How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Intelligent Design

Dahlia Lithwick has written one of the funniest things I've ever read about the debate over "Intelligent Design." Here's a taste.

Let's face it: The problem with science has always been that each new discovery unleashes thousands of new questions and ambiguities. So really, the more we discover new stuff, the stupider we get. Clearly, that isn't working. ID says we shouldn't bother ourselves with resolving scientific inconsistencies or untangling puzzles. We should recognize that what God really wants is for us just to stop learning.

If you think ID belongs in the science classroom, you won't find it so funny. But if you think that ID is nothing more than gussied-up creation myths in a pseudo-science wrapper, I guarantee a guffaw or two.

The Feinstein Standard

Regarding the Senate vote yesterday to confirm John Roberts to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Washington Post reports:

"The pivotal appointment is the next one," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who opposed Roberts. "The comparison obviously is with O'Connor," she said, in contrast to the reliably conservative Rehnquist.

Be careful, senator. This kind of standard may serve Democrats' short-term interests, but, in the long run, it could come back to haunt liberals.

Suppose a Democrat is in the White House 15 to 20 years from now (the very notion may seem remote, but indulge me for just a moment). If Clarence Thomas or Antonin Scalia were to step down from the court, could conservative senators point to the Feinstein standard and insist that the next nominee should have a judicial or constitutional philosophy comparatively similar to Scalia and Thomas?

Even if there weren't long-term political pitfalls to the Feinstein standard, I have a hard time seeing the intellectual rationale for insisting that a new justice must reflect the views of the justice he or she is replacing.

If Feinstein believes Bush's next high court nominee holds views that would unduly curtail civil rights, the right of privacy, and other individual rights, then she can (and she should) vote against this nominee. But don't claim justification by pointing to Sandra Day O'Connor as an appropriate template for the new nominee.

Perhaps the Pen Truly Is Mightier Than the Sword

The world's biggest asshole is blaming an editorial in a Texas newspaper for why he was indicted by a grand jury yesterday. According to the AP, Tom DeLay blames an editorial published by the Austin American-Statesman for pushing a Texas prosecutor to pursue the criminal indictment against him:

"It was this renewed political pressure in the waning days of his hollow investigation that led this morning's action," DeLay said Wednesday after a grand jury indicted him on a criminal conspiracy charge.

... DeLay said that prosecutor Ronnie Earle had said as recently as two weeks ago that DeLay was not the target or focus of his probe into election spending in the 2002 state legislative campaigns.

"Soon thereafter, Mr. Earle's hometown newspaper ran a biting editorial about his investigation, rhetorically asking what the point had been, after all, if I wasn't to be indicted,'' DeLay said.

... Arnold Garcia, editorial page editor for the American-Statesman, said the newspaper was doing its job in writing the [Sept. 11 editorial]. "We're commenting on an item of public interest,'' Garcia said. "But you should never forget the newspaper didn't indict Mr. DeLay. A grand jury did."

The editorial said Earle and the grand jury may have good reason for indicting just organizations, but "time is running out, and on the face of it, the felony indictments returned last week against the Texas Association of Business and the now nonexistent Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee are disappointing."

The American-Statesman posted the Sept. 11 editorial on its Web site Wednesday, along with a new editorial commenting on the indictment and on Delay's remarks.

"DeLay was not mentioned by name, nor was there an allusion to him," the new editorial states. "It is either DeLay's hubris or his conscience that leads him to think that the editorial targeted him."

Conscience? Nah, can't be. Doctors must have removed that organ from DeLay's body when they took out his appendix.

Two Reasons I'm Proud to Live in Amsterdam

1. This was built with money from city, provincial, and national governments, and the first pile was driven by the Christian Democrat alderman for the arts.
2. When I was in the Dam square the other evening, just near the royal palace and in an area whose heavy pedestrian traffic includes people with plenty of food and drink on board late at night, this was in pristine condition.

More info (English available on some pages of this site).

He Is a Great Quarterback -- Speaking of Zocor ....

It's all about transition. When a pharmaceutical sales rep wants to move his company's drugs, it takes more than just wining and dining physicians at chic, high-priced restaurants. It requires that sales reps find a way to connect virtually any comment a doctor makes to their drugs.

The following 3 scenarios are from course materials used by the drug giant Merck & Co. to train sales representatives from 1999 to 2004. Courtesy of Harper's magazine:

Scenario 1

Physician says: “What a nice restaurant! I hear that the food is wonderful.”

Possible rep response: “You’re right, it is. I’d only arrange the best for you. I’m sure you feel the same way about your patients. When you decide to prescribe an antihypertensive, what characteristics make one product stand out from another?”

Scenario 2

Physician says: “I love coming to this restaurant. It has a great menu.”

Possible rep response: “That’s one of the reasons I chose this place. You can get boiled lobster or a venison steak. Speaking of a great menu, what concerns you about the HMOs you’re dealing with, limiting your choices when choosing a specific drug therapy for a patient?”

Scenario 3

Physician says: “What a great football game yesterday. Did you see how effective Drew Bledsoe was in the fourth quarter? That guy is amazing.”

Possible rep response: “Bledsoe is effective on so many levels. He’s a leader, you feel safe with him carrying the ball, and he’s a proven winner. You know who else that sounds like? Zocor, a market leader with an eight-year safety record, proven to save the lives of your patients. Physician, what concerns do you have about Zocor leading your team in the fight against congenital heart disease?”

I don't think I could give any of these responses without suddenly breaking out in laughter. Which is probably why I'm not a pharmaceutical sales rep.

Unprecedented

This Pennsylvania ruling is incredible on many levels.

In a groundbreaking ruling in support of the rights of gay and lesbian parents, a court in Pennsylvania on Tuesday said the lesbian partner of the biological parent of twins should have primary custody of the children. The decision, by the superior court, upheld a lower court ruling that Patricia Jones would provide a better home than her ex-partner, Ellen Boring, even though Boring is the biological mother of the twins. "We believe that the record supports a finding by clear and convincing evidence that the best interests of the children are served by granting primary physical custody to Jones, for a number of reasons discussed in the trial court's opinion," a unanimous three-judge panel stated in its opinion.
...
Jones and Boring were partners for 14 years. During that time they planned a family, resulting in twins for whom both Jones and Boring served as caregivers. After the couple split up in 2001, the trial court found that Jones had parental rights to the children and awarded joint custody to both mothers, giving primary physical custody to Boring. Later Jones filed for primary physical custody, citing Boring's history of contempt in observing the visitation schedule set by the court and her attempts to unilaterally remove the children from Pennsylvania. The court found "convincing reasons" that being in Jones's custody would be in the best interest of the children and awarded her primary physical custody. That ruling was appealed by Boring, contending that as she was the children's biological mother and former primary custodian, the children could not be removed from her custody without a finding she is unfit, a very high standard. The superior court of Pennsylvania found that argument to be invalid and upheld the lower court's decision to grant custody to Jones.

It is in state and lower level courts that the future of gay and lesbian family law is being decided, on a case-by-case basis. It's always nice to see judges prevent a vindictive parent from using their children to punish the other parent, although in this case it's extra special.

Pat Robertson's Foot Discovered To Be Lodged Permanently in Mouth

There has been a lot of blame going around for Katrina. Some have said it was God's way of preventing Southern Decadence, others have said it was punishment for abortion, has sometihng to do with "intelligent design," while still others have have had a more generic approach and laid the blame at the feet of "sin."

However, you have to hand it to Pat Robertson for thinking completely outside the box and coming up with the most convoluted warning message from God ever. Who is at fault for both Katrina and 9/11? Ellen Degeneres for hosting the Emmys.

"By choosing an avowed lesbian for this national event, these Hollywood elites have clearly invited God's wrath," Robertson said on "The 700 Club" on [9/5/05]. "Is it any surprise that the Almighty chose to strike at Miss Degeneres's hometown?"

Robertson also noted that the last time Degeneres hosted the Emmys, in 2001, the September 11 terrorism attacks took place shortly before the ceremony.“This is the second time in a row that God has invoked a disaster shortly before lesbian Ellen Degeneres hosted the Emmy Awards,” Robertson explained to his approximately one million viewers. “America is waiting for her to apologize for the death and destruction that her sexual deviance has brought onto this great nation.”

Robertson added that other tragedies of the past several years can be linked to Degeneres’ growing national prominence. September, 2003, for example, is both the month that her talk show debuted and when insurgents first gained a foothold in Iraq following the successful March invasion. “Now we know why things took a turn for the worse,” he explained.

OK, while this is a parody, but who can tell anymore? I'm starting to wonder if Pat Robertson's is the man behind the Weekly World News.

What is Denny Smoking?

Hastert wants Dreier to take over DeLay's duties?

First of all, there are only a handful of known gay republicans in congress-- Rep. David Dreier(CA) is one of them-- he lives with this Chief of Staff for pete's sake!

I can practically hear the Family Research Council howling over the appointment of Dreier from more than 10 blocks away.

Update: Dreier's 24-year record on gay rights issues is, as expected, bad. Last year back he received the "Roy Cohn Award."

Update, part deux: I guess someone took Denny's hash pipe away. As mentioned in the comments, Dreier's name was initially floated then rescinded after a big closed door meeting yesterday. Majority Whip Roy Blunt (MO) was tapped instead. Allegedly there was right-wing pressure to reject Dreier for the top post. Hmmmm. Wonder why that would be?

*IF* Dreier was rejected as temporary speaker because he's gay it certainly serves him right considering that he voted against the Employment Non-Discriminiation Act.

Mission Accomplished

Someone other than us referred to DeLay as "The World's Biggest Asshole."

I have never been so proud.

Double-Ended Probe

First DeLay's indictment, now Frist is being formally investigated.

Both leaders of the GOP are getting uncomfortably, publicly probed at the same time.

If only they could make it a triple-- I'd really like to see Rove probed. All we need is the Valerie Plame investigation to open up wide today and the whole news cycle would turn into political porn, providing us all with the political equivalent of a wet dream.

Bush: We're Ready for the Insurgents, But They're Still Gonna Kick Our Ass

... or, mostly, the asses of ordinary Iraqi citizens. ABC News reports on today's Rose Garden statement by President Bush:

President Bush on Wednesday warned there will be an upsurge in violence in Iraq before next month's voting, but said the terrorists will fail. "Our troops are ready for them," he said.

Huh?

If U.S. troops "are ready for" the insurgents, then why will the insurgents be successful in raising the level of violence?

It's one thing to say our troops will respond swiftly when violence happens, but to say we're ready for the insurgents is to mislead the American people. We're no more ready for the insurgents than Michael Brown was ready for Katrina.

World's Biggest Asshole INDICTED

DeLay indicted on conspiracy charges
House majority leader's position in jeopardy.
By Laylan Copelin
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, September 28, 2005

A Travis County grand jury today indicted U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on one count of criminal conspiracy, jeopardizing the Sugar Land Republican's leadership role as the second most powerful Texan in Washington, D.C.

The charge, a state jail felony punishable by up to two years incarceration, stems from his role with his political committee, Texans for a Republican Majority, a now-defunct organization that already had been indicted on charges of illegally using corporate money during the 2002 legislative elections.

Hey, Tom, maybe this is just God's special way of sending you a very personal message-- "you're fired."

Will the Select Committee Finish Its Job?

In a column on ex-FEMA Director Michael Brown's appearance Tuesday before the House Select Committee on Katrina, the Washington Post's Dana Milbank writes:

Rep. Gene Taylor, one of two Democrats who ignored the boycott, said Brown was in way over his head. "You folks fell on your face. You get an F-minus in my book," he attested. The Mississippian added: "Maybe the president made a very good move when he asked you to leave your job."

I agree. Of course, if Rep. Taylor's assessment is accurate, then one could also say that the president made a very bad move when he originally asked Brown to take the job.

Like Milbank, I thought the members on the committee did "a heck of a job on Brownie yesterday." But the shortcomings in the federal response to Katrina can't all be laid at Brown's feet. The select committee has more to do before its job is truly finished.

Brown said he repeatedly talked with officials at the White House about FEMA's needs as it responded to the Katrina destruction. One of the White House officials named by Brown was the president's chief of staff, Andrew Card. Will members of the select committee have the balls to insist that Card appear before them?

And what about Michael Chertoff, who heads the Homeland Security Department? As Brown testified yesterday, it was Chertoff who took a saw to FEMA's budget. Those funding cuts -- probably approved by some of the very members of Congress who on Tuesday gleefully poked and prodded Brown for answers -- may have undermined FEMA's ability to respond.

Yes, the select committee did "a heck of a job" on Brown, but its job is far from completed.

Pending Indictment for the World's Biggest Asshole?

I'm not holding my breath, however, if DeLay gets indicted and consequently dethroned there's going to be one helluva party at my house!

Conspiracy charge a possibility for DeLay

Travis County grand jury to weigh indicting House leader, lawyers say

By Laylan Copelin
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, September 28, 2005

U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's leadership post is on the line today as a Travis County grand jury is expected to consider indicting DeLay on conspiracy charges, several lawyers familiar with the investigation said.

The charges would stem from the DeLay's role in using corporate money in the 2002 elections. State law generally bans corporate money from campaign activities.

"I wouldn't have expected this a year ago," one Austin criminal defense lawyer said. "It's quite a turnaround if it happens."
...
An indictment would not force DeLay to resign as a member of Congress, but the GOP's rules would demand that he resign his post as majority leader.

Now if only Frist gets indicted then we'd have both GOP leaders looking like the sleazebags that we know they are and 2006 could be a "throw the bums out" election...hey, a girl can hope.

Straight Fokkers

Robert de Niro and Ben Stiller managed two pretty successful comedies based in part on juvenile humor stemming from the fact that Stiller's character's surname was Fokker.

Fokker is a Dutch name (the Red Baron flew a Fokker biplane). The Dutch word fokker means "breeder," and the corresponding verb is fokken. Example: Ik fok honden means "I breed dogs."

A few years back, it was hip in some circles to refer to heterosexuals as "breeders."

Put these disparate facts together and you realize that we heteros are just a bunch of straight fokkers.

Anarchy and the UN

Here is the weekly post from the CFD:

As Darfur descends into anarchy, the United Nations appears unable to do any more than express concerns and continue to ask the parties involved to cease their violent attacks.

After rebels attacked and took control of the town of Sheiria last week, the Sudanese army said it was prepared to retake the town, to which the rebels replied that they would "repulse anything from the Sudanese government's army."

The upsurge in violence forced thousands more out of the villages, swelling the ranks of the internally displaced that already numbers nearly 2 million.

As the violence was raging, even the UN's own Special Representative Jan Pronk, a man who tends to see everything in Sudan through rose-colored glasses, was forced to admit that the violence was spiraling out of control. He was joined by the US government, which stated that the "uptick in violence ... is of concern to us" and the UN's genocide advisor, Juan Mendez, who acknowledged that Khartoum had done little to disarm militias or end the "culture of impunity" that exists in Darfur.

Pronk went on to state that the UN must give the Sudanese government and rebels an ultimatum to compel them to reach some sort of peace agreement and even made the startling admission that, thus far, the UN has utterly failed to deal with Darfur

Pronk said that when the Darfur conflict began U.N. humanitarian officials agitated for the Security Council to take up the conflict, which it refused to do.

A "massive force" was needed [in 2003] then to guarantee security but instead several thousand African Union troops and monitors had to carry the burden. And now the council needed to plan for how to keep the peace in case a peace deal was signed.

Pronk was quoted elsewhere as saying

He said the war situation in Sudan was "everybody’s failure" and could have been avoided if the international community had acted quickly.

How could the present day situation have been avoided?

"I think there should have been intervention in 2003," Pronk said, adding that while the occurrence of genocide in the country was debatable, "There was mass slaughter of people. It needed humanitarian intervention."

Of course, the international community did not act quickly, nor are they acting quickly now.

In fact, while Darfur burned, the BBC reported that American and British intelligence officials, along with representatives of the UN, China and 12 African nations were in Khartoum discussing cooperation on counter-terrorism operations in the region.

Hosting the conference is part of a sustained diplomatic push by Sudan to shake off its pariah status ... When the opportunity for this second regional conference on counter-terrorism came up, Sudan competed for the right to host it ... The decision of the CIA to agree to come to Sudan shows the pragmatism of the intelligence community against the continuing political desire of America to punish Sudan for what has happened in Darfur.

Khartoum continues to work to "shake off its pariah status," with Sudanese Ambassador Khidir Haroun Ahmed publishing an op-ed in the Washington Times today claiming that "After two decades of brutal civil war, Sudan is emerging as a reminder that engagement, dialogue and intensive diplomacy can resolve seemingly intractable problems and permit a country to look to the future with optimism."

Meanwhile, the violence and anarchy Khartoum unleashed is now spilling over into neighboring Chad, a country that is already host to an estimated 200,000 refugees from Darfur

A group of unidentified armed men in military uniform crossed into Chad from Sudan early on Monday, killing 36 herders and stealing livestock, the Chadian government said.

The violence, in addition to threatening the people of Darfur, is also threatening the relief work that sustains them, as U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland noted yesterday

"If it (the violence) continues to escalate, we may not be able to sustain our operations for 2.5 million people requiring life-saving assistance," he said, adding: "In Darfur, it (aid distribution) could all end tomorrow. It is as serious as that."

As Eric Reeves never fails to remind us, in December 2004, Egeland warned that 100,000 people could die a month if humanitarian organizations are forced to suspend operations in Darfur.

Despite all of this, Pronk still managed to recently declare that progress was being made on implementing the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the North and South and on efforts to reach peace in Darfur.

Such a statement is utterly feckless and shameful.

As Gerald Caplan, author of "Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide," wrote last week

But what we are learning from Darfur, which we never remotely imagined, is that even naming a genocide is an utterly inconsequential exercise in hot air ... despite the apparent concern of many western leaders, despite the pressure from elements of civil society, the catastrophe in Darfur is explicitly allowed to continue ... As always, everything takes precedence over the suffering and death of hundreds of thousands of distant, exotic others. It won't be the last time."

After two years, 400,000 deaths, and an estimated 3.5 million now entirely dependent on humanitarian aid, it must be stated that the UN and every one of its member nations have failed the people of Darfur and, in all likelihood, will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Those Tender-Footed Democrats

On his blog, John Moltz speaks for a lot of us with this post on Tuesday about Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and the HCA stock sale controversy:

A Senate Democrat, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said: “This doesn’t help Bill Frist. It just looks bad. We’ll see what happens.”

Writes Moltz:

Another gutsy Democrat speaks out!

(I can understand not wanting to put your foot in your mouth by claiming Frist has an ethics problem before he’s been indicted or something, but WTF do you need anonymity for to say that?! That’s obvious! Oh, these tender-footed Democrats we have!)

More Evidence of Post-Katrina Hype

I posted on this a several days ago -- the revelation that so much of what was reported during the first 36 hours of post-Katrina media coverage was hyped or imagined. Now, the Associated Press has offered yet more proof of the gap between rumor and reality:

On September 1, with desperate Hurricane Katrina evacuees crammed into the convention center, Police Chief Eddie Compass reported: "We have individuals who are getting raped; we have individuals who are getting beaten." Five days later, he told Oprah Winfrey that babies were being raped.

On the same show, Mayor Ray Nagin warned: "They have people standing out there, have been in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."

The ugliest reports -- children with slit throats, women dragged off and raped, corpses piling up in the basement -- soon became a searing image of post-Katrina New Orleans.

The stories ... were repeated by public officials. Many news organizations, including The Associated Press, carried the witness accounts and official pronouncements, and in some cases later repeated the claims as fact, without attribution.

But now, a month after the chaos subsided, police are re-examining the reports and finding that many of them have little or no basis in fact.

They have no official reports of rape and no eyewitnesses to sexual assault. The state Department of Health and Hospitals counted 10 dead at the Superdome and four at the convention center. Only two of those are believed to have been murdered.

One of those victims -- found at the Superdome -- appears to have been killed elsewhere before being brought to the stadium ...

Oil Prices and a Trip Down Memory Lane

Five years ago, during the summer of 2000, gas prices spiked upward (although nowhere near the level they've reached today). Back then, Iran-Contra alumnus Oliver North wrote a column in which he took shots at presidential candidate Al Gore, saying that consumers are "getting 'Gored' " at the pump.

North wrote:

Truth be told, the price of gas is high because the Clinton-Gore administration has no influence with the OPEC cartel and because -- and this is important -- they want higher gas prices.

In his monumental tome, "Earth in the Balance," Gore extols the virtues of higher gasoline prices as the way to get rid of the evil internal combustion engine ...

So if those are the two reasons why gas prices rise, then which explains the situation in 2005, Ollie? Does the Bush administration have even less influence over OPEC than Clinton-Gore? Or does the Bush gang want higher gas prices?

In this 2000 presidential debate, Bush assured Americans that oil was "an issue I know a lot about." If so, it didn't make him a success in the oil business. And, if so, Bush's knowledge has not proven all that beneficial for the average American.

Not Your Father's Military

The military has admitted that they have had a secret policy in place to run around "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" during wartime. Too bad it's in direct conflict with the first policy-- people who are out aren't supposed to be able to serve.

National Guard troops and reservists who come out [of the closet] to their superiors are routinely sent to serve in Iraq under a policy designed to prevent soldiers from falsely claiming they are gay to avoid duty, an Army spokesperson said last week. "If a soldier 'tells,' they still have to go to war and the homosexual issue is postponed until they return to the U.S. and the unit is demobilized," said Kim Waldron, a civilian employee at U.S. Army Forces Command at Fort McPherson, Ga. LGBT advocacy groups have long maintained such a policy was in place, but Pentagon officials had denied it.

Don't worry, we'll dishonorably discharge you after you come back from serving your country and fighting in the war. (Well, if you come back.)

So, the theory is that gays can't be in the military because they make other people uncomfortable, they're bad for morale, and so on. Right? This exposes the rank hypocrisy and idiocy of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Gays have and do serve and the military knows it, accepts it, but then treats them like crap afterwards.

Monotheism Has Problems

Rude Pundit responds to an e-mail he received from the Family Research Council that warned Americans that Katrina is clearly God's way of sending us all a telegram that we don't worship Him enough.

But it is worthless to argue with people who think a mystical sky wizard farted giant anus-looking storms to fuck up the Gulf Coast twice. It's worthless to ask why God decided to kick the asses of the poorest people, black and white, while leaving the French Quarter, where all the sex, booze, and feather queen fashion shows reign supreme, relatively unscathed.

It's because the wacky God of fundamentalists is as inconsistent and incomprehensible as a pet ferret that's gotten into your meth stash. God's hatin', he's lovin', he's smitin', he's depositin' great gobs o' god jizz into a teenage virgin. Really, this version of God's got quite the multiple personality syndrome. Man, the ancient cultures had it all over Christians in this god shit: instead of tryin' to come up with one all-encompassing God, they had all those many deities to blame shit on. The Mayans had kick-ass gods, like Ah-Puch, the most vicious god of death; Ixtab, the goddess of suicide; Cizin, the earthquake god; and Ixchel, the moon goddess. So you didn't have to fit disaster and happiness into one god figure. You could blame anyone you wanted. It's so much more convenient. It's so much less mind-blowing. And it doesn't require the faux-cryptic "we cannot know the ways of God." If it's a fuckin' earthquake god, you know what that bastard does.

But let's say, for a moment, that the Christian God is "warning" America, that it's a whole Sodom and Gomorrah deal. Maybe we could say that God's saying that it's time to work on the whole global warming thing. Maybe we could say that launching a big-time God attack on an oil production center says it's time to start buildin' more hybrid cars. Hell, maybe we could say that there's worse sins than tossin' a few coins on a craps table while gettin' fellated by your boyfriend.

Generally speaking, if I want someone to like me more I don't try to convince them by killing a lot of people and destroying their entire lives. You'd think that God would be smart enough to know that hurricanes are probably one of the worst methods possible to make friends and influence people. Anyone who believes this kind of thoughtless nonsense needs to either go to a doctor and get some help and/or promise the rest of us they won't breed.

Underreported Katrina Story?

It's one thing to be abandoned, it's another entirely to be both locked up and abandoned. From my buddy David over at his anti-death penalty blog.

As Hurricane Katrina began pounding New Orleans, the sheriff's department abandoned hundreds of inmates imprisoned in the city’s jail, Human Rights Watch said today.

Inmates in Templeman III, one of several buildings in the Orleans Parish Prison compound, reported that as of Monday, August 29, there were no correctional officers in the building, which held more than 600 inmates. These inmates, including some who were locked in ground-floor cells, were not evacuated until Thursday, September 1, four days after flood waters in the jail had reached chest-level.

“Of all the nightmares during Hurricane Katrina, this must be one of the worst,” said Corinne Carey, researcher from Human Rights Watch. “Prisoners were abandoned in their cells without food or water for days as floodwaters rose toward the ceiling.”
...
“They left us to die there,” Dan Bright, an Orleans Parish Prison inmate told Human Rights Watch at Rapides Parish Prison, where he was sent after the evacuation.

As the water began rising on the first floor, prisoners became anxious and then desperate. Some of the inmates were able to force open their cell doors, helped by inmates held in the common area. All of them, however, remained trapped in the locked facility.

“The water started rising, it was getting to here,” said Earrand Kelly, an inmate from Templeman III, as he pointed at his neck. “We was calling down to the guys in the cells under us, talking to them every couple of minutes. They were crying, they were scared. The one that I was cool with, he was saying ‘I'm scared. I feel like I'm about to drown.' He was crying.”

Some inmates from Templeman III have said they saw bodies floating in the floodwaters as they were evacuated from the prison. A number of inmates told Human Rights Watch that they were not able to get everyone out from their cells.

Not only did the government fail to help get the poor, free people out of the city, but they left prisoners locked up in a flooding prison without food or water? Think this qualifies as cruel and unusual? The government's systematic, comprehensive failure to adequately prepare for a hurricane people have been openly concerned about for decades is astounding.

Ex-FEMA Director Tries to Spin the Agency's Role

The New York Times reports on former FEMA Director Michael Brown's appearance before a congressional panel today:

... Brown told Congress on Tuesday he made ''specific mistakes'' in leading the initial federal government response to Hurricane Katrina. But Brown also blamed state and local officials for government failures.

... He suggested that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had gotten a bum rap because many people incorrectly believe it serves as something of a federal rapid-response force.

Don't worry, Mr. Brown. Recent events have shattered any lingering belief by the public that FEMA plays a "rapid-response" role.

I can't imagine where the media and the American people would have gotten the impression that FEMA played a rapid-response role. Unless, umm ..... maybe it was from this FEMA update, released last September:

FEMA Prepares for Hurricane Frances
FEMA Region 4 Operations Center (ROC) has been activated and will assume management of the Federal response and recovery activities in Florida effective 8:00 a.m. today. The Emergency Response Team National (ERT-N)-RED is on alert ... One Emergency Response Team-Advance (ERT-A) has deployed to Tallahassee ... Three Rapid Needs Assessment Teams have deployed to Orlando ... Ten Mobile Disaster Recovery Centers are staged in Florida for a rapid response.

Or perhaps it was from this FEMA news release in July about Hurricane Dennis:

Disaster Medical Assistance Teams (DMATs) hasten to the scene, providing a rapid-response element to supplement local health care.

Or maybe it was from this FEMA report:

More than ten rapid response teams and two Mitigation Assessment Teams were deployed (in Florida last year) to document observations and recommendations (about hurricane relief efforts).

"... the New York Times Calls It More Hilarious Than a Mushroom Cloud Over Denver"

Well, actually, the N.Y. Times said no such thing about this film, but at least I got your attention. In The New Yorker, Hendrik Hertzberg writes about a film that opened recently at an auditorium on Manhattan's East Side:

The film, “Last Best Chance,” was a bit unusual .... You might even say it isn’t really a movie at all — it just plays one on TV. Set in the near future, it takes the form of a slick international suspense thriller, the kind that cuts from a rainswept warehouse in a bleak corner of the former Soviet empire to a dimly lit White House Situation Room.

It has no sex scenes, no car chases, and no wisecracking sidekicks, and it is only forty-five minutes long, but it lays out a frighteningly plausible narrative of how terrorists might buy or steal the makings of a nuclear bomb, assemble one, smuggle it halfway around the world, and send it on its way to an American city in an S.U.V.

The closest thing to a star in the cast is Fred Thompson, the lawyer turned actor turned Republican senator from Tennessee turned actor again. Thompson plays the President of the United States, and his character is mature, wise, and serious — the one jarringly unrealistic note in the picture.

“Last Best Chance” was made not by a movie studio but by a singularly unraffish indie producer: Nunn’s Nuclear Threat Initiative .... The blurb on its poster comes not from Ebert & Roeper but from Kean & Hamilton — Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, the chairman and vice-chairman of the 9/11 Commission. Its grosses are zero. For the past five months, it has been distributed free on DVD.

Now it has been taken up by HBO, which plans to show it repeatedly, beginning on October 17th.

“Last Best Chance” is entertaining, in a grim sort of way, but entertainment is not its raison d’être. Its purpose is to stimulate public support and political pressure on the Bush Administration and Congress to do something serious about the terrifying danger of nuclear terrorism. And this is a scandal

It is scandalous that at this late date, four years after the attacks on New York and Washington, people like (former Senator Sam) Nunn, (Senator Richard) Lugar, and (financier Warren) Buffett feel it necessary to go to such unorthodox lengths to get the attention of Washington’s responsibles.

“Last Best Chance” is a symptom of an immense failure of national, and especially Presidential, leadership. “As short a time ago as nine years or eight years,” Turner said in his remarks after the screening, “I still thought that nuclear weapons, biological and chemical weapons, was an area that the government took care of.”

One of the attendees at the screening was Graham Allison, the founding dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and the director of its Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, who held high Pentagon posts under Reagan and Clinton. Allison’s “Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe,” which has just been published in an expanded paperback edition, is the indispensable text on the subject. “Americans are no safer from a nuclear terrorist attack today than we were on September 10, 2001,” he writes.

... In 1991, thanks to the initiative of Senator Lugar and then-Senator Nunn, the United States launched a program aimed at giving the Russians financial and technical help in “locking down” their bombs and other weapons-adaptable nuclear material subject to theft or diversion.

Fourteen years later, half of Russia’s material is still unsecured, and at the present rate the job won’t be finished until 2022. We don’t have that long. If the President cared to make the effort, it could be finished in four years or less.

Also in urgent need of attention are about a hundred civilian laboratories and reactors in dozens of countries, including the United States — all containing bomb-grade material, some protected by no more than a night watchman and a chain-link fence.

... After the September 11th attacks, Condoleezza Rice said that no one had imagined planes being smashed into buildings. After Hurricane Katrina, President Bush said that no one had imagined the breach of the levees. These statements were untrue, of course, but Rice and Bush probably believed them at the time.

What no one can say, or can have said in good faith for many years, is that no one has imagined nuclear terrorism, and not just onscreen.

Mayor: It Was a "Death Trap" .... FEMA: "Effective"

Are there any lessons that federal emergency planners can learn from the latest hurricane that struck the Gulf coast? Apparently not. On NPR's "Morning Edition," that was essentially the response from a FEMA official who was interviewed about Hurricane Rita.

NPR's Steve Inskeep pointed out that soon before Rita hit the coast, fleeing evacuees from southeastern Texas clogged highways heading north of the Houston area, bringing traffic to a complete standstill. Many motorists ran out of gas as their cars waited in the gridlock. The situation prompted Mayor Bill White of Houston to warn that the chaos on northbound freeways was a potential "death trap" if the hurricane hit land and then veered toward the metro area.

Inskeep asked if the highway bottlenecks would lead FEMA to talk with state officials about rethinking future evacuation procedures. The FEMA spokesman's answer: Basically, that's up to the state and local officials. Inskeep then asked for the FEMA spokesman's assessment of the highway gridlock. From his perspective, said the FEMA spokesman, the evacuation seemed to be "effective."

While Texas' highways north of the Houston area were choked with traffic as Rita approached, what was Gov. Rick Perry saying?

"Be calm. Be strong. Say a prayer for Texas."

That's most reassuring, Governor.

I guess effective emergency planning is something we just have to leave up to supernatural beings.

Things Get Testy in the WH Press Room

Ladies and gentlemen! In this corner, the defending champion of dodge-and-deception, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan. In the other corner, an ABC news reporter.

Excerpts from Friday's White House press briefing:

REPORTER: How is it going to help the people of Texas practically prepare for this storm that the President is going to fly in to take a firsthand look at preparations and show support for first responders? How is that going to practically help them do what they have to do?

McCLELLAN: Well, I think we're going to have as minimal a footprint as possible. We're not going to get in the way of the ongoing preparations that are going on. We go out of our way when we travel to make sure that that doesn't happen. The President wants to go in there and be able to thank all those first responders as they are gearing up for the challenges that will be coming shortly thereafter. That's why we're going there first, for a short amount of time, and then going on to Colorado. And it will also give him a chance to see firsthand some of the preparations that are underway on the ground.

REPORTER: But it sounds like a bit of a photo op, one that he'd prefer over playing the guitar at the airport photo op before Katrina.

McCLELLAN: Well, first of all, let's correct the record on that. There was a reporter from your news organization that was backstage during that event. That was an event to go and thank our troops and talk about the war on terrorism. And it was not an event, as you may have portrayed to some people that are watching this out there by this simple statement. It was --

REPORTER: He didn't pick up the guitar while the hurricane was rolling into Louisiana?

McCLELLAN: -- much more than that. The person that was entertaining our troops there presented a gift to the President. So I think you need to make that clear to everybody who's watching this or to your viewers. And it was one of your colleagues at ABC News who was backstage taking a picture of that.

REPORTER: It was a very good picture and I'm proud of her, but the question I have --

McCLELLAN: Yes, but that picture was taken by someone -- hang on, hang on, Terry -- that picture was taken by some people way out of context. And it was portrayed that the President was simply doing that, and that's not the case, as you and I know.

REPORTER: The point was that he was over there and not --

McCLELLAN: As you and I know, I had announced shortly before that, that we were returning the next morning. As you and I know, we had announced the President -- the day before -- all the briefings he was participating in. The President spoke the day before. He spoke that day about the hurricane. So let's just set the record straight.

REPORTER: Fair enough.

The Hot Zone

Yahoo has teamed up with journalist Kevin Sites, who will "spend the next year covering every major global conflict ... in "The Hot Zone."

The first dispatch come from Somalia, where 12 years ago the infamous "Black Hawk Down" incident occurred. Sites does a good job of explaining an oft-ignored point regarding just what had happened in June of 1993 and the role it played in the fury unleashed on the Army Rangers four months later

So much of what many Americans, including myself, know about Somalia comes from watching news coverage of the aftermath of the Battle of Mogadishu, and the chilling image of Somalis dragging a dead American soldier through the streets.

It was a seminal moment for Americans who collectively shook their heads and wondered how Operation Restore Hope, a joint humanitarian effort to protect United Nations relief supplies from falling into the hands of warlords, degenerated into bloody combat.

Historians say the key moment was when the mission shifted from protecting food supplies to capturing Aidid.

A major misstep in the operation, acknowledged even in the U.N.'s own independent inquiry, was a United States-led attack on what was believed to be a safe house in Mogadishu where members of Aidid's Habr Gedir clan were supposedly meeting to plan more violence against U.S. and U.N. forces.

In reality, elders of the clan, not gunmen, were meeting in the house. According to U.N. officials, the agenda (which was advertised in the local newspaper) was to discuss ways to peacefully resolve the conflict between Aidid and the multinational task force in Somalia, and perhaps even to remove Aidid as leader of the clan.

17-minute combat mission

What eventually took place on July 12, 1993, was a 17-minute combat operation in which U.S. Cobra attack helicopters fired 16 TOW missiles and thousands of 20-millimeter cannon rounds into the compound.

When the operation was over and the smoke had cleared, more than 50 of the clan elders, the oldest and most respected in their community, were dead. Many here agree that was the turning point in unifying Somalians against the U.S. and U.N. efforts here.

It would also lead to the deaths of four journalists, killed by angry Somali mobs when they arrived to cover the incident.

This is only the first installment, but I like what I see so far. Giving a journalist dedicated to covering "hot spots" his or her own forum is undoubtedly a good thing and I plan on reading it regularly.

A Quick Update on Bush's War on Terror

From the Harper's Index of Sept. 14:

Number of killed or captured suspects reported so far by U.S. media to be Al Qaeda’s “number 3” man : 4

Minimum number of people convicted on “terrorism-related charges” since 2001, according to Alberto Gonzales in April : 200

Actual number convicted on charges related to terrorism or national security : 39

Can You Name That Judge?

Here are some clues. This judge:

a) graduated 640th in a West Point class of 800.

b) was nicknamed "Captain America" during his stint in Vietnam.

c) can thank a trial of two male strippers for catapaulting him into the public's eye.

d) moved to Australia in the 1980s and worked for several months as a cowboy at a 42,000-acre ranch.

This final clue may give it away:

e) won election to the supreme court in his state by defeating Harold See, whose chief campaign adviser was Karl Rove.

In this month's Atlantic Monthly, staff writer Joshua Green's follows Roy Moore and "the rock" on a nationwide tour. It's an interesting, surreal article -- an almost superfluous description for an article about the "Ten Commandments" judge.

The Protest Against the Iraq War, Poverty, Israel ....

I was glad to know that roughly 100,000 people felt strongly enough about the Iraq war that they chose to gather near the White House on Saturday to protest. Of course, a number of the speakers delivered messages that were either unrelated or only marginally related to the Iraq war. This is how the Left works, unfortunately.

Organizers are so damned afraid of appearing "insensitive" that an anti-Iraq war platform ends up being diverted or hijacked, for example, to speak of "indigenous peoples," slam the World Bank and attack Israel. This is strange timing for a volley of anti-Israeli messages. Didn't Sharon just complete a pullout from Gaza and forcibly remove Israeli settlers who had been living there?

Even if one feels, as I do, that the Israeli settlers shouldn't have been encouraged to live there in the first place, one at least has to applaud the Sharon government's decision as a positive step forward.

One of the speakers at Saturday's anti-war protest was Mohammed Abed, a University of Wisconsin faculty member. It's rather telling that the best criticism that Abed could level at the Gaza withdrawal was that it "allows Israel to ... creat[e] an illusion of reasonableness and political compromise" and that "the (withdrawal) plan satisfies the international community’s yearning for progress in the 'peace process'; at the very least, it looks like a first step in the right direction."

Just as the U.S. government has long held a pro-Israeli bias, a pro-Palestinian bias is de rigueur among the Left. For the Left, acknowledging the shortcomings of both sides of this conflict would complicate the ability to conduct "die-ins" and write messages that fit on a protest sign. But enough about the Middle East.

The organizers of this protest rally should have had plenty of things to say about the Bush administration and its debacle in Iraq. Yet one of the organizers seemed to be reaching. According to the New York Times:

"It's significant that Bush is out of town," said William Dobbs, an organizer of the march. "It shows that he's turned his back on the peace movement, which represents a majority of the American public right now."

On the contrary, all that Bush's absence from Washington "shows" is that the president was nervous as hell that the his administration might (again) be caught with its pants down when Rita hit the Gulf coast. With his approval ratings in the toilet, Bush wanted to be in locations with appropriate photo-ops when Rita struck. No surprise there.

If it took knowing that Bush was out of town for Dobbs to realize that the president is no fan of the peace movement, then Dobbs is rather slow at putting two and two together.

Put it down, Orrin

Here's a thought, if it's rude to talk or play with your cell phone in a restaurant or in a business meeting isn't it obvious that it's even more inappropriate to play with one during Judiciary Hearings? Sheesh.

Screaming on the Inside

A frightening breakdown of cuts proposed by "Operation Offset," from Salon Premium:

The Republicans would freeze funding for the Peace Corps, the Global AIDS Initiative, U.N. peacekeeping operations and a wide variety of third-world development programs; eliminate the EnergyStar program, eliminate grants to states and local communities for energy conservation, reduce federal subsidies for Amtrak, eliminate funding for new light-rail programs and cancel the president's hydrogen fuel initiative; eliminate state grants for safe and drug-free schools because "studies show that schools are among the safest places in the country and relatively drug free"; and eliminate the teen funding portion of Title X, which provides "free and reduced-price contraceptives, including the IUD, the injection drug Depo-Provera, and the morning-after pill" to poor teenagers.

Along the way, they'd find a way to punish -- or simply eliminate -- some of their enemies, real and imagined. They'd cut funding for the District of Columbia, eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, eliminate subsidized student loans for graduate students, terminate the Legal Services Corporation, eliminate funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and kill the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Of course, you can't balance the budget on the backs of PBS viewers, grad students and other outside-the-mainstream liberals alone. So the Republican plan also calls for "rational reforms to Defense and Homeland Security." Does this mean cutting weapons systems at the expense of big defense corporations? Well, no. But it does mean closing schools for the children of soldiers, cutting grants for local responders and offering National Guard members the "option" to purchase a less comprehensive healthcare plan.

It only makes sense. The GOP has a choice between making many tiny cuts of small programs they want to get rid of anyways but have lacked the opporutnity, OR they can choose to eliminate a few HUGE items such as Bush's tax cuts or all that famous pork in the transportation bill. Which do we think they're going to choose?

Wake up Call?

It never ceases to amaze me how well the Bush Administration manages to breathe with its head firmly planted in the sand.

Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, said Thursday that he had been warning the Bush administration in recent days that Iraq was hurtling toward disintegration, a development that he said could drag the region into war.

"There is no dynamic now pulling the nation together," he said in a meeting with reporters at the Saudi Embassy here. "All the dynamics are pulling the country apart." He said he was so concerned that he was carrying this message "to everyone who will listen" in the Bush administration.

Prince Saud's statements, some of the most pessimistic public comments on Iraq by a Middle Eastern leader in recent months, were in stark contrast to the generally upbeat assessments that the White House and the Pentagon have been offering.

But in an appearance at the Pentagon on Thursday, President Bush, while once again expressing long-term optimism, warned that the bloodshed in Iraq was likely to increase in the coming weeks.

"Today, our commanders made it clear," he said after a meeting on Iraq with senior military officers, "as Iraqis prepare to vote on their constitution in October and elect a permanent government in December, we must be prepared for more violence."

American commanders have repeatedly warned that insurgents would try to disrupt the voting, as they did before legislative elections in January.

Mr. Bush said that if the United States left Iraq now, it could turn into a haven for terrorists, as Afghanistan was before the fall of the Taliban.

"To leave Iraq now would be to repeat the costly mistakes of the past that led to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001," he said.

Prince Saud, who is in Washington for meetings with administration officials, blamed several American decisions for the slide toward disintegration, though he did not refer to the Bush administration directly.

Primary among them was designating "every Sunni as a Baathist criminal," he said.

Saudi Arabia styles itself as the capital and protector of Sunni Islam, and the prince's remarks - at times harsh and at other moments careful - were emblematic of the conflicted Saudi-American relationship.

A senior administration official, reacting to Prince Saud's remarks, said, "The United States values and respects his view, and we all share a common concern for the future and stability of Iraq." He declined to be identified, under administration policy.

Prince Saud said he met with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last week and added that American officials generally responded to his warnings by telling him that the United States successfully carried off the Iraqi elections and "they say the same things about the constitution" and the broader situation in Iraq now. On Thursday, in fact, the senior administration official said, "The forward movement of the political process is the best answer."
Prince Saud argued: "But what I am trying do is say that unless something is done to bring Iraqis together, elections alone won't do it. A constitution alone won't do it." Prince Saud is a son of the late King Faisal and has been foreign minister for 30 years.

Someone who knows far more than we do is telling us something incredibly important, is Bush listening?

You Think John Roberts is Bad?

London, Part III

I wonder how much play has been given in American media to the rather serious story involving British troops in Basra, in the relatively calm part of Iraq the Brits have been occupying since the war. If you don't know, the Iraqi president has acknowledged that the police force is riddled with insurgents and insurgent sympathisers, and a couple of British soldiers who had been put into jail were handed over by the jailers to the insurgents. It's really a big story, but I wonder whether the American press will cover it much since it doesn't involve Americans--even though it has serious implications for the American zone and for the American project of supposedly training the Iraqi security forces so that they can take over and we can leave.

I ask because of how high on the agenda the news from the U.S. has been. The Katrina story was the top on the Dutch TV news for days before the hurricane hit. I was watching interviews on Dutch TV with the New Orleans mayor regarding evacuation two days before the hurricane arrived. Naturally, after the horrifying scenes that followed Katrina's landfall, Rita has been the lead story on the Dutch and British news for quite a while already.

When you're an expat, one of the things that brings home to you how important our country is is how much attention everyone else pays to it--especially as compared to how much attention we pay to everyone else. As a program (or should I say programme) I saw here on Tuesday evening regarding anti-Americanism in Britain put it, perhaps what really pisses off Europeans is the fact that Americans, generally speaking, think Europe is irrelevant in today's world.

London, Part II

Near Leicester Square last night, I walked past a stand selling T-shirts. A lot were variations on a theme stemming from what's referred to here as 7/7, namely the bombings on the Tube a couple of months ago. The shirts have the familiar Tube symbol, but where the name of the station should go, there's a message like: "Still not afraid" or "al who?" The idea obviously being that we're going to go on living normally, and you can't make us stop.

Then there was the shirt with a frightening-looking silhouetted figure and the legend: "Kill Bush."

Now, I don't think there's anything inconsistent with taking a stand against the terrorists and also loathing Bush. After all, that's pretty much how I view things. While Bush was busy making sure that Americans in places that foreign terrorists have never heard of would stay afraid, I was staying in lower Manhattan, raising kids there, working across the street from the great mountain of rubble that used to be the WTC, and so on. And I think Bush is--well, if you read this blog, you know what I think.

But that T-shirt was so far out of bounds that I was astonished--and if you've lived in New York and Amsterdam for the past decade, it takes a bit to astonish you. It wasn't funny (not that it was meant to be), it wasn't appropriate, it wasn't...for once, I found myself at a loss for words. And, as an American, I have to say I took it as a bit of a personal afront to see that shirt for sale on a foreign street.

There is a line. And that went way across it.

London, Part I

Hello from London, where I spent all of last week (M-F, I mean) and will be from W-F this week. Tip: if you don't want to feel old, don't go somewhere you used to hang out when you were young. I have some very, very fond memories of the summer of '88, when my then-girlfriend, with whom I'd been going out for only a few months (she's now Mrs. California) and I lived in a small flat with 7 (!) other kids from Ireland, France, England, and the U.S., did secretarial work during the days, researched Mrs. C's senior thesis at the British Library and the Fawcett women's library in East London when we could, and hung around Leicester Square the rest of the time. I strolled over that way last night and had supper in Soho (sadly, it wasn't raining, as it almost always seems to be in London, so there was no point in going to Lee Ho Fook's and getting the beef chow mein). It seemed to me that no two people on the street put together would add up to my age.

When did this happen?

Clinton v. Gore?

This would be very interesting.

AS Senator Hillary Clinton ratchets up her attacks on President Bush, some Democrats think they smell an explanation: the threat of a 2008 Al Gore presidential bid that could come at her from the left on Iraq.
The former vice president is suddenly re-emerging as a vocal and visible Bush-basher — he's slated to star at a Democratic National Committee fund-raiser for big donors in Washington next Tuesday.

"He's keeping a very strong public profile. He was the first major Democrat to oppose the Iraq war. He's keeping in touch around the country and doing a lot of speeches. You don't do all that if your goal is to play celebrity golf," says a Democratic fund-raiser.

A top Dem strategist adds: "Americans love comebacks and Gore could come back as a real human being instead of a wooden guy. He could come back as the new Nixon — somebody who went into the wilderness and found himself."

No wonder Dems are having trouble winning elections, our own strategists are calling Gore the "new Nixon." (pounding head on desk)

How do I feel about Gore running again? As big of a fan as I am of recycling, I do wish we could find some fresh faces. But if we don't I think Gore should run again. I like him about 10 times more than I ever liked Kerry and he already won once. If people wake up and decide they want someone who stands for good, reliable government, Gore might just kick ass. Maybe by the time 2008 comes around people will be looking for a smart, well-informed leader instead of a shallow, nationalistic cowboy. Maybe people will be yearning for a guy who reminds them of the Clinton years who isn't married to Clinton.

My only concern about Gore is this-- one would hope that he and his handlers would have learned something about the GOP Slime Machine so it won't just be a rehash of the same old bullshit from 2000. Yeah, I'm not holding my breath.

You're F'ing Kidding Me

According to the Houston Chronicle's blog there are still old, poor black people who can't evacuate from Houston?!

Hortense Davis is waiting at the Houston Greyhound station for a bus that may not be coming.

The 73-year-old woman called the Red Cross today to find out what she should do about the storm. She said she was told to go to the bus station and tell them she had no money and needs to get out of the city.

"But when I got here, they said they couldn't help me," she said. "So now I'm just sitting here."

Davis is trying to evacuate to Lufkin because she is scared hurricane Rita is going to causing major flooding in Houston.

"I'm stuck here," she said. "I don't have anywhere else to go."

Hundreds of people packed the downtown Greyhound station tonight hoping to get a ticket to safety.

Carolyn Rivera, 62, said she bought a bus ticket to Dallas today, but when she arrived at the station she discovered all the buses were filled. So she called her daughter and the two women plan to drive to Arkansas tonight.

"There are so many people and so few buses," she said.

Rivera said she has been through two hurricanes and numerous tropical storms, but Rita has her worried.

"I think this one is going to be stronger than those others," she said.

Sheesh. It was bad enough when this happened during Katrina, but now? I hope that this story is no longer true and Hortence and anyone else in Rita endangered areas can get out regardless of their age, health and income.

Spring Has Sprung

From Harper's magazine -- deletions are striked-thru and additions are in bold:

From editorial revisions and marginal notations made to government reports on global warming by Philip A. Cooney, then chief of staff for the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality. Cooney’s previous employer had been the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade and lobbying group of the petroleum industry. Soon after the documents were released by the Government Accountability Project in June, Cooney left the administration to take a public-relations job with ExxonMobil.

Many scientific observations point to the conclusion indicate that the Earth is may be undergoing a period of relatively rapid change.

Humans have become agents of environmental change, at least on timescales of decades to centuries, even as the quality of living standards for billions of people has improved monumentally in the past century and a half.

These models are useful for performing if-then scenario experiments that make it possible to begin to explore the potential implications of different technological and institutional conditions for future emissions, and climate, and sustained and expanded wealth and living standards.

Longer growing seasons are likely to be reflected in changes in plant life cycles and associated insects and disease, and possibly in the migratory patterns of associated wildlife. [Balance? How about more food and forest products for humanity? Lower prices for consumers of food and forest products throughout the U.S. economy and world.]

Briefings, forums, workshops, and other forms of engagement between researchers and stakeholders increase the likelihood that research will contribute to improved decision-making. At the same time, we should always be vigilant in ensuring the independence of research and resist its being influenced or biased by the policy agendas of decision-makers.

You Sure Made Your Point, Sen. Leahy

Judge John G. Roberts today won the support of the Senate Judiciary Committee in his quest to win confirmation as the next chief justice to the U.S. Supreme Court. In reporting the 13-5 vote in favor of Roberts, the New York Times writes:

The Democrats who backed Judge Roberts were generally more restrained. Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking minority member on the panel, said that despite his vote in favor of the nominee he was very disappointed in him for not being more forthcoming and with the White House for not consulting more with the Senate.

I won't bother to tackle the question of how forthcoming Roberts was or how much the White House consulted with senators. But assuming Leahy's complaints are valid, what lesson does his vote teach future nominees and the White House?

The lesson for nominees: don't provide forthcoming answers and you'll get a favorable vote anyway -- hell, you'll even win the vote of senators like Leahy who bitch about you not being sufficiently forthcoming.

For the White House, the lesson is similar: don't bother consulting with the Senate or providing senators with full access to a nominee's governmental or legal work. Despite the whining, enough Dems will roll over in the end.

Joining the Parade...a Day Late

Apparently yesterday was proclaimed the unofficial "Lurker Day" and we missed it. It's the day that bloggers are supposed to encourage people who read but never comment to say something, anything.

So this is an invitation to say hullo, tell us where you're from, share your favorite dirty limerick, tell all of us to STFU, ask a question, or whatever else you feel like writing...just do so in the comments of this post.

Burka Sold Separately

Move over Barbie. There's a new doll on the scene -- a young woman with
equally anorexic proportions, but the similarities end there:

In the last year or so, Barbie dolls have all but disappeared from the shelves of many toy stores in the Middle East. In their place, there is Fulla, a dark-eyed doll with, as her creator puts it, "Muslim values."

Fulla roughly shares Barbie's size and proportions, but steps out of her shiny pink box wearing a black abaya and matching head scarf. She is named after a type of jasmine that grows in the Levant ... she has quickly become a best seller all over the region.

Young girls here are obsessed with Fulla, and conservative parents who would not dream of buying Barbies for their daughters seem happy to pay for a modest doll who has her own tiny prayer rug, in pink felt. Children who want to dress like their dolls can buy a matching, girl-size prayer rug and cotton scarf set, all in pink.

Fulla is not the first doll to wear the hijab, a traditional Islamic head covering worn outside the house so a woman's hair cannot be seen by men outside her family. Mattel markets a group of collectors' dolls that include a Moroccan Barbie and a doll called Leila, intended to represent a Muslim slave girl in an Ottoman court.

Something tells me that Mattel executives might be a little nervous at getting this publicity for a doll that represents "a Muslim slave girl" -- not terribly PC in this post-Taliban era.

Fawaz Abidin, the Fulla brand manager for NewBoy, said that was because NewBoy understood the Arab market in a way that its competitors had not.

"This isn't just about putting the hijab on a Barbie doll," Mr. Abidin said. "You have to create a character that parents and children will want to relate to. Our advertising is full of positive messages about Fulla's character. She's honest, loving, and caring, and she respects her father and mother."

Honest, loving and caring? Those traits don't get you ahead in today's world. What foolish dollmakers.

In Damascus, a Fulla doll sells for about $16, in a country where average per capita income hovers around $100 per month.

Jack Kemp Isn't Reading From the Same Script

Jack Kemp, the former Republican congressman and the party's 1996 vice-presidential nominee, was quoted in today's Washington Post in a post-Katrina story:

"There really has not been a strong Republican message to either the poor or the African American community at large."

But, Jack, how can you say such a thing? As Laura Bush explained to us all, until Katrina it "really was not possible" for the administration to discuss poverty-related issues.

It's A Good Thing the Police Are Illiterate

There has been a lot of discussion of this New York Times article on the supposed trend of women at elite colleges wanting to forgo their careers for the sake of raising children (Zoe discussed it here and here.)

The main criticism is that the article doesn't provide any actual data to back up the claim, instead relying on anecdotal evidence.

The same can probably be said for this other New York Times article on gay men congregating in suburban parking lots for a quick hook-up. But at least in this case, the NYT was kind enough to list specific places where such activity occurs

Long Island spots include Two Mile Hollow Beach in East Hampton, the Field 6 parking lot at Jones Beach, a rest stop near Exit 52 on the Long Island Expressway and the park-and-ride lot on Route 110 in Melville. Each has its own culture and often its own set of protocols, ranging from parking position to the flashing of headlights or blinkers as mating calls.

So if you are ever in one of these neighborhoods, now you know where to go for a quick fix on the way home from work.

Thanks, NYT!

Maybe next they will do a follow-up piece on just what exactly the "protocols" are in each of the spots, so that all the newbies who are going to start showing up don't embarrass themselves.

Now if only I can get the Washington Post to do a piece on exactly where in DC I can score some top-quality weed or stolen stereo equipment, I'll be all set.

The Descent into Anarchy

The weekly post from the CDF:

One week ago, experts and observers warned that Darfur risked "sliding into a perpetual state of lawlessness." At a time when Khartoum and the Darfur rebels were preparing to meet in an attempt to move the essentially non-existent peace process forward, IRIN was reporting

Banditry and continuous attacks by armed groups on humanitarian workers, Arab nomads and villages in Darfur have increased significantly over the past weeks and threaten to destabilise the fragile ceasefire in the volatile western Sudanese region.

The "fragile ceasefire" has never really existed and fears of "perpetual" lawlessness are misplaced considering that Darfur has been essentially lawless for more than two years.

Last week, the World Food Program reported that "security levels deteriorated in Darfur during the reporting week." This week, the WFP reported that "despite precautionary security measures, attacks on commercial and humanitarian vehicles continue in Darfur."

And as the UN was expressing its concern "about the recurrent attacks carried out by armed men and gangs in Darfur states, which target civilians and commercial vehicles hired by relief organizations," Norwegian Church Aid was reporting that "relief convoy has been raided at gunpoint by bandits in Darfur for the second time in a short period. The security situation in Darfur shows signs of deterioration"

A growing problem is also that aid convoys are now being ambushed with increasing regularity by bandits on horses and camels. Norwegian Church Aid vehicles have been raided at gunpoint twice in a matter of weeks ... The field teams who travel most often through the western and southern parts of Darfur regularly encounter en route, and are often chased by, heavily armed men riding on horses and camels. Since the aid operation began just over a year ago, security has presented a great challenge for the agencies. Yet whereas assault, exchanges of fire and attacks on villages were previously politically motivated, much of the violence seems now to be criminal in nature.

And the violence continues.

Just yesterday, it was reported that 40 were killed in fighting after an attack on the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement/Army by "armed nomadic tribesmen" [aka "the Janjaweed"]. This was followed by another report that 80 government soldiers had been killed by the SLM when they captured the town of Sheiria in a surprise attack in retaliation for earlier government attacks on rebel-held territory.

The attack on Sheiria put at risk some 33,000 civilians who rely on humanitarian assistance after staff from three NGO's were withdrawn due to the fighting. And for good measure, the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) "reported that the security situation in the Kalma camp housing displaced persons has further deteriorated with a large number of security incidents, including some 60 reported attacks on women over the last week alone."

All of this took place while the sixth round of peace talks were being held in Nigeria.

It has now been more than a year since the United States declared the situation in Darfur a "genocide" - and the security situation on the ground is now even arguably worse. While government-orchestrated attacks on civilians have diminished, mainly because "there are not many villages left to burn down and destroy," the rampant insecurity in all likelihood still qualifies as part of Khartoum's genocidal campaign to "deliberately [inflict] on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part."

The genocide is not ending and the situation is not improving. The people of Darfur have, for all intents and purposes, been abandoned.

Able What?

I can't imagine why they don't want anyone talking about this anymore.

The Department of Defense forbade a military intelligence officer to testify Wednesday about a secret military unit that the officer says identified four Sept. 11 hijackers as terrorists more than a year before the attacks, according to the man's attorney.

In testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, attorney Mark Zaid, who represents Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, said the Pentagon also refused to permit testimony there by a defense contractor that he also represents.

The Judiciary Committee was hearing testimony about the work of a classified unit code named "Able Danger."

Zaid, appearing on behalf of Shaffer and contractor John Smith that Able Danger, using data mining techniques, identified four of the terrorists who struck on Sept. 11, 2001 -- including mastermind Mohamed Atta.

"At least one chart, and possibly more, featured a photograph of Mohamed Atta," Zaid said.

Maj. Paul Swiergosz, a Defense Department spokesman, said Wednesday that open testimony would not be appropriate.

"We have expressed our security concerns and believe it is simply not possible to discuss Able Danger in any great detail in any public forum," he said.

Swiergosz said no individuals were singled out not to testify.

"There's nothing more to say than that," Swiergosz said. "It's not possible to discuss the Able Danger program because there are security concerns."

Yes, yes, there are security concerns-- concerns over the security of your jobs, perhaps?

Wait, what am I talking about, nobody gets fired in the Bush Administration no matter their extraordinary level of imcompetence. It must be something else.

Move Over Cindy...

you may have a lot more company.

In military communities across the United States, a debate over the Iraq war is being waged by reluctant, neophyte activists. Their microphones chirp and squeak, or don't pick up their quiet voices at all. Their signs are too small. They forget the banners.

"This is my community. I don't want to offend people here. But my husband is a soldier; he can't say anything. So it's my duty as a citizen to speak up," Kara Hollingsworth, a D.C. native and Army wife at Fort Bragg whose husband served two tours in Iraq, said as she took a seat on a panel of antiwar activists last week.
...
Military families, stoic and tight-lipped during most of the nation's wars, have become a powerful voice on both sides of the bitter argument over U.S. involvement in Iraq. And their growing prominence will add a poignant note to Saturday's antiwar march and rally near the White House.

Organizers of the protest, who anticipate a crowd of about 100,000, estimate that thousands of military families and veterans will join in the demonstration. Three busloads of military families have been touring the country since Aug. 31 and will converge on Washington today to promote Saturday's rally.
...
[Cindy] Sheehan also galvanized Phil and Linda Waste, who were riding one of the "Bring Them Home Now" buses through the hills of North Carolina last week. Their three sons, grandson and granddaughter are all in the military and have served a total of 58 months in Iraq, and the Wastes have white-knuckled their way through each of those tours of duty.

They sat in their Hinesville, Ga., living room for months, cursing at the television reports from Iraq.

"Then we saw Cindy in Texas," said Linda Waste, holding tight to the table's edge on the bumping bus. Her husband picked up her thought: "And then we heard people call her unpatriotic. And that was it."
...
When Chito [the ex-navy bus driver] parked the "Bring Them Home Now" bus in the center of Fayetteville the next day, cars whizzing by it honked and drivers barked at the slogans all over the windows and sides.

A woman in a silver Mercedes leaned out and shouted, "Go home!" A man in a red muscle car gave members of the group an obscene gesture. A soldier in a beat-up Olds Cutlass gave them a peace sign.

Cindy Sheehan's lasting legacy may not be her Crawford protest, it appears she has helped other military families who oppose the war to find their voices and one another. Awesome.

Laura Bush: Poverty and Housing Discussion "Really Was Not Possible Before"

The Associated Press interviewed First Lady Laura Bush on Tuesday and wrote this article afterward. Notice the not so subtle excuse that Mrs. Bush offers for why poverty-related issues were not on the administration's radar screen in pre-Katrina days:

[Laura Bush] said she also hopes for a broader national discussion of poverty and race.

"I think it's really important for us to talk about it in a different way," said Mrs. Bush, who over three decades ago taught elementary students at an inner-city school in Houston and was a school librarian in a poor Austin neighborhood.

The next three words are my favorite.

Without offering specifics, she urged policymakers to tackle not only improving education so that poor and minority children have a leg up in life, but increasing the amount of affordable housing stock and the jobs available to those who most need them. She pressed for job training programs ....

"Because of the devastation on the coast, there will be a neighborhood and a housing discussion that'll be possible that really was not possible before," she said.

This is a subtle yet ridiculous notion that the First Lady is trying to advance. It wasn't possible for the Bush administration to have a serious conversation about poor neighborhoods and the challenges their residents have faced?

Katrina's destruction certainly raises the sense of urgency around housing and poverty issues, but the White House could easily have broached these issues years ago if the Bush gang had really given a damn about it.

I'm sure it's merely a coincidence that this administration discovered the poverty issue after its feeble response to a hurricane made it look uncaring and drove its poll numbers downward. When George W. Bush talks like John Maynard Keynes and when Laura Bush starts sounding like a 21st century Jane Addams, you know this administration is running scared.

Bush's Next High Court Nominee

Slate.com's Emily Bazelon invites readers to guess who the next Supreme Court nominee will be:

Making one perfect Supreme Court pick is hard enough. Making a second one may be impossible, as the Bush administration is learning. John Roberts' cakewalk through the Senate has changed the calculus. The Democrats swear they won't be slow on the trigger for the next nominee. Republican women are anxious. The far right is determined to gain rather than lose ground on the court. And that's just the beginning.

Bazelon reviews the possible choices here.

What Didn't Get Reported From the Sex Survey

Last week a new survey by the Centers for Disease Control on sexual behavior in America got lots of attention in print, but Slate.com's William Saletan writes that there was one part of the survey that was virtually ignored:

If you live in Bergen County, N.J., congratulations. You get the only newspaper in the world that mentioned heterosexual anal sex, albeit briefly, in its write-up of the survey. Two other papers buried it in lines of statistics below their articles; the rest completely ignored it. Evidently anal sex is too icky to mention in print. But not too icky to have been tried by 35 percent of young women and 40 to 44 percent of young men—or to have killed some of them.

Not that there's anything wrong with it, as Jerry Seinfeld might say. But if your moral standard for judging sex acts is the risk of disease, anal is worse than oral.

... I understand why we fixate on the oral sex numbers. Even liberals can digest sexual revolutions only one taboo at a time. We think oral sex is the new frontier. We think talking about it in print and sex education classes makes us hip and candid. It doesn't.

The entire article is here.

Yet Another "Apology" That Isn't One

The Washington Nationals pro baseball team announced yesterday that it suspended a volunteer chaplain and, according to The Post, "distributed an apology" from one of its players, Ryan Church, for controversial remarks he had made a few days earlier. Church was quoted in a front-page Post article suggesting that Jews are headed for eternal damnation.

But what the newspaper called an apology was nothing of the kind. No, this was yet another case of what I call the non-apology apology. Call me a sentimentalist, but apologies used to mean someone was admitting that he or she had spoken or acted inappropriately. These days, the apology has evolved into a one-sentence, take-the-heat-off message.

Here is The Post describing Church's apology:

In a written statement yesterday distributed by the team, Church said: "Those who know me on a personal level understand that I am not the type of person who would call into question the religious beliefs of others. I sincerely regret if the quote attributed to me in Sunday's Washington Post article offended anyone."

Just for future reference, the first tip-off that someone is not truly apologizing is when he/she uses the word "if" within the so-called apology statement. Using "if" means that Church is only conceding that he might have offended someone.

Even more pathetic is the fact that Church dares to claim that anyone who knows him knows that he is "not the type of person who would call into question the religious beliefs of others." Well, apparently, your friends and teammates don't know you that well because that's exactly what you did. According to The Post:

An article in Sunday's paper about Baseball Chapel quoted Church as saying that he had turned to (chaplain Jon) Moeller for advice about his former girlfriend, who was Jewish. "I said, like, Jewish people, they don't believe in Jesus. Does that mean they're doomed? Jon nodded, like, that's what it meant. My ex-girlfriend! I was like, man, if they only knew. Other religions don't know any better. It's up to us to spread the word," Church said.

Is Church going to pretend that this statement doesn't "call into question the religious beliefs of others"?

Hillary-induced Paranoia

Apparently Hollywood has come up with a tv show to indoctrinate the masses so we would be more willing to accept the crazy notion of a female president, namely Hillary Clinton. From my favorite blathering idiot over at The Corner:

HAVE YOU NOTICED [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

that the billboards for the Geena Davis as President show never show Geena? They just inform you that a woman will be president soon. It's all part of the Hillary campaign, I tell you. Her Hollywood friends coming through for her.

Best left-wing conspiracy theory ever. I'm surprised "K-Lo" doesn't send a letter to the FEC demanding that the whole show be considered an unreported in-kind political contribution.

Photo ID Rule Shouldn't Derail Reforms

A commission co-chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Sec. of State James Baker has outlined several key recommendations for improving the conduct of elections in future years. As the Associated Press reports:

The commission recommended improved voter registration lists, requiring a verifiable paper trail for electronic voting machines and rotating regional primaries, while warning that "Americans are losing confidence in elections."

"Some foreign countries have gone far beyond us in making sure that voting procedures and registration of voters is at a high level of true democracy," said Carter, who has monitored elections around the world.

The commission also recommends that top election officials in the states should be nonpartisan and chosen by super-majorities of the legislature so as to ensure their actions won't be influenced by partisan instincts.

But the commission's recommendations may not get very far. Why? Liberal congressmen and their allies are seeing red over one of the proposals.

Critics suggested that having to acquire the ID cards in order to vote could be an obstacle for minorities, the poor and older Americans and might intimidate some people.

"We believe such a requirement would constitute nothing less than a 21st century poll tax," said a letter from Reps. John Conyers, D-Mich., and John Lewis, D-Ga. Poll taxes were once used in some states to prevent black citizens from voting.

Comparing that to a poll tax is ridiculous.

Allowing states to require a photo ID is a small and reasonable compromise to getting a few things that Republican legislators have traditionally resisted -- in particular, the verifiable paper trail to help guard against electronic-voting fraud.

You can't board a commercial airplane, pick up event tickets at "will call," cash a check at a bank, or check into many hotels without displaying a photo ID. Is it so unreasonable to ask people to bring one with them when they vote?

The ID requirement is not without some basis. A lengthy investigation in the city of Milwaukee found that in last November's election, the number of votes cast there exceeded the number of registered voters by more than 4,600. More than 100 people voted twice, used fraudulent names or false addresses, or voted in the name of a dead person.

Besides, simply refusing to support this at the national level doesn't make it go away. As Carter pointed out, 24 states already require photo ID and 12 other states are considering such a mandate. At least the national proposal embraced by the Carter-Baker commission would require states to provide the ID cards for free and to publicize how these cards can be obtained -- conditions that don't apply in most state laws that now require photo IDs.

Additionally, the commission's proposal is not Draconian. It would still allow voters without ID to cast provisional ballots.

If progressives really want to improve access and integrity in the electoral process, allowing a photo ID provision is a very small, reasonable price to pay.