The Folly of Estate Tax Repeal Lite

In Wednesday's Washington Post, Harold Meyerson offers familiar arguments against estate tax repeal, but they bear repeating. He writes:

The Senate, meanwhile, is scheduled next week to take up legislation by Arizona Republican Jon Kyl that would permanently repeal the estate tax on the wealthiest Americans. If enacted, Kyl's bill would plunge the government another trillion dollars into the red ...

... the (Democratic) party's leadership has sought to dissuade Montana's Max Baucus, ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee, from forging a halfway-house compromise with Kyl that would deplete revenue by only $500 billion to $600 billion during that decade.

... A decades-long campaign by right-wing activists ... has convinced many Americans that the estate tax poses a threat to countless hardworking families. That was always nonsense, and under the estate tax revisions that almost all Democrats support -- raising the threshold for eligibility to $3.5 million for an individual and $7 million for a couple -- it becomes more nonsensical still.

Under the $3.5 million exemption, the number of family-owned small businesses required to pay any taxes in the year 2000 would have been just 94 ..... The number of family farms that would have had to sell any assets to pay that tax would have been 13.

On the other hand, an estate tax repeal would save the estate of Vice President Cheney between $13 million and $61 million ...

... Why any Democrat would back [Baucus' "repeal lite"] measure, however, is a deep mystery. From the policy standpoint, it would make it vastly more difficult both to shore up programs that Democrats believe need shoring up -- better educating the nation's children, for one -- and to get the nation's fiscal house in order.

Politically, backing the measure is even wackier. The Democrats are running this year as the party of comparative fiscal sanity and greater economic equity and security. Baucus's compromise would undermine all those premises.

War Is Hell

Here's the thing about Haditha: stuff like this happens in war.

I'm not saying this makes it OK, or that the people who carried out the apparent massacre shouldn't be punished. In a large city, there's inevitably going to be some crime, but that doesn't mean you don't punish the criminals. In war, there are always atrocities, but that doesn't excuse the people who commit them. That these particular Marines reacted to the bombing death of a comrade in such a horrible way wasn't inevitable, but it was inevitable that someone would do something horrendous under the pressures produced by a war of this magnitude (Abu Ghraib, anyone?).

But the fact that horrific things happen in war is relevant--to the decision to go to war in the first place. George Bush didn't intend for 24 civilians to be murdered. He didn't particularly want to kill tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians over the course of three years. He didn't want Iraqis to have the misery caused by their rotten water and power supplies. But all of this has happened because he did want to invade Iraq. And if the details weren't predictable--no one could have said three years ago that there would be a massacre just like the one that seems to have happened in Haditha--the fact that lots of people would end up dead, orphaned, permanently injured, or miserable was perfectly predictable.

That's why, from Catholic just war doctrine up through contemporary international law, the morals and laws applicable to war have said that you can't attack someone without a very, very good reason: traditionally, only self-defense or the defense of another country against aggression (e.g., the first Gulf War on behalf of Kuwait).

Bush's eagerness to go to war, and the deception and willful blindness he used to get us there, are morally reprehensible. He didn't kill anyone in Haditha, and he may well be horrified by what happened there; but he knowingly created the conditions in which here was a significant risk of such things happening. And he gave no evidence, then or now, that risks like this played any role in his decision whether to invade. He's not morally responsible for killing these particular people, but he is morally responsible for recklessly putting millions at risk without giving their lives any moral weight at all.

Sometimes, I wish we had a president who acted like a Christian instead of loudly announcing that he is one.

The Media Is Nothing If Not Predictable

Lest anyone think CNN was the only TV network that was anxiously awaiting the one-year anniversary of Natalee Holloway's disappearance in Aruba, here's Exhibit B -- from the home page of ABC News' website.

No doubt, ABC News was also eagerly repackaging the videotape it had filmed related to the 18-year-old's disappearance. Under its home page heading "Hot Topics," the one-year anniversary was one of five stories. Nothing new to report. It simply carried the headline: "The Natalee Holloway Mystery, One Year Later."

Natalie Holloway may not be alive, but the Missing White Girl genre is very much alive.

CNN Returns to Missing-White-Girl Mode

CNN's home page currently features a large head-and-shoulder photo of Natalee Ann Holloway. No, there's nothing at all new to report about the 18-year-old who left a nightclub in Aruba last year and never returned to her hotel.

But, y'see, this is the one-year anniversary of Holloway's disappearance. And the TV networks couldn't let that go by without recycling the large amount of footage they filmed and giving their talking heads yet another opportunity to drone on about her disappearance.

In a nation with lots of bored people and relatively few hungry people, many Americans need to add a little drama to their lives. Or at least the broadcast media seem to think so. Bloodshed in Darfur and earthquake victims in Indonesia don't quite hit the mark -- certainly not as well as a blonde, white girl.

Besides, something tragic always happens "over there." And so CNN presents another round of Missing-White-Girl programming.

The George W. Bush School of Media Management

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper appears to have graduated from it cum laude. This article is from Monday's New York Times:

Since the election of his minority Conservative government in January, Mr. Harper and his staff have repeatedly tried to change how Canada's news outlets deal with its prime minister.

Mr. Harper's office is vetting minor government announcements, members of his cabinet have generally been off limits to reporters, and cameras have been blocked from covering the return of Canadian soldiers' remains from Afghanistan.

... In formal news conferences in Ottawa ... journalists are selected by a member of the (press) gallery's executive committee, which is elected by reporters, to ask questions, more or less on the principle of first come, first served.

Now, Mr. Harper's office wants reporters with questions to put their names on a list and let members of his media relations staff pick and choose.

... last Tuesday, when officials from Mr. Harper's staff asked reporters to sign up before an informal news conference in the House of Commons lobby, about two dozen left. The handful of reporters who stayed did not submit their names and were told that Mr. Harper would not take their questions.

Harper might want to think twice about borrowing press-control strategies from an American president with an approval rating in the low 30's.

Hillary ... Motivated by "Personal Ambition"?

Hold the presses, ladies and gentlemen. In today's Wash Post, Dan Balz has written this profile on Hillary Clinton, and (as always) the Post looks silly trying to be so nuanced in its assessments:

Clinton's roles as senator, first lady, governor's wife, lawyer and children's advocate have given her a depth of experience that few national politicians can match, but she is still trying to demonstrate whether these yielded a coherent governing philosophy.

For now, she is defined by a combination of celebrity and caution that strategists say leaves her more vulnerable than most politicians to charges that she is motivated more by personal ambition and tactical maneuver than by a clear philosophy.

Imagine that.

Did the Post honestly feel it needed to attribute this view to some unnamed "strategists"?

If They Regain the House, Dems Have a Choice

A week or so ago, I expressed concern about how House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — were the Dems to regain the House after the 2006 elections — would reorder the agenda. In the latest issue of The New Yorker, Jeffrey Goldberg has written an excellent article about the Democrats' challenge. In this interview with Goldberg, TNY's Amy Davidson asks a question that points to the same concern I have:

DAVIDSON: Nancy Pelosi told you, “We win ’06, we get subpoena power.” You write that she appeared to be excited by that prospect.

GOLDBERG: It’s very exciting to the Democratic Party’s most loyal supporters and to the Net-roots people, the online Democrats who are quite vitriolic in their hatred of President Bush. The problem — and this is what a lot of Democrats say who are cautioning against this — is that by the time the Democrats take over the House, if they do, it’ll be 2007, and the Bush Administration will be on its last legs. The argument is that, if the House goes Democratic, the leadership should spend more time convincing the American people that this is the party you want in the White House in 2008.

Imagine if the Democrats in the House voted to raise the minimum wage, or for college-tuition tax credits. That sort of legislation would be broadly attractive to millions of voters, and either the Republican Senate or President Bush would be put in a position of stopping it.

Or let’s say that the Democrats take over the House and vote to implement the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. That would probably be pretty popular.

So they could work to make the country safer and to help the poor — or they could spend their time investigating the run-up to the Iraq war.

The End of the Line?

To complete a trio of East African stories, consider the rather bizarre video released by the Lord's Resistance Army of Uganda. Actually, this story ties into the religious theme of my two posts on Kenya, as the LRA leader, Joseph Kony, claims to be a prophet. I know there was a certain amount of smiting in what I call the Bible (and what Christians call the Old Testament), but Kony's activities don't comport with my notions of what prophets are supposed to do:

"[The LRA is] notorious for massacring villagers, mutilating survivors and abducting thousands of children....LRA fighters have spread terror on both sides of the Uganda-Sudan border, targeting remote communities and torturing survivors by slicing off their lips and ears."

The children abducted by the LRA are turned into soldiers and sexual slaves.

Not surprisingly, Kony is the first, and to my knowledge only, prophet subject to an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court.

He says now that he wants to make peace. I fervently hope that this really is the end of the LRA's c ampaign, but something tells me Kony isn't entirely to be trusted.

Cutting Off His Nose

Kenyan Christians, part 2.

The Anglican Bishop of Chelmsford is visiting Nairobi. The Bishop, whose name is John Gladwin, "is the chair of the UK-based development agency, Christian Aid, which has provided financial aid to many partner organisations in Kenya over the past 40 years." Bishop Gladwin's visit is intended, in part, to support educational projects in Kenya.

However, his visit has hit a snag. He was supposed to deliver a sermon at Nairobi's cathedral on Sunday, but he was denied the opportunity by the Anglican Archbishop of Kenya, Benjamin Nzimbi. In fact, the entire trip has been "abandoned." The Kenyan Church announced that it was "unable to continue with advancing the lined-up activities with the diocese of Chelmsford." I doubt that the Archbishop has a problem with the educational projects that Bishop Gladwin was there to promote, or that he thinks Kenyan organizations should turn down money from Christian Aid. So why did he veto Bishop Gladwin's appearance, and why has he scuttled the entire visit, causing the Archbishop of Canterbury to send a special envoy to try to calm the waters?

You probably think I'm about to say that Bishop Gladwin is gay. But he isn't. In fact, his wife accompanied him on the trip. Bishop Gladwin's sin is that he has supported the "full inclusion" movement within the Church of England, which aims to foster a more inclusive approach toward gay and lesbian Christians.

If Bishop Gladwin had intended to use his sermon to speak in favor of gay rights, I could see the Kenyan Archbishop saying he didn't want the pulpit in his cathedral to be used for that purpose. But, so far as I can tell, Bishop Gladwin's visit was all about development and charity, and the subject of homosexuality wasn't intended to come up at all.

It seems that Archbishop Nzimbi considers support for gay rights to override everything else a fellow clergyman has done. The victims, one fears, will be the potential beneficiaries of the charitable projects that Bishop Gladwin intended to promote on his visit.

"Pornographic, Devilish, and Blasphemous"

The first of two posts on Kenya's up-in-arms Christians.

I know little about The Da Vinci Code and frankly am not particularly interested in reading the book or seeing the movie. From what little I do know, I can see why some Christians, and especially Roman Catholics, consider the book and movie an attack on their faith. But as a free-speech hawk, I can't condone calls for the book and movie to be banned.

Still, I have a sneaking admiration for the (over-the-top) rhetoric of the mostly Evangelical groups in Kenya pushing their government to censor the movie.

The movie, they said, was a rush by the producers to make money, a move similar to Biblical Judas' betrayal of Jesus.

"May the producers equally perish with their silver!" the churches said in a statement read by Pastor David Oginde of Nairobi Pentecostal Church.

It's a good thing Oginde isn't Muslim, as that sort of talk might get his church on the wrong side of the War on Terror.

This Is Totally Irrelevant

Well, almost totally. I mean, it should be.

In a colony of 16 storks in a Dutch zoo, three homosexual pairs have been nesting this spring. Two of them (one male pair and one female pair) have hatchlings, while the remaining (male) pair is still sitting on the eggs. (I'm going with the version of the facts on the zoo's Dutch website, rather than in this English news item).

The zoo's personnel aren't sure how the male pairs got their eggs, but they think the storks may have chased off brooding females after the eggs had been laid. Presumably, the female pair used artificial insemination (note for the humor-challenged: I'm kidding).

Anyhow, this story brings to mind one of my favorite fallacies, wherein people refer to the behavior of animals, or to "nature" in general, to support arguments about how human beings ought to behave. For example, I think there are strong moral arguments for vegetarianism, but the fact that certain other primates subsist without meat is not one of them. Nor, on the other hand, is the fact that primitive humans ate meat, or that the teeth in the front of our mouths are well-adapted for meat-eating, a decent argument that eating meat is morally permissible today.

So leave these Dutch storks out of the same-sex marriage debate, if you please, as well as gay adoption, and any other gay/family-law issues. They don't belong there.

Except--

So long as some anti-gay folks defend their positions as simply reflecting what is "natural," then I suppose it is worth pointing out that their premise is wrong. But we knew that long before these storks came along, since evidence of homosexual behavior among other animals is well-known.

In other words, they only new thing here is the symbolic power: we're talking about storks, after all, the animal that's in charge of handing out human babies. I wonder if these three pairs got the idea after delivering a few Heathers to two-mommy families--humans influencing nature, rather than the other way around. (I'm kidding again).

Alabama Voters Want No Moore

Is it possible that Judge Roy Moore is too much of a fire-breathing, right-wing whacko for even a conservative state like Alabama? A recent article in the Mobile Register:

Gov. Bob Riley continues to widen his lead over Roy Moore in the Republican gubernatorial primary ....

The Press-Register/University of South Alabama poll showed Riley as the choice of 69 percent of the likely GOP primary voters surveyed. Moore, the former Alabama Supreme Court chief justice known as the "Ten Commandments judge," drew 20 percent support.

I'm not shocked that Moore is trailing the governor, but I am surprised he's behind by a whopping 49 percentage points.

It speaks volumes about Judge Moore's nutiness that he can't poll any better than this in a conservative state against an incumbent who vigorously campaigned for a tax increase.

In the Wake of Enron Convictions

Ken Lay: He'll look dashing

in an orange jumpsuit

At the Moneybox, Daniel Gross worries that the convictions yesterday of top Enron executives will be used by the Wall Street world and its allies as an excuse to water down accounting and other reforms:

.... you can bet that CEOs and the Wall Street Journal editorial page will soon be telling us that, now that the evildoers have been rooted from the system, it's time to scrap Sarbanes-Oxley and other post-scandal regulation.

It would be nice if this vision of a sparkling clean corporate America were true. It would also be nice if everyone could have a pony.

Alas, the accounting games and executive-compensation excess that began in the 1990s are still very much with us. Some of the most obvious offenders have been caught, but huge amounts of corporate corruption remain.

... Consider what's been making the headlines in the business press. On Monday, the Securities and Exchange Commission levied a whopping $400 million penalty on Fannie Mae to settle charges that the mortgage giant fudged earnings between 1998 and 2004 so that executives ... could receive larger bonuses. The accounting problems persisted well into the Sarbanes-Oxley era.

... The biggest business news story of recent weeks is the Wall Street Journal series of reports on options backdating.

... Between 1995 and 2002, for example, the CEO of Affiliated Computer Services received six options grants at times when the stock was poised to rally after falling. The odds of such a propitious set of options grants were calculated at one in 300 billion.

The Answer to That Earlier Post

Now, for the answer to my post earlier today. Who said this and in what year:

"Show this administration an oil well, and it will show you a foreign policy."

These words were spoken in 1924 by U.S. Senator Pat Harrison (D-Miss.). Speaking at the Democratic National Convention that year, Sen. Harrison was voicing frustration at the Coolidge administration's failure to forcefully take Turkey to task for then-recent massacres and other forms of oppression against Armenians and other Christian minorities.

Harrison is quoted in Peter Balakian's book, The Burning Tigris. I was reminded of this quote after reading Eugene's post yesterday.

You'd be forgiven if you'd assumed this statement were made about a more recent White House administration.

Long before either Bush came to office, the politics of oil were strongly influencing U.S. foreign policy. (Some influence, of course, would be understandable.) But access to free-flowing oil, combined with the Cold War, encouraged the U.S. (with British support) to engineer the coup that toppled a democratically elected government in Iran in 1953.

So Much for Those Agreed-Upon Spending Limits

The GOP congressional majority is "at risk" of losing its ruling status "because of exhaustion, scandals and, critics would say, the rigidity of their ideology and failure to learn from policy failures in a changing world." Not a kind assessment -- and, even more damning, it's coming from the Wall Street Journal's David Rogers.

As Rogers explains, even the rising criticism of GOP leaders by fiscal conservatives hasn't changed the behavior of Hastert and company:

Despite scandals and promises of change, the Appropriations Committee persists in setting aside billions of dollars for home-state projects without disclosing the sponsors of such "earmarks."

To get around budget caps, the committee even opted to designate $507 million for 20 military construction projects as war-related expenditures that could be financed from an emergency reserve outside the agreed-upon spending limits.

Darfur Violence Moving West

The violence in Darfur continues to spill westward into Chad. Here's an update from our sister blog.

Who to Believe?

Whoah nelly.

Republican House members on Thursday echoed House Speaker Dennis Hastert's demand that ABC News "fully retract" a report that the Illinois Republican was the subject of a Justice Department probe into corruption on Capitol Hill.

The Justice Department on Wednesday night twice issued denials of the story, saying that Hastert, the House's top Republican, was not the subject of an investigation. Such denials are rare; the Justice Department usually refuses to confirm or deny the existence of a probe.

"The ABC News report is absolutely untrue," Hastert spokesman Ron Bonjean said, in a statement, Wednesday night, citing the Justice Department denial.

"We are demanding a full retraction of the ABC News story," Bonjean said.

ABC News late Wednesday posted an update on its Web site, saying that despite the Justice Department statement, federal law enforcement sources said the network had accurately reported that Hastert was "in the mix" in the FBI probe of congressional corruption.

We Can Only Hope

Is there a layer deep within the Abramoff investigation that we're overlooking? Writing in the new issue of Washington Monthly, Jeffrey Birnbaum seems to think so:

So far, the scandal surrounding disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff has produced some vivid and memorable examples of modern Washington graft -- skybox tickets, pricey restaurant meals, golf junkets to Scotland.

Yet at the center of the scandal is something more prosaic, and potentially far more explosive: good old-fashioned campaign donations.

Deep in the plea agreements won by Justice Department lawyers are admissions by the defendants -- Abramoff and his cronies, ex-DeLay aides Tony C. Rudy and Michael Scanlon -- that they conspired to use campaign contributions to bribe lawmakers. Even though these gifts were fully disclosed and within prescribed limits, the government said they were criminal, and the defendants agreed.

This aspect of the case has received little attention. But it is sending shudders down K Street.

... If prosecutors begin to assert as a matter of routine that lobbyist gifts and campaign contributions are a form of bribery, it could open up a whole new front on the decades-old (and largely ineffective) effort to break the nexus of money and politics in the capital.

The full column is here.

Kausfiles on Milbank

Kausfiles is one of my regular reads. Today's edition gently slaps the WashPost's Dana Milbank for his Wednesday column ripping Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) over the immigration issue. Sessions may be an imbecile, but I actually think Kaus makes a few good points.

The New Buzz Over Al Gore

Slate.com's John Dickerson writes:

Who knew Al Gore could be such fun? He's the toast of Cannes and was hilarious on Saturday Night Live. He's also Topic A in political conversation. A lot of Democrats start to sound a bit giddy when the subject of a Gore presidential run in 2008 comes up.

Even with recent troubles in the GOP, many of them have been preoccupied with the weakness of their leaders and the party's uncertain future. When discussion turns to Gore, everyone gets excited.

In spite of all that, writes Dickerson, Gore "probably shouldn't run." The full column is here.

Care to Guess?

Who made this statement and in what year?

"Show this administration an oil well, and it will show you a foreign policy."

I'll provide the answer later today.

Shorter Bush Administration: Speak the Truth, Get Fired

Two years ago, the White House announced

John Marshall Evans, of the District of Columbia, a Career Member of the Senior Foreign Service, Class of Minister-Counselor, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Republic of Armenia.

In February 2005, Evans has the audacity to acknowledge that the deaths of some 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey in 1915 was "genocide" - a designation Turkey vehemently opposes.

As the LA Times noted in March

JOHN EVANS IS THE U.S. ambassador to Armenia, as of this writing. But he probably won't be for long. Evans, a career diplomat who was selected to receive an American Foreign Service Assn. award last year for his frank public speaking, irked his superiors at the State Department by uttering the following words at UC Berkeley in February 2005: "I will today call it the Armenian genocide." For that bit of truth-telling, Evans was forced to issue a clarification, then a correction, then to endure having his award rescinded under pressure from his bosses, and finally to face losing his job altogether.

The LA Times was right, because yesterday the White House announced

The President intends to nominate Richard E. Hoagland, of the District of Columbia, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Republic of Armenia.

McCain Shares His Wisdom on Iraq

On his blog today, Brendan Nyhan has written this post, demonstrating that Senator John McCain is starting to confuse bravado with diplomacy. It's worth a quick read.

Toto, I Think We're in Northern California

The latest issue of Roll Call newspaper (subscription only) notes that Democratic Congressman Tom Lantos is facing primary challengers in the state's "very liberal" 12th C.D. -- on the southern edge of San Francisco. One of these challengers, the newspaper reports, is Kevin Hearle, "a poet who doesn't even want to serve in Congress ..."

Hearle decided to enter the Democratic primary only after Lantos' office failed to respond in a timely fashion to an e-mail he'd sent the congressman.

And he's the more normal of the two challengers.

The other challenger? He's a public relations/advertising executive named Robert Barrows. I'll let Roll Call take it from there:

Barrows decided to write the rap song "Run for Office," which is available through Barrows on a self-issued two-song CD along with "Big Bucks," a song about "pulling down big money."

... Barrows is the inventor of "The Video Enhanced Gravemarker."

The video tombstone, which recently received a "notice of allowance" and is expected to be patented in the next few months, would allow people to visit a cemetery, press a button on a tombstone and see a message from beyond the grave.

"It'll make a fascinating place to visit," Barrows said.

And because cemeteries can reject a tombstone based on what it says, "it will create some fascinating free speech issues," he said, especially if a controversial tombstone message is denied.

"How can you control what somebody is going to say from beyond the grave?" he said.

Finally!

Clergy opposed to the Federal Marriage Amendment are coming out of the closet.

Not just a few, either.

About 35 representatives of the coalition, Clergy for Fairness, said at a news conference that more than 1,600 clergy members had signed an online petition against the amendment. The group's Web site has postcards that lay people can print out and send to members of Congress.[ed.- bold mine]
...
Among those represented by the coalition are clergy members and groups affiliated with mainline Protestant churches; the Interfaith Alliance; Jewish groups including the Anti-Defamation League, the Union for Reform Judaism and the National Council of Jewish Women; Sikh groups; and the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.

Four weeks ago, 50 prominent conservative Christian and Jewish leaders, including evangelicals and Roman Catholic cardinals and archbishops, signed a petition backing the amendment to prohibit same-sex marriage.

While anti-gay religious folks might dismiss them all as "liberals," the fact is there isn't consensus among all people of faith that we need a Federal Marriage Amendment-- to many people of faith the FMA represents an affront to their beliefs.

Thoughtful people of faith can and do disagree on the issue of marriage. America’s many religious traditions reflect this diversity of opinion, as do we who sign this letter. But we respect the right of each religious group to decide, based on its own religious teachings, whether or not to sanction marriage of same-sex couples. It is surely not the federal government’s role to prefer one religious definition of marriage over another, much less to codify such a preference in the Constitution. To the contrary: the great contribution of our Constitution is to ensure religious liberty for all.

Keep in mind that not all of the clergy who signed the petition are in favor of same-sex marriage, but they believe that the FMA is the wrong way to address the issue.

Let's hope we hear more from the folks of Clergy for Fairness as the GOP leadership attempts to score November votes via demagoguery.

"Fiscal Conservatives" When It Suits Them

Given the pork-barreling ways of Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), Southern Appeal's Patrick Carver seems disappointed that no fiscal conservative has dared to challenge Lott in the GOP primary:

Lott has generally amassed a conservative voting record ... but (he) really tends to be a Pork-a-saurus, and even brags about it .... It would have been nice for a real conservative to challenge Lott in a primary. At the very least, he would feel some heat for his free spending ways. But given Lott’s entrenchment in the state GOP and relative popularity in Mississippi, nobody who had a thought of having a future in the MS Republican Party entered.

Party loyalty partly explains the lack of a GOP challenger. Yet there is another reason why no Mississippi Republican is willing to use the "pork" issue to oppose Lott -- most Southern Republicans are fiscal conservatives only when it suits them.

Southern conservatives love to tout their fiscal conservatism when they explain their votes to cut education, public health or other human-service programs. But they forget all about fiscal conservatism when it comes to "bringing home the bacon" -- i.e., spending $700 million to relocate a rail line that was just rebuilt or giving Northrop Grumman $140 million to cover rebuilding costs for which the defense contractor was underinsured.

A lot of families were underinsured to cover their hurricane-related property damage, but Lott and company were much less interested in coming to their rescue. Middle-class families living along the Gulf Coast are unlikely to be major contributors to a senator's campaign; Northrop Grumman is.

The News Vs. Those Who Read the News

There was a time when journalists and others in the media were content to stand on the sidelines. But those times are far behind us. In their own minds at least, they have entered the celebrity world and everything they do, every job they take, etc., deserves lots of attention.

Perhaps this explains why the Washington Post believed that ABC News' decision to return to a solo anchor for its evening newscast was deserving of front-page status -- and 23 paragraphs.

Couldn't the Post have used this space more wisely? How important was it for Post readers to know in today's newspaper that now-replaced anchor Elizabeth Vargas ....

* already has a 3-year-old son?

* is expecting her second child in August?

* or that Vargas told the newspaper: "This has been, in full candor, not the easiest pregnancy. In fact, it's been pretty difficult. This is a show, and a staff, that deserves an anchor who can give 150 percent ..."

Yawn. When it comes to story length and placement, The Post should give a much higher priority to news than to those who read the news.

In Arizona, Voting Could Make You a Millionaire

Under a proposed ballot initiative, Arizona would go to unprecedented lengths to encourage eligible voters to go to the polls:

With supporters hoping to boost voter participation, an initiative filed Monday for the state's November election would provide $1 million to one randomly chosen Arizona voter just for casting a ballot.

Increasing the number of ballots cast would produce more moderate electorate that is more prone to elect officeholders willing to address the concerns of most Arizonans, a key supporter said.

"We want to make sure that we get everybody voting so we get truly representative government. If people don't vote, they don't get represented," said Dr. Mark Osterloh, a Tucson ophthalmologist and political activist who headed and bankrolled the initiative campaign.

Osterloh and other supporters submitted petitions bearing what they said were 185,903 signatures of registered voters, well over the 122,612 required ...

.... Then You Divide by the Number of Age-Adjusted Fornication Incidents

Over the past years, there have been a number of books and articles about the Clintons that have enraged liberals. But who'd have thought that one article by the New York Times' Patrick Healy would send liberal bloggers off the deep end?

Healy notes how rarely the former prez and the N.Y. senator are in the same city (or state). I found the article more silly than offensive, but it has been quite amusing to watch its impact on the blogosphere.

One week ago, I doubt that Tapped's Ezra Klein could have imagined spending a good hour or so of his Tuesday morning calculating whether Bill and Hillary have enough moments together to satisfy their age-adjusted appetite for fornication.

Even Britain Has a Crime Rate-Perception Gap

In the 1990s, even as violent crime rates steadily fell in the U.S. from the historic highs of the 1970s, the public seemed as worried as ever about crime. One reason the perception may be out of kilter with the statistical reality is the emergence of Court TV and tabloid-style TV shows that stoke Americans' fascination and fears about crime with constant stories about missing teens, serial rapists, etc.

If there's any solace, it may lie in the fact that the same disconnect exists in Great Britain. As the BBC reports, public officials there are frustrated by polls showing that 60% of Brits believe that crime is on the rise even though statistics show it has been falling for the past 11 years.

"Choose Your Weapon, Sir"

A good model for candidates in the midterm elections who can't get their frontrunner opponents to participate in debates.

Bush Praises Mayor as Evidence of Graft Grows

These days, just about everything President Bush says seems to be ill-tuned and ill-timed. Speaking Monday in Chicago, the prez opened with these laudatory remarks for Mayor Richard Daley:

"Thank you all very much. Thanks for the warm welcome. It's great to be back in Chicago, home of the mighty Chicago White Sox -- world champs.

"I said that because the Mayor is here -- who, by the way, is one of the finest mayors in our country. Mayor Daley, thank you for being here."

Roughly five hours after the president's remarks, the Chicago Tribune published this story online:

A former deputy commissioner for the city's Sewers Department testified today that he hired and promoted employees based on a "blessed list" of applicants that came from officials in Mayor Richard Daley's office.

Joseph Gagliano, who retired from the city in 2002, said that he agreed to go along with an alleged scheme to hire and promote pro-Daley political workers because he "had a family to feed."

Gagliano is the second prosecution witness to testify in the trial of ... [four] ex-city officials accused of rigging the city's hiring process.

Bush Offers a Compromise

(Courtesy of Mike Luckovich of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

Repackaging the Old Speeches As New

Yesterday, the prez was in Chicago telling an audience that things in Iraq are going much better than they might think. But, as Newsweek reports:

... the most striking thing about [President Bush's] latest PR offensive is not his message. It's his staging.

After months of appearing mostly before military audiences or groups perceived as friendly to the president, Bush has stepped out of the box, taking questions from unscreened audiences.

... Some GOP officials privately question whether Bush's media push is helping or hurting.

Just as troops are forced to adapt to changing war tactics, Republicans say the White House needs to adjust its communications strategy to adapt to public sentiment. Yet one senior GOP leadership aide tells Newsweek that administration officials have rejected the advice.

"Every time the White House puts out a story that the president will be talking about the war and the new strategy behind it, it's the same speech," says the GOP aide, who declined to be named while criticizing the White House. "This is like their eighth time they've rolled out this process, and it's had no impact beyond lower poll numbers."

The Congressman Who Loves Frozen Foods

From today's Washington Post:

Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.), the target of a 14-month public corruption probe, was videotaped accepting $100,000 in $100 bills from a Northern Virginia investor who was wearing an FBI wire, according to a search warrant affidavit released yesterday.

A few days later, on Aug. 3, 2005, FBI agents raided Jefferson's home in Northeast Washington and found $90,000 of the cash in the freezer, in $10,000 increments wrapped in aluminum foil and stuffed inside frozen-food containers, the document said.

The 83-page affidavit, used to raid Jefferson's Capitol Hill office on Saturday night, portrays him as a money-hungry man who freely solicited hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes ...

In one instance, at an unidentified D.C. restaurant, Jefferson allegedly exchanged cryptic notes with investor Lori Mody and discussed illegal kickbacks for his children in a telecommunications venture in Nigeria in which she had invested.

"All these damn notes we're writing to each other as if we're talking as if the FBI is watching," he told Mody, who was wearing an FBI wire.

Is Bush Lying About Immigration?

Over at Slate.com, Mickey Kaus writes:

WaPo's Weisman and VandeHei recount the successful attempt of Senator Hagel and others to get the Bush White House to scuttle conservatives' attempt to amend the immigration bill to stipulate that the 200,000 low-skilled immigrants allowed to enter the country under a new temporary-worker visa would have to leave when the visa expired.

According to WaPo, the conservative senators argued, ineffectively, that

Bush has always said he backs a "temporary worker program," not a permanent funnel of immigrants to the United States.

Actually, it's worse than that. In Bush's big May 15 speech, he said flatly:

And temporary workers must return to their home country at the conclusion of their stay.

Now it's been made clear that -- according to the White House -- temporary workers need not return to their home countries after all. Was Bush's speech statement just a lie?

... But if Bush didn't mean what he said, maybe he shouldn't have said it. Or does he have so much contempt for his own base -- what Sen. Hagel, in a revealingly snotty outburst, called "the political lowest common denominator" -- that he thinks he can con them with impunity?

Today's Lesson: Hate

Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House, wrote this article in Sunday's Washington Post:

Saudi Arabia's public schools have long been cited for demonizing the West as well as Christians, Jews and other "unbelievers." But after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 -- in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis -- that was all supposed to change.

... the Saudi government has claimed repeatedly that it has revised its educational texts. .... A year ago, an embassy spokesman declared: "We have reviewed our educational curriculums. We have removed materials that are inciteful or intolerant towards people of other faiths." The embassy is also distributing a 74-page review on curriculum reform to show that the textbooks have been moderated.

The problem is: These claims are not true.

Among the disgusting examples that Shea offers are this excerpt from an 8th grade Saudi textbook:

"As cited in Ibn Abbas: The apes are Jews, the people of the Sabbath; while the swine are the Christians, the infidels of the communion of Jesus."

... as well as this example from a Saudi textbook:

"They are the Jews, whom God has cursed and with whom He is so angry that He will never again be satisfied [with them]."

Lordi!

So here I was, putting the finishing edits to a movie (I love my Mac!). Then I had to compress it before publishing it to the web, which takes the CPU a while, so I switched on the TV.

Big mistake. I thought I asked everyone to keep me away from the television tonight.

But the Europeans are showing surprisingly good taste in the voting. It's a little past the halfway point (each of the 36(?) voting countries reports one by one, and each doles out points to its top 10 choices). Lordi has a sizable lead. The sarcastic Lithuanians are in fourth place. In fact, no one would have a chance of catching Lordi if it weren't for the fact that all of the ex-Soviet republics give their top votes to Russia.

Regional back-scratching really distorts the voting. For instance, that buxom Ukrainian chick I mentioned the other day? The singer from FYR Macedonia has much better breasts, and excellent legs as well. Nonetheless, Ukraine is doing better in the voting thanks to post-Soviet solidarity. As long as I'm on the subject, the American hostess is really an embarrassment. The BBC commentator, Terry Wogan, loves the fact that whenever she comes on, she refers to whatever has happened immediately before as "amazing." But of course she's an airhead; that's part of the job description, and her European male counterpart shows no greater signs of intelligence. But where the Americaness really lets her country down is in the bust. She's wearing a dress split very, very low, and I've got to say her breasts just aren't in the same league as the pair from Ukraine, let alone the Macedonian talent. Really, the Europeans are going to think our standards are slipping.

But that's not the important thing. I'm selling my possessions, buying a VW bus, and going on the road to follow Lordi's next tour.

Putting Lady Liberty to Work

Hey, Frenchie, enough with the standing around, welcoming the poor, tired, huddled masses to our shores, we have something else you can do...

Relevant? Interesting? Neither?

Earlier this week I began reading "Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty" and learned of an interesting event that, in some ways, seems to have relevance to events today.

In January 1968, thirty-one North Korean commandos crossed the DMZ in order to assassinate the South Korean president. The attack was foiled and many of the commandos were killed while others fled back across the border. At the same time, a US Navy spy ship - the Pueblo - was off the coast of North Korea gathering intelligence. For reasons nobody really knows - perhaps it was an attempt to test US resolve, or perhaps it was an attempt to distract the world for its own failed assassination attempt - North Korean warships fired on the Pueblo and ultimately captured it and its crew.

No US effort was made to help or rescue the Pueblo, in part because all the US fighter planes in the area were equipped with nuclear weapons. This did not sit well with some members of Congress, such as Rep. L. Mendel Rivers who called on the Johnson administration to nuke a North Korean city in retaliation or South Koreans who wanted to use it as an opportunity to attack the North in order to drive out Kim Il-Sung's communist regime.

Anyway, the most interesting part is that the Pueblo's crew was held for 11 months by North Korea and beaten and tortured into signing "confessions." The crew subtly fought back, filling these "confessions" with references to their co-conspirators such as cartoon character Buzz Sawyer and TV spy Maxwell Smart.

But, as the book states

Such stunts backfired when Time ran a photo of Pueblo captive extending their middle fingers. The magazine explained that this was "the US hand signal for derisiveness and contempt." That was an unpleasant surprise for Pyongyang, since crewmen had described the gesture as a Hawaiian good-luck sign. The crew's treatment during the following week, according to its commander, was "the most concentrated form of terror that I've ever seen or dreamed is possible."

I'll leave it up to others to decide what, if any, relevance this has for current events - I just wanted to share it because I thought it was interesting.

Lurching to the Right

First McCain gets all buddy-buddy with Falwell, now Giuliani is campaigning with Ralph Reed?!? C'mon, Ralphie is up to his neck in Abramoff scandals, he's not even a good person to be seen with in public with, let alone campaigning with!

Jeezus, people. I understand that you're running in '08 but you're both supposed to be independent, even moderate. Do you not have a clue about what it is that makes you appealing to people? Do you not realize that after 8 years under Bush that what you represent-- moderate, independent Republicans-- might really appeal to Americans? Especially you, Rudy, since you're pro-choice and pro-gay rights. Oh, wait, you're not so much anymore.

"I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman, that it should remain that way, it should remain that way inviolate, and everything should be done to make sure that that's the case," Mr. Giuliani said in response to a reporter's question. "But I also believe that you should allow for the protection of legal rights for people who are gay and lesbian."

Hold on, this is coming from a man who openly cheated on his wife while he was mayor and who lived with a gay couple during his seperation is now voicing his opposition to same-sex marriage because marriage is "inviolate"? That's rich.

This is a good way to go if you want people to start thinking that you're no different from the rest of the political herd-- a big, freaking hypocrite who doesn't have the courage to stand up for what he truly believes.

The Italians Don't Like Our War or Our Architecture

The historic center of Rome has changed, and the Italians aren't too happy about the change. A Newsweek reporter explains why:

... Cobblestone lanes wind around decrepit ruins that have been frozen in time for millennia. Crumbling facades are left to decay — some from blatant neglect and others simply to mark the passage of history. Symmetry and order are foreign concepts.

But all of that changed this spring with the unveiling of American architect Richard Meier’s starkly un-Roman museum of the Ara Pacis (Altar of Peace) — the first modern building project in the historical center since the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini’s destructive modernization of the 1930s.

Now the characteristic labyrinth of quaint, decaying Rome is interrupted by what looks, at first glance, something like a space-age gas station.

The building has become a flash point for anti-American sentiment and public disaffection for efforts to modernize the ancient city, which residents, historians and many visitors prefer were left untouched. Visitors have taken to expressing their dissatisfaction in graffiti.

MEIER IS A CRIMINAL wrote one visitor in English on a construction tarp. IKEA: NOW SELLING TOILETS AT THE ARA PACIS wrote another in Italian. The site has also become a gathering spot for antiwar and anti-American protestors who point to its lack of regard for its surroundings as a symbol of everything they hate about the United States.

Bush and Clarity

Slate.com's John Dickerson contends that President Bush has lost one of the few traits that originally endeared him to the public: clarity. Dickerson writes:

In the post-9/11 uproar, Bush's clarity defined him and won him admirers. His plain-spokenness about "evil" was bracing and just what the country seemed to want. But the president's greatest talent has suddenly become a curse.

Lack of clarity bedevils Bush on immigration reform, high gas prices, and Iraq. He's now trying to make nuanced arguments but his presidency rests on an anti-nuance platform. Now he has to actually make a subtle case, but he has neither the tools to do so nor a receptive audience.

... conservatives see nuance as a sign of weakness, in part because Bush has taught them to view it as such. During the 2004 campaign, Bush advisers and campaign officials turned "nuance" into a pejorative. They walloped Kerry with it like a mallet. It was a point of pride for the president, who once reportedly told Sen. Joe Lieberman, "I don't do nuance."

Now Bush is nuancing all over the place, trying to explain to his supporters the complicated competing interests that require everyone to compromise by gathering at some "rational middle ground." But polling suggests Bush has lost moderates and independents. The only people left who still even listen to him are the ones least likely to buy the pitch.

The president's address to the nation on immigration Monday was measured and at times stirring. He reiterated that the proposal he supports for allowing illegal immigrants a path to citizenship is not amnesty.

Conservatives, subscribing to the old Bush model, didn't buy his shading. Forget the administration's wordy rationalization. Illegal immigrants are lawbreakers, and they shouldn't be rewarded for it.

My New Heroes

Anyone who can play his instrument while dressed like this has real talent.

Besides, how can you can you resist their slogan:

Bringing the balls back to rock, and rock back to Eurovision

And you've got to respect song titles like "The Devil is a Loser" and "Arockalypse."

As for the idiots who accuse Lordi of Satanism, these guys aren't the Antichrist; they're Spinal Tap.

Things Get Testy as Gay Marriage Ban Approved

The Gutless Arlen Specter

Is this a Samuel Beckett play? I think I've seen this Act before.

With the GOP's political fortunes looking grim, the party has decided (yet again) to play the gay card. Yesterday, tempers flared as the Senate Judiciary Committee voted along party lines to approve a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. The AP described the "shouting match" that occurred:

“I don’t need to be lectured by you. You are no more a protector of the Constitution than am I,” Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., shouted after Sen. Russ Feingold declared his opposition to the amendment, his affinity for the Constitution and his intention to leave the meeting.

“If you want to leave, good riddance,” Specter finished.

“I’ve enjoyed your lecture, too, Mr. Chairman,” replied Feingold, D-Wis., who is considering a run for president in 2008. “See ya.”

... Among Feingold’s objections was Specter’s decision to hold the vote in the President’s Room, where access by the general public is restricted, instead of in the panel’s usual home in the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

... Specter said he is “totally opposed” to [the gay marriage amendment], but felt it deserved a debate in the Senate.

Question: how many other proposals has Specter been "totally opposed" to, yet voted for in committee?

What a pair they have in Pennsylvania. Rick Santorum, the fervent homophobe. Arlen Specter, the gutless wonder. I'm not sure which is worse.

With any luck, one of them will be voted out of office in November.

Nothing But Hot (Bl)air

The newest issue of Blueprint, the publication of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), features this article by British Prime Minister Tony Blair. In the article, Blair tries to create a paper tiger by falsely framing the debate over foreign policy in the Islamic world in these shallow terms:

The true division in foreign policy today is between those who ... between those who believe that the long-term interests of a country lie in it being engaged -- and those who think the short-term pain of such a policy and its decisions is too great.

Blair wants us to believe the debate is simply about some amorphous "engagement." He seems to think a nation's leader should say "yes" to "being engaged" overseas without asking three relevant questions -- where? why? and how?

In the article, the prime minister proves that he is just as capable as Dick Cheney was of using the word "Iraq" in the same breath as 9/11, bin Laden, Afghanistan, etc. Here's what Blair writes about those who oppose "being engaged":

According to this opinion, the policy of America since 9/11 has been a gross overreaction; George Bush is as much if not more of a threat to world peace as Osama bin Laden; and what is happening in Iraq, Afghanistan, or anywhere else in the Middle East is an entirely understandable consequence of U.S./U.K. imperialism or worse, of just plain stupidity.

Leave it all alone or at least treat it with sensitivity and it would all resolve itself in time .... The effect of this paradigm is to see each setback in Iraq or Afghanistan, each revolting terrorist barbarity, each reverse for the forces of democracy or advance for the forces of tyranny as merely an illustration of the foolishness of our ever being there; as a reason why Saddam should have been left in place or the Taliban free to continue their alliance with al Qaeda.

Those who still justify the interventions are treated with scorn.

Blair would have us believe that it's all or nothing -- either you were opposed to the U.S. ("coalition forces") invading both Afghanistan and Iraq or you were in favor of invading both.

He'd prefer to ignore that there are millions of us who supported one of those interventions, but not the other.

Blair's article is shoddy, pedestrian analysis. It's shameful that Blair could write (or have one of his flunkies write) such rubbish given the revelations in the Downing Street memo -- e.g., "the case (for invading Iraq) was thin" and the "intelligence and facts were being fixed" by the Bushies to justify an invasion.

This article also reflects poorly on the DLC, which has presented itself as a serious, intellectual clearinghouse of ideas. And, at times, the DLC has had some ideas worth listening to. I can only guess that DLC officials were so tickled pink with the news that Blair agreed to write a Blueprint article that they never bothered to read it once it arrived.

"Lord, Can You Please Repeat That ... Slowly?"

Stop the presses. The Lord is talking again to televangelist Pat Robertson:

"If I heard the Lord right about 2006, the coasts of America will be lashed by storms," Robertson said May 8. On Wednesday (May 17), he added, "There well may be something as bad as a tsunami in the Pacific Northwest."

If? Don't you pay close attention when the Lord speaks to you, Pat? Or was God slurring his words like our president does from time to time?

Words like "if" and "may well" can come in handy. If a hurricane slams into the east coast, Pat will tell us all that he predicted it. If no such event happens, he can shrug his shoulders and say he must not have "heard the Lord right."

As a companion to its story about Robertson's disclosure, MSNBC ran a poll of its website visitors. After 116,000+ responses, here were the results:

Do you believe Pat Robertson received warnings from God about storms and tsunamis?

Yes .............. 11%
No ............... 78%
Not sure ........ 11%

It Just Gets Worse

I can't believe I just sat through the preliminaries for Eurovision. This spect(deb)acle was just to fill out the field for Saturday's final. About half of the 24 spots in the finals were already taken--maybe I missed a similar event last night. So I spoke too soon. The Netherlands once again failed to qualify for the final. The buxom Ukrainian made it (surprise), as did the postmodern Lithuanians. The heavy metal entry from Finland is really something to behold--outstanding monster make-up, guitars that shoot fire, the works--though I don't imagine they stand much chance in a contest that's really about pop.

Please, anyone who knows me, if you see me on Saturday, don't let me go near a television.

European Superiority

The next time some smug Europhile belittles the U.S. as an unsophisticated child among nations and a cultural desert as compared to its European parents, just utter three little words:

EUROVISION SONG CONTEST

I saw my first one two years ago when I was over here job hunting. The Netherlands' entry didn't even make the final that year (I think it's restricted to about 20, although all 253 European countries, or however many it is, report their voting one by one after the audience has suffered through all 20 performances; thus, the whole debacle lasts for hours). Anyhow, the Dutch group this year decided to show off their country's prowess at foreign languages by performing a song consisting mostly of nonsense syllables--the point apparently being that we don't need language to understand each other. The Lithuanians had a clever idea: their song was called "We Are the Winners," and the lyrics were along the lines of "We are the winners/of Eurovision/vote for the winners/vote for us." The Portuguese are going with a latter-day Abba approach, not a bad move given that the original version of Abba won this thing twice. The Ukrainians went to the same formula that their countrywoman won with two years ago, viz., buxom singer wearing very little clothing. Come to think of it, that's the formula that won for Greece last year.

I can't bring myself to turn it off. It's mesmerizing in its awfulness.

Remember, we may be the country of Britney Spears, but we're also the country that gave the world jazz, blues, and rock and roll.

In the States, the GOP Right Gains Ground

It's only May, but already some areas of the country are feeling a political shock wave -- although this revolt is coming from the Right, not the Left. The longtime State Senate pro tempore in Indiana was defeated by a more conservative Republican with no political experience. And, in Pennsylvania, as the New York Times reports:

A revolt among Pennsylvania conservatives gained national attention on Wednesday after challengers toppled at least 12 state lawmakers they deemed insufficiently committed to small government and fiscal restraint.

Among those losing their positions in a Republican primary on Tuesday were the two State Senate leaders, Robert C. Jubelirer and David J. Brightbill, who had 56 years of incumbency between them and vastly outspent their upstart rivals.

GOP primary voters were pissed that their Republican legislative leaders managed to spend more money in two of the last three state budgets than the Democratic governor originally requested.

It also didn't help that legislators voted themselves a hefty pay raise -- I'd have been ticked off by this too.

I'm willing to bet that the ultra-conservative challengers who won Tuesday have some very scary positions on various issues. Even so, I take some solace from the fact that these primary races demonstrate that not all re-elections can be bought. For example:

Facing a tire salesman with little political experience, Mr. Brightbill, the majority leader, outspent his opponent nearly 20 to 1 and still captured just 37 percent of the vote.

The Cost of Higher Ed Just Got a Little Higher

Since 2001 anyone paying for higher education has received a tuition tax deduction up to $4,000 a year. But Bush's new tax cut plan took care of that, it is no more. Considering the rate in which tuition is skyrocketing this seems like a *great* time to make it that much harder to afford higher education. Thanks Mr. President!

I do have a sincere question though, doesn't failing to renew this provision qualify as a tax hike on people paying for tuition?

Another Test for Border's Bookstores

From the Bidinotto Blog:

[Back in March], the Borders Books chain banished from its newsstands an issue of Free Inquiry magazine which reprinted the now-infamous Danish cartoons of Muhammad. As its excuse, Borders cited concerns for the safety of its customers and employees.

As editor of The New Individualist, the first magazine in America to reprint one of the "offensive" cartoons on its front cover, I published here a widely quoted An Open Letter to Borders Books, challenging the company's gutless surrender to vague, non-specific fears of jihadist retaliation.

Well, Borders has a new moral dilemma on its corporate hands: Harper's magazine has also just published the Muhammad cartoons in its June issue.

Do you think Borders now will banish the venerable Harper's from its shelves, too? Or will it instead carry the magazine, and add to its past history of cowardice a new policy of hypocrisy? And if it does, why did it single out Free Inquiry for exile, but not Harper's? Inquiring minds will want to know.

The Tune That Dick Cheney Used to Sing

Harper's Ken Silverstein reminds us that there was a time when Dick Cheney had a very different view of how the U.S. should conduct its foreign policy in the oil-rich Middle East:

A few months ago, in an interview with Jim Lehrer, Vice President Dick Cheney — who has been leading the call for tough action on Iran — said that the country has been “a problem for a long time.”

Not that long, apparently. Go back to March 1996. Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, which was eagerly seeking to win energy business in Iran. The Clinton Administration had imposed sanctions on Iran a year earlier.

“I think,” said Cheney (in '96), “we Americans sometimes make mistakes. There seems to be an assumption that somehow we know what's best for everybody else and that we are going to . . . get everybody else to live the way we would like.”

Cheney argued that a unilateral approach would backfire and urged the United States to follow the lead of European countries that were seeking to expand business and trade with Iran. According to a Reuters account, Cheney said history “proved that international influence was derived from economic activity and clout” — not from threats and provocations.

... Two years later, in a speech at the Cato Institute, Cheney was even more scathing toward American sanctions on Iran.

... "The nation that's isolated in terms of our sanctions policy in that part of the globe is not Iran. It is the United States. And the fact that we have tried to pressure governments in the region to adopt a sanctions policy that they clearly are not interested in pursuing has raised doubts in the minds of many of our friends about the overall wisdom and judgment of U.S. policy in the area.”

“The good Lord,” he told the crowd at Cato, “didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would not normally choose to go. But, we go where the business is.”

Hirsi Ali Update

The split between insiders and outsiders is becoming ever more stark.

Rita Verdonk's patron Neelie Kroes, who is now the European Commissioner for Competition (i.e., the European Union's anti-trust czar), has withdrawn her support for Verdonk's candidacy to become leader of the Liberal Party. The race for the leadership was well underway when the whole Hirsi Ali crisis broke out. As far as I can tell, most prominent Liberal MPs are running away from Verdonk as fast as they can.

Meanwhile, Verdonk announced that she is not standing down from the race and contended that the party stands the best chance of becoming the largest party in Parliament--as opposed to a junior member of a coalition headed by the Christian Democrats--if she is leader. In her determination, she is still getting a lot of support from rank-and-file members of the party, and since they're the ones who vote on the leader, she's still in with a chance. Her appeal has always been her toughness, so this only makes her look more attractive to her devotees.

This quote, when asked in the hallway of the parliament building whether she would resign from her position as Immigration Minister, fits nicely into that image (you have to see the Dutch to get the defiant tone): "Je moet optreden, niet aftreden." In English: "You've got to take action (optreden), not resign (aftreden)." (Actually, I think it might be even more clever, since optreden can mean both to take action and to serve in a certain capacity--to be a government minister, for example. But I'm way out of my linguistic depth at this point).

Verdonk continues to argue that she had no choice. My off-the-cuff translation: "I have to uphold laws and regulations. That's difficult, especially when you know someone well. But the laws apply to everyone equally."

Hirsi Ali's lawyer begs to differ. She claims that Verdonk did have some discretion in the matter. I don't know whether the double entendre is as striking to the Dutch ear when she says: "My client's situation isn't as black-and-white as Verdonk makes it out to be."

My own, ill-informed intuition is that while Verdonk may or may not survive (in the sense of keeping her current job, let alone becoming party leader), the whole brouhaha will only boost Hirsi Ali's career. If she wants to go back to parliament, she'll be able to eventually; even if Verdonk is right about the law, surely Hirsi Ali will be able to go back and get Dutch citizenship the right way if she wants to. But she may be looking to bigger and better things than the Dutch parliament (no offense meant to my Dutch friends), and this episode has not only heightened her already considerable celebrity status in the Netherlands but also projected her onto the international stage. If the AEI really wants her, then she's already made some very useful connections in Washington.

The two principals in the eye of this hurricane, during happier times:

Verdonk says she hasn't had any contact with Hirsi Ali since she broke the news to her that she wasn't Dutch. But she will call her soon, "simply, as just Rita," i.e., as a buddy not a minister.

I'd love to be a fly on the wall (or a federal agent listening in without a warrant) on that call.

CNN Recycles News, Demagogue Has Learned

Amid my seemingly-never-ending search for news on Darfur, I came across this article from CNN

Children as young as 13 are being forced into combat by Sudanese rebels who take the youngsters from squalid refugee camps in neighboring Chad, CNN has learned.

In some cases, Chadian guards look the other way as rebels make children join their ranks, local people say.

And just how did CNN "learn" this?

I'm guessing they "learned" it when UNHCR said it yesterday

Rebel groups are reportedly continuing to recruit men and boys in camps in Chad that shelter 200,000 Sudanese who have fled the fighting in the Darfur region of their own country, and the Chadian Government must take all necessary steps to stop such activities, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said today.

I guess that, technically, CNN did "learn" this - but so did everybody else.

Normally, when news outlets claim to have "learned" something, it means they have discovered something nobody else knew and that had not yet been reported.

I think that, from now on, I am going to start all of my blog posts with phrases like "The NSA has a massive database of Americans' phone calls, Demagogue has learned."

The RNC's Post-Speech Spin

In the wake of President Bush's televised speech on immigration Monday, the Republican National Committee (RNC) created this web page entitled: "What They're Saying About The President's Address On Immigration."

Below this title was the following headline:

Praise For President Bush's Address

Among the quotes cited as "praise" was this set of remarks by House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio):

"Providing extra resources and extra security personnel on our borders in an effort to stop illegal immigration is an important initiative, and I applaud the President's commitment to making our borders more secure."

Of course, the deployment of thousands of National Guard troops to the Mexican border was only one of Bush's immigration proposals.

In his statement, Boehner went on to declare that the bill passed by the House is sufficient reform -- a bill that lacks the guest worker provision that Bush said he wants. Boehner said:

"House Republicans have responded to the concerns of the American people by passing a strong border security bill that reflects our commitment to re-establishing basic respect for our immigration laws and sealing our border against illegal entry."

In the final sentence of his statement, Boehner acknowledges that the Senate may embrace a different version of reform by saying simply that he will seek to "make border security our first priority."

In Congress-speak, this is the polite way of saying, "We like the bill we passed so don't expect us to roll over for your version."

Further evidence that Boehner's "praise" was nothing more than a courteous tone comes from how Fox News characterized the Majority Leader's views in the wake of Bush's speech:

The task of settling differences between the Senate and House [bills] could be the biggest barrier to reform. The House bill emphasizes border security and calls for construction of a 700-mile fence along the Mexican border. It also makes no guest worker provision.

Signaling that House Republicans have not changed their position, Majority Leader John Boehner said he will wait and see what comes out of the Senate.

This doesn't sound like Boehner has changed his tune on immigration. He remains strongly opposed to a guest worker provision. As much as the RNC would like to portray Republicans as coming to consensus on this issue, this isn't happening. At least not yet.

Bad Connection

So now that Verizon is denying that they were "approached by NSA and entered into an arrangement to provide the NSA with data from its customers' domestic calls." They also emphatically declare that "media reports about Verizon are simply false." Bellsouth also makes very similar denials.

Interesting. Especially in light of this, also from Verizon's official statement:

"As the President has made clear, the NSA program he acknowledged authorizing against al-Qaeda is highly-classified. Verizon cannot and will not comment on the program.... Again, Verizon cannot and will not confirm or deny whether it has any relationship to the classified NSA program."

So did they or didn't they? If they did are they even allowed to say they did? There is range of possibilities here. Is there a way for them to share information with the NSA without defining their actions as "providing"? Or maybe they're setting themselves up to hang the blame on lower level employees? So that the official decision makers can say they didn't know about it and that they never complied with a formal request from the NSA?

Also, and this is the thing that jumps out at me the most, if USA Today's piece is 100% BS then why didn't the government come out and say so? Why haven't they denied it outright?

In fact they haven't really denied it at all, they quickly resort to claiming that they "do not listen" to the calls, that they weren't the only ones who knew about it, and that other people had been "briefed."

Two judges on the secretive court that approves warrants for intelligence surveillance were told of the broad monitoring programs that have raised recent controversy, a Republican senator [Orrin Hatch] said Tuesday.

President George W. Bush, meanwhile, insisted the government does not listen in on domestic telephone conversations among ordinary Americans. But he declined to specifically discuss the alleged compiling of phone records, or whether that would amount to an invasion of privacy.
...
Bush was asked Tuesday about the reported lists of calls.

"We do not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval," Bush said.

He appeared to acknowledge the NSA sweep of phone records indirectly, saying that the program referred to by a questioner "is one that has been fully briefed to members of the United States Congress in both political parties."

"They're very aware of what is taking place. The American people expect their government to protect them within the laws of this country and I'm going to continue to do just that," Bush said.

So Bush doesn't deny that the mega NSA database exists, various members of the government are asserting that judges and members of congress had been briefed, but neither BellSouth or Verizon "provided" the NSA with their records? It seems possible that much of their argument hangs on how they are defining the word "provide" as well as how they might have been asked and who might have complied with such a request.

Keep in mind that Verizon, Bellsouth and AT&T all have a very serious problem on their hands if they did "provide" the government with their records without a warrant and are facing a $200 billion dollar lawsuit for violating the Telecommunications Act of 1934. So while seems highly unlikely that they're actually lying-- that makes no sense legally-- there is something about this whole story that just doesn't add up.

Blogging the Bible

Slate.com's David Plotz thought he knew the Bible pretty well. But when he recently read Chapter 34 of Genesis (describing the rape of Jacob's daughter Dinah), he was deeply disturbed by this story:

... The founding fathers of the 12 tribes of Israel lie, breach a contract, encourage pagans to convert to Judaism only in order to incapacitate them for slaughter, murder some innocents and enslave others, pillage and profiteer, and then justify it all with an appeal to their sister's defiled honor. (Which, incidentally, may not have been defiled at all: Some commentators ... think Dinah went with Shechem willingly, and even the language in the two translations I looked at is ambiguous ...)

Like many lax but well-educated Jews (and Christians), I have long assumed I knew what was in the Bible — more or less.

I read parts of the Torah as a child in Hebrew school, then attended a rigorous Christian high school where I had to study the Old and New Testaments. Many of the highlights stuck in my head — Adam and Eve, Cain vs., Abel, Jacob vs. Esau, Jonah vs. whale, 40 days and nights ..... All this left me with a general sense that I knew the Good Book well enough, and that it was a font of crackling stories, Jewish heroes, and moral lessons.

So, the tale of Dinah unsettled me, to say the least. If this story was strutting cheerfully through the back half of Genesis, what else had I forgotten or never learned? I decided I would, for the first time as an adult, read the Bible. And I would blog about it as I went along.

... My goal is pretty simple. I want to find out what happens when an ignorant person actually reads the book on which his religion is based. I think I'm in the same position as many other lazy but faithful people (Christians, Jews, Moslems, Hindus). I love Judaism; I love (most of) the lessons it has taught me about how to live in the world; and yet I realized I am fundamentally ignorant about its foundation, its essential document.

So, what will happen if I approach my Bible empty, unmediated by teachers or rabbis or parents? What will delight and horrify me? .... I'll spend the next few weeks (or months) finding out.

In Saudi Arabia, It's Deja Vu All Over Again

From Reuters:

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, under pressure from Islamists to curb reforms, has warned local media against showing pictures of Saudi women, local newspapers reported on Tuesday.

Many Saudis have said they hope the king, who came to power last year, will loosen strict political and social mores in the ultra-conservative kingdom which imposes an austere version of Islam called Wahhabism.

Newspapers have broken with tradition and have more frequently begun printing photographs of Saudi women beside stories, usually with hair covered but faces showing, which many Wahhabi Islamists consider morally wrong.

They have also printed debate about other issues concerning women, such as whether bans on women driving and working in some retail stores could be reversed, issues which have raised the ire of many religious conservatives.

“There are photographs published in some newspapers ... and one needs to think if he would want his daughter, sister or wife to appear like that. Of course, no one would,” the king was quoted as saying at a meeting with newspaper editors late on Monday.

C-Span Would Be Jealous

The lower house of the Dutch Parliament had a debate last night--yes, they met at night--and much of the country was transfixed. Five million viewers tuned in for live TV coverage, and more than a million were still watching after midnight (the thing went on until 3 a.m.). Five million might not sound like a lot by American standards, but the Netherlands has an adult population of 13 million.

Minister Verdonk was pretty much all alone. Members of her own party and other coalition party were, if anything, even more vociferous in criticizing her than were opposition members. The Dutch newspapers this morning all carried headlines like "Verdonk Under Fire." Zacht Ei has a blow-by-blow account of the debate.

Among other things, MPs pointed out that Hirsi Ali's e-mail address is not Ali@tweedekamer.nl but Magan@tweedekamer.nl (the Tweede Kamer is the lower house of the Dutch legislature). In other words, every time Verdonk sent her an e-mail, she knew that Hirsi Ali's "real" name was Magan, her father's surname. As I mentioned yesterday, it's the fact that she was naturalized under the wrong name that Verdonk cited as grounds for determining that Hirsi Ali wasn't a citizen--people are pointing out that this is not news, so why get all excited about it now?

Verdonk's position is that she's just enforcing the clear rules and that she has no discretion in the matter. The irony is that if anyone is supporting her at all, it's the pro-asylum groups who are normally her bitter enemies: they say that this debacle proves that it was a bad idea to adopt such rigid laws in the first place rather than permitting officials to take account of individual cases.

Meanwhile, there's talk--it must be somewhat overblown, I'm sure--of a constitutional crisis. The idea is that if Hirsi Ali was never a Dutch citizen, the parliament has not had the required 150 members for the past three years.

Verdonk has agreed to reconsider her finding (actually, one of the big arguments last night was whether she made a "decision" that Hirsi Ali isn't a citizen, or just noted an existing fact). Meanwhile, Hirsi Ali does continue to have a refugee passport, besides which I've heard (but haven't been able to confirm) that the U.S. ambassador announced that the U.S. will do whatever is necessary to enable her to come to the U.S.

This circus will continue. Stay tuned.

Why Sausage-Neck Doesn't Need to Enlist

Jedmunds at Pandagon nails "war bloggers" to the wall.

When you recall that these people believe that “will” is what wins wars, then the insane self-regard these people have for themselves, their “hard work and sacrifices,” and their concern about flagging morale within their ranks actually makes quite a bit of sense. After all, if “will” is what wins wars, than stoking that “will” via your keyboard and wireless internet connection is quite a bit more important than actually fighting in the enterprise.

See! Sausage-neck (aka Jonah Goldberg) and all the other 101st Fighting Keyboardists don't need to do any actual fighting, they probably believe that supporting the war effort from the safety and comfort of their desk chairs is plenty, so no need to enlist!

Venezuela Ups the Ante

The Associated Press reports today:

Venezuela's military is considering the possibility of selling its fleet of U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets to another country, perhaps Iran, a Venezuelan military official said Tuesday.

In response to a U.S. ban on arms sales to President Hugo Chavez's government, Gen. Alberto Muller, a senior adviser to Chavez, told The Associated Press he had recommended to the defense minister that Venezuela consider selling the 21 jets to another country.

Muller said he thought it was worthwhile to consider "the feasibility of a negotiation with Iran for the sale of those planes."

Now what?

Yes, I know Pat Robertson has an answer for that question.

The "Demand" Side of Illegal Immigration

A number of politicians and activists say they oppose amnesty because it rewards illegal behavior. But doesn't a guest-worker policy do the same?

Over the past 12 months, many companies in the U.S. have hired workers whom they know to be illegal immigrants or at least strongly suspect they are.

I finally tracked down this AP article from last month, which indicates that the illegal immigration debate is as much about demand as it is about supply:

When Pedro Lopez Vazquez crossed illegally into the United States last week, he was not heading north to look for a job. He already had one. His future employer even paid $1,000 for a smuggler to help Vazquez make his way from the central Mexican city of Puebla to Aspen, Colo.

... Vazquez, 41, was interviewed along the Arizona border after being deported twice by the U.S. Border Patrol. He said he would keep trying until he got to Aspen. His story is not unusual. A growing number of U.S. employers and migrants are tapping into an underground employment network that matches one with the other, often before the migrants leave home.

... As debate over immigration heats up in the United States, more U.S. companies in need of cheap labor are turning to undocumented employees to recruit friends and relatives back home, and to smugglers to find job seekers.

Darcy Tromanhauser, of the non-profit law project Nebraska Appleseed, said companies in need of workers rely on the networks to "pass along the information more effectively than billboards."

... At the same time, it has become less risky for companies to recruit undocumented migrants. Since the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. prosecution of employers who hire such workers has dwindled to a trickle as the government puts its resources toward national security.The few cases that are prosecuted, however, highlight how lucrative a business recruiting undocumented workers has become.

In one case, a single smuggler allegedly earned $900,000 over 15 months placing 6,000 migrants in jobs at Chinese restaurants across the upper Midwest.

... Shan Wei Yu, a 51-year-old Chinese-American, was sentenced in December to nine years in federal prison on charges involving the transportation of 40 of those migrants.

... Shan sent a recruiter with Spanish interpreters to find migrants in Dallas willing to be fry cooks and dishwashers, Hilzendager said. A team made up mostly of undocumented Chinese immigrants rented cars and drove them up. Shan allegedly charged a $150 finder's fee for each migrant while the drivers earned $300 per worker. Restaurant owners deducted the $450 from workers' first-month paychecks of $1,000.

... Nick Chase, assistant U.S. attorney in North Dakota, said Shan offered to replace workers free of charge if one left within two weeks of starting. "It was a two-for-one special, like a pizza," Chase said. "Everything about it was ugly."

The employees, housed in cramped apartments provided by employers, worked 14-hour shifts and had little outside contact.

Drowning in a Sea of Negativity

Via Carpetbagger we find that reviewing Bush's ratings in state-by-state polls adds some dramatic, devastating depth to his national polls. Here's a fact you won't hear repeated on CNN-- Bush's disapproval ratings are bigger than his approval ratings in 47 states.

Bush is down to just three states in which his support is 50% or better (Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah). He has fallen into the 30s in 37 states (including 18 states that voted for him the 2004 election) and is into the 20s in 10 states (including one that backed him in '04).

Bush has even lost the support of Texas-- 42% approve, 56% disapprove. Heck, he's lost support in the entire South!

What was that you were saying, Karl? That people are just in a "sour" mood, "that people like this president"? Are you not aware that 33 states have Bush disapproval ratings in the 60s or higher? What do you think his poll numbers would look like if people turned on him?

Bring Out Your Dead!

Now this is the kind of thing I like to read, New Republic's Ryan Lizza describes how Bush's speech last night reminded him of a scene in a Monty Python movie-- the "Bring Out Your Dead/I'm not Dead Yet/Oh Yes You Are" scene from The Holy Grail, one of my personal favorite movies of all time.

Watching Bush last night reminded me of the famous scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail in which the Dead Collector pushes a cart through a plague-ridden village collecting bodies.John Cleese throws a corpse on the Dead Collector's pile, but the corpse protests that he's very much alive:

The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I'm not dead.
The Dead Collector: What?
Large Man with Dead Body: Nothing. There's your ninepence.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I'm not dead.
The Dead Collector: 'Ere, he says he's not dead.
Large Man with Dead Body: Yes he is.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I'm not.
The Dead Collector: He isn't.
Large Man with Dead Body: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I'm getting better.
Large Man with Dead Body: No you're not, you'll be stone dead in a moment.
The Dead Collector: Well, I can't take him like that. It's against regulations.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I don't want to go on the cart.
Large Man with Dead Body: Oh, don't be such a baby.
The Dead Collector: I can't take him.
The Dead Body That Claims It Isn't: I feel fine.

Last night, George W. Bush played the role of the Dead Body That Claims It Isn't. Going into the speech, he looked like a political corpse.
...
Just as the dead cart was about to be wheeled away, the president popped up on TV and proclaimed, "I feel fine." What was striking about Bush's speech was its audacity and refusal to bend to changed political circumstances.

...remember what happens to the Dead Body That Claims It Isn't at the end of that scene? The Dead Collector clubs him to death and carts off the corpse.