"And We’ll Have Fun, Fun, Fun …"

In this recent post, I took issue with columnist Nicholas Kristof’s analysis of what the Democrats should do to get back on the winning track. Kristof’s essay was one of many in a collection published right after the November election and entitled, What We Do Now.

One of those other essays was written by Cass Sunstein. As much as I wish it weren't so, Sunstein’s final suggestion makes a lot of sense. This suggestion carries a headline that isn’t quite what you’re expecting from a distinguished law school professor from the U. of Chicago: “Have fun.”

Sunstein writes:

"People are more likely to succeed in politics and elsewhere, if they enjoy what they're doing. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the most successful president in American history, loved his jobs, had a tremendous sense of humor, and disarmed his sharpest critics with jokes.

"... President Bill Clinton obviously relished politics and running for president, and he liked to respond to harsh attacks with bemusement ("that dog won't hunt," he said to President George H.W. Bush); the same holds true for Reagan ("There you go again," he said to Jimmy Carter).

"George W. Bush obviously didn't like the (fall 2004) debates, and that hurt him; but he did seem to have a lot of fun at campaign events, and that helped him.

"Compare Jimmy Carter, Michael Dukakis, George H.W. Bush, Al Gore, and John Kerry -- diverse and honorable people, to be sure, but a relatively humorless group and not the most fun crowd, at least not on the campaign trail.

"John Kerry did many things right, but he would have been a better candidate if he had appeared to enjoy what he was doing, or proved able to make a few jokes ... Why wasn't Teresa Heinz Kerry able to provide more help to her husband? Answer: She didn't like campaigning and it showed."

In Case You Missed It

I posted this earlier in the Daily Darfur but it has sort of been buried under an avalanche of posts today, so I am re-posting it because I think it is important

I strongly encourage you all to check out this short video from Aegis Trust - Not On My Watch (it takes a little while to load, but it is worth it.)

Sexual Psychoanalysis

Writer and "sexpert" Susie Bright has a insightful essay on Jeff/James "Bulldog" Guckert/Gannon and how self-loathing, GOP queers function and gain access to the halls of power. She addresses what most news stories danced around-- Guckert/Gannon was a successful prostitute-- and nails the frustration that so many of us feel about the underwhelming coverage of the Guckert/Gannon story in addition to the mystery of how people like Gannon/Guckert live with themselves.

I know he isn’t a household name yet, but one day Mehlman and his brethren will be understood on the same level as Roy Cohn, or J. Edgar Hoover: classist, misogynist, elitist power whores who may be Kinsey 6 homosexuals, but who look in the mirror and whisper this:

“Mirror mirror on the wall, I am special and above it all.”

The Kinky Fascists feel entitled to fuck who they want and ruin who they want, because they believe they are a unique breed of men above other men. They say “to hell with gay marriage,” because they’d never do something that “weak.” Hate crimes are something that happens to nelly queens who deserve it. And women are bitches from hell that need to be kept on a leash until you need their venom for your enemies.

Sure, the hypocrites have deep-seated self loathing, but they’re in the driver’s seat of American conservative politics, baby! Power is better than a line of cocaine up their ass for that all-important self esteem buzz.

I forgot how much I love Susie Bright, she writes about sex & politics so well, just not frequently enough.

(Thanks to Amanda @ pandagon for the link. Susie is sort of like Dan Savage, only she came first, is bisexual and has a much larger sexual universe of personal experience. She's smart, radical, funny as well as warm and cuddly.)

Bush, Darfur, and the ICC

Mark Leon Goldberg has a good post over at TAPPED regarding reports that the Bush administration is now poised to accept, or at least refrain from vetoing, a Security Council referral to the International Criminal Court.

This article lays out the concessions sought by the Bush administration in order for the resolution to be acceptable to the US

The first would exempt foreign forces in any peacekeeping mission for Sudan from ICC jurisdiction and would allow them to be tried only by their national authorities, something the Security Council reluctantly backed for peacekeepers in Liberia in 2003.

The second, and most controversial, would allow the United States to opt out of ICC jurisdiction over war crimes for its peacekeeping forces throughout the world for seven years.

Parties to the ICC's founding treaty have such a seven-year opt-out for war crimes and the U.S. officials argued they should have the same right without, however, conceding their forces would be subject to its jurisdiction after seven years.

It is ludicrous that the Bush is demanding a seven year exemption from a court he refuses to recognize and repeatedly asserts has no authority over the US. It is equally absurd that the administration is arguing that they should be able to benefit from this provision without becoming a party to the treaty itself. By this logic, I should be able to demand that Netflix start delivering movies to my house without actually, you know, joining or paying for it.

Anyway, regarding this final condition

Third, the United States wants guarantees it would not be asked to cooperate with the ICC in ways that violate limits on such cooperation imposed by U.S. law. U.S. officials said there was little opposition to this from other nations.

Goldberg makes a good point

Helms' parting gift to the human-rights community, the American Servicemembers' Protection Act (ASPA), expressly forbids any U.S. government agency from assisting the ICC in any way. Back in 2002, when the legislation was passed, Chris Dodd wisely inserted a provision into ASPA giving the president the authority to waive it on a case-by-case basis. If the president is serious about his desire to bring Darfur's war criminals to justice, now would be the time to exercise that authority.

[edit]

As the ICC investigators prepare for Sudan, the seriousness of President Bush's intent to bring to justice Sudan's war criminals will be measured in part by whether or not he signs an executive order waiving ASPA for Darfur-related investigations.

It'll be a real test of Bush's commitment to this issue to see if he waives the restrictions on cooperation with the ICC. Not vetoing the Security Resolution is one small concession - but it is entirely meaningless if he then refuses to cooperate with any subsequent ICC prosecutions.

Columbia Report

As I've blogged on this controversy a few times in the past, I thought I'd alert our legion of readers to the fact that Columbia University today published the report of the ad hoc committee investigating claims of anti-Semitism and intimidation of students expressing pro-Israel views by faculty. A related New York Times article is here.

As does the Times reporter, I read the report on an initial skim as being most critical of the university's procedures (or lack thereof) for investigating students' complaints about faculty misconduct. The report points to a number of adverse consequences of the ill-defined and poorly publicized grievance procedures. Reading between the lines, I suspect that one particularly frustrating consequence from the committee's point of view is that the absence of contemporaneous complaints and investigations made it almost impossible for the committee to determine the truth at this late date. Some of the most explosive allegations essentially come down to one person's word against another's (sometimes with two or three other witnesses on each side, but still a matter of whom who believe).

Hence the committee's description of itself as the "least bad" way to deal with the crisis once it had been allowed to fester for so long.

I found the committee's reaction to the three incidents it took most seriously pretty reasonable. The committee mostly relied on intuition and common sense, but its thinking struck me as indeed sensible. On the charge that a professor had ordered a student to leave the class after she made a comment that appeared to defend the Israeli military against charges of atrocities, I think the committee was right to think that the professor probably said something that was an improper reaction and that basically denied the student's right to question the professor's beliefs about Israel's conduct. And it was also right to conclude that it's impossible to tell whether that improper reaction included an order to leave the class (the student did not in fact leave the room).

I also found appropriate the resolution of the bizarre episode when a professor allegedly told a Jewish student that she couldn't have a claim to the land because she had green eyes and therefore wasn't a Semite. Especially given the context (a long after-class chat), and the fact that the student said nothing else happened during the semester to make the course exceptional in any way, I think the professor's explanation was very plausible: he said he sometimes uses physical features like that when arguing that claims to land based on one's choice of religion are absurd. Frankly, I'm not sure I understand his argument, and in particular his explanation of how the argument is illustrated by the difference between inherited physical characteristics (like eye color) and the religion passed down (non-genetically) from one's parents. Even in the written form in which he publicly defended himself, the argument strikes me as badly worded and perhaps pointless. But in the course of a lengthy and intense conversation, it doesn't seem unreasonable that he might have worded his argument in an even more obscure way or that the student might have misunderstood his meaning; and the accusation isn't that his arguments are wrong or incoherently explained, but that he actually claimed that he had a superior claim to the land because he had brown eyes and his interlocutor had green eyes, which strikes me as a much less plausible occurrence. [Note: this paragraph was updated from the original post after I read the professor's op-ed and realized that I'd misstated his position based on the synopsis in the committee's report.]

The unfortunate fact is that we'll never know the truth about most of the particular incidents that allegedly occurred. For that reason and others, there's no way this report will satisfy everyone, particularly those who claimed that the committee was composed of professors with overtly pro-Palestinian views. The organizations that pushed this issue will no doubt say--and, I think, honestly believe--that this is a whitewash and that serious misconduct has gone unpunished. But after reading the report, I'm not sure that it reasonably could have been any better.

The Bully Pulpit

We all know about Bush signing the Texas bill in 1999 and Tom DeLay's family "pulling the plug" on his father 1988. Sidney Blumenthal highlights some of the lesser-known examples, revealing the surreal, naked hypocrisy running rampant among the "right-to-life" players in the Schiavo case.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, M.D....had as a doctor pulled the plug on a "regular basis," his staff acknowledged. And in 1989, Frist published a book, "Transplant," in which he stated that anencephalic infants, suffering the same condition as the cortex-dead Schiavo, should be classified as "brain-dead."

Even the Franciscan Brothers of Peace, a ministry numbering only 10 monks, two of whom have appeared as personal counselors to the Schindlers, Schiavo's parents, confronted a crisis when the founder of their group suffered a heart attack and severe brain damage. He was kept alive through a feeding tube, but in 2003, after a dozen years, the monks decided to withdraw his life support.

But more importantly Blumenthal gets to the heart of how this overexposed issue will play in the GOP's not-too-distant future.

The culture war has imploded inside the Republican Party. ...Schiavo has given the religious right an invaluable lever with which to pressure Bush and the Republicans, who can never fully satisfy its demands if they are to sustain a national majority. The inviolability of marriage, states' rights, limited government, respect for the law -- these conservative principles must be cast aside in the struggle for power. Moreover, the Catholic right, a minority within both the American church and the religious right, has used this event to flex its muscles at evangelical Protestants as never before.
...
A bigger prize looms. The shadow of political blackmail hangs over Bush's Supreme Court nominations. Bush's appointment of justices who meet the approval of the religious right, even if he had intended to appoint them all along, must be interpreted as its triumph in the Schiavo struggle. If he flouts its will, there will be hell for Republicans to pay. Bush has set himself up for appearing terrorized.

Blumenthal is especially right when he says "The Bush administration doesn't have a faith-based initiative; it is a faith-based initiative." But the point is that this will inevitably backfire, the risk of backlash is great, and Bush has given the fanatical right-wing enough rope to hang themselves and him along with them. Here's to hoping that Blumenthal's crystal ball isn't jinxed.

Schiavo Has Died, But the Right's Rage Lives On

On the website of the conservative publication Human Events, Adam Rickel has written an article about the case of now-deceased Terri Schiavo that carries this completely over-the-top, hysterical headline: "Judge Greer, Would You Have Killed My Brother Too?"

From the information that Rickel shares, it appears that he is using his own family trauma to launch an invective against Judge Greer. But from what Rickel has written, the analogy seems weak. Rickel lays out the case of his brother who, he says, had so much in common with Terri:

... every time I see a picture of Terri I am reminded of my brother.

Like Terri, my brother could not feed or take care of himself in any way. Like Terri, there were moments when he could react to someone's voice or presence. Like Terri, my brother did not have a living will. Like Terri, my family had to face the questions and even accusations that my brother's life was not worth the effort and expense.

But after reading Rickel's article, I quickly suspected that he was telling an incomplete story for a reason -- the analogy probably didn't fit.

Yes, both Schiavo and Rickel's brother lacked living wills. That's quite clear. But the blank that Rickel never bothers to fill in is whether his brother had ever indicated to his family what he felt about the use of extraordinary measures to extend his life.

If his brother was as conservative as Rickel is on this issue, my guess is that the brother would have had no problem with the use of extraordinary measures. If so, in the Rickel family's case, both liberals and conservatives would have no objection to the decision that the family made -- as Rickel explains:

My brother never once lifted himself from his bed, but I learned the value of serving our fellow man as I lifted him up. My brother never fed himself, but I learned what it meant to feed those less fortunate.

As is well known at this point, Schiavo's husband has successfully convinced various courts that his wife had made it clear through prior remarks that she would not want to live in a vegetative state. A few others have backed up Schiavo's husband on this point.

Some people may believe that states should require explicit language in a living will before cutting off a respirator or feeding tube. And they're entitled to that point of view. But, for now anyway, Florida law seems to allow courts to consider other expressions (even second-hand reports) of an individual's wishes vis-a-vis extraordinary measures.

The patient's wishes, in other words, were always central to the Schiavo case. Rickel's brother may never have expressed personal wishes about the use of extraordinary measures, but Rickel conveniently sidesteps what was perhaps the major issue in this case. In fact, he doesn't even address the issue.

I don't see this case as a simple, black-and-white issue. I think a legitimate argument can be made that states might want to set the bar a little higher in determining when respirators or feeding tubes are shut off. But Rickel's diatribe against Greer is devoid of serious ethical or intellectual analysis.

Of course, the same can be said for much of what appears on Human Events' website.

A Real Race for Repulsive Rick?

I was glad to learn that Pennsylvania State Treasurer Bob Casey had announced his candidacy to oppose incumbent Senator Rick Santorum, whose views are more akin to Trent Lott's than Arlen Specter's.

And I was particularly pleased to see this recent poll that shows Casey leading Santorum by 7 percentage points.

The good news? Casey is running +4 among white voters and +14 among seniors. (The latter margin is critical in Pennsylvania -- Florida is the only state east of the Mississippi River with a larger share of 65-and-over residents.)

The bad news? Santorum is polling well in the northeast region of the state, Casey's backyard. And Santorum is polling very well (for a Republican, anyway) among blacks. He receives nearly one out of four African-American votes.

Unless these voters are all rabidly anti-gay, Casey can make inroads with them. Even if they're pro-life voters, Casey should have a shot at winning their votes -- he is economically liberal, but pro-life (like his father, the ex-governor).

The Sound of the Other Shoe Dropping

About a month ago, I wrote about the pending case in which the Massachusetts SJC will decide on the constitutionality of the state's ban on marriages between out-of-staters if the marriages would be void in the state where the couple actually resides. The case is being brought by non-Massachusetts residents who want to get married and county clerks who want to issue marriage licenses to them. But in a comment to my own post, I mentioned the kind of factual situation in which the rubber will really meet the road:

At some point in the not-too-distant future, there's going to be a case involving a pair of Massachusetts residents who got married and later moved to another state.

We're still waiting for that situation to come up. But a case that already has come up suggests to me that we won't have much longer to wait. Two women from Connecticut got married in Massachusetts (presumably because the governor had yet to order clerks not to issue licenses to out-of-state same-sex couples). Then, back home in Connecticut, one of them filed for an annulment. The Connecticut trial judge held that she lacked jurisdiction over the petition. The reasoning is a bit complicated, and I'm not sure it actually makes sense. But the gist of it is that there was no "marriage" over which the family court could exercise jurisdiction: the Massachusetts statute banning out-of-staters from skirting their home-states' laws meant that the marriage was void from the start, even under Massachusetts law.

This is only a trial court decision, and unless the SJC strikes down the statute (which I think it won't), the decision does not put Connecticut in conflict with Massachusetts. The more difficult situation, which will put the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act and various state laws directly into question, will be when a couple with a legal Massachusetts same-sex marriage ends up in litigation in another state.

That shouldn't take long. As the Connecticut case emphasizes, a percentage of marriages fall apart within months. I think the odds are that we'll soon see at least one member of a same-sex couple move out of Massachusetts and file for divorce in another state.

And that's not the only fact pattern that would put the constitutional questions in issue. For instance, say one spouse is killed in an accident while on vacation in Florida. The surviving spouse might sue the person who caused the accident in Florida court, and the defense would certainly argue that a same-sex spouse can't bring wrongful death or survivorship claims under Florida law; to which the plaintiff would certainly respond that the Full Faith & Credit Clause requires Florida to accept the validity of the Massachusetts marriage and that anything in DOMA or Florida law to the contrary is unconstitutional.

I expect the pending SJC decision to get a lot of press when it comes out. But the truly significant cases will come from courts in other states.

Missing the Story

There's burying the lede, and then there's missing it completely. I'm sure other news sources won't make the same mistake the AP did in its story on the former Boy Scout national program director who pleaded guilty to child pornography charges.

Here's what the AP said:

Douglas Sovereign Smith Jr., 61, was accused of receiving images over the Internet of children engaging in sex acts.

Here's what the stipulated facts admitted by Smith and signed by Smith and his lawyer said:

A forensic analysis was performed on the defendant's computers and computer discs, revealing a total of 520 images of child pornography, including video clips. The child pornography depicted males under the age of 18 engaged in sexually explicit conduct. Among these pornographic images were sexually explicit depictions of actual and known prepubescent males under the age of 12 years.

So how did "males under the age of 12"--what we might colloquially call "boys"--become "children?"

Meanwhile, thanks to the General, we can compare the statement of facts Smith signed this week with another statement of his from a few years back--a letter to the editor regarding the Boy Scouts' vigorous defense of their right to discriminate against gay boys and men.

Some intolerant elements in our society want to force scouting to abandon its values and to become fundamentally different. They want scouting to forego its constitutional rights, affirmed in 2000 by the Supreme Court in BSA v. Dale, and adopt fundamentally different values from the ones that helped shape the character of Mr. Collins and 106 million other young men over the past 94 years.

(Mr. Collins was (is?) general counsel of C-SPAN and an Eagle Scout, and he had written an article despairing over the Boy Scouts' being dragged into, or choosing to drag itself into, the "culture wars" by virtue of the BSA's taking a hard line in both offensive and defensive litigation over its exclusion of gays.)

Keep These Men Away From My House

Sen. Charles Grassley appeared with President Bush at one of his Social Security propaganda rallies in Iowa yesterday.

Speaking on the need for reform, Grassley had this to say

"The president and I are like a builder and an architect, and we agree on a blueprint," Grassley said. "The blueprint is we need to do something to guarantee Social Security for our children and grandchildren. Doing nothing is not an option."

Um, I hate to break it to you Chuck, but merely recognizing the need to do something does not qualify as a "blueprint."

A blueprint is a detailed plan, not just a bunch of vague, contradictory, and disingenuous nonsense.

If I hired a builder and an architect and asked to see their blueprints and they responded by showing me a piece of paper that read "We're gonna build you a house," I'd probably fire them.

My Very Last Post...

on Terri Schiavo. She's finally gone. May she and her family find peace.

Does this mean that all the pols will stop using her as a political football?

One can only hope.

(One caveat-- I do reserve the right to talk about it in the greater political context.)

The Religious Banishment Myth, Take 73

On Sunday, I came across a commentary piece in the Newark Star-Ledger, written by New Jersey ex-attorney general John Farmer, Jr. At one point in his lengthy article, Farmer complains about what he calls “the banishment of religious discussion from our public discourse ...”

The banishment of religious discussion? Somebody pinch me. Hasn’t the hottest news story over the past week been the Terri Schiavo case — a story that has been rife with references to religion, the Almighty and theological doctrines?

And did Farmer miss the last presidential debate between Bush and Kerry? In this debate, the two candidates spoke the words God, pray or faith a total of 32 times. (That excludes a few times when “faith” was used in a non-religious context).

It was incredibly ironic that in the very same issue in which Farmer complained of religious discussion’s “banishment” from the public sphere, the Star-Ledger featured:

• a front-page article related to the Easter holiday that carried this headline: “By an Act of Faith, Hope Is Renewed.”

• a news story that took up most of page 3 and was headlined, “Pope Is With the Faithful in Prayer” – including a teaser above the headline that quoted the official Vatican newspaper.

• a news story on page 11 that read like a French Tourist Bureau ad promoting package tours to the city of Lourdes. The article reported that local community groups had helped finance a trip for eight disabled, New Jersey youth to visit the Catholic shrine in Lourdes, a shrine drawing millions each year who visit in hope of healing themselves of a physical or mental affliction.

Daily Darfur

The Daily Darfur post is up on the coalition blog - the US has reportedly dropped its opposition to attempts to refer the crimes in Darfur to the International Criminal Court.

On a semi-related note, I strongly encourage you all to check out this short film from Aegis Trust - Not On My Watch (it takes a little while to load, but it is worth it.)

Also, there is this extremely hopeful news

A Rwandan Hutu militia group on Thursday denounced the Hutu-orchestrated 1994 genocide in the African country and announced it was stopping its fighting in the region.

The announcement by the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, the main Hutu militia group, came at the end of four days of talks in Rome with the Sant'Egidio Community, a Catholic group that mediates world conflicts.

"The DFLR commits to ending armed struggle," the group said in a statement. "The DFLR decides to turn their fighting into political struggle."

According to GlobalSecurity.org

The [DFLR] rebel group is comprised of key members of the 1994 genocide, plus Hutu members of the former Rwandan army, as well as a mix of displaced Rwandan Hutus.

It is nice to get some good news for a change.

And Speaking of Juan Cole

I found his public humiliation of Jonah Goldberg amusing, and it shows that he can certainly hold his own in a one-on-one fight with purveyors of nonsense. But don't miss Cole's important post from earlier this week about a new variation on the VRWC's strategy of turning misstatements, oversimplifications, and lies about political opponents into "facts" that "everyone knows." I find some of Cole's counterarguments tendentious, particularly his saying that "much of the Arab world" has peace treaties with Israel on the basis that Egypt alone has one-third of the total Arab population. But the garbage that he's dealing with goes way beyond tendentious.

A word to the wise: when you read in an article that Juan Cole claims to have invented the Internet, be skeptical.

Reality Continues to Be Complicated

I'm not the only person frustrated by the Bush Administration's insistence on seeing everything in extremely simple terms. Of course, there are the political/ideological oversimplificiations--you're with us or you're with the terrorists, if you oppose the war it means you support Saddam, etc.--but ordinary factual matters are oversimplified as well. This is a human tendency, as there's only so much information and nuance we can handle, and it's exacerbated by numerous aspects of the way the press covers news in the U.S. (some of which I blame the press for, some of which are functions of limited time or pages, and some of which are just giving the people what they want).

Anyway, as I and others (including, much more authoritatively, Juan Cole) noted at the time, as inspiring as the Iraqi election was, intelligent analysis is a lot more complicated than declaring an "Arab spring" featuring a democratic Iraq.

The Economist captures the current state of play, which is mostly not too good. The article does a good job, IMHO, of not insisting on a one-sided approach ("everything sucks"), and of including several important good signs and possible routes to good outcomes, without turning into a useless "on the one hand . . . but on the other . . . ." kind of article.

A principal problem, as Cole explained cogently in January, is that the Sunni population is virtually unrepresented, so that even though the Shia and Kurdish parties seem willing to include Sunnis in the government, no one can figure out who the Sunni representatives should be. The most likely outcomes seem to be that someone will emerge as the "leader" of the few Sunni MPs in parliament but will be unacceptable to large chunks of the Sunni population; or that the Sunni MPs won't be able to coalesce around any individual, and the Kurds and Shias will appoint the Sunni representatives for them. Neither of these would be a terrific outcome, obviously, but there is some hope that a significant portion of the Sunni population is losing patience with the insurgency and will start to get behind the institutions set up by the interim constitution, including parliament.

Still, as Cole now mentions, the Shiite coalition may oppose giving any role to almost any of the Sunni MPs, since that small group is mostly composed of ex-Baathists. Cole speculates--and admits that this is speculation--that recent public comments by the Shiite leadership may imply that they'll refuse even to seat the elected Sunnis in parliament, which would be disastrous for the nascent democracy. Of course, most of the elected Sunnis are on the list of Iyad Allawi, the interim prime minister to whom we handed "sovereignty" nine months ago and who is tainted in many Sunnis' eyes not so much because of his party's Baath connections but because he participated in a collaborationist government supported by the occupier. Hence these two quotes, one from The Economist and one from Cole's post yesterday:

IT WAS a farcical scene. For only the second time since a widely acclaimed general election two months ago, Iraq’s parliament met again on Tuesday March 29th—and achieved precisely nothing.

---

The United Iraqi Alliance [the Shiite religious coalition] rejected as candidate for speaker of the house a parliamentarian on Allawi's Iraqiya list, Janabi, on the grounds that his brother had worked closely with Saddam. This blackballing of a politician for links to the old regime infuriated Iyad Allawi, who stalked out of the building. He was followed by the major Sunni politician in the talks, Ghazi al-Yawir....

There are behind the scenes maneuverings to dump Ibrahim Jaafari as prime minister. Ahmad Chalabi [!!] seems to be making another push to be prime minister himself, supported by the Kurds and by dissidents in the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance. If the religious Shiites are cheated of their proper role in government, now that they
have over 50 percent of seats, there is danger of a popular revolt.

If you had to stick a Dubyaesque good/bad label on the situation, you'd say bad; but if you're an adult, you say one word can't encapsulate the reality.

The Brits Are So Cute

For some reason, Tony Blair's Government continues to believe, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that the U.S. will treat the U.K. favorably as a reward for Blair's obedience to Dubya.

The Security Council members are feverishly trying to negotiate a compromise that will stop the U.S. from vetoing a resolution referring Darfur crimes to the International Criminal Court (maybe we'll deign not to veto if the rest of the Council agrees to grant American nationals an even broader exemption from I.C.C. jurisdiction than we now enjoy). The U.S. would prefer that the I.C.C. disappear and doesn't want to do anything that would legitimize it, such as permitting it to hear cases arising from what we've already agreed is a genocide.

Here's what Britain's UN ambassador had to say:

The British position is very clear. We want that referral to the ICC.

Maybe if they said pretty please and offer Dubya a knighthood, he'd give a **** about what the Brits want.

But probably not.

The Name Game in Berkeley

The federal budget deficit continues to grow, some 43 million Americans live their lives without health insurance, and the misery continues in Darfur, but a group of parents and teachers at Thomas Jefferson Elementary School in Berkeley, Calif., have focused their attention on a major issue right in their community.

The major issue isn't the difficulty of attracting certified teachers to urban, high-poverty communities like Berkeley. It isn't the number of children who reach 3rd grade reading well below grade level. And it isn't the significant sanctions imposed on low-achieving schools by No Child Left Behind.

The major issue is the school's name. At least this group of parents seems to think so.

Soon, parents, teachers and students at Jefferson will vote on whether they want to change the name of their school -- a vote scheduled after some parents complained that the school shouldn't be named after a former slaveholder.

Berkeley has a Washington Elementary School, and I'll bet it was probably named after our first president. He also owned slaves. Will he be next on the purge list?

It remains to be seen whether Berkeley decides that an 18th century slaveholder doesn't meet the test for approved names for schools, but a 20th century convicted burglar (Malcolm X) does. One might remind these Berkeley parents of Malcolm X's disparaging comments about MLK:

"He got the peace prize, we got the problem .... If I'm following a general, and he's leading me into a battle, and the enemy tends to give him rewards, or awards, I get suspicious of him. Especially if he gets a peace award before the war is over."

My point is not to argue that Malcolm X is unworthy of having a school named after him. My point is that it's a futile exercise when the morality police -- be they "left" or "right" -- try to hold mortal human beings to a constantly evolving standard of moral or philosophical purity.

Surely there is something else, something far more meaningful on which these Berkeley parents could be focusing their energy.

Weak Analysis by Kristof

Soon after the November election, Melville Publishing produced a book entitled “What We Do Now” — a collection of essays by various progressive writers and columnists. I finally managed to get through it a week or so ago.

I don’t know whether the book was widely read, but I can’t say I was overwhelmed with the advice therein.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof was among the essayists, and he tried to make the case that Dems need a "centrist" makeover. (It's an argument he repeated a few weeks ago.) Here are excerpts of the essay Kristof wrote:

If Democrats want to know how to win again, they have a model. It’s the British Labor Party.

… Labor was caught in its own echo chamber of militant unions and anti-American activists, and it so repulsed voters that it seemed it might wither away entirely. Then Tony Blair and another M.P., Gordon Brown, dragged the party away from socialism, unions, nuclear disarmament and anti-Americanism.

… The Democrats need a similar rebranding.

This strikes me as a strange anaology. The Labor Party of old espoused an agenda that was virtually indistinguishable from Britain’s trade unions. But Democrats on this side of the Atlantic are hardly in the pocket of unions.

Consider the Democratic Party’s standard bearers over the last four presidential elections. After all, it was over the vehement objection of unions that the Clinton-Gore administration pushed for the passage of NAFTA and PNTR status for China. And John Kerry? He voted for NAFTA and PNTR, calling the latter “absolutely vital” for America’s economic future.

Socialism? The health care plan that Kerry proposed last year was quite minor compared to one advanced by the Clintons 10 years earlier. I would remind Kristof that it was a Democratic president, not a Republican, who declared nine years ago, “The era of big government is over.”

And anti-Americanism? Please. At times, the floor of the Democratic convention in Boston resembled a flag factory. And there was John Kerry, paying tribute to the armed services with his opening remark, declaring that he was “reporting for duty.” And in the final presidential debate, it was Kerry — not Bush — who declared that “with faith in God and with conviction in the mission of America, I believe that we can reach higher.”

At one point in his essay, Kristof writes:

Gov. Mike Johanns, a Nebraska Republican, told me that each time Michael Moore spoke up for John Kerry, Mr. Kerry’s support in Nebraska took a dive.

Given that Nebraska has only voted for a Democratic nominee once in the past 64 years, I don’t think Dems should lay awake at night wondering if their fortunes are slipping a bit in the Cornhusker State.

Indeed, Kristof must have been pleased to know that Moore was spending at least some of his time last fall in states that were sure to go Republican anyway.

In his essay, Kristof also offers a few suggestions to Democratic candidates, including these:

Don’t be afraid of religion. Offer government support for faith-based programs to aid the homeless, prisoners and AIDS victims.

… Accept that today, gun control is a nonstarter.

Again, Kristof can't be talking about the most recent presidential campaign. During the final presidential debate, for example, John Kerry used the terms “God,” “faith,” “the Almighty” and “Bible” a total of 24 times. Kerry may have been a lot of things, but he was not afraid of religion.

On gun control, Kerry’s position was a retreat from the stand that Gore took in 2000. Kerry didn’t bother to push the trigger-lock issue, which even Kristof said was an acceptably moderate position.

Shaking Hands With the Devil

Texas Governor Rick Perry is attempting to fight off a possible challenge from Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson and is doing so by releasing a videotape showing .... get this ... Hutchinson and Sen. Hillary Clinton being friendly at some museum opening.

The horror!

Now, I understand that there are few people more hated by Republicans than Bill and Hillary Clinton and I understand that Perry is trying to damage Hutchinson by linking her to them.

But check this out

Perry said campaigns routinely film the speeches of their opponents, or potential ones. He also told reporters that the video his campaign got suggests that Hutchison is guilty -- of being too close to Hillary -- by association.

"Videos speak for themselves. We all go places and do things with people that are reflective of who we support," Perry said. "The fact of the matter is, we're pretty much who we hang with."

Sullivan, the Hutchison campaign chief, accused Perry of unparalleled chutzpah. He noted that Perry, a former Democrat, served as a co-chairman of Al Gore's 1988 presidential campaign.

Apparently Perry thinks that paling around with Hillary Clinton at a work function is worse than co-chairing the campaign for the man who went on to serve as Bill Clinton's vice president.

I think it is clear that the key to finding success within the Republican Party is to have no understanding of irony.

You Say Tomato ...

The Hill reports that several conservative groups are rallying to defend The World's Biggest Asshole.

Conservative leaders who spoke to The Hill said these groups’ criticisms of DeLay was an attack on conservatism itself.

“I think that conservative groups ought to be concerned,” said Donald Hodel, who recently retired as head of Focus on the Family, “If conservative politicians are singled out for attacks by groups that have allegiance to a different worldview, if [conservatives] leave attacks to the liberal groups, they’re not going to have conservative politicians working for them.”

Blackwell, of the Leadership Institute, hinted that conservative groups will turn the attack back on Democrats and outside groups that are criticizing DeLay’s conduct, issuing a stern warning to Republican lawmakers who hang back from the battle.

“Any politician that hopes to have conservative support in the future better be in the forefront as we attack those who attack Tom DeLay,” he said.

I tend to see DeLay as a corrupt, meglomanical, power-hungry asshole, but apparently conservatives see him as the embodiment of their ideology.

We're both right.

Daily Darfur

Today's Daily Darfur is posted on the coalition blog.

And here is this week's Coalition for Darfur post

Never Again: Again and Again

In her 2001 article "Bystanders to Genocide," Pulitzer Prize winning author Samantha Power recounts how President Clinton was shocked and outraged by an article written by Philip Gourevitch recounting the horrors of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, prompting him to send the article to his national security advisor Sandy Berger with a note scrawled in the margin reading "Is what he's saying true? How did this happen?"

After taking office, President Bush reportedly read Power's article on the Clinton administration's failure to intervene during the genocide. He too scrawled a message in the margin - "NOT ON MY WATCH."

Yet we are now faced with another African genocide, this time in Darfur, and the United States and the rest of the world are responding exactly as they did during Rwanda - with paralyzed inaction.

Though there are many key differences between what is taking place in Darfur and what occurred in Rwanda a decade ago, there are also many similarities.

In 1993, the world watched "Schindler's List" and wondered how such horrors could unfold and why they were not stopped. In 2004, it watched "Hotel Rwanda" and asked the same questions. In each case, those questions went unanswered.

Just as in Rwanda, the international military force on the ground in Darfur is far too small, poorly equipped and operating under an extremely limited mandate that does not allow them to protect civilians at risk.

Just as in Rwanda, the genocide is taking place against a backdrop of "civil war," leading the international community to focus more on establishing a cease-fire than protecting those being killed.

Just as in Rwanda, the death toll is nearly impossible to determine.

Just as in Rwanda, the United Nations is more or less paralyzed as individual nations seek to protect their own national interests rather than helpless men, women and children.

Just as in Rwanda, media coverage is almost nonexistent, Congress is all but silent, and the human rights community is having difficulty get the nation to pay attention to a genocide in progress.

Just as in Rwanda, a genocide is unfolding - but this time it is happening on our watch.

We ask you to join the Coalition for Darfur as we attempt to raise awareness of the genocide in Darfur and raise money for the live saving work Save the Children is doing there.

I'll Never Complain About Taking the Triboro Bridge to JFK Again

A taxi driver was literally caught with his pants down on Saturday. The driver started masturbating in front of a 23-year-old female passenger, from Heemstede, who subsequently called police. The 39-year-old Amsterdam man was arrested at the Leidsevaart in Haarlem. His pants were still unbuttoned at the time of his arrest.

Apparently, there are limits to Dutch tolerance of self-indulgent (not to say self-abusive) behavior.

"Those Damned Activist, Conservative Judges"

You've never heard that phrase from conservatives, have you?

But one can only guess how frustrated the Christian Right must feel to have learned that the Florida circuit court judge who issued the key rulings in the Terri Schiavo case was described this weekend by the Associated Press as “a conservative Christian and longtime Republican.”

The Schiavo case helps to shed additional light on the sort of Christianity that prevails in the land of Red States. As the AP reported:

… (Pinellas County Circuit Court Judge George Greer) has become the public face of the judiciary in this internationally watched fight. But despite the mounting pressure, he has been steadfast in his rulings that Terri Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state and did not want to be kept alive artificially.

… Protesters now show up at his Clearwater home. The FBI arrested a North Carolina man it said placed a $50,000 bounty on the head of a judge in the case, although officials didn't name the judge.

This past week, [Greer] parted ways with his Southern Baptist church, which had advocated keeping Terri Schiavo alive, after his pastor suggested it would be better if he left.

“You must know that in all likelihood it is this case which will define your career and this case that you will remember in the waning days of life,” Calvary Baptist Pastor William Rice wrote to Greer in a letter than later became public. “I hope you can find a way to side with the angels and become an answer to the prayers of thousands.”

No doubt, the same pastor who showed Greer the door will continue to sprinkle his sermons with feel-good talk about “love,” “acceptance” and “brotherhood.”

Vote For Me, You Traitorous Dogs!

Last week, Arnold linked to this article in the Economist regarding the sure-to-be-stolen upcoming election in Zimbabwe.

If you were holding out hope that maybe the Economist was wrong, you can stop

President Robert Mugabe branded supporters of the country's main opposition Movement for Democratic Change party as traitors in comments broadcast repeatedly on state radio Tuesday, raising fears of new political violence two days ahead of parliamentary elections.

"All those who will vote for the MDC are traitors," state radio quoted Mugabe as saying to a ruling ZANU-PF party rally Monday at Mutoko, 90 miles northeast of Harare.

Daily Darfur

Today's Daily Darfur is up on the coalition blog.

On an unrelated note, a quick Factiva search reveals that, in the last month, there have been 6179 media reports mentioning Terri Schiavo.

There have been 942 mentioning Darfur.

For every one article mentioning Darfur, there are been 6.5 mentioning Schiavo despite the fact that her death is just 1/10,000th the number of deaths occuring every month in Darfur.

Selling Terri Schiavo

Geez, guys, if you are going to do something as callous as this you could at least work a little harder at keeping a lid on it.

List of Schiavo Donors Will Be Sold by Direct-Marketing Firm

The parents of Terri Schiavo have authorized a conservative direct-mailing firm to sell a list of their financial supporters, making it likely that thousands of strangers moved by her plight will receive a steady stream of solicitations from anti-abortion and conservative groups.
...
Privacy experts said the sale of the list was legal and even predictable, if ghoulish.

"I think it's amusing," said Robert Gellman, a privacy and information policy consultant. "I think it's absolutely classic America. Everything is for sale in America, every type of personal information."
...
Pamela Hennessy, an unpaid spokeswoman for the Schindlers, said she was initially appalled when she learned of the list's existence.

"It is possibly the most distasteful thing I have ever seen," Ms. Hennessy said. "Everybody is making a buck off of her."
...
"I think it sounds a little unusual right now because of the situation where she is in the process of dying," said Richard Viguerie, another major conservative direct-mail operator. "If you came across this information six months or a year from now, I don't think you would give it too much thought."

Yes, Richard, I think you're right. Wow, look at me, actually agreeing with Richard Viguerie. This story has officially transcended bizarre.

So, let me get this straight. Right after the importance of "life" is the importance is making a buck? Nice. Very nice. It sure does cast a different light on her parents, doesn't it? Well, at the very least Terri doesn't know about it.

Vote Republican or This Man Will Kill Your Son

I think the GOP picked the wrong victim with Terri Schiavo. Much as they vilified Michael Schiavo, it is undisputed that he is male.

Zoe's post on Maryland's pending legislation on partners' rights regarding medical treatment made me realize that DeLay could have really energized the base, and maybe gotten less of a political backlash, if he'd waited for a case where the courts had permitted a same-sex partner to make the decision to disconnect the feeding tube against the wishes of Ma and Pa, themselves monogamously and heterosexually married for 40 years or so.

Even if Michael Schiavo had actually been Michelle, I think that for maximum effect the GOP should still have waited for a male couple. Perhaps one where the villian had been photographed in his younger days in leather or maybe in something outrageous at a Pride parade.



Vote Republican or This Man Will Kill Your Son

Two Questions

Apparently, the right-wing bloggers are in a tizzy over charges that the memo talking about what great politics the Schiavo bill would be for the Republicans was in fact a forgery. Maybe that's overstating the situation, since I don't have the stomach to troll the seriously wingnut blogs, so I have to go on the hearsay of others who do. But it looks like at least some of the usual suspects have run with this theory. There doesn't seem to be any significant evidence of a forgery, but the wingnuts seem to think the memo should be regarded as suspect until the journalists who published it reveal where they got it.

Two questions come to mind, and only the second one is rhetorical.

1. Have the bloggers who are demanding verification of the journalists' sources taken a position on whether Robert Novak should disclose his source(s) in the Intimigate (Valerie Plame) matter?
2. Does any sane person seriously doubt that the "money quote" from the memo accurately reflected the thinking of the GOP leadership in Congress ("This is a great political issue...and this is a tough issue for Democrats.")?

On the second point, I'm not saying you have to accept that political strategery was the only motivation for every GOP politician who supported the Schiavo bill. The underlying moral questions are difficult, and an honestly held opposition to terminating nutrition in these circumstances presumably affected the judgment of some of the bill's supporters. But is it really plausible to suggest that Tom DeLay and Bill Frist weren't out to make political hay?

Which is why the forgery issue is a non-issue. If the document were forged, that would be a serious matter for the journalists involved and would send another reminder about the need to be careful in the increasingly time-pressured and competitive business of gathering news. But politically, the memo doesn't really matter much. People watched this grotesquery play out on their TV screens, and they saw DeLay and Frist and the others, and they (mostly) concluded that this was a bunch of political grandstanding. The memo merely confirms what the majority of the public already knew. Yes, the "Rathergate" memo also contained factual assertions that were, at least in large part, true. But that wasn't generally known amongst the public, and with the Swift Boat Liars on the attack, most independents probably figured the Dubya/AWOL stuff, along with the noise about Kerry's war record, was a bunch of he-said, he-said where voters were never going to find out the truth.

Trade, Not Aid

I always found that slogan annoying. Partly it was because the phrase was deployed by a commercial entity in search of profit, and partly because it made people feel like they were doing some noble deed by buying expensive cosmetics. But, mainly, it annoyed me because the reality of poverty and development is much, much more complicated than the slogan lets on. It takes us (citizens of rich countries) off the hook, reassuring us that all we have to do is consume what we want and the world's poor will magically stop doing conscience-troubling things like starving to death.

A couple of reminders of the complexities of the situation came down the pike this month. One is an interesting position paper from the UK's Department of Trade and Industry and the Department for International Development. The paper urges the EU to avoid "mercantilist" policies in negotiating Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) in the Africa, Caribbean, and Pacific (APC) regions. It's a short statement in bullet-point format, good for the executive with a short attention span. Some highlights, with my comments:

We will not force trade liberalisation on developing countries either through trade negotiations or aid conditionality. [This is remarkable and seems to depart from the standard rich-country practice of requiring poor countries to adopt market liberalization policies, including growth-restricting and debtor-unfriendly monetary policies, as a condition of development aid.]

Within EPAs, the EU should make an upfront offer of complete duty and quota-free market access to each ACP regional group, with no strings attached. [Again, the absence of conditions is stressed. Most important, the UK is saying that poor countries should be able to enjoy a one-way free trade regime, in which they can export freely to the EU even before they have liberalized their own markets.]

There should be an effective safeguard mechanism for ACP countries to use if faced with a surge of subsidised EU imports. [It is surely too much to hope that the EU will give poor countries relief from the effects of the EU's appalling agricultural subsidies, which, along with similar subsidies in the US and Japan, are among the leading causes of continued misery in nonindustrialized economies.]

EPAs should be accompanied by additional resources to enable the ACP countries to benefit from trade reforms and build their export competitiveness. The EU, in coordination with international financial institutions and other donors, must provide additional financial assistance to support the ACP countries. This assistance must support them in building the infrastructure and economic capacity they need to benefit from trade with the EU and the rest of the world... [Trade plus aid, in other words. The UK recognizes that free trade doesn't help, and may hurt, the people in countries that lack the legal, political, logistical, and economic infrastructure to take advantage of it.]

The second item is an op-ed by George Soros in the Financial Times, the serious newspaper on the funny salmon-colored paper. Again, it revolves around an action of the UK's Department for International Development, in this case the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative.

Soros notes the ongoing political and economic backwardness of many countries that are blessed with valuable commodities under their soil (oil and gas, gold, and so on). The story he tells will sound familiar: Western companies pay for the right to extract the commodities, but the money doesn't benefit the people in the country. The first step toward solving the problem, says Soros, is transparency. The public should know how much money these companies are paying and to whom they are paying it. That, he hopes, can lead to accountability about how the money is spent.

Soros points out the progress that's been made toward transparency, working from both sides of the equation: some companies have started publishing information about their payments, and some governments have started making their receipts of money from foreign companies more transparent.

But there's a long way to go. In many poor countries, things are as opaque as ever. And the UK's EITI isn't yet getting the support of some of the other key rich countries.

Other governments need to follow the UK and help expand the EITI. France appears to have done little to encourage countries within its sphere of influence, let alone ask its own companies to disclose information. The Bush administration's recent decision to initiate a parallel anti-corruption process through the Group of Eight leading industrial nations leaves the US outside the leading international forum for addressing resource revenue transparency and reinvents the wheel.

Pretty typical: the French don't give a damn about anything other than making money, and the U.S. won't play unless everyone else agrees to do it our way. The French attitude reminds me of their approach to foreign corruption; while U.S. companies are forbidden from bribing foreign officials under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, their froggish counterparts blithely cough up in exchange for government contracts. As for the American decision to treat the EITI as if it were the International Criminal Court or the Kyoto Protocol: if Paul Wolfowitz does become President of the World Bank, don't expect thet Bank to further the progress made by the EITI.

Insipid and Punctual

Jon Stewart's sweet mug graces the cover of this month's American Spectator, the #1 magazine among snide conservative douchebags.

Whaaaaa? Why is Jon on their cover? Well, the knee-jerk folks over at the magazine have proclaimed Jon's book America the "WORST BOOK OF THE YEAR."

I'm sure they're hoping that no one notices that they're making their meaningless "worst of 2004" announcement three months after the year ended.

A Discussion that Needs to be Had

This is what blogging is all about!

Norbizness and Pandagon are discussing when exactly "The Simpsons" became one of the worst shows on television.

Everyone has their views, but I think the show jumped the shark with "Lisa the Skeptic." That episode was part of Season 9, and I think we can all agree with Norbizness when he says that it was "the first season where the bad significantly outweighed the good."

It has been seven years since then and the show just continues to get worse. But for some reason, I keep watching. I think that I do so, in part, because I feel morally obligated. But the sad reality is that this craptacular show now exists solely as a vehicle for cleansing viewers' palates before the sublime Arrested Development.

I never thought that I would say this, but "The Simpsons" needs to be cancelled. The sooner, the better.

The End is Coming!

Hey, how'd they slip this one by the anti-gay right? Guess they were all too busy obsessing over the medical battle in Florida to notice this sign of the coming apocalypse-- the Maryland state senate passed the Medical Decision Making Act of 2005 with a strong majority last Friday.

After a lively debate that included alternate charges of "promoting the radical homosexual agenda" and being "homophobic," the Senate passed a bill yesterday to give medical decision-making rights to all unmarried couples who sign onto a domestic registry.

The 31-16 vote came after two days of heated debate and marks a significant step toward the bill becoming law.

The House of Delegates overwhelmingly passed a similar bill last year and passage is expected again in that chamber. The Senate's wide margin of approval yesterday was seen as a victory for the gay and lesbian rights community, which was championing the bill as a top priority this year.

"I guess if wanting to be in the hospital room with your loved one at a time of illness is part of the radical homosexual agenda, then we're guilty as charged," said Dan Furmansky, executive director of Equality Maryland, a statewide gay rights advocacy group.

The Maryland Catholic Conference lobbied against the bill, calling it a step down the road to state-sanctioned gay marriage.

Sen. Alex X. Mooney, a Republican from Frederick and Washington counties, read a letter from the Catholic Conference on the floor.

"We all know what this bill is really about," said Mooney. "It's really about promoting the radical homosexual agenda.

"One day we're going to wake up like Massachusetts perhaps and wonder, 'Gee how did we get to the point where we have same-sex marriages in Maryland?'" he said.

But Sen. Paul G. Pinsky, a Prince George's County Democrat, countered that opposition to the bill was really about "a homophobic problem." "We're in the 21st century, ladies and gentlemen," said Pinsky.

This is seriously smart equality politics. It focuses on basic family rights that will benefit both straight and gay couples and serves to highlight that a patchwork of wills/durable power of attorney/advanced medical directives are not equal to all the rights covered by marriage/civil unions/domestic partnerships. Plus it makes the people who oppose it look like assholes who want to deny non-married couples basic care and self-determination in their own medical treatment. It's not a very compassionate stance to take, it's pretty cruel really. One has to be pretty anti-gay to want to stop someone from having their partner by their side during a medical emergency.

In the 2004 Maryland General Assembly Session, Assistant Attorney General Kathryn Rowe stated "much of what is in the bill cannot be achieved by use of an advanced directive." In fact, there are 11 rights included in the Medical Decision Making Act, and at least 7 of those rights cannot be achieved either through power of attorney, advance directive, or will.
They include:
1. The right to be treated as an immediate family member for purposes of hospital visitation
2. The right to inspect a record to permit the disinterment or reinterment of their deceased partner’s body
3. The right to petition a court to enjoin certain actions of certain treating health providers.
4. The rights to accompany a partner while being transported from one health care facility to another.
5. The right to share a room with a partner in nursing homes and other related facilities.
6. The right to private visits with a partner in a nursing home.
7. The designation of being a person of "interest" in the property of a burial site.

It's a good sign when progress such as this goes largely unnoticed-- especially if it soon becomes the law of Mary's Land.

I'd really like to see a lot more legislation like this, it's what I like to think of as "none-of-your-business" bills. It's strictly our business if my partner and I register for these rights-- it has no impact beyond us, it is nobody's business but our own. Anyone would would lobby to prevent us from having these rights is a heartless, meddling bastard. Get out of our bedrooms, out of our lives! You're nothing but a bunch of damned busybodies, I tell ya.

Adam, Where Are All of Those "Critics"?

What is in the water that Adam Nagourney has been drinking lately? A few weeks ago, I wrote this post about a New York Times article that Nagourney co-wrote – an article that included this overblown assertion:

Four months after Mr. Bush won a solid re-election over Senator John Kerry, 63 percent of (poll) respondents say the president has different priorities on domestic issues than most Americans.

Nagourney was guilty of another indefensible assertion on Friday when he wrote:

Gov. Jeb Bush's last-minute intervention in the case of Terri Schiavo … has cemented [his] religious and social conservative credentials …

… even critics said his efforts – prodding the Florida Legislature and the courts and defying much of the electorate – were rooted in a deep-seated opposition to abortion and euthanasia rather than in political positioning.

But who were the critics that Nagourney spoke to? Good question.

A reporter who reaches such a conclusion in his or her article is obligated to provide supporting evidence. So where’s the evidence that "even critics" of Jeb Bush say his Schiavoesque efforts have been “rooted” in moral views, not politics?

In Friday's Times article, Nagourney quoted only 6 people. First, he quoted a political science professor at the University of North Florida whose remarks were unrelated to the principle-over-politics assertion.

Second, Nagourney quoted Cory Tilley, who praised the Florida governor, declared Jeb to have “no future political ambitions,” and insisted that the Schiavo case is “an issue that strikes at his core beliefs.” But since Tilley is described as “a longtime (Bush) advisor,” surely he can’t be considered one of these mysterious critics.

Next, Nagourney quoted Susan McManus, a political science professor at the University of South Florida. McManus did call Bush “a very ideologically consistent person,” and she did state, “Those of us who watch him think this is Jeb, and how he truly believes …” But neither Nagourney nor McManus’ quote spell out the persons being referred to as “those of us.”

Is McManus a Jeb Bush critic? Judging from Nagourney’s conclusion, I assumed she must be. So you can imagine my surprise when I learned from the website of Media Matters that McManus actually served on Jeb Bush’s health care policy transition team and was appointed by Gov. Bush to the Florida Elections Commission.

Oh well, on to the next “critic.”

Republican strategist Mike Murphy is the 4th person quoted, but his remarks didn’t speak directly to Nagourney’s conclusion. Needless to say, Murphy is not a critic of Bush.

The state’s outgoing Democratic Party chair would definitely qualify as a Bush critic, and he is the next person quoted in Nagourney’s article. But outgoing chair Scott Maddox declares Bush’s high-profile maneuvering in the Schiavo case to be an instance in which politics “has to be in play here.”

The only other person quoted is Jim Kane, chief pollster for Florida Voter. But he is identified as the head of a “nonpartisan polling organization” – in other words, not someone who could be branded as a Bush critic.

So there you have it. Six up, six down. Of all of the people quoted directly or indirectly in the Times article, not a single critic expressed an opinion supporting Nagourney’s assertion that “even critics” believe Jeb Bush’s actions were driven by principle, not politics.

Who Wrote This?

By now you have surely read about House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's ethics troubles. Probably, too, you aren't entirely clear as to what those troubles are -- something to do with questionable junkets, Indian casino money, funny business on the House Ethics Committee, stuff down in Texas. In Beltway-speak, what this means is that Mr. DeLay has an "odor": nothing too incriminating, nothing actually criminal, just an unsavory whiff that could have GOP loyalists reaching for the political Glade if it gets any worse.

The Beltway wisdom is right. Mr. DeLay does have odor issues. Increasingly, he smells just like the Beltway itself.

[edit]

Taken separately, and on present evidence, none of the latest charges directly touch Mr. DeLay; at worst, they paint a picture of a man who makes enemies by playing political hardball and loses admirers by resorting to politics-as-usual.

The problem, rather, is that Mr. DeLay, who rode to power in 1994 on a wave of revulsion at the everyday ways of big government, has become the living exemplar of some of its worst habits. Mr. DeLay's ties to Mr. Abramoff might be innocent, in a strictly legal sense, but it strains credulity to believe that Mr. DeLay found nothing strange with being included in Mr. Abramoff's lavish junkets

Nor does it seem very plausible that Mr. DeLay never considered the possibility that the mega-lucrative careers his former staffers Michael Scanlon and Mr. Buckham achieved after leaving his office had something to do with their perceived proximity to him. These people became rich as influence-peddlers in a government in which legislators like Mr. DeLay could make or break fortunes by tinkering with obscure rules and dispensing scads of money to this or that constituency. Rather than buck this system as he promised to do while in the minority, Mr. DeLay has become its undisputed and unapologetic master as Majority Leader.

Whether Mr. DeLay violated the small print of House Ethics or campaign-finance rules is thus largely beside the point. His real fault lies in betraying the broader set of principles that brought him into office, and which, if he continues as before, sooner or later will sweep him out.

When the World's Biggest Asshole has lost the support even of the hacks at the Wall Street Journal you know things are not going very well.

Update: I see that the Carpetbagger wrote about this first. What else is new?

I hate him.

The Congo's Final Four

Confused about the complex on-going war in the Democratic Republic of Congo that, over the last several years, has taken an estimated 4 million lives?

Well, the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) has reprinted this handy guide to the various military organizations currently operating in the Congo

Government Forces

FARDC (Armed Forces of the DRC): The official armed forces, totaling perhaps 300,000 troops. Most are poorly equipped and poorly trained, with corrupt officers, etc. It includes former rebel/rival organizations that have now been "integrated" into the armed forces. These include the following contingents, some of which still operate independently.

ex-FAC (Armed Forces of Congo): About 70,000 men.

ex-RCD-G (Goma Faction of the Congolese Rally for Democracy): Some 20,000 men.

ex-RCD-ML (Liberation Movement Faction of the Congolese Rally . . . ): About 4,500 men.

ex-Mai-Mai (Tribal militias): At least 25,000 armed (often with spears and bows) men. Number varies depending on how many tribesmen feel like going out and raising hell.

Ituri Militia (3-4 local defense forces in the Ituri region of the northeast): About 25,000 men.

FRP (Federal Republican Forces): Congo Tutsi force of about 3,000 armed men. The Tutsi are a minority in eastern Congo, but make good soldiers.

GSSP (Special Presidential Guard): possibly as many as 13,000 troops. Probably the best armed and equipped, but poorly led by corrupt officers.

Allied Forces

FLEC (Front for the Liberation of East Congo): Kivu tribe regional militia, about 5,000 men.

North Kivu Militia: Possibly 10,000-15,000 poorly armed irregulars.

Independent Ituri Militia: several bands of irregulars totaling about 3,500 men.

Foreign Forces that are pro-FARDC

FDLR (Democratic Front for the Liberation of Rwanda): Hutu exiles, some 12,000-15,000 poorly armed men. They raid into Rwanda and Burundi, causing military and diplomatic problems for the Congo.

FNL (National Liberation Front): Burundi Hutu rebels. About a thousand in Burundi, who make occasional raids into Congo.

ADF (Allied Democratic Force): Ugandan exiles, no more than 200, operating more as bandits.

Foreign Forces that are anti-FARDC

FDR (Rwanda Defense Force): About. 1,000 of a force that formerly totaled over 25,000 and is now largely back in Rwanda. FDR troops still raid out of Rwanda from time to time, in response to FDLR raids into Rwanda. FDR are rumored to be good troops by regional standards, lightly armed, fast moving, pretty disciplined.

ARP (People's Republican Army): Ugandan exiles, only about 500 men.

International Community

UN Forces: About 10,000 troops currently in MONUC, with an additional brigade each of Indians and Pakistanis en route. The UN, already acting more aggressively against the rebels, and pro-government forces that are out-of-control. May push harder after the Indian and Pakistani troops arrive.

Training Contingents: Personnel from Angola, Belgium, South Africa, and Tanzania, working with Congolese government forces.

Got that?

While reading this I had the same feeling I get whenever I look over the NCAA tournament brackets: Utter confusion caused by the fact that I've never heard of, and don't know anything about, the vast majority of the teams listed.

In the case of the DRC, I'm putting my money on the ex-Mai-Mai - just because I like their uniforms.

Daily Darfur

Today's Daily Darfur is now up over at the coalition blog, along with several other recent posts.

I must apologize for my lack of posts over here at Demagogue in recent days. The fact is that I have become (even more) obsessed with Darfur and I am finding it difficult to pay attention to most anything else.

Initially, I resisted the idea of creating a blog solely dedicated to Darfur because I figured that once I did, my obsession with the issue would consume me and I'd be unable to focus on anything else.

And that is exactly what has happened.

When I was just writing for Demagogue, I forced myself to keep my Darfur posts to a minimum out of fear of boring everyone. But now that I have a forum in which I can indulge this obsession, I find that it is consuming nearly all of my blogging energy.

I am going to continue to try to post here at Demagogue whenever I see some non-Darfur issue worth commenting on, but most of my blogging will probably be relegated to the Coalition for Darfur for the foreseeable future.

I hope that you all understand.

Tom DeLay & the Right-to-Die

If you haven't read this elsewhere already, in 1988 Tom DeLay and his family stopped medical treatment and allowed Charles DeLay, Tom's father, to die after a freak accident that caused him severe brain damage.

The DeLay case and the Schiavo case are not mirror images of one another, but there are plenty of similarities, all of which are especially relevant when considering Tom DeLay's character assassination of Michael Schiavo. Unfortunately, DeLay knows what it is like to be in a painful situation with an incapacitated family member.

In 1988, however, there was no such fiery rhetoric as [Congressman DeLay] quietly joined the sad family consensus to let his father die.

"There was no point to even really talking about it," Maxine DeLay, the congressman's 81-year-old widowed mother, recalled in an interview last week. "There was no way [Charles] wanted to live like that. Tom knew — we all knew — his father wouldn't have wanted to live that way."

Doctors advised that he would "basically be a vegetable," said the congressman's aunt, JoAnne DeLay.
...
There were also these similarities: Both stricken patients were severely brain-damaged. Both were incapable of surviving without medical assistance. Both were said to have expressed a desire to be spared from being kept alive by artificial means. And neither of them had a living will.

DeLay's family was in agreement so the case was kept a private family matter, as these things should be. However, I do wonder how Tom DeLay would have felt if there had been a serious disagreement within his family over how to pursue his father's treatment, and if that disagreement eventually led to a court battle and congress intervening, with his father's face was plastered all over the national news for over a week. Or if members of congress attacked him personally for simply following what he believed to be his father's wishes? How would he feel about that? Without too much difficulty DeLay could put himself in Michael Schiavo's shoes, at the very least you'd think he'd have a little empathy. Nope, nada, zip. It would get in the way of using Schiavo as a political tool.

Columnist Daniel Ruth in today's Tampa Tribune in response to Tom DeLay's involvement in the Schiavo case.

[This is a] great political issue? Oh really?

Emotionally manipulating a brain-dead woman's tragic plight, lying about her condition, undermining the Constitution - all for a few lousy, stinking votes?

Terri Schiavo being lugged around like a GOP Bible Belt version of ``Weekend At Bernie's'' a winning political issue?

In North Korea, maybe.

Oddly enough, it also recently occured to me that the people protesting outside of Schiavo's hospice are outside of a hospice-- a place where people are sent for end-of-life care, where DNR/DNI orders abound. So why is it only Terri they are concerned about? What about the other 70-something people inside? Why don't they demand that the governor get involved with their care?

Screwed Twice

I'd like to introduce the brothers Bush to my friends, rock and hard place.

Gov. Bush Cancels Appearance at Good Friday Service for Fear of Facing Schiavo Supporters

TALLAHASSEE, Fl., March 25 /Christian Wire Service/ -- Governor Jeb Bush was scheduled to attend and participate in an outdoor Good Friday service at 12:30 pm, at Florida State University. According to event organizers, the Governor canceled at the last minute.

As part of this event Jeb Bush would have publicly read from a printed program that includes the following text entitled the Fifth Station of the Cross; "Lord Jesus, sometimes I don't want to do what is right or to help someone in need, but you want me to respond positively to the needs of others in my life. Help me to say 'yes' and be willing to give heroic assistance to all who are in need."

"It is clear that Governor Bush canceled his scheduled participation in this Stations of the Cross service out of fear and guilt of seeing supporters of Terri Schiavo pleading for her life. Our prayer for Governor Bush is the same prayer he would have prayed publicly on this Good Friday, had he kept his scheduled appointment.

See what happens when you try to appease tyrannical, fundamentalist zealots-- they are never satisfied, they always want more! more! more!

This very well may backfire on both Bushes, in more ways than one. Not only is it hurting their popularity with the majority of Americans who think their actions in this case are WRONG but they may also succeed at pissing off the wingers for not going far enough, for giving up because a few "radical judges" are telling them what to do. And the timing of this is amazing-- it's Easter weekend! So, what to do now? They are screwed with the wingers if they do nothing, screwed with the general public if they do something radical like storm the hospice.

They just can't win for losing!

Bush's Culture of Life*

Poor Dubya. He just can't seem to do anything right lately.

His poll numbers are at the lowest ever and now there's his insult to Native Americans, exposing the dizzying hypocrisy of his "culture of life" rhetoric.

Native Americans across the country -- including tribal leaders, academics and rank-and-file tribe members -- voiced anger and frustration Thursday that President Bush has responded to the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history with silence.
...
"From all over the world we are getting letters of condolence, the Red Cross has come, but the so-called Great White Father in Washington hasn't said or done a thing," said Clyde Bellecourt, a Chippewa Indian who is the founder and national director of the American Indian Movement here. "When people's children are murdered and others are in the hospital hanging on to life, he should be the first one to offer his condolences. . . . If this was a white community, I don't think he'd have any problem doing that."
...
"I hope that he would say something," said Victoria Graves, a cultural educator at Red Lake Elementary School on the reservation. "It's important that there's acknowledgment of the tragedy. It's important he sees the tribes are out here. We need help."

The reaction to Bush's silence was particularly bitter given his high-profile, late-night intervention on behalf of Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged Florida woman caught in a legal battle over whether her feeding tube should be reinserted.

Ouch. They neglect to mention that Bush spent Monday and Tuesday speaking to screened audiences in the West about reforming Social Security-- and still managed to not say anything about tragedy at Red Lake.

Could this really be the beginning of the great unraveling of "The Great White Father in Washington"?

Update:Bush has offered his condolences. Now that wasn't so hard, was it?

If you'd like, you can help the Red Lake Nation with a donation.

---------------------------
* Does not apply to everyone equally, including, but not limited to: Native Americans, non-Christians, homosexuals, children, elderly, the poor, the working class, the unemployed and the uninsured.

It Should Be Over Now...

The Supremes say 'no way, leave us out of this' to the Schindlers, as expected. It appears that the Schindler's legal options are pretty much exhausted.

So, what next? One thing I've really been wondering-- how will this all end? What other measures are Dubya/Jeb/DeLay/Frist/Hastert prepared to take, will they really just shrug and say "sorry, that's all we can do"? After all this? Not only is it anti-climactic, which is fine by me, but it won't be very satisfactory conclusion for the audience that they've all been performing for all this time.

Considering that Jeb has been attempting to legally take custody of her and has been rejected repeatedly, even the local police have been warned by a judge to keep an eye on the hospice in case Jeb tries to do it anyway. Now he has a few quacky "pro-life" doctors making extraordinary claims, like she's been totally misdiagnosed for 14 years, which is based on their personal/religious biases, not actual medicine. Is Jeb just going to stop everything now?

Also, what else, if anything, can congress do?

If they were to follow Pat Buchanan's advice-- who was in rare, stark-raving-mad Pat form last night on Hardball-- President Bush should send federal marshals into the hospice and reinsert her feeding tube and take her into federal custody.

I'm not sure how this will end. I do hope that it just goes away, that Terri Schiavo's family will find some peace and America notices what a bunch of conniving douchebags are running this country. But for some reason I doubt that.

In Such Bad Taste, Tears Rolled Down My Face

Freakin' funny.

Still Shocking, But Still--True?

I promised to keep tabs on the bizarre court proceedings in California stemming from an ex-prosecutor's contention that, at the instigation of a judge, the prosecutor excluded Jews from a jury because the judge believed Jews would never vote for a death sentence.

The ex-prosecutor's day on the stand finally arrived yesterday, and there seem to have been some moderately exciting moments in the cross-examination.

What seems weirdest to me about this weird case is that the judge was himself Jewish (I believe; I can't find the article where I read that fact, though, so maybe I'm making it up) and opposed to the death penalty.

Mikhaela on the Culture of Life

My favorite young cartoonist does it again.

Strange Bedfellows

This gives me some hope that the fearmongers and end-timers haven't taken over completely. I mean, really: Bob Barr? I think the big-government conservatives of the Bush administration may really, finally, be scaring off some of the libertarians of the right.

"I Pray that Mugabe Should Die"

A reminder of yet another African tragedy dragging on out of sight of the American press.

God forbid they spare any air time from the latest rumors of a secret wedding between Michael Jackson and Terri Schiavo, or whatever it is they're covering these days.

Speaking of Nazi-Like Behavior...

I read this article on government-forced sterilization programs yesterday and was amazed at one of two things (I'm not sure which yet):
1. How ignorant I am with even the most important historical happenings
2. How pathetic it is that historical happenings like this are completely unknown to even people who think they are good at paying attention to the world around them.

Until as late as the mid 1970s, "[m]ore than 30 other states had eugenics programs" and that these programs

were ruled constitutional in Buck v. Bell, a 1924 Supreme Court decision that is still the law of the land. Roughly 70,000 Americans in all were sterilized before the notion fell out of favor, becoming linked in the public's mind to Hitler's Germany after World War II. But North Carolina is the first to appoint a panel to study what to do now for its victims, from health care and counseling to financial reparations.

It's no surprise who was targeted in the programs:

North Carolina's sterilization program zeroed in on welfare recipients. Over the last 15 years of its operation, 99 percent of the victims were women; more than 60 percent were black.

Despite being one of the main perpetrators of this terrible practice, at least North Carolina feels obligated to recognize its history and do something about it.

Connecting the Hot Buttons

Could Terri Schiavo end up as an unknowing heroine of the marriage equality movement?

It's starting to become conventional wisdom that GOP politicians (most notably Tom DeLay) and the "Christian" right have overreached in the Schiavo case. It turns out that a smallish majority of Americans apparently think that removing the feeding tube is the right decision--but a larger majority are seriously unhappy about having people like Tom DeLay meddle with a family's private tragedy.

I'm not saying that folks will go to bed saying, "I wish those clowns in Congress would do something worthwhile instead of fixating on Terri Schiavo," and wake up saying, "My God! What they're doing to the queers is unjust!" But a lot of straight people can empathize with Michael Schiavo, either because of personal experience with dying parents or because they can imagine themselves in the role of either Terri or Michael. And a highly publicized case like this, threatening governmental intrusion into painful and personal decisions, will frighten people.

People like me find the radical clerics and their political lackeys frightening enough already. But this episode may move the moderate, common-sensical, middle-aged cohort that seems to be the "swing vote" on same-sex marriage in the same direction. This case is only one small moment in a long culture war; nonetheless, we may be witnessing the beginnings of a backlash against the fundamentalist agenda. More people may, in the coming months and years, start saying that they'd like the fundies to butt out of their lives, thank you very much; and stopping them from screwing around with gay people's families could be part of that backlash.

I May Not be an Expert, But I am a Celebrity

Patricia Heaton, the woman who played the bitchy wife on "Everybody Loves Raymond," apparently sees herself as something on an expert on the Terri Schiavo case.

And to show just how serious Heaton is about the situation, she granted an exclusive interview to Entertainment Tonight to discuss it.

And thank god she did

Patricia, who is a mother of four boys, says she has thought about this a lot. "As an actor, I visualize these situations when I'm doing a role and in this situation, I've thought about, day in and day out in a hospital with my own child and it's very difficult, very difficult."

As someone not blessed with the precious skills required to act on a television sitcom, I am totally incapable for comprehending the moral difficulties raised by this case or feeling any sort of empathy for anyone. But fortunately Heaton is.

Heaton went on

"People on death row have more appeals than Terri," Patricia told our MARK STEINES. "And she's committed no crime except that she can't speak."

Nice non sequitur - but since Schiavo's case has gone before at least 19 judges in the last several years, I don't know what the hell Heaton is talking about.

Heaton doesn't know what the hell she is talking about either, judging by things like this

I think I've always had a heart for people with no voice. And Terri literally has no voice. There's a long history of this kind of treatment in other cultures. We know that the Nazis felt the same way about the disabled, that before they started taking the lives of Jews and Catholics and homosexuals, they started with the disabled.

Yes, that is exactly the same thing: Schiavo's apparent desire not to be kept alive in persistent vegetative state is very much like a state-orchestrated attempt to create a master race.

They do both involve the word "state" after all.