House Democrats are again demonizing House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) -- and this time they say it's paying dividends.

Last month, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent out a fundraising appeal -- some might call it a screed -- to potential donors, accusing DeLay of "gross abuses of power, ugly partisan politics, handouts to Big Money special interests in return for millions of dollars in campaign contributions and the imposition of a right-wing political agenda upon America."

"It will take tremendous financial resources for Democrats to remove DeLay from power," wrote James J. Bonham, DCCC executive director. "But I know we can do it -- if you help. . . ." Committee spokesman Greg Speed said the missive netted $250,000, bringing the committee's August take to $1 million, a non-election year record. "What it shows is outrage over the Karl Rove-Tom DeLay power grab in Texas is energizing Democrats," he said.

National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Carl Forti, who noted that DeLay has raised millions for the NRCC, said of the Democrats and their target: "They're still struggling to find an issue they can run on, and believe me, Tom DeLay is not it."

Nearing the second anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, seven in 10 Americans continue to believe that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had a role in the attacks, even though the Bush administration and congressional investigators say they have no evidence of this.

Sixty-nine percent of Americans said they thought it at least likely that Hussein was involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, according to the latest Washington Post poll. That impression, which exists despite the fact that the hijackers were mostly Saudi nationals acting for al Qaeda, is broadly shared by Democrats, Republicans and independents.

Bush's defenders say the administration's rhetoric was not responsible for the public perception of Hussein's involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. While Hussein and al Qaeda come from different strains of Islam and Hussein's secularism is incompatible with al Qaeda fundamentalism, Americans instinctively lump both foes together as Middle Eastern enemies. "The intellectual argument is there is a war in Iraq and a war on terrorism and you have to separate them, but the public doesn't do that," said Matthew Dowd, a Bush campaign strategist. "They see Middle Eastern terrorism, bad people in the Middle East, all as one big problem."

"You can say Bush should be faulted for not correcting every single misapprehension, but that's something different than saying they set out deliberately to deceive," said Duke University political scientist Peter D. Feaver. "Since the facts are all over the place, Americans revert to a judgment: Hussein is a bad guy who would do stuff to us if he could."

You know, this country has faced a lot of challenges in the past few years. And I believe those challenges have brought out the best in America. On September the 11th, 2001, a date I will not forget so long as I'm on this Earth, America's enemies declared war on this country. That's what happened on that day. It was a declaration of war by people who hate what America stands for. And war is what they got.

We are dismantling the al Qaeda network, leader by leader. We are finding these killers, one by one, and they will be brought to justice. We also acted in decisive ways to uphold doctrine. One of the doctrine said, if you harbor a terrorist, you're just as guilty as the terrorist. And so in Afghanistan, we recognized that there was a cruel and oppressive regime that had turned a nation into training camps. And so we removed that regime. And the people of Afghanistan are free.

In Iraq, a dictator was arming to threaten the peace. And he defied the demands of the world. He didn't defy just the demands of the United States, he defied the demands of the United Nations Security Council -- not once, but many times. And so, for peace and for the security of the free world, we removed that regime. And the Iraqi people are now free.

Eugene, from Oregon writes:
Given that Estrada's withdrawal was due solely to the filibuster, I am wondering if the White House be open to any sort of compromise solution to this problem. Perhaps the administration and the Senate could agree to officially institute President Bush's earlier proposal whereby he agrees to nominate candidates within 180 days of receiving notification of a vacancy and the Senate guarantees that nominees will receive a Judiciary Committee hearing within 90 days and a full Senate vote within 90 days of that. In return for such a guarantee for every nominee, perhaps the standard for confirmation could be raised to 60 votes, thereby ensuring true bipartisan support for all confirmed nominees as well as eliminating the use of the filibuster. Would the White House be willing to consider of compromise of this sort?

Judge Gonzales
The most important point is that all nominees receive an up or down vote regardless of who is in the White House or which party controls the Senate. This is why the President proposed a plan last October that would ensure timely votes for all nominees. The changes that would be required to effectively deal with filibusters would have to be instituted by the Senate. The White House remains willing to work with the Senate so that the President's nominees receive an up or down vote in a timely fashion.

Given that Estrada's withdrawal was due solely to the filibuster, I am wondering if the White House be open to any sort of compromise solution to this problem.

Perhaps the administration and the Senate could agree to officially institute President Bush's earlier proposal whereby he agrees to nominate candidates within 180 days of receiving notification of a vacancy and the Senate guarantees that nominees will receive a Judiciary Committee hearing within 90 days and a full Senate vote within 90 days of that.

In return for such a guarantee for every nominee, perhaps the standard for confirmation could be raised to 60 votes, thereby ensuring true bipartisan support for all confirmed nominees as well as eliminating the use of the filibuster.

Would the White House be willing to consider of compromise of this sort?

In the view of this old Senate hand, it's time for everyone to take a deep breath, calm down and wait for this storm [over how gays and lesbians fit into American life] to head out to sea. But no such luck: Several Senate members want to create more anguish by pushing a proposal to amend the Constitution. It would set a federal definition of marriage as being a union between a man and a woman.

Like most Americans, and most Republicans, I think it's important to do all we can to defend and strengthen the institution of marriage. And I also believe it is critically important to defend the integrity of the Constitution. But a federal amendment to define marriage would do nothing to strengthen families -- just the opposite. And it would unnecessarily undermine one of the core principles I have always believed the GOP stood for: federalism.
...
As our country has gained honest and steady knowledge about homosexuality, we have learned that it is not a mental illness or a disease or a threat to our families. The real threats to family values are divorce, out-of-wedlock births and infidelity. We all know someone who is gay, and like all of us, gay men and women need to have their relationships recognized in some way. How are gay men and women to be expected to build stable, loving relationships as all of us try to do, when American society refuses to recognize the relationships?
...
To reach the best understanding, the debate over gay men and women in America should focus not on what drives us apart but on how to make all of our children -- straight or gay -- feel welcome in this land, their own American home.

" Two years ago we were all united against the common threat of terrorism. Now, less than two years later I am sitting here and being told my relationship was a threat to our country."

"As a conservative, I believe [the Federal Marriage Amendment] is unnecessary, it is unwise, it is contrary to the structure of our federal government, it is anti-democratic ... and it is a form of overkill."

"What are we doing here?" Adding that there are more important issues to discuss than a constitutional amendment "that responds to a nonexistent problem."

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) today condemned Senate Democrats' dishonest and vicious campaign against federal appellate court nominee Miguel Estrada, who withdrew his name from consideration for the bench this morning.

"The Democrat's character assassination of Miguel Estrada was a political hate crime," DeLay said. "We have witnessed the Democrats at their ugliest."

This is the story of DC 9/11. Screenwriter and co-executive producer Lionel Chetwynd had access to top officials and staffers, including Bush, Fleischer, Card, Rove, and Donald Rumsfeld—all of whom are played by look-alike actors in the movie (as are Cheney, Rice, John Ashcroft, Karen Hughes, Colin Powell, George Tenet, and Paul Wolfowitz). The script was subsequently vetted by right-wing pundits Fred Barnes, Charles Krauthammer, and Morton Kondracke. Chetwynd, whose vita includes such politically charged movies and telefilms as The Hanoi Hilton, The Heroes of Desert Storm, The Siege at Ruby Ridge, Kissinger and Nixon, and Varian’s War, is a prominent Hollywood conservative—a veteran of the 1980 Reagan campaign who, after Bill Clinton’s election 12 years later, was recruited by right-wing pop culture ideologue David Horowitz to set up the Wednesday Morning Club ("a platform in the entertainment community where a Henry Hyde can come and get a warm welcome and respectful hearing," as Chetwynd later told The Nation).

Chetwynd bonded with Dubya in March 2001 when, at Rove’s suggestion, Varian’s War was screened at the White House; Chetwynd was subsequently involved in various post-9-11 Hollywood-Washington conclaves and currently serves Bush as part of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. Shot largely in Toronto, DC 9/11 was eligible for Canadian film subsidies, but it is, in nearly every other sense, an official production.

The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was justified in part because Saddam Hussein retained scientists capable of building nuclear weapons, Washington's top arms control official said Thursday.

In an interview with The Associated Press, John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control, said that whether Saddam's regime actually possessed weapons of mass destruction "isn't really the issue."

That's right. I mean it's time to bring back the Hollywood blacklist.

In fact, I'd very much like to start compiling the blacklist right now

I don't think people should go to jail for their anti-American views. I just think they should never work in the entertainment industry again.

The only real victory for the Democrats on Owen or Estrada would be for Bush to withdraw them, which isn’t going to happen.

Embattled Estrada Withdraws as Nominee for Federal Bench

Miguel Estrada, President Bush's embattled nominee for a federal appeals court judgeship, has withdrawn his name from consideration, ending a bitter battle with Senate Democrats who blocked his nomination, administration officials said Thursday.

[W]hen you add this to the cost of the war itself plus the postwar costs already incurred, it looks to me like the 12-month cost of Gulf War II is going to net out to about $100 billion. That's 10% of the total amount raised via personal income taxes each year.

I have to wonder how broad support for the war would have been if every household had been asked to pay a 10% income tax surcharge to cover the cost?

Protesters plan to return to the nation's capital next month to oppose the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq, demonstration organizers said Wednesday.

The International ANSWER coalition, whose name stands for Act Now to Stop War and Racism, brought thousands of anti-war protesters to Washington in January, March and April.

Organizers predict the Oct. 25 march from the Justice Department to the White House and the Pentagon will attract tens of thousands of people. The group is seeking a protest permit for 10,000 people, the National Park Service said.

On Saturday October 25, hundreds of thousands of people will be back in the streets in Washington DC and in capital cities of other countries to demand "End the occupation of Iraq." The shout "Bring the Troops Home Now!" will echo throughout Washington that day. No politician or the mass media will be able to deny that the anti-war sentiment in this country is not only "not dead" but is instead growing with each passing day. Coming as it does on the second anniversary of the passage so-called Patriot Act, the demonstration will be part of the massive fight-back campaign growing throughout the country against the administration's assault on civil rights and civil liberties.

[edit]

The occupation of Iraq must end. While we demand that the obscene expenditure of $6 billion each month be used instead for jobs, education, housing and health care, we are clear that our opposition to the occupation is not simply that working people in the U.S. have to bear the financial burden. The occupation is a violation of the Iraqi people's fundamental right to self-determination by the U.S. government which pursues Empire in the interests of the U.S.-based corporate and banking elites. This was never a war to defend the United States from the supposed "grave and imminent danger" posed by Iraq. That claim was a bold-faced lie. Killing tens of thousands of Iraqis and sacrificing a growing number of U.S. soldiers - who are being killed or maimed in the interests of Halliburton, Bechtel, Exxon/Mobil, Citibank and Chase - is what reveals the criminal character of the whole endeavor.

This is a common mistake among people who think the ability to order from a Taco Bell menu constitutes fluency in Spanish.

[edit]

A better translation might be:

Together [in la raza] we can acheive everything
Apart we achieve nothing

or

Through Us Everything
Apart from Us Nothing

Between June 10, when a Canadian court legalized gay marriage, and Aug. 25, only 590 gay and lesbian couples had applied for gay marriage licenses in Toronto. And, reports the [New York] Times, more than a hundred of those were Americans who crossed the border. Toronto, by the way, is the home of Canada's largest homosexual population - I'm talking numerically, I don't mean that only gay dudes who shop at "Big and Tall" stores live in Toronto.

The reason for this surprising reluctance on the part of gay men to marry is that, well, many gay men don't want to get married.

SUGAR LAND, Texas., Sept. 2 /U.S. Newswire/ -- House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Sugarland) today condemned the comments of presidential candidate and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, who said, "John Ashcroft is not a patriot," in New Hampshire yesterday.

"Howard Dean is a cruel and extremist demagogue," DeLay said.

"John Ashcroft loves America more than Howard Dean could ever know. John Ashcroft has sacrificed for his country, and devoted his life to serving it. He is as kind, generous, and patriotic a man as I've ever met. And Howard Dean is as ignorant on John Ashcroft as he is on national security."

"Howard Dean's comments are an embarrassment to the democratic process and the Democrat Party. If this cruel, loudmouth extremist is the cream of the Democrat crop, next Novembers going to make the 1984 election look like a squeaker."

there was an outcry when the director of the United States Agency for International Development said that AIDS drugs "wouldn't work" in Africa because many Africans don't use clocks and "don't know what Western time is."

Indeed, the war is going so well that now liberals have to create absurd straw-man arguments no one ever uttered in order to accuse the Bush administration of horrible miscalculations

[edit]

Liberals are hopping mad about the war with Iraq. Showing the nuance and complexity of thought liberals pride themselves on, they are excitedly restating all the arguments they made before the war – arguments which were soundly rejected by the American people, the U.S. Congress and the Bush administration.

Before the war, they said Saddam Hussein – their favorite world leader behind Jacques Chirac – was not a threat to America's interests in the region, was not developing weapons of mass destruction, and did not harbor terrorists. Now that we've taken the country and are uncovering mass graves, canisters of poison gases, victims of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and colonies of terrorists, liberals are claiming the war created it all.

After seeing more than 130 prisoners freed by DNA testing in the last 15 years, prosecutors in Florida and across the country have mounted a vigorous challenge to similar new cases.

Prosecutors acknowledge that DNA testing is reliable, but they have grown increasingly skeptical of its power to prove innocence in cases where there was other evidence of guilt. Defense lawyers say these prosecutors, who often relied on the same biological evidence to convict the defendants before DNA testing was available, are more committed to winning than to justice.

The fight has become particularly heated in Florida, where prisoners will soon be barred from seeking DNA testing for old cases under a 2001 law that set an Oct. 1 deadline for such requests.

In Florida, Mr. Dedge had to sue to have the evidence in his case retested, over the objections of prosecutors who said that the state's interest in finality and the victim's feelings should preclude it.

New Jersey's two U.S. senators plan to oppose President Bush's nomination of Peter G. Sheridan as the next federal judge in Camden, saying the appointment should go to a South Jersey resident.

Their opposition to Sheridan, a Mercer County resident and a member of former Gov. Tom Kean's staff, will delay and may end his chance of being confirmed by the Senate.

[edit]

David Wald, a spokesman for Sen. Jon Corzine, and Alex Formuzis, a spokesman for Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, said Thursday that the two Democrats believe the White House ignored requests to honor regional concerns by choosing Sheridan, who lives in Princeton Junction.

[edit]

... Formuzis said the senator does not question Sheridan's qualifications and holds "no ill will" toward him regarding the legal fight.

How distressing that it turns out to be Bush, leader of the world's greatest democracy, who is the true master of denial and deception, rather than Hussein, who proved to be a paper tiger. Bush is such a master at deceiving the American public that even now he is not threatened with the prospect of impeachment or any serious congressional investigation into the possibility that he led this nation into war with lies.

Sooner or later, the United States must admit that it has made a terrible mistake in Iraq, and it must move quickly to undo it. That means the United States must yield not only command of the occupation force, but participation in it. The United States must renounce any claim to power or even influence over Iraq, including Iraqi oil. The United States must accept the humiliation that would surely accompany its being replaced in Iraq by the very nations it denigrated in the build-up to the war.

As highlighted in the controversial 1994 book "The Bell Curve," studies have repeatedly found that people's genes -- and not their environment -- explain most of the differences in IQ among individuals. That has led a few scholars to advance the hotly disputed notion that minorities' lower scores are evidence of genetic inferiority.

Now a groundbreaking study of the interaction among genes, environment and IQ finds that the influence of genes on intelligence is dependent on class. Genes do explain the vast majority of IQ differences among children in wealthier families, the new work shows. But environmental factors -- not genetic deficits -- explain IQ differences among poor minorities.

The results suggest that early childhood assistance programs such as Head Start can help the poor and are worthy of public support. They also suggest that middle-class and wealthy parents need not feel guilty if they don't purchase the latest Lamaze mobile or other expensive gadgets that are pitched as being so important to their children's development.

"How many books are in the home and how good the teacher is may be questions to consider for a middle-class child, but those questions are much more important when we're talking about children raised in abject poverty," said lead researcher Eric Turkheimer, a psychologist at the University of Virginia.

The work, to be published in the November issue of the journal Psychological Science, is part of a new wave of research that embraces a more dynamic view of the relationship between genes and environment. Although older research treated nature and nurture as largely independent and additive factors, and saw people as the sum of their genetic endowments and environmental experiences, the emerging view allows that genes can influence the impact of experiences and experiences can influence the "expression," or activity levels, of genes.

Mr. Bush said his budget plan proposes a "reasonable" 4 percent growth rate, which he said is "little more than inflation."

He asserted that given the size of the expected surplus, his proposal leaves plenty of room for a large tax cut, while paying for increases in spending on education and for dealing with Social Security and Medicare.

"Education gets the biggest increase of any department in the federal government," the president said. But he insisted that "as we give more to our schools we're going to expect more in return."

"Social Security and Medicare will get every dollar they need to meet their commitments," Mr. Bush said. "And every dollar of Social Security and Medicare tax revenue will be reserved for Social Security and Medicare."

He pledged that his spending plans will not neglect the national debt, now totaling about $5.7 trillion.

"After paying the bills, my plan reduces the national debt, and fast," Mr. Bush said. "So fast, in fact, that economists worry that we're going to run out of debt to retire. That would be a good worry to have."

But telling the majority of voters that your tax policies are designed to shift more of the burden of paying for federal government onto them is not a very effective way of eliciting their support. So, instead, Bush pitched his tax cuts as the solution to whatever problems were most in the news at the time. During the election, he argued that tax cuts were a way to refund to voters part of a budget surplus that people like Alan Greenspan worried was growing too big. By early 2001, it became clear that those surpluses were never going to materialize. So the administration cooked up an entirely new rationale: The tax cut was needed as fiscal stimulus to pull the economy out of an impending recession. In other words, the tax cut that was tailor-made for a booming economy made equally good sense in a tanking one. When the economy eventually began to grow again but only at feeble levels, the administration insisted that things would have been worse without the tax cuts (another assertion impossible to prove or disprove). And when, because of that anemic growth, coupled with gains in productivity, the unemployment rate continued to rise, the administration had yet another excuse: A new round of tax cuts, they said, would generate jobs.