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Saturday, December 20, 2003


The Loophole Artist

Read this piece in the New York Times Magazine by Pulitzer Prize winner David Cay Johnston on how tax lawyers help the super-rich hide their money to avoid paying taxes.

And then order Johnston's soon-to-be-released book on the topic: '"Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - And Cheat Everybody Else."


posted by Eugene Oregon at 3:28 PM




Parliament of Whores

If you haven't read this LA Times investigative piece into how Sen. Ted Stevens managed to become a millionaire by investing in companies that directly benefited from legislation he helped draft, you should.

He wielded extraordinary power in Washington for more than three decades, eventually holding sway over nearly $800 billion a year in federal spending.

But outside the halls of the U.S. Senate, which is a world of personal wealth so rarified some call it "the Millionaires' Club," Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) had struggled financially.

Then, in 1997, he got serious about making money. And in almost no time, he too was a millionaire - thanks to investments with businessmen who received government contracts or other benefits with his help.

Now some are calling on Stevens to resign as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, to which he responded (more or less) "Like hell I will!"

Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska dismissed calls Friday from activist groups that he resign as chairman of the Appropriations Committee and disputed a newspaper report that said he used his powerful position to enrich himself and others.

If they think I am going to resign because of a story in a newspaper, they're crazy," he said at a news conference here.

Stevens, a Republican who has been in the Senate nearly 35 years, said he had done nothing illegal, immoral or unethical.

The Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday that the senator has grown wealthy from investments with people who benefited from legislation he helped write.

Stevens, 80, said he has been a senator so long that it would be hard to find any Alaska investment that people would not see as a conflict.

"I know this state and I believe in its future, and this is where I want to invest my money when I have it ," he said.

I can understand that you love Alaska and might want to invest your money there, but the key phrase is "when I have it." You didn't have it until you started investing in companies that benefited from your legislation. That is not simply a "wise investment strategy" - it's corruption.

posted by Eugene Oregon at 2:57 PM


Friday, December 19, 2003


Why Aren't Any of These States Red?



Congratulations to Alaska and Delaware! You've gotten as many new jobs as President Bush promised his "Jobs and Growth" [sic] tax cut package would create.

The rest of you laggards, try harder.

(From jobwatch.org)

posted by Arnold P. California at 3:37 PM




Lieberman Pile-On or Who Are You Calling "Divisive," Asshole?

From the Washington Post

Presidential hopeful Joe Lieberman warned Friday against replacing "one divisive leader with another divisive leader," a swipe at both President Bush and the front-runner for the Democratic Party's nomination, Howard Dean.

[edit]

Lieberman, a Connecticut senator struggling in the race to gain the 2004 nomination, on Friday added to his earlier criticism that Dean was taking Democrats backward by arguing that the former Vermont governor was a "divisive force" within the party.

"We're too divided," Lieberman said as he toured a technology plant in Delaware. "I don't want to replace one divisive leader with another divisive leader."


posted by Eugene Oregon at 3:26 PM




Dean Pile-on

Some Dems and old Clinton administration folks are hurt and offended by this remark that Dean made the other day.
"While Bill Clinton said that the era of big government is over, I think we have to enter a new era for the Democratic Party, not one where we join Republicans and aim simply to limit the damage they inflict on working families."

Um, why the brou-hah-ha? I think Dean is clearly saying that in addition to Clinton's declaration, he has his own to add which mirrors Clinton. If anything, Dean is paraphrasing Clinton and then updating what the Dems have been doing since Clinton left office. Yes, Dean is saying that Dems need to regrow their spine. Start acting like winners. It's not a criticism of Clinton. For pete's sake people, what would Dean possibly gain by criticizing Clinton? Absolutely nothing. Guess what, then logic dictates that he isn't.

Dems need to hurry up and find their collective power and work it, baby. If Dean gets the nomination I hope they're not just weakening him with their myopic, piss-poor attacks. So, dummies (yes, Lieberman, I mean you) stop taking cheap shots at Dean and distorting his record and words. Try going after what he actually says and means instead. If you can't come up with anything substantive, then shut the hell up.

posted by Zoe Kentucky at 3:19 PM




Even National Review Knows the Administration Lies

Tad DeHaven eviscerates Josh Bolton for his recent Wall Street Journal editorial ("We Can Cut the Deficit in Half") defending the administration's reckless federal spending

Over the past week, almost every major news outlet has carried front-page stories on the rising tide of conservative discontent. Many people who support the president's tax cuts and his conduct of the war can no longer stomach his expansion of big government via big spending. If Bolten's response to the critics in the Wall Street Journal represents the best case the administration can make for itself, the criticism is only going to spread and multiply.

Bolten begins by trotting out the same tiresome excuses we've been hearing for several years: The deficit was caused, first, by declining federal revenues resulting from a sluggish economy and, second, by the need to spend money to fight terrorism. These explanations are partly true. But the administration could have responded to these trends by cutting low-priority areas of the budget. Instead, Bush signed every spending bill that crossed his desk.

Bolten argues that the president hasn't vetoed a single spending bill because "He hasn't had to." Wrong. The president hasn't vetoed a single spending bill because he didn't want to - he just doesn't have the political will. Each spending bill that has come across his desk has represented an apparently irresistible vote-buying opportunity.

He then goes on to check Bolten's math and concludes that

[I]t would be nice if the White House were as good at controlling spending as it is at spin.


posted by Eugene Oregon at 1:59 PM




Robert Kagan's Skewed Analysis on Iraq

In the world of politics, what frequently passes an analysis usually has a thinly veiled bias that flows from the writer's philosophical predisposition. While Robert Kagan's op-ed in today's Washington Post makes some valid points about the public’s overall support for the Iraq war, he offers selective polling data that supports his pro-war position and neglects to mention other polls. (Kagan and Bill Kristol co-edited "Present Dangers," a book that featured such virulent hawks as Bill Bennett and Paul Wolfowitz promoting the use of U.S. military power to impose their vision of a new global "order.")

I basically agree with Kagan that Americans generally support the war effort, but I think the evidence strongly suggests that public support for this military venture is quite fragile and likely to shift with future events. Among the polling data that Kagan decided wasn't worth passing on are these findings:
*Right after Saddam Hussein's capture, the Pew Research Center asked Americans whether they felt President Bush "has explained clearly his plans for bringing the situation in Iraq to a successful conclusion ..." The answer? A clear majority (59%) said Bush had not clearly explained his plans to accomplish this goal.

*The Pew poll went one step farther and played devil's advocate—after all, just because Bush has yet to explain these plans doesn't necessarily mean that no such plan exists, right? Yet even when asked a question of this nature, the public doesn't seem terribly confident of this White House. Asked whether they thought President Bush "has a clear plan for bringing the situation in Iraq to a successful conclusion," 45% of Americans said no clear plan exists and 44% said such a plan did exist. These are not numbers that make it easy for Karl Rove to get a goodnight's sleep.
In other words, the "glass" is neither half empty nor half full; as is so often the case, it's somewhere in between.



posted by Frederick Maryland at 1:35 PM




Just Because It Is Funny

I just got this short e-mail message from The Budds

Rumor is that Bush and Saddam Hussein will share the title of Time's Man of the Year: Saddam for believing Bush was not stupid enough to invade Iraq, and Bush for meeting that challenge.


posted by Eugene Oregon at 12:49 PM




Gay Man Bites Dog

No, this doesn't have anything to do with Rick Santorum. You know all those lawsuits where schools impose Christianity on students and the God-haters force them to stop? And how it proves that the courts are anti-Christian? Well, if you leave the Bible Belt and go to the bastions of liberalism, the shoe can end up on the other foot; the Roy Moore crowd might want to remember that the next time they start bashing federal judges (and I have to say as one of the Chosen People that I love the fact that this judge has a Jewish name).
A federal court judge ruled Friday that the Ann Arbor Public Schools violated a former Pioneer High School student's Constitutional right to free speech and equal protection when the student was not allowed to express her religious views on homosexuality in March 2002.

U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen also ruled that school officials violated the Constitutional establishment clause when they allowed a panel of clergy to present only one religious viewpoint on homosexuality.

In 2002, a panel on homosexuality and religion included: two Episcopalian ministers, a Presbyterian minister, a Presbyterian deacon, a rabbi and a pastor of the United Church of Christ.

All the religious officials expressed positive views of homosexuality. Hansen wanted to be a part of the panel to express an opposing view, but she was denied. In her July 2002 lawsuit, she claimed she was prevented by school officials from expressing her view that homosexuality is immoral and sinful.

Hansen was allowed to give a two-minute speech at a separate assembly. She claimed in the lawsuit that her written speech was censored to exclude a passage which said in part, that she could not "accept religious and sexual ideas or actions that are wrong."

Rosen wrote that the case "presents the ironic and unfortunate paradox of a public high school celebrating 'diversity' by refusing to permit the presentation to students of an 'unwelcomed' viewpoint on the topic of homosexuality and religion, while actively promoting the competing view."
And what story involving homosexuality would be complete without:
Antigay group pickets in Ann Arbor

A group of about 10 picketers from a Baptist Church in Kansas carried neon-colored signs, with antigay slogans on them, in front of Pioneer High School and then the Ann Arbor school district's Balas I administration building this morning.

District spokeswoman Liz Margolis said the group first picketed at the corner of Stadium Boulevard and Main Street, near the high school, and later moved to State Street, near the entrance of the administration building. Their signs bore slogans such as, "God hates fags."

[The court] decision was not out yet however when the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., announced its picketing plans in an epithet-filled press release Nov. 26. In addition to picketing Pioneer and the administration building, the release stated plans for picketing several Detroit churches, the University of Michigan and the U.S.-Canada border on Dec. 14.
Picketing the whole freaking U.S.-Canadian border? Got to hand it to these people: they think big.

Update: Anyone interested in reading Judge Rosen's strongly-worded opinion can find it in a lengthy pdf file on the court's website.

posted by Arnold P. California at 12:33 PM




Posted Without Comment

From the Washington Post

Donald H. Rumsfeld went to Baghdad in March 1984 with instructions to deliver a private message about weapons of mass destruction: that the United States' public criticism of Iraq for using chemical weapons would not derail Washington's attempts to forge a better relationship, according to newly declassified documents.

[edit]

An earlier trip by Rumsfeld to Baghdad, in December 1983, has been widely reported as having helped persuade Iraq to resume diplomatic ties with the United States. An explicit purpose of Rumsfeld's return trip in March 1984, the once-secret documents reveal for the first time, was to ease the strain created by a U.S. condemnation of chemical weapons.

[edit]

Publicly, the United States maintained neutrality during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, which began in 1980.

Privately, however, the administrations of Reagan and George H.W. Bush sold military goods to Iraq, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological agents, worked to stop the flow of weapons to Iran, and undertook discreet diplomatic initiatives, such as the two Rumsfeld trips to Baghdad, to improve relations with Hussein.


posted by Eugene Oregon at 11:54 AM




70%?

I have very little faith in polls and don't think that they should be particularly relevant to forming public policy given that the questions are usually overly-simplistic and fail to take into account an individual's actual knowledge regarding the issues.

That said, I find this poll pretty disconcerting

The Associated Press-Ipsos poll on Iraq, terrorism and President Bush is based on telephone interviews with 1,001 randomly selected adults from all states except Alaska and Hawaii. The interviews were conducted Dec. 15-17 by Ipsos-Public Affairs

[edit]

2. I'm going to read two statements. Please tell me which comes closer to your view: The U.S. military presence in Iraq is an important part of the campaign against terrorism; the U.S. military presence in Iraq is a distraction from the campaign against terrorism.

* Important part of campaign against terrorism, 70 percent

* Distraction from campaign against terrorism, 27 percent

* Don't know-refused, 3 percent

3. All in all, thinking about how things have gone since the United States went to war there in March, do you think the Bush administration made the right decision or a mistake in going to war in Iraq?

* Right decision, 67 percent

* Mistake, 29 percent

* Don't know-refused, 4 percent

I know that, for the most part, I do not share the views held by most Americans. But I simply cannot fathom how 70% of the American public can honestly believe that the war in Iraq is a key part of the war on terror and, more importantly, that "all in all" Bush made the right decision.

"All in all"? That means that, on the whole and taking everything into consideration, people think that Bush has made good decisions. The failure to find WMDs, the diplomatic failures, the reckless unilateralism -- none of that matters?

I could at least understand if 70% thought that Iraq was relevant to the war on terror but that "all in all" Bush handled it poorly, which is more or less my personal view.

If this poll accurately reflects the views of voting age Americans, then I am forced to admit that Bush may very well get re-elected. And if he does, it is because the American people get the leaders they deserve.

posted by Eugene Oregon at 10:47 AM




Political Poop

NO-NO-NO! BAD Nader!!! Sit! Lay down! Now STAY! Don't make me rub your nose in it!

posted by Zoe Kentucky at 10:35 AM




Diary of a Dean-O-Phobe

Via Southern Appeal we learn that Jonathan Chait has started an anti-Dean blog with the blessing of the New Republic

It's not entirely clear to me why I've taken such an intense dislike to Howard Dean. Yes, I find him arrogant and frequently dishonest. Yes, I'm certain his nomination would lead to a political disaster of historic, and possibly biblical, proportions. And, yes, I'm continuously dumbfounded that a number of highly intelligent people I know have convinced themselves that his nomination is a good thing, or at least that it's not an unambiguously bad thing. But somehow the whole of my loathing for Dean is greater than the sum of its parts. So I've decided to start a blog on TNR's website to indulge that loathing.

I disapprove, but knock yourself out.

posted by Eugene Oregon at 9:19 AM


Thursday, December 18, 2003


Here We Go Again

Here's yet another Ten-Commandments-in-a-courthouse case. This is a 2-1 decision by the Sixth Circuit finding unconstitutional a couple of DDs (Decalogue Display--my own term--think it will catch on?--thought not) in two county courthouses in Kentucky.

I haven't read through the opinions, and I don't intend to, but it seems that this decision turns on the history of these particular DDs. The historical facts showed, in the majority's view, that the DDs were intended to endorse a particular religious view, rather than having some kind of secular purpose. Thus, although this will certainly provoke more calls for Supreme Court review, it still may be possible to reconcile this case, the Roy's Rock case from the Eleventh Circuit, and the Chester County case from the Third Circuit (which permitted a DD to remain). If all three decisions depended on the particular histories of those specific DDs, then there may not be a true division among the circuit courts' views of what the law is. Also, to the extent a case is fact-bound and is not a suitable platform for the Supreme Court to announce a general rule for lower courts to apply in the future, it's not an attractive use of the Court's limited resources. So there's good reason to hope that we won't have the DD issue dropped right into the middle of an election year via a controversial Supreme Court decision.

But I do expect the nutjobs who've been backing Roy Moore to train their sights on this new case, and I also expect more silliness about how the courts are anti-Christian and how Congress should remove federal courts' jurisdiction to hear challenges to DDs.

Ugh. Just when I was hoping the grown-ups could start talking about real issues.

posted by Arnold P. California at 3:30 PM




My Name Is Bill and I am Addicted to Lying

During an interview with Matt Lauer on Monday's "Today Show," the following exchange occurred

LAUER: Number one on the best seller list. You have bumped past Al Franken's book. Is there a little ecstasy in that for you?

BILL O'REILLY: We've outsold that guy all over the place. We're running against Hillary for most copies of non-fiction books sold this year. That's who we want to beat, and that's why I'm here talking with you. It's a delightful experience on the TODAY show as always.

Let us take a look at the USA Today's list of the best-selling books of 2003

7. Living History - Hillary Rodham Clinton

21. Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right - Al Franken

60. Dude, Where's My Country? -Michael Moore

63. Who's Looking Out for You? - Bill O'Reilly

On the bright side, O'Reilly did just barely manage to beat out The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and Captain Underpants and the Big, Bad Battle of the Bionic Booger Boy, Part 1: The Night of the Nasty Nostril Nuggets. So kudos for that.

Update: While we are on the subject, why not read this other post I made a few days ago highlighting another recent incident in which O'Reilly made a total ass of himself.

posted by Eugene Oregon at 3:30 PM




Diebold Election Systems has a Dream...

And apparently it involves seeing how far they can push the definition of competency before being shut out of the lucrative government contracts.
Digital voting giant Diebold Election Systems took a staggering blow Wednesday as California officials reported that Diebold ran uncertified -- and in some cases untested -- software in all 17 counties where it counted votes in the state's last two elections.

What began as a scandal in Alameda County swept statewide as every county served by Diebold realized its software was not state certified, and three counties, including Los Angeles, found that some of their software never had been tested by a federally designated lab.
They must be laughing their asses off behind closed doors.
Diebold officials portrayed the software certification issue as more or less cosmetic, saying the differences were negligible between state-certified software and versions used to count at least a quarter of votes in California's recall and last municipal elections.

That's not altogether clear, said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, a Sacramento-based nonprofit that studies voting systems.

State officials note there's no evidence that the use of uncertified or untested software resulted in lost or manipulated votes.

"While nobody is undervaluing the significance of uncertified and unqualified software, this is not about uncounted or miscounted votes," said Douglas Stone, a Shelley spokesman. "What we're trying to establish is a strong procedure that ensures every voter has confidence in the integrity of our system and in the counting of their vote."

But Alexander says current e-voting systems provide no way to be certain. A recount would be a digital clone of the original count.
How much will it take before states boot this outfit?

posted by Helena Montana at 2:58 PM




Kay Fails to Take Advantage of Eternal Job Security

From the Washington Post

David Kay, the head of the U.S. effort to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, has told administration officials he plans to leave before the Iraq Survey Group's work is completed and could depart before February, U.S. military and intelligence officials said.

The move comes as more of Kay's staff has been diverted from the weapons hunt to help search for Iraqi insurgents, and at a time when expectations remain low that any weaponry will be discovered.

Kay requested the change for personal and family reasons, officials said. When he accepted the job in June, they said, he expected to quickly find the expansive evidence that the administration had claimed as its primary reason for going to war. Rather, Kay's preliminary report in October said the group had so far discovered only that Iraq was working to acquire chemical and biological weapons, had missile programs under various stages of development and possessed only a rudimentary nuclear program.

Don't feel bad, David. Everyone else expected you to find them too ... well, maybe not the White House.

I suspect that Kay is leaving in order to take part in an expedition searching for Atlantis or maybe the Fountain of Youth, something that has a slightly better chance of success.

posted by Eugene Oregon at 12:41 PM




Judicial Irony

So, what do you do when a judge that you appointed says this about you? From the ruling on the Padilla enemy-combatant case (pdf file)

We also conclude that Padilla’s detention was not authorized by Congress, and absent such authorization, the President does not have the power under Article II of the Constitution to detain as an enemy combatant an American citizen seized on American soil outside a zone of combat.

When are Republicans going to notice that in several of the major cases where they didn't like a ruling (Lawrence, Goodwin) that the "liberal" judges were actually Republican administration appointees? More importantly, when are Dems going to start pointing out this fact every time a republican blames "liberal" judges for "judicial tyranny"?

posted by Zoe Kentucky at 11:44 AM




Charting Bush's Course to Re-Election

From the USA Today

The capture of Saddam Hussein has given President Bush his highest job-approval rating in six months, improved his standing against Democrats who want his job and increased confidence that U.S. goals in Iraq will be accomplished.

A USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll on Monday and Tuesday found that 63% of Americans approve of the overall job the president is doing. His rating just before Saddam's arrest on Saturday was 54%.

So it seems clear that if Bush can just manage to capture Saddam Hussein every few weeks until next November, he'll be a shoo in for re-election.

posted by Eugene Oregon at 10:17 AM




God Bless Dana Milbank

For being the only major reporter who consistently covers things like this

It's not quite Soviet-style airbrushing, but the Bush administration has been using cyberspace to make some of its own cosmetic touch-ups to history.

White House officials were steamed when Andrew S. Natsios, the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said earlier this year that U.S. taxpayers would not have to pay more than $1.7 billion to reconstruct Iraq -- which turned out to be a gross understatement of the tens of billions of dollars the government now expects to spend.

Recently, however, the government has purged the offending comments by Natsios from the agency's Web site. The transcript, and links to it, have vanished.


posted by Eugene Oregon at 9:45 AM




"They Simply Failed"

From CBS (via Not Geniuses)

For the first time, the chairman of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is saying publicly that 9/11 could have and should have been prevented, reports CBS News Correspondent Randall Pinkston.

"This is a very, very important part of history and we've got to tell it right," said Thomas Kean.

"As you read the report, you're going to have a pretty clear idea what wasn't done and what should have been done," he said. "This was not something that had to happen."

Appointed by the Bush administration, Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, is now pointing fingers inside the administration and laying blame.

"There are people that, if I was doing the job, would certainly not be in the position they were in at that time because they failed. They simply failed," Kean said.


posted by Eugene Oregon at 9:00 AM


Wednesday, December 17, 2003


Life for Sex (Personally, I'd Prefer Sex for Life)
BEIJING (AP) A Chinese court sentenced two people to life in prison Wednesday for organizing a sex party for hundreds of Japanese tourists that caused an uproar in China, the government said.

According to earlier Chinese news reports, about 400 Japanese men and as many as 500 Chinese hostesses had sex at the Zhuhai International Conference Center Hotel over a three-day period ending Sept. 18.

That was the anniversary of a Japanese attack on a city in northeast China in 1931 that many Chinese regard as the start of Japan's wartime invasion and occupation.

The trial began Friday and ended Saturday amid tight security in the Zhuhai Intermediate Court. The public and nonessential court employees were barred from the courthouse by officials who cited privacy concerns.
I never realized that safe sex required not only condoms but also due process.

Update: And what "privacy concerns" can there be about an activity that involved 900 people?

posted by Arnold P. California at 7:04 PM




Great Leader*

Joshua Green has a good piece in the Washington Monthly on Republican attempts to canonize Ronald Reagan. Green examines both Reagan's administration and his legacy and concludes that

[A]s any balanced account must make clear, Reagan acceded to political compromises as all presidents do once in office--and on many occasions did so willingly. In fact, however often unintentionally, many of his actions as president wound up facilitating liberal objectives. What this clamor of adulation is seeking to deny is that beyond his conservative legacy, Ronald Reagan has bequeathed a liberal one.


* Much like my insistence on always referring to Tom DeLay as the "World's Biggest Asshole," I am hereby declaring that from this day forward, I will always refer to Ronald Reagan as "Great Leader" due to Republican attempts to force Americans to worship Reagan just as the North Korean government forces its citizens to worship Kim Il Sung.

posted by Eugene Oregon at 4:03 PM




Ring of Despair

Sheesh. This marriage amendment crap follows me everywhere. There I was, reading a nice New Yorker piece on Tolkien's Ring v. Wagner's Ring (I recommend it, if you are nerdy that way), when I read this paragraph, which I edited for brevity.
When Tolkien stole Wagner's ring, he discarded its most significant property -- that it can be forged only by one who has forsworn love.... It is the little ring that brings out the lust in men and in hobbits. And what, honestly, do people want in it? .... Tolkien mutes the romance of medieval stories and puts us out in self-abnegating, Anglican-modernist, T. S. Eliot territory. The ring is a never-ending nightmare to which people are drawn for no obvious reason. It generates lust and yet gives no satisfaction.
I was immediately reminded of the sour faces of Gary Bauer, James Dobson, et al. Now, I'm not trying to say that gay people are hobbits or that Dobson is Wotan, though I'll try to remember that come next Halloween. But the sad and ugly crusade of the anti-marriage crowd is as joyless and barren as those drawn to that Ring. Wagner's version of the saga finds redemption in love, ultimately that will happen in this battle as well.

posted by Helena Montana at 3:13 PM




Christmas: Commercialized and (Now) Politicized

It doesn't get much more smarmy than this. How often have religious groups complained that the core meaning of Christmas is diluted by the ways in which retailers and advertisers commercialize the holiday? Well, the Family Research Council (FRC) -- whose website describes the group as "defending family, faith and freedom" -- has decided to use Christmas as a prop for its political agenda.

FRC is asking its members and supporters to "Protect Marriage While You Celebrate Christmas" by doing the following:
"As you and your family prepare to send out Christmas cards this month, why not add three more people to your list? Send a card to the Governor, Senate President, and Speaker of the House in Massachusetts.

"Ask them to support a Constitutional Amendment on February 11th, so that the people of Massachusetts can decide for themselves if they want marriage redefined. Protecting marriage in Massachusetts is the first step to protecting marriage across America."
It's a constant challenge to find new ways to "market" a right-wing, anti-gay agenda. But the folks at FRC are so smart that they've probably already thought of some clever spin-offs. How about finding a right-winger who's in the confectionary business who will print those little heart-shaped Valentine's Day candies with cute little sayings like "Gay Marriage Breaks My Heart"?

On President's Day or Lincoln's Birthday, what about a print-ad campaign that bears the headline: "Abe and Mary Todd Lincoln Didn't Get Along, But At Least They Were Straight." Gee, holidays make great props.

posted by Frederick Maryland at 2:26 PM




You Have the Right to an Attorney ...

... But not until you first incriminate yourself

U.S. citizens classified as enemy combatants should gain access to attorneys only after they have disclosed everything they know about terrorist operations, federal law-enforcement officials said Tuesday.

Three senior Justice Department officials outlined the policy for the first time and said it is the proper way to balance national security and constitutional protections for people in government custody as part of the war on terror.

One of the officials said the goal has never been to deny counsel, only to delay it until interrogations are finished.

I thought suspects had the right to have an attorney present when interrogated. I fact, I am pretty sure that the Supreme Court explicitly ruled that they did, and even recently reaffirmed that decision, which is why we have this

You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to be speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense.

Well, look at that. Right there it says that you have the right to "have an attorney present during any questioning."

I am no constitutional scholar so maybe someone can explain to me how we ended up in a situation where, when the President designates you an "enemy combatant," you no longer have any 5th or 6th Amendment protections.

posted by Eugene Oregon at 2:09 PM




Gay Marriage: Confusing the Secular with the Sectarian

In his much-talked about interview with ABC News, President Bush referred on at least a couple of occasions to the "sanctity" of marriage as the reason why he might support a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage:
DIANE SAWYER: "... Vice President Cheney has spoken out in favor of (gay) civil unions. In the 2000 election, you said pretty much it was a state issue."

PRESIDENT BUSH: "That's right. Except and unless judicial rulings undermine the sanctity of marriage. In which case, we may need a Constitutional amendment. "
Later, Bush goes right back to this same term:
DIANE SAWYER: "Are they sinners? Are gays sinners?"

PRESIDENT BUSH: "We're all sinners. We're all sinners, and that's important for —"

DIANE SAWYER: "No distinction."

PRESIDENT BUSH: "I think we're all sinners .... and having said that, however, I do believe in the sanctity of marriage."
This term reveals that Bush (and, I believe, many other conservatives) are completely unwilling to view marriage in anything but a religious context. The definition that the American Heritage Dictionary provides for "sanctity" makes clear its religious meaning:
sanctity: 1. Holiness of life or disposition; saintliness. 2. The quality or condition of being considered sacred; inviolability. 3. Something considered sacred.
Does someone need to remind the president that each year many thousands of couples are legally married outside of any religious ceremony or ritual? And many others who are non-religious are simply married in churches to basically placate a parent who has expressed this desire?

Bush isn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but he knows how to recite talking points. It's pretty clear that Bush and his right-wing ilk are working terms like "sanctity" into their soundbites as a deliberate strategy. They are determined to redefine marriage in religious terms and make gay marriage appear to be an attack on faith. We're talking about people who have long expressed views that are hostile to Thomas Jefferson's conception of a "wall of separation" between church and state.

The "sanctity of marriage" is a term that conveys a subtle, nuanced message that can encourage or play on misguided fears. It's critical that opponents of an anti-gay amendment hammer home the point that neither the Massachusetts ruling, nor any others, will force any church, temple or synagogue to marry same-sex couples if it doesn't want to marry them. Period.

posted by Frederick Maryland at 1:48 PM




Getting Under Rod Paige's Skin

"For better or worse, whether you like it or not, Houston has become the epicenter of this discussion, the battleground of a new struggle for freedom."
Exactly what was Education Secretary Rod Paige talking about when he spoke these grandiose words? The answer may surprise you. Paige's "new struggle for freedom" is the Bush administration's so-called "No Child Left Behind" Act (NCLB).

Paige's hyperbolic, circle-the-wagons remarks were in response to a New York Times article that cast serious doubts on the supposed improvements in student achievement during Paige's tenure as superintendent of the Houston Public Schools. Paige's much-touted success in Houston was cited by President Bush when he was nominated for the cabinet post he now holds.

A thin-skinned Paige has reacted to the Times article by alleging that those raising questions about the performance of Houston students "are fighting against [NCLB]" and "have targeted Houston and are targeting your children ..." Judging from the language Paige used in his recent comments, you'd almost think that Times reporters were tip-toeing through Houston neighborhoods, stalking school kids.

The Times isn't alone in bringing to light the ways in which Houston may have manipulated dropout data to artifically pump up its test scores. Just this week, an article in the Houston Chronicle noted that the Texas Education Agency, a Houston-area law firm and a school-sanctioned research team each found that the school district "did not accurately count its dropouts" in the final years of Paige's administration.


posted by Frederick Maryland at 1:06 PM




The Ever Changing WMD Rationale

Rather than reproduce the information here, I'll just encourage you to go and read the first two WMD posts in today's Progress Report and then read the WMD section of the ABC interview with Bush.

DIANE SAWYER: But stated as a hard fact, that there were weapons of mass destruction as opposed to the possibility that he could move to acquire those weapons still —

PRESIDENT BUSH: So what's the difference?


posted by Eugene Oregon at 12:59 PM




Understatement of the Week

During yesterday's testimony in the trial over the Texas re-redistricting, state Rep. Joe Deshotel described how the new map puts African-American voters into districts where they're vastly outnumbered and cannot influence the outcome of an election:
20,000 Galveston County blacks are put into the 22nd District of U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land [WBA]...."If you want to reduce the African-American impact on an election, that is how you would do it," Deshotel said.


posted by Arnold P. California at 12:42 PM




(sighing loudly)

Gawd, Mickey Kaus is so extraordinarily lame sometimes.

posted by Zoe Kentucky at 12:37 PM




LIAR! LIAR! PANTS on FIRE!

"The position of this administration is that whatever legal arrangements people want to make, they're allowed to make, so long as it's embraced by the state or at the state level."

This is part of Bush's explanation for why he would indeed support a Federal Marriage Amendment. It's bullsh*t. The FMA, as it is currently written, would negate all legislation that recognizes civil unions, domestic partnerships, etc. But his other comment is just as wacky.

"I do believe in the sanctity of marriage ... but I don't see that as conflict with being a tolerant person or an understanding person." Hmmm. It's "tolerance" to support a amending the U.S. Constitution declaring gay marriage illegal? Hurting and insulting gay families is tolerance? If that's how he defines tolerance, I'd wonder what he'd do to us if he didn't want to "tolerate" us.


posted by Zoe Kentucky at 11:20 AM




Remember When ...

Remember when the RNC ran an attack ad against Gore, highlighting his appearance at an illegal fundraiser at a Buddhist temple?

I do. And I wonder when we can expect the RNC to start running ads highlighting our Attorney General's own campaign law violations

The Federal Election Commission has determined that Attorney General John D. Ashcroft's unsuccessful 2000 Senate reelection campaign violated election laws by accepting $110,000 in illegal contributions from a committee Ashcroft had established to explore running for president.

In documents released yesterday by the FEC, Garrett M. Lott, treasurer for the two Ashcroft committees, the Spirit of America PAC and Ashcroft 2000, agreed to pay a $37,000 fine for at least four violations of federal campaign law. Lott agreed "not to contest" the charges.

"Spirit of America PAC and Ashcroft 2000, respectively, violated the [law] by making and receiving this excessive contribution. Additionally, Spirit of America PAC and Ashcroft 2000, respectively, violated the [law] by failing to disclose the making or receipt of the excessive contribution," the FEC declared in a news release.

Under the law, the Spirit of America PAC was allowed to give the Ashcroft 2000 committee only $5,000 for the primary and $5,000 for the general election, which it did. The commission found that the Spirit of America PAC far exceeded these limits by illegally transferring to the Ashcroft 2000 committee $110,000 derived from the rental of its donors list.

The FEC vote to fine the Ashcroft committee was 5 to 1, and the one dissenter sought harsher penalties and tougher findings.

Well, Ashcroft only exceeded the transfer limits by $100,000 - just under twice the amount of money Gore received. So no harm, no foul I guess.

posted by Eugene Oregon at 11:19 AM




Um, yeah, sure, whatever...

Lieberman is a man truly full of himself.

"To me, this race has crystallized between Howard Dean and me."

I hate to break it to you Joe, but you're just not a contender. Despite your distinct advantage of name recognition, you just don't have what it takes. You're barely in the running, much of the time you're just a few ticks above Kuchinich, Sharpton and Mosley-Braun. I also think that the more you attack Dean personally, the more you try to be the "anti-Dean" the more you look like a desperate loser, and the happier most Dems will be. Frankly, you're just not that well-liked or well-respected except perhaps by other DINOs like yourself.

Sadly, Lieberman, Gephardt and Kerry have all decided to take the low road and have resorted to misrepresenting Dean's positions on Iraq and using GOP-style arguments against him. This all makes me think of the playground taunt, "I'm rubber, you're glue, whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you!"

posted by Zoe Kentucky at 8:10 AM


Tuesday, December 16, 2003


Corruption of Blood

That's Mrs. California's favorite legal term, and it came up today in a case from the D.C. Circuit. The case involves one of my favorite constitutional clauses, the Bill of Attainder Clause; you could probably count on your thumbs the number of times it's successfully invoked in a decade, so we B of A connoisseurs have to savor each one that comes along. (Besides corruption of blood, today's case also mentions banishment, and stuff like that is pretty much par for the course when it comes to attainder--you can see why it's a break from a lawyer's day-to-day work).

An attainder is a stain--I think the word "attainder" is lexically related to "taint." Attainder is the sort of stain you get when you've committed an crime so infamous that you're not fit to live on this earth. A bill of attainder is a legislative declaration that you bear such a blot; more prosaically, it happens when the legislature takes over the judicial function, declares a person guilty, and punishes him or her. This is a handy way to get rid of political undesirables, which is why our revolutionary ancestors banned them in the Constitution. Not coincidentally, on the relatively few occasions when the Supreme Court has grappled with the B of A Clause, the cases have often involved such social lepers as ex-Confederates, draft dodgers, and Richard Nixon.

Today's case involves one of the most notorioius child custody battles of recent decades. Dr. Eric Foretich, the father, and Dr. Elizabeth Morgan, the mother, were already separated when their daughter Hilary/Ellen (Hilary Foretich at birth, Ellen Morgan now) was born in 1982. Long (very) story short: starting when Hilary/Ellen was a toddler, Dr. Morgan accused Dr. Foretich of sexually abusing her during his visitations; these allegations were never accepted, either by the D.C. court that oversaw the custody case for many years or by a jury in another court where Dr. Morgan sued Dr. Foretich; Dr. Morgan's parents sneaked Hilary/Ellen to New Zealand; Dr. Morgan spent two years in jail for civil contempt, refusing to tell the court (and Dr. Foretich) where her daughter was; Congress passed a special bill requiring the court to let her out of jail; and Dr. Morgan went to N.Z. to join her parents and daughter.

Whereupon Congress reentered the scene. Since the custody order still required Dr. Morgan to permit her ex-husband to have unsupervised visitation with their daughter, she refused to return to the U.S. The case had already received considerable publicity, with Dr. Morgan garnering much sympathy for giving up her own freedom for two years to protect her daughter. Congress reentered the picture, holding an extraordinary subcommittee hearing where Members essentially said the courts had got it all wrong. This led to the Elizabeth Morgan Act, which effectively declared that Dr. Foretich was a sick bastard who had done hideous things to his daughter and guaranteed that Dr. Morgan and Hilary/Ellen could return to the U.S. without having to allow Dr. Foretich to see his daughter.

The D.C. Circuit had little trouble finding this to be a B of A, and rightly so. I'm sure the people who championed Dr. Morgan's cause, including those in Congress, thought that she was right and that Dr. Foretich was a sick bastard. As for me, I don't know nearly enough about this case to have an opinion on where the truth lies. But we have courts to sort these things out, and not only a D.C. judge, but also a Virginia jury, had declined to credit the charges. This is exactly the sort of thing the B of A Clause is meant to stop: after the bill was passed, Dr. Foretich was accosted by strangers, abandoned by patients--essentially shunned as an outlaw, banished as it were by legislative declaration even though he was never charged, let alone convicted, in court.

We fought a Revolution to stop stuff like that, and Congress should have been ashamed of itself.

posted by Arnold P. California at 9:14 PM




Beware of Wingers Bearing Gifts

It's always funny when the Right offers big-brotherly advice to Democrats on how to choose a presidential nominee. Today, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which has always shown an intense interest in the welfare of Democrats, offered advice for ditching Howard Dean and thus avoiding what it calls a "Dukakis-like debacle."

According to WSJ's reasoning, Saddam's recent arrest should be a wake-up call for Democrats to earn some national security cred by supporting "President Bush's anti-terror policy." Their advice leads, as it often does, to the GOP's favorite Democrat, Joe Lieberman (aside from Zell Miller, but he's not running):
Joe Lieberman was first into this much-needed breach, as you'd expect from a candidate who has been strong on Saddam all along. "This news makes clear the choice the Democrats face next year," he said on NBC's Meet the Press. "If Howard Dean had his way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power today, not in prison, and the world would be a much more dangerous place."

WSJ must be alot wiser than your average Democratic primary voter to see the compelling message behind Lieberman's mushy-middle campaign. Then again, perhaps they're hoping that the guy they labeled "Loserman" in 2000 will live up to the name in 2004.

Apparently, Lieberman and Dick I'm-running-for-president-because-I-couldn't-manage-to-become-majority-leader Gephardt are the Dems' best hopes because they are:
...offering a choice, and not a post-Vietnam echo of Mr. Dean, and we hope they keep it up. By taking the debate to the front-runner, they may help save their party from repeating its post-Vietnam Cold War mistake of showing weakness on national security. After September 11, this is a losing platform.

To be receptive to WSJ's advice, you'd not only need to believe that Lieberman and Gephardt have the ability to run dynamic, competitive campaigns. You also have to accept the Bush premise that the war in Iraq somehow advances the ball for the U.S. in the war on terror, rather than hurting the cause by opening up a new recruiting center for al Qaeda in the Middle East, as Dean, Gore, and Clark contend. And, if you can swallow all that, I'm sure WSJ also has an economic policy they'd love to sell you.

posted by Noam Alaska at 3:31 PM




Make Sure You Read Beyond the First Paragraph

Kathryn Jean Lopez made the following post today

SOUNDS LIKE A FIND
LONDON, Dec 16 (AFP) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Tuesday that the US-led Iraq Survey Group hunting for weapons of mass destruction had found "massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories" in Iraq.

For some reason, she failed to provide a link to this story so I hunted it down. And if you read the paragraphs that follow the one provided by Lopez, you learn that

Blair did not go into detail, but a spokesman for the prime minister said that the findings were part of an interim report produced several months ago by the Iraq Survey Group, which is hunting for weapons of mass destruction.

"The Iraq Survey Group has already found massive evidence of huge system of clandestine laboratories, workings by scientists, plans to develop long range ballistic missiles", Blair said in an interview with the British Forces Broadcasting Service.

So the "massive evidence" Blair was referring to actually first appeared in David Kay's report from October; a report that many noted failed to provide any evidence that Hussein had any WMDs at all (including yours truly)

A close reading of the actual, unclassified report—which Kay delivered as testimony on Oct. 2 to a panel of several congressional committees—reveals not only that Bush's critics are closer to the mark, but something much more significant: that Saddam wanted and, in some cases, tried to resurrect the weapons programs that he had built in the 1980s, but that the United Nations sanctions and inspections prevented him from doing so.

Is Lopez intentionally seeking to mislead her readers? (That is a rhetorical question. We all know that the answer is "yes.")

posted by Eugene Oregon at 3:18 PM




Does This Sound at All Familiar?

From a retired officer and Desert Storm vet:
I’ve been following the international news for quite some time and was astounded how many news European magazines have had reporters tag along with the still emerging Iraqi resistance. Interestingly enough, many of the interviewed fighters didn’t think much of Saddam, nor were they connected to Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda gang. They fought for other objectives, such as religion, their families and liberation from western corruption and domination.
I don't know what these European sources are--Lt. Col. Zimmerman doesn't name any names--nor, obviously do I know how representative the interviewees are. Still, the cautionary note Zimmerman sounds seems sensible to me.

Lots of people argue lots of things about what the "lesson(s)" of Vietnam is/are. But one lesson I think we should have learned is that people have a natural tendency to resist being controlled by outsiders. Rather than thinking that the entire NVA, let alone the entire Viet Cong, was composed of doctrinaire Communists fighting for an ideology that we considered odious, we might have been better off thinking more deeply about our enemies' actual motives.

Similarly, it is hard to believe that anyone not closely linked to Saddam's regime would be fighting, or even suicide-bombing, U.S. troops in order to restore the Ba'athists to power. It is more plausible to think that a segment of the opposition is motivated by Islamism or general anti-Western sentiment of the sort trafficked in by al-Qaeda. But we'll be better off if we recognize that a good chunk of any resistance--likely a growing chunk the longer we're there--will be motivated by nationalism and a desire to get Iraqis back in charge of Iraq.

This is one reason to welcome Dubya's surprisingly cautionary words following Saddam's capture. Perhaps the Ba'athist segment of the resistance will disintegrate in his absence, but the Islamists and the nationalists shouldn't be greatly affected--indeed, they may be encouraged to know that if the U.S. is ejected, Saddam and his gang aren't likely to take over again.

A final tidbit from Lt. Col. Zimmerman:
When asked about the main American weakness, one group leader pointed to intelligence. “We’re not talking on the phone and we’re communicating in Iraqi Arabic. Even Palestinians and Egyptians have a problem understanding us. Most American intercept experts have no clue.”
Well, no one ever said this would be easy.

Oh, wait a minute; they did.

Update in response to Frederick's comment:



posted by Arnold P. California at 1:57 PM




"Dean Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"

From the office of the World's Biggest Asshole

The Democrats' hateful, moronic comments are beyond the pale, and the Democrats know it, but they don't care because they have nothing to offer the public debate but rage, resentment and quackery. Until other Democrats stand up against this hysteria, they're admitting to the country their party has no claim to national leadership.


posted by Eugene Oregon at 1:41 PM




The Strom Thurmond Revelations

"I" is for Irony


Politics is filled with some incredible ironies. I was reminded of this after reading Eugene's post earlier today about the acknowledgement by the family of the late Senator Strom Thurmond (who served as a Republican from South Carolina) that he fathered a child out of wedlock to a woman of color.

One irony, of course, is the fact that someone who was such a rabid segregationist and who never publicly repudiated his racist past would have jumped in the sack with someone of a darker race. But there is another, less obvious irony that comes to mind.

Earlier this year, Dan Kennedy wrote in the Boston Phoenix that in the year 2000:
"... Senator John McCain dared to challenge (George W.) Bush in the Republican primaries, only to be smeared in South Carolina as the father of an illegitimate black daughter -- a twisted reference to the Bangladeshi girl McCain and his wife had adopted."
Rich with irony, indeed. South Carolina, of course, was one of the early pivotal primaries in 2000. After losing the New Hampshire primary, Bush desperately needed to win SC. And Thurmond's political machine in the state -- no doubt uncomfortable with the moderate McCain -- was probably among those who were hearing and repeating this obnoxious smear against the Arizona senator.

And "H" is for Hypocrisy

According to today's Washington Post, Thurmond and his family had engaged in "decades of denial" that such a woman was fathered by Thurmond out of wedlock. Now, recall that Thurmond voted for both articles of impeachment of President Clinton, and also recall what Strom had to say about the issue of Clinton and truthfulness:
"Because the President is the Commander in Chief, I must think about our men and women in uniform ... if we vote not guilty on the articles on these facts, what message do we send to our soldiers about duty, honor, and country? Given that the President is the Chief Law Enforcement Officer, if we vote not guilty, what message do we send American citizens about respect for the rule of law? For that matter, what message do we send our children and grandchildren for generations to come about the consequences of not telling the truth?
Like so many of his fire-breathing, Clinton-hating colleagues, Thurmond was one hell of a hypocrite to be able to speak those words with a straight face.

The only thing for which you have to credit Thurmond and his family is this -- at least they provided some post-college, financial sustenance to the woman who was Thurmond's daughter. But, as much as the GOP lashed out at President Clinton on the issue of veracity, at least Clinton was around to face the music.

On the other hand, quite conveniently for Strom, he was 10 feet under before the truth came out.

posted by Frederick Maryland at 1:38 PM




Who Needs a Permanent Solution?

This Washington Post article looks at some of the complications involved in any attempt to try Saddam Hussein for "genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity"

Although international legal specialists acknowledged the importance of trying Hussein first, they expressed concern about making the tribunal's initial case one that would be so complicated and closely watched.

Chalabi, a nephew of the Iraqi political leader Ahmed Chalabi, said legal specialists involved in setting up the tribunal would have to "tread a line between moving quickly to appease Iraqi political pressure and slowly enough to make sure we don't stray outside the scope of internationally recognized due process of law."

This is a prime example of why the United States ought to be supporting the International Criminal Court, which was created specifically to address these sorts of situations

The Court's jurisdiction will be limited to the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole. It will therefore have jurisdiction with respect to the crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, all of which are fully defined in the Statute and further elaborated by the Elements of Crimes.

Unfortunately, thanks to the US, the ICC does not apply to any country that refuses to ratify the treaty - which includes both the US and Iraq.


The US has opposed the ICC at every turn and even though Clinton finally signed the treaty before he left office, Bush didn't hesitate to unsign it just a year and a half later.

After all, why create and support a permanent means of dealing with such cases when we can just create an ad hoc tribunal that will allow Hussein to be "tried first -- and executed first."

posted by Eugene Oregon at 12:53 PM




Here's a Judicial Appointment We Could All Support

Justice Bedsworth of California's Court of Appeal (no "s" if you please) is hilarious. And humble:
As near as I can determine, I was assigned to the Court of Appeal so I would have months to consider the problems my colleagues on the trial bench resolve in twenty minutes.
Read more of his wisdom here.

posted by Arnold P. California at 12:40 PM




Shorter John Fund

"Judicial activism" is any decision I disagree with.

posted by Arnold P. California at 12:28 PM




The Right to Know

Via the Progress Report we learn of this lengthy US News article examining the Bush administration's penchant for secrecy

For the past three years, the Bush administration has quietly but efficiently dropped a shroud of secrecy across many critical operations of the federal government--cloaking its own affairs from scrutiny and removing from the public domain important information on health, safety, and environmental matters. The result has been a reversal of a decades-long trend of openness in government while making increasing amounts of information unavailable to the taxpayers who pay for its collection and analysis. Bush administration officials often cite the September 11 attacks as the reason for the enhanced secrecy. But as the Inauguration Day directive from Card indicates, the initiative to wall off records and information previously in the public domain began from Day 1.


posted by Eugene Oregon at 11:47 AM




Outsourcing Our Dirty Work

On Sunday's "60 Minutes," Lesley Stahl interviewed Donald Rumsfeld about the capture of Saddam Hussein and raised the issue of torture

Stahl: Let me raise the whole question, for lack of a better term, torture. Let's say he's not forthcoming. Would we deprive him of sleep, make it very cold where he is, or very hot? Are there any restrictions on the way we treat him to get him to cooperate more than he has been?

Secretary Rumsfeld: You know, to even raise the word torture in terms of how the United States military would treat this person seems to me is a unfortunate. We don't torture people and here's a man who has tortured to death tens of thousands of people, conducted rape and brutality the likes of which would be difficult to find a more vicious and brutal dictator in our adult lifetimes. And I just told you he would be treated according to the Geneva Conventions and to suggest that any one would be engaged in torture or conduct inconsistent with the Geneva Convention seems to me isn't on the mark at all.

Rumsfeld is right, we don't torture people. We prefer to send them to Syria and have them do it.

posted by Eugene Oregon at 10:57 AM




What Year is it Where You Live?

On Thursday's "O'Reilly Factor," O'Reilly was discussing the Pentagon's decision to bar France, Germany and Russia from receiving reconstruction contracts in Iraq when he made the following statement

We're talking about a foreign policy here that's confused. President Bush has got to start to straighten this stuff out. And here's something else we just learned. He calls Mulroney up in Canada and says, hey, don't worry about this. We're not going to hold you on Iraq. He's trying to get Canada, which should not have been included in this Department of Defense memo because Canada has lost guys in Afghanistan, and already paid $190 million to help out in Iraq. So that was dumb, too.

Bush called Mulroney up in Canada? Would that be Brian Mulroney, the former Canadian Prime Minister who retired from politics in 1993? Why would Bush call him? The answer is: he wouldn't.

If O'Reilly would pull his head out of his ass once in a while, he'd know things like that.

posted by Eugene Oregon at 9:45 AM




What is Bush's Excuse?

From the Washington Post

After decades of denials, the family of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) acknowledged yesterday a claim made by a 78-year-old Los Angeles schoolteacher that she is the senator's mixed-race daughter, a charge that had dogged her throughout her otherwise quiet life and shadowed Thurmond during his public career as a leading voice of racial segregation.

I suspect that this dalliance probably played some role in forming Thurmond's racist political views and made him say things like

There's not enough troops in the Army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the Negro race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes and into our churches

Similarly, I wonder if there was some indiscretion in Bush's past that makes him take stands like this

President Bush indicated Wednesday he opposes extending marriage rights to homosexuals, saying he believes marriage "is between a man and a woman."

Bush said it is "important for society to welcome each individual," but administration lawyers are looking for some way to legally limit marriage to heterosexuals.

"I believe marriage is between a man and a woman, and I think we ought to codify that one way or another," Bush told reporters at a White House news conference. "And we've got lawyers looking at the best way to do that."


posted by Eugene Oregon at 9:13 AM


Monday, December 15, 2003


Bush Improves in Poll, But Deep Concern Remains

As expected, the capture of Saddam Hussein is providing President Bush with a bounce in the polls. His positive job-approval rating has climbed to 57% in the new Washington Post-ABC News survey. But things are far from gloomy for Democrats who have set their eyes on winning back the White House in 2004.

The Post-ABC poll was taken yesterday, just as news was breaking of Hussein's capture. Indeed, nine out of 10 survey respondents said they had heard the news. In spite of this, attitudes were far from rosy about Bush policies and the Iraq war. According to The Post:
The public remains deeply divided as to whether "the war with Iraq was worth fighting," with 53 percent agreeing it was, and 42 percent saying it was not -- unchanged from last month.

... Meanwhile, more Americans say the war in Iraq is going worse than expected (27 percent) than say it is going better than expected (14 percent). The majority said it is turning out much the way they had anticipated.


posted by Frederick Maryland at 4:53 PM




Happy Bill of Rights Day

I've got no pithy tie-in from current news. If you're reading this, you can find that yourself. But I will take this opportunity to link to two things.

First, this nifty little resource is from the Bill of Rights Institute. It's a list of landmark Supreme Court cases involving the liberties covered by the Bill of Rights.

Second, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC) are the fine folks who've passed all those nice resolutions against the PATRIOT Act. And now I see that my list actually needs a...

Third, the Nevada County, CA BORDC has set up a page with all sorts of festive activist things to do, if you are so inclined.

Or, you could just go read some porn. Again, find your own damn link.

posted by Helena Montana at 3:16 PM




We've Found Saddam. But WMDs? Nada.

While all of the world can rightly rejoice in Saddam Hussein's capture, the apprehension of the Iraqi dictator will undoubtedly be used by the Bush administration to help the American people forget the Bushies' original reason for invading Iraq and putting U.S. troops in harm's way.

Before the war, I never recall the administration publicly identifying Saddam Hussein's capture and eventual trial as a major goal. In the first three months of this year, the thrust of the Bush administration's justification for an invasion of Iraq was "weapons of mass destruction"—WMDs.

The WMD justification was reinforced by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz in a major speech outlining the administration's case on March 11. Addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), Wolfowitz said the following:
"Today we hear calls to give Saddam Hussein more time. But we should ask: How long should we wait? … should we wait until Saddam Hussein finishes preparing weapons of mass terror—weapons that will further endanger our troops, or which he can use on the Iraqi people as he has in the past? Those very weapons are the source of our concern."
Later in the speech, Wolfowitz reiterated what the administration's main goal was when he stated:
"Disarming Saddam's weapons of mass terror is a second front in the war on terrorism."
In the VFW speech, Wolfowitz did blast Hussein for presiding over "one of the world's most brutal tyrannies." Yet he never described the soon-to-be-launched invasion as having the goal of apprehending Hussein and bringing him to justice for his brutal repression.

Wolfowitz told the crowd that "if it becomes necessary to use force to remove his regime, it will not be a war against Iraq, it will be a war to liberate Iraq." The very fact that one of the Pentagon's most strident hawks used the word "if" underscores that toppling Saddam Hussein’s regime (and not necessarily bringing him to justice) was only a means to an end—a way to find and destroy the WMDs.

Amazingly, the term WMDs has virtually disappeared from the White House's (and the media's) lexicon. Even back in the summer, it was obvious that the administration was trying to deflect attention from the WMDs that had yet to materialize despite post-war searches in Iraq.

In late July, a reporter asked White House press secretary Scott McClellan why President Bush was no longer mentioning WMDs in Iraq. McClellan squirmed uncomfortably.
McCLELLAN: "I think the President has always spoken out about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. And, obviously, in those speeches I think you're referring to, there were a lot of issues he covered."

REPORTER: "But why not weapons of mass destruction?"

McCLELLAN: "We're confident that we will uncover the full extent of the weapons of mass destruction programs."
However, it was McClellan's predecessor who revealed just how anxious the White House is to have Americans forget the administration’s original "sales pitch" for securing Congressional and public support—the direct threat posed by Iraq's WMDs. On July 2, in one of his final briefings as press secretary, Ari Fleischer quipped:
"I think that the burden, again, falls on the people who are criticizing the President here, for them to explain how and when Saddam Hussein destroyed [WMDs]."


posted by Frederick Maryland at 12:58 PM




Same chapter, on the next page...

Is it just me, or does it seem that whenever the rest of the political punditry is saying something is black, Slate is irritatingly dedicated to saying something completely different? 'No, that it's not black, it's actually purple and has two heads!' Lately, some of their anti-Dean screeds have made me wonder if they're underwritten by Friends to elect Kerry.

However, Slate maintains its role as compulsive contrarian with this piece on Bush's chances in 2004, post Saddam-capture, and gives a heads-up to Bush to watch out for Dean's next clever maneuver. While everyone is thinking that Bush will now have a cakewalk in 2004 and that the Dems should already begin to think of themselves as losers, Saletan points out that,

"We forget how quickly people forget. Problems, once solved, disappear. Voters take for granted what has been accomplished. Each success, initially framed by the president as an end in itself, is reframed by the challenger as a means to a further, unfulfilled end.
...
Dean seems to understand. "Our troops are to be congratulated on carrying out this mission with the skill and dedication we have come to know of them," he said this morning. "This development provides an enormous opportunity to set a new course and take the American label off the war. We must do everything possible to bring the U.N., NATO, and other members of the international community back into this effort. Now that the dictator is captured, we must also accelerate the transition from occupation to full Iraqi sovereignty."

Notice how Dean repeats every element of the 2000 Bush approach. Somebody other than the president—in this case, our troops—gets the credit. The mission becomes history. Capturing Saddam becomes a means to a more difficult end: getting the United Nations into Iraq, and getting the United States out.
...
It's clear from interviews Dean gave to reporters Saturday (written up in Sunday's Washington Post and New York Times) that he's repositioning himself as a more hawkish candidate in the general election. He was planning to claim that position tomorrow in a major foreign policy speech. Now he'll have maximum attention as he does so. Bush's aides would be unwise to assume that Dean can't make their latest triumph vanish into history. They should know."


Point taken. This is December 2003. Yes, if Saddam had been captured in fall of 2004, Dems would have been royally screwed. But, folks, it's only December 2003. The election is nearly a year away. A lot can happen in a year.

posted by Zoe Kentucky at 11:58 AM




Rumblings from the Other Trenches

David Frum aside, there's a lot of crankiness in the right-wing camp, and it's not just your usual malcontents. Many movement conservatives have been refusing to shut up and go along with the Bush agenda over the last year. These are the folks who built a movement, so they know about influencing things from the inside margins. That means that they also have no problem leaving presumed party loyalty aside to take some real potshots at Bush.

One very natural home for these irate folks is Pat Buchanan's mag, The American Conservative. Doug Bandow's recent cover article is a fine example of this. He riffs a lot about the crop of commentary about Bush-haters and rightly points out that "after spending eight years hating Clinton, conservatives who complain about the Bush-haters appear to be hypocrites." But his main point is:
George W. Bush enjoys neither royal nor religious status that would place him beyond criticism. Whether or not he is a real conservative, he is no friend of limited, constitutional government. And for that the American people should be very, very angry.
Insight magazine has also been airing these rumblings from the Right, publishing a four part series by disgruntled right-wing leaders who gathered "at a leadership session in Charlottesville, Va., organized by the Richard Norman Co., to decide how The Gipper's ideas can be restored today." This series includes the perennially disgruntled Howard Phillips, who left the GOP before Pat Buchanan, but still has a place at the movement table. The other pieces are from Don Devine, Brent Bozell, and David Keene, folks that GOP leaders don't want to piss off too much. Between pork-laden bills like the recent energy legislation, civil liberties issues and creation of big new "compassionate conservative" government programs, these folks are pretty aware of the fact that Bush is not acting much like a small government conservative.

In fact, this morning, I got another sign that this was for real. (And I'd bet good money that my signs are more reliable than Frum's.) The ACU is starting a new online conservative opinion journal, Conservative Battleline. The headline of the media advisory announcing the journal indicates the ACU's increasing frustration with the Bush administration: "NEW CONSERVATIVE MAGAZINE DECLARES INDEPENDENCE FROM GOP: Conservative Battleline Online To Speak For Limited Government Conservatives Against Big Government Right." On the substance, I look forward to reading them for civil liberties issues. For sport, I look forward to reading them in general.

posted by Helena Montana at 11:40 AM




Reading a Bit Too Much into This

Forget about Al Gore's endorsement of Howard Dean. According to former Bush speechwriter David Frum, the recent good news on the economic and Iraqi fronts indicates that the President is endorsed by an even higher authority:
My take on the capture of Saddam will appear in tomorrow’s National Post. I’ll post a link as soon as the Post has the story on line. For now, let’s say that while the President’s opponents have made much sport of the idea that God called George Bush to the presidency, it’s becoming increasingy difficult to doubt that God wants President Bush re-elected.


posted by Noam Alaska at 10:15 AM


Sunday, December 14, 2003


Saddam, Pol Pot, and Noriega

The capture of Saddam probably won't make a lot of difference to how things continue to unfold in Iraq. Of course it's good that he's out of power, but his regime had been demolished months ago. Still, even if his being in custody doesn't have a lot of directly practical significance, I'm glad to see it.

It reminds me of the death of Pol Pot a few years ago. I studied Cambodia quite a bit and traveled there in 1991 (when the war between the Khmers Rouges and the Hun Sen regime was still on) and then in 1994 (after the UN-supervised election that followed a cease-fire). When I saw photographs of Pol Pot's body in the newspaper, I was surprised to find that I was angry. It seemed to me that he had cheated justice, that he should have had to stand trial so that the millions who continue to suffer from his crimes, and the word at large, could make an official record of what he had done and say together that it was wrong.

So I'd be happy to see Saddam's many victims be able to have their day in court.

But I'm afraid that won't happen. Instead, the U.S. will keep control of Saddam's punishment. Maybe he'll be tried by military tribunal. If we're lucky, he'll be tried in U.S. federal court and put in a cell next to Manuel Noriega, in the burgeoning monsters-we-supported-in-the-Eighties-and-arrested-when-they-got-inconvient wing of some federal prison. A cell next door will be reserved for Osama, though he'll probably not be there long; if we catch him, he'll surely get the death penalty for 9/11.

posted by Arnold P. California at 6:41 PM



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