nickles (R-Okla.) makes the dividend cut look less expensive by phasing the cut in (only 50 percent of dividends will be tax-free this year), having the full exclusion take effect for three years, and then -- supposedly -- making it disappear in 2007. This cuts the supposed price tag to $124 billion, but if that artificial sunset were removed, the dividend cut would cost $380 billion through 2013 -- and the real price of the tax package would be $660 billion. Mr. Voinovich's colleague Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) had it right when she refused to go along with this "gimmick."

Yeah. I know, depressing.

I thought maybe I'd perk up after I read about the next thing the Senate did, which was pass a huge AIDS bill for Africa and the Caribbean. Unfortunately, I got to the part where conservatives inserted an amendment requiring 1/3 of all the money -- we're talking about a $15 billion bill here, so about 5 billion taxpayer dollars -- go to abstinence only education in Africa.

Now I think we all know that abstinence-only education has been a resounding failure in the United States, but continues to thrive because we live in such a morally reversed nation that conservatives consider it a victory when kids don't know how to protect themselves against disease and teenage pregnancy. That this huge bill is going to spend billions of dollars exhorting Africans to not have sex is just insane. Why not just set up huge television screens with images of white people asking them not to die--it would be equally effective.

I know, I know, I'm getting worked up. Alright, more later.

Politics: Hunting the Gray Lady

I was chatting with some people yesterday, and I realized why the Jayson Blair story is resonating so well on both sides of the ideological spectrum. It speaks back to the big question about how the left doesn't play hardball in the same way. Some people believe it's the reason we lose sometimes, but I tend to think that it is part of a swinging pendulum situation.

We don't play the dirtiest pool right now, they do. Some think we need to play much dirtier, but we wear this like an ill-fitting suit of clothes. Something about the audacity of Tom DeLay's scummy behavior just makes us hate him tremendously while it inspires his partisans to love him and his side even harder. If a person on the left stooped to the DeLay level, the right would scream and point, but we wouldn't embrace the stooper. We still have standards.

The right will eat up the New York Times like it's eating up Jayson Blair, like it ate up CNN, like it ate up MSNBC, like it ate up the Washington Post. I never really thought of it this way before, but all the boo-hooing about the liberal media wasn't just a skewed point of view, or even an outright lie. It was a plan. We're the gullible left, and we still have a shred of soul left, and that's why these plans always work on us.

Like Alterman says, call the press liberal, again and again, until it believes that you must be right because you keep saying it. The press will then move to the right, because it's constantly being accused of being liberal. They move to the right, and the right wingers say, "Liberal media, you're still liberal!" And the media moves to the right some more.

Stand on principle, ignoring some big lie that everyone else is adopting as true, and you're a liberal bastion spitting in the wind. So you function as if that lie is true, just that one at first, and then one more. Finally, some big tree falls in the forest. The Washington Post editorial page suddenly starts reading like the Wall Street Journal. And still the right wing echo chamber says, "Liberal media, you're still liberal!"

MSNBC, inexplicably still in existence, hears the doleful cry, "liberal media!" and fires Phil Donahue just like that. They don't want to be the liberal media poster network. Hire Michael Savage and Joe Scarborough, quick. Think the right wing echo chamber will stop with the screeching calls of "Liberal media!"?

It doesn't matter how far to the right the media shifts. It isn't a relative test of whether a newspaper is moving to the right of some mythic center. It's a test of whether you are "with us or against us." You can't hire a couple assholes and fix your liberal media problems, apparently, you've got to go through the shift. "You've got to clean out your newsroom, clean out your editorial page, stifle the viewpoints that we don't like and for God's sake show the flag more!" No, it isn't easy to stop being the liberal media.

This is a process that the New York Times has undergone just as much as other papers, except for the last big shift. The editorial page hasn't fallen yet, like the Post's has in the last half-dozen years. But the New York Times reporters give the Bush administration the benefit of the doubt just as much as Posties or any other major papers' folks (and sometimes more than one Postie who hasn't lost the will to think, Dana Milbank). Times Editor (and then editorial page editor) Howell Raines was relentless and vicious during much of the second Clinton administration, and Nicholas Kristof has jiggled on the edge of left-right conversion so many times, I'm tired of writing letters to the editor about that wishy-washy waste. And don't get me started on Tom Friedman.

Now, the right wing echo chamber is gearing up for a perfect opportunity to execute a deathblow on the so-called liberal New York Times. The sound will be deafening, and if the right is successful, the changes in the paper will seem subtle at first. Krugman's columns will sound more shrill, and maybe he'll bolt the paper altogether. People will start talking about how the local coverage is getting better; that's code for how they don't want to talk about how the national coverage sounds a lot like Fox News.

Jayson Blair will spend the rest of his life apologizing for his lies. Here are two he can start with: sorry for opening the door for the right wing to attack affirmative action unjustly by my stupid actions; sorry for leaving the door open for the right wing to kill the last marginally progressive major media voice in America.

I'm sure you're sorry Jayson. But you're not as sorry as us.

Politics: The Christian Way

This New York Times item about a journalist at a small Christian college in Georgia goes a long way to explaining the rocky relationship some Christians have with their own faiths.

Joel Elliott, a student at Toccoa Falls College in Georgia, discovered that the University's president, Donald O. Young, doesn't have the master's degree he claims on his resume.

Elliott confronted the president in an interview, and the president told him that it was a mistake that the degree was on his resume. Everybody knew that he didn't have an advanced degree, Young said.

The reporter then asked a trustee, who said the mistake wasn't common knowledge, and that Young wouldn't have made the first cut without an advanced degree. This story ends well: the reporter writes his story, there is a little stuggle, but the president resigns his post.

The rub comes in the Times' interview with the David G. Reese, the academic dean of the school, who serves as its spokesman. Read his preachy, derisive remarks:

But not everyone on campus is so approving. Dr. Reese, for example, says that Mr. Elliott found himself at a fork in the road between the Christian way and the way of a newspaperman, and chose newspaperman. "The prescription that Jesus gives us in the Gospel of Matthew if we find someone overtaken in a sin, or who has wronged us, is to go to them, privately, and if they recognize it and show a readiness to make it right, you've accomplished your mission," Dr. Reese said. "Joel's view was that it would all be swept under the rug. That is a choice he had to make."

He added: "As a Christian, I feel it could have been better handled."

It betrays some of the invisibility and self-delusion that permeates religion. Many are taught that religion revolves around the simple concept of faith, a belief in something of which you have no proof. But this wasn't a question of deciding between the Christian way and some other way. And there was no crisis of faith. Even by Reese's own standards, the young journalist passed the test created in the bible scripture so self-righteously quoted above. He privately went to the president and got snowed.

That he can impugn the motives of a reporter who bucks the leadership of his school by telling the truth is startling to me. That telling the truth, and defying a liar who had deceived the whole community, should be regarded as something other than the Christian thing is unthinkable.

Joel Elliott confesses at the end of the piece to be struggling a little with his beliefs and the rocky time he had addressing this story. If I could send him my words, I would tell him that in terms of faith, his commitment to the truth is part and parcel of that faith. Truth is the elusive chimera that journalists are constantly seeking. And believing in your religious denomination or your fellow man all require leaps of faith. This young journalist took a leap, landed hard on the truth and now has a new perspective. And no preaching false interpretations of scripture can change that now.

Politics: Unbelievable

This came up before the weekend: It's the story of a settled lawsuit and a student with a disability. She was preparing to graduate first in her class, when the school proposed that she share her Valedictorian honors at her high school with the other top kids in the class. It appears that some parents complained because this student, whose immune disease represents a disability which precludes her from taking, say, physical education courses, or muddling up her schedule with extra-curriculars that could detract from her school work. Without gym, the student was able to pile on more regular academic classes, and therefore, these parents argued, drive up her GPA.

I had to read this thing about a half-dozen times because I kept gagging from the unbelievable self-centeredness of these motherf*ckers. Honest to God, you’re going to claim that because this student has to live FOR THE REST OF HER LIFE with this disability that she is somehow getting away with something and doesn’t deserve to be Valedictorian? Apparently, that’s exactly what they did, convincing the principle and school board or whomever to let this student know that she wouldn’t be the sole Valedictorian even though her GPA clearly indicated that she was first in the class. No, they would have a couple other students stand as Valedictorians as well.

Apparently, these school administrators hadn’t yet learned the little lessons about how people who are different us aren’t any less valuable as people. Maybe they missed those crucial episodes of friggin’ Sesame Street, for chrissakes. Anyhow, these boneheads — who shouldn’t be running a goddamn 7-11 let alone a school district — got their asses rightfully sued. Maybe the parents were just so insistent, but I have a feeling it was more than that. It was a case of ‘you’re either with us or against us, and that kid isn’t, like, a real person, she’s a freak, right?’ And then it was, ‘you can’t have that freakshow up on the stage giving the speech, can you? My kid won a baseball trophy and only date-raped two underclassmen, and everbody knows that the Miller’s daughter is going to Harvard and is guaranteed a cheerleading trophy this summer at nationals. You can’t tell me just because this kid can’t go out for gym and is taking 6 classes that she’s gonna be valedictorian in front of my kid?

And then it went. But the kid sued. And this month, she’s going to be the valedictorian of her graduating class.

Of course, any worthwhile experience she may have taken from high school is gone. She may have struggled for twelve years with her disability and the kids calling her names and the teachers acting like she was mentally and not physically incapacitated, but she had, before this, managed to cordon off a few useful memories that she was planning to take to college where everything else would be forgotten.

Now she will stand on that stage and deliver a speech that, if she’s smart, will reflect on this whole disaster. She won’t name names, but everybody knows who they are. And she will tell them that there are no hard feelings, and she will talk about the future, and how much she has learned from her four years in high school, and how though we’re all going our own separate ways, we will always have the time we spent become adults at Walker high or wherever.

And then she should leave that auditorium, stadium or arena, and never look back at those sons of bitches. They should soak in their own marinade of guilt and bigotry. And their kids should be ashamed.

Politics: American Justice

The Associated Press is reporting that "President Bush on Tuesday denounced the bombings in Saudi Arabia as the work of 'killers whose only faith is hate' and vowed that those responsible 'will learn the meaning of American justice.'"

Presumably, the American justice of which he speaks is different from the kind doled out to the investment firm Bear Stearns which waited a full two weeks before violating the agreement barring firms from using their 'impartial' stock analysts to push IPOs. Perhaps they too will soon learn the "meaning of American justice." Only, American justice for them translates loosely as 'tax shelter in the Caymans.'

Politics: Yeah, No Problems Here, Thanks

One of the most disturbing arguments floating up in regards to this spring's Supreme Court debate on Affirmative Action is the one most easily debunked: that the lingering effects of racism which Affirmative Action is designed to counteract don't exist. This argument claims that America has become a race-blind place where opportunities are available to all equally, and no one judges people by the color of their skin anymore.

Apparently, some vandals in Jacksonville feel differently:

The city that calls itself "The Bold New City of the South" was reminded of its troubled racial past when vandals spray painted racist graffiti on the campaign headquarters of a black mayoral candidate.

It happened earlier this month, when similar graffiti also were discovered on the sign outside the office of a white Republican who supported the black Democratic candidate, Nat Glover.

If America was a perfect place, we wouldn't need laws protecting people from discrimination, hatred and bigotry. But we're far from perfect.

Politics: I Want All Attorneys General to Have Senses of Humor

The Washington Post covers the Texas Democratic legislators who are putting the kibosh on Republican redistricting efforts by bolting Austin. The best quote is the last one, from NM's AG:

Today, New Mexico Attorney General Patricia Madrid said lawyers for Perry asked her if Texas Rangers might be allowed to make arrests in New Mexico. Madrid, a Democrat, said no. "Nonetheless," she added in a statement, "I have put out an all-points bulletin for law enforcement to be on the lookout for politicians in favor of health care for the needy and against tax cuts for the wealthy."

Politics: On the Run

I guess the War on Terror is working like a charm so far.



When I was a kid, we lived in a western compound in Saudi Arabia. My father worked for a hospital there, and the clashes between the Westerners and the locals were all cultural; none featured C4 or AK-47s.

Politics: Judging Georgie

Despite the Washington Post's non-my-wife-related transgressions, this weekend was otherwise good for one of your truly's pet issues: the absolute ideological wretchedness of President Bush's judicial nominees. Let's read together:

That nice charity-case Salon.com covers the not-so-closeted racism of better-luck-next-time Mississippi judicial nominee Charles Pickering, who Bush renominated to a seat on the ultra-conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals mere weeks after hanging Trent Lott out to dry on civil rights concerns. Looking back, I guess both the people who were convinced that Bush was sincerely concerned about Lott's misdeeds have now had their eyes opened wide. Lott was punished for letting the truth slip, but that doesn't change the truth itself.

Pickering's a real peach:

In 1990, for instance, when he was successfully nominated as a federal judge for the southern district of Mississippi, Pickering testified that he had had no contact with the commission and knew little about its operations. This was false, as the commission's subsequently released files show. In 2002, Pickering attempted to correct his false testimony, saying that he had contacted the commission in 1972 because he was concerned about possible Ku Klux Klan infiltration of a union in his hometown. This too was false: Commission records show that Pickering actually contacted the commission about union infiltration by a well-known civil rights organization, not the KKK.

Comme-ci, comme-ca, eh Chuck? Got Klan in yer union? Yeah, I'm sure all sorts of white Republicans were stepping up in 1972 to complain that the Ku Klux Klan had infiltrated their union. Right after that, Pickering was going to start a Mississippi chapter of the Black Panthers

Anyhow, the next thing I wanted to mention was a pair of hits from the New York Times. There is something of a discussion going on at Atrios about the New York Times being a target for the right, which is funny because it’s reporting is sometimes reviled on the left, as well. I don’t want to weigh in here, because I think it’s a larger argument, but suffice to say that I don’t think I’ve ever met a newspaper that agreed with everything I thought, and at times when I’m reading something that doesn’t challenge me a little, and take a reasoned dissent from time to time, I get bored.

That said, I thought they hit a pair of homers this Sunday and Monday. First, read the editorial of the paper on President Bush’s so-called judicial crisis. Read this tidbit:

The only "crisis" at hand is that the White House is having trouble getting its most politically extreme nominees confirmed. What kind of nominees are Senate Democrats balking at? One, an Arkansas anti-abortion activist, has written that women should be subordinate to men. Another argued, as a Justice Department lawyer, that Bob Jones University should keep its tax-exempt status even though it discriminated against blacks. Senators who demand that federal judges have a record of standing up for equality for women and minorities are not obstructing — they are doing their jobs.

President Bush backed a proposal by Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, to change the Senate rules, effectively ending filibusters for judicial nominees. Filibusters, which prevent Senate action through endless debate, have a long tradition, including use against judicial nominations. Republicans helped lead a filibuster in 1968 that stopped Abe Fortas from becoming chief justice of the United States. And just three years ago, Republicans tried to use a filibuster to block Richard Paez, a Clinton nominee who took four years to be confirmed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Senator Frist, who now questions the constitutionality of the filibuster, was one of only 14 senators to vote in favor of a filibuster at the time. Mr. Frist now says he was only seeking more debate.

Second was Bob Herbert’s column this morning on Bush’s judges, and references the same two who are discussed in the first graph above, Carolyn Kuhl (whose nomination was appropriately skewered by her hometown newspaper last week) and Leon Holmes. Holmes is a real special fellow:

Mr. Holmes has a problem with women. He doesn't see them as equals. "The wife is to subordinate herself to her husband," he has written. The woman, in Mr. Holmes's view, "is to place herself under the authority of the man."

Those who adopt the "feminist principle" of the equality of the sexes, he has said, "are contributing to the culture of death."

Mr. Holmes, a lawyer, is an absolute opponent of abortion, even in cases of rape. He once said that "conception from rape occurs with approximately the same frequency as snowfall in Miami."

Judge Holmes will be offering his caring insights in rape counseling all month long down in his Arkansas courtroom, where hopefully he will be compelled to remain by the Senate (but don’t hold your breath).

Finally, looking southward to one of Bush’s most loathsome nominees, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution called Alabama Attorney General William Pryor "unfit to judge”.

Then the Tuscaloosa News commented on Pryor’s Supreme Court brief in the Texas sodomy case, wherein he out-Santorumed Santorum by lumping “homosexuality in with abusive crimes such as child pornography, bestiality, incest and pedophilia puts him well within the camp of recent nominees to the federal bench but well outside the mainstream of American life.”

Finally, even the Huntsville Times had to point out that “Churches are supposed to promote faith, and courtrooms, justice. If Pryor is confirmed to the 11th Circuit, he would do well to honor this distinction.”

Now I know that the battle over the federal judiciary seems kind of arcane, but there are rights on the line. I’m glad to see that sometimes, some people are noticing. (Special thanks to How Appealing for some of the links.)

Personal: Wife in the Post

Say what you will about the Washington Post, but their Bob Levey has perfected the regular folk columnist style from his perch on the comics page for more than 20 years. Today, in a family first, my beloved wife is Levey's lead:

Katrena Henderson would probably scoff if you accused her of being Wonder Woman.

She is seven months pregnant and, by her own account, "a bit big for my stage in this process." She's hardly in shape to leap tall buildings in a single bound, or to borrow trouble.

But trouble seems to be borrowing her. She says that spring 2003 has brought an epidemic of belly-rubbers.

These are busybodies of both sexes who spy the bowling ball in Katrena's midsection and think that they have a right to pat it.

Without asking.

In public.

Even though they are total strangers.

Katrena is totally outraged, of course. But the way she gets even is positively ingenious.

She rubs back.

Love you baby. You're a riot.

Politics: Come On. Seriously. Get. Out.

Some dumbass nominated Bush and Blair for the Nobel Prize for Peace this week. This is, of course, after Bush and other members of the White House criticized the Nobel committee and its recipient last year Jimmy Carter, for using the Prize to speak out on political matters, like, say, starting a war "preemptively" and triggering the death of a whole bunch of people in the process.

But this is of a piece, you see, with the transformation that this war and its trappings have brought. It frightens me because I'm bringing a kid into this world (and my wife would point out that he's comin' whether I'm comfortable with it or not), and this is a world where the old rules are gone. The bully wins, and he doesn't wait until school's out to beat your ass.

And as a result, the American people aren't as worried about the evil we live within. There was something profound about the period between the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the invasion of Iraq. We left that war, despite its somewhat dubious outcome, with a profound sense of what was wrong, and what was right. The pendulum marked its furthest point, and we were the white-hat wearing country fighting for truth and justice.

We knew that fighting a clear, threatening and shocking evil was right. The evil we fought was one that demonstrated a supreme disdain for life, plain and simple. The appetite was voracious, but more importantly, the ability to satisfy that appetite was very well developed. We came out of that conflict with a clear sense that when right was challenged, we arrived at her side in defense.

But then came all those things that seemed different. We were fighting for the side of right in Korea, but against a proxy villain. Then in Vietnam, we were weighing different challenges against one another, and the relative costs of getting involved were seemingly miscalculated, until it was too late to revise the calculations. The pendulum swung back.

At that point, we realized that there was watching to be done. Our own people were never going to have their words taken without salt, as it were. They had lied to us once, and that should have been the only chance they got. The left used its own nuclear option, spending the eighties fighting the surging American arsenal, and losing a bunch of battles while eventually winning the war.

And then we stopped watching. Maybe it was the damn peace and prosperity. But most of the nineties were difficult for left interest groups because the impression was created that, with a Democrat in the White House, well, we don't have to worry about anything. Enviros couldn't raise money, even though Clinton's EPA didn't do much better than Christine Whitman's is. God knows the nuclear watchdogs all took it in the teeth, even though Clinton poured dollars into defense.

But in any case, we just stopped paying attention. Those interest groups got smaller and smaller, despite the money flowing through the economy and funders at such a clip. Then, when Bush came in, the groups were fewer and more spare, and the money disappeared with Bush's recession.

But they're needed more than ever. Because we're going to give a big old thumbs up to nuclear weapons again because who wants to watch the government closely? Why bother? They've always acted in our best interests, right? And we're gonna have to ramp up our poisoning of millions of Americans with toxic chemicals from our pals at the former Chemical Manufacturers Association (now the much more banal-sounding American Chemistry Council).

We're going to let them go ahead and lie like dogs about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and then we're going to sit by while Rumsfeld and Cheney install an even better friend of Wolfowitz and Chalabi as the new Viceroy of Iraq:

What special expertise about Iraq or the Middle East is Bremer bringing to Iraq? None, says a former senior State Department official who has worked with Bremer. He is a "voracious opportunist with voracious ambitions," the official told Newsday. "What he knows about Iraq could not quite fill a thimble. What he knows about any part of the world would not fill a thimble. But what he knows about Washington infighting could fill three or four bushel baskets."

Sure. Nominate them for a Nobel Prize. If they don't win, maybe we'll invade Sweden and take it by force.

Politics: Edgar Out

Ex-Illinois Governor has bowed out of the running for the Illinois Senate seat being abandoned by Peter Fitzgerald. Read the AP piece, and thank your lucky stars.

Politics: I'm Gonna Start Me a Charity and Set to Discriminatin' Against Christians

Scary thought, right?

Not so fast, my friend. The band of whackjobs known affectionately in these parts as "The House of Representatives" is preparing to pass a law that will OK just that. The Workplace Investment Act is how America funds job training efforts. President Bush and his pals want to ensure that a religious charity can decide it won't hire, say, Muslims, and that's OK, even if it receives taxpayer money -- some of which may actually come from actual, non-bigots who may be concerned about this -- to do its work. Two good items about this piece today have two great quotes.

First, the Washington Post covers the impending vote, and quotes Maryland freshman Democrat Chris Van Hollen, who opposes the measure:

"I think most people would be horrified to open their local paper and find an ad that says, 'Hiring Christians only' or 'Protestants only' or 'Methodists only,' and they'd be even more horrified to learn that such ads are funded by taxpayer dollars," Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said. "That's what this legislation would allow."

But the quote of the day award goes to Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank, quoted in the Boston Globe: ''The notion that you need to allow religious groups to discriminate to receive federal funds is a lie,'' said Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Newton. ''If you dip your fingers in the federal till, you can't complain if a little democracy rubs off on you.''

Finally, the Globe combines its coverage of this stinky bit of legislation with coverage of a covert action by the Bush Administration to allow Department of Labor job training grants to be religious. Read:

In guidelines published on April 4, the Labor Department said the job training grants ''may not be used for instruction in religion or sacred literature, worship, prayer, proselytizing, or other inherently religious practices.''

''The services provided under these grants must be secular and nonideological,'' the guidelines said then.

But in amended guidelines published in the Federal Register on April 18, the words ''sacred literature'' were removed, along with the sentence saying that the services provided must be secular and nonideological.

So, you can job train by quoting from the Bible. You can take federal money to offer a "Jesus' Guide to Getting a Job." This rule wasn't, of course, enacted by Congress, but simply changed by the Bush White House. Why bother with democracy, when God is on your side?

Politics: Freedom of the Press

The LA Times this morning has a piece on the surge in ultra-conservative underground newspapers on college campuses lately. I'm a veteran of a college paper myself, and I think it's great that there are more newspapers out there. Too often, the college newspaper is dominated by weirdos, or run entirely by one guy and his friends, like a fraternity without the dues. More words on campus mean more opinions, more dialogue and therefore more of what many people think is the quintessential college experience.

But I am concerned with the way these new college papers appear to be front organizations for conservative political shops. This immediately slashes back across the benevolence of having increased, divergent voices on college campuses. Sadly, it appears that most of the new conservative college papers profiled in the LA Times piece are all designed to serve as frontline soldiers in the right's own war on free speech. Fight fire with fire, I guess.

For instance, take this excerpt, where a seminar leader from one of the conservative organizations seeding these new right-wing papers around the country asks a student a question:

"What do you want professors to feel when you call them up?" asked Owen Rounds, a former speechwriter for Rudolph Giuliani.

"Threatened," replied Duncan Wilson, a tousle-haired 19-year-old from the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.

Journalism, a good journalist will tell you, shouldn't be used as a club to beat subjects over the head. If I contacted a source, I wouldn't want him or her to be threatened, I would want him or her to answer my questions truthfully, and feel like my mission, to tell a story, is important to both of us.

Consider this one:

Duncan Wilson, the UNC Charlotte student, complained that college Republicans got less than $500 in student fees this year. The campus gay club got $2,241, which was used partly to put on a show featuring drag queens, he said.

Wilson, who started college at 16, was particularly incensed at his "Marxist" sociology professor. Would it be all right, he asked, to label the man "Public Enemy No. 1?"

Most disturbing, then, is the possibility that, to exercise the free speech rights of a conservative is to indict, intimidate and harass others exercising their rights. Many of the statements made by new right-wing journal editors cleave closely to the "everybody is a leftist, so it's my turn" philosophy, but they are making an assumption that is false: There has always been room for more than one belief, and your belief doesn't need to destroy or defeat another belief to get recognition.

Finally, the bit Atrios will love:

Another difference: The conservative political organizations that train the right-wing editors are better organized than ever. The Leadership Institute, which sponsored the North Carolina seminar, is one of three organizations that train and fund conservative journalists. Founded by Morton Blackwell, a former Reagan White House operative, the institute offers to pay the costs of printing first issues.

The Collegiate Network sponsors its own competition to honor journalism excellence. And in April, it announced its sixth annual Polly awards, recognizing "the excesses of college administrators and professors."

The organizations boast that their graduates have gone on to some of the most prestigious media outlets in the nation, including Esquire magazine, CNN, Time and Newsweek, as well as major metropolitan papers. Some see such "seeding" of the news media with conservatives as a welcome check on the liberalism of mainstream papers.

"I think it's great if more young conservatives are going into journalism," said Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post's media critic. Noting that journalism has traditionally attracted liberal students "who want to change the world," he said, "we can definitely use people who have different political and cultural points of view."

Since there aren't any now, Howie.

Politics: Cheney's 2004 Ticker

The AP is reporting that Vice President Dick Cheney will run with President Bush in 2004, lending credence to the theory that the vice president has, in fact, been replaced by a Cheney-talking robot.

Politics: 2x Standards

I’ve been thinking about the Madison Capitol Times piece I posted yesterday, regarding Karl Rove’s unbelievably brazen abuse of our fighting men and women for a crass political rally. Atrios has been running a pretty interesting conversation about Howie Kurtz’s remarkable double standard for Bush’s AWOL service record, and that in itself should make this president steer clear of aircraft carriers and the like. Clinton absorbed nothing but spite from the military during his full eight years in the White House, and it was understandable that he didn’t show up on flight decks all that often. Bush, for some reason, is regarded as every soldier’s favorite pal, as if he did anything to deserve that. The double standard is so evident as to sicken a casual observer. Bush signed up, stayed drunk and disappeared when his time to serve came along. Clinton received an extremely prestigious academic scholarship and was therefore out of the country during the years he would have served. Bush doesn’t pay no nevermind to high-minded “scholarship” talk, but he had some coke to snort and some “campaigns” to work on for the family, so his service debt had to be taken care of another way. By lying.

But here’s another double standard that this event brings to mind. Remember when Senator Paul Wellstone - the Senate’s only true liberal - died with his wife and child in a plane crash? And do you remember how many of his friends and allies attended a cathartic, powerful event where they talked about how strongly they wanted to protect his legacy, and preserve all of what he’d worked for before his death. And do you remember how stern-faced Republicans walked out when they realized that a wake for a great man lost wouldn’t follow the script of the past year and act like they were somehow sorry to stand for something? The gathered throng shouted themselves hoarse to pay tribute to their friends deepest beliefs, and pledged to the thundering din that they wouldn’t let the work of Senator Wellstone disappear like he had. Do you recall how the fulminating assholes of American journalism accused Wellstone’s friends and wellwishers of crass electioneering, and abusing the death of their friend.

Shouldn’t someone be pointing out that Bush is taking advantage of not one death, not five deaths, but the death of dozens of American troops, dozens of British troops, thousands of Iraqi civilians, and a handful of American and foreign journalists, not to mention the death of American credibility in several major international institutions, the death of diplomacy, and the near-death of that fundamental American freedom, dissent?

Politics: Rove's Propaganda Machine

Sorry so quiet today, kids. Things are busy.

Anyhow, check out the Madison Capitol Times' editorial on Karl Rove exploiting our fighting men and women. It's short, and I'm running the whole thing:

Rove Exploits the Military

President Bush's political adviser Karl Rove used taxpayer money to stage a rousing campaign event on the warship USS Abraham Lincoln on Thursday. Sailors returning from Iraq, who deserve sincere respect and appreciation, instead were used as props in a shameless exploitation of their service to our country. They were the backdrop for Bush, swaggering in full flight gear, to jet in for a tailhook landing on the Lincoln and later give a substance-free speech to the nation in front of a banner reading "Mission Accomplished."

Look for more scenes linking Bush with military emblems as Rove gears up for the 2004 re-election campaign, which will be all about the president's war leadership - since he has few other accomplishments to claim.

Our fighting men and women, many of whom are still in harm's way in Iraq, merit much more honor than to be cast in cameo roles as part of Karl Rove's propaganda machine.

Indeed.