Politics: Taking Out the Trash

Reuters has Admiral Poindexter (of Total Information Awareness and that whole Iran-Contra thing) resigning from the Defense Department.

Thus concludes by brief emergence from the pile of crap I'm still lodged under here at work. I'll write more sometime soon.

Politics: I Say, We Should All Retire Now, Too

A new GAO report explains how America's young people would be bearing the crushing brunt of President Bush's assinine tax cut and the resulting cuts in services, programs and retirement benefits. This is exacerbated by the fact that the leading edge of the baby boomer generation (many of whom double as our parents) are now heading into their dotage, retiring in droves in the next five years.

I say, let's give them a run for their money. I know I've got a new baby at home, so I may not qualify, but if those bums are gonna put pricks like Bush in the White House and stick us with the bill, why not try a little living at home for a while? You know, Fonz it up over the garage, raiding the fridge and breaking the needle in Dad's hifi? Because these folks screwed us, and otherwise, we have no recourse.

Politics: How Gross Can You Get?

What the hell kind of sick sons of b*tches does it take to come up with this plan?

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon (news - web sites) is setting up a stock-market style system in which investors would bet on terror attacks, assassinations and other events in the Middle East. Defense officials hope to gain intelligence and useful predictions while investors who guessed right would win profits.
[...]
The Pentagon office overseeing the program, called the Policy Analysis Market, said it was part of a research effort "to investigate the broadest possible set of new ways to prevent terrorist attacks." It said there would be a re-evaluation before more money was committed.

The market would work this way. Investors would buy and sell futures contracts — essentially a series of predictions about what they believe might happen in the Mideast. Holder of a futures contract that came true would collect the proceeds of investors who put money into the market but predicted wrong.

A graphic on the market's Web page showed hypothetical futures contracts in which investors could trade on the likelihood that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (news - web sites) would be assassinated or Jordanian King Abdullah II would be overthrown.

Is there any chance that whatever piece of garbage at the Pentagon who came up with this idea shouldn't maybe be working on a plan to keep our GODDAMN SOLDIERS FROM GETTING THEIR ASSES BLOWN OFF BY ROCKET PROPELLED GRENADES EVERY DAMN DAY?!?!

Politics: Freedom of Jack

Listen to Eric Westervelt's report on the Gestapo-tactics of Special Forces troops after a failed raid in the hunt for Saddam Hussein. It should sicken anyone left who believed we were trying to spread some kind of democracy in our bloodthirsty version of a new empire.

Politics: Annals of Evil: the Terrorism Report

Here's where you can learn exactly how badly our government failed in the run-up to the September 11th terrorist attacks:

The Washington Post news analysis explains what the CIA and the White House redacted from the document. Dana Priest's piece points out that information about President Bush's knowledge is missing. It also once again outlines the report's broad strokes and where information went into a hole again and again. That's the White House. Another major point somewhat obscured is the role of the Saudis in the life and proliferation of al Q.

The Saudis, for their money, say there is no such thing as a Saudi role.

Last night, on the NBC Nightly News, Jim Whats-his-name (the unpronounceable last-name of the Pentagon correspondent) had an okay segment about the Saudi question. I can't find an electronic version, but here's what NBC is showing off now.

A little sidelight about this issue? We still haven't integrated our terrorism watch lists, the conflict between which is a leading factor in our inability to effectively track people who actually think could do us harm. Not to mention those of us not interested in being harrassed every time we fly on an airplane.

Politics: Evil Day!

I've got several leads on some super-evil goings-on today. Therefore, from the Washington DC offices of the Liquid List, we bring you the all-evil edition!

We'll start with this nutty, nutty entry from one of evil's greatest hits, Tom DeLay.

Representative and Majority Leader DeLay, whose days are normally filled with low-key stuff like thwarting a child tax credit for low-income folks and selling his influence to the highest right-wing bidder, is taking some time out of his busy schedule to inject his loathesome brand of partisan politics into the Middle East Conflict. DeLay will walk the Levant, visiting Israel, Jordan and Iraq to spread the message that the Palestinians aren't ready for statehood. But DeLay's reasons are best stated in this quote from a New York Times piece offered as he prepared to depart on his trip:

"I'm sure there are some in the administration who are smarter than me, but I can't imagine in the very near future that a Palestinian state could ever happen," he said in an interview today, as he prepared to leave for a weeklong official tour.

"I can't imagine this president supporting a state of terrorists, a sovereign state of terrorists," he said. "You'd have to change almost an entire generation's culture."

And you may wonder why DeLay is so anti-Palestinian?

As an evangelical Christian, he is the most prominent member in Washington of the Christian Zionist movement, a formidable bloc of conservative Republicans whose support for Israel is based on biblical interpretations, sometimes putting them to the right of Israeli government. His persistent skepticism about Mr. Bush's peace initiative indicates that the president may yet have to wrestle with his right flank in pursuing a plan that ultimately calls for a Palestinian state.

In fact, DeLay and several other bible-thumping elected officials believe that eratz Israel must be completed in order to hasten the coming of the messiah. So we're talking about, just in case anybody left their scorecards at home, the fiery death in eternal hellfire and damnation of everyone who hasn't repented and taken the Lord Jesus Christ as their one true savior, including all the Muslims and the Jews in Israel for whom Mr. DeLay roots so fervently.

However, the Israeli government is supporting Bush's "Road Map" to peace. How did DeLay take the news?

"You could have knocked me over," he said, when Mr. Sharon declared in May that the time had come to divide the land of Israel with the Palestinians, a position that Mr. DeLay has long abhorred with much of the same thunder that used to be Mr. Sharon's trademark.

Even now, he said, he thinks that the Palestinians must go much further in renouncing terrorism before a meaningful peace can be achieved.

"So far, I can't be critical, but I do have grave concerns," he said. "I have watched peace process after peace process after peace process, which is what happens when the process drives everything, not the peace. When they talk about a road map, I question whether this is a road map based on the president's speech, or a road map based on some State Department concept of another peace process."

That's it. Must be those State Department idiots, right, Tom? They've only spent their entire careers learning how to negotiate with people, rarely using heavy weaponry or calling the police when they don't get their way.

But we don't need negotiation, chit-chat and State Departments, do we Tom? We just need power, right?

"In the Arab world before 9/11, they thought the United States was a paper tiger," said Mr. DeLay, who will also make a brief visit to military commanders in Baghdad next week. "We had a president at the time whose retaliation at terrorism was throwing a few bombs in the desert. They laughed at that. And now they see this is real stuff and real power. And they respect power. If the experiment going on in Iraq comes off, it will have a huge, huge impact in the Arab world, showing people who want freedom and self-government and education that they can have it."

Freedom from torture, random killings and detentions, Tom? Because Amnesty says we're doing that in Iraq, picking up where Uday and Qusay left off. Is it freedom of speech? Because our soldiers putting their lives on the line in Iraq don't have that. Or do you mean freedom of the press? Nope, we took care of that as well.

I told you it would be evil day, didn't I?

Music: More on Masked

Stephanie Zacharek has a thorough review of the film in today's Salon. Do the premium thing and read it.

Music: Mr. Dylan, Masked and Anonymous

The New York Times has a review of the new Larry Charles movie featuring Bob Dylan, "Masked and Anonymous." As a huge Dylan fan, I absolutely must find a way to sneak away from my family and see this picture. The review is middling, but I don't care. Even the reviewer says Dylan fans won't care. So, if I manage to see it, I'll give you all a report.

Politics: From Slime, Slime

The Senate Judiciary Committee sent the nomination of Bill Pryor to the floor this morning. Senator Hatch, in collusion with several other Republican members, dealt a serious blow, frankly, to the rules that body must obey by essentially railroading the committee into a vote.

After Hatch refused to yield to the Democrats concerns under Committee Rule 4. Rule 4 says that "debate shall be terminated if the motion to bring the matter to a vote without further debate passes with ten votes in the affirmative, one of which must be cast by the minority." That is to say, in this situation, at least one Democrat needs to vote yes to stop talking and call a vote on sending Pryor's nomination to the floor. There was no Democrat supporting, and Hatch refused to acknowledge this fact. Here's the rule in its entirety:

The Chairman shall entertain a non-debatable motion to bring a matter before the Committee to a vote. If there is objection to bring the matter to a vote without further debate, a rollcall vote of the Committee shall be taken, and debate shall be terminated if the motion to bring the matter to a vote without further debate passes with ten votes in the affirmative, one of which must be cast by the minority.

The debate also included Senators Sessions, Hatch and Cornyn adding fuel to the false fire (started by Boyden Gray's Committee for Justice) that Pryor is being opposed because he is a Catholic.

I've read several reports on Pryor from groups on the left, and I don't see a single reference to his religion. There is no, "Pryor, who is Catholic, opposes abortion, even in cases of rape and incest." No, it's just "Pryor opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest." That's not attacking somebody's religion, that's attacking someone who will have to look at the Constitution, not his bible, to determine whether Americans can live their lives and rule their own bodies.

So it was ugly. They broke the rules, even though Senator Hatch himself admitted that he was a much bigger fan of the rule when Clinton was president and Hatch was the ranking minority member on the committee. They accused the Democrats on the Judiciary committee of anti-Catholic bias, even though Senators Leahy, Kennedy, Biden, and Durbin are all Catholic as well. It was Durbin who summed up the hearing best. No transcript is available yet, but he roughly said the following, which I can't stress enough is a paraphrase:

What kind of service we're doing to Bill Pryor? A shabby injection of unseemly ads regarding religion, an unfinished investigation of serious ethical questions, and the icing on the cake is scrapping the rules. What a perfect send-off for the nominee."

I couldn't have said it better myself.

Politics: Excellent Point

Lambert over at Atrios makes a great point about the killing of Saddam Hussein's sons. Lambert builds the case that we should have surrounded, waited out and eventually seized Qusay and Oday, and brought them to justice in a way that would enhance our standing in about a million different directions. Here's a good bit, but read the whole thing:

Great powers that survive over centuries know that "soft power" is both more efficient and more effective than "hard power."

Bringing Saddam's sons to justice would have reinforced true "American justice." The Iraqi people would have seen Saddam's sons in captivity, and seen justice in action (which they have not seen much of). Our soft power would have been reinforced.

The strategy of bringing a dictator to justice instead of killing him worked in the Balkans with Slobadan Milosevic (but since Clinton did that, it must be wrong). Again, why not go with what works?

Admin: Beauty

Rad new pix of my son Reid up at Hardlyborn. This kid's just a phenom. But I'm a little biased.

Politics: Quick Hits

A couple few quick ones this morning, owing to pressing business at the real job:

1. Pryor nomination will be voted on this morning in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Sadly, Pryor's real record of unbelievably right-wing activism from the office of Attorney General, from his speeches denouncing the Supreme Court and Roe v. Wade to his breathless support for Decalogue-crazy Judge Roy Moore, will all be swept aside because questions about his ethics and fundraising tactics appear to sell papers. I think the efforts of the Republican Attorneys General Association to raise money from corporations that were also subject to state litigation is dispicable, but on Pryor's dance card, duplicitous fundraising is fairly far down the list.

2. The New York Times assembles a Issa-as-Bush piece. As an east coast liberal, I'm supposed to gobble this sh*t up, I know, but if you look closely, you can see the implications nationwide. When the New York Times covers somebody like Rep. Darrell Issa (who is spearheading all this recall garbage in California), the standard NYTimes method of laying out information becomes a de facto judgement of the subject. And this judgement is part of the low-expectations, "liberals hate us" game that the GOP now plays. It wins with snarky frat guys because the people who hate the snarky frat guys are the people (like myself) who can't believe how easy life is for a snarky frat guy. Simpsons fans will recognize the modified "Frank 'Grimey' Grimes syndrome;" they may also recognize the bulging vein on my forehead when I think too long about how the world somehow flipped backwards. Now the smart people are reviled and the dumb are revered. Issa's no idiot (for some reason, the Times quotes his I.Q., and, after explaining he's dyslexic, quotes him saying "I have to work real hard to get things when I read.") but this is a guy with a car theft arrest at age 27.

Still, even the Times, as it simultaneously talks down and therefore pumps up Darrell Issa, can't resist falling into the Bush-time travel trap. Read the front page blurb as it appeared at 8:54 am:

Darrell Issa, the millionaire congressman who is bankrolling the effort to recall Gov. Gray Davis, is facing nagging questions about two arrests for car theft in his youth.

In his youth? He was 27! That isn't your youth by any measure on the planet. Pretty soon, that's going to be the total lifespan of people in Liberia for chrissakes. I know Bush's youthful indiscretions ended when he was forty and within fifteen years, he was president, but should that be the national standard for high office?

3. I know we killed Uday and Qusay. The LA Times and the Washington Post all breath a sigh of relief on behalf of President Bush, and predict that now that we've killed these two maniacs that everyone in Iraq hated already, we won't have to worry about that insurgency we've been fighting for the past two months. Or maybe not. Maybe the continued attacks (two more dead today, plus nine wounded) have less to do with restoring the Saddam Hussein government than with what comes after. Wouldn't it make sense for the Iranis who have carefully fostered exiled Shiite leaders to support action to strengthen the Shiite hand in an utterly chaotic Iraq? Aren't there about a million other groups of people with guns and bombs interested in something other than an occupation force in Iraq?

4. This is good for democracy: US forces shut down a newspaper in Baghdad today. The paper was printing some truly inciteful stuff, publishing an article a week and a half ago entitled "Death to all spies and those who cooperate with the U.S.; killing them is religious duty." So we shut them down, in an effort to protect, we claim, the Iraqi people and our own people there.

My question is, don't we need to undertake these kinds of tasks with more finesse? Can we do nothing more than, as neighbors reported, break down the door, ransack the office and detain the editor? Do we absolutely have no tact whatsoever? Did we honestly believe that this newspaper editor, who ten days ago printed some inciteful items, was going to be hiding guerrillas in his office? Will these kinds of activities make the lives of regular soldiers in Iraq easier or harder?

Politics: Secret Message: Bloody Death Good For Business

Several news items have cropped up (including this Reuters item here) exclaiming with glee that the bloody death of Saddam Hussein's two sons (and good riddance) is somehow good for the stock market. The pieces all talk about this intangible link between good news and bad news, and how that affects the stock market.

This is just sickening, if you stop and think about it. "We caught and killed a terrible pair of men who exacted awful pain on their fellow countrymen for years. I'm going to buy some Texas Instruments stock to celebrate!" The oblique conclusion you could draw is that the war has been seeming for the recent past like a bad idea, and the people who buy and sell stock were concerned that their favorite president was going to get in trouble for getting involved in this war. Now that we killed Uday and Qusay, their favorite president isn't in such trouble.

I guess I just resent the idea that this killing, which is strategically meaningless but could provide a huge public relations boon to a White House honestly concerned about re-election, is actually good for American business. Where do I go to look up what kind of impacts various killing has on the market? What was the market ramification of the hundreds of dead Liberians this week? What about the salsa-singer index? Does anyone register the stock-market implications of a dozen and a half dead in Kashmir?

Politics: The Truth About DC Vouchers, and Who Doesn't Get It.

The DC voucher debate has been raging here, as much as is possible considering that there's a war on in Iraq and Liberia is about to descend into bloody chaos.

But the question of vouchers in DC is a brakish one of semi-state and local politics. The reality about the vouchers seems hard to pinpoint until you look at the facts in the clear light of day: They've never been proven effective in enhancing student performance, despite all the assertions to the contrary. The student with an involved, connected, quick-on-the-draw parent may be able to take advantage of them, but the rest of the students are left behind in a ghetto-ized school which is essentially written off as a failure. The money spent on voucher programs is far better applied to the needs of the existing public schools.

The right wing loves vouchers for several reasons. They allow religious institutions to receive government money, violating the First Amendment and providing a boost to the teaching of intolerance and close-mindedness that often occur in some religious institutions. Vouchers also represent an important step for the right wing toward their ultimate (and not secret) goal of privatizing education and other parts of the government, removing accountability and ending America's commitment to our young people.

Back to DC. Here, a voucher program is being pushed by right-wing senators because voucher proponents long for a majority-black city on which to hang the sign "voucher success story." This will allow them to bulldoze vouchers into other cities and advance the goals outlined above. This time, it may work.

DC's mayor Tony Williams has supported the vouchers, largely because he was lured into believing that there would be a ton of free money for the schools in the District to go along with the program. Of course, the amount of money committed to non-vouchers in DC kept shrinking, and the voucher program kept growing. (For a while there, it looked like there would be $40 million for vouchers and nothing for the public schools. Nice deal, Tony.)

The most preposterous thing about the new vouchers supporters (DC's School Board Chair and City Council Education Committee Chair both support the bill) is that they are, in effect, admitting that we've lost the fight to improve schools in Washington, DC. Vouchers are just that: an admission that kids can't get a good education here. We have charter schools, so choice isn't an issue. Students can select out of regular classes and enroll in a foreign-language immersion curriculum, or an arts-only curriculum, or a skills-oriented technical curriculum, all through DC charter schools.

No, this round of vouchers represents the intersection of two unfortunate realities. Right-wingers have never and will never relinquish control over DC, and DC's own elected officials don't think we can fix the problems we have here, because we can't overcome corruption, graft, ignorance, and laziness. DC's leaders are embracing the tacit message Congress has always sent this city: "These people (most of whom happen to be black) can't take care of themselves, so we won't burden them with confidence, or a vote on the House floor, or statehood, or anything else. They can't run their DMV, so how can they run their city or their schools?"

Add to this mixture the inwelcome sight of a formerly progressive Senator dragging herself to the center, presumably in an attempt to curry favor with the right-wingers in power, or to save her from the blood-thirsty neo-conservative mob running roughshod over her home state. Read Dianne Feinstein's op-ed in this morning's Washington Post entitled Let DC Try Vouchers.

In it, DiFi sells out (and not for the first time) any liberal cred she may have had to appease the right-wing by endorsing the DC voucher plan. She couches her support in all the right sounds, blah-blah-blah, but in the end, her argument is as weak as they come:

If supporting the mayor's proposal will help us to better understand what works and what doesn't in terms of educating our youth, then I believe Williams should be allowed to undertake this experiment.

Policymakers can't do this to children. DC's kids have spent the last twenty-five years understanding "what works and what doesn't," and continuing to experiment on them should not only offend any parent worth their salt, it shouldn't be permitted to serve as a rallying cry for the right wing.

The worst thing of it is, the DC voucher program will handsomely achieve both right-wing goals. Because DC's schools are so very compromised, and have long-resisted half-hearted efforts to reform them, this voucher program will be the camel's nose for a full school privatization venture -- like the rapidly failing Philadelphia privatization experiment. And the amount of the vouchers will ensure that the private schools DC students can attend are only religious ones. Parents believing the the "miracle" of so-called school choice will have their Southeast-DC born sons waltzing into Washington's prestigious St. Albans School (annual tuition: $21,837), the equally-prestigious Sidwell Friends School (annual tuition: $20,975) or the highly regarded Capitol Hill Day School (annual tuition: $16,750.00) have another think coming. With only a $7,500 voucher in hand, you'll have better luck trying a Catholic school like Archbishop Carroll (annual tuition: $6,000 for Catholics and $6,250 for non-Catholics), or one of the Center City Consortium Schools, whose annual tuition for one child hover between $3,100 and $3,500.

(Posted at naw)

Politics: Endgame

It looks as if Liberia is going to get a lot uglier real soon. The AP is reporting that the capitol city of Monrovia is on the brink of falling to a renewed rebel barrage of mortar-fire, some of which is falling on the U.S. embassy compound there. There is also news now that 4,500 U.S. marines and sailors are under orders to position themselves closer to Liberia, in the event President Bush decides to send troops in.

I am concerned that the numbers don't match up. The rebel barrage on Monrovia has squeezed an astounding half of the nation's 3 million strong people into the city, creating an instant urban refugee crisis, regardless of who controls the capitol. 10,000 refugees live across the street from the U.S. Embassy in a diplomatic complex. 30,000 people have taken up permanent residence in the football stadium in Monrovia. Those numbers lead a logical person to believe that any U.S. troops visiting Liberia are only there for one reason, pointed out by a Liberian here:

"The coming of additional American troops is important," one man, Moses Smith, 32, said. "But what we need is not those just coming to mind American property, but those who will be deployed on the ground to give us the feeling that peace is really coming."

You hit the nail on the head, there, Moses. A boat with 4,500 American servicemen is coming, and the 2,000 marines might well get off that boat (seamen rarely deploy on land), but they are going to get a couple of key assets out of the country, and then they are going to get themselves the hell out of the country.

Two weeks ago, 2,000 U.S. troops would have affected the dynamic of the seige, potentially spelling the end of Charles Taylor's presidency and creating incentive for the rebels to slow their attack. Now it is too late; Monrovia could well be a bloodbath before daybreak.

(Posted at naw)

Politics: Better, Better

The newest CNN poll numbers on President Bush are a refreshing antidote to the item I posted earlier about the GOP's big eyes for 2004.

I know that some blogs really like to follow the polls. You'll notice that we here at the Liquid List are far less dependent on our statistically manipulated hunks of news. Polls reflect a populace that is barely informed and fickle about what they deign to care about. The poll-respondents, like an unfortunate majority of Americans, aren't thoughtful or well-informed. Most jarring is the final graph of the CNN item:

But a majority of those polled, 66 percent, said Bush is very or somewhat likely to win the election regardless of how they cast their vote.

(Sigh.) Back to the drawing board, I guess.

Politics: Your Rights, Or Not

The New York Times got its hands on a new DOJ Inspector General's report on civil rights abuses under the USA Patriot Act. I'm not sure what to make of the numbers. The IG boils the complaints down to about 34 cases that are unimpeachable, documentable, credible civil rights complaints in the last six months. This includes "accusations that Muslim and Arab immigrants in federal detention centers had been beaten." During that same six months (actually 12/16-6/15), more than a thousand complaints were made, but many could not be proven, or were easily dismissed.

Buried in the story are some pretty important allegations. First, it is made amply clear that the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General is overwhelmed with work since 9/11. It's a pretty safe bet, then, that the threshold for investigations and actions by the department is pretty high. (Projecting, you can assume that civil rights action would only come is a prisoner was, say, threatened by his treating physician, perhaps with the doctor saying, "if I was in charge, I would execute every one of you" to the prisoner during a physical examination. Read the story. This actually happened.) Second is the fact that the Department of Justice and the Bureau of Prisons is attempting to cover up civil rights violations of prisoners in its care. The article explains that the IG's report doesn't explicitly scold the Department for this behavior, but it notes that an internal inquiry into allegations of repeated prisoner abuse had been closed, and the accused officer initially cleared, without anyone interviewing the inmates or the implicated officer.

Hmm. I feel safer already.

Politics: Depressories

Whatever you do, don't go read Janet Hook's LA Times item about the GOP's big plans to take over the world. Unless you're prepared to go out and raise some Democratic cash, bigtime.

Politics: Voucher Success Story?

From the CQ Mid-Day Update:

The Lexington HERALD-LEADER reported that more than a dozen parents have removed their children from an alternative, private school located in a rural upstate county amid complaints about disciplinary tactics by one teacher. Claire McConnell, the daughter of Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., was accused of strapping one child into a chair with a leather belt, tying the hands of others and taping shut the mouths of some elementary school students. McConnell, who apologized for the incidents in a letter June 24, did not immediately return phone messages yesterday.

Here's the AP item on same. I wonder if the GOP voucher program would cover tuition at this school, including medical expenses from being strapped to one's chair?

Politics: Tug of War

Adam Nagourney has a sharp political analysis in today's New York Times about the various political constituencies that Democratic candidates for president must appease. The story proceeds fairly straight: Gephardt, Kucinich and Lieberman all dropped what they were doing to run down to Miami for the tail-end of the NAACP meeting there, after Kweisi Mfume scolded them for skipping the event. Republicans relished the idea of candidates (and potentially a future opponent) quickly asking "how high" when an interest group shouts "Jump!"

Nagourney caught James Carville pointing out that Bush doesn't have to show up at the NRA because those groups are politically savvy about their interests. Carville says, "They understand what it is to win an election. They don't make Republican presidential candidates go there and hold assault weapons up in the air."

The piece doesn't quite get to the rub of it, which is the quid pro quo of all this campaign foolishness. Democrats have to visit the Human Rights Campaign and NARAL during these vital fund-raising and volunteer-grooming months because they believe they will have to turn their back on these constituencies to win in November. Basically, trips to NARAL are a sign by a candidate reading "I agree with you, now let's never speak of it again." Often this pledge also indicates a pledge to take no pro-active effort on this issue, but merely to ensure that the worst possible thing doesn't happen. I frequently gnashed my teeth when President Clinton (who really perfected the appearance-based constituency mollification method outlined here) just barely managed to hold the line on environmental, handgun and war-mongering questions, and then tried to rest on his good liberal reputation so often.

Meanwhile, with Republican candidates generally -- and President Bush in particular -- the opposite is true. Bush doesn't need to visit the NRA, because some functionary will make sure that the message gets across. And Bush follows-up on the promise, delivering the goods, looser gun control laws, so-called partial birth abortion laws, right-wing ideologue judges to restrict our rights for decades, whatever it takes. Democrats shrug and say, "we visited your forum last month, uh, right?"

Carville points out that the understanding it missing. NARAL and NAACP want the power of having candidates visit their meeting to kowtow to their ideals. I would much rather they keep campaigning and then actually do something for us when they get into office.

(Also posted at Naw where I'm doing a little guest-gig.)

Politics: Reminder

Perusing my erstwhile hometown newspaper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, I came across the following letter to the editor, which inspired me so that I am including here in full, as well as linking to it.

We owe our freedoms to those who reject political obedience

I guess it's touching that so many Americans believe they owe their freedoms to veterans who have fought their wars (of whom I am one). But, in reality, wars don't defend our freedoms. Every war severely limits freedoms by creating suspicion and fear, by suppressing dissent and debate and by increasing police surveillance, arrests and persecutions of those who dare to speak out.

Tyrannized by a government-controlled party line that brands peace as unpatriotic, most Americans are too fearful to even think critical thoughts, much less express them. Only flag-waving obedience is regarded as acceptable.

We have freedoms in America -- such as we do, and they are limited -- only because of those who have publicly opposed political oppression, and been abused for it. Those who never speak up for an unpopular idea or against the ones in power have never truly exercised their freedom. We owe our freedoms to those who have thoughtfully and painfully taken unpopular stands, for civil rights and liberties, for the rights of labor, for the right to believe or disbelieve in religion.

Abject obedience is labeled patriotic, but it doesn't preserve our liberties and is the easy route for the conformist mind. As Thoreau observed, "A very few . . . serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and are commonly treated as enemies by it." Thus, we don't owe freedom to those who served in these foreign and dubious wars, or to the authoritarian military they served under, with its ideal of automatic allegiance, which nullifies individual moral choice. Generals are rarely friends of freedom.

JIM SCOFIELD
Johnstown

Amen, sir.

Politics: Pryor Restraint

The vote on the nomination of Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor took an interesting turn yesterday. The committee met in Executive Session under a "two-hour" rule, which keeps them from staying around too long when the full Senate is in session. Anyhow, when they got to the nomination, several democrats, led by Chuck Schumer of NY, made the point that there was an ongoing investigation into serious charges of dubious fundraising by the Pryor-founded Republican Attorneys General Association. Schumer thought maybe they should finish the investigation before they voted on Pryor. Hatch accused the democrats of stalling, which is pretty ironic considering that the last time Hatch was chairman, the Republican blocked a full 35% of Clinton's nominees. Anyhow, Hatch was all pissed about it, and threw around some huffs. Senator John Cornyn, who is implicated in the scandal for his fund-raising efforts as a member of RAGA when he was Texas AG, accused the whistleblower of breaking the law, and took special care to undertake some serious character assassination. Finally, Hatch, in what turned out to be a face-saving maneuver, somewhat acquiesced and absurdly told the committee to complete its investigation over the next nine hours. Before they re-convened, the decision was apparently made to postpone the vote to Wednesday to accomodate ranking Democrat Pat Leahy's schedule.

Lobbying groups were pushing hardest on Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter, who claims to be pro-choice and anti church-state separation. He seemed get-able on Pryor. It seems that his right-wing primary opponent pushed him into shoring up in favor of Pryor. This may have been a trade-off for his defection on vouchers for DC.

Shouldn't a right-minded senator be able to vote his conscience, even if it pits him against his party's president? Apparently not. (Warning: pdf)

Politics: With a Lead Pipe

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee will be meeting on July 23rd on the nomination of racist, bigot, right-wing nutjob Daniel Pipes to the U.S. Institute of Peace. I've written before here and here that Pipes' record is deplorable, and how his nomination is so clearly a neo-con giveaway from his very close friends in the evil anti-Arab war-monger cabal in the Pentagon. Pipes' racism masquerades as scholarly discourse, and as a result is particularly vile because it isn't easily dismissed (like Pat Robertson's deranged demand that millions pray for the death of his least favorite Supreme Court Justices). Pipes launched a website to monitor the activities of college professors who disagree with his ideas about disenfranchising American Muslims and his belief that Muslims in government, military and law enforcement service should be "watched." As an author, columnist and speaker, Pipes has spread his wretched gospel of hate and anti-Islam far and wide.

I, for one, am going to contact one of my senators, who happens to sit on the HELP Committee and (not for the first time) urge him to oppose Pipes' nomination to the USIP. The Institute of Peace is a government-charted organization dedicated to "promoting the peaceful resolution of international conflicts." It is hardly the place for a bigot who has told Jerusalem Post readers in 2001 that Israel needed to "take more active steps" against the Palestinian Authority. Pipes then advocated that Israel raze Palestinian villages and destroy the Palestinian Authority entirely. Remember, this is a nomination to the US Institute of PEACE.

If one of your senators happens to be (Rs) Gregg, Frist, Enzi, Alexander, Bond, DeWine, Roberts, Sessions, Ensign, L. Graham, Warner or (Ds) Kennedy, Dodd, Harkin, Mikulski, Bingaman, Murray, Reed, Edwards, Clinton, then maybe you'd like to give them a call, send a setter or at least send an email urging them to reject the nomination of Daniel Pipes to the US Institute of Peace. Bilious, divisive, racist commentary and intellectual demagoguery should never be honored with plaudits and promotions.

Politics: Pryor Rundown

In the previous post, I discussed Bill Pryor. It sounds like the Judiciary Committee will be at the very least discuss, and possibly vote on, Pryor today, despite the ongoing, previously non-public investigation into the RAGA fund-raising question. Totally insane TLL readers can listen to the committee's deliberations by going to Capitol Hearings and clicking on the Dirksen 226 link.

The Birmingham News has an item this morning discussing the request by Democratic senators to delay the vote because their investigation, is both ongoing, and has been compromised by a Republican leak.

Prior to the RAGA question, the big debate around Pryor has been whether avowed pro-choice, pro-church-state separation Pennsylvania Republican Senator Arlen Specter will realize how dangerous Bill Pryor is to both these things and oppose -- or at least request a negative recommendation for -- Pryor's nomination. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a thorough item on the lobbying of Specter regarding this nomination. It has been fierce.

Politics: Pryor, RAGA and All the Rest

Alabama AG William Pryor helped to establish the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA). Soon thereafter, Pryor and other AGs were raising money without disclosure from all sorts of sources, including corporations which had cases pending in the states represented by the AGs. This was all revealed in a disclusure, probably leaked by GOP members of the committee, to a paper in Pryor's home state of Alabama. This morning's Washington Post discussed the fundraising at length in a front-page article. Today, Pryor is scheduled for a vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee on his nomination to the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.

Any comprehensive assessment of Pryor's record -- without the RAGA information included -- would lead a thinking senator to disqualify him as a nominee. That hasn't happened yet. But here's hoping this puts the ball across the line.

Oh, one other thing: Senator John Cornyn, who sits on the committee as a freshman senator, was a founding member of RAGA with Bill Pryor. Here's the Post's bit on Pryor:

In the documents, Pryor is described as phoning Philip Morris Inc. and Brown & Williamson in 1999 to obtain $25,000 "Roundtable" memberships in RAGA from each company. He also is described as phoning Boeing Co., BP/Amoco, GTE Corp., AT&T Corp., MCI Communications Corp., SouthTrust Bank and other firms, including some in Alabama, and collecting an additional $75,000.

The two tobacco companies were parties to a $2.6 billion liability settlement reached in 1998 with 26 state attorneys general, including Pryor. In a written statement following his June 11 confirmation hearing, Pryor said he was unaware of any funds RAGA solicited or collected from companies in Alabama. He also told Congress he did not know whether any tobacco companies were RAGA members.

And here's the blast on Cornyn's role in the fundraising fiasco:

One document states, for example, that Cornyn was asked to collect a donation from Shell Oil in late 1999, but does not mention whether Shell gave the group money. The firm was one of five energy companies that reached a $12.6 million settlement with Cornyn in August 1999 in a dispute over unpaid royalties. Two years later, Shell was one of 28 oil and petrochemical companies to reach a $120 million settlement with him and the U.S. Department of Justice in a separate dispute over toxic waste.

And that's why Cornyn should excuse himself from this vote. If he does, the membership on the committee goes to 9-9, Ds-Rs.

Of course, this is the new Washington, where decieving the people and embracing your evil is all acceptable.

Politics: Poindexter Turns Surveillance Skills to Want Ads

Senators may be offering Admiral Poindexter some tips of their own soon -- on where he can find a new job.

Debating the defense spending bill for next year, Senators inserted the following clause:

"No funds appropriated or otherwise made available to the Department of Defense ... or to any other department, agency or element of the federal government, may be obligated or expended on research and development on the Terrorism Information Awareness program."

Although they declined to comment, administration reviewers of the spending bill reported back to Congress that the provision would "deny an important potential tool in the war on terrorism."

Take a hike, fattie. Start spending some time spying on your own damn self.

Politics: Update on the 3rd Infantry

Kos has a collection of international clips also profiling the abject misery of the 3rd Infantry Division, after they were informed that they wouldn't be going home this summer as planned. As Kos says, "The disappointment of the soldiers the 3ID and their families is worldwide news."

Music: Cease to Resist

One of this Liquid Lister's favorite all time artists, Frank Black, has indicated in a British radio interview that the Pixies were considering a reunion.

May I just say how incredible such an event would be, personally. Return, if you will, to your Pixies collection and listen for yourself how much of the last ten years (and it has been ten years, my friends) have been affected and infected by the Pixies powerful, strained glory. Listen, please, to Surfer Rosa, and then flip over to, say, Nirvana's best. Then smack your own head, saying, "They ripped off the Pixies!"

You may repeat this process with nearly each alternative rock record that hasn't sucked for the last who knows how long. Yes.

The Pixies, if they were to re-form, would need a lot of help. When I caught a Frank Black show in Pittsburgh recently, opener and former Pixies drummer David Lovering indicated that Frank and Pixies guitar-man Joey Santiago had hung out (Joey has a baby and makes music for films). And David makes three, right?

Right. And in this interview, Frank admitted that they had re-formed and played together. The original lineup, Kim Deal, Frank, Joey and David. Playing together, low-pressure, having what sounds like an okay time of it.

Now the desperation: PLEASE RE-FORM AND MAKE A RECORD AND PLAY A TOUR AND SAVE US FROM SO MUCH MUSIC GARBAGE! PLEASE!

We now return to your regularly scheduled Liquid List.

Politics: Support Our Troops??!!?!

Remember how Rummy and the gang over at the five-sided monstrosity on the Potomac openly derided people when they pointed out that America's troop levels were too low for the Iraq war? How about when Army Chief Eric Shenseki was shunted aside because he pointed out we would need hundreds of thousands of troops to stay in Iraq for years?

Well, everything has come true, in spades. We were able to technically "beat" the Iraqi army with the numbers we had, but the levels were so dangerously low at times that our supply line was in peril of snapping entirely. And now we're fighting a guerrilla war and we've decided we need more men to stay longer, just as Shinseki predicted. The rub? The 3rd Infantry Division will be staying on the ground. Read the response from soldiers and their families:

"It pretty much makes me lose faith in the Army," Pfc. Jason Punyhotra of the 3rd Infantry told ABC News in Fallujah, Iraq. "I don't really believe anything they tell me. If they told me we were leaving next week, I wouldn't believe them."
[...]
Families of 3rd Infantry soldiers have been frustrated by the uncertainty. The division was among the first conventional forces to reach Baghdad during the war, and division soldiers have assumed a major role in providing stability in postwar Iraq. Thirty-seven of the division's soldiers have been killed in hostile action in Iraq.

"Don't do that to us. Don't pull on our heartstrings that way," said Julie Galloway, whose husband, Sgt. Michael Galloway, was one of the first 3rd Infantry soldiers deployed.

It is the second time the Army has backed off a tentative return date. After President Bush declared the end of major combat operations on May 1, many families were told by base officials to prepare for homecomings in June.

"Every time a soldier is shot and killed, it comes to mind: Is that my husband?" said Tasha Moore, whose husband, Capt. Daniel Moore, deployed in February. "I don't think the government understands what a husband or a wife or children are going through every day."

That's supporting the troops, boys.

Politics: Even the Economist

There is a fine line between conservative and neoconservative. The Economist magazine treads the line carefully, but usually lands on the traditional, market-oriented, old-style conservative side when push comes to shove.

This week's Economist includes a leader on the U.S. government's plan for military tribunals. The headline tells the story: Unjust, Unwise, UnAmerican. Perhaps the most damning passage is this one about exactly what supporters will continue to support:

This newspaper firmly supported George Bush's battles against the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. We also believe that in some areas, such as domestic intelligence gathering, his government should nudge the line between liberty and security towards the latter. But the military commissions the Bush administration has set up to try al-Qaeda suspects are still wrong—illiberal, unjust and likely to be counter-productive for the war against terrorism.

Politics:Talking Points I'd Like to See

Any Democratic candidate, any time: "President Bush is really raising a lot of money. Still, I bet Karl Rove wishes he could bring in campaign cash as fast as they can run up the national deficit. Bush can really rake it in from Ken Lay, Philip Morris and his multi-million-raking "bundlers", who are just rich people who know other rich people and give some small portion of everybody's riches to Karl Rove; it's a shame that money can't go to the families with poor children whose tax-credit was taken away to further reduce the so-called "tax burden" on America's stuggling millionaire class.

Instead towns, counties and states will be taking on the new tax burden, absent money from the federal government. They will raise property taxes for working families who thought they had achieved the American dream of owning a home. School districts will cut short the school year, lay off teachers and not buy books for students this year. And the government keeps taking money from those who need it most, to give tax cuts to the richest among us.

In America, we often say that our children are our greatest asset. But cuts to school budgets and even denying child tax credits to working families demonstrates that these youngest of our number aren't our priority. Perhaps it is our veterans, who served, fought for and defended our nation in Vietnam, Korea, and the second World War. How does President Bush treat them, while handing out hundreds of millions in tax cuts to the rich and taking in millions more in quid pro quo dirty campaign lucre? America's veterans are waiting six months or more for care in VA hospitals and clinics. 110,000 veterans wait for their first visit at hundreds of VA hospitals around the country.

This is how President Bush treats our children and our veterans, while his fund-raising swat team sucks in millions from power companies and corporate shills. Those millions, Mr. President, belong to to the American people. You took it from them with your tax cut, sending their hard-earned money to the richest of the rich, who sign it right back to your campaign, in a filthy cycle. It's time to stop the cycle, Mr. President. That money belongs to the American people to pay for schools, to protect our air and water, to help our children stay healthy and strong, and to help our parents and our grandparents receive the care they deserve long into the future. That money doesn't belong to you or Karl Rove, Mr. President. It belongs to all of them.

Politics: Tear-Stained Eye

Read TomPaine.com's account of a U.S. Marine who honestly believed in the ideals of peace, and spoke out about his opposition to our latest war. In late June, this un-named soldier was killed in Iraq. Chris Strohm and Ingrid Drake tell the story well. The final paragraph of the piece, excerpted from a letter the Marine left with his will, should be a wake-up call for all of us:

"That I have died means I have failed to achieve the one thing in life I truly longed to give the world -- peace," the letter reads. "The plight of human suffering consumed me and I dedicated much to trying to find the ideas that might lead humankind toward alleviating it for all. It was a quest which was inextricably intertwined with my quest for freedom. If you know anything about me you know that. Understand it and come to understand how the suffering of others tormented my soul. Then seek to honor my memory by trying to achieve what I could not."

Admin: Thank Goodness

It appears that Oliver has come to rest after his cross-country ramble. God-willing, he'll pick up the slack where the over-whelmed, new dad yours truly has let the Liquid List get away from him. Blog Away, Oliver!

Politics: Update

Marc Moran, the white supremacist town council member from Hopewell, NJ I wrote about last week has announced he will step down and not run for the seat he was recently appointed to.

The lesson? Outcry works!

Politics: Pundits and Lies

In an absurd move, presumably intended to piss off a whole pile of folks, the geniuses at ESPN have decided to sign Rush Limbaugh up to do some kind of commentary during the network's Sunday NFL Countdown program.

Alert reader SAA pointed this out to me, and started an amusing game of "New Jobs for Pundits," offering that Noam Chomsky replace Dick Vitale as the voice of March Madness. For my money, I countered with the distressing possibility that Bob Novak and Charles Krauthammer start calling NBA Finals. Then I realized that the ultimate (and perfect) final outcome would be Bill O'Reilly calling NASCAR races. Of course, I'm not really sure that hasn't already happened.

Politics: You Thought Clinton Parsed

In coverage the White House's latest attempts at defending the Niger ruse, here's something truly insane. Defenders claim that this sentence is technically true: Among elements he [Bush] cited to make his case was a statement that "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." This weekend, Condi Rice said, "the statement that he made was indeed accurate. The British government did say that."

Bush doesn't say, however, that the British government says it learned that Saddam Hussein blah blah blah. Bush says the fact that the UK "learned" something occurred. One can't know about something that didn't happen.

Admit you lied, you stinking dogs, and then hope for a grisly murder in California to save your sorry asses.

Politics: Know Allah, No Peace

Professor Jonathan Turley in the LA Times lays out a stark contrast between the justice received by non-Muslims and the so-called justice that Muslims and Arab-Americans receive under the heavy hand of Ashcroft's Justice Department:

Consider the cases of Earl Krugel and Robert Goldstein. Krugel is the former West Coast coordinator of the Jewish Defense League. He was recorded in meetings in October 2001 with alleged co-conspirators planning a reign of terror on Arab Americans to give them "a wake-up call" by destroying one of their "filthy mosques." This conspiracy allegedly included a plan to assassinate Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), who is of Lebanese descent. Recently, Krugel confessed to a plot to blow up a mosque in Culver City.

Krugel was given immunity and is reportedly sharing information on other attacks, including the 1985 bombing death of Arab American civil rights leader Alex Odeh. Though Ashcroft has promised to prosecute accused terrorists to the fullest extent of the law and to reject any deals, Krugel was given a generous plea bargain and immunity and is likely to receive a mere 13-year sentence.

In the Krugel case, the government had evidence of a conspiracy to attack Arab Americans and their institutions; it included bombings with the stated intent to terrorize. Yet, the government chose not to charge Krugel as a terrorist but instead charged him only with civil rights violations.

Krugel's case is not unique. In Florida, Robert Goldstein and his wife, Kristi Lea Persinger, plotted their own terror war. When the police were called to their house in a domestic dispute in 2002, they discovered an arsenal that included 30 bombs, mines, 30 to 40 guns, light-armor rockets, machine guns, sniper rifles and grenades. They also found plans to blow up 50 mosques and to "liquidate" Muslims. Goldstein vowed to "kill all 'rags' "at an Islamic education center.

Like Krugel, Goldstein was charged not with terrorism but with civil rights violations. Goldstein was sentenced to a paltry 12 1/2 years for conspiracy to violate civil rights. Persinger (who had five bombs in her closet) was given a mere three years in prison — about what you might get for tax evasion.

Next Turley goes on to discuss the extreme action the Justice Department has taken in the case of 11 Muslim men in Northern Virginia (discussed here in the Liquid List). Unlike the bomb- and threat-making exploits of the former Mr and Mrs. Goldstein, "in the cases of at least four of the men, there is scant evidence of anything beyond anti-Indian sentiments and weekend Rambo fantasies."

There is so much in our nation that is dangerously flawed, or tragically still bound up in racism, bigotry and hate. And so much of it seems beyond repair. I can't convert the racist beliefs of this or that bigot; it's an exercise in futility in which I'm not interested in wasting my time. But shouldn't our nation's highest law enforcement entity not so clearly engage in racist treatment of American citizens? Don't we all deserve that?

Politics: Of Bigotry

Operation Save America, a racist, anti-choice, anti-gay religious organization is having a big ol' hoe-down of hate this week in Charlotte, NC. They plan on protesting in front of abortion clinics, gay- and lesbian- tolerant churches and mosques. This is apparently how they spread their message of peace and love in Christ's name.

I think that America's greatest threat is zealotry. I believe that people who believe something so hard and to the exclusion of all else should be considered much closer to mentally ill than anything else. Listen to this tripe from one of Operation Save America's press releases this weekend:

While the city of Charlotte is free to align itself with the enemies of the Lord Jesus under the banner of tolerance, it is not free to deter the severe consequences that will come as a result of her decision.

With the accusations of extremism against Operation Rescue/Operation Save America, the city of Charlotte, its police department, and its city manager, have made a decision to choose abortion, homosexuality, and Islam over Christianity. Who is more extreme? People praying for the souls of men, the lives of children, and the future of America, or those who rip babies apart in their mother’s wombs. Who is more extreme? People proclaiming the transforming message of the Gospel of Christ, or those who promote homosexual sodomy. Who is more extreme? Christians who advocate love toward their enemies, or those who advocate conversion by force or death, i.e. Islamic Jihad.

Charlotte can purchase a false “peace” by touting “diversity and tolerance,” but lies, death, and destruction are included in the package. Our message is true and motivated by the love of Jesus Christ. Apart from Him, there is no peace. History will confirm this to be so!

The whack-jobs sweeping through Charlotte this week will be greeted with nothing but peace and maybe a dinner:

On Friday, members of three mosques hosted an interfaith dinner and a news conference geared at educating non-Muslims about Islam and addressing Operation Save America's position about their faith.

Some 200 people, including Christians, Jews, Buddhists and Muslims, gathered at the Islamic Society of Greater Charlotte in northeast Charlotte for a meal designed to strengthen the ties between the Muslim community and those of other religions.

People sat together on the floor and as they ate, they discussed everything from religion to sports.

"The most important thing for us to remember is that we are not far from each other. Islam is a religion of peace," said Ali Khan, a 29-year-old Muslim. "Our religion teaches of peace and friendship for all humanity."
[...]
Islamic Center of Charlotte spokesman Mujahid Idlibi said his group isn't planning any actions for next week because "we feel doing a counterprotest might result in counterattacks. ... We believe he just wants to incite anger out of us."

Politics: No Justice For You, One Year

The National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys has advised its members not to participate in the Guantanamo Bay terror tribunals because they are concerned about lending legitimacy to what may be "sham" trials, since lawyer client privilege, among other critical aspects of a "fair trial" will be compromised. Of course, it doesn't seem to be that big of a deal, right? They're just Muslims, right? Okay, when American citizens end up in these tribunals (and this is presumably the fate that awaits Yasser Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla) let's see how our complacency serves us then.

Politics: For Your Information

The New York Times has an interesting story about a vexing free speech issue. William Sheehan posts the home addresses, phone numbers and Social Security numbers of law enforcement personnel in Washington state on his web site. The state legislature enacted a law that appeared to specifically target Mr. Sheehan's activity, but a judge eventually threw the law out as a too-narrow restriction on free speech.

But Mr. Meehan, law enforcement officials argue, is endangering the lives of officers and their families, without accountability.

The kicker to the story, and I suspect the reason the piece goes from a lifeless wire piece to a New York Times item is the closing clause. The spokesman for the police department in Sheehan's home town, after admitting that no identity theft or targeting of police officers has occurred, makes a plain threat:

Brightening, Lieutenant Caldwell said some officers even welcomed the posting of their home addresses, if that encouraged Mr. Sheehan to visit.

"If he wants to drop by the house," Lieutenant Caldwell said, "the police officers would be more than happy to welcome him. We're all armed and trained."

Now I don't know that Mr. Meehan's website is defensible. I have concerns, as I did about the Nuremberg Files anti-abortion websites. But the information he publishes is all retrieved from public domain sources. Meehan does appear to have a beef with the police that makes him want to break down the privacy walls for peace officers. But the thinly-veiled threat is almost too much to take.

I could never imagine that Mr. Meehan would be interested in having vigilantes go to the homes of police officers and exact justice (though that or something like that could occur). I think he's probably trying to push them in a way that the public normally feels vulnerable and the police routinely feel untouchable. But the public information officer's threat really doesn't paint a very sympathetic impression of the police in this story. I'l interested in what the outcome could be.

Politics: New Jersey Town Taps Racist For Town Council Seat

The borough of Hopewell, NJ, has filled an unexpired town council seat with an admitted white supremacist named Marc Moran. Check out some of his writings, quoted in this piece from the Trenton Times:

"Take your children out of the schools that would teach them that they are the problem instead of the solution," he wrote in one essay. "Stare back and point your own finger at the effrontery demonstrated by the homosexual, the feminist, the illegal immigrant, the Jew."

In another he wrote: "Wherever diverse peoples come into contact there is a sharp spike in crime, violence, discord and economic instability." And, he wrote, "Other than the (Ku Klux Klan) I cannot think of a group that has suffered more slander and outrage in the media than the National Alliance."
-- -- --
In an essay recounting a conversation with his young son about Christmas, Moran described telling the boy that "Hanukkah celebrates the misfortune of others at the hands of the Jews. They tend to celebrate their conquests of other people." Afterward Moran quizzed the child.

"Do you understand what the Jews celebrate on Hanukkah?" he asked.

"Killing people," his son replied.

Moran nodded his head in response.

In an April 2002 letter to an Alaska newspaper, Moran wrote: "The easiest part of recruiting new members for the National Alliance is not the fact that it is a `hate-group,' but rather that those who espouse ideals such as diversity and tolerance don't really mean what they say. . . . The NA is not made up of youngsters with `too much time on their hands,' but by intelligent, hardworking Americans whose sole desire is to keep this country from becoming a third world cesspool."

There's a guy you want climbing the ladder of local politics. He's allowed to believe whatever he wants, but I have trouble believing that his office will be of much use to the "47 Hispanic residents, 22 black residents and 71 Asian and other residents" who live in Hopewell borough.

Check out the website of the National Alliance, Moran's white supremacist mothership. It's a riot. The current front page graphic shows 10 presidential candidates (9 Ds and Bush) with Stars of David or a silhouette of the African continent to denote their Jewish or Black interests. And get a load of this excerpt from National Alliance radio personality Kevin something Strom:

Things have come a long way since the days of Lenin and Trotsky. Those who would take away our freedom and exterminate us as a people have discovered that there are more effective ways to enslave us, take away our land and our wealth, and eventually eliminate us than openly arriving with Uzis and killing anyone who won't submit to open Jewish rule.

Of course, the Jews don't have to wax nostalgic for the days of the NKVD and the purposeful starvation of the Ukrainian and Russian farmers in the 20s and 30s, or the killing of millions of Germans in the 40s and 50s (which they've essentially suppressed from public view) since the "Justice Department's Michael Chertoff does publicly sate his blood lust by persecuting, imprisoning, and torturing stalwart White patriots from time to time, and our Jewish satraps really had some fun blowing the arms and heads off innocent Iraqi children recently (all the while laughing at the idiot Americans who believed their whoppers about "Weapons of Mass Destruction"), and the killing and torturing of Palestinians never stops over in the American-funded charnel house called Israel.

Wow. These crazy bastards hate Jews so much, they seem to like Arab folks. That's got to be a first, huh? Their speech is dispicable, but protected. However, I can't imagine that the 2000 folks in Hopewell would endorse these views. Let's see if one who isn't a fire-breathing, anti-semitic, racist, and who doesn't believe that the United States is "a puppet-state of International Jewry" can challenge the execrable Mr. Moran in the upcoming election. This behavior shouldn't be rewarded with a public platform.

Politics: Gotcha

Joshua Micah Marshall notes a New Republic report on the lying about Iraq situation which defines even more sharply the outlines of the deception that led to the Niger-uranium charges being included in the State of the Union Address:

We noted yesterday that Colin Powell told reporters that the Niger uranium charge "was not standing the test of time" and thus dropped it from the presentation he gave the UN on February 5th. We further noted that given the timing of the State of the Union speech and the preparations for the UN presentation, that the time span over which the evidence didn't stand up stretched from January 29th to February 1st. Now The New Republic is reporting that the State Department's intelligence bureau, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, sent Powell a detailed memo in March 2002 stating that the Niger-uranium charges were, in its opinion, false. (They came to this judgment without seeing Joseph Wilson's report which, separately, helped scotch the story at the CIA.) "We knew it was important," an analyst who worked on the I&R report tells TNR. "The [Niger] issue might have traction, and so we wanted him to know what our opinion was."

Nice. Here's a link to the New Republic piece.

Politics: Connect. The. Dots

Take Back the Media has screen shots of the CBS News website from the last 24 hours that appears to have softened the take on President Bush's knowledge of the mendacious Niger-Iraq information. The first reads "Bush Knew Iraq Info Was False." The subsequent headlines include Bush's spin about the CIA clearing the info, without sticking to the real story.

Now I'm no expert, but Westinghouse once owned CBS, and many of the board members remained in seats on the CBS board as the rest of Westinghouse was sold off to BNFL and Bechtel and dozens of other government contractees. And, of course, when CBS merged with Viacom, many retained their seats there as well.

There's no way, of course, that the interests of these board members could ever trickle down to the news department and the web editors who made the decision to lighten up on President Bush over the past 24 hours. I think there is a better chance that the real answer lies in the lingering media kid-glove approach to Bush when war is in the equation. This is the biggest factor, I believe, to any kind of realistic assessment of the Bush presidency and a meaningful 2004 race for the White House. Get the lying in the public eye, divorce it from the war in Iraq and the war on terror, and close with a roaring chorus of "it's the economy, stupid."

Politics: Camus Redux

Outbreak of plague in Algeria. At least one death already. Throughout the last several years we've seen stories about how easily at times people travel between the former French colonies in North Africa and the European continent. It will be an interesting test to see if any plague cases crop up in Paris, etc. following this development.

Politics: Chilling

Fellow blogger Noah Schactman scores the cover story in this week's Village Voice. Schactman's excellent DefenseTech blog offers an insightful round up of the defense industry with a focus on watchdogging. Noah hit a grand slam with his exposition on Combat Zones That See (CTS), a DARPA program now being tested which will link feeds from remote cameras into a central database for the first time:

The military is scheduled to issue contracts for Combat Zones That See, or CTS, as early as September. The first demonstration should take place before next summer, according to a spokesperson. Approach a checkpoint at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, during the test and CTS will spot you. Turn the wheel on this sprawling, 8,656-acre army encampment, and CTS will record your action. Your face and license plate will likely be matched to those on terrorist watch lists. Make a move considered suspicious, and CTS will instantly report you to the authorities.

Of course, the nice folks at DARPA (who also employ the convicted felon Admiral John Poindexter to run the Total Information Awareness program) and some of DARPA's partner's on the contract don't appear to have their stories straight regarding the application of CTS:

This assumes, of course, that CTS has anything to do with urban combat. If it does, it'd be a surprise to some of the businesses bidding for the CTS contract.

"The primary application is for homeland security," said Tom Lento, a spokesman for the Sarnoff Corporation.

"The whole theme here is homeland security," added Northrop Grumman's De Witte.

Strat disagreed. "DARPA's mission is not to do homeland security," he said.

In a presentation to industry, DARPA noted, "CTS technology will be demonstrated only within the observable boundaries of government installations where video surveillance is expressly permitted, and operational deployment areas outside the United States where it is consistent with all local laws."

But in an interview, Strat did admit that "there's a chance that some of this technology might work its way" into domestic surveillance programs.

In the test at Fort Belvoir this year the aim is to track 90 percent of all of cars within the target area for any given 30-minute period. The paths of 1 million vehicles should be stored and retrievable within three seconds. A year after that, CTS is supposed to move on to testing in an urban combat setting, where it will gather information from 100 mobile sensors, like drone spy planes and "video ropes" containing dozens of tiny cameras.

Apart from the in-home parenting potential for this product which I clearly see since I've been a father for all of 4 days, this is a terrifying development.

Politics: What a World

First day home with my beautiful little boy in tow and here's what we wake up to after a largely-sleepless evening:

More U.S. soldiers die in Iraq, and a grim but sadly rewarding turn towards reality by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld admits that this "new kind of war" is going to require a whole lot of our old kind of money. If only we didn't have the largest federal deficit in the history of the American experiment...hmmm.

Meanwhile, jobless claims rose by another 5,000 tax-cut victims last week. Many economists has anticipated a better situation, but of course, they have their heads up their asses. Actually, they thought that the marginally good news from the stock market this past quarter was going to lead to some businesses deciding they could invest in new labor. But the reality is that it's going to take a lot more than a dodgy but rising stock market to get people working again. I am continually amazed at this type of thinking, which matches the Bush administration's "more money in the paycheck" philosophy of tax cutting. The stock market doesn't hire anybody, or represent anything like the employers for whom most Americans work. That the healthcare sector had a great quarter -- or whatever -- doesn't mean a thing if they did so by cutting costs and often cutting the workforce. Investors, who may have represented America in 1998 but have now returned to their old definition of rich bastards, reward companies who cut costs and maximize profits. But that enterprise almost always leads to the jobless numbers we see today.

And what most of the world would call "lying" from their child or friends, but what the press hasn't even approached calling "deception" got another interesting linguistic turn today: "Skirting."

As in, "Bush Skirts Queries on Iraq Nuclear Allegation":

The White House acknowledged Monday that the intelligence underlying the president's assertion was incorrect and should not have been in his State of the Union speech. Leading Democrats have seized on the admission as justification for a congressional inquiry into the administration's handling of prewar intelligence on Iraq.

Bush's press secretary, Ari Fleischer, told reporters that the White House learned only after the speech that documents that were the basis for his claim had been forged. "After the speech, information was learned about the forged documents," he said. "With the advantage of hindsight, it's known now what was not known by the White House prior to the speech. This information should not have risen to the level of a presidential speech."

It has emerged in recent weeks, however, that the CIA dispatched a former senior diplomat, Joseph C. Wilson, to Niger in 2002 to investigate the uranium claims, and that Wilson concluded the allegations were false. Administration officials have said the information had not been conveyed to the White House at the time of the speech.

A month before the speech, the CIA and State Department had stopped referring to the Niger issue in public statements and documents because they were questioning the reliability of the intelligence, senior officials said.

Liars, anyone?

Admin: Cigars All Around

Sorry for the delay, folks, and I can't thank Oliver enough for stepping into the breach and putting in a little blog action since Sunday.

Sunday night, after sitting around at our house thinking we were in labor but not knowing for sure, we headed to the hospital. There, we were informed that in fact our baby was coming, and we should settle in for a long night.

At three a.m., a heaping dose of anasthesia was administered, and the slow-chase to the finish was on.

By 11 a.m. Monday the 7th of July, my wife was pushing and I was pleading with her to push, and telling her how great a job she was doing, and dodging punches.

At 1:35 p.m. on Monday, the 7th of July, with a gasp and a huge, lung-filling cry, Reid Tarek joined this world. Weighing in at 7 pounds and 2 ounces, stretching to 19 3/4 inches, this little bundle is nothing but the most incredible gift I can give to the world, and the most incredible gift I have ever received.

I will blog again this afternoon if I can, between changing diapers and helping my wife with feedings and whatnot. Thanks to everyone who sent kind words as we went down this road. And wait'll you get a load of this kid. He's incredible.

Oddly enough, we've noticed that there is one particular mammary gland he favors. It's the left one. Hmmmm.

Politics: Supreme Court Wrapup

Last week at the office I noodled with a Supreme Court wrap-up that dealt with civil rights and civil liberties concerns. And any recent reader of the Liquid List has surely noticed that the potential for a Supreme Court retirement has been a big issue for yours truly in a professional way.

But all that was gradually laid to rest over the past few weeks, as the chance of a retirement ebbed to nearly nothing.

Today, Sandra Day O'Connor moved those almost invisible chances one tick closer to gone with this exchange with George Stephanopolous:

The show's host, George Stephanopoulos, referring to widespread speculation that she was about to retire, asked, "Should we take your silence to mean you intend to serve out the next term?"

"Oh, I assume so," she answered.

Whew. But since I'm over at the New York Times discussing the Supreme Court, I'll mention Linda Greenhouse's column about the chance for change on the high court

Greenhouse does an excellent job of lending humanity to this band of inscrutable jurists. Little touches that come from a long career of careful observation make Greenhouse one of the best Court-watchers in the business. The band of court-watchers is almost as tight as the Supreme Court members. (Walter Dellinger and Dahlia Lithwick's Breakfast Table discussion from the end of the term gives readers a view of a few more of those veteran watchers.) But they offer us a valuable half-peek into the world of the nation's highest court, who demonstrated this term that they were truly living -- for the most part -- in the real world where the rest of us live, with everybody, gay and straight enduring the persistent, painful sting of racism and sexism. Greenhouse's piece picks this out perfectly.

Music: Roger, Wilco

I mentioned earlier that I would put up a review of the Wilco show I saw Monday night. I've been thinking about it for a couple days, and I've collected some thoughts over here. I decided to set it up as a standalone link because it ended up being pretty damn long, and I know Oliver and I are always talking about long posts, but this thing is a little nuts. Sorry it came so late, but I was trying to install some ftp client, and then decided it would be approximately 1 million times easier to just use the terminal. There you go: I'm a nerd.

Enjoy the review. The Washington Post's review of the show, which I won't dignify with a link, was clearly written by someone who wanted to see Sonic Youth and may not have stayed for Wilco at all. They essentially wrote the review about how SY should be headlining, and Wilco don't deserve critical acclaim or even attention.

On the point of which band is bigger or more important or whatever, this is a meaningless discussion. Wilco filled 3,200 seats in Constitution Hall and Sonic Youth simply would not have done so. This is life.

I saw Mudhoney open for Pearl Jam on the day Kurt Cobain's body was found. I remember thinking then about the twin tragedies of the afternoon, one enormous and one nearly overlooked. Mudhoney, whose Sub-Pop success, and whose pioneering embrace of the marriage between punk and hard-rock that became the (reviled nickname) grunge sound was supporting Pearl Jam, who weren't doing anything but heroin when Mudhoney was blazing the trail. But I realized that the success of some depends on the mondo-success of others. The mask of semi-visibility allows bands, like Mudhoney then and Sonic Youth now to avoid some major pitfalls, but still stand before thousands and sing their songs.

Well, that was a digression. Enjoy the review.

Politics: Hot Dog

Kobayashi rides again. Though he failed to break his own 50 and a half dogs in 12 minutes record, Takeru "Tsunami" Kobayashi destroyed the competition, downing more than 44 hot dogs and leaving his nearest competitor more than a dozen dogs behind in today's Coney Island Nathan's Famous Hot Dog contest.

Competitive eating. How far behind must we fall?

Culture: Domination, In All Contests

Adam, posting at naw, has an interesting post about Hideo Fukuyama, a Japanese NASCAR racer who is trying to break through one of the toughest barriers in sports, the culture barrier in car-racing.

Perhaps this will cause people to finally wake up and realize the dangerous hot dog gap. We've fallen dangerously behind the Japanese in the decisive Nathan's Original Hot Dog Eat-Off at Coney Island.



When will Americans wake up to the threat that Takeru "Tsunami" Kobayashi represents?

Politics: Update

Alert reader S.A.A. points out that the 11 men indicted recently and discussed here were not all Arab or Arab-American. Pointing to the AP item from the original arrest, S.A.A. notes:

Six of those charged were arrested Friday by the FBI: Mohammed Aatique, 30, a Pakistani national and U.S. visa holder, in Philadelphia; Masoud Ahmad Khan, 31, and Donald Thomas Surratt, 30, both U.S. citizens, in Baltimore; and U.S. citizens Randall Todd Royer, 30; Hammad Abdur-Raheem, 29; and Caliph Basha Ibn Abdur-Raheem, 29, in northern Virginia.

Two had previously been taken into custody: Ibrahim Ahmed Al-Hamdi, 25, a Yemeni national; and Yong Ki Kwon, 27, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from South Korea.

Three others, all U.S. citizens, are believed to be in Saudi Arabia: Seifullah Chapman, 30; Khwaja Mahmood Hasan, 27; Sabri Benkhala, 28. FBI officials said the United States is working with the Saudis to locate and apprehend the men.

Thanks for clearing that up.

Admin: Folklife Festival

Taking the advice of the wise Sam Heldman, and taking advantage of a little bit of free time, my very pregnant wife and I are taking in the Smithsonian Folklife Festival today. I've put the finishing touches on the Wilco concert review, but I'm struggling with OS X and ftp, so I'll noodle with it some more later.

The cast of characters blogging at naw has grown, so check out what those crazy kids have to say.

Politics: Walked a Black Dog

Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy, who remains an outstanding reason to open the paper, delivered a brilliant dispatch Sunday, and because of its presence not in the opinion section but on the cover of Metro, I missed it until this very minute. Milloy gets the drop on Clarence Thomas' ingracious quoting of Frederick Douglass in his Affirmative Action dissent. Milloy skewers Thomas for hijacking the words of a great abolitionist leader, and delivers his blows with eloquence, ferocity and not a little sadness. This segment is long, about half the column, but I'm putting it all in, and you should still read the rest:

Efforts by right-wingers to highjack the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. are bad enough. By conveniently forgetting every word King ever said except "colorblind," they pretend not to see white privilege and accuse blacks of "reverse racism" for daring to point it out.

Now here they go again. The words of Frederick Douglass, the great abolitionist who came to symbolize the necessity of activism and agitation in the quest for justice, are being emptied of all-empowering content and refilled with a watered-down mix of black self-help and fermented self-loathing by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

How low can those bootleggers go?

In his dissenting opinion slamming affirmative action, Thomas quoted from a speech Douglass gave in 1865:

"And if the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone. . . . [Y]our interference is doing him positive injury."

Now, I could understand if Thomas had said all this by way of standing up to Justice Antonin Scalia, the brainy but heartless jurist who appears to have the junior justice under some kind of spell.

But he did no such thing. What's worse, he seems to have deliberately misinterpreted Douglass's words. In fact, Thomas deleted those parts of the Douglass speech that provide historical context for understanding just how entrenched white racism is and why affirmative action is necessary to combat it.

For instance, the speech does not stop with "Let him alone." Douglass continues: "If you see him on his way to school, let him alone -- don't disturb him."

In other words, don't yell racial slurs at him or write racist epithets on classroom walls, as recently happened at several public and private schools -- including some Ivy League universities.

"If you see him going to a ballot-box, let him alone," Douglass said. (Read: Don't send the police to harass him while he's going to vote; or call him a felon as a ruse for striking his name from the voter rolls; or close down the polling place before the deadline; or refuse to count his vote if he gets to cast one, as was the case in Florida during the 2000 presidential election.)

"If you will only untie his hands," Douglass said, "and give him a chance [See Webster's New World Collegiate: chance -- an advantageous or opportune time or occasion; opportunity], I think he will live."

Clearly, Douglass is not saying, "Leave the newly freed slaves alone, and if they rot in hell, so be it." That is, however, what Thomas is saying.

Politics: Quit Sulking. Baby

President Bush will be the first head of state in years to not visit Nelson Mandela when he visits South Africa next week.

Although Bush and Mandela have met before, as this piece points out, they differed greatly on the war in Iraq, and you know how Bush holds a grudge!

Go Madiba!

Politics: ...Does Not Hold Water...

I am not saying that these guys are innocent of all charges. But the Constitution (maybe we should be sending copies of the Constitution out to prosecutors and Justice Department officials) says that you're innocent until proven guilty. And if a judge -- who has a duty to evaluate these sorts of things, you understand -- says that the case against a defendant is flimsy, then there is something in that whole "innocent until proven guilty" bit there that leads a judge to try his or her level best to avoid depriving a person of his or her liberty.

You'll recall that Justice Department has decided that a dozen Arab-Americans entertaining themselves with paintball in the woods of Virginia is an apparent violation of the USA Patriot Act. (Incidentally, I have never engaged in the sport of paintball, but I'm still surprised to find this widely accepted non-Arab people sport is off limits to us Arabs and Arab Americans.)

The story from the Times:

But the men remain in custody, pending appeals that the prosecutors vowed to bring in federal court. Prosecutors also persuaded another judge today to keep a fifth defendant in custody despite an order this week that he, too, be freed.

The five men, along with six others, were indicted last week on terrorism-related and weapons charges for reportedly organizing a paramilitary training group in the Washington area in support of a "jihad network" committed to driving India out of Kashmir.

The men, nine of whom are United States citizens, have depicted themselves as victims of anti-Muslim harassment, and defense lawyers accused the Justice Department in court today of exploiting their Islamic backgrounds and their passion for engaging in paint-ball war games in rural Virginia to unfairly portray the men as terrorists.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, federal judges have given the Justice Department wide latitude in incarcerating terrorism suspects without bail as their cases progressed in court. Hundreds of illegal immigrants and several people the government has declared "enemy combatants" were also held in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks, prompting accusations from civil liberties advocates that they had been denied due process.

In bringing a criminal case against the reported Kashmir separatists, prosecutors were met with often skeptical questioning from Judge Jones.

The judge, saying that the government's argument about the danger posed by one of the defendants "simply does not hold water," ordered the four men released under electronic monitoring to ensure they cannot flee the area. He did not require them to post financial bond.

If you think I'm picking out the paintball evidence and playing it up because it's funny, check out this tidbit from the Post item regarding the arrest of the 11 men -- 9 of whom are American citizens:

There is no evidence that the men were planning attacks in the United States, law enforcement officials said. But the indictment says that the men had "an intent to serve in armed hostility against the United States" and that one of them, Masoud Ahmad Khan, had a photograph downloaded from the Internet of the FBI headquarters building in Washington.

I don't think it's necessary to point out for anyone reading this that pictures of buildings aren't hard to come by. The FBI's website featured this picture on its history of the HQ page. The CIA used the picture again here, on its children's page. CNN carried this image of the building in 1998, ironically in a story about a new counterterrorism center that opened that year. Conveniently enough, CNN even tells you which floor the center was on: five. The BBC carried this photo of HQ in a 2001 story about the appointment of Robert Mueller as FBI Director.

So these guys were indicted for paintball and knowing how to use Google?

Wait, there's more:

The men also are accused of gathering at the Dar el Arkum mosque on South Washington Street in Falls Church "to hear lectures on the righteousness of violent jihad in Kashmir, Chechnya and other places around the world and to watch videotapes of mujahideen engaged in jihad."

The Fairfax County home of a Muslim scholar who has lectured at the Falls Church mosque, Ali al-Timimi, was searched as part of the investigation, according to court records. He is not charged in the indictment, and federal authorities would not comment on his role in the case.

So they went to their mosque? Did the search of the Imam's home yield any interesting evidence, G-Men? Was it interesting to see what a monotheistic religious leader's home looks like? Probably just a house in Falls Church, about four miles from where I'm sitting right now, huh? That's what I thought.

Oh. I almost forgot, they possessed legal handguns as well. I think you can ask the folks in the Virginia Citizens Defense League (who I must pause and deride as totally insane, thanks) whether possessing guns is a crime. Or you can ask the more than 100,000 concealed carry permit-holders in the Commonwealth. As long as you don't mind getting shot at.

But seriously. These indictments are all about being Arab. I don't know these guys, and I don't want to know them. I deplore guns and I'm not a Muslim, merely an Arab-American. Hell, I think paintball is stupid. But like the judge who tried to send these guys home without bail, I smell something fishy here. Everyone knows a grand jury is a prosecutor's show. You can tell those folks just about anything. Empanel a grand jury in Northern Virginia and show them pictures of scary Arab guys in the woods with guns and tell me they won't see that tired al-Qaida recruiting tape flickering across the screen.

These guys played paintball, travelled to India, went to the mosque, used Google. Show me evidence, show this judge some evidence, and maybe we can try this again. But right now, taxpayer money and government resources look like they're being sent down a hole to railroad some unfortunate paintball players. And America can't afford the false sense of security that kangaroo courts and pig-circus trials leave us with.