Scrubbing Away Abramoff's Stench

Thanks to (P)rick for bringing it to our attention that Jack Abramoff's posh "Signatures" restaurant is soliciting suggestions on their website for a new name. (Can't imagine why...)

Have any ideas about what they should call it? Let them know.

Considering the place is destined to be a Trivial Pursuit answer they also might want to revise the following description from their "about us" page.

One of Washington's most exciting restaurants, Signatures has already earned acclaim from the Wall Street Journal as "DC's Meeting Spot for Movers and Shakers." Home to many of Washington's most recognizable political figures, Signatures has played host to royalty, Hollywood stars and sports legends.

While dining at Signatures, you can also enjoy viewing our historic artifacts and rare political memorabilia, which are available for purchase if you so desire.

Political "movers and shakers" often meet there and can buy each other rare, expensive things? What do you think the going rate is for Tom Delay's leftovers?

I Never Dreamed of this When I Was a Boy

The NY Times has a good article about the American Girl experience--and, for once, the consumer-hype word "experience" is apt. My kids (both the boy and the girls) have been into American Girls for years, and I reach the same reluctant conclusion as the Times reporter: sure, its gimmicky and really expensive and manipulative, but in the end the kids really do get a lot out of it.

I went to the Fifth Avenue American Girl Place at least two or three times on our recent trip back to New York, and it really is something that must be seen to be believed. We had lunch (with the dolls) at the restaurant, and the girls also had the dolls' hair done at the salon.

There was an awkward moment when my son wanted one of the kids' outfits to match his doll's clothing--he apparently didn't realize it was a girls' outfit, as is all of the American Girl clothing. But that's what you get for raising a kid in Greenwich Village and Holland--he also sometimes arrives at school with barrettes in his hair and a princess lunchbox in his hand. When Mrs. California said to him one day that he looked like a metrosexual that day, he responded: "That's a boy who is confused." Remarkably, he has yet to be beaten up. (Then again, he's only 4 years old).

One of my girls was quite pleased at the news that a Felicity TV movie was coming out, as she'd written an angry letter to American Girl a year or so ago (when she was all of six years old) complaining that they were neglecting Felicity and favoring Samantha unfairly. This may have had something to do with the fact that she had selected Felicity as her American Girl doll and her twin sister had chosen Samantha. But now Felicity has as many goodies as Samantha, if not more, so everyone is happy. Especially Mattel stockholders.

They'd Better Not Bill Him for This One

One of the annoying features of having moved back into the for-profit side of the profession is dealing with clients who scrutinize every detail of a bill and then demand to know how this 20 minutes spent writing a letter or that half-hour on a conference call assisted their case.

As annoying as that can be, you do have to agree with them sometimes. You will find, for example, that a junior lawyer spent hours researching an argument that was clearly hopeless.

On that basis, I'm figuring Saddam's not going to pay for this letter.

And here's one for the Separated at Birth column: Saddam's lawyer and Rick Scarborough:

You will become convinced of President Saddam's complete innocence. His popularity gains by the day and (he) is beloved by millions of Iraqis.

You're Not Helping

The European Parliament has to be one of the most useless democratic institutions known to man. It is good for the occasional laugh, however. This article shows how a Dutch MEP (Member of the European Parliament, silly) who supports Turkey's bid for EU membership managed to set back that bid just a wee bit.

Turkey's foreign minister said on Wednesday it might be necessary to change a controversial law after nationalist lawyers used it to call for the prosecution of an EU lawmaker for criticising the Turkish military.

The lawyers accuse Joost Lagendijk, a Dutch member of the European Parliament, of insulting Turkey's armed forces by suggesting the military was provoking Kurdish rebels in south-east Turkey in order to boost its influence.

The group has already embarrassed the government by launching prosecutions of novelist Orhan Pamuk and other writers under Article 301 of the penal code, which makes it an offence to insult "Turkishness" or state institutions like the military....

Asked by his interviewer whether he thought Lagendijk had "overstepped the boundary" in his remarks on the military, [Foreign Minister Abdullah] Gul said: "I do not think so. But of course this is for the courts to decide."

Gul has in the past said he believes Pamuk, the best-selling author of novels such as "Snow" and "My Name is Red", would be cleared of insulting the state for saying a million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed in Turkey in the 20th century.

Lagendijk, a Green and a vocal supporter of Turkey's EU bid, is reported to have said during a recent visit to Istanbul: "The military wants clashes with the PKK (Kurdish rebels). This makes it feel powerful and important."

The military is a revered and powerful institution in Turkey and insulting it is a crime. But under EU-inspired reforms, the generals have seen their influence eroded in recent years.

Speaking very generally, freedom of expression isn't protected quite as strongly in Europe as it is in the U.S.--consider, for example, England's horrible libel laws, anti-blasphemy laws in various countries, and anti-Nazi laws in Germany and Austria. But free expression still counts for something, so Article 301 has been more than a minor embarrassment to Turkey in its effort to win EU membership.

Texans for Intolerance

Do homophobes take a rest during the holidays? Apparently not.

Since last year, a student-funded center at the University of Texas at Austin has offered counseling, workshops, forums and other services to gay, lesbian and female students.

Now some Texas conservatives are targeting the Gender and Sexuality Center, saying UT students shouldn't have to pay $80,000 a year in fees for a center that "promotes a lifestyle" a majority of Texans reject – particularly when parents are struggling to afford college costs.

"They're obviously trying to promote an agenda on one side of the political spectrum," said Will Lutz, a columnist who wrote a scathing piece on the center for the socially conservative Texans for Texas group. "What we've created is a government-funded advocacy group for values a lot of Texans don't agree with."

Within the next year, conservative groups say they plan to draft legislation that would require the center to be paid for by private sponsors instead of student fees.

Following their logic I wonder why they're not trying to defund all the other student groups they don't like-- feminist groups, Jewish groups, Muslim groups, Pagan groups, etc. There have to be more than just this one considering that UT-Austin has nearly 50,000 students and over 900 student organizations.(UT-Austin is one of the largest universities in the country, their annual school budget exceeds $380 million.)

Cases like these exemplify exactly why places like the Gender and Sexuality Center are so direly needed-- especially in places like Texas.

How Wingnuts Work

Apparently they lie to one another to make each other feel better about their Dear Leader. From Zoe's mailbox-- the latest Rick Scarborough Report:

A month ago, [Bush's] critics said George Bush would continue to lose public support for the war in Iraq. I’m happy to report that they were dead wrong.

The latest Rasmussen poll shows the president’s job approval rating up 6 points since mid-December, to stand at 50%. Today -- in the midst of a protracted war on terror -- Bush’s approval rating is higher than either Reagan’s or Clinton’s at the same point in their second terms.

I'm sure he doesn't expect anyone to actually look this up-- Bush's approval numbers are at 47%, with a 52% disapproval rating. Also, while I don't have Clinton's approval numbers for the December of his 5th year, I do have his approval numbers for November of his 5th year-- 57%. While I am loathe to admit it but Reagan was even more popular, he was at 65% in the November of his 5th year. So unless both Reagan and Clinton took a big nosedive in December of their respective 5th years, Scarborough is l-y-i-n-g.

The truth is that not only is Bush doing worse than either Bush or Clinton but he's only been at 47% for a short time, as everyone is well aware his numbers have been been in the low 40s and mid to upper 30s for the past few months. So, it's a bit premature to say it's a comeback and miles away from "dead wrong." Although don't let the facts stop you from gloating.

iGod

No, I'm not being paid to shill for Apple, and I don't own any Apple stock. I just thought this was interesting.

All I Wanted for Christmas

I've been playing with my new toy for the last couple of days. It's a Macintosh, specifically a 15" PowerBook.

I got my first Apple in 1979 as a Bar Mitzvah present, an Apple II+ with a breathtaking 48k of RAM (or less than 0.005% of what the PowerBook has). The storage device was an ordinary cassette tape recorder--a couple of years later, I got a floppy drive that seemed like something out of science fiction in those days. The "plus" in the Apple II+ was that the programming language was Applesoft BASIC, written by a small outfit in Washington called Microsoft.

My first Mac was in 1985, a bit more than a year after they were introduced in the famous "1984" commercial during the Super Bowl. I upgraded it, then replaced it with another Mac, and so on until some point in the mid- to late 1990s. I had to yield to the fact that both my and Mrs. California's employers used Windows machines, and their servers couldn't offer remote access to Macs.

Now I'm back to Macland, and it's clear that the Macintosh OS is still superior to Windows. I figure I'll be seeing some of the features of the current Mac OS on my work computer in, oh, three to five years. The Mac's overall superiority isn't as great as it was when I bought my first Windows PC under protest. For one thing, the Windows of that era was horribly buggy and crash-prone; Windows XP or Windows 2000 may be inferior to Mac OS X, but at least they do work most of the time. Also, the Motorola chips used in Macs were better than the Intel chips used in PCs back then, largely because Motorola had RISC processing and Intel didn't. But Motorola has lagged in development since then, and Intel has caught up; in fact, Apple is going to start using Intel chips this year and will soon stop making computers with Motorola chips.

So if my blogging slows down, it's because I'm enjoying all the things my toy can do, particularly with music, photos, and video.

We now return to our scheduled programming.

Bush in '04: We Follow FISA "Because We Value the Constitution"

Zoe has posted on this topic before -- President Bush's earlier (and now meaningless) assurance that

"a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way."

But I also liked the analysis that Slate.com's Timothy Noah offered as he compared these two statements by Bush -- one quote from before and one quote from after he was caught violating federal law.

* * * * * * * *

On a related note, I have no problem with MSNBC hiring a "terrorism expert" who happens to be a former FBI agent. A person with that background might be able to offer insights on how intelligence is gathered, what approaches to intelligence-gathering are most successful, and so on. But on Sunday night, an MSNBC newscaster interviewed this individual and asked him whether Bush had violated federal law by failing to seek FISA court orders (not even retroactively).

His answer -- no shock at all -- was "no." Earth to MSNBC news directors: what's the sense in posing such a question to someone who worked for years in a culture that celebrates existing and expanding federal police and investigatory powers?

This kind of question would be more appropriately asked of someone who: a) has some knowledge of constitutional law, and b) can offer a more impartial assessment than a career FBI agent.

Evolution of a Flip-Flop

Excerpts from an amusing column published in Tuesday's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Writing about home-state Senator Rick Santorum, columnist Brian O'Neill observes:

The Republican from Pennsylvania is looking at a tough re-election fight next year. That's why some are scornful of Mr. Santorum's announcement last week that he's withdrawing his affiliation with the public interest law firm that bills itself "as the sword and the shield for people of faith.''

That would be the Christian faith, which I happen to share. But it turns out Mr. Santorum, whose photo was still there with the rest of the advisory board on the law center's Web site yesterday, has just figured out how much religion goes into the work of this firm named for a Catholic saint.

It only took a losing court fight in his home state to put him on the path to enlightenment. Mr. Santorum now says the center "made a huge mistake'' in backing the Dover Area school board in its failed effort to move the notion of "intelligent design'' into science classrooms. Mr. Santorum told The Philadelphia Inquirer he is cutting ties with the firm.

Many see that as a curious turn. "The evolution of a flip-flop,'' one critic called it. Earlier in the year, Mr. Santorum had commended the school district for having "taken a step in the right direction by engaging in the debate and attempting to teach the controversy of evolution.''

But if Mr. Santorum wishes to grant himself retroactive naivete, who are we to judge? Perhaps he honestly didn't know this case was steeped in religion from the start.

... We don't know how many precedents for Santorum-like disavowals of previous affiliations may exist. Consider these possibilities:

"It has recently come to my attention that the University of Notre Dame is a leading Roman Catholic institution of higher learning, and I am, evidently, the son of Norwegian Lutheran immigrants. I therefore see no choice but to submit my resignation as coach of the football team.

-- Regretfully,
Knute Rockne."

... "Nobody told us this job would involve so much travel! We can no longer in good conscience spend so much time away from our families. St. Louis is as far west as we care to go.

-- Yours truly,
Meriwether Lewis
and William Clark."

Ordinarily . . .

. . . I wouldn't simply reproduce a cartoon that you may have seen elsewhere. But this one, by Anna Telnaes, has such savagery that I couldn't resist.

Wal-Mart Must Have Skinny Employees ....

.... judging from this case involving the retail giant:

A California jury on Thursday awarded $172 million to thousands of employees at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. who claimed they were illegally denied lunch breaks.

The world’s largest retailer was ordered to pay $57 million in general damages and $115 million in punitive damages to about 116,000 current and former California employees for violating a 2001 state law that requires employers to give 30-minute, unpaid lunch breaks to employees who work at least six hours.

Apparently, these were the best arguments that Wal-Mart could muster:

In the California lunch-break suit, Wal-Mart claimed that workers did not demand penalty wages on a timely basis. Under the law, the company must pay workers a full hour’s wages for every missed lunch.

The company also said it paid some employees their penalty pay and, in 2003, most workers agreed to waive their meal periods as the law allows.

"Yeah, we're guilty of denying employees their lunch break, but they didn't file the paperwork quickly enough."

It's not hard to guarantee "low, low prices" when you make your employees work through the lunch hour. Any day now, I suspect the retail giant will debut a new TV ad with the tagline: "Wal-Mart: Helping Its Employees Lose Weight."

More Than 30 Years Before Abu Ghraib

More than 30 years before the revelations of abuse by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib, there were similar acts of torture and degradation perpetrated by American troops in Vietnam. Even today, few Americans know about them. The documentary film Winter Soldier, now showing in limited release, shares this relatively untold story -- and I highly recommend it.

"Winter Soldier" was filmed in February 1971 when over 125 veterans (including John Kerry) spoke of atrocities they had personally witnessed and/or committed. Bear in mind that a central attack leveled against Kerry in the '04 "Swift Boat" TV ad was that he supposedly gave "aid and comfort" to the enemy in Vietnam. How? Apparently, by telling the truth.

Of course, there were a few GOP senators who briefly said the same thing about Abu Ghraib until John McCain insisted on holding hearings about the torture and abuse that occurred there.

Finally, it should come as no surprise that there were clear connections between Bush operatives and the creators of the anti-Kerry "Swift Boat" ad. Both believe that dodging or distorting the truth and keeping Americans in the dark are justified as long as doing so serves their political ends.

If you have a chance to see this movie, do it.

Is the Party Over?

Sigh. And to think it was only yesterday evening that I smelled that sickly sweet smell as I awaited my bus. Had I but known what had happened earlier in the day, I would have appreciated the moment more--stopped to smell the, er, well, you know, in other words.

CNN's Schneider Deciphers the Poll Data

In this recent column, political commentator Bill Schneider offers this interpretation of the recent polls showing an improvement in the public's approval of President Bush:

Bush's current improvement looks like a blip at the end of a long slide. What's behind it? The economy, stupid.

Americans are beginning to feel better about the economy because gasoline prices are going down a bit and the stock market is nudging upward. Over the past month, the number of Americans saying that the nation's economy is in good shape rose from 47 percent to 55 percent in the CBS/Times poll.

However ...

Despite the improving economic outlook, Democrats still get higher marks when it comes to handling the economy (in the CBS/Times poll, 45 percent prefer the Democrats on the economy and 37 percent prefer the Republicans).

What about Iraq? The Democrats' advantage is surprisingly small: 40 percent say Democrats would handle Iraq better; 35 percent say Republicans.

FISA and the Committee That Laid the Groundwork

By authorizing domestic wiretaps without securing the approval of a special court, President Bush has apparently violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978. FISA requires the White House and other federal officials who wish to conduct wiretaps or similar forms of surveillance to secure permission from a special court.

FISA was passed by Congress largely as a response to the revelations of the Church Committee, chaired by then-Sen. Frank Church of Idaho. The Church Committee uncovered numerous examples of U.S. intelligence-gathering agencies perpetrating despicable acts -- plotting assassinations of democratically elected foreign leaders, unlawfully maintaining stores of chemical and biological agents, and using wiretaps to spy on people who posed no danger to others.

Given that our president has been bypassing the FISA court, now is a good time for all Americans to learn (or refresh their memories) about the Church Committee's findings. This website to is a good place to start.

I'll sign off with this quote from Jeffrey H. Smith, the former general counsel of the CIA, who said this about FISA and similar laws:

"I think it is wrong to conclude in a simplistic fashion that these rules and regulations, which have been designed to constrain the activities of an intelligence agency in a democracy ... I think it's a mistake to immediately conclude that those rules need to be thrown out just because of [the 9/11] intelligence failure."

Some People on the Hill Are Getting Very Nervous

Why? According to news reports:

Former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, facing trial on fraud charges Jan. 9 in Florida, is negotiating a possible deal with the Justice Department, in which he would agree to plead guilty and cooperate in the wide-ranging political corruption investigation focused on his dealings with members of Congress and executive branch officials, people familiar with the talks said last night.

Abramoff would provide testimony about numerous members of Congress and their staffs if he and the Justice Department reach an agreement, the sources said.

Up to now, the assumption has always been that Abramoff is the big fish in this investigation, the end of the trail. But the only way someone like him could possibly strike a plea bargain is if he has some awfully damning information to share, info that would possibly implicate several members of Congress.

Several members of Congress are probably pissing in their pants right now.

The "Temple" They've Defiled

Soon before the Senate yesterday rejected an attempt by Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) to slip ANWAR oil drilling into a defense appropriations bill, Stevens and Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) exchanged comments. The two senators, perhaps more than any of their colleagues, have mastered the game of raiding the federal treasury to deliver pork to their states -- frequently in the form of dubious projects.

According to the Washington Post:

It was quite a bull session between two old bulls.

Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, battered all week for using the defense spending bill to force through a home-state oil drilling provision, delivered an emotional plea to his colleagues as the Senate prepared to vote on the legislation.

"I ask every one of you, have you ever come to me as chairman of appropriations and tell me you needed help for your state and I have turned you down?" implored the Republican, who [once chaired] the Senate Appropriations Committee ...

If Stevens has an equal in logrolling, it is Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia. But the veteran Democrat, another former appropriations chairman, would have none of the drilling maneuver and charged that Stevens was breaking Senate rules.

... Byrd and Stevens -- their collective age is 170 -- are masters of the legislative game as well as melodramatic floor speech. They know every nook and cranny of the Senate rulebook -- a malleable text, if yesterday's debate was any guide.

... "My remarks today do not reflect upon [Stevens] or upon his efforts in regard to the people he represents," Byrd continued, thunder clouds gathering in his voice. "I abhor, I abhor this idea. Shame. If such a scheme were carried into effect, it could seriously impair the Senate rules."

... "I came here and swore an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and I would die upholding that oath," Byrd vowed.

Stevens concurred, at least in his reverence for the Senate. "As my good friend from West Virginia says, we're in a temple. We're in the temple. I've lived in the temple for 37 years," said Stevens ...

Yes, and like the Biblical money-changers, they've done their best to defile that temple through pork-barrel schemes and slick legislative maneuvers.

Dutch Also Annoyed at Germans

The title of this post probably falls into the same category as "Grass is Green." But it seems that, like the U.S., the Dutch have their own case in which Germany granted early release to a terrorist whom the Dutch want to prosecute.

(I've gathered the information from a couple of Dutch blogs, here and here, which in turn rely on Dutch news sources).

Readers of my vintage or older may remember the Red Army Faction, a violent leftist organization active in Germany in the 1970s and 1980s. They also did some business here in the Netherlands. During the "German Autumn" of 1977, when RAF activity caused a national crisis in West Germany, RAF member Knut Folkerts shot and killed a Dutch policeman. A Dutch court sentenced him to 20 years' imprisonment, but the government extradited him to Germany for trial on other charges there (he'd killed in Germany as well). He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Eighteen years later, the German government released him. The Dutch government has been trying to get its hands on Folkerts so that he can serve his Dutch sentence here. Meanwhile, he's started proceedings in Dutch court to get his sentence quashed, I think (though I'm really unclear on this) on the basis that he's already done his time in German prison.

I gather that the German government hasn't been very cooperative with Dutch efforts to take Folkerts into custody. There is some hope that the new Merkel government might be more receptive, since the new interior minister is himself a victim of the RAF, which put him in a wheelchair. Earlier this month, the Dutch government again requested extradition of Folkerts. The German government has yet to respond.

Turnabout?

So we're pissed off at Germany, and probably with good reason, for releasing the TWA hijacker without telling us. Turns out they're not very happy with us, either, over another incident.

BERLIN - Despite U.S. assurances that any mistreatment of prisoners will be investigated and punished, German prosecutors have been waiting since May for the American government to respond to charges that the CIA kidnapped and mistreated a German citizen named Khaled al-Masri.

* * *

Al-Masri was arrested as he was traveling from Germany to Macedonia on New Year's Eve 2003. He said that after five months in Afghanistan, he was flown to Albania, put on another plane and taken back to Germany. The German government also is seeking information from the Albanian and Macedonian governments.

A spokesman for state prosecutors in Munich, Christian Schmidt-Sommerfeld, said German prosecutors had been seeking answers from U.S. officials since May. They have al-Masri's testimony, but need to confirm it, he said. "If it's accurate, it would indicate a criminal violation."

The case now names "persons unknown" as the perpetrators of al-Masri's alleged kidnapping.

At a joint press conference during Condoleezza Rice's recent trip to Europe, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was "pleased" that Rice had discussed the al-Masri affair with her and that the U.S. had accepted that it had made a mistake. Rice, who was standing next to Merkel when she said this, didn't say anything at the time, but U.S. officials later denied that Rice had made any admissions about the case.

"We are not quite sure what was in (Merkel's) head," a senior official said.

How's that for diplomatic language?

Al-Masri has now sued former Director of Central Intelligence Tenet, and his statement regardig his experience at CIA hands is not pretty. The case has become well-known in Germany.

It appears most likely that al-Masri was the victim of mistaken identity, overexcited CIA officials, and a rather extreme case of CYA when they figured out they had the wrong guy and basically dumped him in Albania in the hope that no one would believe his story.

Masri was held for five months largely because the head of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center's al Qaeda unit "believed he was someone else," one former CIA official said. "She didn't really know. She just had a hunch."

***

Members of the Rendition Group follow a simple but standard procedure: Dressed head to toe in black, including masks, they blindfold and cut the clothes off their new captives, then administer an enema and sleeping drugs. They outfit detainees in a diaper and jumpsuit for what can be a day-long trip.

Their destinations: either a detention facility operated by cooperative countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, including Afghanistan, or one of the CIA's own covert prisons -- referred to in classified documents as "black sites," which at various times have been operated in eight countries, including several in Eastern Europe.

***

Khaled Masri came to the attention of Macedonian authorities on New Year's Eve 2003....He was taken off a bus at the Tabanovce border crossing by police because his name was similar to that of an associate of a 9/11 hijacker.

* * *

Unbeknown to Masri, the Macedonians had contacted the CIA station in Skopje. The station chief was on holiday. But the deputy chief, a junior officer, was excited about the catch and about being able to contribute to the counterterrorism fight, current and former intelligence officials familiar with the case said.

"The Skopje station really wanted a scalp because everyone wanted a part of the game," a CIA officer said.

* * *

Others were doubtful. They wanted to wait to see whether the passport was proved fraudulent. Beyond that, there was no evidence Masri was not who he claimed to be -- a German citizen of Arab descent traveling after a disagreement with his wife.

The [CIA Counterterrorism Center's al Qaeda] unit's director won the argument. She ordered Masri captured and flown to a CIA prison in Afghanistan.

***

Back at the CTC [Counterterrorism Center], Masri's passport was given to the Office of Technical Services to analyze. By March, OTS had concluded the passport was genuine. The CIA had imprisoned the wrong man.

At the CIA, the question was: Now what? Some officials wanted to go directly to the German government; others did not. Someone suggested a reverse rendition: Return Masri to Macedonia and release him. "There wouldn't be a trace. No airplane tickets. Nothing. No one would believe him," one former official said. "There would be a bump in the press, but then it would be over."

***

Several intelligence and diplomatic officials said Macedonia did not want the CIA to bring Masri back inside the country, so the agency arranged for him to be flown to Albania. Masri said he was taken to a narrow country road at dusk. When they let him off, "They asked me not to look back when I started walking," Masri said. "I was afraid they would shoot me in the back."

He said he was quickly met by three armed men. They drove all night, arriving in the morning at Mother Teresa Airport in Tirana. Masri said he was escorted onto the plane, past all the security checkpoints, by an Albanian.

Masri has been reunited with his children and wife, who had moved the family to Lebanon because she did not know where her husband was. Unemployed and lonely, Masri says neither his German nor Arab friends dare associate with him because of the publicity.

At this point, I suppose one question would be how we would react if another country had done this to an American citizen.

Another question would be: what have we become? Al-Masri says he was beaten by Americans at the prison and force-fed when he went on a hunger strike. And although the CIA realized its mistake by March, they let him rot for another couple of months.

A forensic analysis of Masri's hair showed he was malnourished during the period he says he was in the prison....

Masri can find few words to explain his ordeal. "I have very bad feelings" about the United States, he said. "I think it's just like in the Arab countries: arresting people, treating them inhumanly and less than that, and with no rights and no laws."

Presented without Comment

Women in a Croatian village have seized power from their lazy menfolk in local elections.

* * *

They won all seven seats on the local council after deciding they were sick of seeing the village men doing nothing for the community.

Merica Bogdan, one of the seven women who was elected to serve on the local council, told local media: "The time has come for women to rule.

* * *

"Men will never have power here again. We have agreed to let our men be in our beds, but never in politics again."

She added that despite having a tiny budget to work with the all-female council had already arranged for a municipal cleaning service, put up and decorated a Christmas tree in the village square and begun a project to repair the spire on the village church.

Declaring Victory Over a Faux War

Example #265 that sometimes the wingnuttery is clinically delusional. From Vision America's Rick Scarborough Report*:

Thirty days ago, Merry Christmas was almost expunged from the public square, but Christians and many of our Jewish friends stood up to the infidels and said “Enough!” and suddenly corporate America stood up, took note, reversed earlier boardroom decisions, and affirmed that Christmas is truly CHRISTmas! Our “It’s OK to Say MERRY CHRISTMAS” campaign spread all the way to Australia.

If anyone can show me *any* examples that any of this actually happened I'd truly love to see it.

Vision American is likely an obscure right-wing group you've never heard of, however, their annual conference lineup looks something like this:

Senator Sam Brownback
Senator John Cornyn
Congressman Tom DeLay
Congressman Todd Akin
Congressman Louis Gohmert
Phyllis Schlafly
Alan Keyes
Gary Bauer
Janet Parshall
Rick Scarborough (president of Vision America)

Conference panels Include: The Gay Agenda: America Won’t Be Happy and Taking Our Faith to the Ballot Box.

Yes, we gays have an agenda-- we're coming for you! boogity! boogity!

These people are so in love with the idea of being persecuted that they selectively ignore the fact that they are living in a country that is overwhelmingly Christian and run by a conservative Christian government. Persecution complex anyone? Is it any wonder why liberals/Democrats think they're detached from reality?

-----
* I received it via e-mail. If you'd like a copy, just ask.

Let's Hear It for the Senators with Guts

Two or three years ago, GOP lawmakers in both houses of Congress blindly took their marching orders from the White House. For many years, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) has been a horse-trading, pork-barreling legislator whose wishes have rarely been challenged by his colleagues.

But, in recent weeks, someone must have added something to the water they're drinking up on Capitol Hill. Consider these two encouraging developments:

* Four Republican senators are a big part of the reason why President Bush has been rebuked in his my-way-or-the-highway attempt to reauthorize the Patriot Act without any safeguards for civil liberties.

* Today, Senator Stevens took it on the chin -- the A.P. called it a "stinging defeat" -- as the Senate rejected the Defense spending bill to which Stevens had added a provision authorizing drilling in ANWAR.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) said after the vote, "It took a lot of guts for a lot of people to stand up" to Stevens' legislative push.

Does your senator have any guts? If you live in Pennsylvania, you have a truly gutless senator representing you.

Is Canada a Great Country or What?

Who would want to live in Canada? It's cold and snowy for nearly 5 months of the year, leaving the citizenry stuck inside, behind closed doors with nothing to do but ...... a-ha! Reuters reports today from Ottawa:

Group sex among consenting adults is neither prostitution nor a threat to society, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on Wednesday as it lifted a ban on so-called “swingers” clubs.

In a ruling that radically changes the way courts determine what poses a threat to the population, the top court threw out the conviction of a Montreal man who ran a club where members could have group sex in a private room behind locked doors.

“Consensual conduct behind code-locked doors can hardly be supposed to jeopardize a society as vigorous and tolerant as Canadian society,” said the opinion of the seven-to-two majority, written by Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin.

Someone should warn Chief Justice McLachlin that there's an unruly, conservative televangelist in America who urges the assassination of foreigners who offend him.

My Republican Hero

Yesterday's "Intelligent Design" ruling in Pennsylvania will certainly earn Judge John E. Jones III predictable vilification as a "liberal, activist judge" by people who don't care much for facts. However, those who are upset about the judge's strongly worded rebuke of ID have no one other than Bush to blame-- after all, it was Bush who appointed the lifelong Christian conservative Republican to the bench in 2002.

Jack Abramoff Nipping at Your Nose

Forget Fitzmas, this could be like Halloween, Thanksgiving and The Holidays all rolled into one.

Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist under criminal investigation, has been discussing with prosecutors a deal that would grant him a reduced sentence in exchange for testimony against former political and business associates, people with detailed knowledge of the case say.

Mr. Abramoff is believed to have extensive knowledge of what prosecutors suspect is a wider pattern of corruption among lawmakers and Congressional staff members. One participant in the case who insisted on anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations described him as a "unique resource."

Other people involved in the case or who have been officially briefed on it said the talks had reached a tense phase, with each side mindful of the date Jan. 9, when Mr. Abramoff is scheduled to stand trial in Miami in a separate prosecution.

What began as a limited inquiry into $82 million of Indian casino lobbying by Mr. Abramoff and his closest partner, Michael Scanlon, has broadened into a far-reaching corruption investigation of mainly Republican lawmakers and aides suspected of accepting favors in exchange for legislative work.

There may be a lot of people celebrating The Holidays with more than a little bit of worry in their hearts. (Granted that assumes they are both human and have warm, beating hearts.)

We Use Laws Like this Against the Klan

According to a Dutch-language story, the governing coalition is supporting the proposal of frighteningly coiffed MP Geert Wilders to ban the wearing of burkas in public on the grounds of women's rights and public security.

Justice Minister Rita Verdonk, who always seems to be in the middle of one controversy or another, has now been landed with the task of figuring out whether a general ban would be legal (the Dutch courts do not strike down legislation that conflicts with the constitution, but both they and the European Court of Human Rights can review legislation for compliance with the European Convention on Human Rights). If she thinks it's not, then Parliament may still pass a more limited ban applying to schools and other specific places.

The debate reminded me of a case decided not long ago in federal court in New York and of the reversal of the court's decision on appeal (pdf). One difference is that the New York law forbade the concealing of one's face in general and was not applied only to one particular group, although it was passed with a particular group in mind: tenant farmers protesting violently against the conditions under which they worked the land. To bring this post full circle, back to the Netherlands, the tenant farmers operated under an arrangement established when New York was a Dutch colony and persisting two centuries later.

TWA Hijacker Released Early by Germany

The Bush administration and a lot of Americans are probably quite pissed about this news, and you know what? They should be. The Times of London reports:

A Lebanese hijacker who was jailed for life for the murder of a US Navy diver has been set free, prompting speculation that he was part of an exchange deal to secure the release of a German hostage in Iraq.

Mohammed Ali Hammadi belonged to the [Hezbollah] gang that seized a TWA airliner in 1985 and murdered an American passenger and dumped his body on the tarmac in Beirut. He was jailed in Germany four years later, but three of his accomplices remain on the FBI’s list of most-wanted terrorists.

Mr Hammadi slipped out of Germany last week, shortly before the release of Susanne Osthoff, 43, an archaeologist and the first German hostage in Iraq. It had been assumed that the German Government paid a ransom, but now commentators are asking whether the two were traded.

“There is no connection between the two cases,” Martin Jaeger, a (German) Foreign Ministry spokesman, said.

No, of course not.

A spokeswoman for the Justice Ministry added that Mr Hammadi had served his sentence and was free to go.

Hammadi was sentenced to "life," not 19 years, which is all he served.

“There was no current US extradition request,” [the spokeswoman added].

However, the German Government was aware that the US wanted Mr Hammadi to be extradited to America on his release. Washington, barely concealing its irritation, last night insisted that it would seek Mr Hammadi’s extradition from Lebanon. “We are disappointed by the fact that he was released before the end of his full sentence,” Sean McCormack, a spokesman at the State Department, said.

Germany has experience in Middle Eastern prisoner exchanges. Palestinian terrorists captured after the massacre of Israeli sportsmen at the Munich Olympics in 1972 were quietly freed in part payment for the release of hostages. And in 1987 the German Government turned down a US request for the extradition of Mr Hammadi to protect two German hostages in Lebanon.

Nice Headline

This Dutch-language item about the warrantless spying scandal covers the story reasonably well, including an update earlier today reporting on Judge Robertson's resignation from the FISA court.

But what I like best is the headline.

Unimaginable

Can you imagine the U.S. federal government, or the government of a state, saying something like the following? Now try to imagine that the party in power is a right-of-center, pro-business, anti-regulatory party. Don't try too hard, though, or your head might explode.

The Liberal Party is pushing a plan to make childcare facilities more accessible for working parents. Under the plan, the employee, the employer, and the government would each pay one-third of the cost.

Eighty percent of Dutch employers already pay the one-third voluntarily. This is what the leader of the Liberal Party, Finance Minister Gerrit Zalm, had to say about that:

Zalm said this figure must rise to 90 percent by the middle of 2006, or else a compulsory contribution for employers would be unavoidable.

Understatement of the Day

Several interesting items in the Dutch news today. First is the sad denouement of a story that got a lot of attention here a month ago. A handicapped woman was robbed by two young men who then strangled her dog on its own leash. What seemed to disturb people most was the killing of the dog, which was just gratuitously cruel. Weirdo MP Geert Wilders, who fancies himself the successor to Pim Fortuyn, offered a €10,000 reward.

Turns out that the woman killed the dog herself and made up the whole story.

Why the title of this post? As this Dutch-language article reports: "According to police, the 49-year-old woman has psychological problems."

Spying Insanity

My heart sunk into my feet when I read this via Pam at Pandagon from the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.

According to recent press reports, Pentagon officials have been spying on what they call "suspicious" meetings by civilian groups, including student groups opposed to the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" ban on lesbian, gay and bisexual military personnel. The story, first reported by Lisa Myers and NBC News last week, noted that Pentagon investigators had records pertaining to April protests at the State University of New York at Albany and William Patterson College in New Jersey. A February protest at NYU was also listed, along with the law school's LGBT advocacy group OUTlaw, which was classified as "possibly violent" by the Pentagon. A UC-Santa Cruz "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" protest, which included a gay kiss-in, was labeled as a "credible threat" of terrorism.

I suddenly feel so insecure and unsafe. Not because I'm a homo but because THE GOVERNMENT SUPPOSEDLY ENTRUSTED TO PROTECT US CLEARLY DOESN'T HAVE A FUCKING CLUE.

Please, please, wake me up and tell me I'm dreaming.

Good (But Not Great) News for Bush's Ratings

The Washington Post reports:

President Bush's approval rating has surged in recent weeks, reversing what had been an extended period of decline ... according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News Poll.

Bush's overall approval rating rose to 47 percent, from 39 percent in early November, with 52 percent saying they disapprove of how he is handling his job. His approval rating on Iraq jumped 10 percentage points since early November, to 46 percent ...

Anytime a president raises his approval ratings, the White House and its allies are understandably pleased.

But the uptick in Bush's numbers is made less significant by this detail from the Post story:

Bush's pre-Christmas rebound was fueled largely by a sharp increase in support among his core supporters. In the past month, the proportion of Republicans approving of the president's performance rose 9 percentage points, to 87 percent. And among conservatives, three in four said Bush was doing a good job, up 12 points from November. Among Democrats, independents and moderates Bush's support remained unchanged or increased only modestly.

Where independent and moderate voters go, in the end, usually determines whether a White House can move its agenda or not.

Judge Rules I.D. Lessons Violate Constitution

Within the past hour, the Associated Press has reported that a federal judge in Harrisburg, Pa., has issued his ruling in the I.D. case:

"Intelligent design" is "a religious alternative masquerading as a scientific theory" and cannot be mentioned in biology classes in a Pennsylvania public school district, a federal judge said Tuesday, ruling in one of the biggest courtroom clashes on evolution since the 1925 Scopes trial.

Dover Area School Board members violated the Constitution when they ordered that its biology curriculum must include the notion that life on Earth was produced by an unidentified intelligent cause, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III said.

“We find that the secular purposes claimed by the Board amount to a pretext for the Board’s real purpose, which was to promote religion in the public school classroom,” he wrote in his 139-page opinion.

“The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy,” Jones wrote, adding that several members repeatedly lied to cover their motives even while professing religious beliefs.

Hmmm, isn't there a commandment on that famous list of 10 that says you're not supposed to lie? Just double-checking.

Quote of the Day? Week? Month? Year?

Looks like Bush's people didn't get around to scrubbing this speech from the whitehouse.gov site.

Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.

-George W. Bush, April 20, 2004

There you have it ladies and gentlemen-- Bush clearly states that he knows that wiretaps without court orders are unconstitutional at the same time he is/had been secretly authorizing the NSA to conduct order-free surveillance of American citizens for two years.

Why Do I Even Try?

My weekly Dutch lesson begins in a few minutes. Maybe I shouldn't bother.

Dutch is a complicated and illogical language, according to 60 percent of the Dutch people taking part in a new opinion poll.

Also, I may as well give up on trying to figure out spelling. As I mentioned a while ago, new spelling rules are coming into force, but it turns out that a lot of people haven't even assimilated the last round of changes from 1995.

The new spelling rules that come into force on August 2006 are unknown to 67 percent of the public....Only 28 percent of the respondents feel they have mastered the 1995 standard, as laid out in 'De Groene Boek' (the Dutch language 'bible'), and an equally large number of people say they still use the pre-1995 spelling....Several Dutch newspapers, magazines, the national news broadcaster NOS, and news website Planet.nl have announced they will boycott the new spelling.

I love their reasoning and completely agree that these are grounds for a boycott: "The editors claim the latest revision makes the language unnecessarily unclear and ugly."

Flemish Pride

Hard to imagine something like this on American TV, but it's a reasonably biggish (not huge) deal here.

Iranian Leader Bans Fun

Well, not quite, but it may be the next target of Iran's brash, holocaust-denying ruler. The Associated Press reports:

Hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has banned Western music from Iran's radio and TV stations, reviving one of the harshest cultural decrees from the early days of 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Songs such as George Michael's "Careless Whisper," Eric Clapton's "Rush" and the Eagles' "Hotel California" have regularly accompanied Iranian broadcasts, as do tunes by saxophonist Kenny G.

... Ahmadinejad, as head of Iran's Supreme Cultural Revolutionary Council, ordered the enactment of an October ruling by the council to ban Western music. "Blocking indecent and Western music from the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting is required," according to a statement on the council's official Web site.

... "This is terrible," said Iranian guitarist Babak Riahipour, whose music was played occasionally on state radio and TV. "The decision shows a lack of knowledge and experience."

Music was outlawed as un-Islamic by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini soon after the revolution. But as the fervor of the revolution started to fade, light classical music was allowed on radio and television. Some public concerts reappeared in the late 1980s.

Western music, films and clothing are widely available in Iran, and hip-hop can be heard on Tehran's streets, blaring from car speakers or from music shops.

Thanks for Clearing That Up, Mr.Vice President

Excerpts from an interview with Vice President Cheney that will air tonight on ABC's "World News Tonight":

ABC's Terry Moran: "... The president has now acknowledged authorizing and reauthorizing, more than 30 times, a program to spy on Americans without any warrant from any court. This is a huge change."

Cheney: "I think that's a slight distortion of what the president said. The president said — is that we will use all of our power and authority — the decision we made after 9/11 — to do everything we can to defend the country. That's our obligation. We take an oath of office to do that."

ABC's Terry Moran: "That's not in dispute. "

Cheney: "And that when we have a situation where we have communication between someone inside the U.S. and an acknowledged al Qaeda or terrorist source outside the U.S., that that's something we need to know. ..."

ABC's Terry Moran: "But, Mr. Vice President, this is a program that surveilles people inside the United States. The Constitution— "

Cheney: "Who are in touch with al Qaeda who are outside the United States."

So if Cheney insists that the surveillance program is only being used for people "in touch with al Qaeda," is he trying to tell us that this college student was an al Qaeda operative?

In Cheney's world, someone whose words or actions are being monitored by the feds must, by definition, be a terrorist.

Gee, Now I Feel Safer from Terrorism

This past weekend, the Standard-Times of New Bedford, Mass. reported:

A senior at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung's tome on Communism called "The Little Red Book." Two history professors at UMass Dartmouth, Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand, said the student told them he requested the book through the UMass Dartmouth library's interlibrary loan program.

The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand's class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents' home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said.

The professors said the student was told by the agents that the book is on a "watch list," and that his background, which included significant time abroad, triggered them to investigate the student further.

"I tell my students to go to the direct source, and so he asked for the official Peking version of the book," Professor Pontbriand said. "Apparently, the Department of Homeland Security is monitoring inter-library loans, because that's what triggered the visit ..."

So if this is what DHS agents are monitoring, then what aren't they monitoring?

In Iraq, What Are the Benchmarks?

Last night, when I heard President Bush speak these words ...

My fellow citizens, not only can we win the war in Iraq, we are winning the war in Iraq.

... my first thoughts were as follows: On what basis does he conclude that we are "winning"? What benchmarks is the President using to come to this conclusion? In a game like football, the benchmarks are clear -- there's a scoreboard and a game clock. But it's much trickier to keep score in war. I'll be the first to acknowledge that.

The U.S. military has lost more than 2,150 soldiers since the invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003. It's harder to count how many insurgents' lives have been lost. And even if we knew that figure, it would not (in and of itself) determine who's winning or losing.

In one 60-day period of 1864, the Union Army suffered considerably higher casualties (55,000) than the Confederates. Yet the battles fought by the Union were critical in strategic terms. Even as they were suffering frightfully high casualties, the Union was advancing toward Richmond, which was the Union's end game.

But what is the end game for the U.S. in Iraq? This has never been stated in clear terms. Even last night, Bush was as cryptic as ever:

I will make decisions on troop levels based on the progress we see on the ground and the advice of our military leaders ...

But what kind of "progress" will he be looking for?

* How many Iraqi military and police units need to be fully trained and ready for deployment?

* Which towns or districts, now tormented by violence, need to be stabilized?

I suspect these kinds of questions are being asked by top military commanders, but the White House, never anxious to be held to any standard (high or low), wants to steer clear of establishing benchmarks that could be used potentially to point to shortcomings in the post-war occupation.

Unfortunately, public support has slipped largely because Americans don't understand the mission in Iraq. Without benchmarks to assess actual on-the-ground progress, most Americans are probably a little skeptical when their president declares "we are winning" in Iraq.

Without a scoreboard of any kind to offer an objective assessment, Bush's "winning" rhetoric sounds empty and self-serving.

That's Their Story, And They're Stickin' to It

For the past few years, President Bush and his supporting cast have frequently insisted that the White House and Congress both "saw the same intelligence" in the weeks and months before the 2003 Iraqi invasion. But a recent report by the Congressional Research Service essentially said the administration was talking nonsense.

The Carpetbagger has a good post today on White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan's response when he was asked recently about the CRS report.

New Orleans, Still Desolate in Many Respects

Jason Lewis, a New Orleans area resident, is maintaining a website of photo images taken from above the city. The latest photos -- posted on Dec. 10, more than three months after the Katrina-induced floods -- show a city with many residential areas that, in Lewis' words, "are still devastated and uninhabitable."

I have three co-workers who have homes, or whose parents have homes, in New Orleans. In each of these cases, the homeowner had flood insurance. Yet all three of my co-workers have described a nightmare of delays and other headaches trying to get insurance companies to send adjusters, file claims, approve payments and actually cut their checks.

Human beings have short attention spans, and the national news media is no longer talking about New Orleans and other Gulf coast communities that were pummeled by Katrina. It will be interesting to see if the seemingly slow pace of reconstruction and repair garners media coverage -- other than the predictable "N'Orleans, one year later" and Mardi Gras storylines.














Literally hundreds of refrigerators (above), damaged
beyond repair, are stored in rows on a flood plain on the
city's outskirts.














Likewise, thousands of cars that once belonged to
New Orleans residents are left in a makeshift salvage yard.
Their electrical systems were damaged by the floodwaters,
and many of the car bodies suffered heavy rust from
sitting for weeks in the salt water.

The Big "What if?"

I'm neither a lawyer or constitutional scholar. I do not play one on tv or on this blog. But I came across this explanation of what is currently at stake, "The Constitution Versus Itself."

We are now on the verge of one of those grand and grave constitutional dramas that scholars and historians will study decades, maybe centuries, from now.
...
The president's legal position — that no law may forbid him from ordering domestic surveillance without a warrant — is not explicitly contained in the text of the Constitution, has never before been implied into it by the federal courts, and is nowhere to be found in Congress' most germane legislation on the topic. You might say, as one long ago Supreme Court justice might have put it, that the president's power to wage war in this fashion, without specific constitutional or statutory authority, stems from the discovery by government lawyers of "penumbral emanations" of such power in the Constitution itself. That doesn't mean the power does not somehow exist; it just means that no other branch of government, including the branch that has the job of interpreting the Constitution, has ever stated that it does.

There's already an interesting debate going on over at Pandagon whether or not Dems should consider pushing for impeachment, which raises the issue of the Order of Presidential Succession:

#2: Dick Cheney
#3: Denny Hastert
#4: Ted Stevens
#5: Condi Rice

As much as I would love to see Bush impeached for violating the constitution, does anyone want to live under President Cheney? Additionally, couldn't Bush just blame his lawyers for giving him bad legal advice? After all, he's neither a lawyer or constitutional scholar and could eventually try to defend himself by saying that he didn't know better. In other words, he could play the I'm-too-ignorant-to-do-my-job card as well as the I-should-have-got-a-second-opinion card.

(Aside: Arnold? What are your thoughts on Bush's predicament?)

Bill O'Reilly's Hero

A true hero in the War Against the War Against Christmas and the War Against People Whom Bill Finds Creepy!





(See the post above this one for context)

"30 Years of Mindless Crap"

The first same-sex couples to unite in England under the U.K.'s new civil partnership laws will do so on Wednesday. But because the registration period is shorter in Northern Ireland, the first unions were formalized today in Belfast.

I assume the government settled on this arrangment in order to focus as much attention as possible on someone that sectarian Catholics and Protestants could both hate.

Recalling Reagan's Ignorance

When I read this I couldn't help but be reminded of Reagan's people-are-homeless-by-choice comment.

Policy pundits are unhappy with the state of health insurance. What is the problem? After considering some alternative theories, I believe that the best explanation is simply that most people do not want health insurance.

Only someone with health insurance would ever think that. Only someone who doesn't know anyone without health insurance would ever think that. Only someone who doesn't understand the emotional and financial consequences of not having health insurance would ever write that. It means he has no clue about the frightening financial consequences of getting sick or getting in a car accident or needing an emergency operation. How nice for him.

What a maroon.

Journalistic Ethics? What Ethics?

Armstrong Williams wasn't the only professional pundit whose opinion was for sale.

A senior fellow at the Cato Institute resigned from the libertarian think tank on Dec. 15 after admitting that he had accepted payments from indicted Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff for writing op-ed articles favorable to the positions of some of Abramoff's clients. Doug Bandow, who writes a syndicated column for Copley News Service, told BusinessWeek Online that he had accepted money from Abramoff for writing between 12 and 24 articles over a period of years, beginning in the mid '90s.

I suspect that when it comes to Jack Abramoff and the GOP the "six degrees of separation" rule doesn't apply, it's more like 3 degrees. Maybe even 2.

What Was Really "Fixed" by the Bush Admin.

Hint: It wasn't the reconstruction miscues. This is one of the subtopics covered below as I compare reality with the rhetoric employed last night by President Bush:

BUSH: "In all three aspects of our strategy — security, democracy, and reconstruction — we have learned from our experiences, and fixed what has not worked."

REALITY CHECK: Eight months before the Iraqi invasion, a British government official reported in a secret memo that the Bush administration had "fixed the intelligence and facts around the policy" of removing Saddam Hussein. Beyond that, it is difficult to see what else the Bushies have fixed vis-a-vis Iraq. Last year, Kenneth M. Pollack of the Brookings Institution offered this prescription for U.S. strategy in Iraq: "To date, U.S. forces have concentrated on chasing insurgents and protecting themselves .... these pale in comparison with the need to provide basic security for the Iraqi people. Today, the fear of common crime and attacks committed by those who seek to undermine the course of the reconstruction are the single greatest impediments to Iraq's economic and political reconstruction. This will likely require the commitment of more American forces, or a significant shift in U.S. policy to secure additional foreign forces ..." What evidence exists that U.S. commanders in Iraq have "fixed" this situation?

BUSH: "I know that some of my decisions have led to terrible loss — and not one of those decisions has been taken lightly. I know this war is controversial — yet being your president requires doing what I believe is right and accepting the consequences."

REALITY CHECK: Whatever Americans may think of how the war in Iraq is progressing, Bush asks them to give him some credit for doing what he "believe[s] is right and accepting the consequences." First, if the president truly believed that waging war against Iraq was noble even in the absence of WMDs, he would not have based his pre-invasion justification around WMDs -- a case his administration so clearly misrepresented. Second, it's rather outrageous that Bush suggests that he is the one "accepting the consequences" of his administration's decisions. The 2,150-plus soldiers who have died in Iraq remind us that the most tragic consequences of Bush's decisions have been borne by thousands of other people and their surviving family members.

BUSH: "Today in Iraq, seven in 10 Iraqis say their lives are going well — and nearly two-thirds expect things to improve even more in the year ahead. Despite the violence, Iraqis are optimistic — and that optimism is justified."

REALITY CHECK: Bush is highlighting select portions of a poll taken earlier this month. Which results did the prez neglect to mention from this poll? By a nearly 2-to-1 margin, Iraqis voiced a preference for a single, powerful leader over democracy. Even looking ahead to what their country would need five years from now, Iraqis' support for a democratic form of government climbed no higher than 45 percent.

BUSH: "The terrorists will continue to have the coward’s power to plant roadside bombs and recruit suicide bombers."

REALITY CHECK: Yes, and their recruiting efforts may be enhanced because of the way Bush chose to conclude his speech on Sunday night. "God is not dead," said Bush, ".... the Wrong shall fail, the Right prevail ..." This kind of language plays right into the hands of jihadists who want to portray the Iraqi occupation as part of a wider, religious holy war.

New Reasons to Worry About Florida's Elections

A news report by A Florida TV station reveals that voting machines used in 26 of the Sunshine State's counties could permit computer hackers to change election results without being detected. According to WESH-Channel 2:

The supervisor of elections in Tallahassee tested voting machines several times over the last several months, and on Monday, his workers were able to hack into a voting machine and change the outcome. He said that same thing might have happened in Volusia County in 2000.

... when Ion Sancho, Leon County's Supervisor of Elections, tested the Diebold (voting machine) system and allowed experts to manipulate [a computer] card electronically, he could change the outcome of a mock election without leaving any kind of trail.

... Sancho began investigating the problem after watching the votes come in during the infamous 2000 presidential election. In Volusia County precinct 216, a memory card added more than 200 votes to George W. Bush's total and subtracted 16,000 votes from Al Gore. The mistake was later corrected during a hand count.

After watching his computer expert change vote totals this week, Sancho said that he now believes someone on the inside did the same thing in Volusia County in 2000. "Someone with access to the vote center in Volusia County put it on a memory card and uploaded it into the main system," Sancho said.

Sancho has been raising red flags about the system for months after other hackers were able to change votes during earlier tests. But Sancho said he's gotten nowhere with the company or with the Florida secretary of state's office, which oversees elections.

"This raises serious questions as to the state of Florida's certification program," Sancho said.

Acting Secretary of State David Mann defended the security of the machines. "Right now, we are confident that those machines will carry on an election when they're used within the context of the security parameters that all supervisors follow," he said.

... The concerns come on the heels of the resignation of Diebold CEO Wally O'Dell, a Republican fundraiser and staunch Bush supporter. Diebolds were used in Florida and Ohio in 2004, and skeptics are raising a lot of questions.

Talk about a useless reassurance. Florida's acting secretary of state is either terribly naive or just engaging in double-talk. When Mann says he's "confident" that voting machines will not be hacked so long as they're "used within the context of the security parameters," he's assuming that no one would dream of operating outside of those "security parameters."

Fox: Definitely the "Right" Place for Novak

The Associated Press reports:

Commentator Robert Novak, who hasn't been seen on CNN since swearing and storming off the set in August, will leave the network after 25 years and join Fox News Channel as a contributor next month.

Novak, 74, said Friday he probably would have left CNN anyway when his contract expired this month even if it hadn't been for the incident.

The suspension actually served to eliminate a delicate problem for CNN, which had received some criticism for keeping the political columnist on the air with his involvement in the
CIA leak case.

The Other Bush Who Left "Christmas" Off His Card

I'm stumbling on this a little late, but since we've blogged quite a bit about the hysterics of Bill O'Reilly and others over the imagined "war" on Christmas, I thought I'd pass this on to those who don't know that Jeb Bush hates Christmas just as much as his brother does.

The Deeper Meaning of an Early Poll for '08

Do the Religious Right leaders who have a firm grip on the GOP accurately reflect the views of ordinary Republicans? I don't think so, and I believe this is confirmed by a new poll released by the Cook Political Report/RT Strategies:

"I am going to read a list of people who might seek the Republican nomination for president in 2008, and I will read the list twice. I would like you to tell me who would be your first choice for the nomination."

John McCain ...... 25%
Rudy Giuliani ..... 25%
Newt Gingrich ..... 12%
Bill Frist ............. 5%
Rick Santorum ..... 4%
Mitt Romney ....... 4%
George Allen ....... 3%
George Pataki .... 3%
Mike Huckabee .... 2%
Mark Sanford ...... 2%
Chuck Hagel ...... 2%
Sam Brownback .... 1%
Unsure ............. 14%

Total up the support for McCain, Giuliani, Pataki and Hagel, and you've got 55% of Republican voters supporting potential candidates whom the Religious Right would never permit as nominees (for one reason or another -- their views on abortion, gay rights, school prayer, etc.)

Given Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's support for stem-cell research, one could argue that 60% of grassroots Republicans support presidential hopefuls whom the GOP's evangelical kingmakers would consider unacceptable.

Take it to the bank: The GOP presidential nominee in 2008 will not be McCain, Giuliani or Pataki.

Rick Santorum's "Guardian of the Poor" Facelift

When do you know that Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) is in the re-election race of his life? When his campaign website posts a brief article with this headline:

Sen. Santorum Goes to Bat For Low-Income Families

The article explains that Santorum "joined together with 14 other Senators to ensure that food stamp cuts that were passed in the House of Representatives did not make it into the final (budget) bill." Of course, another link on Santorum's site trumpets the "tax relief that Rick supported in Congress."

Santorum's site doesn't make it clear that the senator has been a fervent supporter of every tax-cut plan that President Bush has put forth, including the 2003 tax cut. What effect does a tax cut like this have on the middle-class and the poor?

According to a 2003 analysis by the Center for Budget & Policy Priorities:

... while the (Bush) plan contains middle-class tax cuts, they are temporary .... By contrast, the most affluent Americans would receive a lavish new tax cut that is permanent, the elimination of taxes on corporate dividends.

... over time, middle-class families could be net losers. There is no ‘free lunch,’ and these tax cuts ultimately would have to be paid for, either through higher interest rates and slower economic growth caused by swollen deficits or through budget cuts, most likely in programs for the middle class and the poor.

Because Medicaid is the primary source of health care for the poor, it's worth examining Santorum's attitude toward the program in order to determine whether or not he actually "goes to bat" for the poor. In the recent battle over the 2006 fiscal year budget, seven Senate Republicans had the courage to reject cuts of $14 billion in Medicaid, including Pennsylvania's other GOP senator, Arlen Specter. But Santorum voted to move forward with these cuts.

Santorum likes to trumpet his concern for the "unborn," and yet he has no qualms about cutting a program that pays for prenatal care for more than one out of three pregnancies nationwide? Two-thirds of the women insured by Medicaid are in their reproductive years, and, in four states, Medicaid coverage funds a majority of the medical costs related to pregnancies.

But Santorum would still have us believe he is "pro-life."

In the months ahead, Santorum's political advisers will continue to advise him to play up his "kinder, gentler" side -- wherever that is. Democrats need to fight Santorum's political facelift with the facts. They need to make it clear that Rick Santorum may be a lot of things, but he is not Jane Addams.

Big Brother Bush

At this point I think it's almost a given that Bush tapes all of his conversations.

Bush secretly ordered the NSA to spy on American citizens without a warrant-- you don't say!

Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.

Combine this with the recent story about the FBI spying on anti-war protesters and you have yourself something along the lines of Nixon II, not Bush II.

Political Poetry

Last night Congressman John Dingell (D-Michigan) recited the following original poem on the floor of congress in objection to House Resolution 579: "Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the symbols and traditions of Christmas should be protected." A roll call vote is scheduled for this afternoon to "protect Christmas" from an invisible, imaginary war.

Yes, this is truly beyond ridiculous. But at least some Dems are treating it as it should be treated-- as a joke.

'Twas the week before Christmas and all through the House,
no bills were passed `bout which Fox News could grouse.
Tax cuts for the wealthy were passed with great cheer,
so vacations in St. Barts soon should be near.

Katrina kids were all nestled snug in motel beds,
while visions of school and home danced in their heads.
In Iraq, our soldiers need supplies and a plan,
and nuclear weapons are being built in Iran.

Gas prices shot up, consumer confidence fell.
Americans feared we were in a fast track to ..... well.
Wait, we need a distraction, something divisive and wily,
a fabrication straight from the mouth of O'Reilly.

We will pretend Christmas is under attack,
hold a vote to save it, then pat ourselves on the back.
Silent Night, First Noel, Away in the Manger,
Wake up Congress, they're in no danger.

This time of year, we see Christmas everywhere we go,
From churches to homes to schools and, yes, even Costco.
What we have is an attempt to divide and destroy
when this is the season to unite us with joy.

At Christmastime, we're taught to unite.
We don't need a made-up reason to fight.
So on O'Reilly, on Hannity, on Coulter and those right-wing blogs.
You should sit back and relax, have a few egg nogs.

'Tis the holiday season; enjoy it a pinch.
With all our real problems, do we really need another Grinch?
So to my friends and my colleagues, I say with delight,
a Merry Christmas to all, and to Bill O'Reilly, happy holidays.
Ho, ho, ho. Merry Christmas."

When someone suggested amending the resolution to include protecting Chanukah too GOP House leaders said no way. Go figure. "Judeo-Christian values" my ass.

----------------
Addendum:Welcome friends of Shakes & Atrios! Thank you for shopping, please come again.

If you want to contact the person responsible for bringing the so-called "War on Christmas" to the floor of congress for a vote, please write to Rep. Jo Ann Davis of Virginia and let her know how much you support her invaluable contribution to the protection of poor persecuted Santas everywhere. (Do you think she knows that "Christmas" is actually 4000 years old? You know, as in it started 2000 years BC. I think she needs to be enlightened, don't you?)

Not the Smoothest Messenger

Matthew Yglesias reminds me of why I am not thrilled with Nancy Pelosi being at the helm of the Democratic Party's leadership in the U.S. House. In an article about Democrats' position on the war in Iraq, Yglesias writes:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has, if anything, been worse (than DNC Chair Howard Dean). She responded to Bush's new political push by first proclaiming herself a proponent of leaving Iraq as soon as possible, then by saying that most of the caucus agrees with her, and then by saying that the caucus wouldn't be adopting this as its official position.

Telling the world that most House Democrats have a position on Iraq that they don't intend to expound and defend in public is bizarre and merely opens the door for Republicans to define their opponents' views any way they choose.

Pelosi was trying, one assumes, to accommodate the existence of diverse viewpoints within the party, which is understandable. But at a December 8 press conference, she managed to explain this diversity of views in the most counterproductive way possible, describing the war as "not like an issue such as prescription drugs or Social Security, which are core issues to the Democratic Party."

Thus, House Democrats apparently both have a secret plan to lose the war, and don't consider national security to be a topic that should be taken all that seriously anyway.

By This Measure, Bush's Ratings Look Good

A new poll just released by Zogby-America asked the following question about our vice president:

For the following list of people, please tell me how you would rate their overall performance on the job: excellent, good, fair, or poor? ..... Dick Cheney

Excellent 13%
Good 20%
Fair 24%
Poor 42%
Unsure 1%

Rumor has it that one of the "excellent" responses came from Lynne Cheney.

The Board That Never Meets

Milton Berle once quipped, "Committees take minutes and lose hours." But there are exceptions. Consider the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, a body established a year ago this month by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004.

This Board was created to help ensure that the USA Patriot Act's police and investigatory powers weren't abused. Yet, according to Eric Alterman:

[Bush administration officials] insist that there can be no possibility that they would ever abuse the powers they enjoy under the “Patriot Act” and yet, to take one minor example from the recently released — and barely covered — 9/11 commission report on compliance, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board that is supposed to oversee this delicate balance ... was deemed to have “funding [that] is insufficient, no meetings have been held, no staff named, no work plan outlined, no work begun, no office established.” (And they didn’t even get an “F” for that one.)

So what happened?

Well, for starters, after the Board was created by the '04 law, it took President Bush nearly 6 months just to announce his "intention to nominate" a chair and vice-chair for the Board. And even that happened only after a group of senators from both parties complained that the White House was dragging its feet.

That Sure Lends Credibility to Your Opinion

In an interview yesterday with Fox News, President Bush defended Tom DeLay, but he also had this to say about Jack Abramoff, the poster child for what's wrong with Washington:

"... Abramoff -- I'm not, frankly, all that familiar with a lot that's going on over at Capitol Hill, but it seems like to me that he was an equal money dispenser, that he was giving money to people in both political parties."

It lends a lot of credibility to your views, Mr. President, when you state those views right after reminding us all that you're not "all that familiar with a lot that's going on over at Capitol Hill ..."

Stated more succinctly, our president doesn't have a clue what an entire branch of government is doing. Gee, how reassuring.

At least you've got to appreciate his candor.

House Cuts Education for 1st Time in a Decade

Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a spending measure that National Public Radio notes contains the first cuts in federal education spending in more than a decade.

Larger news outlets don't seem to have much to say about this, however. Click on the "Education" link on CNN's home page, and this is the earth-shattering news you get.

Quakers and the Post-9/11 War on Terror

In the weeks after 9/11, there was a lot of talk about America's intelligence failures -- the information we weren't collecting. Unfortunately, the Pentagon seems to have concluded that it wasn't collecting enough intelligence on the Quakers.

According to an investigative report by NBC News:

A year ago, at a Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Fla., a small group of activists met to plan a protest of military recruiting at local high schools. What they didn't know was that their meeting had come to the attention of the U.S. military.

A secret 400-page Defense Department document obtained by NBC News lists the Lake Worth meeting as a “threat” and one of more than 1,500 “suspicious incidents” across the country over a recent 10-month period.

“This peaceful, educationally oriented group being a threat is incredible,” says Evy Grachow, a member of the Florida group called The Truth Project.

“This is incredible,” adds group member Rich Hersh. “It's an example of paranoia by our government,” he says. “We're not doing anything illegal.”

The Defense Department document is the first inside look at how the U.S. military has stepped up intelligence collection inside this country since 9/11, which now includes the monitoring of peaceful anti-war and counter-military recruitment groups.

... documents obtained by NBC News show that the Defense Department is clearly increasing its domestic monitoring activities. One DOD briefing document stamped “secret” concludes: “[W]e have noted increased communication and encouragement between protest groups using the [I]nternet,” but no “significant connection” between incidents, such as “reoccurring instigators at protests” or “vehicle descriptions.”

I don't know about you, but I sure feel safer knowing that our Pentagon is keeping its eye on those terrorist-laden Quakers.

Progress and Reality

Matthew Yglesias calls his website "a reality-based blog." One wonders why such a stipulation is necessary -- until, that is, one reads the transcript from White House press briefings. Press Secretary Scott McClellan was at it again today, using the word "progress" 9 times to describe the U.S. military presence in Iraq.

Like Yglesias and most other people, the Foreign Policy Leadership Council also believes in being reality-based. On its website, FPLC offers this information vis-a-vis the "progress" cited by McClellan:

Misperception No. 1: Violence has declined since the U.S. handed power to an Iraqi government in June 2004.

Reality: The number of American fatalities has increased every month since the June 28, 2004 transfer of sovereignty.

* Daily fatalities have increased more than 20%.

* The numbers of daily attacks against American troops have increased more than 50%. U.S. troops in Iraq are attacked an average 70 times a day.

* There are now wide areas of the Iraq known as “no-go zones” because they are too dangerous for even heavily armed U.S. troops.

Sullivan Reassures Us He's "Still Pro-War"

On his website today, Andrew Sullivan informs one and all that he is still "still pro-war" on the Iraqi situation. No doubt, we shall all sleep much more easily tonight knowing that Sullivan's ideology is so resilient that it trumps the experience of the past 2 years and 8 months.

Sullivan tries to buttress his pro-Iraq war stand by citing this column from today's Times of London. In the column, David Aaronovitch points to a recent poll of the Iraqi people:

Iraqis themselves, in a large poll released yesterday, believe that things are bad in their country: 53 percent took a negative view of the situation, compared with 44 percent who were optimists. Half now thought the invasion had been a bad idea.

The same number now wanted rule by a single, strong leader and only 28 percent thought democracy more important. One quarter had confidence in Iraq’s politicians, while two thirds trusted its religious leaders and army.

But Aaronovitch insists other results from this same poll show things aren't so bad after all. He cites the following:

... 71 per cent of Iraqis said things were currently good in their personal lives, while 29 percent said they were bad. 69 percent expected the situation in Iraq to improve, while 11 percent said it would worsen. And asked about what Iraq would need in five years’ time, support for the strong leader fell to 31 percent and for democracy rose to 45 percent.

Okay, fair enough. The Iraqi people's support for an all-powerful leader does appear to be based largely on their current frustration that conditions in Iraq remain violent and chaotic. But what will happen to those 31-to-45 numbers if the domestic turmoil continues in Iraq?

The fact that we can't get a majority of Iraqis to say they yearn for democracy right now or in five years should not please America (or Sullivan). How does this square with Colin Powell's pronouncement last year that "the Iraqi people want democracy, deserve democracy, and we're going to help them achieve that goal of having a democracy"?

And the 69 percent result suggests that Iraqis are a hopeful people. But that means very little unless the U.S. can do more to stabilize the country.

New RNC Ad Doctors Photo of U.S. Soldier

In this post for Slate.com, John Dickerson offers some revealing analysis:

The [Republican National Committee's] new Web video "Retreat and Defeat" starts with a flat-screen TV playing clips from Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, Sen. Barbara Boxer, and Sen. John Kerry.

As they speak (about the Iraq war), a white flag waves over their faces while ominous music moans. Dean says the war in Iraq can't be won; Boxer says withdrawal should start after the Iraqi election; and Kerry says U.S. soldiers shouldn't be "terrorizing kids and children, you know, women."

Then the camera pans back, and we learn that we've been watching these clips over the shoulder of a U.S. soldier dressed in desert camouflage, his service rifle strapped to his back. Candy canes hang on the wall just above the screen, which flashes the message: "Our soldiers are watching and our enemies are too."

The video conveys the impression that somewhere in Iraq, a soldier is having his mission and Christmas tarnished by weak-willed Democrats.

Here is a frame from the ad (above) and the actual picture of the soldier (top photo), taken two years ago .... the soldier was really watching "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!"

... Bush has distorted images of U.S. soldiers before. During the 2004 campaign, he got into trouble when one of his ads, titled "Whatever It Takes," doctored the images of soldiers. The ad showed a crowd of soldiers listening to the president. But some of the faces appeared several times in several different places within the same crowd shot, the result of an attempt to increase the number of soldiers appearing to listen to Mr. Bush.

... The RNC is pimping a mute and unnamed soldier not just to defend the Iraq war but to imply that Democrats are white-handkerchief-waving cowards who want the United States to lose.

The Last Word

It's the rant I've been slowly building up to over the past few weeks, but, thankfully, I can put down my sword. I have nothing else to say about the war on Christmas because www.fuckchristmas.org/ says it all. An excerpt:

At what point did a basic understanding of the separation of church and state become a fucking war on religion? And how did we get to the point where you can call an organization set up to defend our civil liberties “Terrorists” on national television and no one fires your ass? Enough. Fuck all of you lying little shitheads who wish the world was out to get you so you could play the poor oppressed victims. Wake up assholes — you’re the cowboys, not the fucking Indians.
...
Let’s back up even fucking further, shall we? Can anyone tell me how old Christmas is? Anyone? Two thousand years, give or take, right? Gee, who’s been reading their No Child Left Behind History Textbooks? Try fucking four thousand years. Huh. Twice as fucking long as your little baby king has been around. How could that possibly be, unless. . . waitaminute. . .

Christmas isn’t fucking Christian. Ok, now we’re talking.

That’s right, that Yuletide cheer you’re spreading? Those “Christmas” traditions? They’re not just like Pagan rituals, they fucking are Pagan rituals. Yule? It’s the holiday celebrating the rebirth of the Sun god Mithra in . . . guess when? Go on – guess. Late December. What a weird coincidence. Practically the whole thing is ripped off from the fucking Druids. Twelve days? Check. Exchanging gifts? Check. Mistletoe? Check. And you’d better fucking believe that those decorated trees that [John] Gibson and Co. are so bent out of shape over are as Pagan as the Rune and Crystal Shack at Pentagramfest 2005. You might as well be building miniature fucking Stonehenges in your den.
...
Christians just stole a bunch of traditions from other cultures, slapped them together, stuck a fucking tinfoil star on top and called it the Most Important Holiday of the Year. Modern American Christmas makes Michael Jackson look positively organic.

Oddly enough if Christmas wasn't considered a Christian holiday and wasn't so overly commericialized I just might join in and celebrate it-- but the sham factor is just too big for me to ignore. The whole holiday is nothing more than a Pagan festival dressed up in Jesus drag.

Bushies Distort Reality to Provide "Balance"

On Monday, The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz examined complaints from the Bush administration and its allies that the media have painted an overly pessimistic view of the war in Iraq:

In his speech (last week), Rumsfeld said: "We've arrived at a strange time in this country, where the worst about America and our military seems to so quickly be taken as truth by the press and reported and spread around the world, often with little context and little scrutiny, let alone correction or accountability after the fact."

... "When something goes wrong in Iraq or there's a possibility of something going wrong, it gets very big play," [National Review Editor Rich Lowry] says. "And if the situation improves or doomsday doesn't come about, it gets almost no play. There's a tendency by a lot of the media to believe the worst of the military. A lot of reporters are skeptical of the war and of Bush, and their coverage tends to conform to that point of view."

Marjorie Miller, foreign editor of the Los Angeles Times, says it's "a little hard to focus on positive stories when 10 men have just been blown up or bombs are going off every day. I think we do a pretty good job of balancing it."

But this was my favorite part:

Rumsfeld cited as a positive development the emergence of "a vital and engaged media ... with some 100 newspapers in Iraq now." He did not mention the Los Angeles Times disclosure that the Pentagon has paid some of those papers to carry positive stories written by military officers.

When Vice President Cheney says, as he did in June, that the insurgency is in its "last throes," journalists naturally start to wonder whether the administration officials are being candid. "As a balance to overly negative media coverage," Lowry says, "they give us overly positive statements."

Ah, now it all makes sense to me. When the press portrays the Iraqi situation in an inaccurate light, it's unforgivable and outrageous bias. When the Bush administration portrays events in an inaccurate light, it's okay because it provides "balance" by counteracting the media's bias.

Thanks for clearing that up, Rich.

If Starting a Troop Withdrawal Soon Is "Retreat," Then Why Does Rummy Seem to Support It?

FactCheck.org has some interesting analysis of a new Republican National Committee TV ad. The RNC ad airs excerpts of comments made by Howard Dean, Barbara Boxer and John Kerry about the U.S. presence in Iraq, intersperses images of white "surrender" flags, and then concludes with the phrase: "Retreat and defeat is [sic] not an option."

Of all the observations made by FactCheck.org, I found this piece of analysis most interesting:

After showing another white flag, the ad next quotes California Sen. Barbara Boxer advocating withdrawal of US troops from Iraq: "So there's no specific timeframe but I would say the withdrawal ought to start now, right after the elections December 15th."

... Is Boxer's call to begin withdrawal a call for "retreat and defeat?" Worth noting is that the Bush Administration itself plans to withdraw at least 17,000 troops from Iraq after Dec. 15, and more next year if "conditions permit." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated this on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on Dec. 8, 2005:

Rumsfeld: We're [at] about 155,000 [US troops]. And we're going to go back down to our baseline of about one hundred and thirty-seven, thirty-eight thousand, after the elections. I'm sure of that.

So if proposing a troop withdrawal after the Dec. 15 elections amounts to embracing "retreat and defeat," then count Rummy as a defeatist.

Your Tax Dollars at (Not So Hard) Work

In 2005 the Bush Administration spent $168 million dollars on "abstinence education" to teach young adults enlightening stuff like this:

While a man needs little or no preparation for sex, a woman often needs hours of emotional and mental preparation.

5 Major Needs of Women: Affection, Conversation, Honesty and Openness, Financial Support, Family Commitment

5 Major Needs of Men: Sexual Fulfillment, Recreational Companionship, Physical Attractiveness, Admiration, Domestic Support

Um, what year did they write this? 1955? It's so wrong and so dated I don't even know where to start. Apparently it's very expensive to own and maintain breasts and a vagina, therefore women need "financial support" and men do not. I also didn't know that men have no need for conversation, affection, honesty or openness-- just sex, hiking and breakfast in bed, and please, do it all without talking.

Then again, this is far more twisted:

It is hard for many of us to understand terrorism and why someone would have such hatred in their heart that they would deliberately kill innocent people. Today I would like to introduce you to another form of terrorism that gets little, if any, attention—the terrorism that our youth face each and every day.

At one time the definition of an adult was someone who had left childhood behind and taken on the responsibilities of life. In contrast, today “adult” means being able to view and participate in any and all types of perverse activities that depraved minds can imagine. We actively seek to eliminate terrorism from our land; please help us actively seek to eliminate this corruptive terrorism that is stealing our children’s future.

Sex = terrorism?!? What "perverse" and "depraved" activities do you think they're referring to? (nudge, nudge, wink, wink)

Read more at Harper's Blue Balls for Red States.

Restoring Honor to the White House

I'll blog more at a later date on the House of Lords' judgment of last week barring the use of evidence obtained in another country through torture, even if the person against whom the evidence is used is not the person who was tortured. I've been swamped with work and have had time only to skim the nearly 100-page judgment. A few paragraphs, though, jumped out:

There can be few issues on which international legal opinion is more clear than on the condemnation of torture. Offenders have been recognised as the “common enemies of mankind” (Demjanjuk v Petrovsky 612 F Supp 544 (1985), 566), Lord Cooke of Thorndon has described the right not to be subjected to inhuman treatment as a “right inherent in the concept of civilisation” (Higgs v Minister of National Security [2000] 2 AC 228, 260), the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has described the right to be free from torture as “fundamental and universal” (Siderman de Blake v Argentina 965 F 2d 699 (1992), 717) and the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture (Mr Peter Koojimans) has said that “If ever a phenomenon was outlawed unreservedly and unequivocally it is torture” (Report of the Special Rapporteur on Torture, E/CN.4/1986/15, para 3).

***

37. In Canada, article 15 of the Torture Convention has been embodied in the criminal code: see India v Singh 108 CCC (3d) 274 (1996), para 20. In France, article 15 has legal effect (French Republic v Haramboure, Cour de Cassation, Chambre Criminelle, 24 January 1995, No. de pourvoi 94-81254), and extradition to Spain was refused where allegations that a witness statement had been procured by torture in Spain was judged not to have been adequately answered (Le Ministère Public v Irastorza Dorronsoro, Cour d’Appel de Pau, No 238/2003, 16 May 2003). In the Netherlands, it was held by the Supreme Court to follow from article 3 of the European Convention and article 7 of the ICCPR that if witness statements had been obtained by torture they could not be used as evidence: Pereira, 1 October 1996, nr 103.094, para 6.2. In Germany, as in France, article 15 has legal effect: El Motassadeq, decision of the Higher Regional Court of Hamburg, 14 June 2005, para 2.

38. In the United States, torture was recognised to be prohibited by the law of nations even before the Torture Convention was made: Filartiga v Peña-Irala 630 F 2d 876 (1980). Earlier still, it had been said to be “unthinkable that a statement obtained by torture or by other conduct belonging only in a police state should be admitted at the government’s behest in order to bolster its case”: LaFrance v Bohlinger 499 F 2d 29 (1974), para 6.

And we shall be a light unto the nations.

DeLay Doomed?

If this case ends up being decided against the World's Biggest Asshole™ next year could very well be a boon year for Dems. (Not that they've earned it-- yet.)

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to consider arguments that a Republican-engineered congressional redistricting in Texas illegally diluted minority voting rights and was so partisan it violated the Constitution.

The justices today said they will review a three-judge panel ruling that allowed the redistricting, which was orchestrated by former U.S. House Republican Leader Tom DeLay and helped Republicans pick up five House seats in Texas in the 2004 election.

``Simply redistributing power from disfavored to favored political parties is not legitimate,'' argued an appeal by a group of voters from 17 congressional districts.

The justices will hear arguments in Washington in four appeals by Democrats, Hispanic groups and other opponents of the new map. The appeals also say the redistricting relied on outdated census data and was done purely for partisan purposes.

The redistricting, which broke up some of the state's Democratic strongholds, was challenged in part because it took place in the middle of the decade, rather than in response to the 10-year census. The map replaced one that had been drawn by a federal court after a legislative deadlock.

Even DeLay can't survive such a political shitstorm-- the only thing that could kill his career quicker is a dead girl/live boy in his closet.

That's an awfully long way to tumble. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

O'Reilly, Donohue & Co.: Get Over Yourselves

As a follow-up to Zoe's post, let me add my thoughts about the war-on-Christmas whiners: get over yourselves. Bill O'Reilly, the Fox News commentator, and John Gibson, the Fox talking head who has written the book "The War on Christmas," have been leading the charge and whining themselves silly over this imagined "war."

Arizona Republic columnist E.J. Montini speaks for me when he writes:

The two TV hosts and the groups that support them believe that Christmas is being denigrated. And they're correct.

For years the holiday has been abused. Only it's not because retailers refuse to utilize Christmas as a sales tool. It's because they do use it. Way too much.

When I was a boy in Catholic school we were urged to reject the blatant commercialization of the holiday. Now we're supposed to denounce companies for not exploiting Christmas?

Then there's fellow whiner Bill Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious Liberty and Civil Rights. (Think of this group as the political wing of Opus Dei.)

Donohue gripes about the fact that the official 2005 White House Christmas Card doesn't actually include the word "Christmas" inside. He neglected to mention, however, that this year's White House card does include a Biblical scripture. But that's not enough to meet Donohue's religious test.

In this article, Donohue says he doesn't want a "diversity lecture." Fine. The point isn't complicated so no lecture is necessary. The point is simply this -- this is America, a country in which individuals decide for themselves how they celebrate a holiday, which holiday they celebrate, what their greeting cards say or whether they send greeting cards at all.

Instead of obsessing over how other people choose to observe the holiday, Donohue and company could simply move on with their lives and send the most Christian-themed cards they can find. No one's stopping them.

But I'm not a Christian, and not all of my friends are Christian. So I can choose to refer to the "holiday season" whether Bill Donohue likes it or not. And someone can send me a card with or without the word "Christmas" in it without me freaking out at them.

Besides, simply using the word "Christmas" doesn't, in and of itself, express reverence for Christian values or traditions. Does it soothe Donohue's nerves to know, for example, that this Internet news site used the headline "It's a Christmas Price War" instead of "It's a Holiday Price War"?

A Little Papal Perspective

I know most American fundies aren't Catholic so they won't let this message from the Pope interfere with their pseudo-war-on-Christmas talking points, but here it is regardless.

"In today's consumer society, this time (of the year) is unfortunately subjected to a sort of commercial 'pollution' that is in danger of altering its true spirit, which is characterized by meditation, sobriety and by a joy that is not exterior but intimate," the pope said in his traditional Sunday blessing.

Who is ruining Christmas? Not the Jews, not the godless, not the liberals-- it's the unholy union between Christmas and the Almighty Dollar. If I were a practicing Christian I think my mantra for the "holiday season" would be "What Would Jesus Buy?" A 30" plasma tv? An ipod? A diamond necklace? Or is it more likely he'd take all that money and give it to a homeless shelter?

The Eternal Question

O.K., perhaps "The Eternal Question" is a bit of an overstatement, but this one has been bugging me for a while. Pretty much since I sat in my lower Manhattan apartment shortly after 9/11 and saw news reports of people murdering Sikhs in Arizona, in fact. And the question is this:

Why are red states in which Arab and Muslim terrorists have never shown an interest so much more afraid of all Arab and Muslim people than those of us who live(d) in target zones?

Today's stomach-churning episode courtesy of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. Interestingly enough, the Coalition for a Secure Driver's License has chucked its billboards down the Memory Hole. But the magic of Google caching can show you what you missed (unless you live in New Mexico or North Carolina, in which case you'll see them in living color soon enough).

By the way, if you're wondering what the Arabic script on the billboard means: it means nothing. It's just random characters. Maybe the answer to my eternal question might have something to do with ignorance borne of unfamiliarity. Ya think?

Meet the New Boss. Same as the Old Boss.

Ugh.

In choosing a new secretary of state, Gov. Jeb Bush picked a woman with impressive credentials in every aspect of the job except the most important one: overseeing fair and accurate elections.

***

She also has been a generous partisan, befriending the governor and president and financially backing Republican candidates.

***

Cobb's only obvious involvement in an election was as a volunteer coordinator of Republican lawyers in the 2000 presidential recount, hardly Florida's finest hour.

I wonder if she'll still be secretary of state in 2008. If she is, I've got a prediction of who will chair Jeb Bush's presidential campaign committee in Florida.

Some Interesting Factoids

A few tidbits from last month's Harper's Index:

Days after Katrina hit that Dick Cheney’s office ordered an electric company to restore power to two oil pipelines: 1

Days after Hurricane Katrina that the White House authorized sending federal troops to New Orleans: 4

Number of consecutive years that the U.S. median income has failed to increase: 5

Number of consecutive years that the percentage of Americans living in poverty has increased: 4

Trotting Out the Ole "Gays as Child Predators" Line

Religious Right groups are at it again. In Montgomery County, Md., a Religious Right group is fighting efforts to include references to homosexuality in the sex education curriculum of the public schools. In doing so, the local group is subtly weaving code language into its literature that plays on the discredited notion that gay people seek to molest children or lure them into this "lifestyle."

According to the Washington Post, a leaflet circulated by the group reads:

DID YOU KNOW ...

Three organizations supporting homosexuality as natural and mainstream were appointed to the NEW Citizens Advisory Committee?

Homosexual advocacy groups are targeting Montgomery County children and families?

The group never refers directly to child molestation, which, of course, is what makes it so effective. It conveys the notion, but allows for plausible deniability. Conservative religious groups have often played this card. In 1978, they tried (unsucessfully) to exploit this fear to pass a ballot measure in California that would have banned gays and lesbians from teaching in the public schools -- the Briggs initiative.

Anti-gay groups choose their words very carefully, as is proven by this quote from the Post article:

"It's an adult-driven agenda to indoctrinate students,'' said Mike Johnson, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund.

"... an adult-driven agenda" It makes it sound so insidious.

Of course, any responsible effort to design a curriculum for school students is always going to be "adult-driven," isn't it? Does Johnson want 12- and 13-year-olds to decide what they're going to be taught? And any group or person who makes a suggestion for changing curriculum or other school policies has, by definition, an "agenda." On the other hand, the "indoctrinate" part is sensationalist nonsense. Yet, even without that word, you have to admit that "adult-driven agenda" has a certain inflammatory effect -- whether it should or not.

So, just to sum things up, it's quite true that the effort to let young people know there's such a thing as homosexuality -- oh, my god, you'll traumatize them all for life! -- is an "adult-driven agenda." Likewise, the push in some states to teach creationism (a.k.a., "intelligent design") is also an "adult-driven agenda."

Nothing

That's what this post is about - nothing.

(I just wanted to post something that isn't about a pretend war waged by conservatives against themselves so they can feel persecuted and self-righteous.)

Actually, earlier this morning I read a story in the Washington Post that made me so crazy that I'm not ready to write anything other than this: I hate these people. I just don't understand how harassing small businesses and trying to prevent undocumented immigrants from earning money in the Virginia suburbs is helping their case.

A Stroll Down Memory Lane

I was looking through a timeline of the year 1957 on Wikipedia.org when I noticed, amid the dates and events, this item:

February 4 -- France prohibits UN involvement in Algeria.

Then, under the month of March, I read the following:

March 20 -- French newspaper L'Express reveals that the French army tortures Algerian prisoners.

Interesting, eh? History has a way of repeating itself, even if the perpetrators rotate.

One wonders if it is sheer wisdom that has led the French, 48 years later, to be so stridently multilateralist. Or, is it merely the sad and slow realization that France's superpower days ended 190 years ago at Waterloo.

The Enemy Within

No wonder Dubya sent out anti-Christian "Happy Holidays" cards this year. I can now reveal a Demagogue exclusive: an enemy agent in the War on Christmas has been in deep cover in the White House for nearly five years.

War Profiteering

There's a war going on! Make sure you show everyone you support it with your "It's OK To Say Merry Christmas" and "Boycott the Holidays, Merry Christmas!" bumper stickers-- get them while they're hot! And if you feel really strongly about the War on Christmas are also t-shirts; "Say 'Merry Christmas' or I'll Pitch a Fit in Your Store!" for the mall or "If You Don't Celebrate Christmas You Hate America" for you to wear at your office "holiday" party. My personal favorite is a button I saw on the metro the other day: "Say 'Merry Christmas' or Else! (Else is the name of my gun)" So many ways to say Happy Birthday to Jesus!

One last time-- there is no war/attack/conspriacy against Christmas. For 6 weeks out of the year you can't escape Christmas if you wanted to, Christmas-themed decorations are on anything and everything that isn't moving. (Even some things that are, like cars or dogs.) If I were to decide that I wouldn't step foot in any building that had Christmas decorations inside I wouldn't even be able to eat, shop or go to work. (20 foot Christmas tree in the lobby went up the 1st week of December.)

Calling it "holiday" instead of "Christmas" is supposed to be a nice sentiment, it's about not presuming that everyone celebrates Christmas because not everybody does. Leave it up to some domineering, rude Christians to come up with an imaginary war to feel persecuted over and complain about. Isn't this this time of year people are supposed to be nice to each other or something? The biggest irony about the whole "War on Christmas" farce is that there is a *real* war going on. You know, the kind of war with actual casaulties. Instead of waging war over semantics why don't these people do something nice for people fighting in a real war? For starters, sending holiday care packages to soldiers in Iraq.

I don't hate Christmas but I'm increasingly looking forward to December 27th so we can put this "war" away with the perennial Christmas decorations. (I'm sure they'll bring it out again next year-- 'tis the season to make a profit.)

A "War" Needs an Official Declaration...

otherwise we'd have to call it "The Police Action Against Christmas."

You knew it was only a matter of time-- an official Declaration of War Against Christmas (a parody) and a right-winger at Townhall blames The Jews for leading the war on Christmas (sadly, not a parody). Apparently it's OK to demonize Jews for "stealing Christmas," refer to Jews and the ACLU interchangably, and tell Jews that this is a "Christian Nation" if you yourself are a right-wing, conservative Republican Jew.

I suppose it's high time for me to start blaming gays for destroying the American family. While I'm at it I might as well blame my nonreligious, liberal family for my homosexuality. (Conveniently ignoring that I'm the only gay kid in my family or that people like Mary Cheney exist.) Maybe if I pretended to be a self-hating ex-liberal, ex-gay I could be the right-wing's next media darling?

All I really need is a gay man to marry and to pretend that every day of my life is opposite day. However, I suppose that means I'd have to stop blogging and start pretending to hate all you fine people. Nah.

Ford Motor Co. Caves In to the Religious Right

Where to place advertisements is a decision that normally is made by a company's vice president for marketing. At the Ford Motor Co., this title belongs to Darryl B. Hazel. But Ford's most recent decision about ad placement was made essentially by Donald Wildmon, not Hazel.

If the name "Donald Wildmon" sounds familiar, there's a reason why. He's a bigot who lives in Mississippi, and Ford just said "uncle" to him. As a leading gay news magazine explains:

The antigay American Family Association claimed a cultural victory on Thursday and called off its threatened boycott of Ford Motor Co. On Friday, Ford spokesman Mike Moran confirmed to Advocate.com that the company will stop advertising its Jaguar and Land Rover brands in gay publications but insisted it was strictly a business decision.

The Dearborn, Mich., automaker came under fire from the AFA in May for its longtime efforts to increase ... workplace diversity and support gay rights causes.

... Threatened with a boycott by the Mississippi-based AFA, Ford and some of its dealers agreed to negotiate, and the AFA announced in June that it would hold off on its planned action. On Thursday, AFA announced the boycott would be canceled altogether.

"They've heard our concerns; they are acting on our concerns. We are pleased with where we are," said Donald Wildmon, AFA’s chairman, in a statement. "

Donald Wildmon is pleased. Are you? Click here to let Ford executives know what you think about their decision to cave in to the anti-gay bigots.

Bolton: Still Determined to Trash the U.N.

John Bolton has never been shy about attacking the United Nations for not holding its officials or programs accountable. Well, it appears (for now, at least) that the UN has just made an appropriate decision that holds one of its top officials accountable. According to Reuters:

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has decided to fire the head of the U.N. election unit, who has became a star in the world body for supervising polls in dangerous places like Afghanistan and Iraq, two U.N. officials said.

The reasons for the dismissal of Carina Perelli, a 48-year old Uruguayan, were harassment of staff and management lapses, the officials said Saturday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

... The Swiss firm Mannet SARL, in a leaked 22-page report in August, cited her personal courage and extensive knowledge of election procedures. But it said she had shown favoritism toward a small circle of employees and created an atmosphere of sexual jokes, unwelcome advances, and professional harassment.

"The work environment within the division is considered offensive by many of those interviewed and has contributed to emotional harm," the report said.

So did Bolton applaud the U.N.'s action? Nope.

As a matter of fact, the man who loves to hate the U.N. found another reason to bitch about the organization -- it holds people accountable at times that are inconvenient for the United States.

I suspect Bolton will always find a reason to trash the U.N.

Why Does the Administration Hate Christianity Update

In my latest naked boobs post, I linked to an older post on the administration's request for the Supreme Court to hear a case on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), in which an obscure Christian sect based in Brazil won the right to keep drinking its drug-laden ceremonial tea. I wondered why, given the religious right's great enthusiasm for RFRA, Dubya & Co. would be making an issue of an otherwise unremarkable case in an effort to narrow the statute's reach.

Well, the Supreme Court did take the case, which was argued last month. And I was right about the religious organizations' views on the matter. The Court got amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs from such radicals as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Baptist Joint Committee, and the American Jewish Committee.

In the straight-face category of arguments, we have the Bush administration arguing that the Court should not enforce a United States statute as written because otherwise we would be in violation of an international treaty. Tee-hee. International law. What will they think of next?

With a new Chief Justice and the possibility that Judge Alito will replace Justice O'Connor while the case is pending, we could be in for some very interesting judicial bedfellows. RFRA touches on a lot of issues, including the power of Congress to interpret the Constitution differently from the Court and to grant more protection to individuals than the Constitution requires, not to mention the recently controversial topic of international law in the Supreme Court. The separation-of-powers angle is interesting, as the Court's "federalists" have been cutting back on Congress's power, but Justice Ginsberg is also not happy about Congress's having essentially overruled the Court by passing RFRA. Meanwhile, most of the "federalist" Justices tend to be much more friendly toward laws that benefit religious practice. And some of the Justices who were most peeved about Congress's having overruled the Court are also among those who have been most enthusiastic about international law (the government argues that it has a compelling interest in stopping the religious use of this drug because that's the only way to comply with an international narcotics convention to which we're party).

Who knows how it will play out? Should be interesting. Many of the issues I mentioned aren't necessarily presented in this case--ostensibly, it's just about how to interpret and apply RFRA, not whether RFRA is constitutional--but they're lurking in the background, and everyone on the Court is quite aware of that.

A Very Fundy Christmas

The only people who have declared a war on Christmas are the people of the right-wing Christian-fundamentalist-supremacist movement. Some of them are so lacking the "Christmas spirit" that when they receive an all-encompassing "holiday card" from their beloved president they're actually offended by it.

"[The White House holiday card] clearly demonstrates that the Bush administration has suffered a loss of will and that they have capitulated to the worst elements in our culture," said William A. Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights.

Bush "claims to be a born-again, evangelical Christian. But he sure doesn't act like one," said Joseph Farah, editor of the conservative Web site WorldNutDaily.com. "I threw out my White House card as soon as I got it."
...
"Certainly President and Mrs. Bush, because of their faith, celebrate Christmas," said Susan Whitson, Laura Bush's press secretary. "Their cards in recent years have included best wishes for a holiday season, rather than Christmas wishes, because they are sent to people of all faiths."
...
But the White House's explanation does not satisfy the groups -- which have grown in number in recent years -- that believe there is, in the words of the Heritage Foundation, a "war on Christmas" involving an "ever-stronger push toward a neutered 'holiday' season so that non-Christians won't be even the slightest bit offended."

One of the generals on the pro-Christmas side is Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association in Tupelo, Miss. "Sometimes it's hard to tell whether this is sinister -- it's the purging of Christ from Christmas -- or whether it's just political correctness run amok," he said. "I think in the case of the White House, it's just political correctness."

Are these people even capable of having fun? What a bunch of whiny, miserable douchebags. They all like to pretend that secularism or "political correctness" has stolen Christmas-- but really it's all the damn Christians who are are stuck in complain mode who are ruining their own holiday. Instead of enjoying the holidays they're spending the month of December complaining that others aren't celebrating Christmas the right way, to their specifications. There's a name for people like this-- Scrooge.

I personally do not celebrate Christmas. But do I spit in Santa's face or curse at people who wish me Merry Christmas? No. I certainly don't throw away Christmas cards or throw snowballs at carollers. I understand that this time of year makes a lot of people very joyful and I respect that. Additionally, I am one of those people who appreciate holiday greetings from strangers that aren't specific, it means people are capable of respecting the fact that not everyone celebrates Christmas. It's nice.

However, for Christians like Donahue this is supposed to be the most important, most magical time of the year. They're supposed to be filled with love towards their fellow man, counting their blessings, spreading cheer and mirth-- but no. They don't even take time off during Christmas to stop their incessant bitching. If they weren't such asshats I'd feel sorry for them for being too simple-minded to realize that there is no war on Christmas except for their own.

Here's to hoping they're all visited by one of those Past, Present or Future Christmas ghosts so they can give the rest of us the best gift of all-- a little peace.

WWPD?

Finally a topic that unites my tireless endeavors to bring to America the latest news of European pornography and bare breasts with my interest in religious matters. I'm not sure what to make of this church from a theological point of view, but I'm thinking they forgot to ask themselves "What Would Pat [Robertson] Do?" Adam and Eve are having way too much fun for Original Sinners.

Condi "Unsatisfactory"

There he goes again. The Dutch government has been one of Dubya's staunchest supporters in the Iraq adventure, but Foreign Minister Ben Bot has shown a disturbing independence of thought on the subject. Now he doesn't seem willing to take Dr. Rice's word for it that the U.S. doesn't torture prisoners in Europe.

At Least He's Not Gay

Without further comment.

In Boston, a T-Shirt Raises the Mayor's Ire

In Boston, Mayor Thomas Menino is taking aim at T-shirts in gang-ridden neighborhoods that read: "Stop Snitchin'." Today's Boston Globe published this editorial about the mayor's efforts to stop people from wearing the shirt:

The Menino administration should avoid coercion during its effort to discourage the sale of the controversial ''Stop Snitchin' " T-shirts. The shirts carry an especially reprehensible message in urban neighborhoods marred by gang violence. But it is a message nonetheless, and as such it falls directly under the protection of the First Amendment.

... Last year, spectators adorned in such [T-shirts] were ejected from a Suffolk County courtroom during a murder trial. Now Mayor Menino is frustrated by reports that terrified witnesses are refusing to testify, allowing violent criminals to overwhelm neighborhoods. Menino is even threatening to use city employees to seize the T-shirts from retail outlets.

Police and city inspectors should play no role in efforts to remove the shirts from circulation. The local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union is right to point out in a recent letter to Menino that proposed visits to retail stores by uniformed police would be ''a form of official censorship which is fundamentally inconsistent with the constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression." The ACLU's legal director, John Reinstein, says that mailing a ''Stop Snitchin' " T-shirt to a specific potential witness would call for a response from law enforcement. But walking down the street in the same shirt is well within individual rights.

There is no reason, however, to sit idly by when residents suspect that the T-shirts are being used as a means to exert control through fear. In such cases, good speech is the right weapon to overpower bad.

On Saturday, the local manufacturer of ''Stop Snitchin' " T-shirts agreed voluntarily to pull the item from his shelves ....

The Legislature should make careful note of the frustration that is driving this controversy. An anticrime bill that would strengthen the laws against witness intimidation and provide funds for witness protection has passed the Senate but still awaits action by the House. Like entrepreneurs in gang-infested areas, lawmakers need to listen to the citizens' appeals for help.

Wesley Clark's Rx for Iraq

In an op-ed in Tuesday's New York Times, Wesley Clark offers his assessment of the U.S. military presence in Iraq. And whatever you may think of the current military strategy being pursued by the Bush administration, it's hard to view Clark's advice as brimming with wisdom. The former NATO commander and '04 presidential candidate writes:

We need to deploy three or four American brigades, some 20,000 troops ... to provide training, supervision and backup along Iraq's several thousand miles of vulnerable border. And even then, the borders won't be "sealed"; they'll just be more challenging to penetrate.

An additional deployment of tens of thousands of U.S. troops just so we can make the border "more challenging to penetrate"? No, thank you.

... we must start using America's diplomatic strength with Syria and Iran. The political weakness of Bashar al-Assad opens the door for significant Syrian concessions on controlling the border and cutting support for the jihadists.

What diplomatic "strength" do we really have with either Syria or Iran?

Within weeks of the Iraqi invasion in April 2003, conservative commentator Joe Scarborough made much-to-do of the Bush administration's stern warnings that Syria and Iran must not aid Iraqi insurgents: "Syria and Iran, you've already been warned by Rummy and, if I were you, I wouldn't screw around with this guy because between you and me, I'm pretty sure he means business."

Given the fact that numerous reports show insurgents and weapons have flowed into Iraq from these two countries, I guess we can assume that this sabre-rattling message didn't work.

But what is especially annoying is Clark's embrace of the same macho-laden rhetoric as Bush, Cheney and the rest of the gang. Near the conclusion of his op-ed, Clark writes:

Don't bet against our troops.

As if success or failure in Iraq is determined solely by the quality of an army's soldiers.

The union commanders who in 1862 ordered their soldiers to charge at the Civil War battlefield of Fredericksburg, Va. may well have made a similar statement -- "don't bet against our boys." But what ensued was a virtual massacre of union troops, and the reason had little to do with the quality of those troops. The terrain, tactics and and other dynamics of a battle matter, and they matter greatly.

Of all people, Clark should know that.

The Link Between De Lay, Abramoff, and the Next 9/11

It shouldn't be news any more that while we've been busy minting terrorist recruits through our Iraq adventure, the GOP Congress and the Bush Administration have been ignoring steps that would actually protect us from terrorist attacks.

There are lots of angles to this, and we've heard most of them. The most common is probably noting how much port security, enhanced information systems, etc., could have been bought for the hundreds of billions that we've poured into disproving the neocons' fuckwitted theories in Iraq.

Another angle had me particularly seething, as a New Yorker, in the run-up to the Necropublican Convention celebrating the anniversary of 9/11 last year. As you probably know, "homeland security" money is being wasted on red-state locales that don't need it, while places that have been hit and are the most likely future targets (New York and Washington, for instance) are getting screwed.

Josh Marshall has been running some interesting posts lately about how corruption has become a near-GOP monopoly in Washington because of things like De Lay's K Street project and the increased use of earmarking in appropriations bills. In ways both corrupt and legitimate, the GOP machine has perfected the art of bringing pork to Republican districts. This is bad enough when it sends hundred of millions to Alaska to build a bridge to nowhere, but it's even worse when it takes security funding away from places that are most vulnerable.

Twisted Justice

In a chilling case of prosecutorial misconduct, in Oregon a 17-year old woman accuses 3 adult men of gang raping her, but since her charges can't be proven she's charged with filing a false report-- and found guilty.

I'm not denying that there are such things as false rape accusations, but in cases where the accuser knows the accused it is often a she-said-he-said problem. In this particular case one of the accused was her boyfriend, he and the other men claimed it was consentual, however she has never recanted her version of events and there doesn't appear to be any clear evidence that it was a false report. Typically the devil is truly in the details, from Shakespeare's Sister.

Let me give you some more information—something that is only a possibility because The American Street’s Kevin Hayden has known the victim nearly her whole life. He attended the trial. He noticed that the prosecutor repeatedly referred to the attackers as “boys,” even though they were grown men and the victim was 17. He noticed that the judge acknowledged he had found inconsistencies in all of their stories, but, inexplicably, decided that the same reasonable doubt that kept prosecutors from pursuing charges against the attackers wasn’t enough to keep him from finding the victim guilty.

He also noted what was, and was not, allowed to be introduced as evidence. Allowed: The 17-year-old victim’s sexual history.

Don't we have something in this country called rape shield laws? WTF?!?!

Regardless of whether or not the rape happened, this ruling is frightening. It sends a message that any woman who accuses a man (or men) of rape or sexual assault must win their case or they risk punishment themselves. As if filing assault charges isn't hard enough, keep in mind that the vast majority of rapes and sexual assaults already go unreported, that 3 out of 4 women know their attackers. Every two and a half minutes, somewhere in America, someone is sexually assaulted.

Update:Arnold points out that rape shields only protect the accuser when her attackers are on trial. In this case the 17-year old woman was literally on trial for accusing the 3 men of gang raping her, so the rape shield law does not apply. Which is perverted. (It's so nice to have a lawyer on the team.)

Her guilty conviction is the ultimate punishment for a rape victim-- not only did she not get justice, but her attackers were given a don't-worry-we-know-the-girl-is-a-lying-whore card by the judicial system. It's just so sickening and wrong, wrong, wrong.

Politics v. Voting Rights

You may have seen the Washington Post's recent revelations that political appointees in the Justice Department overruled career staff who had recommended that a couple of redistricting plans be rejected under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Certain jurisdictions with a history of racial imbalances in voting have to get redistricting plans (among other changes to election law) "precleared" by DOJ, which is supposed to approve them only if the change has no "retrogressive effect" on the ability of minorities to elect candidates of their choice. It appears from leaked DOJ memos that the Ashcroft DOJ overruled staff recommendations in order to approve GOP-drafted redistricting maps, including Tom DeLay's Texas re-redistricting.

Anyway, if this stuff interests you, there's been a lot of traffic on Prof. Rick Hasen's election law listserv about the Post stories. The contributors are people who know whereof they speak--veterans of the DOJ Voting Rights Section, lawyers who litigate Voting Rights Act cases, and election law professors--and they come from different parts of the political spectrum. There's an interesting exchange about whether the career lawyers are any less partisan than the political appointees, as well as information about how things have worked under previous administrations.

You might imagine that the GOP response would be that all administrations do this, and Dems do it when they control the White House. In fact, most of the DOJ veterans say that both Democratic and Republican administrations have generally not done this; it's not that Republicans are worse than Dems, but that the Bush II administration is worse than everyone else of either party. But I think there should be a caveat that since the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, the Dems have never occupied the White House during the part of the decade when most redistrictings occur, i.e., around the middle of the x1 year (e.g., 1991) to around the middle of the following year.

Check out the threads here, including the one headed "Electionlaw blog news and commentary 12/2/05."

There's also been a discussion of the controversy over Judge Alito's negative comments about the one person, one vote cases, which Prof. Hasen predicted would become controversial long before the issue surfaced in public debate. And if you've been following the debate about applying campaign finance law to bloggers and other Internet sources, there's a lot of talk about the FEC's latest advisory opinion (recently departed FEC Chairman Brad Smith, arch-conservative and arch-foe of campaign finance reform, is a regular contributor).

Neocon Catch-22

It is difficult to learn from your mistakes if you are incapable of recognizing them.

In other words, one of the principal problems with being a fuckwit is being too fuckwitted to notice that you're a fuckwit.

One-Thousand Murders

As of yesterday 1000 people have been executed in the United States since the Supreme Court ended the death penalty moratorium in 1976.

The majority of the people on death row are black, poor, uneducated, victims of childhood and neglect. That their profiles have so much in common is no coincidence. It doesn't mean they're not responsible for their actions, they are, but does someone who was present at a robbery where someone was shot and killed rise to the level of the death penalty? The death penalty in America is not reserved for cold-blooded, calculated killers/rapists/child molestors. The robbery-shooting death row inmate story is far too common in death penalty cases. For example, next week in Maryland a man is scheduled to be executed for being present at a robbery where someone was shot and killed. For some reason it doesn't matter that a recent study commissioned by the state of Maryland found an all too common picture of how unevenly the death penalty is carried out.

According to the study, released in January 2003, the death penalty is 2.5 times more likely to be sought against those who commit black-on-white murders than against those who commit white-on-white murders. Furthermore, the death penalty is 3.5 times more likely to be sought against those who commit black-on-white murders than against those who commit black-on-black murders. In addition, the study also found that Baltimore County is 13 times more likely than Baltimore City to seek the death penalty, 5 times more likely than Montgomery County, and 3 times more likely than Anne Arundel County.

This alone should be enough for a moratorium, for the death penalty to be reconsidered, for people to realize that the judicial system cannot be trusted with fairly carrying out capital punishment.

I personally have very mixed feelings about the death penalty. On a philosophical level I have trouble with the notion of the state being able to methodically kill its own people. On some level I agree with America's peers, most of Europe, and consider the death penalty to be barbaric and uncivil. However, on a pragmatic level I recognize that there are some people whose crimes against others, against humanity, make them undeserving of life. If the death penalty were reserved for very rare, extraordinary cases-- serial killers, rapists, child molesters, cold and premediated murders-- I think I might be a fencesitter about its legality. But that is not the reality of the death penalty in America. Instead America's death penalty symbolizes all the deeply troubling flaws of our judicial system, reflecting America's most profound inequities. It's time for it to end.

You've Got to Be Kidding

Are the wingnuts and televised rabble-rousers really doing the stupid liberal-conspiracy-to-kill-Christmas rant again this year? It's getting to be as familar as It's a Wonderful Life, only insane and hateful rather than warm and endearing.

Hell, I'm a Jewish liberal, and I can't wait for Christmas.

And I'm not talking about the "secular" side of it, or at least not just that. I'm looking forward to the carol service on Christmas Eve and all of the other celebrations of the birth of You-Know-Who (we liberals apparently hate to say His name even more than wizards dislike saying Voldemort). I don't believe in Christian doctrine, which means I don't believe in the entire underpinning of the holiday. But I can appreciate and even enjoy religious ritual and expression by people of other faiths, particularly when I happen to be married to them.

What I don't like is having the government engaging in religious ritual and expression, and that includes Judaism (don't laugh; it has happened in New York and gone to the Supreme Court). But what Christians do and say and believe is entirely up to them, and I will never support anyone who attempts to censor private religious expression. (By "private," I don't mean that it's done out of public sight; for instance, kids should (and do) have the right to pray on school grounds).

One more reason to be happy this season that I'm in the Netherlands. Of course, there's no Establishment Clause here, and my kids' public school is awash with celebrations of Sinterklaas (St. Nicholas's Day), including images of the Saint with his mitre (with a cross on it, of course) and his black-faced Al Jolson-style sidekick Zwarte Piet.

So have a good Sinterklaas on Monday, everyone, and try not to let Bill O'Reilly ruin Christmas for you.

A Domino Falls in Africa

The Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada: who's next?




Update: In case anyone else suffers from the same fuzzy memory that I do, I should point out that the ANC supported gay rights, that the 1994 South African Constitution banned discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and that Thabo Mbeki was instrumental in both of these developments. I had thought he had said something a few years ago to the effect that South Africa didn't have to worry about AIDS because it didn't have any homosexuals. That recollection was almost totally wrong; Mbeki did say some bizarre and troubling things about AIDS, but that wasn't one of them.

Princess to Dubya: Drop Dead

Well, maybe that's putting it too strongly. Princess Mabel (is it just me, or does "Mabel" not sound like a princess's name?) criticized the U.S. yesterday for supposedly hindering the fight against AIDS by opposing measures that would protect high-risk populations such as prostitutes and IV drug users.

Mabel is not exactly a storybook princess. She's been involved with human rights for many years and was the director of the Brussels office of the Open Society Institute, which George Soros founded a few years back; even though she's now a princess, she continues to be OSI's Director of EU Affairs. On behalf of OSI, she went to the global AIDS conference in Bangkok last year and criticized the US there, too, so yesterday's talk wasn't exactly new for her. She was also friends with the Bosnian ambassador to the UN during the worst years of the war and was supposedly considered by the Dutch intelligence agency for a secret mission to Belgrade. Later, during the investigation into the Srebrenica massacre at which Dutch peacekeeping troops were supposed to have been protecting civilians, Mabel and the Bosnian ambassador were identified as the only two people outside the Dutch government who had influence on the management of Dutch policy in the Balkans. The World Economic Forum (you know, those folks who get together every year in Davos) named her one of its "Young Global Leaders." (In fact, as of this writing her picture is at the top of the WEF's home page because of World AIDS Day).

Mabel accomplished almost everything in the preceding paragraph before she turned 30 (don't you hate people like that?).

But when her romance with Prince Johan Friso was revealed, what really made her interesting to the press were rumors of a previous romance. She supposedly had had an affair with the notorious drug kingpin Kluis Bruinsma in the late eighties or early nineties (Bruinsma was shot dead in 1991 by an ex-cop who had gone to work for the "Yugoslavian mafia"; the shooting happened right in front of the Hilton Hotel that John Lennon and Yoko Ono had made famous). Bruinsma wasn't just any old drug dealer: he was Europe's biggest trafficker, and he the organization he ran was one of the most violent in Dutch history. He was known as "the Minister" (in the religious sense) because of his black clothing and his habit of "teaching others lessons." A film about him, based on an earlier book, came out last year; both were titled The Minister.

At the time of the supposed affair, Bruinsma had been in his late 30s and Mabel was a university student of about 20. At first, she downplayed the nature and duration of her acquaintance with Bruinsma. This led to a series of leaks and testimonials, such as the former underling of Bruinsma who claimed to have served the pair breakfast in bed. Mabel and Friso did later admit that Mabel had not been forthcoming about the extent of her relationship with Bruinsma but continue to maintain that the relationship was not sexual.Eventually, all of the fuss made it clear that Parliament would take the unprecedented step of withholding its approval of Mabel's marriage to Friso, so the couple asked the Prime Minister not to submit the matter to Parliament.

That meant Friso had to give up his place in the line of succession to his mother's throne when he married Mabel--shades of Edward VIII and Mrs. Simpson, only without the Nazi sympathies. (Johan Friso himself is no intellectual slouch, having picked up, among other degrees, an advanced degree in mechanical engineering at Berkeley, and he studied Dutch law and parliamentary history on the off chance that he might become King someday).

So what's the point of this post? I don't know. I just thought this stuff was kind of interesting. I hope that one of our Dutch commenters will let me know if I've got my facts wrong. One thing I know is this: if Dubya tried to debate Mabel--in English--about AIDS policy, she could beat him without breaking a sweat.

Sign This

I am trying to help gather signatures for a petition on Darfur being circulated by Samuel Totten, a professor at the University of
Arkansas and editor of "A Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts."

If you want to help out, you can do so here.

Presented without Comment

Item 1: Two political parties propose making it illegal to smoke pot in public; the Minister of Justice is opposed.

• Quote: The Liberals say they have no moral objection to cannabis, but people should only smoke at home or in coffeeshops.

Item 2: The leader of Amsterdam's largest political party, to which the mayor belongs, calls for the city's famous legal red-light district to be shut down.

• Quote: Asscher said women who wanted to earn their living by prostitution would be better off working in a brothel.

The Gift that Keeps Giving

Business interests, particularly credit card companies, lobbied for years and spent millions of dollars to get the Bankruptcy Code amended to put the screws to consumers. They finally succeeded, and their amendments went into effect a couple of months ago.

So in this season of consumerism and hype, remember this: that annoying person in front of you in line at the cash register, who is taking up way too much time and pissing everyone off, might end up indentured for life to MasterCard because of the charge he's about to make.

There: doesn't that feel better?

Merry Christmas.