If Pryor responded as the NR reports that he did, this was a blatant departure from honesty. Pryor's swipe at Justice Souter came immediately after Pryor urged that the best hope for "federalism" was that then-Gov. Bush would be elected as President and thus be in a position to appoint judges. In this context, Pryor's singling out of Justice Souter can have only one reasonable meaning: that Pryor said "no more Souters" rather than "no more Ginsburgs or Breyers" because Justice Souter had been appointed by the first President Bush, and turned out to be a grave disappointment to those who want Republican judicial appointees to generate Republican-favored outcomes. Bill Pryor thus squarely put himself in that camp: he doesn't like it when Republican judicial appointees aren't reliable votes for the outcomes that the nominating President's supporters prefer, at least in significant cases.

"I'M PROBABLY the only one who wanted it 5-4," Alabama Attorney General William H. Pryor Jr. said the day after the Supreme Court resolved the 2000 election controversy with a split decision. "I wanted Governor Bush to have a full appreciation of the judiciary and judicial selection so we can have no more appointments like Justice Souter."

The Security Council on Thursday grudgingly approved another one-year exemption for U.S. peacekeepers from prosecution by the newly established International Criminal Court, despite objections from some members that it puts the U.S. outside international law.

Washington had pushed hard for the exemption, saying that its personnel were particularly vulnerable to politically motivated charges, and that it would not participate in peacekeeping operations without immunity. The measure does not, "as some today suggested, elevate an entire category of people above the law," said U.S. Deputy Ambassador James Cunningham. "The ICC is not 'the law.' In our view, it is a fatally flawed institution."

William H. Pryor, Alabama's attorney general, who has gained prominence as an outspoken opponent of legalized abortion and as an advocate for a greater Christian influence in government, told skeptical Democrats on the Judiciary Committee today that his personal views would have no bearing on his performance if he is confirmed as a federal judge.

Given that the Clinton presidency did nothing and could do nothing, the only real matter for discussion is its style. In that regard, there are things that should not and cannot be forgotten. Chasing interns around the office is one thing; but this was the Oval Office, the people's office in the people's house, a shrine of our constitutional tradition. The Clintons, in their fathomless New Class arrogance, were blind to all that. It would never have occurred to them to think it, and if anyone had said it out loud in their presence, they would have turned away in scorn.

They were actually more than blind: They hated that stuff — the stuff about tradition, respect, formality, institutional dignity, values. Institutions, for them, existed only to be smashed up and remade in the image of New Class ideals. As did the nation — they hated that, too. Not just the U.S.A.: They hated the very idea of nation. The world, in their view, should be run by international bureaucracies, staffed by confident New Class-niks like themselves on limitless expense accounts. What, after all (they said amongst themselves) had the idea of nationhood ever brought the world, but war, imperialism, and racial arrogance? Away with it!

...What the Clintons left behind them is nothing to do with policy, foreign or domestic. It is the "red-blue" split, the gulf between citizens who, having been very thoroughly exposed to New Class values, detest them, and those who don't. The Clintons did not add anything to the country; nor, in spite of their best efforts, did they subtract much from it. What they mainly did was polarize it. If you compare the nation at the end of the Clinton years with what it was at the beginning, there are two things that stand out: We were richer, and we were more bitterly divided.

Currently under attack by the Department of Justice, the Alien Tort Claims Act has enabled victims of torture to bring more than 30 foreign human-rights abusers to justice, exposing their crimes, causing some to leave the country and, in a few cases, taking away their ill-gotten wealth. Why do John Ashcroft and President Bush want to take away the ability of torture survivors to pursue human rights abusers? San Francisco's Center for Justice & Accountability, which represents torture survivors in these suits, is concerned that the answer has more to do with protecting the Bush administration's friends in the oil industry than with the law.

The remarkable thing about George W. Bush is how much of a leader of the Republican Party he's been, and that's kept a lot of the bellyaching and groaning to a minimum, whereas we Republicans in the past have been the source of much our own undoing -- whether we stray from our base, or our promises, or we try to be just a little bit different from the Democrats, thinking we can beat vanilla by being French vanilla, which doesn't work...

And as the "WE" cluster of issues -- war and economy -- is forced to share more of the stage with the "SHE" cluster of issues -- Social Security, healthcare and education -- the Democratic Party has had a natural advantage on those issues for decades; people don't trust Republicans on those issues as much as they do on the war and economy. So that would be a natural vulnerability for any Republican...

I also think there's always lurking dark-horse issues. One is if Bush has a Quayle moment and is treated unfairly for a basic human mistake -- and it sticks, that's key here -- that could potentially be costly. [Here's the kicker-->] Another dark-horse issue could be the plight of children in this country. If the Democratic Party were to start to run ads showing hungry, homeless children, showing staggering statistics about death rates among young black youth, black youth on black youth crime, and the very poor state of public education for many American children. Just really the fact that in parts of this country it's looked upon as no better than in the Third World -- and connect it to George W. Bush and assign blame and say, Gee, this is compassion? Then perhaps.

So here's my challenge - if you are a proprietor of a Democratic blog, and primarily post on how the GOP is the great evil, comment to me on one thing that the GOP has done that's good. And, if you are feeling adventurous, post something on your actual site that does the same thing. Maybe a local Congressman or Senator has done something good for the area you live in. Perhaps a bill has been supported that you agree with. Maybe you actually *gasp* like the policy someone has. Whatever it is, let's hear it.

It is now evident that Saddam Hussein's possession of vast quantities of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) is about as likely as Mars having canals, complete with gondolas and singing gondoliers. Remember, it wasn't just a couple of stink bombs we accused him of possessing. According to data compiled by columnist Nicholas Kristof, the governments of the United States and (once) Great Britain told the world that Saddam had 500 tons of mustard and nerve gas, 25,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum, almost 30,000 banned munitions and the tornado that abducted Dorothy. So far, all we have found is two empty trailers. Presumably, American troops had sufficient time to paint over the "Allied Van Lines" logos.

The upshot is that we went to war and wrecked a country over something that, barring an unlikely revelation, was not true. The American people don't seem to care. Perhaps they expect to be misled by their government, or, more likely, they have just changed the channel.

But the rest of the world does care. The international credibility of American assertions based on military intelligence is now zero. When we make claims about other countries -- as we are now doing about Iran -- not a soul will believe them, even when they happen to be true. At this point, Americans should not believe them either.

At issue here are high crimes – not misdemeanors – that make Watergate and the Iran Contra, much less Bill Clinton's peccadilloes, pale in comparison. But to watch the debate, elevated to operatic levels by neoconservative opinion and policy makers, one gets the impression that whether Hillary really loves Bill or whether he caught her off guard are the defining moral questions of the day.

Here's the nub and the rub: Smart people know that truth is immutable and objectively ascertainable. They know that, while a lie is a lie, some lies are face-saving understandable fibs, while others are deadly and dreadful breaches and infractions.

Bush's lies about the war on Iraq were the latter.

But in the last few months there has been a crisis of confidence in Afghanistan, a sense that the security situation may be spiraling downward and that the rise of regional warlords may be more than a temporary phenomenon. Attacks on peacekeepers and aid workers are increasing. After more than a year of waiting patiently for results, people here are increasingly asking: are the Americans getting it right?

An American resolution that would extend United States citizens' immunity from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court has rekindled some of the trans-Atlantic hostility that led to the diplomatic debacle over the Iraq war.

Three days after gun battles between warring ethnic militias brought this town to a terrified standstill, the newly arrived commander of the multinational force dispatched by the United Nations pledged today "to reassure and to protect" its people. But he made clear he did not intend to disarm the fighters, many of them children.

The United States mounted a public relations offensive today in anticipation of some of the biggest expressions of anti-Americanism here in years.

The American Ambassador, Thomas Hubbard, and the commander of United States forces in South Korea, Gen. Leon LaPorte, opened the campaign with renewed expressions of regret over the deaths of two 13-year-old schoolgirls last June 13. The two were crushed by a 50-ton American armored vehicle during a military exercise on a narrow road about 20 miles north of here.

House Republicans yesterday unveiled their $82 billion plan, which features tax breaks for military families (and for the estates of astronauts who die on space shuttle missions). The proposal sets up a likely fight with the Senate, which approved a more modest tax cut package last week.

For several days, Republicans have been trying to quell protests over the fact that the tax cut enacted last month excluded 6.5 million poor families from receiving a credit of as much as $1,000 per child. The Senate reacted swiftly, passing a $10 billion bill last week that would give the expanded child credit (now $600) to families making from $10,500 to $26,625 a year.

House Republicans rejected that approach yesterday, saying they wanted a broader bill that would extend the child credit and other tax breaks through 2010.

"We're not in the business of politics, but rather in policy," said Ways and Means Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.), noting that the expanded child tax credit phases out in 2005 under the existing law. "If these people need help between now and the election [of 2004], they need it for the rest of the decade."

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) told reporters yesterday that passing a bill dealing only with the child credit "ain't going to happen," because GOP leaders prefer a broader package that "provides tax relief, creates jobs and [helps] the economy grow."

Hanged Man Cleared of Murder, 53 Years Too Late
Tue June 10, 2003 11:09 AM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - A British man who was hanged for murder had his conviction quashed Tuesday, 53 years too late.
George Kelly was executed in 1950 for the murder of cinema manager Leonard Thomas during a robbery in Liverpool the previous year.

Kelly's family claimed vital material was not disclosed to his defense lawyers during the trial. This included a statement to police by a prosecution witness who said another man had confessed to the crime.

Tuesday, three of Britain's top judges ruled Kelly's conviction was "unsafe."

Kelly was 27 at the time of his hanging. Britain abolished the death penalty 15 years later in 1965.

Today's subject is the minimum wage, an area where conservatives' usual affinity for local control often yields to more prosaic interests. The latest example is Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who recently signed a law prohibiting counties and municipalities from adopting any minimum wage above the floor set by federal law. The federal minimum wage statute expressly states that it does not preempt states and localities from requiring higher minimum wages in their jurisdictions. Florida, which has no state minimum wage, has thus passed a state law giving preemptive effect to a federal law that Congress intended not to have such an effect. (The Brennan Center's Poverty Program is working with living wage campaigns in several localities--none in Florida).

As the attached article reflects, Gov. Bush's action also has a security angle: the law will invalidate a Miami-Dade County ordinance requiring employers at the Miami airport to pay workers twice the federal minimum. It is now feared that the wages of some 2,000 security personnel may be cut in half. Gov. Bush has promised to seek legislation to carve the security workers out of the scope of the preemption.

Prominent Democrats and a consumer advocacy organization yesterday called on the Justice Department to investigate $56,500 in campaign contributions by a Kansas-based energy company that had sought a "seat at the table" as key Republicans worked out details of the Bush administration's energy bill.

The money went to political groups associated with GOP leaders, including Rep. Joe Barton (Tex.), who inserted a provision to exempt the company, Westar Energy Inc., from a troublesome federal regulation, and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (Tex.) The provision was later withdrawn after Westar became the subject of a federal investigation of the company's practices. In e-mails, company officials had written of a plan "for participation" in the legislation and had said that Barton and other GOP lawmakers had requested the contributions.

May 17, 2002

Memo: Suggested Campaign Contributions

Attached are three sheets of information regarding campaign contributions. The estimated needs (first page) summarizes the total budget for our Washington efforts regarding the Federal Energy Bill and its impact on our financial restructuring plan. It also reflects the individual budget based on the suggested participation provided in an earlier memo. If you have any questions about this legislation and what our needs are please feel free to contact me.

The second page is a budget allocation according to current needs as recommended by our Washington Lobbyist.

The final page is specific contributions suggested on the basis of the budget to specific campaigns. If you have any questions about these allocations, please call X 8411. On the current needs, time is of the essence. Please forward your personal checks as soon as possible to my attention (TGO 2)

Thank you
Doug Lawrence (signed)

Memo Page I
Current need for:

Rep John Shimkus (R IL)
Rep Sam Graves (R-MO)
Rep Anne Northup (R-KY)
Rep Shelly Moore Capito (R-WV)
Tom Young for Congress (protégé of Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL)
Tom Delay (R-TX)

Current needs $11,500.00
Corporate Soft Money $25,000.00

Doug Wittig $300.00 $3,450.00
Doug Lake $200.00 $2,300.00
Doug Sterbenz $100.00 $1,150.00
Paul Geist $85.00 $977.50
Dick Dixon $60.00 $690.00
Joe Hunt $45.00 $517.50
Doug Lawrence $30.00 $345.00
Lee Wages $30.00 $345.00
Bruce Akin $30.00 $345.00
Larry Irick $30.00 $345.00
Peggy Loyd $30.00 $345.00
Caroline Williams $30.00 $345.00
Kelly Harrison $30.00 $345.00

Memo Page II
Recommended Allocations of First Round

David Wittig
$2,500.00 Tom Delay Congressional Committee
$1,000.00 Tom Young for Congress

Doug Lake:
$2,300.00 Tom Young for Congress

Doug Sterbenz
$1,200.00 Tom Young for Congress

Paul Geist
$400 Northup for Congress
$350.00 Shelly Moore Capito for Congress
$250.00 Tom Young for Congress

Dick Dixon
$650.00 Shelly Moore Capito for Congress

Jo Hunt
$400.00 Volunteers for Shimkus
$100.00 Graves for Congress

Doug Lawrence
$300.00 Graves for Congress
$50.00 Tom Young for Congress

Lee Wages
$300.00 Graves for Congress
$50 Tom Young for Congress

Bruce Akin
$350.00 Graves for Congress
$50.00 Tom Young for Congress

Larry Irick
$300.00 Northup for Congress
$50.00 Tom Young for Congress

Peggy Loyd
$350.00 Northup for Congress
$50.00 Tom Young for Congress

Caroline Williams
$300.00 Volunteers for Shimkus

Kelly Harrison
$300.00 Volunteers for Shimkus

Memo Page III
Total Estimated needs Federal Energy legislation and our efforts to include grandfather clause for financial restructuring plan

Total Budget $31,5000.00
Soft Money (Corporate) $25,000.00

David Wittig $300.00 $9,450.00
Doug Lake $200.00 $6,300.00
Doug Sterbenz $100.00 $3,150.00
Paul Geist $85.00 $2677.50.00
Dick Dixon $60.00 $1,890.00
Jo Hunt $45.00 $1,417.50
Doug Lawrence $30.00 $945.00
Lee Wages $30.00 $945.00
Bruce Akin $30.00 $945.00
Larry Irick $30.00 $945.00
Peggy Loyd $30.00 $945.00
Caroline Williams $30.00 $945.00
Kelly Harrison $30.00 $945.00

Subsequent E-Mail I
Doug Lawrence to Douglas Lake

5/20/2002 101:12 AM

Subject: Campaign Contributions

I had to rework the list for campaign contributions because some special limits an amounts of checks in certain circumstances. Your total participation will be the same as outlined in the memo. The checks will need to be made out to different people in order to arrange the money in the appropriate amounts:

Here are you suggested contributions:

$1000 Volunteers for Shimkus
$300 Tom Delay Congressional Committee
$1000 Tom Young for Congress

I apologize for the change. I appreciate your cooperation in moving quickly on this. Several events are underway already, and in the case of Tom Young, his primary election is next month.

Thanks.
Lawrence

Subsequent E-Mail II
Douglas Lake to Doug Lawrence

5/20/2002 11:36 AM

Re: Campaign Contributions

who is Shimkus, who is Young. Delay is from TX what is our connection? Happy to give but earlier wittig memo had me giving I think $3-400 per candidate. I am confused.

Subsequent E-Mail III
Doug Lawrence to Douglas Lake

5/20/2002 11:54 AM

Subject: Re: Campaign Contributions

You probably didn't get a copy of the memo sent internal mail on Friday about the current legislative issue in Washington. David had outlined a donation schedule for all the officers. For you it was $200 per thousand dollars in contribution needs. The memo included everyone's targets for the total package in immediate needs.

Right now, we are working on getting our grandfather provision on PUHCA repeal into the senate version of the energy bill. It requires working with the Conference committee to achieve. We have a plan for participation to get a seat at the table, which has been approved by David the total of the package will be $31,500 in hard money (individual), and $25,000 in soft money (corporate). Right now, we have $11,500 in immediate needs for a group of candidates associated with Tom Delay, Billy Tauzin, Joe Barton and Senator Richard Shelby.

Delay is the House Majority Leader. His agreement is necessary before the House Confrees can push the language we have in place in the House bill. Shimkus is a close associate of Billy Tauzin and Joe Barton, who are key House Confrees on our legislation. They have made this request in lieu of contributions to their own campaigns. Tom Young is Senator Shelby's Chief of staff who is running for the House in Alabama. Shelby is a member of the Senate Energy Committee and the Banking Committee ... and is the lead republican on all Senate PUHCA related matters. He is our anchor on the Senate side. He's made a substantial request of us for supporting Young's campaign.

These seem disconnected, but ultimately the plan is directed at getting a strong position at the table on both the Senate and House Side. Instead of having everyone write checks to every candidate, I have proposed dividing it up in a way to reduce the number of checks being written. (There are six people who need contributions in the next several days) The break out was presented to David last week.

Hope this answers you questions.

By the way, Governor Graves signed SB 545 (trees and security) on Friday

Oftentimes I have wondered how conservatives can persist in the belief that tax cuts will cure all economic ailments in the face of mountains of empirical evidence. In particular, there's always the embarrassing matter of the '93 Clinton budget which raised taxes and helped turned the economy around despite dire predictions of depression from the GOP. At last, NRO tries to come to grips with this awkward fact: "We have had four presidents in the past four decades of American history who signed major tax cuts: Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, and Bush. Although these men also raised some taxes, they stand out in history for their large tax cuts."

Turns out that Clinton counts as a historical example of a big time tax cutter because he passed NAFTA which lowered tariffs. Well, I'm glad they've become Clinton fans over at NRO, but I think it's worth mentioning that there's a significant difference between lowering trade barriers (while raising some taxes on the wealthy) and endless cuts in income taxes at the top brackets.

The French intervention on behalf of the UN in Congo will be short-lived and localised and will have a negligible impact on tribal conflict, according to a French military briefing paper obtained by the Guardian.

The document confirms military analysts' pessimism about the likely success of the mission, which began on Friday, to rein in the latest outburst of violence in the civil war which has killed an estimated 4.7 million people in four years.

[edit]

A European military planner who was issued a copy of the French document said: "This is the most cynical military briefing I've read in my entire life. Everybody is just laughing at it."

François Grignon of the International Crisis Group writes in a forthcoming report on Congo: "This intervention is, on the face of it, totally insufficient to meet the needs of Ituri's pacification."

In an effort to mitigate concerns about Pryor's views on civil rights, Pryor and some of his proponents have pointed to Pryor's support several years ago for repealing the provision of Alabama's Constitution prohibiting interracial marriage. That provision, however, has been null, void, and unenforceable since 1967, when the Supreme Court declared that state bans on interracial marriage violated the U.S. Constitution. In 2000, Alabama was the only state in the country with such a provision remaining on its books. Pryor’s support for removing this unenforceable, repugnant vestige of Alabama's discriminatory past, while commendable, hardly negates the serious concerns posed by such matters as his support for weakening the Voting Rights Act, one of the most important civil rights protections in our country’s history.

(cut, pasted and paraphrased)

Pryor’s extreme views about church-state separation are particularly evident in his steadfast support — inside the courtroom and out — for the unconstitutional practices of Alabama Judge (now Chief Justice) Roy Moore. Moore is most famous for his efforts to use his judicial office to display the Ten Commandments in his courtroom when he was a trial judge and now in the rotunda of the state’s Judicial Building. When he was a trial court judge, Moore also “routinely invited Christian clergy to offer prayer at [the opening of jury] sessions; those prayers have routinely been Christian prayers.”

A lawsuit was filed against Moore in federal court by several local taxpayers and residents, challenging both his sponsorship of sectarian prayers and his display of the Ten Commandments as violative of the Establishment Clause. That suit was ultimately dismissed on the ground that the plaintiffs lacked standing.

While that suit was pending, however, Pryor, then the Deputy Attorney General, filed a lawsuit in the name of Alabama in state court asking the court to declare that Moore’s practices, including the prayer practice, were constitutional, a lawsuit that the state was under no obligation to file. The state court rejected Pryor’s arguments, and held that a judge’s practice of officially sponsoring sectarian prayers before jury assemblies was unconstitutional.

Pryor appealed. The brief that he filed with the Alabama Supreme Court urging the court to overturn the trial court’s ruling not only illuminates the sectarian nature of Judge Moore’s prayer practice that Pryor voluntarily defended, but is another example of Pryor’s trying to push the law in an extreme direction. As Pryor’s own brief recounts, Judge Moore would typically open jury assemblies by stating that “we’re going to begin as we always do, with prayer;” he would then introduce the clergy member whom “I have with us today,” give the name of that person’s church, and ask the jurors to “please stand;” the prayer followed.

Pryor’s brief itself admits that “[t]o Judge Moore’s knowledge, each of the clergy who had delivered a prayer in his presence was a Christian. Some of the prayers had ended in Jesus’ or Christ’s name. . . . Moore did not recall having invited any Jewish, Muslim, or Jehovah’s Witness clergy, but explained, ‘[T]hese jurors are summoned from Etowah County are ninety-five percent Christians or persons who believe in God if they are not Christians.’”

The Alabama Supreme Court did not rule on the merits of the case but instead dismissed the case as lacking any controversy because Pryor had named Judge Moore as a defendant, and Pryor and Moore were plainly in agreement as to the constitutionality of Moore’s practices. The court was extremely critical that the case had been brought: “We are convinced . . . that ‘the Office of the Attorney General [has] . . . sought to ‘use’ this Court in order to get an advisory ruling.’ . . . We will not, however, allow the judiciary of this state to become a political foil, or a sounding board for topics of contemporary interest.”

Even after being so castigated, and even though the result of the court’s dismissal of the case was to allow Moore to continue his practices, Pryor was so bent on having a court declare them constitutional that he asked the state Supreme Court to rehear the case and uphold Moore’s practices. The court refused.

Think Republicans are the small government party? Federal domestic spending rose eight percent from 2001 to 2002, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, at a time when the GOP controlled the White House and the U.S. House.
(snip)
"People think we're increasing spending just for defense," said Brian Riedl, federal budget analyst for the Heritage Foundation. "But Congress has also gone on a spending spree in areas such as education, health research, [$190 billion in] farm subsidies, unemployment benefits, highways and small low priority programs.
(snip)
"The Republican reputation for being for small government is wholly undeserved," said Riedl. "Republicans are politicians first, and they're trying to spend money to get themselves re-elected.

"The current crop of Republicans is surprising in their lack of principles," Riedl surmised. "They seem willing to spend on any special interest they need to win re-election next year."

Guantanamo officials are working on plans to provide a courtroom, a prison and an execution chamber if the order comes to try terror suspects at the base in Cuba, the mission commander said.

To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be "a high crime" under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony "to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose."

It's important to recall that when Richard Nixon resigned, he was about to be impeached by the House of Representatives for misusing the CIA and FBI. After Watergate, all presidents are on notice that manipulating or misusing any agency of the executive branch improperly is a serious abuse of presidential power.

Nixon claimed that his misuses of the federal agencies for his political purposes were in the interest of national security. The same kind of thinking might lead a President to manipulate and misuse national security agencies or their intelligence to create a phony reason to lead the nation into a politically desirable war. Let us hope that is not the case.

Israel began dismantling settler outposts in the West Bank Monday, taking initial steps on the ground toward implementing a U.S.-backed "road map" to peace.

But while the move set Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on a confrontation path with Jewish settlers he had long championed, the army's demolition of empty caravans on lonely hilltops in the first hours of the operation drew Palestinian derision.

"This is a theatrical and insignificant step," said Nabil Abu Rdainah, a senior aide to Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.
The road map, affirmed at a June 4 summit in Aqaba, Jordan attended by Sharon, Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and President Bush, mandates the removal of settler outposts set up since the Israeli leader took office in 2001.

Israel's Peace Now group put their number at about 60. None of the outposts was authorized by the Israeli government and settler leaders said all of the 15 slated for removal on a list presented to them by the Defense Ministry were uninhabited.

Well, we do notice. We do care. And it does matter.

Some people might not have agreed with my decision to leave the GOP two years ago, but at least I did it for the reasons I said I did. I was honest about what brought me to that decision.

What makes the actions of the Bush administration so troublesome is the lack of honesty.

It amounts, in the end, to a pattern of deception and distortion; ultimately that does not respect the wisdom of the American people.

Thank you.

Amid all the political rhetoric about saving taxpayers money, we seem to have forgotten how governments actually function. President Bush says federal tax cuts now totaling more than $1.5 trillion will put money back in the bank accounts of average Americans, but to understand what governors are going through is to understand why that isn't really true. For a lot of Americans, the president's tax cut won't end up being a tax cut at all; it's really just a tax shift.

Here's how it works. The tax cut will choke off revenue to the federal government, which is precisely what conservatives want it to do. Their thinking is that the less money Washington has, the less it will waste. This means Congress can't increase financing for the mandates it's been heaping onto the states for 40 years. For instance, Congress shares with states the cost of Medicaid, the health care program for the poor, which gobbles up huge chunks of state budgets. Since Washington hasn't seen fit to provide elderly patients with a prescription drug plan, that, too, falls to the states. So does the overwhelming share of special education for disabled children, another federal program. And let's not forget more recent mandates -- Bush's ''No Child Left Behind'' law and increased spending on homeland security -- that the feds have passed on to governors with minimal assistance.

the report's author, Melissa A. Thomas, found that the bank had for years focused on promoting foreign investment in these industries without considering how the countries' governments were managed and what they were likely to do with the money. As a result, she said, in most of the nations studied — Chile, Ecuador, Ghana, Kazakhstan, Papua New Guinea and Tanzania — the bank's work had not achieved its development goals.

Even when the bank made loans conditional on a country's promise to make public how it had spent its revenues, the projects did not produce economic benefits. Ms. Thomas, a political economist at the University of Maryland, concluded that the bank should stop financing these so-called extractive industries in countries "whose governments lack the capacity to benefit from or manage such investment."

The textbook definition of insanity is performing the same task over and over again and expecting a different result. Sanctions rarely achieve their stated goals (just ask Fidel Castro, still large and in charge after more than 40 years of sanctions against Cuba). What's worse, they have a nasty tendency to backfire. Richard Haass, who served in George H.W. Bush's administration and is director of the policy-planning staff at the State Department (he will become president of the Council on Foreign Relations in July), has argued that sanctions might have hastened Pakistan's development of nuclear weapons, because the regime was cut off from acquiring U.S. conventional weaponry. The 1996 Helms-Burton bill, which imposed "secondary" sanctions against other countries that invested in Cuba, unleashed a diplomatic backlash as European countries and Canada fiercely protested U.S. efforts to dictate where they do business.

Yet, sanctions remain a favorite tool of U.S. foreign policy. Barry Carter, of the Georgetown University Law Center, noted a net increase of 33 new unilateral sanctions between 1997 and 2001. In 1998 alone, according to a United Nations report, 75 countries (more than 50 percent of the world's population) were subject to some form of coercive, unilateral U.S. sanctions.

One reason for the enduring popularity of sanctions is that, on occasion, they hit their intended target. For every dozen outright failures there are famous success stories, such as ending apartheid in South Africa. So the debate over the effectiveness of sanctions is often reminiscent of the old folktale about "stone soup": Three soldiers begging for food convince a gullible village that they have a magic soup stone. They put the stone in a pot of boiling water and then suggest that the villagers add a few carrots, a dash of salt, some leftover meat, a head of cabbage -- and miraculously, the soup stone creates a bountiful feast.

Sanctions are the soup stone of U.S. foreign policy. They are deemed to have succeeded or failed without taking into account the mélange of other ingredients that constitute international statecraft. Were the sanctions accompanied by clear policy objectives? Were they combined with diplomatic inducements or a credible threat of military force to ensure compliance? Those who declare that sanctions compelling Iraq to disarm were an abysmal failure conveniently ignore that those sanctions deprived Saddam Hussein of hundreds of billions of dollars that could have been used to build a vast arsenal for mass destruction. And those who claim that sanctions alone toppled the apartheid regime often ignore the millions of dollars in economic assistance that bolstered black civil society in South Africa.

Daryl G. Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that promotes arms control, says senior Bush administration officials knew claims about Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were exaggerated.

"The real controversy now is the difference between the administration's dire rhetoric and dire warnings about Iraq's WMD capability and its alleged possession of such weapons, and what we know so far, which is that there is no physical evidence of actual chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons," Kimball says. "My personal view is that there were those in the administration who wanted to have this war no matter what. They recognized that the charge of Iraqi non-compliance with the U.N. resolutions barring weapons of mass destruction was the strongest possible charge against Iraq and the strongest possible justification for war." Kimball says, "What is disturbing is that high-ranking administration officials certainly knew" that claims about Iraq's weapons arsenal "were based on sketchy evidence."

In numerous speeches and appearances, Hatch has condemned the Democrats' use of the filibuster, calling it a "weapon of mass obstruction." Yet in his autobiographical book Square Peg, Hatch praised the filibuster while recounting many of his own shrewd political victories on Capitol Hill.

"Although I have been both a beneficiary and a victim of filibusters, I hope the procedure remains intact," Hatch writes in his book. "It is, in many ways, the fundamental parliamentary power available to the minority in Congress. Its presence has guaranteed that American law does not reflect the will of only one side."

Hatch spends the next 10 pages recounting his orchestration of a 1978 filibuster that killed pro-labor union legislation favored by a majority of members of the Senate, which was stacked at the time with 61 Democrats, 38 Republicans and one independent. Today, the Senate comprises 51 Republicans, 48 Democrats and one independent.