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 WonÂ’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.

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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.