Health Insurance is a "Special Right"...

reserved for opposite-sex couples only because every time the domestic partner of a gay worker gets health insurance God kills a truckload of kittens.

Seriously, if a single marriage is Michigan has been helped by this, I'd love to hear about it.

The Michigan Court of Appeals temporarily halted a ruling Monday that allowed governments and public universities to provide health insurance to the partners of gay employees.

The dispute goes back to Michigan voters' approval almost a year ago of a constitutional amendment that made the union between a man and a woman the only agreement recognized as a marriage "or similar union for any purpose."

The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan sued, and Ingham County Circuit Judge Joyce Draganchuk ruled in late September that public-sector employers can offer domestic partner benefits without violating the amendment.

Republican State Attorney General Mike Cox is now appealing that ruling and had asked the appeals court to delay Draganchuk's decision until the higher court decides the issue.

Please explain to me how extending health insurance to domestic partners threatens other people's marriages.

Add this story to the growing pile of evidence that the battle over same-sex marriage isn't really about the "m word," it's about denying same-sex couples truly radical things like health insurance benefits for no other reason than irrational anti-gay hatred.

Immigrants: A Helpful Political Prop

I noticed that as he announced his nomination of Judge Samuel Alito for SCOTUS, President Bush couldn't resist the chance to play up the immigrant angle. Even though Alito himself was born in the U.S., it was critical, the president's speech writer felt, to note that Alito's father immigrated from Italy.

In his statement, Bush remarked:

"I'm sure, as well, that Judge Alito is thinking of his mom ... [a]nd I know he's thinking about his late father. Samuel Alito, Sr., came to this country as an immigrant child from Italy in 1914, and his fine family has realized the great promise of our country."

Some historians have asserted that America loves its immigrants, but I don't think the evidence quite backs that up. Without question, we seem to be quite fond of immigrants' children, or their children's children. But those who are fresh off the boat? Not really.

The real immigrants tend to be more of a source of anxiety than anything else as we worry what demands they will make on the schools, the health care system and entitlement programs. I'm willing to bet that many WASPs who crossed paths with Alito's father were less than welcoming. But there's who we really are and then there's who we'd like to think we are as Americans.

Immigrants have fared reasonably well in America relative to most other countries, but the overwhelming majority of immigrants to the U.S. have encountered a lot of ignorance, bigotry, and personal or economic hostility.

Still, presidents, governors and other leaders hasten to point out when one of their appointees or political allies happens to be an immigrant. Doing so validates the myth that race and culture are never obstacles in America. Bush constantly reminded us that appeals court nominee Miguel Estrada was an immigrant from Honduras. (Never mind that Bush's Homeland Security chief is less fond of immigrants.)

Of course, the same conservative citizen who, just a few years ago, was writing letters and e-mails urging the Senate to confirm Estrada might consider it a crisis to learn that a Honduran family had moved in next door.

The Bible + Lego + A Dose of Humor =

.... the website TheBrickTestament.com. The website uses a combination of speech balloons and images produced with Legos to illustrate the all-important lessons of the Bible. Under the heading, When to Stone Your Children -- Deuteronomy 21:18 lies this image:



















TheBrickTestament.com brings the Bible alive so everyone can understand its teachings on homosexuality, fashion, what not to eat, and other important subjects.

But my favorite illustrated Biblical lesson at TheBrickTestament.com is this one.

Beyond Choice: Thinking about Casey

In Planned Parenthood v. Casey Pennsylvania had passed a "spousal notification" law that required married women to, essentially, get the permission of their husbands to have an abortion.* It's one thing to be against legalized abortion, even to be anti-Roe, but supporting Casey strikes me as something altogether different. Aside from the ickiness of the state requiring a grown woman to get "permission" from her husband to do anything, that being married negates her autonomy over her own body, there is an underlying issue-- why wouldn't a woman want to tell her husband that she's pregnant?

We live in an era where awareness of domestic violence and sexual abuse is the highest it has ever been. It takes no imagination whatsoever to think of a few scenarios where a woman wouldn't want to tell her husband she was pregnant and wanted an abortion-- and none of them are nice ones. It's a pretty safe bet that any woman who wants to have an abortion and not tell her husband is in a bad marriage, does not live in a happy home, and quite possibly even a dangerous home. A similar principle applies to parental consent laws, neither of which give the woman the benefit of the doubt that she is in a better position to decide whom she can trust than the state. Both laws have the same goal-- to restrict access to legal abortion by granting someone else other than the woman the right to exercise control over her body.

Essentially, the law in Casey is about the state is inserting itself into a woman's privacy as well as her marriage in a truly pernicious way. But I suppose that's OK for anyone who believes that the framer's intent is paramount, after all the framer's never intended for anyone female to be full, equal citizens under the law.

Happy Halloween!
--------------------------
* A talking point that people need to grasp-- requiring a woman to notify her husband gives him the right to try and restrain the wife from proceeding, hence notification is tantamount to seeking permission.

What We Told Our Iraq-Bound Troops in 1942

Late last week, Harper's magazine posted this excerpt of “A Short Guide to Iraq,” which was written by the U.S. government in 1942. The handbook was prepared for American soldiers who were stationed in Iraq to prevent the Nazis from trying to seize Iraqi's oil supplies. It's a document that, when read from today's perspective, is thick with irony:

American success or failure in Iraq may well depend on whether the Iraqis (as the people are called) like American soldiers or not. It may not be quite that simple. But then again it could.

One of your big jobs is to prevent Hitler’s agents from getting in to do their dirty work. The best way you can do this is by getting along with the Iraqis, and the best way to get along with any people is to understand them ... so that you as a human being will get the most out of an experience few Americans have been lucky enough to have. Years from now you’ll be telling your children and maybe your grandchildren stories beginning, “Now, when I was in Baghdad . . .”

... Iraq is hot! Probably you will feel Iraq first — and that means heat. Blazing heat. And dust. Or the first thing you notice may be the smells. You have heard and read a lot about the “mysterious East.” You have seen moving pictures about the colorful life of the desert and the bazaars. When you actually get there you will look in vain for some of the things you have been led to expect. You will smell and feel a lot of things the movies didn’t warn you about.

What? Hollywood doesn't depict faraway places with utter accuracy?

But don’t get discouraged. Most Americans and Europeans who have gone to Iraq didn’t like it at first. Might as well be frank about it. But nearly all of these same people changed their minds, largely on account of the Iraqi people they began to meet. So will you.

That tall man in the flowing robe you are going to see soon, with the whiskers and the long hair, is a first-class fighting man, highly skilled in guerrilla warfare. If he is your friend, he can be a staunch and valuable ally. If he should happen to be your enemy — look out!

... But you will find out that the Iraqi is one of the most cheerful and friendly people in the world. If you are willing to go just a little out of your way to understand him, everything will be okay.

The Bushies tell us us it is America's role to push democracy abroad — even in countries with no democratic traditions. But the U.S. military in '42 was feeling no such obligation. According to the U.S. government guide:

Sure, there are differences (between you and the Iraqis). Differences galore! But what of it? You aren’t going to Iraq to change the Iraqis. Just the opposite. We are fighting this war to preserve the principle of “live and let live.” Maybe that sounded like a lot of words to you at home. Now you have the chance to prove it to yourself and others. If you can, it’s going to be a better world for all of us.

Then there was this gem of an understatement:

By far the most (Iraqi) people you will meet are Moslems .... Their feeling about their religion is pretty much the same as ours toward our religion, though more intense.

Y'think?

Hmmm ... Does This Sound Familiar?

I've been reading a book written by James Surowiecki called The Wisdom of Crowds, and I recently came upon this passage:

Homogenous groups, particularly small ones, are often victims of what the psychologist Irving Janis called "groupthink." After a detailed study of American foreign policy fiascoes ... Janis argued that when decision makers are too much alike - in worldview and mind-set -- they easily fall prey to groupthink.

... In the case of the Bay of Pigs invasion, for instance, the Kennedy administration planned and carried out its strategy without ever really talking to anyone who was skeptical of the prospects of success.

The people who planned the operation were the same ones who were asked to judge whether it would be successful or not. The few people who voiced caution were quickly silenced. And, most remarkably, neither the intelligence branch of the CIA nor the Cuban desk of the State Department was consulted about the plan.

The result was a bizarre neglect of some of the most elemental facts about Cuba in 1961, including the popularity of Fidel Castro, the strength of the Cuban army, and even the size of the island itself. (The invasion was predicated on the idea that 1,200 men could take over all of Cuba.)

The administration even convinced itself that the world would believe the United States had nothing to do with the invasion, though American involvement was an open secret in Guatemala (where the Cuban exiles were being trained).

Unlike the Kennedy administration, the Bush II administration was kind enough to consult CIA intelligence analysts. Of course, once those analysts reached conclusions that differed from those of the White House hawks, it was time to send Dick Cheney and "Scooter" Libby over to the CIA headquarters to, um, persuade those analysts to change their minds.

It's amazing that our government learned so little over the span of 42 years.

Word of the Day is...

"Scalito."

There's a nickname for federal appeals Judge Samuel Alito Jr. that captures two things at once -- his particular brand of legal conservatism and a recognition that his credentials are strong enough to put him on any Republican president's short-list for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Some lawyers call the judge "Scalito."

Roughly translated, the nickname means "Little Scalia," suggesting that Alito, a judge on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, has modeled himself after Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

So, the right got their mold-of-Scalia-and-Thomas after all. Scalito is the right-wing conservative activist judge they've been waiting for.

Alito's conservative stripes are equally evident in criminal law. Lawrence Lustberg, a New Jersey criminal defense lawyer who has known Alito since 1981 and tried cases before him on the Third Circuit, describes him as "an activist conservatist judge" who is tough on crime and narrowly construes prisoners' and criminals' rights.

Scalito is pretty out there on abortion-- lone dissenter in Planned Parenthood v. Casey when it was before the Third Circuit-- supporting a law requiring that women get their husband's permission to have an abortion. There's more on his record here.

This is not going to be a polite confirmation fight.

A Beautiful Oasis Surrounded by Conflict and Killing

An interesting and amusing profile from Saturday's New York Times included a startling fact that came as news to me:

At (age) 93, the resident owner of Jerusalem's most beautiful hotel, the American Colony, [Valentine Vester] is a last tie to an earlier era in the Middle East, before the Holocaust, the end of the British Mandate and the 1967 Arab-Israeli war changed the landscape and put her hotel, which was first under Ottoman, British and then Jordanian rule, firmly under the Israelis.

Now hard of hearing and with her vision failing, she remains funny and tart about the world around her and the accidents of her own life.

... Mrs. Vester, who was born in Yorkshire, England, married into a wealthy Chicago family, the Spaffords. They had decided to come to Jerusalem in 1881, after four of their children died in a shipping disaster ... she is pleased that the hotel, which is owned by a board of seven relatives, including her and her two sons, remains one of the few places where both Israelis and Palestinians come.

"We've tried very hard to be neutral," Mrs. Vester said. "And we've tried not to let the hotel become some Disney Oriental, and remain rather traditional."

... Mrs. Vester remembers just after the (1967 Arab-Israeli) war, walking through the grounds, when she saw some Jews from Mea Sharim picking flowers. She remembers saying, "Please don't do that, this is our private garden."

... During the first gulf war, in 1991, she says, the Israelis, under the threat of Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons and Scud missiles, handed out gas masks -- but only to the guests, not to the Palestinian staff of the hotel.

"But we diddled them," Mrs. Vester said with pride. "We made an imaginary list of hotel guests. I mean two can play at that game. It was shocking, really."

... "We sit in our beautiful garden while people are killing each other in Ramallah," she said. "I really feel rather embarrassed by it, ashamed in front of the staff, who live in these places and battle to get back and forth, with all these delays."

Scooter is in Trouble, Big Time

Scooter Libby has been handed five indictments on the following charges: one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of making false statements and two counts of perjury.

Hmm, something tells me these are going to be tricky to characterize as frivolous.

Also, Rove isn't off the hook.

Rove's attorney Robert Luskin issued a statement Friday that Fitzgerald "has advised Mr. Rove that he has made no decision about whether or not to bring charges."

"Mr. Rove will continue to cooperate fully with the Special Counsel's efforts to complete the investigation," Luskin's statement said. "We are confident that when the Special Counsel finishes his work, he will conclude that Mr. Rove has done nothing wrong."

As Rove departed his home in Washington Friday morning, he told reporters, "I am going to have a great Friday and a fantastic weekend and hope you do too."

Nice try, Karl.

Scooter Libby has already resigned. According to former Cheney aide Mary Matalin, "Scooter is to Cheney as Cheney is to Bush."

Awww, Cheney has lost his Scooter.

At Least You Have to Appreciate Her Candor

Conservatives never use the term "right-wing" to describe their own views or politics. Likewise, liberals are quite fond of "progressive," but they are less likely to use "liberal" and almost never get caught using the moniker "left-wing" to describe themselves. So I was quite surprised to hear Ann Coulter's comments this morning on CNN.

Asked by host Miles O'Brien about possible choices to fill the SCOTUS vacancy, Coulter said that the president has a number of good options because there is an excellent "farm team of right-wing or conservative" judges. After speaking the term "right-wing," there was this pregnant pause -- as if Coulter was thinking, "Damn, I know we want someone who is right-wing, but we're not actually supposed to say that.

Time to Look in the Mirror

Thursday's edition of USA Today published a letter to the editor by "D. Barton" of Port Orange, Fla., a self-identified Republican who enthusiastically trumpeted the candidacy of Michael Steele for the U.S. Senate. Steele, Maryland's first African-American lieutenant governor, announced this week he will run for the Senate in '06.

Barton voiced hope that Steele is "elected overwhelmingly" by Maryland voters, adding:

I don't know him, nor am I resident of Maryland. Instead, I want him to win because it'd be a step in the right direction to show black America that we Republicans have no agenda to hinder black advancement.

Members of the Democratic Party and some liberal-controlled news media outlets want blacks in the USA to feel that they're suppressed, need government subsidies and can't make it on their own merit.

What's wrong this picture? Dems and the media are blasted for supposedly believing that blacks "can't make it on their own merit," but this Republican believes Steele should make it to the Senate simply because he's black.

Barton doesn't "know" Steele -- presumably that means he's unaware of Steele's positions on the issues. He seems to know little more than one fact: Steele is black and his victory would help spit-polish the GOP's image. Barton is treating blacks as a prop in the very same way of which he accuses others.

National Review on the Next SCOTUS Nominee

Commenting on Harriet Miers' withdrawal today, the National Review looks ahead and editorializes:

If President Bush now nominates someone whom most conservatives can support, as he should, then Bush and the conservatives may, together, win the nominee's confirmation.

... The Democrats will insist that the far Right has forced a nominee beholden to it on a weak president.

Did the editors of NR have a response for this Democratic argument? No.

But taking on the Democrats, even Democrats armed with that argument, still seems the best option. Republicans still have a majority of the Senate. If Democrats mount a filibuster, Republicans should be able to break it one way or the other. Republicans will need only two members of the "gang of 14" who made the filibuster deal to prevail.

So it would appear that NR essentially agrees with what Dems are likely to conclude -- "that the far Right has forced a nominee beholden to it on a weak president." The only point NR is making here is that GOP senators just have to use their majority status to "break" any Democratic resistance and force through an ultra-conservative nominee.

I guess it's too much to expect that NR would come clean and just write: "The Democrats will insist that the far Right wanted to force a nominee beholden to it on to a weak president. And they'd be right."

There was a time when one would have expected a more thoughtful rejoinder from a magazine that has long claimed to be the publication for conservative intellectuals (a term that seems increasingly oxymoronic these days).

Let's Hear It for THC

Something tells me this news development won't be incorporated into the federal government's future anti-drug ads. From Reuters:

Although both marijuana and tobacco smoke are packed with cancer-causing chemicals, other qualities of marijuana seem to keep it from promoting lung cancer, according to a new report.

The difference rests in the often opposing actions of the nicotine in tobacco and the active ingredient, THC, in marijuana, says Dr. Robert Melamede of the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs.

... Whereas nicotine has several effects that promote lung and other types of cancer, THC acts in ways that counter the cancer-causing chemicals in marijuana smoke, Melamede explained in an interview with Reuters Health.

"THC turns down the carcinogenic potential," he said

Get Your Pair of GOP Blinders Today-- Now with Free Rose-Colored Glasses!

Apparently Kathryn Lopez ("K-Lo") from The Corner graduated with honors from the Peggy Noonan School for Hero-Worshipping Sciolists.

A FEW WORDS ABOUT PRESIDENT BUSH [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
You know what the relief is this morning? A return to the feeling that this president gets the big things right. There was a detour, but I’m confident we’re going to have good news shortly on SCOTUS, because this president tends to get the big things right. That’s the confidence so many of us have always had in him. And we may have been worried about our assessment for a few weeks there, but there's a renewed confidence this morning.

Um, what part of his-hand-was-forced do you not understand? If it were up to your Dear Leader Ms. Miers would have been on the bench, I think it's pretty clear that he really wanted her on the bench. Or do you think he was kidding when he said things like this:

Q: So are you ruling it out, any withdrawal [of Harriet Miers]?

PRESIDENT BUSH: No, she is going to be on the bench, she'll be confirmed -- and when she's on the bench people will see a fantastic woman who is honest, open, humble and capable of being a great Supreme Court Judge.

Only K-Lo would see it as a sign of strength that he was bullied by his own party into nominating someone else. Perhaps she just received the new White House talking points?

A note to "The Corner," get rid of "K-Lo" already, she even makes liberals like me wince in embarassment on your behalf.

"Burden for the White House"

So Miers is gone, Bush says he has "reluctantly accepted" her withdrawl.
So the SCOTUS judicial nominee battle begins anew-- who is next? Is Bush going to throw a juicy bone to his base (Janice Rogers Brown?) or punish them with someone moderate for being disloyal to him and so hard on his good friend Harriet? More importantly, did he learn his lesson that he needs to think beyond his own personal feelings about a nominee? This is a job for life after all.

Additionally, the Plame indictments-- if there are any-- should come down today or tomorrow. The MSM is going to have a heckuva time focusing on these stories and the hurricane aftermath in Florida considering that they generally don't multi-task very well.

What is that so-called curse, may you live in interesting times?

Bush: A Victim of His Own Character (Or Lack of It)

Conservatives talk a lot about character. As George W. Bush's presidency appears to be teetering on the brink, the Atlantic Monthly's Jack Beatty examines the source of this train wreck and concludes that W's achilles heel has been character(or the lack thereof). From the magazine's Oct. 20 issue:

Compassionate conservativism? A "humble" foreign policy? A new relationship with Mexico? The policy "facts" were by no means uniformly deplorable. Certainly they didn't predict the disasters of the Bush presidency.

But character did. The predictive facts were right there, in Bush's biography ... A reservist pilot who failed to report for duty, a failed politician, a serial failure in business until his dad, then vice president, intervened with the commissioner of baseball to get him taken in as a "partner" in the Texas Rangers, "W" misplayed winning hands and fumbled golden opportunities.

And those words fit his post-9/11 actions as well. A winning hand --the country's support for the war in Afghanistan. A golden opportunity -- the world's sympathy for the U.S. and cooperation in the "war on terror." Lost, fumbled, trashed.

... Bush finally holds a job from which he can't fail up.

... Character, for the Greeks, was destiny. What you did you would do. Your past predicted your future. Yet, by the conventions of political reporting, the "character issue" means naughtiness á la Clinton. The Greek sense of character, familiar from literature and modern psychiatry, is typically ignored.

... "I'm all name and no money," Bush said in a 1986 interview. If his name was just George Walker he might have gone to jail for insider trading.

Al Hunt, the estimable Wall Street Journal columnist, might have slugged him for his drunken obscenity-laced tirade at a Washington restaurant in front of Hunt's wife and four-year-old son—several years after Bush claims he stopped drinking.

His father owned the name that spared W the consequences of his actions. From which Bush learned, Go ahead, mess up. Daddy will fix everything. For a future President there can't be a worse life lesson than that.

Looming Catastrophe

The latest post from the CFD:

In the last few weeks, there have been a series of warning signs that the situation in Darfur, already horrific, is rapidly deteriorating.

Two weeks ago, Juan Mendez, the UN's Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, returned from Darfur and warned that the situation was worsening, stating frankly that "the situation much more dangerous and worrisome than I expected it to be." Shortly thereafter, the UN declared that, due to insecurity, large portions of the region were deemed "no go" areas, which in turn cut off aid access to at least 650,000 people. The UN also evacuated all non-essential personel from West Darfur.

All the while, attacks on the displaced continued and seven AU monitors were killed in an ambush. Not long after that, the New York Times reported that the Janjaweed militias, equipped and supported by the Sudanese government, were acting with complete impunity and were "now emboldened enough to turn their guns on the government."

That was followed by a frantic statement from Antonio Guterres, the UN's High Commissioner for Refugees, that "everything is getting out of control" and that the international community had just weeks to attempt to restore order in Darfur or risk "a very serious degeneration of the situation."

That, in turn, was followed by a report that "more than 100,000 people are now believed to have died in the Darfur region of Sudan since the United Nations Security Council set a 30-day deadline last year for the Khartoum regime to begin to resolve the crisis in the area." That is on top of the several hundred thousand who had died prior to UN-issued deadline.

Amid all of this, and mostly ignored by the press, former Secretary of State Colin Powell told an audience that the world had failed to "fully face" the genocide in Darfur. That is something of an understatement, but considering that it was Powell himself who first declared that what was happening in Darfur was indeed genocide - more than one year ago - it is certainly worth noting.

One year ago, the world knew it was genocide and did nothing. One year later, UN officials are warning that "everything is getting out of control" and that Darfur risks descending into utter anarchy, bringing with it an untold loss of life ... and still the world does nothing.

Philippe Gaillard was head of the International Committee of the Red Cross mission in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide - and though the following quote refers to international community's failure to respond to the atrocities in Rwanda, it could just as well apply to the failure to respond to Darfur

In such circumstances, if you don't at least speak out clearly, you are participating in the genocide. If you just shut up when you see what you see -- morally, ethically you cannot shut up. It's a responsibility to speak out. It did not change anything, and it …[did not] move the international community. I just can say that they cannot tell us or tell me that they didn't know. They were told every day what was happening there. So don't come back to me and tell me, "Sorry, we didn't know." No. Everybody knew.

Wal-Mart Is At It Again

The negative publicity that Wal-Mart has received for its shoddy business practices has led the huge discount retailer to expand its already mammoth advertising budget. Who would have thought Wal-Mart would contribute financially to NPR in order to air sponsorship teasers that tout the company's "diverse workforce" -- i.e., their wages are so low that many of their workers are recent immigrants who are living hand to mouth.

But the feel-good ads will not allow Wal-Mart to escape responsibility for its behavior. From today's New York Times:

An internal memo sent to Wal-Mart's board of directors proposes numerous ways to hold down spending on health care and other benefits while seeking to minimize damage to the retailer's reputation. Among the recommendations are hiring more part-time workers and discouraging unhealthy people from working at Wal-Mart.

In the memorandum, M. Susan Chambers, Wal-Mart's executive vice president for benefits, also recommends reducing 401(k) contributions and wooing younger, and presumably healthier, workers by offering education benefits. The memo voices concern that workers with seven years' seniority earn more than workers with one year's seniority, but are no more productive.

...Ms. Chambers acknowledged that 46 percent of the children of Wal-Mart's 1.33 million United States employees were uninsured or on Medicaid.

Wal-Mart executives said the memo was part of an effort to rein in benefit costs, which to Wall Street's dismay have soared by 15 percent a year on average since 2002. Like much of corporate America, Wal-Mart has been squeezed by soaring health costs. The proposed plan, if approved, would save the company more than $1 billion a year by 2011.

Sounds like cost-cutting, right? Not according to Wal-Mart:

In an interview, Ms. Chambers said she was focusing not on cutting costs, but on serving employees better by giving them more choices on their benefits.

"We are investing in our benefits that will take even better care of our associates," she said. "Our benefit plan is known today as being generous."

But this was my favorite part:

To discourage unhealthy job applicants, Ms. Chambers suggests that Wal-Mart arrange for "all jobs to include some physical activity (e.g., all cashiers do some cart-gathering)."

... Ms. Chambers also said that she made her recommendations after surveying employees about how they felt about the benefits plan.

Does she expect us to believe that all of these recommendations flowed from the employee survey? Including the recommendation about creating different types of "physical activity" for the purpose of exposing which employees are less healthy than others?

Hell, maybe Wal-Mart will try next to collect DNA samples from every employee and run them through a lab. Armed with the lab results, Wal-Mart can then lay off employees who have a genetic marker for any costly disease.

That may sound heartless, but, when a company's raison d'etre is to give the public "low, low prices" it is tempting to take outrageous steps to maintain "low, low benefit costs" -- and one example is conspiring to show "unhealthy" workers the door.

Some employers have health-and-wellness programs, but to the Wal-Marts of this world, such an approach must seem downright exotic, perhaps even silly.

Full Court Press?

WNBA superstar Sheryl Swoopes has officially come out of the closet.

I remember back when the WNBA league first started they spent an inordinate amount of time profiling the players and emphasizing their femininity and marital/motherhood statuses-- something they don't do for the men-- to make it clear they weren't a bunch of dykes. Meanwhile going to a WBNA game in places like DC, LA or NYC was like going to a lesbian pride event. In its early days the league was definitely trying to appear "wholesome" and "family-friendly" by downplaying the visibility of the lesbian players and fans and there was a lot of tension between the two.

In a word, Sheryl Swoopes rocks. She's been named MVP several times and has a few Olympic gold medallions to call her own. She joins the ranks of a few other lesbian atheletes-- Martina Navratilova, Billie Jean King, professional female golfers -- although I'm pretty sure she's the first black lesbian athlete. From the sound of this article, Swoopes may have accidently outed herself when she and her partner signed up for an Olivia cruise, a lesbian cruiseline. When Olivia noticed her name they contacted her and asked her if she wanted to become a spokeswoman for the company. From there she decided to do it and come out of the closet.

It'll be interesting to see what impact this news has on her other endorsements, if any. (Swoopes the only woman to have a shoe named for her, Nike's Air Swoopes.) I think it's also possible that it won't get too much press. It's pretty well established that lesbianism isn't treated like male homosexuality-- we're usually not portrayed as predatory, mostly we're ignored or serve as fantasy-fodder. Add that to the fact that women's sports are largely ignored anyways and this isn't likely to be that big of a story. (Although in contrast, when Martina came out she lost a lot.) Well, except for the fact that she plays for the Houston Comets. This might not go over so well in Texas.

All things considered, good for Swoopes, she has a lot to lose by coming out so it takes quite a bit of bravery. Good for her.

Bush: This Distraction Is Not a Distraction

The AP reports:

BUSH VOWS NOT TO BE DISTRACTED BY POLITICAL PROBLEMS

Washington (AP)-- President Bush, jarred by investigations of White House officials and congressional leaders and an uproar over his Supreme Court nomination, said Thursday there was "some background noise here, a lot of chatter" complicating the work of his administration.

But he said, "The American people expect me to do my job, and I'm going to."

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Of course, if Bush truly were not distracted by the political rumblings of Plame and Miers, he wouldn't feel the need to tell us he isn't distracted.

Like a Cold Little Bird

Looks like someone might be feeling pretty puffed up right now.

It's been a very long since poor little Gary Bauer has been in any kind of media spotlight and/or has been able to pretend that he's being unfairly persecuted. Now he gets to feign outrage over the idea of being dragged-- in painful, rusty shackles, no less!-- in front of the Judiciary Committee where they will pull out his toenails one by one until he talks!

To: Friends and Supporters
From: Gary L. Bauer, Chairman Campaign for Working Families
Date: Monday, October 24, 2005

"Judiciary Committee Fiasco? Once again, over the weekend, Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) threatened to require Dr. James Dobson and other pro-family leaders, including me, to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee. In fact, today I met with the Judiciary Committee staff, at their request, to answer questions about an October 3rd conference call that has Specter and other liberal senators in such a tizzy.

How dare those nasty liberal senators like Republican Arlen Specter request that right-wingers who boasted about getting private assurances about Harriet Miers' conservative, Christian beliefs demand that they share with the rest of us what they were told! Don't they know that's private information for right-winger ears only? From Gop's lips to their ears!

It's All Miers' Fault

When the President of the United States nominates an underqualified crony to the Supreme Court, who deserves the blame?

If you are a right-wing loon, I guess the answer is "the underqualified crony"

Mark Smith, vice president of the New York chapter of the Federalist Society, who attended the Roberts swearing-in at the White House just last month, said Miers does not even deserve hearings. "If Miss Miers were truly a conservative, she would withdraw her nomination," he said. It is "certainly harming the Republican Party and the conservative movement," and she should pull out "if for no other reason than the good of the cause."

What "cause" is that? The one that has been savaging her for the last three weeks?

Others, such as the National Review, also seem to think that Miers ought to fall on her sword to protect President Bush

Some conservatives have called on the president to withdraw her nomination, and a few have urged senators to vote against her. If the president withdrew the nomination, we believe that he would seek a replacement who could unite conservatives — as he no doubt expected Miers to unite them. But that nominee would be tarnished, perhaps fatally, by the suspicion that the president was forced to pander to the Right. The president, moreover, surely does not want to risk looking less than strong and steadfast. The prudent course is for Miers to withdraw her own nomination in the interests of the president she loyally serves. The president could then start over.

Hell, Peggy Noonan even goes so far as to call on Miers to take a figurative bullet for him

He was the Secret Service agent who stood like Stonewall and took the bullet for Ronald Reagan outside the Washington Hilton. Harriet Miers can withdraw her name, take the hit, and let the president's protectors throw him in the car. Her toughness and professionalism would appear wholly admirable. She'd not just survive; she'd flourish, going from much-spoofed office wife to world-famous lawyer and world-class friend. Added side benefit: Her nobility makes her attackers look bad. She's better than they, more loyal and serious. An excellent moment of sacrifice and revenge

Wasn't one of Bush's pledges to usher in an "era of personal responsibility"? Maybe his supporters ought to ... you know ... start holding him responsible for his mistakes.

It is the only way he'll learn.

The "Last Throes" of the Insurgency Continue

From Baghdad, the AP reports:

"Suicide bombers including one in a cement truck packed with explosives launched a dramatic attack Monday against the Palestine Hotel, where many foreign journalists are based, sending up a giant cloud of smoke and debris over central Baghdad. American troops and journalists escaped without serious injury but at least a half-dozen passers-by were killed.

"The deafening attack triggered confusion and panic throughout the hotel, and sent cars swerving wildly on a roundabout to escape the blasts. Inside the 19-story hotel, the force of the blasts shattered glass, tore pictures off walls and brought down light fixtures and ceilings."

But don't be alarmed. Our vice president insisted that the Iraqi insurgency was "in the last throes" -- of course, he insisted so over four and a half months ago.

Aren't We Getting a Little Ahead of Ourselves?

It's one thing to jump the gun. It's another thing to jump the gun in committing yourself to a losing candidate. According to the AP:

Sen. Edward Kennedy said Wednesday he would back fellow Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 -- even if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton also pursues a White House bid.

"If he runs, I would support him," Kennedy told The Associated Press in an interview at his Boston office.

.... Kennedy called Kerry, the 2004 nominee, an "able, gifted and talented political leader."

Were we watching the same candidate?

Excuse me while I go windsurfing.

Scooter to be Indicted?

Odds of that happening are looking increasingly likely-- he didn't find out Plame's identity from a journalist, Cheney told him.

I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.

Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby’s testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.
...
Mr. Libby’s notes indicate that Mr. Cheney had gotten his information about Ms. Wilson from George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, in response to questions from the vice president about Mr. Wilson. But they contain no suggestion that either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby knew at the time of Ms. Wilson’s undercover status or that her identity was classified. Disclosing a covert agent’s identity can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent’s undercover status.

It would not be illegal for either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby, both of whom are presumably cleared to know the government’s deepest secrets, to discuss a C.I.A. officer or her link to a critic of the administration. But any effort by Mr. Libby to steer investigators away from his conversation with Mr. Cheney could be considered by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the case, to be an illegal effort to impede the inquiry.

Death of a Civil Rights Heroine

December 1, 1955 is the 50th anniversary of the day Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat a bus in Montomery, Alabama. Thanks to Rosa Parks, 1913-2005, the United States is forever changed.

Naked, Dancing, Frolicking Hypocrisy

Right-winger orgs that are usually angrily demanding that all of Bush's nominees deserve an up-and-down vote have suddenly changed tactics-- they don't think Harriet Miers deserves one. Several orgs have formed a coalition and have launched a website that helps underline their blatant hypocrisy-- www.withdrawMiers.org.

If Miers' nomination moves makes it to the floor I wonder if they'll all call for a filibuster? That would be awesome.

It's the theme of the day-- IOKIYAR!

"Let Them Eat Potatoes"

The Sunday Times has an absolutely amazing story about Robert Mugabe and what he has done to Zimbabwe.

There is way too much to excerpt here and so I strongly encourage you to read the entire thing.

But, in the meantime, I just have to highlight this

This, after all, is a country that until five years ago not only fed itself but exported food. Justice for Agriculture, a commercial farmers’ lobby group, predicts that this year Zimbabwe will produce enough food for only one month — some 200,000 tons against a minimum requirement of 1.8m.

Only about 200 commercial farms are still operating, compared with 4,500 five years ago when “war veterans” were starting to seize white-owned land. Once-fertile fields now lie scorched or weed-ridden.

If there was any doubt that Mugabe is willing to see his people starve, The Sunday Times has learnt from a company hired to rid food stores of weevils that there are WFP stocks all over the country, a year’s supply of grain and 1,000 tons of corn soya blend to make fortified porridge.

Mugabe refuses to let this be distributed because he wants to retain control of the food supply. Some has been left to rot and last month more than 300 tons of bran was destroyed in Bulawayo and Harare because Mugabe believed it was genetically modified. Asked in an interview earlier this month about the hunger, Mugabe replied in Marie Antoinette vein: “Let them eat potatoes. We have plenty of potatoes.”

But with the prices of basic foods spiralling out of control, it is getting harder to feed everyone. The cheapest loaf costs 62p, a daunting sum in a country where civil servants earn £15 a week. This is way below the £45 a week that the Consumer Council of Zimbabwe says an average family needs. Experts are calling Zimbabwe the fastest-shrinking economy in the world. The latest report from the UN Development Programme says it has seen the sharpest drop in quality of life of any country not at war. The quality of life is worse than in Mongolia and Equatorial Guinea, it says. Deepening poverty and widespread HIV/Aids have reduced life expectancy to 36.9 years.

Reason # 769 Republicans Really Bug Me

For some reason September 9, 1998 popped into my mind when I read this.

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, speaking on the NBC news program "Meet the Press," compared the [Plame] leak investigation with the case of Martha Stewart and her stock sale, "where they couldn't find a crime and they indict on something that she said about something that wasn't a crime."

Ms. Hutchison said she hoped "that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars."
...
Some Republicans have also been reprising a theme that was often sounded by Democrats during the investigations into President Bill Clinton, that special prosecutors and independent counsels lack accountability and too often pursue cases until they find someone to charge.

I wonder if Ken Starr's ears are burning?

Just another reminder that they're operating under different rules than everyone else-- because lying under oath IOKIYAR.

Let's hope that Hutchinson's comment makes its way into a campaign ad, after all she's advocating that anyone who gets caught in Fitzgerald's net should get 5 months in prison, at least, just like Martha.

Update: Alec Baldwin nails it by adding the 1999 KBH quote (mentioned in comments) and asking the $1,000,0000 question-- Why are contemporary Republicans so full of shit?

Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock...

Will the Downing Street Memos intersect with the Plame investgation?

The CIA leak inquiry that threatens senior White House aides has now widened to include the forgery of documents on African uranium that started the investigation, according to NAT0 intelligence sources.

This suggests the inquiry by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald into the leaking of the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame has now widened to embrace part of the broader question about the way the Iraq war was justified by the Bush administration.
...
Fitzgerald's team has been given the full, and as yet unpublished report of the Italian parliamentary inquiry into the affair, which started when an Italian journalist obtained documents that appeared to show officials of the government of Niger helping to supply the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein with Yellowcake uranium. This claim, which made its way into President Bush's State of the Union address in January, 2003, was based on falsified documents from Niger and was later withdrawn by the White House.

This opens the door to what has always been the most serious implication of the CIA leak case, that the Bush administration could face a brutally damaging and public inquiry into the case for war against Iraq being false or artificially exaggerated. This was the same charge that imperiled the government of Bush's closest ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, after a BBC Radio program claimed Blair's aides has "sexed up" the evidence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

There can be few more serious charges against a government than going to war on false pretences, or having deliberately inflated or suppressed the evidence that justified the war.

If Fitzgerald's investigation touches upon this, exposing the goverment's falsified justifications for going to war in Iraq, it will not be good for the country, at home or abroad. I can't say I'll be happy if all of this comes to light-- the days of schadenfreude are long gone, it has been replaced by total shame and disgust towards my government.

The Bush Administration has done far more damage to his so-called War on Terror than any "anti-American" anti-war liberals ever could-- they have boldly undermined and unraveled their own cause with their arrogance, their lies and their deception.

Being Dishonest = Not Being Sufficiently "Exact"

From today’s Washington Post:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) was given considerable information about his stake in his family's hospital company, according to records that are at odds with his past statements that he did not know what was in his stock holdings.

… In January 2003, after winning election as majority leader, Frist was asked on CNBC whether his HCA holdings made it difficult for him to push for changes in Medicare, a federal health program for seniors that added to the hospital company's revenue.

"I think really for our viewers it should be understood that I put this into a blind trust," Frist replied. "So as far as I know, I own no HCA stock." He added that the trust was "totally blind. I have no control."

Two weeks before that interview, M. Kirk Scobey Jr., a Frist trustee, informed the senator in writing that one of his trusts had received HCA stock valued at between $15,000 and $50,000.

A Frist spokesman tried his best to pull the Senator’s feet out of the fire with this spin:

"He [Frist] could have been more exact in his comments," said Bob Stevenson, spokesman for Frist.

It’s hard to imagine Frist being any more exact or precise. The senate Majority Leader did not describe his trust as merely “blind” — he called it “totally blind.” It doesn’t get more exact than words like total or totally. And Frist said he was not aware that he owned any HCA stock when, only two weeks before, he had been informed of the estimated value of HCA stock within his trust.

Childhood Is Frequently a Casualty in Uganda

Over the past year or so, Eugene has written numerous posts on Demagogue and our sister blog (CoalitionForDarfur) about the bizarre and barbaric Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda. The LRA has kidnapped roughly 25,000 children and forced them to serve as soldiers, servants and sex slaves.

I was planning to link to an excellent column by Kevin Sites of the "Hot Zone" about a boy who had been abducted by the LRA when I realized (not surprisingly) Eugene had beaten me to it. It's worth reading.

Good News from the Land of Dorothy and Toto

QUESTION 1: If you were a judge, what kind of punishment would you give a male who was 18 years old who had consensual sex with a 14-year-old female?

QUESTION 2: If you were a judge, what kind of punishment would you give a male who was 18 years old who had consensual sex with a 14-year-old male?

Now, compare your answers to the sentencing procedures that used to apply in Kansas courts until Friday when (happily) the state's Supreme Court struck down the law on which these criminal penalties were based.

According to the Associated Press:

The Kansas Supreme Court on Friday unanimously struck down a state law that punished underage sex more severely if it involved homosexual acts, saying "moral disapproval" of such conduct is not enough to justify the different treatment.

... Gay rights groups praised the ruling, while conservatives bitterly complained that the court intruded on the Legislature's authority to make the laws.

The case involved an 18-year-old man, Matthew R. Limon, who was found guilty in 2000 of performing a sex act on a 14-year-old boy and was sentenced to 17 years in prison. Had one of them been a girl, state law would have dictated a maximum sentence of 15 months.

The high court ordered that Limon be resentenced as if the law treated illegal gay sex and illegal straight sex the same. He has already served more than five years.

... Kansas law prohibits any sexual activity involving a person under 16. However, the state's 1999 "Romeo and Juliet" law specifies short prison sentences or probation for sexual activity when an offender is under 19 and the age difference between participants is less than four years — but only for opposite-sex encounters.

Libby Is (In)Famous For Something Else

All of Washington seems to be both awaiting and speculating about possible indictments in the Valerie Plame affair. According to rumors floating around town, Lewis "Scooter" Libby is highly likely to be indicted.

Libby is Dick Cheney's chief of staff, although Libby's name is not one that has appeared much (until just recently) in the news. Still, I couldn't help but think earlier this week that I had read something notorious about Libby over the past year. Turns out I wasn't dreaming.

Remember this article written by Sidney Blumenthal last year?

The truth is that much of the intelligence community did not fail (in its WMD assessments), but presented correct assessments and warnings, that were overridden and suppressed.

On virtually every single important claim made by the Bush administration in its case for war, there was serious dissension. Discordant views -- not from individual analysts but from several intelligence agencies as a whole -- were kept from the public as momentum was built for a congressional vote on the war resolution.

... Never before had any senior White House official physically intruded into CIA's Langley headquarters to argue with mid-level managers and analysts about unfinished work. But twice Vice President Cheney and Lewis Libby, his chief of staff, came to offer their opinions.

According to Patrick Lang: "They looked disapproving, questioned the reports and left an impression of what you're supposed to do. They would say: 'you haven't looked at the evidence'. The answer would be, those reports [from Iraqi exiles] aren't valid. The analysts would be told, you should look at this again'. Finally, people gave up. You learn not to contradict them."

Given the fact that Libby pressured intelligence analysts to reach the wrong conclusion (thereby helping to justify a war that remains a bloody quagmire), should he be indicted in the Plame affair, I can only say: it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

If This T-Shirt Existed, I'd Sure Buy One

The latest chapter in the life of the world's biggest asshole -- courtesy of the Associated Press:

Rep. Tom DeLay appeared in court Friday for the first time since indictment, but arraignment on conspiracy and money laundering charges was delayed pending a hearing on his request for a new judge in the politically-charged case.

.... Inside the courtroom, Judge Bob Perkins told defense lawyer Dick DeGuerin that "the best way for me to handle" the request for a new judge would be to defer further proceedings. That set the stage for a pointed exchange between the two men that seemed as much a campaign debate as a courtroom exchange.

In respectful tones, DeGuerin noted that Perkins had donated money to MoveOn.org, a liberal organization that he said has been "selling T-shirts with Mr. DeLay's mug shot on it."

"Let me just say I haven't ever seen that T-shirt, number one. Number two, I haven't bought it. Number three, the last time I contributed to MoveOn that I know of was prior to the November election last year, when they were primarily helping Sen. Kerry," responded the judge.

MoveOn.org denied it was selling any such shirts, and issued a statement that said, "DeGuerin has either bad information or lied in court."

An attorney for Tom DeLay possibly lying in court? Imagine that.

In Case You're on the Fence About the Nazis

If you're having trouble deciding whether the Nazi regime was basically a good thing or a bad thing, you should take into account the current effects of Herman Goering's environmental policy. It may just tip the balance for you.

(Of course, if you actually had any doubts, you'd have to be unbalanced to begin with, so tipping wouldn't be a good idea. This parenthesis is for any passing netizen who might be silly enough to take this post seriously.)

Colin Powell's Ex-CoS Takes the Gloves Off

Plenty of Democratic lawmakers and liberal interest groups have disparaging things to say about the way the Bush administration operates. You’d expect as much. But you’d also expect that Bush alumni would either say good things or nothing at all.

Yet the list keeps growing of ex-Bush administration officials who have rather disturbing reports of how the White House and top Bush confidants run things. To the names of Paul O’Neill, Richard Clarke and other disenchanted Bush alumni, you can add Lawrence Wilkerson.

On the surface, Wilkerson is not the kind of guy you’d expect to be taking shots at the Bush administration. He’s a retired Army colonel and former director of the Marine Corps War College. But as today’s New York Times reports:

Secretary of State Colin Powell's former chief of staff has offered a remarkably blunt criticism of the administration he served, saying that foreign policy had been usurped by a "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal," and that President Bush has made the country more vulnerable, not less, to future crises.

The comments came in a speech Wednesday by Lawrence Wilkerson, who worked for Mr. Powell at the State Department from 2001 to early 2005 …. Mr. Wilkerson suggested that secrecy, arrogance and internal feuding had taken a heavy toll in the Bush administration, skewing its policies and undercutting its ability to handle crises.

"I would say that we have courted disaster, in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran, generally with regard to domestic crises like Katrina, Rita — and I could go on back," he said. "We haven't done very well on anything like that in a long time."

Mr. Wilkerson suggested that the dysfunction within the administration was so grave that "if something comes along that is truly serious, truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence."

Security moms: doesn't this make you feel nice and safe?

… (Mr. Wilkerson) said that in his years in or close to government, he had seen its national security apparatus twisted in many ways. But what he saw in Mr. Bush's first term "was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberration, bastardizations" and "perturbations."

Ineptitude? Hmmmm .... Wilkerson must be referring to Bush's advisers, but not Bush himself. Thanks to Harriett Miers, we now know what a "brilliant" president we have.

If I Can Make It There

The Arnold California clan will be heading to New York for a vacation starting this weekend. It'll be my first time back since my eight years of living downtown came to an end, and I'm really looking forward to it. (The four-year-old littlest California came bouncing into the bedroom to wake us up this morning, in one of those out-of-control, I-can't-keep-still frenzies that little kids get, and finally announced that he was just really, really excited about going to New York on Sunday). But it means, in all likelihood, no blogging for about a week and a half.

Don't Fool With Father Webster

I suppose most people reading this blog would be surprised by the degree of sympathy I feel for David Parker. Without knowing more details of what happened, I certainly am in no position to condone what he did or to criticize the authorities for prosecuting him--but I can sympathize with his emotional response to discovering (as he thought, anyway) that the school was teaching his son something that conflicted with the values that Parker himself wants his son to adhere to.

But his lawyer needs to work on his spin (the quote is attributed to Parker, but no normal person talks like this; only lawyers and politicians do).

We will continue to move forward as we always have with tolerance and patience in these matters.

Apart from the horrible but increasingly heard phrase "move forward" (evidence of a lawyer's hand), whatever traits Parker's actions demonstrated, tolerance and patience weren't among them.

Did the Label Make the Difference?

Zoe has written several times about whether civil unions can be an acceptable compromise--at least in some places, or at least temporarily--or whether the M-word is non-negotiable when it comes to equality for gay families.

Usually, this is argued as a question of symbolism; as the Massachusetts SJC said in its advisory opinion rejecting civil unions, giving same sex couples a different name for the same bundle of legal rights implies second-class citizenship.

But, as Joanna Grossman reminds us, there are times when the label can make a difference. It's only one part of her lengthy (and worth reading) column on a fascinating case making its way through the New York courts. A friend of mine is representing the gay plaintiff who is suing for the wrongful death of his partner--with whom he entered into a civil union in Vermont--and the intermediate appellate court just dismissed his suit by a 3-2 vote. Although there are lots of legal issues in the case, the basic question is whether the surviving partner is the "spouse" of the deceased person for purposes of New York's wrongful death statute. Professor Grossman says there's one argument that she could see being legitimately used to defeat the claim: that an out-of-state marriage might be said to confer the status of "spouse," but a civil union might not, under the long-developed rules of comity. Grossman doesn't buy the argument in the end, and I don't either, but she does give it more respect than she does the arguments that the court's majority actually used.

This case is interesting on many levels. Conceivably, New York's highest court could rule on the issue that's been hanging out there for nearly a decade: is DOMA constitutional? (That is, the part of DOMA that says states don't have to give full faith and credit to same-sex marriages from other states). My guess is they won't have to get to that issue; even though the high court is composed entirely of GOP governors' appointees, they are not particularly conservative on social issues. I think they'll find (as the trial judge did) that New York has no public policy that would override the usual rule of giving comity to sister states' legal acts, at least for purposes of the wrongful death statute.

But, whatever happens, it will be interesting. As I remember the procedural law from my bar exam days, the fact that the appellate court decision was 3-2 means that the Court of Appeals--the highest court in the state--must automatically review the case if the plaintiff appeals. And even if appeal isn't automatic, I'd expect the high court to agree to review the case anyway. So toss this in the hopper with the case challenging the same-sex marriage ban that's headed to New Jersey's high court among the upcoming blockbusters of 2006.

Protecting Big Guys from Little Guys

Yesterday there was this, known as the "Cheeseburger Bill," House Votes to Ban 'Obesity Lawsuits' Against Fast Food Industry.

Today there was this, the NRA's #1 legislative priority, Congress passes lawsuit shield for gun industry.

Regardless of you how may feel about the merits of this legislation, anyone notice a similaritiy between the two? at the very least a sense of warped priorities?

At least they didn't try to use Katrina to pass the Cheeseburger Bill the way the NRA shamelessly argued that post-Katrina New Orleans was evidence that the unregulated, billion dollar industry needs extra protection from lawsuits. (?) That's exactly what I was thinking when I watched all the post-Katrina chaos in New Orleans-- we need to give the gun industry special rights!

Can Hillary Just Ignore Her Now?

Not that she was too much of a threat int he first place, but has Jeanine Pirro received any flattering publicity thus far?

Jeanine Pirro, a Republican district attorney looking to unseat Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, came under fire Wednesday for portraying Democrats as coddlers of child molesters and murderers.

During a speech to Chemung County Republicans on Tuesday night, Pirro continued her criticism of the Democratic-controlled state Assembly for its refusal to adopt legislation that would civilly confine violent sex offenders after their prison sentences end.

"That's a difference between Democrats and Republicans -- we don't want them next door molesting children and murdering women," said the Westchester County prosecutor, according to Wednesday's Elmira Star-Gazette newspaper.

Hey! Don't Look Over There, Look Over Here!

If this isn't evidence that attacking gay families is nothing more than a GOP scapegoating/distraction technique I don't know what is-- the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution is holding a hearing on the Federal Marriage Amendment at 2:00 pm today.

Yes, in the middle of all that is failing and falling down around them the GOP still has time to discuss the dire emergency that is posed by the idea of gays and lesbians getting legally married. (Look no futher than Massachusetts, it's the poster child for anarchy and lawlessness. Notice how it's crumbling?)

Nice work, fellas, but I don't think rallying behind the FMA is going to do you too much good at this point. Don't you have anything else left in your offical Demagogue's Bag o' GOP Tricks?

Defer to the President ... Uh, But Not This Time

In what was otherwise a halfway decent editorial about the Miers nomination, the Washington Post couldn't resist that signature equivocation for which the newspaper's editorials are renowned. The Post concluded its editorial in Wednesday's edition with this sentence:

While the president's choice deserves deference from the Senate, Ms. Miers needs to earn confirmation on her own.

Huh?

If you read anything today...

read this.

Bunny Greenhouse was once the perfect bureaucrat, an insider, the top procurement official at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Then the 61-year-old Greenhouse lost her $137,000-a-year post after questioning the plump contracts awarded to Halliburton in the run-up to the war in Iraq. It has made her easy to love for some, easy to loathe for others, but it has not made her easy to know.

In late August, she was demoted, her pay cut and her authority stripped. Her former bosses say it's because of a years-long bout of poor work habits; she and her lawyer say it's payback for her revelations about a politically connected company.

It's a long article but well worth reading. Frankly, there seems to be little doubt that she is being punished for being a whistleblower, known for being a stickler for following procedure and protocol, so when no-bid, multi-year billion-dollar contracts for Halliburton companies came across her desk before the Iraq war had even started, she asked questions she wasn't supposed to ask and suffered the consequences.

You Heard It Here First

Think Progress reports on a conservative meme being pushed to discredit in advance any indictments that the Intimigate grand jury might hand down: it's all a witch-hunt against conservatives.

The problem, as Think Progress points out, is that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is a Republican poster child. Cue Arnold taking bows for foreseeing the slime-and-defend attack on Fitzgerald and the appropriate response more than a year ago. Not that it was terribly difficult to foresee the attack given this administration's previous tactics--including, of course, the original outing of Plame as a means of discrediting the (true) account published by her husband of his trip to Niger.

By the way, you've gotta love the sight of the usual GOP suspects decrying the "partisan" nature of Fitzgerald's investigation. Where were these people when Ken Starr was put in charge of investigating Whitewater? Now there was a special prosecutor (or independent counsel, as the term then was under the since-expired statute) who abhorred the administration he was investigating. And the same, in spades, goes for the (false) accusation that Fitzgerald has exceeded his mandate by investigating violations of anything other than one particular statute--again, does anyone remember the roving Starr investigation?

Frankly, I wouldn't like to see the Democratic version of Starr investigating this administration, much as I suspect they've done plenty of bad things. What happened then wasn't good for democracy or for our political process. But, at least so far, there's no evidence that Fitzgerald has done anything even close to what Starr did, and I haven't seen any indication that his investigation has been inappropriate or improper in any fashion.

Doesn't mean that I'll agree with any indictments that might be handed down, and sure doesn't mean that anyone he accuses should be deprived of the presumption of innocence, but he's hardly Javert or (as John Tierney accused him of being) Captain Ahab.

Very Nicely Argued

It has become a point of contention over at The Corner that Harriet Miers just isn't qualified to serve on the SCOTUS; the latest revelation is that Miers has argued a mere 8 cases before juries in her entire career as a lawyer. Objecting to the criticism, a lawyer e-mailed John Podhoretz to point out that this is pretty typical for a lot of lawyers who spend the vast majority their practice in their offices in negotiations, on the phone, and not in a courtroom. However, John Podhoretz still isn't convinced, "If the Miers defenders want to make the case that her experience writing briefs and billing hours and negotiating settlements has prepared her for the Supreme Court, they should go right ahead."

"J-Pod" remarks, "I feel like George Jetson: Jane, won't somebody stop this crazy thing?"

As Indictments Loom, Rove Clears His Calendar

The AP reports:

WASHINGTON -- Juggling appearances before a grand jury and conservative admirers didn’t seem to make sense, so presidential adviser Karl Rove has canceled three such outings as he waits to hear whether he or anyone else will be indicted in the leak of a CIA officer’s identity.

Rove canceled plans to attend two Republican fund-raisers, the national party confirmed Tuesday. And he did not give his scheduled speech to the conservative Hudson Institute think tank on Oct. 11.

A source tells me that long before Rove's office announced these schedule changes, the gubernatorial campaign of Republican Jerry Kilgore in Virginia politely asked Rove not to visit the state for a Kilgore fundraiser.

Yeah, I can just imagine how the head table at such a fundraiser might introduce the White House's Rasputin: "And, ladies and gentlemen, we're so pleased to have with us tonight the as-of-now-unindicted Karl Rove."

Bush Knew

Drip, drip, drip.

An angry President Bush rebuked chief political guru Karl Rove two years ago for his role in the Valerie Plame affair, sources told the Daily News.

"He made his displeasure known to Karl," a presidential counselor told The News. "He made his life miserable about this."
...
Other sources confirmed, however, that Bush was initially furious with Rove in 2003 when his deputy chief of staff conceded he had talked to the press about the Plame leak.

Bush has always known that Rove often talks with reporters anonymously and he generally approved of such contacts, one source said.

But the President felt Rove and other members of the White House damage-control team did a clumsy job in their campaign to discredit Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, the ex-diplomat who criticized Bush's claim that Saddam Hussen tried to buy weapons-grade uranium in Niger.

A second well-placed source said some recently published reports implying Rove had deceived Bush about his involvement in the Wilson counterattack were incorrect and were leaked by White House aides trying to protect the President.

"Bush did not feel misled so much by Karl and others as believing that they handled it in a ham-handed and bush-league way," the source said.

Bush-league way? Yup, that about sums it up.

Off the Reservation

Poor Prime Minister Balkenende. Just as it's started to be possible for Republicans to disagree with Dubya on occasion, the Dutch PM seems to be having a devil of a time keeping his ministers from criticizing his policies. As I passed along, it was Foreign Minister Bot a few weeks ago questioning the wisdom of the government's support for the war in Iraq. Now it's Government Reform Minister Pechtold saying the government has been fear-mongering regarding terrorism. Both ministers duly flagellated themselves in public and got back into line, but I think it's fair to say that not all's well in the Coalition of the Willing.

Head Case

An interesting item from the Dutch news:

A 32-year-old Amsterdam Muslim is challenging the decision by an Islamic school not to employ her because she refuses to wear a headscarf.

***

The headmaster of the Islamic College in Amsterdam said the school's statutes state explicitly that the rules of the Koran and the Sunna must be adhered to.

Non-Muslim teachers can be granted an exemption. "If Miss Haddad was to declare she is not a Muslim then she could, in principle, could come and work with us," a member of the school board said.

In principle. I'm on the school's side. People have a right to believe what they choose, and it shouldn't be up to the government to prohibit a group of people from running a school in keeping with their religious beliefs.

There is a complication, though, and that is that schools here are almost all publicly funded. That includes sectarian schools. The system is complicated, and I don't understand it very well, but in some respects it resembles the kind of voucher system that U.S. conservatives tend to support. The problem here is that once the government is paying the bills, it tends to want the schools to comply with important government policies--such as non-discrimination on religious grounds.

When we think about the separation of church and state, we tend to think about government not supporting religious institutions. But another facet of that concept is avoiding what the Supreme Court has called government "entanglement" with religion. I'd suggest that's a principle whose value is becoming apparent to the Islamic College in Amsterdam.

I Didn't Realize the Supreme Court Was an Apprenticeship

This is not what you would call a strong vote of confidence in Harriet Miers, but compared to the open revolt on the Right, it's probably the closest thing to a ringing endorsement that the White House can expect these days. From Tuesday's Washington Post:

[Sen. Chuck Schumer] reported that Miers told him "no one knows how I would rule on Roe v. Wade." He said the nominee wouldn't talk specifics with him about important cases. "She deferred, saying, 'I need to sort of bone up on this a little more -- I need to come to conclusions' would be a better way to put it," Schumer said. Playing the avuncular law professor, he added: "I'm going to give her a break. She is not a constitutional lawyer ... but she clearly needs some time to learn about these cases."

She says she needs time to "bone up" on key Supreme Court precedents? These are not reassuring words.

A Follow-Up to My "Magic of Commerce" Post ....

In a comment to my post yesterday about conservatives' post-Katrina discovery of Louisiana's poverty, one Demagogue reader commented:

I'm stunned that you left out that Lousiana's leadership (local and state) has been Democrat for quite some time now.

So why does the responsibility fall on conservatives to create jobs here when the Democrat government couldn't do so before the nations worst natural disaster? Isn't it the (liberal) local and state government who has been "ignoring the problem for years?"

First of all, my suggestion that conservatives have ignored the poverty issue was not meant exclusively as a slap at Republicans. This is the Deep South, after all, a place where both Democrats and Republicans pursue generally conservative policies. In fact, I never even used the word "Republican" in the original post.

Second, as for the point that Louisiana's leadership "has been Democrat for quite some time now," that point is irrelevant since (as I mentioned previously) I fully acknowledge that conservatives of both stripes -- Dem and GOP -- are guilty of neglecting poverty and related issues.

But even if you want to view the issue in strictly partisan terms, the notion that Dems have been running the state "for quite some time" is not entirely accurate. True, most local officials are Dems, but party I.D. is relatively insignificant in municipal and county elections. Over the past 25 years, however, the Louisiana governor's mansion has been split almost evenly among Democrats (13 years) and Republicans (12 years).

Bad, Bad Judge

This judge is way worse than Miers, he even makes Scalia look good.

Notwithstanding Rwanda

There have been a number of stories today about the recently released "Human Security Report" that "paints a surprising picture of war and peace in the 21st century: a dramatic decline in battlefield deaths, plummeting instances of genocide, and a drop in human rights abuses."

As the AP explains its findings

Notwithstanding the genocides in Rwanda in 1994 and in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in 1995, mass killings because of religion, ethnicity or political beliefs plummeted by 80% between the 1988 high point and 2001, the report said.

The report itself (PDF) explains it thusly

Figure 1.11 is drawn from Barbara Harff’s genocidepoliticide dataset. It plots the number of events that are classified as genocides or politicides, not the number of people killed. The trend is very similar to that of armed conflicts: an uneven rise until the end of the Cold War, followed by a sharp decline. But the drop in genocides and politicides in the 1990s is twice as steep as the decline in armed conflicts over the same period.

Yippee! The number of events classified as genocide or politicide have fallen. Since "politicide" is not itself an actual crime and the study seems to have ignored instances of widespread crimes against humanity, things do seem to be improving.

And if you choose to count Rwanda as just one event and ignore the nearly 1 million people who died, then things are really looking good.

Maybe next year there will be no hurricanes that hit the US, but the entire state of California will be utterly destroyed by an earthquake. If so, I will be out there touting the good news that, in terms of pure statistics, the number of natural disasters plummeted.

Hooray!

"And for My Next Trick, I'll Pull a Job Out of My Hat"

In the wake of the damage Katrina inflicted on New Orleans, conservatives have suddenly discovered something about the Big Easy: "Holy safety net, Batman -- there's a lot of poverty and urban dysfunction here." The tone of their words betrays an incredible naivete.

Just this week, syndicated columnist Robert Novak wrote:

The devastation is complete in [New Orleans'] predominantly African-American Lower 9th Ward, 36 percent of whose residents live below the poverty level. Their houses, in poor condition before the floodwaters, are not worth replacing.

... Developer Jimmy Riess, a member of the mayor's commission, calls New Orleans public schools the worst in the country and wants them totally reformed.

But aren't conservatives arriving rather late at the scene of the crime?

This article from a 1940 issue of The Atlantic Monthly reminds us that poverty, poor housing stock, corruption and struggling schools are not a recent phenomenon in New Orleans and much of Louisiana. In his 1940 article, David L. Cohn reflected on the environment that had propelled Huey Long into politics several years earlier:

New Orleans had been politically rotten since 1870. For years its police had collected tribute from prostitutes and gamblers; elections were bought at a dime a dozen .... and the municipal services of the South's largest city were those of a tank town that had just been struck by a tornado.

Louisiana, potentially one of the richest states in the Union, had shamefully neglected education, health, roads, and other public services. The mass of the people wallowed in poverty.

New Orleans, for instance, had only a small economic middle class. Its principal residential streets were merely palm-studded facades concealing dozens of mean little streets filled with the houses of the poor.

So there's good news and bad news. The good news is that Novak and his conservative brethren have actually been forced to talk about an issue they felt quite comfortable ignoring for years.

The bad news? Their solutions are more of the same warmed-over, free market rhetoric -- "enterprise zones" and the like. Judging from his column, Bob Novak seems to have spent more time talking to business executives than to ordinary residents. The best hope that Novak could offer for New Orleans and vicinity was that some business owners told him that once "businesses can reopen ... the magic of commerce will do its work."

So even if you lost your home in Lousiana and nearly all of your most cherished possessions, don't lose hope. Behold the "magic of commerce."

Miers' Personal Views on Abortion...

have a paper trail after all.

Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers pledged support in 1989 for a constitutional amendment banning abortions except when necessary to save the life of the mother, according to material given to the Senate on Tuesday.

"If Congress passes a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution that would prohibit abortion except when it was necessary to prevent the death of the mother, would you actively support its ratification by the Texas Legislature," asked an April 1989 questionnaire sent out by the Texans United for Life group.

Miers checked "yes" to that question, and all of the group's questions, including whether she would oppose the use of public moneys for abortions and whether she would use her influence to keep "pro-abortion" people off city health boards and commissions.

So, the Miers question of the day: is Miers being "reverse borked"?

Reality Bites the Right

I've noticed around the liberal blogosphere that there are some people who believe that the whole Miers controversy is some kind of superbly orchestrated trick, that the right is using reverse-psychology in their opposition to Miers so that Dems/liberals will like her just because they don't. I'd like to put this silly conspiracy to rest.

I think this Washington Post article nails the right's negative reaction to the nomination of Harriet Miers-- they're genuinely pissed.
Not only are high profile wingers throwing down the gauntlet over Miers, it is spilling over into their overall support for Bush.

The broader nature of the split becomes clearer with each conservative declaration of independence from the Bush White House. David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, wrote yesterday that many of his friends "swallowed policies" they opposed out of loyalty to Bush.

"We've been there for him because we've considered ourselves part of his team," Keene wrote in an essay printed in the newspaper the Hill and e-mailed to fellow conservatives. "No more. From now on, this administration will find it difficult to muster support on the right without explaining why it should be forthcoming. The days of the blank check have ended."

With the nomination of Miers Bush broke his most important campaign promise he ever made to the right-- a Scalia/Thomas justice that would help overturn Roe as well as rule the way the want on other controversial social issues. The right has been working towards this goal ever since 1963 when the court ruled 8-1 in favor of an atheist's argument that school-sponsored prayer is unconstitutional. They don't mention this case as much as they used to, but their outrage over Murray is the very foundation of the modern right-wing conservative Christian political movement. With this in mind I think it is crystal clear that many of them are genuinely angry and feeling betrayed with the nomination of Miers.

Bush had to have known that his right-wing conservative Christian base has been gearing up for an epic SCOTUS battle and that it was one of the primary reasons they have supported him all this time. What I truly can't quite figure out is why did Bush do it?

Those Iraqi Voters Were So Eager ....

.... for a new constitution that in some provinces nearly every voter cast a "yes" ballot. How interesting. According to the AP:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A sandstorm that muddied Baghdad’s skies cleared, allowing officials to resume flying ballot boxes to the capital Tuesday so “unusually high” vote totals in 12 Shiite and Kurdish provinces can be checked by election officials.

The investigation by Iraq’s election commission has raised the possibility that the results of the referendum could be called into question. As many as 99 percent of the voters reportedly approved Iraq’s draft constitution in some of the provinces being investigated.

... Word of the review came Monday as Sunni Arab leaders repeated accusations of fraud after initial reports from the provinces suggested the constitution had passed. Among the Sunni allegations are that police took ballot boxes from heavily “no” districts, and that some “yes” areas had more votes than registered voters.

... Election officials in many provinces have released their initial counts, indicating that Sunni attempts to defeat the charter failed. But the commission found that the number of “yes” votes in most provinces appeared “unusually high” and would be audited, with random samples taken from ballot boxes to test them.

The high numbers were seen among the nine Shiite provinces of the south and the three Kurdish ones in the north, al-Lami said. Those provinces reported to the AP “yes” votes above 90 percent, with some as high as 97 and 98 percent.

If you are a Washington Post reader, you could easily have missed this developing story. The only mention of possible voter irregularities in the weekend vote in today's Post is buried within this story on page A-20, which is headlined: "Iraq's Premier Urges a Speedy Trial for Hussein." Ridiculous.

There at least should have been a small sidebar on the reported irregularities.

From Outcasts to Incasts

For the past few days I've been mulling over how to respond to Andrew Sullivan's New Republic cover article, The End of Gay Culture. I've read this type of thing many times before where someone opines that as gays and gayness becomes more mainstream, as we assimilate, that we are losing our collective identity and that gay culture is in danger or is dying. On some level it is true, what we associate as uniquely "gay" is indeed changing, but there seems to be an erroneous assumption woven into his article.

Most of it Sullivan gets right, but I can't help but take issue with his repeated reference to the notion of a singular gay cultural identity, "There is no single gay identity anymore, let alone a single look or style or culture...Who can rescue a uniform gay culture?" My question is this-- was there ever such a thing?

For several decades there has been a public "out" face in places like San Francisco and New York, represented mostly by 10-paces-away-queer outsider outlandishness. That has been the gay community's visible face and it gave the (false) impression that all gay people are somehow alike, that there is one way to "be" gay. We needed these images to get noticed, to edge our way into the public consciousness, the history of gays in cinema pretty much tells the story.

However, this doesn't mean there haven't always been "Boston marriages," unmarried Midwestern women who lived together for 25 years or closeted southerners living as "permanent bachelors" before, there always have been, but they were invisible. I'd argue that now the diversity of gay culture is much better represented as all of our different parts are becoming increasingly visible. (For example, look no further than the Idaho Pride Centre in Boise.) The assumption of a singular gay identity is especially perplexing coming from a somewhat paradoxical gay conservative like himself.

The other thing that Sullivan fails to address is the way that gay cultural stereotypes have been co-opted for commercial use and how it has changed us from the outside. I'd argue that at this point we're totally overexposed, even I am a little sick of us if only because the MSM has a hard time moving past sensationalistic, simplistic attention grabbing headlines. Like many minorities before us, our novelty is often exploited by the MSM to the point that we are viewed as exceptionally self-centered and pushy.

What Sullivan does seem to get is that at the moment queers in general are separated by a very distinct generational experiences. That is the quixotic nature of queerness right now, we are simultaneously celebrating what makes us radically different while we argue that we are essentially the same as everyone else and deserve the same rights and protection from discrimination. We just don't fit into a neat little box anymore, if we ever truly did, because there are just so many ways to be gay.

I'm not too concerned about the future of gay culture. There will always been queers who make straight people uncomfortable, who push boundaries and challenge conventional notions of gender and sexuality (thank god!) but there will also be plenty of button-down gay people, even gay Republicans, as there always have been. But what won't change, at least not for several generations (if ever), is that we are different than straight people, we do experience the world differently because gay people grow up in a straight culture. We will always be a minority on some level or another, our very existence will always be hated and deemed a threat by someone-- rest assured, we will always be queer.