They're Just Too Dumb to Save

Friday, on the CNBC television program hosted by Dennis Miller, uber-conservative author Dinesh D'Souza was asked about the president's "private accounts" plan for reforming Social Security. During his reply, D'Souza stated, "If people were smart enough to save, we wouldn't need a (Social Security) program."

D'Souza's statement reflects the view among many conservatives that people who don't have a hefty nest-egg tucked aside for retirement must be dummies. Somehow, it never occurs to free-marketeers that a lot of Americans -- some of whom are smart, some are not so smart -- don't earn the high salaries that allow for someone to accumulate mutual funds, I-bonds and other investments over the course of many years.

Putting it more simply, small paychecks = small savings. As this Democratic staff report from the U.S. Senate notes:

Yet, one-quarter of America's families with young children earn less than $25,000 a year.

A family with both parents working full-time at the minimum wage earns only $21,400 a year, so child care can total almost half of their annual income.

And if your employer doesn't pay the cost of health care coverage (which is almost always the case for minimum-wage or low-wage workers), this cuts deeper into one's paycheck.

But this isn't a world to which D'Souza can relate. In one of his books published several years ago ("The Virtue of Prosperity"), D'Souza begins a sentence thusly: "Many of us have more money than we ever thought we would ..." How nice for you.

For D'Souza, "smart" people, by definition, save enough money so that Social Security doesn't matter and isn't necessary.

Reviewing D'Souza's book, Kim Phillips-Fein summarizes the author's warped thinking:

D'Souza argues that (economic) inequality, far from being the scourge many say it is, is exactly what we want in a market economy. The people making hundreds of millions of dollars are doing it by inventing things we all want and need. In other words, forget about union-busting, the slow growth of the minimum wage, the proliferation of jobs in the low-wage service sector ... inequality exists because rewards are doled out strictly according to merit, and some people, presumably those in the "Overclass," are simply better, smarter ...

D'Souza's attitude toward the element of pure luck is uncharacteristically ambivalent. It's tough to argue that (high-tech) companies that have yet to earn a dime are nonetheless producing things of such value that their founders "deserve" their loot.

I'm Guessing it was A and B

A reader going by the name Winthrop Maine has submitted the following point

President Bush acknowledged in his press conference that concerns over stock-market risks are affecting perceptions about the private accounts he seeks to incorporate into the Social Security system. To sooth that concern, he announced that his private accounts would allow investments in US Treasury Bonds, which, Bush reminded his audience, are "backed by the full faith and credit of the United States."

Yet in the same press conference, Bush described current payments into the Social Security system as going toward today's retirees and other government programs, leaving nothing for future retirees but "file cabinets full of IOUs" – creating the impression that debts owed the Social Security system might not be honored.

Therefore, one of the following conclusions must be true: a) Bush does not know that those "IOUs" are, in fact, US Treasury Bonds – in which case serious persons should dismiss his very competence; or b) he was intentionally trying to mislead the public by playing the solvency of US Treasury bonds both ways.

For the record, A and B are not mutually exclusive.

Norbizness Does It For You

I didn't watch Bush's press conference last night because I had more important things to do.

Fortunately, Norbizness did and he give us the run down (or at least I assume he watched it. Since I didn't see it, I can't say for sure that Norbizness isn't just making sh*t up. But knowing him as I do - which is that say "not at all" - I can't imagine that he'd never do something so irresponsible)

QUESTION: Mr. President, under the law, how would you justify the practice of renditioning, where U.S. agents who bust terror suspects abroad, taking them to a third country for interrogation? And would you stand for it if foreign agents did that to an American here?

BUSH: That's a hypothetical. I know what a hypothetical is! Well, we get assurances from other countries that they won't torture people, which is good enough for us, and even if it isn't, they're terrorists anyway, so who cares, not that we would ever do that to terrorists, even though they richly deserve getting tortured by the countries we know are lying to us. Clear enough? Oh yeah: "September 11th."

That sounds like Bush to me.

What's a Little Genocide Between Friends?

Today, the LA Times reported that Sudan have been providing valuable and extensive cooperation to the US in the fight against global terrorism, creating the odd situation of the CIA working closely with a regime that the US has accused of genocide

The paradox of a U.S.-Sudanese intelligence partnership is personified by [Intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Salah Abdallah] Gosh.

Members of Congress accused him and other senior Sudanese officials of directing military attacks against civilians in Darfur. During the 1990s, the Mukhabarat assigned Gosh to be its Al Qaeda minder. In that role he had regular contacts with Bin Laden, a former Mukhabarat official confirmed.

Today, Gosh is keeping in contact with the office of CIA Director Porter J. Goss and senior agency officials.

Furthermore, the American Prospect's Mark Leon Goldberg reports that the Bush administration is quietly trying to kill the Darfur Accountability Act

Last week, the Senate unanimously passed the Darfur Accountability Act as part of the Iraq-Afghanistan emergency supplemental appropriations bill. Led by Republican Sam Brownback of Kansas and Democrat John Corzine of New Jersey, the act appropriates $90 million in U.S. aid for Darfur and establishes targeted U.S. sanctions against the Sudanese regime, accelerates assistance to expand the size and mandate of the African Union mission in Darfur, expands the United Nations Mission in Sudan to include the protection of civilians in Darfur, establishes a no-fly zone over Darfur, and calls for a presidential envoy to Sudan.

The Darfur Accountability Act is now with the House, and Republican leaders there -- no doubt under pressure from an evangelical movement that has been aiding civilians in Southern Sudan since the outbreak of a civil war nearly 20 years ago -- are similarly joining with Democrats to push for a more robust humanitarian response to the unfolding genocide in Western Sudan. In a recent meeting with Sudanese dissidents on Capitol Hill, Congressman Tom Tancredo, a conservative Colorado Republican who first visited Sudan in 2001, discussed the urgency of passing the bill. "Pressure is the only thing that Khartoum will respond to," Tancredo said. "The only time they will act is when they think they are on the precipice."

Yet in an April 25 letter from the White House's Office of Management and Budget to House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis obtained by the Prospect, the administration signaled its desire to strike the Darfur Accountability Act from the supplemental. Couching its reservations in a suggestion that the act may impede a separate peace accord reached between Khartoum and the rebels in south Sudan, the administration is now leaning on its congressional allies to scuttle the bill. "We are hearing that House Republicans will try to pull it out of conference," a well-placed congressional source told the Prospect.

The administration's assault on the Darfur Accountability Act reveals its belief that further coercion aimed at forcing the Sudanese regime to stop the killing is simply not productive. Prendergast says that the Bush administration seems to feel the need to constantly remind Khartoum that congressional pressure is not reflective of the White House position on Sudan. Now, with the attempt to scrap the act, the Bush administration is sending that message very clearly on a daily basis.

How these sorts of things fit in with Bush's "culture of life" rhetoric and his supposed commitment to freedom and human rights is a bit unclear to me.

Analogy, Schmanalogy

In Thursday's Wall Street Journal (subscription req'd), Harvard education thinkologists Martin R. West and Paul E. Peterson use a sleazy analogy in their op-ed attacking the National Education Association. Blasting NEA for its lawsuit challenging the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, West and Peterson write:

[NEA], its affiliates in 10 states, and a ragbag of school districts have just filed a federal lawsuit alleging that [NCLB] is an unfunded mandate. If the NEA's complaints sound hauntingly familiar, it's because Americans have heard them before -- 40 years ago, when Southern segregationists did their best to evade the desegregationist requirements of Lyndon Johnson's original law offering federal aid for education.

There's one glaring difference that West and Peterson chose to leave out.

Segregationist leaders opposed the spirit and the intent of federal laws that advanced desegregation and equal opportunity in education. There were no ifs, ands or buts about it.

When NCLB was first proposed, NEA never opposed the bill. Indeed, in May 2001, NEA sent a letter to House members stating that the educational union "supports the bill's increased emphasis on assisting low-performing schools but has some concerns on specific provisions." Those concerns included funding for: educational services for students with disabilities (in the 1970s, Congress had set full federal funding as a goal); smaller class sizes; and school building repairs.

In late 2001, NEA tried to get these concerns addressed by the conference committee, but without success. Even then, the union never took a "no" position on NCLB. Bush signed the measure into law in January 2002. In January 2003, NEA released this statement:

"While we have always supported the intent of [NCLB], on its one-year anniversary it only makes sense to step back and see how this legislation can be improved," said NEA President Reg Weaver.

The main way that NEA wanted to improve the law was to secure full federal funding. When segregationists raised the issue of full funding in the 1960s, it was nothing but a red herring -- and West and Peterson know it. For these two men to compare the NEA's position on NCLB in 2005 with segregationists' position on education bills in the '60s is insulting and ridiculous.

NEA's president doesn't look like a "closet segregationist" to me, but, then again, I'm not Peterson or West.

U.S. Pharmacists ... Spanish Civil Servants ...

First, it was pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for the so-called "morning after" pill. Now, the Vatican is appealing to religious conservatives in Spain to help obstruct the implementation of a same-sex marriage law that is almost sure to be enacted. As yesterday's Wall Street Journal (subscription req'd) explains:

On Friday, a day after Spain's lower house of parliament approved the bill (legalizing marriage and adoption by same-sex couples), a senior Vatican cardinal called on Spanish civil servants to resist implementing the measure through civil disobedience, even if that meant losing their jobs.

"A law as deeply inequitable as this one is not an obligation," said Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo of Columbia, the head of the Pontifical Council on the Family and a close ally of the new pope ...

Much to the Vatican's dismay, times have changed quite dramatically in Spain:

Spain jailed homosexuals until 1975, banned contraceptives until 1978, and outlawed divorce until 1981. Certainly, many of the sweeping social changes since have come in reaction to the end of 36 years of right-wing dictatorship under Gen. Francisco Franco, which ended in 1975.

And as comedian Chevy Chase used to say on SNL, "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead."

Much to the Vatican's chagrin.

Armstrong Williams' Struggle for Freshness

Every six months of so, that man really delivers a ridiculous new gem. And I kind of love him for it. This time, Wonkette's Greg Beato points out the "carnally dormant" pundit's recent idiocy. In his latest column, Williams writes, "One of the greatest challenges in my life is the struggle to abstain from premarital sex. It is not easy." Beato continues:

To overcome his powerful natural urges, the 46-year-old Williams calls upon equally powerful imagery: "In case anyone missed the point, [Rev. Donald D. Robinson, former Director of the D.C. Mayor's office on religious affairs,] took a pack of gum from his pocket and gave everyone in the front row a stick. About 25 minutes later, he returned to the topic of the gum. When participants remarked that the flavor is fading, Robinson offered to share his stick. Before they could respond, he plucked the gooey wad from his mouth and held it out like precious offering. The would-be recipients lurched back in disgust. The point, explains Robinson: 'If you are prematurely sexually active, by the time you have become married, you're like a chewed up piece of gum -- all of your flavor, freshness and sweetness is gone.'" At right, a photo of Armstrong Williams practicing his sweet, fresh, and flavorful look.

Williams' column is simply titled, "Sex." It made me kind of sad. But then I remembered that the gay-baiting, Strom Thurmond-loving pundit had settled a nasty sexual harassment claim from a former male employee in the late 90s. Luckily the Blue Lemur remembers this too. Now I hope he just keeps embarrassing himself.

Frist's So Called Compromise

Sen. Frist has offered a totally meaningless "compromise" on the nuclear option in which Democrats get to filibuster for 100 hours and then get steamrolled as the GOP majority confirms all of Bush's judges over their opposition.

Frist even tries to sweeten the deal by ensuring that every judicial nominee makes it out of committee, which just so happens to be the place that the Republicans killed 50+ Clinton nominees.

How does Frist address this basic unfairness and hypocrisy? Thusly (PDF file)

The Democrat leaders regularly allege that Republicans used "anonymous" or "one-person" or "pocket" filibusters to prevent President Clinton's nominations from passing through the Judiciary Committee. Nearly every Senate Democrat who speaks on this issue has insisted that judicial nominees should receive hearings and a vote in the Judiciary Committee in a timely fashion. (See Senate debate, Nov. 12-14, 2003.)

Many Republicans disagree with Democrats' view of history and the committee process, and have noted that all Presidents (such as George H.W. Bush) have seen nominations stalled in committee. Nevertheless, Republicans are willing to put safeguards in place to guarantee that all judicial nominations can be discharged from committee and receive up-or-down votes on the Senate floor.

So Republicans deny killing Clinton's nominees in committee. But even if they did, every president has seen his nominees killed by an opposition majority in committee. But, as an olive-branch to the Democrats, the GOP now pledges not to kill its own president's nominees in committee or give the Democrats the means to do so either. And thus, every single Bush nominee is now guaranteed a Senate vote and confirmation.

That's some compromise.

Advice Needed from the Home Front

My Dutch isn't so great, so maybe I'm wrong in thinking that this organization is the official welcome committee for my President's upcoming visit to the Netherlands. They seem to be throwing some kind of party next Saturday just up the street from where I'm sitting at the moment.

I think they're also linked to the folks who are working with the Dutch courts and police to ensure that law and order are maintained during the visit.

Should I join?

Once Upon a Time ....

What magnifies the tragedy in Darfur is knowing that there was a time — long before the janjaweed's killing spree and the resulting starvation began — when Sudan grabbed George W. Bush's attention. This article from The New Yorker (Aug. 4, 2004) reminds us of those circumstances:

Two days before the 2000 Presidential election, George W. Bush met the Reverend Billy Graham for breakfast in Jacksonville, Florida. They were joined by Graham’s son Franklin, the president of Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian relief-and-development organization that has worked in Sudan since 1993.

Sudan, the largest nation in Africa, had been mostly mired in civil war since it won independence from Britain .... Some two million people died because of the war, and many of them were Christians. The situation was deeply troubling to American evangelicals, and Franklin Graham had led an effort to raise money for victims.

During the breakfast meeting, Graham told me, he urged Bush to turn his sights to the suffering of Christians in Africa. “We have a crisis in the Sudan,” Graham said. “I have a hospital that’s been bombed. I hope that if you become President you’ll do something about it.” Bush promised Graham that he would.

Sudan had already attracted an unusually formidable constituency in Washington ... Sudan had become a haven for terrorists ... and had repressed religious minorities in the South; in addition, it had failed to crack down on a slave trade that had emerged there.

Backed by Christian and African-American constituencies, many U.S. lawmakers had travelled to Sudan. Senator Bill Frist, a surgeon, made several short trips there, serving as a volunteer doctor at the hospital in southern Sudan that had been bombed shortly before Graham’s meeting with Bush.

... President Clinton’s approach was largely confrontational. In 1996, he withdrew the U.S. Ambassador, citing terrorist threats against American officials ... In 1999, Clinton announced the appointment of a special envoy to Sudan, but then never met with the person who filled the post.

President Bush was more attentive. He rejuvenated a multilateral peace process that had been hosted by Kenya since 1993. On September 6, 2001, he appointed John Danforth, an ordained Episcopal minister and a three-term senator from Missouri, his special envoy for peace in Sudan.

(Bush's original hometown of) Midland is home to several churches with sister congregations in southern Sudan. In November, 2001, Midland hosted the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted Church, an annual evangelical event. Some forty Midland churches participated, and many of them passed out leaflets on Sudan and devoted part of their Sunday services to the civil war and the slave trade there. A half-dozen Sudanese refugees spent the weekend in Midland and shared their stories.

... Midland’s churches raised money for Sudanese schools, and local religious and civic leaders petitioned the White House and wrote letters to the government in Khartoum. The Chief of Mission at the Sudanese Embassy in Washington deemed “the town of George Bush” important enough to respond personally to these letters.

One wonders if the Bush administration might take more forceful action with respect to Darfur if, as in 2000 and 2001, the religious leaders and groups that he counts as his base of support placed a higher profile on the continued suffering in Darfur.

Dems' Reaction Is Mighty Lame

President Bush's energy proposals deserve a D+ grade. The good parts: extending a tax break to owners of clean-diesel vehicles, and relying more on liquified natural gas (LNG). In France and other European countries, more and more automobiles are running on LNG.

But the other elements of his plan strike me as misguided -- for example, pushing to expand refining capacity. Doing so creates a disincentive for automakers to produce cars that run on LNG (and for consumers to buy these cars). And why didn't Bush propose raising the federal tax deduction for hybrid car owners, or (better yet) converting the tax deduction to a tax credit? (Credits are more valuable.)

This presented Democrats with an opening, especially as the average price of gasoline at the pump hit $2.23 yesterday. But, based on their published quotes, at least two Democratic leaders in Congress came across sounding silly and predictably partisan in reaction to Bush's proposals. From USA Today:

“The president has suggested there is nothing he can do to provide immediate price relief,” Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic leader, said in a written statement. “That is simply untrue. We can and should do more to lower the price of gas today.”

Reid offered no specifics but said Bush fails “to make the real investments we need to develop renewable energy sources and biofuels that will benefit our economy, create jobs, free us from this national security threat our dependence creates and protect our environment.”

Reduce gas prices today? That's a ridiculous standard to hold someone to, and people who set ridiculous standards tend not to be taken very seriously. When gas prices rose in late 1999 and early 2000, would this have been a reasonable request of the GOP Congress -- Clinton should "lower the price of gas today"?

In political terms, does Reid's statement do anything to connect with independent voters or is it likely to appeal only to voters who already dislike Bush?

This statement by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), a member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, was equally lame:

[Rep. Waxman] said Bush “never asked the American people to pitch in by cutting gasoline waste by excessive idling of their cars and other wasteful activities.”

Okay, Congressman, you're right. Bush never specifically asked Americans to not idle their cars. Neither did he ask Americans to turn out the bathroom light after they're through taking a leak. Is this the basis on which we're going to criticize him? This is the best Dems can do -- suggest that the president didn't wag his finger at the American people enough?

Howard Dean, care to comment on this issue? Your party needs you. Badly.

Because It Deserves a Link

I don't have anything to add to this Raw Story post about Republicans rewriting Democratic amendments to the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act because it pretty much speaks for itself.

The basic point is that Democrats offered amendments to protect various relatives and things like bus companies and taxicabs from prosecution under the new law. But before the vote, Republicans rewrote the amendments in a way that intentionally distorted their intent

1) DEMS: a Nadler amendment to exempt a grandparent or adult sibling from the criminal and civil provisions in the bill (no 12-19)

GOP REWRITE: Mr. Nadler offered an amendment that would have exempted sexual predators from prosecution under the bill if they were grandparents or adult siblings of a minor. By a roll call vote of 12 yeas to 19 nays, the amendment was defeated.

2) DEMS: a Scott amendment to exempt cab drivers, bus drivers and others in the business transportation profession from the criminal provisions in the bill (no 13-17)

GOP REWRITE. Mr. Scott offered an amendment that would have exempted sexual predators from prosecution if they are taxicab drivers, bus drivers, or others in the business of professional transport. By a roll call vote of 13 yeas to 17 nays, the amendment was defeated.

Like I said, I don't have anything to add. But this still deserves a link because people ought to know about it.

Do Progressives Care About Darfur?

I was looking over the agenda for the upcoming Take Back America Conference and noticed that, over the conference's three days, there is not one panel or speech regarding the genocide in Darfur.

As the website says

The Take Back America Conference brings thousands of progressive activists, thinkers and leaders together to discuss our vision, unite our groups and train our campaign organizers. By building relationships and creating strategy, the Take Back America Conference is a catalyst for building the infrastructure we need to ensure that the voice of the progressive majority is heard.

There are panels on Social Security, energy issues, the federal judiciary, health care, and message development. Hell, even Wal-Mart gets its own panel.

Perhaps the organizers of this conference decided to focus on domestic political issues and not include foreign policy or international affairs issues. I don't know.

But I strongly suspect that the idea of having a panel on Darfur never even occurred to the organizers and that the lack of any mention of the on-going genocide during the three day conference will probably go completely unnoticed by those in attendance.

And I find that extremely depressing.

Can the Right's Push for the Nuclear Option Get Any Lamer?

No

Life in the Netherlands Isn't Only Sex and Drugs

OK, maybe it is.

"Bounce room," indeed.

A Dirty Job

Somebody's got to do it. I assure you I take no pleasure in reporting on public controversies over photos in Dutch porn magazines.

Longtime (more than 5 months, that is) readers may remember Boobgate, which I consider the high point of my blogging career.

Now comes news of a schoolteacher in a village in Friesland, a province noted for cows, Calvinism, and a language spoken by a very small number of people. Which is what Holland as a whole is known for, so I guess the Frisians are ur-Dutchmen, the fact that they speak Dutch as a second language notwithstanding.

Anyway, this teacher, known only as Ingrid, went to an erotic fair (don't ask me what that is) with her friend Durkje--I think this is an echt Frisian name--and the two of them had the great idea of posing together nude for a photographer from Holland's biggest sex mag. The issue has sold out, and apparently subscriptions are taking off (no pun intended) in Friesland. Schoolkids are reportedly saving up to buy the magazine so they can check out their naked teacher. (No need for that, BTW, as some of the photos are available online).

Imagine for a moment that this happened in the U.S. Even in a blue-state, urban-liberal environment--say a New York public school--I'm guessing that the official response would be a little more severe than it has been here.

The director of the 't Holdersnêst school, Willem Wouda, revealed on Saturday that Ingrid had been advised to stay home for a week while the storm raged around her.

She will remain at home until the media attention fades....

Parents of the school pupils were recently informed about the photos, but the school has ruled out taking disciplinary action against the teacher.

Admitting it was a very uncomfortable matter, Wouda said "as a teacher, you set an example, but this is of course not a hanging offence"....

As a form of thanks for the free publicity, the magazine's editors have decided to take Ingrid and Durkje and their partners out to dinner.

"They've earned that," Muller [the editor] said.

I seem to remember, a long time ago, that Feddie challenged us in comments to name the song that included the lyric: "I don't feel tardy." I consider it evidence of a well-spent youth that I knew the answer: Van Halen's (another Dutchman!) "Hot for Teacher."

Cannabis Boulevard

Yeah, the phrase caught my eye, too.

It looks as if the Netherlands is not going to legalize marijuana any time soon.

You thought it was already legal here? Oh, you ignorant Americans. Sure, you cannot be prosecuted for buying or using it, but that doesn't mean it's legal. The European mind is capable of such subtleties.

(Seriously, here's the deal. Cannabis possession is against the law, but the public prosecutor long ago established a policy of not prosecuting people who buy or possess it for personal use. Under Dutch law, this written policy is enforceable by individuals; in other words, if someone were charged with possession in spite of the policy, the court would have to dismiss the case.)

Games People Play

Senators Chuck Grassley and Max Baucus were on "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" the other day discussing Social Security.

But this post really has nothing to do with that topic itself. Instead, I am using it as an opportunity to highlight one of the ridiculous games played by politicians and the media in DC.

Take a look at this exchange between Margaret Warner, the anchor, and Sen. Grassley

MARGARET WARNER: Sen. Grassley, even if, let's say just for the purpose of argument, that private accounts were set aside somehow, for the long-term solvency, you all face some painful choices. You've heard some of them today. I mean, it's raising taxes; it's cutting or adjusting benefits.

Do you sense in the Senate, or even in your committee, a real appetite for tackling that now?

SEN. CHUCK GRASSLEY: You know, none of the 535 members of Congress, including all 100 senators really want to deal with Social Security. We have an opportunity to deal with it. We should deal with it. We all know we need to deal with it.

We know -- all understand what the problem is, and that's a mathematical definition of the problem, and there's a mathematical solution to the problem, and I just think even though we don't want to deal with it, we ought to accept this opportunity. And I want to reach that point where we do deal with it, and that's my job.

MARGARET WARNER: But Sen. Baucus, I'll ask you the same question. I guess what I should have said more clearly was, it seems to me there are a lot of Republicans who just won't talk about tax increases, and there are a lot of Democrats who just won't talk about benefit cuts or adjustments.

Actually Margaret, your initial question was perfectly clear - Sen. Grassley just decided not to answer it. You asked Grassley if Republicans were willing to deal with the fact that reforming Social Security might require tax increases or benefit cuts and Grassley responded by completely ignoring your question.

Politicians have mastered the art of merely filling time whenever they appear on television. They are perfectly aware that TV segments have strict time limits and that the best way to deal with a difficult question is just to speak vaguely about the issue long enough to eat up the time allotted for that question.

It is part of the game and everybody knows it - even Margaret Warner, which is why she pretended that the fault was hers for not asking a specific enough question rather than openly challenging Grassley after he blew her question off.

Proof of Life

Check it out, Al Gore proves once again that he does indeed have a pulse! A mere excerpt from a speech he gave earlier today.

When James Madison introduced the Bill of Rights, he explained that "independent tribunals of justice will consider themselves... the guardians of [these] rights, ... an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the legislature or executive."

So, it is not as a Democrat but as an American, that I appeal today to the leadership of the majority in the Senate to halt their efforts to break the Senate's rules and instead protect a meaningful role in the confirmation of judges and justices for Senators of both parties. Remember that you will not always be in the majority, but much more importantly, remember what is best for our country regardless of which party is temporarily in power. Many of us know what it feels like to be disappointed with decisions made by the courts. But instead of attacking the judges with whose opinions we disagree, we live by the rule of law and maintain respect for the courts.

I am genuinely dismayed and deeply concerned by the recent actions of some Republican leaders to undermine the rule of law by demanding the Senate be stripped of its right to unlimited debate where the confirmation of judges is concerned, and even to engage in outright threats and intimidation against federal judges with whom they philosophically disagree.
...
Through their words and threats, these Republicans are creating an atmosphere in which judges may well hesitate to exercise their independence for fear of Congressional retribution, or worse.

It is no accident that this assault on the integrity of our constitutional design has been fueled by a small group claiming special knowledge of God's will in American politics. They even claim that those of us who disagree with their point of view are waging war against "people of faith." How dare they?

Long before our founders met in Philadelphia, their forebears first came to these shores to escape oppression at the hands of despots in the old world who mixed religion with politics and claimed dominion over both their pocketbooks and their souls.

This aggressive new strain of right-wing religious zealotry is actually a throwback to the intolerance that led to the creation of America in the first place.

James Madison warned us in Federalist #10 that sometimes, "A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction."

Unfortunately the virulent faction now committed to changing the basic nature of democracy now wields enough political power within the Republican party to have a major influence over who secures the Republican nomination for president in the 2008 election. It appears painfully obvious that some of those who have their eyes on that nomination are falling all over themselves to curry favor with this faction.

They are the ones demanding the destructive constitutional confrontation now pending in the Senate. They are the ones willfully forcing the Senate leadership to drive democracy to the precipice that now lies before us.

I remember a time not too long ago when Senate leaders in both parties saw it as part of their responsibility to protect the Senate against the destructive designs of demagogues who would subordinate the workings of our democracy to their narrow factional agendas.

Our founders understood that the way you protect and defend people of faith is by preventing any one sect from dominating. Most people of faith I know in both parties have been getting a belly-full of this extremist push to cloak their political agenda in religiosity and mix up their version of religion with their version of right-wing politics and force it on everyone else.

They should learn that religious faith is a precious freedom and not a tool to divide and conquer.

It's worth reading in its entirety-- it's one hell of a speech, chock-full of many excellent Democratic Party talking points.

Language Specific

Following up on Arnold's previous post regarding GOP hypocrisy when it comes to ensuring that every nominee gets an up-or-down vote, I'd like to highlight this statement made by Sen. Frist in his video appearance at the "Justice Sunday" rally

Never in 214 years, never in the history of the United States Senate had a judicial nominee with majority support been denied an up-or-down vote...until two years ago.

There is a lot of specific language in the one little sentence that has been put there so as to create a misleading impression while maintaining technical accuracy.

The "majority support" phrase is there as a way to get around the Republican led filibuster of Supreme Court nominee Abe Fortas back in the 1960s (Republicans like to insist that this wasn't really a filibuster, since Fortas didn't have the votes to get confirmed anyway. That point is debatable.)

As for the limiting phrase "judicial nominee," that is clearly designed to get around things like this (no link available)

Senate Dooms a Vote for Surgeon General

By JERRY GRAY
23 June 1995
The New York Times

WASHINGTON, June 22 -- The nomination of Dr. Henry W. Foster Jr. to be Surgeon General died in the Senate today when Democrats failed for a second and final time to end a Republican filibuster.

[edit]

Today's vote to end the filibuster was 57 to 43, identical to the one taken on Wednesday and 3 votes shy of the 60 votes needed to force a vote on the nomination itself. Under the rules that the Senate majority leader, Bob Dole, set for the debate and that the Democratic minority agreed to a failure to break the filibuster on two tries effectively killed the nomination.

All 43 votes against cloture were cast by Republicans.

I'm sure that if you bother to point that out they clearly did deny a presidential nominee an up-or-down vote, the Republicans will probably just claim that Foster did not have "majority support."

Of course, that begs the question as to why, if they had to votes to defeat Foster, they didn't just do so rather than killing him via filibuster. But I suspect that if you ask them about that, you'll probably end up in Guantanamo.

Oh, the Humanity!

I hope that when he visits the Netherlands next month, President Bush takes the opportunity to learn about the forgotten victims of tensions within the Western alliance. "I'm in Amsterdam--Amsterdam, for Christ's sake." It's just too sad to contemplate.

You Should Probably Sit Down Now

When you're arguing a case to a judge, there sometimes comes a terrible moment when the judge says something that means: "You're going to lose. You may as well save your breath." (When you're inexperienced, the worst thing you can do is when the judge says, in effect, "You're going to win, so sit down before you screw it up," and you don't get the signal).

The Georgia Supreme Court just struck down, on First Amendment grounds, a state law that criminalized "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, or indecent" suggestions made by telephone. For experienced court-watchers, and even for the not so experienced, there was definitely one of those "you're going to lose" moments at the oral argument.

Georgia has another law that forbids telephonic harassment directed at an unwilling listener. So the issue in the current case was whether the state could also make consensual sexually explicit phone calls illegal.

Fate, or a creative court clerk, played a hand in scheduling the oral argument.

The court heard oral arguments on Valentine's Day, leading to a playful but revealing exchange between [Justice Robert] Benham and Inez Grant, a Forsyth County assistant solicitor. Benham wondered about the fate of millions of Georgians who might use the telephone that day to call their spouses and make lascivious suggestions.

Grant told Benham that the phone is off limits for such X-rated talk, even to one's spouse, because "the state can regulate its public utilities," including telephone lines. "You need to know," Grant told Benham later, that a lascivious phone call to your wife could bring prosecution.

Benham thought a moment and deadpanned, "I'll pick her up and talk to her in person," prompting the other justices, the lawyers and the courtroom audience of about 20 to erupt in laughter.

In other words: sit down; you've lost.

Something to Remember When Frist Goes Nuclear

Apparently, the Dems floated the idea of confirming a couple of the filibustered judges in exchange for some kind of assurances regarding future appointments. They may have done so as a political ploy, knowing that Frist would shoot it down. Which he did, accepting the fundies' line that no compromise will be entertained: the only acceptable outcome is an end to the filibuster on every appointee, with no concession in return.

When it comes to filibusters in general, there are a few things that long-time followers of the judge wars will point to as undermining Frist's supposed belief that the Constitution requires an up-or-down vote on every nominee--his own vote against cloture on Richard Paez's nomination being Exhibit A. But on this latest development in particular--that the President is entitled to a vote on every nominee without any concessions to the other side--there are also a few things to remember from the Clinton years.

The GOP not only held up scores of nominees who never got a vote, including several who withdrew after years of waiting, but it also repeatedly cut deals under which Clinton nominees received floor votes in return for a gift from the White House to some GOP senator. One deal that's particularly worth remembering now is the one that got William Fletcher onto the Ninth Circuit.

Republicans didn't trust Fletcher, principally because his mother was already a judge and had a very liberal record. I was at his confirmation hearing, where he was grilled about a law review article he'd written on Article III standing (don't worry if you don't know what that means; I assure you it's riveting stuff). After the hearing, I occasionally checked to see if he'd been confirmed yet. I waited (and, more important, so did he) for four years. Then he was allowed onto the court as part of a deal that gave GOP Senator Slade Gorton of Washington both input into the selection of and a veto over all federal judicial appointments from Washington, including those to the Ninth Circuit. As part of the quid pro quo for allowing a floor vote on Fletcher, Clinton even had to nominate an outspoken conservative to the appellate court at Gorton's behest, though she eventually withdrew for health reasons.

Read that again: in order to allow a vote on a Clinton nominee, the GOP demanded, not some vague promise that Clinton would consult with them in the future, but the matching nomination of a right-wing judge of their choice to the Court of Appeals.

Something to remember when the Right Rev. Bill Frist, M.D., speaks of the sanctity of the President's right to name whomever he wants and to have a prompt, no-strings-attached floor vote on every nomination.

America's Not-Ready-for-Primetime Investors

Syndicated columnist Froma Harrop reminds us of one of the key reasons why the GOP's "ownership" approach to Social Security is a road studded with landmines:

Are Americans smart enough to manage their own retirement savings? No, as a matter of fact, they're not .... every week, fresh evidence bubbles up that Americans don't get the basics of ordinary investing.

Rule number one is to diversify. This means spreading money around different investments.

That's exactly what many Enron workers did not do. Rather than invest in a good mix of securities, they put most of their 401(k) money into Enron stock. The stock lost 99 percent of its value in one year, devastating their retirement accounts.

... just three years later, the same thing happened at Marsh & McLennan, the financial-services company. Thousands of workers had filled their 401(k) retirement accounts with Marsh & McLennan stock. A scandal sent the shares into a tailspin. What makes this tale extra sobering is that the Marsh & McLennan employees worked in finance. They were more sophisticated about investing than the average Joe and Jane.

People still haven't learned. A Hewitt Associates survey of 500 companies looked at workers who keep their employer's stock in their 401(k)s. It found that an average 41 percent of those accounts were invested in that one stock.

... The federal government has been a model for giving workers control over their retirement accounts. Too bad federal employees haven't been model investors.

After stocks soared in the '90s, many federal workers did exactly what Thaler predicted they would do. They took money out of safe-but-dull Treasury bonds and put them in an S&P 500-stock index fund. The Wall Street bubble burst, and their retirement accounts lost big.

Weekly Coalition for Darfur Post

Here is the weekly Coalition post

The Man Nobody Knows

On February 24, 2004, an op-ed entitled "The Unnoticed Genocide" appeared in the pages of the Washington Post warning that without humanitarian intervention in Darfur "tens of thousands of civilians [would] die in the weeks and months ahead in what will be continuing genocidal destruction."

Written by Eric Reeves, a literature professor from Smith College, this op-ed was the catalyst that compelled many of us to start learning more about crisis in Darfur which, in turn, led directly to the creation of the Coalition for Darfur.

For over two years, Eric Reeves has been the driving force behind efforts to call attention to the genocide in Darfur by writing weekly updates and providing on-going analysis of the situation on the ground. As early as 2003, Reeves was calling the situation in Darfur a genocide, nine months before former Secretary of State Colin Powell made a similar declaration. In January of 2005, Reeves lashed out against "shamefully irresponsible" journalists who "contented themselves with a shockingly distorting mortality figure for Darfur's ongoing genocide." Reeves' analysis led to a series of news articles highlighting the limitations of the widely cited figure of 70,000 deaths and culminated in a recent Coalition for International Justice survey that concluded that death toll was nearly 400,000; an figure nearly identical to the one Reeves had calculated on his own.

Perhaps most presciently, on March 21st, Reeves warned that "Khartoum has ambitious plans for accelerating the obstruction of humanitarian access by means of orchestrated violence and insecurity, including the use of targeted violence against humanitarian aid workers." The following day it was reported that Marian Spivey-Estrada, a USAID worker in Sudan, had been shot in the face during an ambush while "traveling in a clearly marked humanitarian vehicle." The lack of security for aid workers has led some agencies to declare certain areas "No Go" zones or withdraw all together, leaving the internally displaced residents of Darfur without access to food, water or medical care.

And as the Boston Globe reported on Sunday, he has done it all while fighting his own battle with leukemia.

Were it not for Eric Reeves, it is quite possible that the genocide in Darfur would have gone largely unnoticed. We at the Coalition for Darfur offer him our prayers and support and express our heartfelt thanks for all that he has done to prick the nation's conscience on this vitally important issue. We hope that his courage and conviction will be an inspiration to others and that Darfur will soon begin to get the attention that it deserves.

The Daily Darfur is also up and it has some interesting things about recent State Department estimates regarding the death toll in Darfur.

Wolf in a Black Sheep's Clothing

Although this was posted on Atrios, I wanted to comment because the Family Research Council has a very special place in my heart.

This morning I was especially delighted when I read this:

Four years ago, [Family Research Council's President Tony] Perkins addressed the Louisiana chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), America's premier white supremacist organization, the successor to the White Citizens Councils, which battled integration in the South. In 1996 Perkins paid former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke $82,000 for his mailing list. At the time, Perkins was the campaign manager for a right-wing Republican candidate for the US Senate in Louisiana. The Federal Election Commission fined the campaign Perkins ran $3,000 for attempting to hide the money paid to Duke.

As the emcee of Justice Sunday, Tony Perkins positioned himself beside a black preacher and a Catholic "civil rights" activist as he rattled off the phone numbers of senators wavering on President Bush's judicial nominees.
...
Perkins issued a flat denial that he had ever had anything to do with Duke, and he denounced him for good measure. Unfortunately, Perkins's signature was on the document authorizing the purchase of Duke's list.

The article is worth reading, as it also has a rare mention of the powerful right-wing secret society, The Council for National Policy.

So, thank you dear Tony Perkins for making my day. I think I may write him a letter, so he can know that he personally made a liberal, card-carrying-ACLU-member, Jewish lesbian in a same-sex marriage very happy. Thank you, Tony Perkins, for not only being a douchebag but also for not being wise enough to hide it better.

Wanna Read Something Ridiculous?

If so, then check out this series of posts over at Southern Appeal revolving around Plainsman's argument that the federal government's failure to stem the tide of illegal immigration is a violation of Article IV, Section 4 of the US Constitution

The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on application of the legislature, or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence.

All the posts revolve around the meaning of the term "invasion" and whether illegal immigration and other types of "invasions" are what the Founding Fathers had in mind.

I happen to think that, as a general rule, whenever you have start arguing about literal definitions of words rather than their common sense usage (as in this case, what the word "invasion" meant in 1854) in order to buttress your case, your argument is probably flawed.

It reminds me of a similarly ridiculous disagreement I had with the Curmudgeonly Clerk more than a year ago regarding the meaning of the word "happen" in the Constitution's recess appointment clause. (And just for the record, back then, Plainsman wrote, in regards to William Pryor's recess appointment, that "the Constitution says what it says.")

Nervous Congressmen, Frantic Accountants

It's rare for a restaurant to forget to put through a credit card charge. When was the last time that happened to you? And, even if it has, do you think a restaurant would forget to charge your credit card for a $1,846 bill?

In Tuesday's Washington Post, staff writer Mike Allen writes:

Members of Congress are rushing to amend their travel and campaign records, fearing that the controversy over House Majority Leader Tom DeLay will trigger an ethics war that will bring greater scrutiny to their own travel and official activities.

... Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) wrote to the Federal Election Commission on April 15 to report that he had discovered that the Washington restaurant Signatures had not charged his credit card -- as he said he had directed -- for a 2003 fundraiser for 16 people that cost $1,846.

Sound strange? Read on:

The event was hosted by Jack Abramoff, a lobbyist and part-owner of the restaurant who is now under congressional and criminal investigation for his handling of millions of dollars in fees from Indian tribes. Abramoff was not at the event.

"I never thought about this event again until it was brought to my attention very recently that no payment or reimbursement for the event has ever appeared on our FEC report," Vitter wrote.

Brought to his attention by whom? There aren't too many restaurants that hire staff accountants. If it was Vitter's director of fundraising, it's odd that he or she "just recently" happened to notice something that happened two years ago.

A Hitler Comparison? That's, Like, Sooooo 1987

Pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for morning-after pills don't seem to have many vigorous advocates in their corner. That's the view of Slate's William Saletan, who observes:

Who's fighting hardest for pro-life pharmacists? Pharmacists for Life. Now, there's a shocker. According to the (Washington) Post, the group "claims 1,600 members on six continents." Come on. That's less than 300 members per continent.

Saletan calls P4L's website "politically insane" — and it is. After Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich ordered the state's pharmacies to fill prescriptions for women wanting the new morning-after pill, even if it meant putting aside their employees' personal views, P4L flipped out.

P4L's attacks against Blagojevich (who is of Serbian-American ethnicity) have all the subtlety of a Fred Phelps poster. On Sunday, P4L referred to the governor's directive as "Rod 'Slobodan' Blagojevich's order" and one of its photo captions called the order "pharmacist religious cleansing."

Groups on the political fringe have long compared their adversaries' views and actions to those of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. So, if nothing else, the firebrands at P4L deserve a tiny bit of credit for at least having the initiative to find a new crazed dictator to fill such a role: Slobodan Milosevic.

Jumping the Shark?

This is so very Onion-worthy, only it's real.

Bush Adds DeLay to Social Security Tour

GALVESTON, Texas - President Bush on Tuesday added a helper to his Social Security road tour: House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who is facing allegations of ethical improprieties but is seen by the White House as crucial to pushing Bush's plans through Congress.

Bush was traveling here to discuss his proposal to add private investment accounts to Social Security and included DeLay in the event being held near his district to show that "the president appreciates his leadership in the House," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. DeLay was also scheduled to fly back to Washington with Bush on Air Force One along with a few other Republican members of Congress from Texas.

As Bush nears the end of a 60-day nationwide blitz aimed at building support for his proposal, the Senate Finance Committee back in Washington was holding a hearing on Social Security. But a new poll showed that despite all of Bush's efforts, there has been a decline in public support for his private-accounts idea — and that his overall job approval rating is at a level that matches his all-time low.
...
But a Washington Post-ABC News poll out Tuesday found that only 45 percent of those surveyed favored diverting a portion of Social Security taxes into accounts invested in the stock market, compared with 56 percent who had supported it in a March poll. Also, 64 percent of those surveyed disapproved of the job Bush was doing on Social Security. His overall approval rating fell to 47 percent.

So the more Bush talks about GOP-sponsored Social Security reform, the less popular it becomes-- so naturally he has extended his 60-day tour-- and to help boost his sagging efforts he's added DeLay to his booster club?!?

Either Bush & Co. are wholly certain that they're going to get DeLay off or they've completely lost their ability to play the game. Apparently through GOP-tinted glasses the blood in the water is tangerine dreams.

If there was a way to convert pure chutzpah into cash money, they'd be the richest political party in the country. Oh, hey, maybe that *is* what they've figured out. It sure would explain a lot.

Either that or someone has been slipping LSD into Karl Rove's cheerios.

Earl Wilson: Baseball and Race

Former major league baseball pitcher Earl Wilson died yesterday. But if you don't give a damn about baseball, you probably won't care that Wilson was the first black pitcher to throw a no-hitter (1962). And you won't be impressed by the fact that Wilson was one of the best-hitting pitchers in baseball history -- he hit a homerun in that '62 game and slugged 34 others in his major league career.

But there is something in Wilson's passing that even non-baseball fans can take stock in. Wilson's death prompted this Boston Globe obituary, reminding us of the degrading stereotypes and discrimination that black Americans faced in the 1960's. Excerpts of the obit:

Former Red Sox pitcher Robert Earl Wilson, who endured racism to become the first black American Leaguer to throw a no-hitter, died of a heart attack Saturday in Detroit. He was 70.

... The subtext of the Red Sox scouting report on Mr. Wilson when he was signed was an indication of the bias in the organization at the time and what Mr. Wilson had to overcome to make it to the major leagues. It read in part, ''well-mannered colored boy, not too black, pleasant to talk to, well-educated, very good appearance.''

''It never bothered me what people said in the stands in Boston,'' Mr. Wilson told the Globe in 1980. ''What I heard in the South was so much worse ..."

Despite racial epithets and biased management, Mr. Wilson emerged to become one of the best Sox players on teams that struggled to reach mediocrity. The Red Sox brought up Mr. Wilson to the major leagues on July 29, 1959, just one week after the Sox called up their first African-American ballplayer, outfielder Elijah (Pumpsie) Green. The Red Sox were the last of the original 16 Major League franchises to have an African-American on its roster.

... In 1966, Mr. Wilson was traded to the Detroit Tigers ... Many thought at the time the trade was retribution for outspoken remarks by Mr. Wilson during spring training. That year, the Red Sox had moved their spring training camp from Scottsdale, Ariz., to Winter Haven, Fla. Mr. Wilson was refused entrance to two nightclubs because of his race. He did not let the matter die. He told his plight to sportswriters covering the team, exposing racism and the Red Sox's reaction to it.

The trade to the Tigers was a blessing for Mr. Wilson. During his years with the Red Sox, they never had a winning record. Mr. Wilson found a home in Detroit, which had a larger population of middle-class blacks.

Which is not to say that Detroit was the "the land of milk and honey" for black Americans. Racial divisions helped to spark multiple riots in Motown during the 1960's. More than 40 people were killed in Detroit's '67 riot, which made the cover of Time magazine.

We've come a long way since then, but we still have a way to go.

Not Rhetorical Questions

Imagine Jack and Diane are two American kids growin' up in the heartland. While they're holdin' onto 16 as long as they can, Diane becomes pregnant when she lets Jack put his hands between her knees (if you don't think this is possible, you should ask Dr. Frist). Jack and Diane decide that they'd rather not turn into Bruce and Mary, so they agree that Diane should get an abortion. Jack and Diane drive from their rural Indiana hometown to Chicago, where the abortion is performed.

Right after the procedure, the FBI raids the clinic.

Question: Why should Jack go to prison, but Diane not?

Now, to add to the hypothetical: before Jack and Diane drive off, Jack asks Diane whether they should talk to Diane's parents about it. Diane says she doesn't want to wake up her parents from their alcoholic stupor to tell them, as they have a tendency to beat the living crap out of her when they're drunk. This seems like sound reasoning to Jack. At the clinic, Diane tells the doctor about the abuse, and he has her write down the details, then calls the Indiana State Bureau of Family Protection and Preservation to report it before performing the abortion.

Question: Why should Jack go to prison, but the doctor not?

Now, suppose the doctor performs the abortion before calling the Hoosier family cops.

Question: Why should doing things in this order (but not the other way around) expose the doctor not only to a prison term and a $100,000 fine but also to a civil suit by Diane's parents once they've sobered up?

If you'd like answers to these questions, contact one of the many co-sponsors of the "Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act," H.R. 748.

I say these questions are not rhetorical because I am honestly interested in the rationale for these features of the bill (assuming there is a rationale, and it's not just poor drafting). That is, let's assume that we want to criminalize transporting minors across state lines to receive abortions without notifying their parents, as well as performing abortions under those circumstances. Why would we want to let doctors off the hook if the girl has been abused, but not do the same for the boyfriend, grandparent, friend, rabbi, etc. who does the driving or buys the bus ticket? Similarly, I can see why you'd still want to nail the 35-year-old who got the girl pregnant and then drove her to the clinic even if the girl herself weren't prosecuted; but when the girl and the guy sit next to each other in homeroom, is it reasonable to criminalize his behavior but not hers (note that the same question applies to some states' statutory rape laws, an asymmetry that the Supreme Court has upheld against an Equal Protection challenge)?

I've looked quickly through the lengthy House Judiciary Committee report on the bill (pdf), and I don't think these questions are answered. The committee majority says the bill protects girls from abuse, citing the exception that protects physicians in cases of abuse, but I don't think it comments on the absence of a similar exception in the transportation component of the bill.

Meta-Post

I read this article in the Washington Post on the Iraq Survey Group's final report that Iraq did not have Weapons of Mass Destruction and decided that it was not even worth posting because its conclusions are barely newsworthy

The report, which refuted many of the administration's principal arguments for going to war in Iraq, marked the official end of a two-year weapons hunt led most recently by former U.N. weapons inspector Charles A. Duelfer. The team found that the 1991 Persian Gulf War and subsequent U.N. sanctions had destroyed Iraq's illicit weapons capabilities and that, for the most part, Hussein had not tried to rebuild them. Iraq's ability to produce nuclear arms, which the administration asserted was a grave and gathering threat that required an immediate military response, had "progressively decayed" since 1991. Investigators found no evidence of "concerted efforts to restart the program."

And then I remembered that we started a war over those non-existent weapons.

Two years and 1500+ US casualties later, the official word is that the war was completely unnecessary, yet we have all become so complacent that I thought it hardly warranted a measly blog post? Truly unbelievable.

Same Old Story

Hold the presses! Hiring in this administration is based on ideological purity.

And for those who think conservatives oppose affirmative action because they believe in meritocracy, well, maybe they believe in it in theory, but in practice they know that who you know matters at least as much as how good you are.

So many of Luttig's former clerks have risen to prominence that the group has earned the nickname "luttigators." At least seven "luttigators" currently hold top DOJ jobs, including Theodore Ullyot, Gonzales' chief of staff; Courtney Elwood, Gonzales' associate counsel; and Office of Legal Counsel lawyers C. Kevin Marshall and Howard Nielson.

"I'm like a proud father," Luttig says. "I run my chambers as if it were a family."

As a federal judge, there are limits to what Luttig can do to help his former clerks land jobs in the administration, but Luttig says he encourages them to help one another professionally. "No one achieves anything alone."

Also, chalk up another instance of rhetorical flimflammery. Speaking of the Federalist Society, this straight-news reporter writes:

Founded in 1981, the organization promotes judicial restraint, states rights, free enterprise and conservative social values.

Judicial restraint? Tell it to Christy Brzonkala. Or James Dale. Or Patricia Garrett. Or the University of Michigan. Or....

This Blot? Oh, I've Had it for 10 Years

AllAfrica has an article on Rwanda's concern about the international community's apparent willingness to hold talks with Ex-FAR and Interahamwe militias responsible for the 1994 genocide that have been operating in eastern Congo for the last decade

While the government understands the need of the government of the DRC to talk to these genocidal groups to cease their activities on DRC territory and disarm, [the Rwanda] government is gravely concerned by the information that the United Nations, the European Union and some countries plan to sit on the same table with a group that committed the last horrific genocide of the 20th century.

"Rwanda believes that such a course of action would be an indelible blot on the respect, honour, and moral standing of the bodies and countries in question," says the communique, released on April 12.

Considering that the entire world turned its back on Rwanda during the genocide, it is nearly impossible that the "respect, honour, and moral standing" of the UN, the US, the EU, and others could be tarnished any further.

Not Surprising ... But Only In a Purely Relative Way

At this point, I am rarely shocked by anything that the Bush administration does.

Thus, I can barely muster any outrage over this even though, in an objective sense, it is utterly ridiculous

Just when you thought you'd heard it all about the Bush administration's disdain for the environment, someone does something to top it. The latest outrage is Interior Secretary Gale Norton's pick as acting director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Matthew Hogan.

Hogan's job before coming to work at FWS was as chief lobbyist for Safari Club International. The club has set hunting awards for its members like the Africa Big Five, in which a member shoots a leopard, elephant, lion, rhino and buffalo. Then there's the American Twenty Nine or Big Cats of the World.

For a member to get all 29 awards, he would have to kill at least 322 different animals. That can get expensive, so some members cheat by shooting captive animals or using questionable hunting tactics, according to the Humane Society of the United States.

Guess which agency decides who gets to bring stuffed trophy animals into the country? Yes, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The Letter That You've Made Public Is Still a Secret

The press and blogosphere have been abuzz over this article in Sunday's Observer (London, U.K.). Disturbing, but not at all surprising ...

Pope Benedict XVI faced claims last night he had 'obstructed justice' after it emerged he issued an order ensuring the church's investigations into child sex abuse claims be carried out in secret.

The order was made in a confidential letter, obtained by The Observer, which was sent to every Catholic bishop in May 2001.

It asserted the church's right to hold its inquiries behind closed doors and keep the evidence confidential for up to 10 years after the victims reached adulthood. The letter was signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was elected as John Paul II's successor last week.

Lawyers acting for abuse victims claim it was designed to prevent the allegations from becoming public knowledge or being investigated by the police. They accuse Ratzinger of committing a 'clear obstruction of justice'.

... [The letter] orders that 'preliminary investigations' into any claims of abuse should be sent to Ratzinger's office, which has the option of referring them back to private tribunals in which the 'functions of judge, promoter of justice, notary and legal representative can validly be performed for these cases only by priests'.

'Cases of this kind are subject to the pontifical secret,' Ratzinger's letter concludes. Breaching the pontifical secret at any time while the 10-year jurisdiction order is operating carries penalties, including the threat of excommunication.

But this is my favorite part of The Observer article:

A spokeswoman in the Vatican press office declined to comment when told about the contents of the letter. 'This is not a public document, so we would not talk about it,' she said.

In other words, this Vatican spokeswoman is saying: The Ratzinger letter instructing priests to keep sex abuse allegations secret is itself a secret, and we don't talk about secrets.

So even though this letter has been quoted by a major newspaper and is, therefore, a fairly "public" document, the Vatican prefers to pretend it's still a secret. Denial is an amazing thing.

Does This Election Strategy Sound Familiar?

Shortly before the election, you accuse the other side of being soft on defense. You deliver a speech promising an administration that "respects the culture of our Armed Forces -- a culture which makes them the envy of the world."

Specifically, you promise to "rescue three of the [battleships] facing decommissioning" under the present administration.

Yes, these are conservatives. But this isn't America -- it's Britain. And at least these conservatives believe in a health care system that provides a baseline of coverage to every citizen.

Intimigate Update

Thanks to Josh Marshall's plug, I've been reading the excellent Plame coverage of Murray Waas. If you think "Intimigate" is clever but perhaps an overstatement, check out his latest on the grand jury proceedings. Apart from revealing Plame's status--which is to say, apart from what might be criminal behavior--the administration pretty clearly had a dirty tricks operation ongoing to discredit Joseph Wilson by slipping information that they knew to be false to reporters. On a not-for-attribution basis, of course.

And speaking of false information, Waas says that "federal investigators have for some time believed that columnist Novak has very likely lied to shield his sources from potential criminal culpability." I'm not a criminal practitioner and am certainly not familiar with most federal criminal statutes, but if lying with the intent to prevent a guilty person from being prosecuted constituted obstruction of justice (or, to use a great legal term, misprision of a felony), then that might answer the question of why Novak might be entitled to invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege in this case.

We Shouldn't Have to Ask

For more than two years, the government of Sudan and its Janjaweed militia allies have been killing people and destroying villages in Darfur. An estimated 400,000 people have died due to disease, starvation and violence and the US government has labeled the situation "genocide."

Last week, former Marine Capt. Brian Steidle was on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer discussing the six months he spent working with the African Union as an observer on the ground in Darfur. Earlier this year, Steidle resigned from his position with the AU and returned to the US so that he could provide a first-hand account of the genocide and share with world the hundreds of photos of destroyed villages and dead bodies he had taken.

Near the end of the segment on the NewsHour, Steidle was asked if humanitarian intervention could stop the violence and he replied

CAPT. BRIAN STEIDLE (RET.): Absolutely. I think that we can, and the power lies with the people. You know, I call on all the people to write their governments and get it done.

When activists are afforded the rare opportunity to share their message with the general public, the one thing they inevitably do is urge listeners to contact their representatives and put some pressure on them.

While I have no doubt that calling, faxing, or e-mailing our congressmen can have a significant impact, in the case of Darfur I find it utterly incomprehensible that we, as citizens, must contact member of Congress and urge them to stop a genocide.

As the leaders of this country, it is inexcusable that they should fail to act on this issue simply because they have not heard from enough people demanding action.

Was there a public outcry about the need to reform Social Security? Were phones ringing off the hook about the importance of reforming our intelligence community? Were the American people swamping fax lines with letters demanding a new bankruptcy bill?

The fact is that most issues get addressed because members of Congress feel that they are worth addressing, and not because the public is calling for action.

President Bush is currently traveling around the country selling Social Security reform, not because the American people are clamoring for it, but because he thinks it is important - and because he thinks it is important, it generates news coverage.

If he thought Darfur was important, he would be talking about it and it too would receive news coverage. But he isn't. And neither is anybody else.

It seems almost ridiculous to have to say it, but those in positions of power should not have to be pressured into stopping a genocide.

Condom Creativity

Perhaps conservatives wouldn't oppose distributing condoms if they knew what most people in India were using them for-- namely, not for their intended purpose. 75% of condoms in India aren't used for contraceptive purposes. Or even sex-related purposes.

What are they using them for? Well, "to make saris, toys and bathroom slippers," of course! Want some spermicide with your sari?

Go Ahead -- Diss Arnold, But Not His Proposal

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has apparently abandoned his merit pay proposal for public school teachers. Instead, the governor is talking about a proposal for what he calls “combat pay” — teachers who work in inner-city schools or other disadvantaged districts would receive supplemental pay.

According to news reports, Schwarzenegger said these teachers should be offered more money “to go to the inner-city schools ... because it's dangerous to be there and it's difficult to teach.” But some teachers or teacher union leaders reacted negatively to Schwarzenegger’s concept.

“I think people like to paint urban students as dangerous, and I don't think that's true," said an eighth grade teacher in Oakland. Margaret Shelleda, a spokesperson for the California Federation of Teachers, also bristled at the gov.’s remark:

“I find the words really offensive, and so do virtually all educators. We're talking about schools that are facing serious challenges and need a lot of help. It doesn't help to have phrases like ‘combat pay’ thrown around.”

I understand the cynicism that many teachers feel these days — most politicians only think about public schools when it comes time for a good photo-op. But if California teachers step back and take a deep breath, they may realize that the Governator has presented them with a decent proposal.

Yes, Schwarzenegger was guilty of hyperbole in using the word “dangerous.” Some indicators suggest that school violence — despite its prominent play on TV news — has actually declined. Having said that, many urban schools still are places with a lot of fighting, harassment and bullying.

Last year, a survey by the Centers for Disease Control found that 5.4 percent of high school students skipped at least one day of school because of concerns for their personal safety. That’s not a high percentage, but apply that percentage to the nation’s high schools and suddenly you’re talking about many thousands of kids who miss days of school because they don’t feel safe there.

And this 2003 study of middle school students in Oakland, Calif., for example, found that 1 in 10 were threatened with a weapon in the previous 12 months, and 3 in 10 students had had their property stolen or damaged at school.

Shelleda’s comment reflects the tendency of those within the educational establishment to spin significant problems as mere “challenges.” But whatever they think of the state of violence in public schools, there are other good reasons to offer stronger incentives to attract teachers to inner-city schools.

For starters, teacher pay tends to be lower in inner-city schools than in suburban districts. In addition, urban school systems tend to have more teachers who are either uncertified or are teaching outside of their certification.

Did the governor choose his words poorly? Yes. But the teachers union should stop bristling and step up to the plate. If they don't like the words "combat pay," think of some others.

Instead of allowing Schwarzenegger to craft this combat-pay proposal by himself or with conservative allies, Shelleda’s union should ask for a seat at the table and help the governor shape a sensible “combat pay” provision. This idea could attract and keep better teachers in the schools where they are needed the most.

John Dean Agrees with Me

This isn’t something I’m especially proud of. On the other hand, when it comes to muscling reporters to reveal their sources, working for the Nixon administration probably gave Dean considerable insight.

I’ve blogged previously here, here, and here on the legal issues surrounding the Intimigate special prosecutor’s insistence that reporters reveal the “two senior administration officials” who leaked Valerie Plame’s name and job to Robert Novak. (A couple of my posts have to do with a TV reporter in Rhode Island who ended up going to jail for criminal contempt in a similar case).

Now comes John Dean, noting that Judith Miller of the New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine are almost out of appeals in Intimigate. They refused to divulge their source to the grand jury, and the district court held them in civil contempt. Pending appeal, life has gone on as normal. But unless the contempt orders are overturned, Miller and Cooper will eventually go to jail and pay $1000 per day until they answer the special prosecutor’s questions (I assume their employers will cover the fines, but the reporters will have to do the jail time). A D.C. Circuit panel affirmed the contempt orders, and the full court just declined to rehear the case.

That leaves only one more appeal: to the Supreme Court. Dean thinks the Court won’t take the case, and I think he’s right. Dean also thinks, as I did, and as David Tatel of the D.C. Circuit said in his concurrence to the denial of rehearing, that existing Supreme Court case law quite clearly covers this case. That is, from the outset it’s been obvious that Miller and Cooper had no legal basis to refuse to testify (the same goes for other subpoena recipients like Tim Russert, who apparently backed down and did testify). The only thing that could change that would be for the Supreme Court to overrule or limit its seminal decision in this area from 30 years ago. I agree with Dean that the Court would take this case only if it were seriously considering overruling its precedent. Dean gives a few reasons why the Court is probably not interested in doing so, and I think there are additional reasons.

So can we look forward to a wrap-up of the grand jury’s investigation--and, presumably, some indictments--in the near future? Probably not quite yet. Miller and Cooper have 90 days from the denial of rehearing to file their cert. petition with the Supreme Court. That’ll be some time in late July. When the Court returns from its summer recess at the end of September, it’ll start issuing massive orders denying certiorari in long lists of cases that will have been filed over the summer. So the earliest this could be over would be in early October. But if the Court considers this petition less than a slam-dunk, it might hang onto it for a while. If the Solicitor General decides not to file an opposition to the petition, as he often does, the Court might review the case and then request the S.G. to file an opposition. That could drag out the Court’s review of the petition into the new year.

Even then, Miller and Cooper might elect to go to jail for at least a short while as a protest against what they’ll see as the invasion of a reporter’s privilege. So who knows when we’ll see the end of this? Under the scenario I’ve outlined, they might testify in February or March 2006, and maybe we’ll have indictments by about a year from today. Of course, if the Court agrees to hear the case, we might not have a decision until June 2006 or even (though not likely) June 2007--and the decision might require the district court to start all over and gather evidence in order to apply a new constitutional test announced by the Supremes.

Two points about this process continue to interest me. First is the fact that Bush could make all of these problems go away by requiring all of his senior advisors to sign a waiver of any confidentiality promise they got from Miller, Cooper, Novak, et al. Indeed, in response to an earlier subpoena, Cooper initially refused to testify, but then (according to the appeals court)
“agreed to provide testimony and documents relevant to a specific source who had stated that he had no objection to their release.” The reporter in the Rhode Island case also said that the defense lawyer who had leaked a videotape to him, in violation of a court order, had continued to request that his identity be kept confidential, and that if he had not, the reporter would have disclosed it.

The White House isn't going to make its officials waive confidentiality, of course--that would make it too easy to trace the leak back to the politically embarrassing source. But it is something to bear in mind when the reporters testify at trial. Can you just see this administration, notoriously unsympathetic to the First Amendment and the importance of the press’s reporting on government conduct, whining about how the courts are violating the reporters’ sacred right to keep their sources confidential? I hope someone (Timmy R? Are you listening?) points out that the administration could have protected the reporters’ rights by requiring waivers, but instead they protected criminals by allowing them to hide behind the reporters’ bravery in the face of jail time. (Not that I like this rhetoric, but considering that Dubya is the kind of non-libertarian conservative who thinks that defendants who refuse to testify are “hiding behind” the Fifth Amendment, I say have at it.)

The second point is that Novak himself has apparently not been requested or subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury. If the point of the investigation were simply to identify the leaker for prosecution, you’d have thought Novak would be the first reporter called before the grand jury. Why hasn’t he been? I can only guess, but I wonder whether the special prosecutor thinks that Novak might be criminally liable. I’m not sure what the theory would be; IIRC, 18 U.S.C. § 2 would cover aiding and abetting a federal crime, but was Novak’s publication of the leak aiding and abetting? Or could Novak be indicted for conspiracy to violate the statutes protecting classified information? Either theory seems a stretch to me. But if there's a realistic possibility he could be prosecuted, Novak could properly refuse to testify before the grand jury--not because of a reporter’s common-law privilege, but because of his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. If he invoked that privilege, then the only way the prosecutor could force him to testify would be to grant him immunity.

Perhaps the prosecutor wanted to keep open the possibility of seeking an indictment against Novak once he’s gotten more facts from the other reporters. In that case, he might not have wanted to force Novak into taking the Fifth. That would require the prosecutor either to give Novak immunity or, by refusing to do so, indicate that he considers Novak a possible defendant before he knows enough about the evidence to want to commit himself on that question. Questioning reporters who also received the leak, or similar leaks, but who did not go to print with them might be a way to delay the decision.

So, long story short: Don’t expect the climax to the special prosecutor’s investigation any time soon; but do expect some dramatic moments along the way.

Those Helpful Bush Volunteers

Regardless of the political party in residence, White Houses work carefully to orchestrate public events in every imaginable way, but not until the Bush White House has an administration paid as much attention to the crowd as to what happens on stage. The Bushies are giving a whole new meaning to the term “crowd control”:

The Secret Service in Washington last week sent agents to Denver to probe allegations by three area Democrats that they were ousted from Bush's March 21 (Social Security) event. The three did not stage any protest at the rally and were later told by the Secret Service they were removed because an anti-Bush bumper sticker was displayed on their vehicle.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the man who removed them was a GOP volunteer, but he refused to divulge his name or whether he works in Colorado or Washington. ''If someone is coming to an event to disrupt it, they are going to be asked to leave," he said.

No wonder Bush won re-election. His supporters have the ability to predict the future, knowing with utter certainty who is "coming to an event to disrupt it ..." But I digress.

The Secret Service knows the man's name, the source said, and has interviewed him. Secret Service spokesman Jim Mackin refused to comment for this story.

This is not the first time the White House has faced scrutiny for ousting critics from Bush appearances or peopling the audiences with friendly Republicans.

In Fargo, N.D., earlier this year, a local newspaper reported more than 40 residents were put on a list of people who should not be let in the door; the White House blamed the incident on an overzealous volunteer.

… In the Denver case, Alex Young, 25, Karen Bauer, 38, and Leslie Weise, 39, say they were forced out even though they never verbally protested or displayed anti-Bush shirts or signs. The White House has not disputed this account.

There’s an interesting pattern here — the enforcers, again and again, are simply unnamed “volunteers.” I’ve volunteered for a lot of political events in my life, and I’ve never been asked (or heard of anyone else asked) to:

1) Thoroughly scan the parking lot to see what bumper-stickers appear on people’s cars, and

2) Identify those with offending bumper-stickers and eject them from the event.

People don't go to such lengths on their own. It stands to reason that these GOP volunteers are being instructed to take these actions directly or indirectly by someone closely connected to the White House.

It is shameful that three citizens — who were not acting in a disruptive manner, contrary to McClellan's statement — would be ejected from an event whose costs their tax dollars were helping to pay. I hope the press stays on top of this issue and demands a measure of accountability from the White House.

(Yes, I know — I must be dreaming if I think that's going to happen.)

I Wonder Why

An article in the Newark Star-Ledger referred to "a large population of gay teenagers in Newark, which had been largely invisible." Now why would gay teens stay invisible? The rest of the article suggests a possible answer.

Shortly before a judge sentenced him to 20 years in prison yesterday for the stabbing death of a 15-year-old lesbian in downtown Newark, Richard McCullough felt the wrath of the victim's family....

The Newark teenager was stabbed to death about 3:20 a.m. on May 11, 2003, as she and four friends were waiting for a bus at Broad and Market streets after coming home from a club in New York's Greenwich Village.

McCullough, also of Newark, killed Gunn during a dispute that began when he and a friend, Allen Pierce, were driving by and asked the girls if they wanted to party. The girls responded that they were gay and not interested.

That's one fewer instrinsically morally evil teenager for Newark to worry about, invisible or otherwise. As a father, I personally find 30-year-old men who ask 15-year-old girls if they want to party more morally problematic, even when they don't back up the invitation with lethal force.

British Reportedly Complained About Bolton

John Bolton's nomination for UN ambassador just hit a new snag:

Newsweek reported, in its May 2 edition, that British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw complained about Bolton to then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in November 2003. Citing a "former Bush administration official who was there," Newsweek said Straw told Powell that Bolton — Powell's undersecretary for arms control and international security — was making it impossible to reach an agreement on Iran's nuclear program.

According to the official, Newsweek reports, Powell then turned to an aide and said, "Get a different view on [the Iranian problem]. Bolton is being too tough."

Newsweek said British officials "at the highest level" persuaded the White House to keep Bolton off the negotiating team that ultimately convinced Libya to give up its nuclear program. Bolton was unwilling to support a compromise under which the United States would drop its goal of regime change in favor of "policy change" in exchange for Libya's disarmament, the magazine reported.

According to Newsweek, a White House spokesman denied the version of these events provided by the magazine.