Rall Is Wrong

I like Ted Rall's work. Like not a few others, I think some of the stuff he's done recently has been in questionable taste at best, and he's perhaps "crossed the line," whatever the hell that means. I certainly don't agree with everything he says; again in company with quite of few other liberals, I don't agree with his views on the war in Afghanistan. But I do agree with a lot of what he says, and the rage he shows in his cartoons is often the most appropriate response to reality.

I like the concept behind the current cartoon. Rall "puts to rest" ridiculous comparisons of Bush to Hitler by showing how they differ in so many ways. The catch is that as Rall conveys it, the differences all make Hitler seem better than Bush. Clever trope. But I don't think he pulls it off.

Here are the four panels:

1. Adolf Hitler was democratically elected. A common misconception, but a misconception nonetheless. The Nazis never got a majority in any national election (in fact, they never really got close), and Hitler was never elected Chancellor. The Nazis did OK in the last reasonably fair election under the Weimar constitution, but they had to form a coalition with the traditional conservatives. Only after the phony Reichstag fire and by physically preventing Communist and Social Democratic deputies from attending votes on legislation giving Hitler dictatorial powers could Hitler seize control, which he then used to crush opposition and turn the government into an arm of the Nazi Party. Even in March 1933, when Hitler had basically banned the leftist parties and the SPD and KPD candidates were being beaten and killed, the Nazis still couldn't get a majority of the votes, though they did get enough seats to control the Reichstag. But that election could not possibly be considered "democratic." It was also the last election held in Hitler's lifetime. Bush, of course, did win a democratic election a few months ago, even if one thinks the win was tainted by his rather less democratic "win" in 2000.

   
   

2. Hitler was a reasonably intelligent man. OK, maybe he was, and maybe Bush isn't the sharpest tool in the box.

   
   

3. Hitler won most of his military campaigns. This just isn't right. The invasion of Western Europe in 1940 was a smashing success. After that, it went downhill. The consensus view has been that Hitler overruled the military experts, the career Army staff officers and generals, whom he thought were too cautious and pessimistic (remind you of anyone?). Instead, he put the SS and the Waffen SS at the head of the military effort and ordered a disastrous invasion of the Soviet Union. Most of the war was a series of overly optimistic misjudgments by Hitler (again, does that remind you of anyone?). This may be overstated; it's possible that Hitler and the General Staff were both incompetent. But you just can't say that Hitler won most of his military campaigns. If he had, the Soviet flag wouldn't have flown from the Brandenburg Gate in 1945. (My favorite quote on this came from Major Field-Robertson of the British Special Operations Executive's (SOE) German Section, when the British were thinking about trying to assassinate Hitler in 1944.

   He agreed with the Chiefs of Staff that Hitler's incompetence as a military strategist was invaluable to the Allies. "Hitler has been of the greatest possible assistance to the war effort," he said. "His value to us has been the equivalent to an almost unlimited number of first class SOE agents strategically placed inside Germany.")

4. Hitler took personal responsibility. No, he didn't. Rall illustrates this point with an image of Hitler's suicide. But by the time he killed himself, Hitler was a dead man anyway. The Russians were all over Berlin, and there was nowhere for Hitler to run. If he had taken personal responsibility, Hitler would have stepped down when it became clear that the war was lost, which was really no later than the winter of 1942-43. He would have faced the music. Instead, he sacrificed millions of other people in order to prolong his regime until the last possible moment. Consider the Hitler Youth--badly equipped, badly organized children who were ordered to defend Berlin to the last boy, even though there was absolutely no chance of holding off the Soviets. And the boys (and a few old men) had to be relied on because Hitler had already shredded the military, not to mention conscripts from occupied or friendly states like Romania. At the end, when he had done his best to destroy Germany, Hitler had an enraged fit in which he blamed his generals for losing the war and said everything that was going wrong was someone else's fault. Whatever Hitler's disease was, it was one that required everything and everyone in the world to serve as instruments of his ego. Bush has a miserable record of taking personal responsibility, or even of holding his incompetent underlings responsible for their failures. But that doesn't differentiate him from Hitler.

So, good idea, but the execution isn't quite there, I think.

Taking the Hatchet to Hagel

Much to the dismay of Christian conservatives, Senator Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) hasn't been willing to sing from their sanctimonious songbook. Up to now, this seemed to have earned Hagel little more than these groups' quiet scorn. But now that Hagel has voiced some presidential ambitions, these cultural conservatives are looking to "Ground Chuck" -- at least that's the headline of this pissy, hatchet job by George Neumayr in the American Spectator:

... (Senator Jim) Jeffords switched parties, and Hagel proceeded to blast the GOP to reporters in terms they like to hear.

"We need to take some inventory and to look into ourselves and our party and how we have handled things," he said. The party has "perception problem in this country, that we are a narrower-gauged party, that we are less tolerant."

Hagel proposed that the GOP pump air into the Big Tent by junking moral philosophy.

"The Republican Party should be a multifaceted party representing many interests and many views, but generally should be anchored with a philosophy about government," he said. "It shouldn't be a philosophy about morals."

... why should the conservative grassroots vote for an anti-Republican Republican who isn't in tune with them? In what looks like a half-baked Hamlet act, Hagel speaks of running for president to "redefine" a party that "has lost is moorings," a project unlikely to resonate with Red-State Republicans.

Like John McCain, Hagel is known as a Republican "populist" even though his agenda to reform the party appeals not to the grassroots but to the tony talk-show set.

This last sentence is a bizarre piece of analysis.

Does Neumayr seriously believe that a more moderate Republican message will appeal to the likes of talk-show hosts Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham? Have I missed something?

Tutors in Calcutta

Think the offshoring of jobs is just a private-sector phenomenon? Guess again. The American Federation of Teachers reports:

American companies that move jobs offshore have been harshly criticized, so it's surprising to learn that the U.S. government itself, through a little-known provision of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), is providing a taxpayer-funded windfall for tutoring companies in India.

NCLB requires school districts to offer tutoring to some students in schools that fail to meet the law's flawed adequate yearly progress requirements. Districts can contract with firms to provide that tutoring through computers and Internet hookups instead of classrooms, and, as a result, the United States is sending NCLB funds to tutoring companies in India.

National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" reports that tutoring firms in India pay employees as little as $230 a month for full-time work.

Let Go of the Bitterness

I should get over it like a 14-year-old rape victim, but stuff like this just gnaws at me.

Now that Bush has almost unveiled an actual plan to "reform" Social Security, the public seems to be catching on to the fact that you can't divert revenue from SS into something else--private accounts, say--without cutting future benefits.

Of course, Al Gore made precisely this point in 2000, while Bush repeatedly pretended that he could give the same dollar to two different people. And Bush also screwed around with mathematical reality in misdescribing his tax policy and his prescription drug plan. And when Gore called him on it, this is what he said in the first debate:

BUSH: Look, this is the man who’s got great numbers. He talks about numbers. I'm beginning to think, not only did he invent the Internet, but he invented the calculator.

(LAUGHTER)

It's fuzzy math. It's to scare them, trying to scare people in the voting booth.

Clever line one of Bush's handlers thought up. It's too bad that Gore never claimed to have invented the Internet, but what he did say was easily misconstrued and ended up like Kerry's "I voted for it before I voted against it" (which at least Kerry actually said). But fair or not, Bush's joke was clever.

The "fuzzy math" thing was another theme Bush repeated incessantly whenever Gore tried to focus on facts. And this passage gives you the anti-intellectual, anti-reality heart of the Bush campaign. "This is the man who's got great numbers." Yeah, who wants to vote for Poindexter?

And now that the surplus has vanished, that polls show most people believe (correctly) that Bush's tax cuts went overwhelmingly to the wealthy, and that Bush is trying to peddle a "reform" that even his aides admit will do nothing to help the solvency of the system, the American People are getting what they deserve.

Blame the media if you want; I certainly don't think they covered themselves in glory. But Bush and Gore were right out front with two different ideas of what responsible leadership was about. Forget ideology for a moment. The Bush approach could have come from a lefty, and a conservative could have embraced Gore's idea of leadership. Bush was saying he didn't need no fancy book learnin' and the voters shouldn't worry their pretty little heads about whether all of the promises he was making could actually be reconciled. Gore was saying that he wanted to do things that were actually possible to do, and he was pointing out how the details of Bush's proposals were a lot different from what Bush was saying.

And now we've got an administration that can't count, that fudges the numbers to an incredible degree, that is dishonest about its own policies, and that has actually threatened the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency.

Who could have predicted this?

Spoken Like a True Fascist

"When uniformity is compromised, then authority no longer holds."

This is what a local Florida woman said in support of the local high school banning a year book picture of a female student because she was wearing "boys clothes." The story is that the school principal pulled the pictures of the young woman-- who was wearing a tuxedo in the picture-- then the school board and superintendent unanimously support the decision. Even the school openly admits that the young woman broke no actual rules but an attorney for the school said "the district gives principals the authority to set standards."

Ironically, school officials claim it's not about the fact that the young woman is openly gay, they strongly insist the case is about gender. Um, apparently they have a really lousy lawyer who didn't coach them very well. Which form of discrimination do they think is actually illegal?

Hello, Florida ACLU? Where are you? We have an easy case for you over here in Fleming Island, FL.

So Much for Those Rosy Assessments

The New York Times reports:

A suicide car bomber drove into a line of about 400 volunteers for the Iraqi National Guard and police force today in Hilla, south of Baghdad, killing at least 122 people and wounding at least 170, an official at the Interior Ministry said.

It was the deadliest single attack since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003.

Over the past few months, Americans have heard a steady stream of reports about how the security situation in Iraq has improved. That message quickly wilts when insurgents are able to inflict their deadliest attack of the war.

Just for the record, those rosier-than-reality security assessments have included:

"Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld hailed what he described as progress in Iraqi security forces after seeing some of them in action today ... 'There's no question progress has been made,' Rumsfeld said of Iraqi forces. 'The professionalism of these units is advancing.' "

Associated Press, Feb. 11, 2005

"(Prime Minister Ayad) Allawi continues to insist that security in Iraq is improving ..."

Newsday, Dec. 15, 2004

" 'Every day, the Iraqi army, police and department of border enforcement demonstrate their ability to carry out their mission, while relying less and less on their coalition partners,' (U.S. Major General John Batiste) said."

Voice of America, Jan. 14, 2005

"On Monday, American and Iraqi officials repeated assertions that despite the (Jan. 3) deadly attacks, Iraqi police and soldiers are improving and that progress is being made on security. The governor of Babil declared his province 'safe and secure.' "

Chicago Tribune, Jan. 4, 2005

Keyes Interview

Gay.com has posted this interview with Alan Keyes' daughter in which she confirms that her parents have withdrawn financial support for her college education solely because she happens to be a lesbian. There was also this exchange:

QUESTION: Last year, your father called Mary Cheney a "selfish hedonist" because she is a lesbian. How do you feel about that remark?

MAYA MARCEL-KEYES: It was a bit of a shock to see that as front-page news, but it wasn't anything I hadn't heard before. I already knew what he thought of homosexuality, and that's the same thing I hear at home.

How lovely.

"I'm Just a Girl From a Trailer Park Who ..."

The complete sentence from last night's Oscars ceremony was this:

"I'm just a girl from a trailer park who had a dream."

This line was delivered by actress Hilary Swank, but I confess I wasn't paying close attention last night. So when I heard this statement, I suddenly glanced up at the TV, half-expecting to see Katherine Harris at the podium.

So How Did I Miss This?

This news has been floating around for a few years on the Web, the mainstream press and the blogosphere. But, somehow, it was news to me -- conservative commentator-for-hire Armstrong Williams settled a sexual harassment lawsuit in 1999 that had been filed by a former male employee, Stephen Gregory.

The 1997 accused Armstrong of more than 50 incidents of sexual harassment, alleging that Williams grabbed his buttocks and genitals on business trips. Soon after he rejected Williams' sexual advances, Gregory charged that Williams fired him.

Williams settled the case out of court two years after it was filed.

Just recently, the GOP-funded (Talon) reporter-for-hire Jeff Gannon resigned his job after it was disclosed that he had advertised his services on the Web as a gay escort. Gannon tried to refute charges of hypocrisy by liberal bloggers who accused him of having written anti-gay comments.

Although Gannon's writings carried an anti-gay tone, I haven't seen anything virulently anti-gay that he has written. But, considering what Armstrong Williams has penned over the years, the commentator-for-hire has no leg to stand on when it comes to hypocrisy charges -- if, I hasten to add, it's true that Williams pursues (and harasses) men behind the scenes.

On his blog, Mike Tidmus shared this excerpt from a February 2004 article that Armstrong Williams wrote (all italics are mine):

“Ever since the Massachusetts State Supreme Court’s Nov. 19 decision to legalize same-sex unions, the nightly news has been saturated with images of gay couples rushing to the altar. This sickens me.”

Last November, Williams wrote this column, arguing that:

"Despite the rhetoric that you hear from the homosexual Cosa Nostra, the lack of support for the gay marriage amendment has nothing to do with prejudice ... It is about recognizing that marriage between man and woman is the bedrock of our society.

"... To abruptly break from those values would have a disastrous effect on our society. For starters, it would speed along the breakdown of family and society. Pushing the homosexual agenda into the mainstream would also inevitably legitimize homosexual adoption. This is truly frightening.

"... placing children in homosexual households would create for these children the sort of gender confusion and social scrutiny that ignites a lifetime of emotional turmoil. I am unwilling to martyr a generation of children just to make a political statement about homosexual rights. Nor am I willing to trash the most fundamental values of our culture."

Shameless Government Propaganda

From Joe Conason at Salon:

The dimensions of the conservative campaign to destroy Social Security -- and dismantle the New Deal -- are now heaving into view. Determined to achieve the victory that has eluded them for more than 70 years, George W. Bush's aides and allies are building a very big, very ugly propaganda juggernaut.
...
Exactly what Bush's minions at the SSA have been up to, aside from writing strategy plans, isn't clear yet. To find out, Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal public interest group, filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the SSA last month. Sloan asked for "records of any contacts between the agency and outside public affairs firms," notably including any dealings with Ketchum and Fleishman-Hillard -- the Washington P.R. giants recently implicated in the administration's pundit payola and news management scandals. Public records show that the SSA already has entered into a $1.8 million consulting contract with Fleishman-Hillard.

The Social Security administrators don't seem eager to disclose their public relations spending. So far, Sloan has received no response at all from the SSA officials who handle FOIA requests, although the 20-day legal deadline for an answer has passed. This week she filed suit against the agency in federal district court in Washington, demanding that the appropriate records be turned over to her.

The Social Security Administration is giving $1.8 million PUBLIC TAX dollars to a private P.R. firm in an attempt to try and convince the public that Social Security is a big, bad unneccesary government program!?!?!

Pardon me, but how the f*ck is this legal? ethical? acceptable? fiscally responsible? sane? What does this administration have to do for the public to recognize that they have (repeatedly and wilfully) violated the public's trust using the public's own money?

Even after all this time, all these years, they never cease to amaze and stupify me.

Tearing Michael Crichton a New One

Courtesy of Professor Michael B. McElroy. A sample:

Crichton's main character, the ubiquitous Professor Kenner, singles out James E. Hansen, long-time director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), a scientist with many years of distinguished contributions to earth and planetary science, for particular attack. In testimony to Congress in 1988, Hansen offered projections of how global temperature might increase through the end of the twentieth century....

To project climate's future requires an assumption about future economic growth....Hansen considered three possible scenarios for future emissions (rapid growth, business as usual, and significant curtailment) and evaluated the consequences of each for future climate change. Crichton has Kenner focus exclusively on results from the high-growth model, concluding that Hansen's projections for future global climate change turned out to be "wrong by 300 percent." Had he opted to talk about the intermediate growth scenario, Crichton would have been forced to conclude that Hansen's projections were right on. But that would have spoiled the story. Why should a best-selling novelist and Hollywood personality (even with two Harvard degrees) be constrained by the usual requirements for fair play and accuracy?

Spinmeister of the Week (February 20-26)

At a time when public schools are frequently under attack, this is not the way to win back the public's affection.

On Monday, school district officials in Washington, D.C., canceled classes at Eaton Elementary School so that cleaning crews would have ample time to disinfect the building. The decision was made after it was learned that school officials had permitted the elementary school's cafeteria to be used to sterilize and vaccinate more than 500 cats over the previous weekend.

Needless to say, the school's parents were royally pissed off.

Jim Collier, chief of the city Health Department's bureau of environmental quality, made the following statement -- more a case of gross understatement than of spin, but, nonetheless, worthy of the Spinmeister's attention:

"It probably was not the best place to carry out that service in hindsight."

Probably not, Jim.

This Never Used to Happen on "ER"

ABC News reports:

A woman who had suffered a massive heart attack died after hospital personnel moved her out of a trauma room to accommodate a flu-stricken Michael Jackson, the patient's family said.

... the pop star was taken to Marian Medical Center in Santa Maria, Calif. (Feb. 15), complaining of flu-like symptoms. Manuela Gomez Ruiz, a 74-year-old grandmother, was moved from the primary trauma room and taken off the machine ventilator, with her breathing instead assisted manually by hand pump, until she was relocated to a smaller room nearby, her family told ABC News.

The larger room was kept for Jackson, the family says. Hospital records show Jackson, 46, told emergency room staff he had severe abdominal pain. His body temperature, 96.9 degrees, was below normal and he had tears in his eyes. The initial emergency room report said he could go home anytime.

There was no doubt Jackson was sick — as a doctor assured the judge presiding over his trial — but how sick? Ruiz's daughter-in-law says she watched as Jackson entered the emergency room. "He walked in," Anna Ruiz said. "When I saw him, he was walking unassisted."

Canada,Oh Canada!

Just today...

The provincial government of Ontario, Canada's largest province in population and second only to Quebec in land mass, voted Thursday to revise its laws to reflect the equality of same-sex marriage.

The proposal to revise the language in some 73 laws passed easily by voice vote. From now on, laws that mention "husband" and "widow," among other terms, will be gender-neutral.

DeLay's Teflon May be Wearing Thin

Apparently there is this silly rule in the House that stipulates that members can't have lobbyists pay for their travel expenses. Allegedly DeLay, his wife and some of his friends got their $13,000+ bill at the Four Seasons in London paid for by a lobbyist-- Jack Abramoff-- the very same Texas lobbyist that is under investigation for his lobbying efforts in Texas and his cozy relationship with Tom DeLay. Plus, there's more.

The Journal will also report that a little known conservative thinktank on whose board Abramoff served paid for another facet of the same trip. The Center for National Publicy Policy research picked up a hefty $70,000 tab–including $28,000 for DeLay and his wife, and $28,000 for DeLay’s then-chief of staff.

Nahhh...all those ethics violations investigations in Texas and in the House against The World's Biggest Asshole* are all just a partisan political game, right?

Thanks to the Raw Story for head's up!

Former Professor Eyes Santorum's Seat

Chuck Pennacchio is running ads on several progressive blogs to get the word out -- he's running for the Pennsylvania Senate seat held now by Rick Santorum. The seat is up in November '06.

I don't know how serious Pennacchio is, and I don't know enough about him to endorse his candidacy, but there are at least four good things I can say about him.

First, Pennacchio has experience in running an effective political campaign (which, hopefully, means he'll understand that the candidate shouldn't try to micro-manage the day-to-day tasks of a campaign.)

Second, he is an educator and is deeply involved in his community.

Third, he hasn't held elected political office -- an advantage since GOP tacticians won't have a series of procedural votes that they can misrepresent to voters.

The fourth "good thing"? He's running against Santorum, a smug senator whose views might be in sync with voters in Alabama, but not in Pennsylvania.

Connecticut Rocks!

This latest development could really change the dynamics of the brewing gay marriage/civil unions debate-- by removing it from the jurisdiction of "activist judges."

Connecticut's legislature moved closer to legalizing civil unions for same-sex couples, as a key panel approved a measure that could make it the first state in the country to recognize gay unions through legislative action rather than court order.

The legislature's Joint Judiciary Committee voted 25-13 to pass a bill Wednesday that would give gay and lesbian couples the same state rights as married heterosexuals, except for the right to obtain a marriage license.

Proponents said Thursday the civil unions measure has bipartisan support among lawmakers and will likely pass the House and Senate by early June, when the session ends.

Gov. M. Jodi Rell, a Republican, has not said whether she would sign the bill, saying she would study the precise wording if it comes to her desk. Rell has said she is in favor of civil rights for same-sex couples but believes marriage is between a man and a woman.

Vermont is the only state that allows civil unions for same-sex couples, following a ruling by the Vermont Supreme Court in 2000. Massachusetts' high court went one step further when it legalized gay marriage last year.

Not Exactly a Lullaby for Seniors

Last night, Senator Rick Santorum (R-Penn.) hosted a townhall meeting to promote the president's proposal to allow some Social Security payroll taxes to be diverted to "private accounts."

But while Santorum was inside calling for "a Republican solution to Social Security," a group of GOP activists was outside offering its own message. More from MoveOn.org:

We couldn't believe our ears when we heard a group of Republicans chanting, "Hey, hey. Ho, ho. Social Security has got to go" on CNN last night. But that is what they did, outside Senator Rick Santorum's Social Security town hall meeting in Philadelphia.

In the meeting, Santorum, the leading supporter of privatization in the Senate, declared that "it is time for a Republican solution to Social Security." But the Republicans gathered outside were more clear about where that plan ultimately leads.

Depending on whether you believe Bush's reform plan eventually would spell doom to SS, the demonstrators were either incredibly honest or amazingly stupid.

Or perhaps both.

What Would Faulkner Do?

What if the man who penned "The Sound and the Fury" were alive today and tried to write a novel about the characters and events that unfold at the Bush White House?

It's debatable whether Slate's Sam Apple has done justice to William Faulkner's writing style, but this is seriously funny stuff. Enjoy.

Specter Gets It

It is stuff like this that makes the Right hate Arlen Specter

Speaking of the impasse over judges, Specter said that "if you trace it back historically, both parties are at fault." A Democratic-controlled Senate held up many of President Ronald Reagan's nominees, he said, and a GOP-controlled Senate used stalling tactics to block many of President Bill Clinton's nominees. "We exacerbated the problem," Specter said.

True Dat! (as they say)

Anyway, you have to appreciate the fact that the Democrats have managed to successfully frame the issue to the extent that they now have the Republican head of the Judiciary Committee using their preferred language

More recently, he said, Democrats used filibusters and Bush made interim appointments of federal judges during congressional recesses, "which is a little unheard-of when the Senate has made a rejection of nominees. So each side ratcheted it up, ratcheted it up, ratcheted it up, until you have a situation today where . . . no one wants to back down and no one wants to lose face."

As I wrote last week, I don't buy the idea that Bush's nominees were "rejected" but it is nice to see the Democrats win a spin war once in a while.

SS Trust Fund May Be the Least of Our Worries

Those of us who have followed the debate over Social Security reform know that the year 2048 is noteworthy. If there are no increases in payroll tax rates or no cuts in SS benefits between now and then, 2048 is the year when many experts project that the SS trust fund will start running a deficit.

Definitely something to be concerned about. But the United Nations hopes Americans think about what they may face two years thereafter -- in the year 2050. According to the Associated Press:

The world’s population will increase by 40 percent to 9.1 billion in 2050 but virtually all the growth will be in the developing world, especially in the 50 poorest countries, the U.N. Population Division said.

... the population in less developed countries is expected to swell from 5.3 billion today to 7.8 billion in 2050. By contrast, the population of richer developed countries will remain mostly unchanged, at 1.2 billion.

“It is going to be a strain on the world,” Hania Zlotnik, the division’s director, told a news conference. She said the expected growth has “important and serious implications” because it will be concentrated in countries that already have problems providing adequate shelter, health care and education.

Between 2005 and 2050, eight countries — India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Congo, Bangladesh, Uganda, the United States, Ethiopia and China — are likely to contribute half of the world’s population increase, the report said.

The population is projected to at least triple in Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Chad, Congo, the Republic of Congo, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger and Uganda, it said.

Daily Darfur

It has now been one year since Eric Reeves' "Unnoticed Genocide" op-ed appeared in the Washington Post

There can be no reasonable skepticism about Khartoum's use of these militias to "destroy, in whole or in part, ethnic or racial groups" -- in short, to commit genocide. Khartoum has so far refused to rein in its Arab militias; has refused to enter into meaningful peace talks with the insurgency groups; and, most disturbingly, has refused to grant unrestricted humanitarian access. The international community has been slow to react to Darfur's catastrophe and has yet to move with sufficient urgency and commitment. A credible peace forum must be rapidly created. Immediate plans for humanitarian intervention should begin. The alternative is to allow tens of thousands of civilians to die in the weeks and months ahead in what will be continuing genocidal destruction.

Little has changed.

The Boston Globe offers this story

The 60 women they met in the camps told stories of a lawless land, where an atmosphere of intimidation and fear has settled on western Sudan since 2003, when rebels began fighting against the Sudanese government. The now homeless Darfur women say they will never forget the faces of the government-sponsored Arab marauders known as Janjaweed -- Arabic for devils on horseback -- who roam the country at will, burn villages, kill Africans, and often gang-rape women and young girls.

[edit]

Mason said she believes that the abuse of women is the biggest tragedy to occur in the conflict. ''Every woman we had talked to either had been raped or knew someone that had been raped," she said. ''They were so open with us. They would drop their robes to show us scars all over their arms and legs and backs. They had been beaten and raped -- and most of them gang-raped. Their daughters had been raped. Their lives are shattered."

The Sudan Tribune reprints a Columbia Journalism Review interview with the Washington Post's Emily Wax

Once in Sudan you need a travel permit to leave the capital. During one of my earlier trips, I waited six weeks for a travel permit with another reporter from The Guardian and rented an apartment to prove we would wait. A French delegation finally took us in. [When the trip finally occurred], all these women were crammed into squalid schools and they were handing me notes, lists of people who had been raped. There were over 40 names on the list with things like, "Please help us," written in Arabic. Also, everyone was showing me their flesh wounds. They all thought I was a doctor. I was glad I waited for the travel permit and didn't just go home.

President Bono

Would he go by Bono or Paul Hewson if he were President of the World Bank?

I guess any liberal who could make Jesse Helms cry over African poverty can do pretty much anything.

Go Bono.

Man Bites Dog

No, really.

This Just Gets Weirder

The headline is strange enough: Court: Man Can Sue Over Surprise Pregnancy. Of course, the suit is about the man's surprise at a woman's preganancy, but I have to admit that on my first glance, it seemed that the man himself had gotten pregnant. That would be surprising.

OK, so maybe the headline could have been better. But how surprised could a guy be that a woman got pregnant after they had sex? I'll bet you're thinking, as I was, that he claims the woman told him she was on the pill, or had had a hysterectomy, or some such thing.

Nope; he was surprised to find out she was pregnant because they had oral sex.

This gives a new angle to the pointless arguments in 1998 about whether fellatio is "sex" or not.

Anyhow, the crowning weirdness of this story for me as a lawyer was the court's discussion of whether the man could sue the woman for theft. In other words, as a legal matter, was the semen his property, or was she free to do with it as she wished?

The judges backed the lower court decision to dismiss the fraud and theft claims, agreeing with Irons that she didn't steal the sperm.

"She asserts that when plaintiff 'delivered' his sperm, it was a gift - an absolute and irrevocable transfer of title to property from a donor to a donee," the decision said.

"There was no agreement that the original deposit would be returned upon request."

This is an early favorite for the coveted Strangest Judicial Opinion of the Year award.

Good News ... Well, Sort Of

Pardon me for viewing the glass as "half empty" rather than "half full," but I wondered if I was the only person slightly depressed by a new poll for Hearst Newspapers. On his Donkey Rising blog, Ruy Teixeira gives the poll this headline: "Poll Says America Is Ready for Woman President."

Yes, a clear majority of the nation is willing to elect a female president. But it's sad to know that roughly 1 in 5 Americans (19%) are unwilling to vote for a woman.

Am I just a pessimist? If I am, so is Matthew Yglesias.

Full Staff Examination?

From Talon News:

Talon News will be offline while we redesign the web site, perform a top-to-bottom review of staff and volunteer contributors, and address future operational procedures.

They are taking a break to review their staff from top-to-bottom?

(excuse me, my inner 7th grader is having a laughing fit)

Like Neil Bush, "Bucky" Can Smell an Opportunity

It must have been a testament to Neil Bush's tenacious work ethic that he managed to find a Colorado millionaire who was willing to give him $100,000 to gamble in the commodities market with no worry of paying it back.

Yes, indeed, the Bush family has a knack for recognizing a business opportunity. Take "Bucky" Bush, for example. Never heard of him? Neither had I until I read this article from Thursday's edition of the London-based Independent newspaper:

The Iraq war has produced many winners and many losers. And one small but significant winner is a certain William "Bucky" Bush, brother of one president and uncle to the current occupant of the White House.

The good fortune of Uncle Bucky, as he is known within America's ruling family, has been to hold a seat on the board of Engineered Support Systems Incorporated (ESSI), a St Louis-based company that has flourished mightily as a military contractor to the Pentagon.

Last month, ESSI shares hit a record $60.39 (£31.64) apiece ­ more or less exactly the moment the presidential uncle chose to sell 8,438 options worth around $450,000, according to obligatory reports filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and disclosed by the Los Angeles Times yesterday. William Bush denies that his presence on the board has had anything to do with the company's success in boosting expected revenues to an estimated $[1 billion] in 2005, in good part reflecting no-bid contracts relating to the war.

Noting that he joined [ESSI] in 2000, before his nephew was elected, "Bucky" Bush says he has not lobbied anyone in Washington to send contracts ESSI's way. "I don't make any calls to the 202 [Washington, DC] area code," he told the [Times].

In fact Mr Bush, aged 66 and 14 years the junior of his brother, the first president George Bush, has long been a prominent member of the St Louis business community and was state chairman in Missouri for the 2004 Bush/Cheney re-election campaign. "Having a Bush doesn't hurt," Dan Kreher, a senior ESSI executive, says.

The company has supplied a variety of equipment to the U.S. military effort in Iraq, including a $49-m contract to refurbish military trailers .... In 2003, ESSI was awarded contracts for equipment to help search for, and protect US soldiers from, Iraq's chemical and biological weapons, which turned out to have been a figment of the imagination of the Bush administration.

But some of that government business is now under scrutiny. The Pentagon has announced that $158-m worth of contracts won by ESSI in 2002, including work on a new air cargo loading device called Tunner, is being reviewed by its inspector general for suspected "anomalies."

Blogging - Fox News Style

By now you have probably seen this Media Matters piece on how Fox News has been changing quotes and AP reports on "suicide bombers" to reflect the Fox and White House preferred term "homicide bombers."

In honor of this, I offer you a recent Bruce Fein column on judicial nominations, edited to reflect Demagogue's preferred use of language

President George W. Bush's judicial agenda is sinking because of his refusal to seek genuinely bipartisan nominees or apologize to the Democrats for the GOP's poor treatment of dozens of President Clinton's nominees.

He has wisely refrained from interceding with irresolute Republican senators to declare judicial filibusters an unconstitutional encroachment on the president's power to appoint under Article II, section 2, with simple majority approval in the Senate.

About 10 Republicans are loath to risk the threatened venom of their Democrat colleagues by destroying 200 years of Senate tradition. A modicum of bipartisanship and comity is pivotal to moving forward on any senator's agenda. The reluctant Republicans insist that President Bush's Supreme Court and subordinate federal nominees are ideological zealots who do not deserve lifetime appointments to the federal bench.

President Bush's greatest second-term accomplishment would be not to pack the federal judiciary from top to bottom with Scalia-Thomas clones, but to try to work with Senate Democrats to restore a sense of comity by nominating individuals who possess good temperaments and mainstream views. Such well-qualified candidates will undoubtedly receive the strong support of the entire Senate and go a long way toward relieving the bitter partisanship that now plagues the country.

That Bruce Fein is one fair-minded and rational Republican. I wish there were more like them.

And there will be, now that it is okay to simply change their words so that they more accurately reflect my own personal views.

Wal-Mart's Feeble Effort to Airbrush Its Image

In a speech yesterday in Los Angeles, Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott argued that the mega-retailer gets a bad rap. Thanks to Slate's Timothy Noah, we can add something else to Wal-Mart's rap: distortion of reality.

Noah cites arguments from Scott's speech and then promptly exposes the quicksand they are based upon. For example:

SCOTT: "Wal-Mart's average wage is around $10 an hour, nearly double the federal minimum wage."

Noah writes: "... the relevant number isn't the average, which would be skewed upwards by the large salaries of relatively few highly-paid company executives — Scott, for example, receives, by one reckoning, 897 times the pay of the average Wal-Mart worker — but the median. In the December 16 New York Review of Books, (the Century Foundation's) Simon Head ... stated, 'the average pay of a sales clerk at Wal-Mart was $8.50 an hour, or about $14,000 a year, $1,000 below the government's definition of the poverty level for a family of three.' "

SCOTT: "Few people realize that about 74 percent of Wal-Mart hourly store associates work full-time, compared to 20 to 40 percent at comparable retailers."

Noah writes: "Yes, but what exactly is a 'full-time worker'? Typically, full-time is defined as 40 hours a week or more. At Wal-Mart, it's defined as 34 hours a week. So of course Wal-Mart has more "full-time" workers. Fewer hours worked, I need hardly point out, means that Wal-Mart's "full-time" employees are less likely than employees elsewhere to afford premiums for any health insurance they're offered ..."

Wal-Mart's P.R. machine is in full swing, as Noah observed with these amusing remarks:

Wal-Mart took the trouble to send this speech out to writers "who are in a position to influence a lot of others," according to a cover e-mail I received from Mona Williams, Wal-Mart's vice president for corporate communications. I took Williams's email as a plea to expose the dishonesty in Scott's remarks (Stop us before we kill again!) disguised as a plea to give Scott's remarks a fair hearing.

Cannon Fodder

Matthew Yglesias highlights this Max Boot piece calling for the creation of a "Freedom Legion"

The simplest thing to do would be to sign up foreigners for the regular U.S. military, but it would also make sense to create a unit whose enlisted ranks would be composed entirely of non-Americans, led by U.S. officers and NCOs.

Call it the Freedom Legion. As its name implies, this unit would be modeled on the French Foreign Legion, except, again, U.S. citizenship would be part of the "pay." And rather than fighting for U.S. security writ small — the way the Foreign Legion fights for the glory of France — it would have as its mission defending and advancing freedom across the world. It would be, in effect, a multinational force under U.S. command — but one that wouldn't require the permission of France, Germany or the United Nations to deploy.

The Freedom Legion would be the perfect unit to employ in places such as Darfur that are not critical security concerns but that cry out for more effective humanitarian intervention than any international organization could muster. U.S. politicians, so wary (and rightly so) of casualties among U.S. citizens, might take a more lenient attitude toward the employment of a force not made up of their constituents.

Nice. Let's set up an arm of the military comprised of foreigners and send them to get killed doing all the things that we want to do but don't want to get our soldiers killed doing.

And how is this supposed to help in Darfur? Invading a sovereign country, either with domestic or foreign troops, is still an invasion. Sudan won't let foreign peacekeepers with a proper mandate into the country, be they African Union, US or "Freedom Legion." Any such "Freedom Legion" deployment would still require a clear violation of Sudan's sovereignty and be a de facto invasion.

If the genocide in Darfur is so important to the US that it requires forced intervention, the US ought to at least have the courage to send US troops to do it - not outsource the mission to expendable foreigners.

Why I Like Russ Feingold

I've made no secret of my admiration for Sen. Feingold. Like most politicians, he occasionally does things with which I disagree, but I believe that he has a genuine integrity that is sorely lacking in much of Washington.

He was interviewed not to long ago on C-SPAN and I think this exchange serves as a pretty good example of what I am talking about

LAMB: On the pay raise thing, as you know all too well, the way it's done now is that there's an automatic increase in the salaries. And it's been every two years at the rate of about $3,000, $4,000 a year.

When did - go back to what you agreed to do. Now that you're starting your third term, what pay are you taking?

FEINGOLD: I've been the leading opponent of this system. I've been the only person that's offered amendments to get rid of it. And I generally try to make us have a vote on it.

My pledge was that during a six-year term I get no pay raise. So, whatever the salary was in 1992, that's all I got for six years. And the only way I could get a raise is if people say, we want to hire you again. And then I would be hired at the new, higher rate.

But in the meantime, I've had to return about $50,000, in checks to the federal Treasury, in order to make up for the increases that occurred during the periods.

I basically follow what was the, what I think, the initial intent of the framers, which is that you shouldn't be able to get a pay raise during your term of office.

And, of course, that's exactly what's happening, even though they say it's just a cost of living increase. Somebody said it's just a COLA. I said, back home we call that $3,000.

So, I send back the checks for any pay raise that occurs during the term.

In and of itself, this is a rather meaningless gesture - but that is what makes Feingold's position so admirable. Normally in Washington, when faced with breaking a rather meaningless pledge, you find a way to justify breaking that pledge, especially if keeping it directly harms you.

Feingold, on the other hand, is keeping this pledge and losing money in the process for the sole purpose of maintaining his credibility and integrity. And that is rare in Washington, DC.

Tbogg's Loss is Our Gain

Tbogg threatened us all that if he didn't win a Koufax Award this year, he was going to start posting nothing but Sausage-Neck Goldberg Fan Fiction.

Well, he didn't win and is now making good on his threat

"Look, lady," Jonah said to her, "is there anything here besides yourself, the Stargate and the sarcophagus and those donuts on that table over there? Because we're tired, we're hungry and I left my asthma puffer in my other pants"

It might be a little early, but I think we've already got an entry for next year's Koufax "Most Humorous Post" category.

Daily Darfur

Eric Reeves says that Khartoum has engineered a famine and that "catastrophic food shortfalls in Darfur can no longer be avoided."

The Washington Times has more on the looming famine

If the food situation deteriorates further, the first victims will be children such as 16-month-old Mohammed.

The staff at Muhajeria's feeding center bandaged his hands as a precaution, but he is too weak to pull the feeding tube from his nose. His eyes are closed to ward off the flies, and the skin on his stomach is wrinkled like an old man's, signaling chronic dehydration.

The boy's mother, Sawat Ise, has three other children who also are ill, but they are too old to be admitted to this program.

Refugees International released a very interesting piece regarding Khartoum's defense and denial regarding its culpability for the genocide in Darfur

Our host and his associates said that Darfur was largely safe and secure, so that people can return with confidence. He said that the police are providing adequate protection. But displaced people say that police are often part of the problem. There are reports that the police have been penetrated by the Janjaweed. As a result, the police are often deeply distrusted by displaced villagers. People in camps repeatedly said they are afraid to go home because their villages are still subject to attack.

Most of the men's assertions were clearly wrong. They said, for instance, that the war was over and the villagers are returning quickly. In fact, fighting continues and most camp residents are afraid to stray far from the camps for fear of being attacked, let alone go home.

As we left, it was hard to know whether or not our host was proud or worried to be on the list of potential human rights violators, but what was clear is that he, as a government official, was not ready to take any responsibility for the death, destruction and displacement throughout Darfur.

The UN says Khartoum is harassing and detaining aid workers in Darfur.

Letters to the editor show that Nicholas Kristof's piece yesterday moved some to action.

Refugees International is hosting a luncheon with Samantha Power next week at the Kennedy Center to discuss the crisis in Darfur and human rights in general.

Upping the Stakes

Get ready for another blockbuster on marriage equality from the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. The decision won't come down before late 2005, and (I would guess) will more likely arrive about a year from now. But it's the next big shoe to drop in the Hate Amendment debate.

Opponents of marriage equality obviously don't want same-sex marriage to be legal anywhere. But even if it is legalized in Massachusetts, they want to draw the line at that state's borders: they don't want other states to have to recognize same-sex marriages performed in Massachusetts. That was one of the two main functions of DOMA (the other being to ensure that the federal government would not recognize the marriage of a same-sex couple).

So far, the question of how legalization in one state will affect other states is largely unanswered. Some people think DOMA is enough to excuse states from granting "full faith and credit" to same-sex marriages in other states; other folks (including some DOMA supporters) think that it's at least arguable that the full faith and credit part of DOMA will be held unconstitutional. One of the stated purposes of "mini-DOMAs" and Hate Amendments in other states is to establish that same-sex marriage violates a particular state's fundamental public policy, bolstering the argument that the state doesn't have to give full faith and credit to a Boston marriage.

Against that backdrop, the SJC has agreed to review a challenge to the 1913 Massachusetts law that prohibits marriages in Massachusetts between non-residents if the marriage would be illegal in the states where the non-residents actually reside. In other words, two men from Pennsylvania can't go to Massachusetts for the weekend and get married.

Same-sex couples from various states, plus a handful of county clerks in Massachusetts, have sued to strike down that law. The trial judge ruled in favor of the state (i.e., it upheld the law), and the couples and clerks appealed. The SJC has agreed to hear their appeal in September.

If the SJC strikes down the law, I think it could give a shot in the arm to the now somewhat moribund drive for a federal Hate Amendment. Recall that proponents of that odious proposal have quite often mischaracterized it in one of two ways: it would just stop courts from imposing same-sex marriage against the will of the legislature and people; and it is needed to protect sister states from having to recognize same-sex marriages because DOMA might be held unconstitutional without it. Of course, the amendment as proposed would ban all same-sex marriages in every state, no matter how much the legislature or the people of that state wanted it, so it goes well beyond either of those two limited purposes.

But the rhetorical value of protecting Virginia from having to recognize Massachusetts marriages is considerable, and folks in red states who think their own state would never legalize same-sex marriages might become agitated if they thought that blue states were going to be able to force it on them. If the SJC strikes down the law, expect it to boost the intensity of the push for a federal amendment and to provide a rallying point for social conservatives heading into the 2006 midterm election. On the other hand, if even the court that legalized same-sex marriages upholds a ban on marrying out-of-staters, that will provide a rhetorical advantage for Hate Amendment opponents, who will say that the concern about one state's setting policy for the country is overblown (this will also be a misleading and overbroad argument, but it will be made; intellectual dishonesty isn't the sole property of the right).

Last point: I found this bit of the article interesting. It came as news to me, though maybe others already know this:

Critics of the 1913 law argued that it was drafted to block interracial marriages, but Ball [the trial judge] rejected that claim in her ruling. She wrote the attorney general's office had offered credible evidence that the law was passed "to prevent evasion of existing divorce laws, not the limitation of interracial marriages."

Since the last round of full faith and credit litigation over marriage (in the mid-20th century) involved whether states like New York and North Carolina had to respect "quickie" divorces from Nevada, the judge's conclusion does not sound implausible to me on its face.

News from Tom Paine

TomPaine.com's daily "Newsworthy" page is an excellent source of leads to information that is often not reported nearly as widely as it should be. Often, the links are to major media outside the U.S., particularly in the U.K. You can sign up for daily e-mails.

Yesterday's installment was a particular gold mine of interesting stories, including one that has the potential to cause enough headaches for Tony Blair that it might just get some publicity in the U.S. (or at least among lefty U.S. bloggers). Yesterday's headlines:

Amnesty International: Iraq Could Be Getting Worse For Women
(Remember how the neocons suddenly discovered women's rights when it came time to invade Afghanistan? Reminds me of Eugene's Daily Darfur yesterday, which mentioned the African suckers who actually think, based on the invasion of Iraq, that Bush would come to their rescue from dictators and warlords if he only knew what was happening?)

Bush Fails To Close Gap With Europe
(You heard it here first! Well, maybe not, but we did write about it. Repeatedly.)

Oil Passes $51 A Barrel As Asia Ponders Dollar Support
(My kvetching last fall about the falling dollar and what would happen if the Asian central banks decided to stop feeding our debt habit? Another brilliant piece of Demagoguery.)

Bush Budget Leaves Children Hungry
(Are you really surprised?)

Justice Dept. Loses Bid To Classify Public Documents
(Ditto.)

And the one that has Tony Blair on the defensive again:
Britain Reveals Iraq War Ruled Illegal

That headline is misleading, if not downright wrong. But the underlying story is still quite explosive. If interested, you can read not only the linked article itself but also further coverage as well as original documents and transcripts linked to from the article. The article includes my candidate for quote of the day. It comes from the head of the British army, Gen. Sir Mike Jackson, who was concerned in the run-up to the war about whether it would be legal to attack Iraq:

"I spent a good deal of time recently in the Balkans making sure Milosevic was put behind bars," said Sir Mike. "I have no intention of ending up in the next cell to him in the Hague."

What is it with Michael Jacksons and jail these days?

Cal's Suspicions Stoked by TV Drama

I'm no intelligence analyst. So I don't know what level of fear or concern is justified in the post 9/11 era. There may be legitimate reasons to worry about so-called "sleeper cells" of Islamic terrorists, but conservative columnist Cal Thomas has come up with a bizarre, new reason to hype fears about al Qaeda-inspired cells plotting within the U.S.

In today's Washington Times, Thomas writes:

As we saw with the September 11 hijackers, modern sleeper cells are ad hoc entities and one cell knows little about other cells.

... Sleeper cells try to appear nonthreatening and avoid notice. They charge anyone suspicious of their activities and intentions with discrimination, racism and the all-purpose "Islamophobia."

One of the best portrayals of how a sleeper cell operates is in the hugely popular Fox TV show "24" Monday nights. This season's show depicts a Muslim family living quietly in a middle-class neighborhood until "activated" in a plot to gain access to U.S. nuclear power plants and stage simultaneous meltdowns.

Cal Thomas sure is ahead of the curve. He rightly suspects that the Arab family living on your neighborhood block is devoting its dinnertime conversation to the subject of producing a "dirty bomb."

And, if you don't believe him, you should know that his suspicions are verified by a fictional TV drama.

Ice Cube vs. Rwanda

Just out of curiosity, I took a look at the weekend box office totals and learned something interesting

Ice Cube's "Are We There Yet?" has raked in more than $71 million in five weeks of release.

"Hotel Rwanda," on the other hand, has taken in a total of $17 million in nine weeks.

Not In Our Hemisphere

Apparently lots of American right-wingers don't think it's enough to stick their noses into the lives of their fellow Americans, but are now feeling obligated to harass our neighbors to the north. Canadian MPs offices are being deluged with email and phone calls from Americans to let them know that they really don't like the idea of legallly married gay people living right next door.

Focus on the Family's Canadian operation is pushing hard against it and are even looking for a new Executive Director, a job that pays $100,000 (Canadian).

One especially enlightened American articulates some rather novel no-gay-marriage-in-Canada arguments:

"The United States is the great nation it is because of its moral code. Canada isn't even considered a Christian nation anymore and they seem OK with that. It's more of a melting pot. That doesn't make any sense to me."
...
"You'd be surprised how many people consider [same-sex marriage] kinky and think it's the beginning of a rotting in this society," said [Ellen] Wyman.

"The economy is going to fall apart. Once the morals start to go, then health care is going to go."

Take a breather there, Chicken Little. Also, last time I checked, America was supposed to be a melting pot too.

Sorry, Canada.

Get Yer "I Support the F-16s" Ribbons Here!

Seriously funny.

"Captivating ... A Must Read!" -- DaimlerChrysler

From today's Washington Post:

In Sicily, a reception was held recently to launch the Italian translation of a controversial book written by Saparmurad Niyazov, dictator and "president for life" of Turkmenistan. In Amsterdam, a Dutch translation of the book was unveiled at a party in a historic 17th-century house.

The various releases this month of the two-volume "Book of Spirit" -- "Ruhnama" in Turkmen -- are part of an international drive to boost the book's circulation as well as what the government-controlled Turkmen media call a "victorious march around the world" by the author-president, 65, also known in his country as Turkmenbashi the Great.

... Human rights groups say the book is at the center of Niyazov's cult of personality and is ravaging educational and cultural life in his country. Almost everyone in Turkmenistan is compelled to study the book and pass exams about it, and the country's libraries have largely been emptied to leave little but the Ruhnama and Niyazov's collections of poetry.

This month, Niyazov ordered most libraries in Turkmenistan closed, according to Russian news reports.

... Niyazov, who allowed the United States to use his country's airspace during the war in Afghanistan, has been in power since the collapse of the Soviet Union. He tolerates no dissent and has turned the country of 5 million into a monument to himself.

Acording to the Post, various corporate interests in the West are financing translations of the "Ruhnama" -- including DaimlerChrysler.

DaimlerChrysler ... sells ambulances and other vehicles to the Turkmen government. The firm published the first volume of the Ruhnama in November 2003.

"I can tell you that employees of DaimlerChrysler translated the book," said Ursula Mertzig-Stein, a company official. "A contract was signed and the book was presented to the leader." ... She declined to be quoted on the human rights situation in Turkmenistan.

If you're not as shy as Mertzig-Stein, please write DaimlerChrysler officials and let them know how repugnant it is for the company to enhance the international stature of a maniacal dictator.

Either click here and send an e-mail -- or you can phone or write the company:

DaimlerChrysler Corporation
Auburn Hills, MI 48326-2766
(Phone: 248-576-5741)

The Pope Pontificates

Heh. In his new book the Pope has declared that same-sex marriage is evil.

Dude, what exactly do you know about marriage anyways? Or sex? Or pregnancy? Or birth control? Or abortion? Or anything about real life for that matter?

Read It

Nicholas Kristof on the genocide in Darfur.

Complete with photos

This key passage was sort of buried near the bottom

The archive also includes an extraordinary document seized from a janjaweed official that apparently outlines genocidal policies. Dated last August, the document calls for the "execution of all directives from the president of the republic" and is directed to regional commanders and security officials.

"Change the demography of Darfur and make it void of African tribes," the document urges. It encourages "killing, burning villages and farms, terrorizing people, confiscating property from members of African tribes and forcing them from Darfur."

It's worth being skeptical of any document because forgeries are possible. But the African Union believes this document to be authentic. I also consulted a variety of experts on Sudan and shared it with some of them, and the consensus was that it appears to be real.

If authentic, such documents could go a long way toward establishing the "intent" that is so crucial to making a genocide determination.

Doggedly "Pro-Life"

In Florida, court appeals continue over whether a man can remove the feeding tube from his wife, Terri Schiavo, who is severely brain-damaged and in a vegetative state. Troy Newman of Operation Rescue is part of the "pro-life" contingent watching events in Florida, and he made this statement yesterday:

"We're not going to stand idly by while she is starved to death. This wouldn't happen to a dog; you wouldn't do it to your pet."

Yes, you're right, Mr. Newman -- this wouldn't happen to a dog. To my knowledge, there's no dog in any animal shelter that has been kept alive for some 15 years through the use of a feeding tube.

Without question, this wouldn't happen to a dog. The fate of a dog is not the subject of lengthy court hearings and appeals. Dogs don't have a governor and a legislature eager to intervene on their behalf.

There aren't many political points to be scored by intervening on a dog's behalf. That may partly explain why powerful people don't seem to be as "pro-life" when it comes to man's best friend.

Ignorance is Bliss

Via the Carpetbagger we get this new Harris Poll

64 percent believe that Saddam Hussein had strong links to Al Qaeda (up slightly from 62% in November).

47 percent believe that Saddam Hussein helped plan and support the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001 (up six percentage points from November).

44 percent actually believe that several of the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11 were Iraqis (up significantly from 37% in November).

36 percent believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded (down slightly from 38% in November).

As the first three results show, the American people are actually becoming stupider as time passes. In a few years, polls will probably show that many Americans believe that Hussein was responsible for the assassination of JFK.

Rove for Chief

One of the games we judicial nerds play from time to time is guessing who's on the "short list" for the next Supreme Court vacancy. The reason I call it a game is that the various speculation that you read and hear is usually uninformed, and anyway who knows what the political exigencies will be when the next appointment is made. I remember that after Clinton appointed Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the "smart money" the next time around said that Stephen Breyer was no longer in the running because he had "flunked lunch" (i.e., failed to impress Clinton during their personal meeting) when he had been considered for the vacancy that went to Ginsburg.

Of course, with the Chief Justice gravely ill and not participating in most of the Court's cases this Term, speculation is bound to increase. The latest thing I've seen, for what it's worth, named John Roberts of the D.C. Circuit as a potential nominee, saying his supporters think he combines the "stealth" quality of David Souter with the ideological reliability of Clarence Thomas. I have considerable professional admiration for Roberts, who was an excellent appellate lawyer before Dubya put him on the D.C. Circuit. But I think the Roberts advocates are barking up the wrong tree. Here's who I think Bush should appoint:

Karl Rove.

So he's not a lawyer. Show me where in the Constitution it says that the Chief Justice has to be licensed to practice law. Anyway, Bush clearly values loyalty and ideological purity over competence in his executive appointments, so why not apply the same principle to the Court? Rove is a genius at whipping up the base over hot-button judicial decisions on stuff like abortion and marriage equality, so he'd be a big hit with the Christian conservatives who are demanding tribute from Bush for having turned out in November. And he's savvy and connected enough to rule the "right" way--quietly--on issues that matter to the money side of the GOP.

Would the Dems try to stop him? Well, consider the worst-case outcome from Bush's point of view: Rove is filibustered, generating a lot higher-profile chance to paint the Dems as obstructionist than Bush has been getting out of Court of Appeals filibusters; then, after trying for a month or two to get Rove through, Bush withdraws the nomination (more in sorrow than anger, of course) and nominates a genuine right-wing judge in his place; he essentially dares the Dems to filibuster two nominees in a row while an understaffed Supreme Court labors through its docket.

You think I'm kidding about this? Well, maybe. But sometimes I wonder if there's anything these guys won't do.

Daily Darfur

The World Food Program says Sudan is facing a food emergency

WFP's Emergency Operation in southern and eastern Sudan has so far received only $22 million, leaving a shortage of more than 92 percent, or $279 million. Stocks carried over from 2004 which are currently being distributed will run out by April, precisely when food distributions normally would be scaling up to meet food requirements in the hungry season, which runs from May and June to August or September, said the agency.

This emergency operation targets 3.2 million people in Sudan outside Darfur. WFP has urged donors to pledge funds to the food aid operations as soon as possible to allow the purchase and delivery of food to people for the crucial hunger season. It takes a minimum of four months for a donation to become food on a table in a poor household.

WFP has pledges for about 54 percent of the food it needs in Darfur this year, but only for about 10 percent of the food it estimates will be needed in southern Sudan. If there are no increases in food donations, WFP could run out of food at the end of March for the southern, eastern and central regions of Sudan. If fresh commitments do not come in for Darfur, the food could finish this summer.

UN emergency relief co-ordinator Jan Egeland says famine is looming in Darfur and that many will die if the UN does not act soon to stop the violence

"Too often the world sends us the Band-Aid, and the world believes that we keep people alive and then they don't have to take a political and security action," Mr Egeland told a news briefing.

The BBC has a good analysis piece on the inability to accurately determine just how many people have died in Darfur

Nobody knows how many people have died during the two-year conflict in Sudan's western Darfur region.

But the widely quoted United Nations figure of 70,000 is clearly wrong, because it was based on a study that does not include those killed in the violence and just covers a six-month period.

The UN says that more than two million of the estimated six million population have fled their homes, but the organisation is reluctant to suggest how many might have died in total.

Some analysts are estimating that the true death toll could be four or five times higher than the 70,000 figure.

Finally, the Associated Press has this article on how many in Africa look to the US as a savior

For many of the young people who take to the streets in protest in Lome and other blighted, overlooked capitals across Africa, only one distant power seems great enough to defeat the local forces of tyranny: the U.S. military.

[edit]

That was evident amid the tear gas and riots in the former French colony of Togo, when thousands protested against the military's appointment of Faure Gnassingbe as president. Young people, many in American-branded jeans and baseball caps, begged Western journalists to send the message that they wanted the U.S. Marines to come in stop a new dictatorship from blossoming.

[edit]

In Ivory Coast, where pro-government mobs attacked French families last year and clashed with French peacekeepers, any foreigner could win immunity and cheers simply by producing an American flag - or even a red-white-and-blue car air-freshener. Demonstrators waved posters appealing to Bush for help.

The French, whose soldiers, traders and technocrats are still deeply engaged in West Africa, get the blame for much that goes wrong here. The United States keeps a much lower profile. French criticism of the Iraq invasion only adds to Washington's luster. So while the educated classes of Africa debate the rights and wrongs of U.S. policy, at street level Americans are often seen as knights in armor who would surely ride to the rescue if only they knew how bad things were.

As U.S. troops rolled into Baghdad in 2003, many people of eastern Congo, 3,000 miles away, were being slaughtered in ethnic massacres. Over and over, frightened Congolese were heard demanding American intervention.

Somebody Brief Dubya, Quickly

I hope Bush's handlers have noticed these remarks by Dutch Prime Minister Jan Balkenende (one of the NATO leaders most friendly toward Dubya).

Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende believes that US President George W. Bush was expressing concern about the murder of Theo van Gogh when he referred to the Netherlands on Monday.

Why does it say "believes?" You'd think Bush either did or did not express concern about the van Gogh murder. Turns out Bush didn't actually mention van Gogh:

"We must reject anti-Semitism in all forms and we must condemn violence such as that seen in the Netherlands," Bush said during a speech in Brussels.

Don't get me wrong. Without more context for the remark, there are only two things I can imagine the reference to "violence...in the Netherlands" was meant to cover: van Gogh's murder and/or the vandalism of mosques and Muslim schools that followed.

It's just that Bush, like other politicians, doesn't write his own speeches. Whoever wrote that line presumably knew about van Gogh, but I honestly wonder whether Dubya himself knew what he was referring to even as he uttered the words on the teleprompter. Not that I'm sure he didn't know; but there's a non-trivial chance that he didn't.

Why care?

The prime minister intended to take up the matter with Bush on Wednesday.

It might be a bit awkward if Dubya doesn't know what the hell Balkenende is talking about. Even his supporters have to concede that spontaneous, articulate speaking is not Dubya's strong suit. If he think's Balkenende is talking about Vincent van Gogh, I can imagine an Abbott and Costello-style dialogue ensuing.

A Window for Murder?

In an article about a call to reinstitute the death penalty in the Netherlands, I found this sentence puzzling:

The Netherlands abolished the death penalty from criminal law in 1870 and introduced a life sentence in 1878.

So what was the maximum penalty from 1871 to 1877? If you had been around back then and wanted to knock someone off, it seems like that would have been your opportunity.

Returning to modern times, it's also interesting that the political party whose think-tank director made the call to reinstate capital punishment so quickly disowned him. (Don't be misled by the fact that the party in question is the Liberal Party; here, "liberal" means, at least on economic issues, what we Americans would call "conservative.") Even though, judging from the remarks in the article, 40 to 50 percent of the public favors the death penalty, it's considered dangerous to a politician's career to support the death penalty. A few prominent politicians have bucked the trend, though, which makes Holland a mirror image of the U.S. on this subject--a few big-time American politicians have done well in spite of opposing capital punishment, but they're a small minority.

Last point: as the article points out, one of the EU's conditions for admitting new countries to membership, including Turkey, is that they abolish capital punishment. Thus, if the Dutch really did seriously consider reinstating the death penalty, the political fallout would be felt far beyond Holland's borders.

"Simply Ridiculous" Notion Remains on the Table

Amid growing European speculation that the U.S. is preparing to attack Iran, President Bush forcefully spoke these words in Brussels on Tuesday:

"This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous. Having said that, all options are on the table."

Or, to put it another way: "All options are on the table, including the simply ridiculous one."

How Europe Translates Bush's "Democracy" Talk

President Bush is urging European leaders to back his campaign to spread democracy abroad, but a new Associated Press poll found that a majority of people in Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain said that it should not be the U.S. role to spread democracy.

My initial reaction was one of disappointment because I firmly believe the Middle East and other regions could benefit from greater democracy (by that, I don't simply mean "majority rule"). But, as I began to consider why Europeans might have reacted so negatively to a push to expand democracy worldwide, I reached the same conclusion that a Bush insider reached -- they see the administration's "democracy" message as shorthand for unilateral muscle-flexing around the globe.

As MSNBC explains:

White House counselor Dan Bartlett suggested that foreigners may misunderstand Bush’s plan to spread the liberties that Europeans and Americans take for granted.

“People get in their mind that spreading freedom means war and that’s not the case,” Bartlett said in an interview Tuesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “Some of those opinion polls are reading in to it a little more than what President Bush intends.”

Gee, Dan, I wonder why?

This illustrates the long-lasting fallout that results when you wage a war over the objection of most of your major allies in order to find and destroy non-existent WMDs.

If Bush genuinely wants to see democracy spread -- a worthy goal -- he will need European support. Securing this support will take time, the right words and the right deeds.

Is Canada Part of the Star Wars Shield or Not?

Two and a half months ago, Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin was noncommital when asked if his nation would be part of the Star Wars-style, missile defense system that the U.S. was attempting to build. But today Canada's next ambassador to the U.S. surprised many of his fellow Canadians when he announced that Canada is already part of the controversial program.

More from one of Canada's largest daily newspapers, the Globe and Mail:

Frank McKenna said that Canadian participation is such that he does not know what more could be asked by the United States, an argument that could remove the need for the minority Liberals to make a contentious decision on ballistic missile defence (BMD).

“We're a part of it now,” he said, citing an amendment to NORAD, a continental defence pact, that has given the joint command responsibility for watching for incoming missiles.

... Defence Minister Bill Graham insisted later Tuesday that nothing has changed in the federal position, leaving opposition parties to jump on the apparent disparity between the two men's statements.

One of those angry opponents is deputy Conservative Party leader Peter McKay, who posed this rhetorical question:

"Last summer, Canada agreed to NORAD's monitoring of incoming missiles. Last August, [Graham] said that decision does not affect in any way or determine the ultimate decision of whether Canada will participate in missile defence.

Mr. McKenna's statements today clearly contradict that position. ... Will the Parliament of Canada have a full debate with all the facts on missile defence, or is Canada's position already a done deal?"

Late to the Game

I was gone for much of last week, so you may have seen this already - but I hadn't, so I'm posting it 'cause it is new to me (via the Liquid List)

Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge met privately with Republican pollsters twice in a 10-day span last spring as he embarked on more than a dozen trips to presidential battleground states.

Ridge's get-togethers with Republican strategists Frank Luntz and Bill McInturff during a period the secretary was saying his agency was playing no role in Bush's re-election campaign were revealed in daily appointment calendars obtained by The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act.

"We don't do politics in the Department of Homeland Security," Ridge told reporters during the election season.

His aides resisted releasing the calendars for over a year, finally providing them to the AP three days after Ridge left office this month.

Santorum Tries to Calm the Restless Natives

Reporting on a 10-stop tour of his state by Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette notes that one of the tour's main goals "is to soothe anxiety about President Bush's proposal to allow workers younger than 55 to divert a portion of their payroll taxes into personal retirement accounts ..."

But based on the newspaper's descriptions, Santorum's pro-private accounts sales pitch soothed only some of his constituents:

At one point, when [Santorum] showed charts illustrating the causes of the nation's rising deficits and referred to discretionary spending on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan as one-time costs, audience members responded loudly with boos and catcalls.

... the president also has held a series of public 'conversations' about Social Security, but participants at those events were almost always handpicked by the administration to showcase Americans who support or would benefit from his proposals.

By contrast, at Santorum's first event in Pittsburgh, audience members were allowed to line up at the microphone. Many expressed deep opposition to the personal-accounts proposal, noting their own stock market losses in recent years and their opposition to the cost of creating such accounts -- $754 billion over 10 years ...

... Santorum's arguments yesterday had more resonance among his younger listeners, who in national polling have been far more supportive of the president's proposal than older workers. Though some admitted that they had attended Santorum's presentation mainly for extra credit in their college courses, some said they were annoyed that many people opposing changes to the system would not be affected by them.

I suspect that Santorum followed the talking points from the GOP document that he himself co-signed. These talking points urge Republicans to call the private-accounts reform "personalization," not "privatization."

Among the Cheese Eaters

I'm sure everyone noticed that I hadn't posted for a week and a half, and I hope that no one suffered too much withdrawal. I was on vacation and chose a destination that I figured would be very welcoming to an American Jew: Morocco.

It was my first trip to an Arab country (though I've spent a lot of time in Muslim countries) and my first time in Africa. But it turned out that as an American, I had more to fear from other tourists: the place is overrun with Frenchmen.

Apart from retarding my progress in Dutch--after speaking French for a week, I seem unable to recall the Dutch words for anything--the cheese eaters didn't do me much harm. Also, my 3-year-old son got a ride on a camel when the camel driver found out I was American and asked me what I thought of Bush. I responded honestly, leading to my son's reward.

Now I'm back among the Coalition of the Willing, but still surrounded by a population that does not hold Dubya in particularly high regard. Frederick mentioned Bush's current can't-we-all-get-along tour in Europe and media speculation over how successfully he can mend fences. I think there's a certain extent to which future cooperation is inevitable: we need each other. And, in fact, even while we were going through our Freedom Fries foolishness and the French were looking down their arrogant noses at the illiterate American barbarians, we continued to cooperate on a wide range of matters.

But to the extent the question is "putting Iraq behind us," I'm skeptical. The problem is that everyone believes he/she was right about the war. Given the failure to find WMD or even active programs to pursue them, the complete lack of evidence of a connection between Saddam and jihadi terrorists, and the massive clusterfuck that is the occupation, it's easy to see why Europeans who opposed the war in 2002 and 2003 think they've been vindicated. It's less easy to see why Bush thinks he's been vindicated, but considering his congenital inability to admit to mistakes and his awe-inspiring capacity to inhabit an alternative reality, I take at face value his continuing assertions that he thinks he did the right thing.

When Bush says he wants to put disagreements behind us, he means that he's willing to cut the Europeans a break even though they were wrong about Iraq and stabbed him in the back. He seems to think the Europeans should be grateful for his generosity.

This is not a message that goes down well over here. Part of America's being bigger and stronger than everyone else is that the impotent European masses want at least to be able to enjoy their I-told-you-so moment, since they can't stop us from f**king things up in the first place. They think Bush should be embarrassed and essentially be asking them for their generous forgiveness. As long as he acts as if it's the Old Europeans who should be embarrassed, I don't see a lot of rapprochement going on. And since the American voters returned Bush to power even after it became obvious that Iraq was a disaster, the Bush-is-a-bastard-but-I-like-Americans option is less viable.

Time will heal this wound. Bush's trip won't. But life will go on, and we will continue to be allies, trading partners, and generally friends with the Europeans. It's just that the friendship is a bit more distant and cool at the moment.

Which European Leaders Are Saying That?

During Sunday's "Meet the Press," host Tim Russert had this exchange with the BBC's Katty Kay:

KAY: "... The success of the elections in Iraq, frankly, chastened many of the war critics in France. They now feel that this extraordinary thing happened in Iraq, and they had not been leading the push to have change in Iraq ... Fundamentally, the way Europeans feel that we should deal with the Middle East is very different from the way America feels we should deal with the Middle East ..."

(moments later)

... whether this warmth in tone ... would translate into real substance, I'm a bit more cautious."

RUSSERT: "Some of the European leaders are saying, 'Well, we'd like to get engaged and do more, train troops, perhaps share in the economic recovery, but the president is so personally popular amongst our people, our options are limited.' Is that an excuse or is that real?

Which European leaders have made remarks like that? Are there European leaders who actually believe Bush is "so personally popular amongst our people"?

I seriously doubt it. Russert's smarter than this. Perhaps he meant to say that the president is "so personally popular amongst his people" -- although even that statement is one hell of a stretch.

Daily Darfur

Rwandan President Paul Kagame is scheduled to visit Darfur where Rwandan troops are serving in the AU force.

Peace talks are scheduled to resume this week.

Eric Reeves offers his latest analysis: "Darfur Genocide and the Current Faces of International Failure."

The Carpetbagger alerted me to this

Add President Bush, the first lady, and the cabinet to the fans of Hotel Rwanda, the film about how hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina housed over a thousand Tutsi refugees during their struggle with Hutu militia killers. Bush saw it twice and "loved it" so much, said an aide, that he hoped to meet with Rusesabagina during his trip this week to Europe. That was, until the White House found out the hero was in Washington last Thursday. So after lunch, the first family and Rusesabagina and his wife huddled in the Oval Office. "[Bush] said he was very much moved by the movie," the humanitarian told us. He also said the prez revealed his goal of ending genocide in Sudan's Darfur region. "He's very much concerned about it. He's very much committed to solving the issue."

Others are apparently "very much committed" to ensuring that Bush follows through on his goal:

Don Cheadle and Paul Rusesabagina have joined the Save Darfur Coalition in urging people to go see "Hotel Rwanda," write "Not On My Watch" on their ticket stubs and send them to President Bush.

Africa Action wants you to send a letter to President Bush

Darfur: Not Another Hotel Rwanda!
Tell Bush: You will not sit silent while another genocide unfolds in Africa!

Dear Friends,

Despite the attention that the crisis in Darfur has been attracting recently, little to nothing has been done to stop the ongoing genocide that has claimed over 400,000 lives and displaced 2 million people in Sudan.

Despite a statement issued five months ago (September 2004) by the US State Department and the White House that the crimes against humanity being committed in Darfur constituted genocide, the Bush Administration and the US government have failed to live up to the obligation that such a statement carries.

Despite the recommendations of a the recent United Nations report urging immediate action to halt the violence in Darfur, the UN and international community have again failed to act. This is not the first time that the victims of genocide in Africa have been neglected.

While the international community has been largely silent about the genocide in Sudan, Africa Action invites you to speak out on this issue. Join us as we call for a United Nations Chapter 7 mandate for a multinational intervention to stop the genocide in Darfur and protect its innocent civilians.

Human Rights First has a petition urging Secretary of State Rice to ensure that the United States does not veto a Security Council referral of the situation in Darfur to the ICC.