Image
Demagoguery
"Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth."

Franklin D. Roosevelt


Regular Reads
Eschaton
Tapped
Daily Kos
The Liquid List
Matthew Yglesias
Talking Points Memo
Slacktivist
James Wolcott
Michael Berube
Political Animal
How Appealing
MaxSpeak, You Listen!
Tbogg
TalkLeft
Rittenhouse Review
Neal Pollack
Suckful
Cursor
John Moltz
Southern Appeal
Nathan Newman
The Poor Man
NRO's "The Corner"
Pandagon
Wonkette
Legal Fiction
Sugar, Mr. Poon?
Carpetbagger Report
Balkinization
Happy Furry Puppy Story Time w/ Norbizness
This Is Not Over


Contact Us
Eugene Oregon
Noam Alaska
Helena Montana
Frederick Maryland
Zoe Kentucky
Arnold P. California


Mutual Admiration Society
DCCC's The Stakeholder
Abolish the Death Penalty
Busy Busy Busy
Uggabugga
New American Empire
Staunch Moderate
A La Gauche
The Moderate Voice
The Sneaky Rabbit
Bluegrassroots
Political Strategy
Cutting to the Chase
Acrentropy
The Blue Bus
American Monkey
Restless Mania
Your Right Hand Thief
Naked Furniture
Dimmy Karras
The Department of Louise
Torvus Futurus
HellaFaded
Live From the Nuke Free Zone
Proof Through the Night
No More Apples
Slapnose
PoliGeek
Irrational Bush Hatred
The Slugging Southpaw
I Voted for George
Nosey Online
Donna's Place
Schadenfreude
Resource.full
wordsimageslife
The Bully Pulpit
Lying Socialist Weasels
TJ Griffin
To The Barricades
Omni-Curious
Eat Your Vegetables
Stoutdem
Suddenly Routine
The Story So Far
Skimble
Marstonalia
The Lefty Directory
ZipSix
ReachM High Cowboy Network
John Hoke's Personal Asylum
Riba Rambles
The Bone
Fables of the Reconstruction
The Modulator
Planet Swank
Scoobie Davis Online
Single-Minded
World Phamous
The Good Life
Something's Got To Break
Upside-down Hippopotamus
Damfacrats 2004
The Fulcrum
BeatBushBlog
archy
Yankee From Mississippi
It's A Crock!
Red Wheelbarrow
Apropos of Nothing
Political Parrhesia
The Mahablog
Mousemusings
Restlessgeist
Galois
Muise in Gradland
American Leftist
Political Blog Directory
Boiled Meat
John Costello
Skydiver Salad
The Game & How We Played It
Soupie's BBQ and Daycare
Odd Hours
Nebraska Liberal
The American Street
Approximately Perfect


If you have linked to us and don't see your name, please send us an e-mail and we'll add you.


Recommendations
















Archives:


-- HOME --



This page is powered by Blogger. Why isn't yours?
Saturday, July 17, 2004


A Tragic Stat
 
As Eugene continues to update readers with his "Daily Darfur," I thought this dismal statistic might give a broader context to the overarching tragedy that is Africa -- from Harper's index:
Number of African countries in which the average life expectancy has declined since 1978 : 22


posted by Frederick Maryland at 1:16 PM


Friday, July 16, 2004


Even He Thinks Cheney's in Charge
 
From the official White House transcript of George W. Bush's remarks in Michigan on Tuesday:
The person who sits in the Oval Office will set the course of the war on terror and the direction of our economy. . . . Give me a chance to be your President and America will be safer and stronger and better.

No wonder this administration has been such an unmitigated disaster.  They haven't started yet.




posted by Arnold P. California at 9:08 PM




Safire's All Wet ... Again
 
Through the years, I have generally disagreed with Bill Safire -- but not always -- and, more significantly, I tended to think of him as a lucid and sensible commentator.  These days, however, Safire's op-eds seem to degenerate into rants that are a bit weak on analysis.  His most recent column, written about intelligence and Congressional oversight, was an example:
... the 9/11 commission staff assured us recently that repeated contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda (including the presence in Baghdad and Kurdistan of the reigning terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi), "did not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship."  This week, the Senate Intelligence Committee chimed in, saying these contacts "did not add up to an established formal relationship." (Italics mine.) 

Think about that. Do today's groupthinkers believe that Osama bin Laden would sit down with Saddam in front of the world's cameras to sign a mutual assistance pact, establishing a formal relationship? Terrorists and rogue states don't work that way. Mass killers collaborate informally, without a photo op, even secretly.
Safire can get playful with the word "formal" all he wants, but I suspect he knows (like most people) precisely what the 9/11 Commission was saying -- as far as the Bush team's allegations about an al Qaeda-Iraq 'relationship' are concerned, there's no there there.
Strange, considering how the nation's interest is riveted on this week's (Senate Intelligence Committee) report on our Iraqi intelligence mistakes, how little interest was shown in the Senate Intelligence Committee's extensive report on the terrorist attack on the U.S.S. Cole in October 2000, which cost the lives of 17 American sailors.
Well, gee, Mr. Safire.  Let's consider what might explain why one of those committee reports would draw more interest than the other.  One report is about the intelligence that justified a war in which 800+ have died.  The other report was about a terrorist attack in which 17 died.



posted by Frederick Maryland at 12:38 PM




Our Man in Baghdad

From the LA Times
After a second major car bombing in 24 hours, Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi vowed Thursday to "annihilate" militants and announced that his interim government was forming a new national security agency to fight the insurgency.
You mean "annihilate" like this? (via Atrios)
Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, according to two people who allege they witnessed the killings.

They say the prisoners - handcuffed and blindfolded - were lined up against a wall in a courtyard adjacent to the maximum-security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security centre, in the city's south-western suburbs.

They say Dr Allawi told onlookers the victims had each killed as many as 50 Iraqis and they "deserved worse than death".


posted by Eugene Oregon at 10:42 AM




Daily Darfur

The World Health Organization is warning that the world "must work urgently to prevent a health catastrophe"
"People are dying now because they are living in totally unsatisfactory conditions, but too many more could die in the coming weeks unless we prevent the lack of sanitation, malnutrition, shortage of clean water and the coming rains from combining into a recipe for death," WHO Director General Lee Jong Wook said in a statement.
John Prendergast, special adviser to the president of the International Crisis Group, says he seen evidence of ethnic cleansing in Darfur
I was not prepared for the far more sinister scene I encountered in a ravine deep in the Darfur desert. Bodies of young men were lined up in ditches, eerily preserved by the 130-degree desert heat.

The story the rebels told us seemed plausible: The dead were civilians who had been marched up a hill and executed by the Arab-led government before its troops abandoned the area the previous month. The rebels assert that there were many other such scenes.

Refugees in Chad claim people had been stuffed into wells by the Janjaweed to poison the water supply. We went looking for these wells and found them covered in sand, in what might be construed as an effort by the Sudanese regime to cover its tracks.
The ICG provides a list of aid and humanitarian organizations currently working in Darfur and Chad if you want to make a donation.

Medecins Sans Frontieres says those living in refugee camps are still not safe
The pro-government militias that drove them from their homes, massacred their family members and friends, and burnt their villages and fields to the ground, now surround them in Riyad. Almost every night militiamen sweep in on their horses to attack and kill, and they beat and rape women who forage for whatever wood, food, and water remains beyond the camp's periphery.
The Sudanese government and Janjaweed warlords are working hand-in-hand. Knight Ridder profiles Sheik Musa Hilal, a man the US has placed at the head of a list of warlords who could be held accountable for crimes against humanity.

Illinois Congressman Bobby Rush was arrested yesterday outside the Sudanese embassy. Political comedian and activist Dick Gregory will be arrested today and Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP, plans on being arrested sometime after July 25.

John Kerry spoke about Darfur during his speech to the NAACP
Finally, I believe in the value of American leadership in the world. Today, a massive humanitarian crisis is unfolding in Darfur, Sudan, where 300,000 people or more may die in the coming months. This administration must stop equivocating. These government sponsored atrocities should be called by their rightful name -- genocide. The government of Sudan and the people of Darfur must understand that America stands prepared to act, in concert with our allies and the UN, to prevent the further loss of innocent lives. The United States must lead the UN Security Council in sanctioning the planners and perpetrators of genocide and authorizing an international humanitarian intervention. As president, I will bring the full weight of American leadership to address this crisis and to promote the democratic hopes of people throughout Africa, Haiti and the Caribbean.
The Justice and Equality Movement is refusing to attend peace talks with Khartoum.

Finally, there are a few other blogs covering the issue. Check out The Passion of the Present, The Horn of Africa, and Darfur: A Genocide We Can Stop from Eric Reeves, who's "Unnoticed Genocide" op-ed in the Washington Post first alerted me to the situation.

posted by Eugene Oregon at 9:25 AM


Thursday, July 15, 2004


Let's play a new game!

Introducing Ethical Twister (TM)! Brought to you by your pal Tom Delay and his friends at the GOP Toy Co.!

Four on Ethics Panel Accepted Delay Money

Four of the five House ethics committee Republicans investigating Majority Leader Tom DeLay have accepted money in the past from the fund-raising operation involved in the complaint against him.

If only it were just a game!




posted by Zoe Kentucky at 8:55 PM




What May Keep Karl Rove Awake
 
A Republican polling firm has prepared a memo that could create more sleepless nights at the White House.  As Taegan Goddard's PoliticalWire.com reports:
Last week, Fabrizio McLaughlin and Associates, a GOP polling firm, released a strategy memo based on their recent Battleground State Survey that reveals undecided voters "are currently poised to break away from President Bush and to John Kerry."
More details right here.


posted by Frederick Maryland at 5:02 PM




Cool Contest

The DCCC is giving away 5 trips to the Democratic Convention to the bloggers who can raise the most money by July 23rd.

I'm not going to try and do this but if any of my co-bloggers want to sign-up, the rest of us will do everything we can to help you place in the top 5.

posted by Eugene Oregon at 1:42 PM




Bush and Broadway Both Love Revivals

During his briefing to reporters on Monday the 12th, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan reviewed President Bush's scheduled activities that day. He told reporters that Bush would go to Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and, once there, would observe centrifuge motors that Libya had purchased on the black market and, later, turned over to U.S. authorities. McClellan's remarks prompted this question:
REPORTER: How similar is this tour, component-wise, to what we saw with (Energy Secretary) Spencer Abraham on the tour a few months ago? Is it additional materials or the same things that have already been shown to the press through Spencer Abraham?

McCLELLAN: Well, I guess there are a couple shipments of materials that went from Libya to Oak Ridge -- one back in January, and another, I think, back in March. So I imagine -- I wasn't on that trip, so I don't know exactly what you saw on that trip, but I imagine it's similar to some of what you saw. But you all will be there to cover it and be able to make that determination on your own.
In other words, prepare yourselves to hear about the same damn materials that you heard about months ago. It's all about repetition, now isn't it?
REPORTER: Scott, if the President is comparing where we are now in the war on terror with where we were three years ago, isn't this really a campaign speech and not an official event?

McCLELLAN: He's the President of the United States regardless of the fact that we're in an election year, and he's talking about the approach that we've been taking over the last few years. There are, obviously, clear choices in the war on terrorism and how we wage that war on terrorism. I think the American people recognize that the President's most solemn obligation is their safety and security. And the President is going to continue talking about this highest of priorities ...
...even if it requires him to show reporters the same centrifuge equipment that Spencer Abraham showed them months before.

posted by Frederick Maryland at 1:10 PM




Hell Hath No Fury Like ...

Not that anyone needs to confirm just how nasty the right wingers are at WorldNetDaily.com, but this is the hateful "kicker" headline that WND is running for its story about the Senate's defeat of FMA (cloture):
Queerly Beloved
Hell hath no fury like a right-winger scorned.

posted by Frederick Maryland at 12:56 PM




Other Africa News

I've been so busy writing about Darfur that I've almost totally neglected other African developments (or at least Central African developments.)

Minority Rights Group International has documented that Pygmys in the forests of the Ituri and Kivu regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo are being subject to mass killings, acts of cannibalism, and systematic rape.

Uganda reports that it has captured Lord's Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony's most senior adviser.

LRA "soldiers" used axes and machetes to kill 11 members of one family, including a six-month-old baby boy, over the weekend.

The International Herald Tribune has a good article on Uganda's "night commuters" - children who leave their villages every night to sleep in towns for fear of being kidnapped by the LRA.

Former Rwandan finance minister Emmanuel Ndindabahizi was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the 1994 genocide.

Finally, the film "Hotel Rwanda" will premier at the Toronto Film Festival in September. It stars Don Cheadle as Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager who saved over a thousand Tutsis during the genocide. It also stars Nick Nolte and Joaquin Phoenix.

posted by Eugene Oregon at 12:23 PM




Redefining Marriage the FRC Way

The Family Research Council is plenty angry at the U.S. Senate, whose members voted 50-48 Wednesday against closing debate on the anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment. FRC's website reports on the vote with this headline: "50 Senators Invite Unelected Judges to Redefine Marriage."

The term "unelected" is a lot of inflammatory nonsense. When was the last time FRC and its allies disavowed a conservative ruling because it was issued by an unelected judge? In a broader sense, however, FRC's headline is reasonably accurate. The ruling last fall by the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts does have the effect of redefining marriage. I happen to support this redefinition, but I'm willing to acknowledge that "redefine" is a fair description of the impact that such court decisions will have.

But FRC is guilty of demagoguery by implying that it simply wants to preserve marriage just the way it is. Last September, FRC's website reported that its Massachusetts chapter would sponsor a summit at which religious leaders "will address why it is important to uphold the sanctity of traditional marriage" and stated the summit's purpose as one of forming a strong coalition "to protect and defend traditional marriage."

The reality? FRC and its conservative allies aren't fans of "traditional marriage" and would like to redefine marriage every bit as much as they claim some judges are doing. For proof, check out this link on FRC's homepage, posing the question: "What Is Covenant Marriage?"

Those who click on the link are taken to CovenantMarriage.com, a site that explains this "movement" to change or redefine the meaning of marriage. In its description, the operators of CovenantMarriage.com make it clear that what amounts to traditional marriage in America is part of what's wrong with the nation's culture:
The world views marriage as a legal contract between two or more individuals. Contracts are based on rights and responsibilities and are motivated by self-interests rather than on unconditional love. A legal contract is necessary to begin and likewise end a relationship. But a covenant is more than a contract. It is more than a legal document declaring a state of interdependence.

For the past 30 years, our nation has been wandering in the wilderness of "no-fault divorce" brought about by an acceptance of the view that marriage is simply a contract. During this time of aimless wandering, the church has found herself taking on the beliefs and practices of our culture rather than impacting our culture with the life-changing Word of God regarding marriage.
Yet covenant marriage is not simply a religious or ceremonial add-on to traditional marriage. The covenant marriage movement is trying to establish an alternate kind of marriage certificate that makes it more difficult for a couple to marry and harder, once married, to legally divorce. At least three states have already passed covenant marriage laws. The Georgia chapter of the Christian Coalition claims to be the source for the covenant marriage bill that was drafted in that state.

Alas, even as FRC and like-minded Religious Right groups explain their efforts as designed to "defend traditional marriage," they are, in fact, trying to change laws -- and already have in 3 states -- in ways that redefine marriage. Indeed, this website by a Canadian group advocating religious tolerance describes a covenant marriage law in Louisiana as having "created a parallel form of marriage."

posted by Frederick Maryland at 11:21 AM




Duh!

The Corner's K. Lo weighs in with a typically inane post on an NYT article on rumors that Cheney will be dropped from the ticket
DROPPING CHENEY [KJL]
A New York Times piece based on, it seems, just about nothing. The assignment editor was bored.
I guess the assignment editor at the Washington Post was bored too, since they also ran a story on it.

In fact, if K. Lo actually bothered to read either of the stories, she would have known that Dick Cheney himself brought the topic up in an interview to be aired on C-SPAN
President Bush has been "very clear he doesn't want to break up the team," Cheney said in a C-SPAN interview that will be broadcast Sunday.

There has been persistent speculation that Cheney would step down for political or health reasons.

"He's made his decision," Cheney said of Bush. "I've made mine. I suppose right now, because we're in the run up to the convention, people don't have much to talk about so you get speculation on that. It's normal. When we get to the convention, I think that'll put an end to it."
How does someone that lazy become an editor at the National Review?

Oh yea, because it's the National Review.

posted by Eugene Oregon at 10:47 AM




Maybe I Need to Move to DC

I live in Virginia and I just found out that it is an "open carry" state, meaning that it is perfectly legal for nutjobs to carry guns out in the open.

And the Virginia Citizens Defense League has been doing just that.

I feel safer already. Thanks, fellas.

posted by Eugene Oregon at 10:11 AM




Daily Darfur

Charles Rangle explains why he got himself arrested protesting the Sudanese embassy.

Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL) plans on getting himself arrested doing the same thing today.

Sam Brownback says the situation in Darfur is an irrefutable example of genocide and pledges that he will introduce a resolution condemning the Sudanese government and calling for international intervention.

Khartoum insists that what is happening is the result of age-old tribal conflicts
The crisis of Darfur is a "traditional tribal conflict" asserted, in Rabat Monday, the Sudanese ambassador in Morocco.

Ahmed Mekki Ahmed Yahya told a press conference that a "foreign campaign aims at politicising the problem," denying that "an ethnic cleansing" took place in the country.

He argued that "all tribes of African origin are Muslims," consequently, the government "can not proceed to cleansing against its own partisans."
That is nonsense. Muslims killing Muslims is still genocide, especially when only Black Muslims are being targeted and killed.

Amnesty International plans to launch a report on rape as a weapon of war in Darfur.

Jewish groups are holding vigils and raising money to stop the killing and help those in need in Darfur.

The UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs warns that the situation in Darfur is deteriorating and that Khartoum is putting "big pressure" on refugees to leave the camps and return to their villages.

Any attempt to impose sanctions on Sudan will be put off until at least next week.

The House and Senate agreed to $417 billion defense bill that includes $95 million in aid for Darfur - and $500 million to fight wildfires in the US. Are wildfires threatening to kill 300,000 people?

posted by Eugene Oregon at 9:40 AM


Wednesday, July 14, 2004


Three Blind Mice ... Six Sensible Senators

When the U.S. Senate declined today to close debate on the proposed, anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment, the final vote was 48 for "cloture," and 50 opposed. All but 3 Senate Democrats had the wisdom to reject this election-year pandering to the Religious Right:
The 3 Democrats Who Supported FMA*

Robert Byrd - WEST VIRGINIA
Zell Miller - GEORGIA
Ben Nelson - NEBRASKA
To hell with Zell. No surprise there. But it's sad that Sen. Byrd, on the one hand, didn't want to give Bush and company the authority to wage war against Iraq, but was more than willing to let them wage a propaganda war against gay people. Nelson is probably the second-biggest DINO in the Senate.

Only 6 Republicans were willing to buck their leadership to vote against cloture. They deserve a round of applause. They are:
The 6 Republicans Who Opposed FMA*

Ben Nighthorse Campbell - COLORADO
Lincoln Chafee - RHODE ISLAND
Susan Collins - MAINE
John McCain - ARIZONA
Olympia Snowe - MAINE
John E. Sununu - NEW HAMPSHIRE
* - This vote was on cloture; although this was not a precise up-or-down vote on FMA, reporters covering the vote essentially viewed the cloture vote as such, even though (as Arnold noted in this post) some senators supposedly said their vote should not be interpreted as such.

posted by Frederick Maryland at 5:22 PM




Spinning a Debacle

A friend raised an interesting tactical question about today's defeat of the FMA: why didn't the Democrats vote for cloture, so that the amendment could then go down to miserable defeat on the merits?

We're familiar with filibusters, which can hold up passage of a bill that 51 senators are prepared to vote for (or 50 plus the Vice President). And anyone who's been following the judge wars knows that under Senate rules, it takes 60 votes to cut off debate. In cases where legislation has majority support but not enough to invoke cloture, supporters routinely say that opponents are using procedural tricks to thwart democracy.

That's the case with a normal bill. But amending the Constitution requires a two-thirds vote in each House of Congress (technically, Congress "proposes" amendments, which become part of the Constitution upon ratification by three-quarters of the states). So in the case of the FMA, it actually takes fewer votes to end a filibuster (60) than to pass the amendment (67).

The cloture vote failed, 48-50. According to Kos, some of the senators who voted in favor of cloture said they would have voted against the amendment had the cloture vote succeeded. If that's correct, the FMA would have failed by more than 20 votes on an up-or-down vote, a devastating defeat in a body with only 100 members, six-year terms, and high incumbent retention rates. Also, Republicans would have seen 15-20% of their caucus abandon the President on the merits of this high-profile issue, rather than the six Republicans who voted against the caucus on a procedural vote.

This matters to the spinmeisters. Take this report on the vote from Reuters. Though it's apparent that the FMA doesn't have anywhere close to enough votes to pass, the reporter makes it sound as if it was foiled by some procedural wrinkle.
On 48-to-50 vote, proponents fell 12 short of the needed 60 to clear a Democratic procedural hurdle and move to a vote on passage of the proposed constitutional amendment.

[snip]

Three of 48 Democrats ended up voting to end their party's procedural hurdle while six of 51 Republicans broke ranks and voted to maintain it after a number of Republicans disagreed earlier this week over the wording of the proposed amendment.
I don't know anything about this reporter and have no reason to think his slant reflects a pro-FMA or anti-Democrat bias; he's probably just falling into the press's well-worn cliches about cloture votes without really thinking about the illogic.

Is that what happened to the Democrats? Were they just reflexively voting against cloture because that's what you usually do if you strongly oppose the underlying bill? If opponents had voted for cloture, then the article would have talked about the FMA's falling 20+ votes short rather than 12, and it wouldn't have enabled anyone to obfuscate the scale of the defeat by talking about procedural hurdles.

I can think of a couple of reasons besides inertia why the Dems might have decided to stick with a filibuster.

1. Maybe they thought there was a chance that the FMA would get a majority on an up-or-down vote and thought that it would be worse PR to have that happen: "Senate Majority Votes for Marriage Amendment," with the fact that it fell short of the necessary two-thirds appearing only in a subheadline. Even if the PR calculus were correct, it seems very unlikely that the Democratic leadership would have had so bad a count of prospective votes as to think the FMA might get a majority, so this seems an unlikely reason to oppose cloture.

2. Perhaps they didn't want to put Kerry and Edwards on the spot. You might have noticed that the 48-50 vote adds up to 98 senators. The Johns were on the campaign trail and missed the vote. They say they would have broken off campaigning and returned to D.C. if there had been a vote on passing the FMA. Not only might this have been logistically inconvenient, but they might have thought that actually voting against the FMA would be politically harmful, while abstaining from a vote on its passage would have dampened liberals' support for them. This seems more likely to me, though I can think of at least one Republican senator who's happy he didn't have to cast a vote on the merits (his initials are Arlen Specter).

Any other ideas?

posted by Arnold P. California at 4:51 PM




Fish in a Barrel

Whenever I'm am struggling to find something to post, I can always wander over to The Corner and find something to mock - like this e-mail someone sent to Sausage-Neck Goldberg
When the Starr report was made public, independents (like me) who usually lean to the right began to support the president. All the caustic criticism and the self righteous condemnation really turned me off.

These days I'm swinging in the opposite direction but for similar reasons. Michael Moore, the 911 Commission, the Intelligence Committee report - these things are making my blood boil.

I'll vote for the president, not because I think he's doing a great job, but because those [standing] against him disgust me.

I'm sure I'm not alone. maybe something to think about.
I find the idea that "independents" are reading the National Review to be laughable. But I find the idea that an "independent" who reads the National Review was so outraged by the anti-Clinton attacks that s/he actually began to support Clinton to be even more laughable.

But beyond that, I can understand how Michael Moore could turn you off, but how do you get outraged by the 9/11 Commission - and especially the Intelligence Committee report?

How dare the Intelligence Committee reveal that Bush's grounds for war were completely false! I hate facts! I'm voting for Bush!

posted by Eugene Oregon at 4:40 PM




A Quiet Revolt?

Charley Reese is a newspaper columnist who is syndicated through King Features, Inc. He can best be described as a conservative-cum-libertarian. His columns are not the polished sort; no one (not even his biggest fans) would ever use the word "eloquent" to describe what he has written.

All forms of taxation, he writes, are "coercive." Reese argues that both liberals and "the professional civil-rights crowd" are "not so keen on freedom." The idea that the U.S. can ever become energy independent, he insists, is simply a "myth."

Many of the people who read this blog have never read, and probably never will see, his columns. They tend to appear in medium- to small-sized newspapers that serve more rural regions of the country -- regions that gave George W. Bush a large majority of their votes in 2000.

In that election, not surprisingly, Reese supported Bush. Recently, a few different friends e-mailed me a column that Reese had written this May -- a column headlined "Vote for a Man, Not a Puppet." Some excerpts:
I have sadly come to the conclusion that President Bush is merely a frontman, an empty suit, who is manipulated by the people in his administration. Bush has the most dangerously simplistic view of the world of any president in my memory.

It's no wonder the president avoids press conferences like the plague. Take away his cue cards and he can barely talk. Americans should be embarrassed that an Arab king (Abdullah of Jordan) spoke more fluently and articulately in English than our own president at their joint press conference recently.

John Kerry is at least an educated man, well-read, who knows how to think and who knows that the world is a great deal more complex than Bush's comic-book world of American heroes and foreign evildoers. It's unfortunate that in our poorly educated country, Kerry's very intelligence and refusal to adopt simplistic slogans might doom his presidential election efforts.

... People who think of themselves as conservatives will really display their stupidity, as I did in the last election, by voting for Bush. Bush is as far from being a conservative as you can get. Well, he fooled me once, but he won't fool me twice.

It is not at all conservative to balloon government spending, to vastly increase the power of government, to show contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law, or to tell people that foreign outsourcing of American jobs is good for them, that giant fiscal and trade deficits don't matter, and that people should not know what their government is doing. Bush is the most prone-to-classify, the most secretive president in the 20th century. His administration leans dangerously toward the authoritarian.

... This election really is important, not only for domestic reasons, but because Bush's foreign policy has been a dangerous disaster. He's almost restarted the Cold War with Russia and the nuclear arms race. America is not only hated in the Middle East, but it has few friends anywhere in the world thanks to the arrogance and ineptness of the Bush administration.

... I will swallow a lot of petty policy differences with Kerry to get a man in the White House with brains enough not to blow up the world and us with it. Go to Kerry's Web site (www.johnkerry.com) and read some of the magazine profiles on him. You'll find that there is a great deal more to Kerry than the GOP attack dogs would have you believe.

... It would be good to have a man in the White House who has killed people face to face. Killing people has a sobering effect on a man and dispels all illusions about war.



posted by Frederick Maryland at 4:26 PM




Jack of One Trade

Sam Brownback has been very good on Darfur but, as the Carpetbagger explains, he is not very good at holding press conferences.

posted by Eugene Oregon at 2:00 PM




What Fox News Calls an "Easy Trap"

The blog PoliticalWire.com's quote of the day is most revealing -- a statement taken directly from an internal memo written by one of the "fair and (un)balanced" people over at FOX News. Check it out. Excerpts from this memo apparently first surfaced in a New York Times article.

I suspect that a top official at FOX News would have a different opinion of military casualties if the deaths occurred in, say, Mogadishu and the president were Clinton.

posted by Frederick Maryland at 1:02 PM




Data Shatters HHS's Wishful Thinking

According to today's New York Times, "Senior officials at the department (Health & Human Services) have been saying for weeks that they believe federal subsidies will induce more employers to continue providing drug benefits to retirees." But the Bush administration's HHS has been indulging in wishful thinking. As the newspaper reports:
New government estimates suggest that employers will reduce or eliminate prescription drug benefits for 3.8 million retirees when Medicare offers such coverage in 2006. That represents one-third of all the retirees with employer-sponsored drug coverage, according to documents from the Department of Health and Human Services.

No aspect of the new Medicare law causes more concern among retirees than the possibility that they might lose benefits they already have. Democrats are likely to cite the new estimates as evidence to support their contention that the new law will prompt some employers to curtail drug coverage for retirees, forcing them, in some cases, to rely on Medicare's leaner benefits.
A good 'ole fashioned bait-and-switch. And, most amazing of all, is the fact that AARP (supposedly the major organizational advocate for retirees) fell for it and supported this Bush proposal.

posted by Frederick Maryland at 12:48 PM




Nerd Crush #27 - Brendan Koerner

Because he can tell that I want to know the answer to questions like: Why Is Antifreeze So Delicious? Not only does he explain the basics:
Ethylene glycol is the ingredient that makes antifreeze tasty. Though colorless and odorless, the syrupy alcohol derivative—which is excellent at lowering the freezing points of vital engine fluids—has a sweet taste that jibes well with soda, juice, and other sugary beverages. As many concerned pet owners and parents are well aware, dogs, cats, and kids are prone to lap up puddles of antifreeze left on garage floors. Every year, 90,000 animals and 4,000 children ingest the toxic liquid; if not treated immediately, the consequences of the poisoning can include renal or cardiovascular failure, brain damage, and death.
But you also get the legislative update as well:
Oregon and California both require that antifreeze manufacturers add a bittering agent to their products, in order to make them unpalatable to pets and children (and, one would presume, potential murder victims). The city of Albuquerque, N.M., passed a similar measure in January, nicknamed "Scooby's Law" after a local golden retriever who was maliciously poisoned with antifreeze. And Congress is currently considering a bill, the Antifreeze Safety Act, that would mandate the addition of yucky-tasting denatonium benzoate to all antifreeze products containing more than 10 percent ethylene glycol.
All concluded with a bit of trivia from The Simpsons. (You'll have to read it to see what it is.) Swooning now.

posted by Helena Montana at 11:14 AM




Janklow Kills Someone ...

And we get to pay for it

A judge ruled Tuesday that former Rep. Bill Janklow was on duty when he caused a deadly accident, meaning taxpayers would be liable for civil damages in a wrongful-death lawsuit.

U.S. Magistrate Arthur Boylan ruled that the South Dakota Republican was on official business on Aug. 16 when he sped through a stop sign and crashed into motorcyclist Randy Scott.

Janklow, 64, was on his way home from official appointments when the accident occurred.

Boylan, ruling in St. Paul, Minn., concluded that the federal government should be listed as the defendant in the lawsuit filed by Scott's family members, who are from Minnesota.

I don't know about you, but when I'm on my home from work I'm not still "on duty." In fact, I'm "off duty" - that is why I'm on my way home.

posted by Eugene Oregon at 10:54 AM




Contre nous de la tyrannie/L'étendard sanglant est levé

I walk past a French restaurant every day on my way to work. Today, the street was blocked off and there were bottles of champagne holding down tarpaulin as workers put up temporary booths and tables in the street. I checked my watch: sure enough, Bastille Day.



I wanted to offer good wishes to the owner, but I decided it would be unpatriotic, so I refrained. It's too bad the French hate freedom so much.



(This poster says, in part, "Liberty, Equality, and Brotherhood--or Death.")



(By the way, this post's title is taken from the Marseillaise, the French national anthem. These lines mean: "Against us tyranny's bloody standard is raised.")

posted by Arnold P. California at 10:21 AM




Daily Darfur

Some members of Congress are seeking to declare a genocide in Darfur in hopes of spurring U.N. action
Also on Tuesday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers pushed for the U.S. Congress to declare genocide is occurring in Darfur, a step they said would pressure the United Nations to take action to protect Africans in the region from Arab militias.

Marauding government-backed militias known as Janjaweed have put hundreds of thousands of people at risk of death from starvation or illness as the rainy season approaches, U.S. officials say.

"While the world debates about what we should do, people continue to die in Darfur. It is time to end the debate and start saving lives," Sen. Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican just back from Darfur, said at a news conference.
You can read the text of the House resolution here.

Rep. Charles Rangel was arrested for blocking the entrance to the Sudanese embassy during a protest over Darfur.

Bush made some remarks on Darfur while signing the African Growth and Opportunity Act
I'm deeply concerned about the humanitarian and human rights crisis in Darfur, Sudan. For the sake of peace and basic humanity, I echo the sentiments of the Secretary of State. I call upon the government of Sudan to stop the Janjaweed violence. I call on all parties of the conflict to respect the cease-fire, to respect human rights, and to allow for the free movement of humanitarian workers and aid. The United States and the United Nations and the leadership of the African Union are working to bring relief to the suffering people of that region. America will continue to strongly support these efforts for peace.
The DCCC has the text of a Nancy Pelosi floor speech on Darfur
A genocide in the making demands the immediate attention of our government.
Sign the DCCC's petition

The tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees who have fled to Chad are overwhelming the region and using up vital resources.

Kofi Annan named Juan Mendez of Argentina as his special adviser on the prevention of genocide.

Finally, today is day 100 of the blog 100 Days of Rwanda. It began on April 6th and ran for 100 days to mirror the 100 days of genocide in 1994.

posted by Eugene Oregon at 9:45 AM




Fox News Memos

Wonkette has posted a bunch of internal memos written by Fox News chief John Moody - here are some examples of just how "fair and balanced" the network is

The president is doing something that few of his predecessors dared undertake: putting the US case for mideast peace to an Arab summit. It's a distinctly skeptical crowd that Bush faces. His political courage and tactical cunning are worth noting in our reporting through the day.

[edit]

The so-called 9/11 commission has already been meeting. In fact, this is the eighth session. The fact that former Clinton and both frmer and current Bush administration officials are testifying gives it a certain tension, but this is not "what did he know and when did he know it" stuff. Do not turn this into Watergate. Remember the fleeting sense of national unity that emerged from this tragedy. Let's not desecrate that.

[edit]

The events in Iraq Tuesday are going to be the top story, unless and until something else (or worse) happens. Err on the side of doing too much Iraq rather than not enough. Do not fall into the easy trap of mourning the loss of US lives and asking out loud why are we there? The US is in Iraq to help a country brutalized for 30 years protect the gains made by Operation Iraqi Freedom and set it on the path to democracy. Some people in Iraq don't want that to happen. That is why American GIs are dying. And what we should remind our viewers.

[edit]

More serious and more important is the US military's end of waiting game for Fallujah. If, as promised, the coalition decides to take Fallujah back by force, it will not be for lack of opportunities for terrorists holed up there to negotiate. Let's not get lost in breast-beating about the sadness of the loss of life. They had a chance.


posted by Eugene Oregon at 9:13 AM


Tuesday, July 13, 2004


Blogging a Dead Horse

Since Dick Cheney is out there stumping for Scott Paterno and saying things like

We need Scott Paterno in Washington to help us keep America moving forward with our strong economy, our values respected by government, and our nation well defended in a dangerous world. Scott has the good judgment and the common sense that you should expect in a congressman.

I just feel compelled to keep linking to this article from Paterno's campaign website

Anyone who has information that is damaging to Clinton's presidency has conveniently, and mysteriously, died. The list of Clinton dead makes Charlie Manson look like a petty criminal. Among those I haven't discussed is Luther Parks, and it illustrates most clearly what happens when you threaten Bill Clinton.

Parks was owed $81,000 from Clinton for providing security for the former Governor. He had kept a file about Clinton's dealings when he was providing security. After publicly threatening to talk if he wasn't paid, he was gunned down in Little Rock, Ark. by four or five assailants. His son was quoted as saying ". . . they had my father killed to save Bill Clinton."

That is what happens to people who threaten this president. They die, they die fast and they die before they can do any damage.

I also came across this paragraph which makes me think that Cheney's "Iraq and al Qaeda worked together" refrain is the result of some strange compulsion he has to make ridiculously misleading statements

Scott also understands the importance of having sensible, well qualified men and women serving on the federal courts -- judges who interpret the law instead of legislating from the bench. Those are the kinds of judges President Bush has nominated. Yet far too many of his nominees are being forced to spend months, or even years, waiting for hearings and for an up-or-down vote. A number are still being filibustered. Some aren't even given a hearing because individual senators -- including the one running for my job -- are standing in the way. That's unfair to judicial nominees, and it's an abuse of the constitutional process. Every nominee deserves a prompt up-or-down vote on the floor of the United States Senate.

Maybe Scott does understand that, but since he is running for a seat in the House, it doesn't really matter because he won't be voting on judicial nominees anyway.

So vote for Scott because he knows it's important to give every judge an up-or-down vote and elect him to the House where he'll never have an opportunity to cast those votes.

posted by Eugene Oregon at 4:41 PM




Two Candidates, Two Standards

In a post last week (July 7), I quoted from a Washington Post article to note that the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had vowed that his group would forcefully push for a Bush-Cheney victory in November because they were so outraged that John Kerry had selected a former trial lawyer as his running mate.

Hmmmm ... then what explains the Chamber's decision last month to endorse Republican Senate candidate Mel Martinez who is running to fill the seat being vacated by Florida Senator Bob Graham? Not only was Martinez a prominent trial lawyer, but, as the St. Petersburg Times has reported, he was president of the Academy of Florida Trial Lawyers and he also gave $20,000 to oppose a 1988 ballot initiative that would have capped damage awards.

Apparently, having been a trial lawyer doesn't count against you so long as you're willing to tow the Chamber's conservative line on taxes and related issues.

posted by Frederick Maryland at 3:57 PM




I Hate Polls - Part 17329

From the latest Washington Post poll

All in all, considering the costs to the United States versus the benefits to the United States, do you think the war with Iraq was worth fighting, or not?

Yes, worth fighting, STRONGLY 34%
Yes, worth fighting, SOMEWHAT 10%
No, not worth fighting, SOMEWHAT 12%
No, not worth fighting, STRONGLY 42%

Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling the situation in Iraq?

Approve 43%
Disapprove 55%

Yet

Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling the US campaign against terrorism?

Approve 55%
Disapprove 43%
DK/No opinion 2%

I guess people don't buy all that talk about Iraq being the "front line in the War on Terror" considering that they think Bush is doing a terrible job there but still approve of his handling of the campaign against terrorism.

Then there is this

Do you think the war with Iraq has or has not contributed to the long-term security of the United States?

Yes, GREAT DEAL 30%
Yes, SOMEWHAT 24%
No, has not 43%

So 54% of the people think the war in Iraq has made us safer - and 54% think it was not worth fighting.

Americans are very hard to please - or understand.

posted by Eugene Oregon at 2:17 PM




Why It Matters, Part 398

The FMA is up for debate this week--tomorrow, I believe. Putting aside the symbolism, the dignitary issues, and so on, here's yet another example of the practical consequences of legal inequality.
The long-time domestic partner of a World Trade Center victim should be given the opportunity to show she is entitled to a portion of a $530,000 award from the federal September 11th Victim Compensation fund, a Supreme Court justice in Brooklyn has ruled.

The lawsuit pitted the victim's domestic partner, Margaret Cruz, against the victim's closest relative, her brother, James P. McAneney.

[snip]

The plaintiff, Cruz, reported having lived with the victim, Patricia McAneney, for 19 years before she was killed.

[snip]

Cruz based her claim to a share of the award on the fact that fund administrators increased the award by about $250,000 after she filed information about her relationship with Ms. McAneney.

The initial fund award, after Mr. McAneney filed a claim, was $278,087. That amount was increased to $531,541 after Cruz filed a statement of interest.
If the amount was recalculated to reflect Cruz's relationship, then it would be particularly unfair to give the windfall to the estate. The state judge recognized this and directed the parties to try to find out from the administrators of the federal fund how they calculated the award.

The article's ending made me proud to be a member of this city's bar.
Cruz is represented by Eric Shimanoff of Kramer, Levin, Naftalis & Frankel, and Mr. McAneney by Susan Kalib, of Carter, Ledyard & Milburn. Both lawyers worked pro bono.
The firms around here have put in thousands of hours of pro bono time to help people deal with all of the legal fallout from the attack. One of the first tasks was to make special applications to have the victims declared dead, since of course no bodies were recovered. Not always pleasant work, and not always on the cutting edge of the law, but it often made a big difference to people who had enough to cope with already.

posted by Arnold P. California at 11:18 AM




Cheney: Take Your Own Advice

The most deceitful veep in American history is busy enhancing his reputation today in Pennsylvania and using his favorite issue (Iraq) to do it. Dick Cheney told a crowd that both senators on the Democratic presidential ticket "are criticizing the president for looking at the same information that they did and coming to the same conclusion (about the alleged threat from Iraq) that they did. If the president was right, and he was, then they are simply trying to rewrite history for their own political purposes."

John Kerry, John Edwards and the rest of the U.S. Senate may have seen the same final product of "intelligence" that Bush and Cheney saw. But Cheney and others in the Bush administration knew far more about how that intelligence was gathered, vetted and analyzed -- or not sufficiently analyzed, as was sometimes the case. In this New Yorker article from last fall, Seymour Hersh reported:
The point is not that the President and his senior aides were consciously lying. What was taking place was much more systematic -- and potentially just as troublesome.

Kenneth Pollack, a former National Security Council expert on Iraq, whose book "The Threatening Storm" generally supported the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein, told me that what the Bush people did was "dismantle the existing filtering process that for fifty years had been preventing the policymakers from getting bad information. They created stovepipes to get the information they wanted directly to the top leadership. Their position is that the professional bureaucracy is deliberately and maliciously keeping information from them.

"They always had information to back up their public claims, but it was often very bad information," Pollack continued. "They were forcing the intelligence community to defend its good information and good analysis so aggressively that the intelligence analysts didn't have the time or the energy to go after the bad information."

The Administration eventually got its way, a former C.I.A. official said. "The analysts at the C.I.A. were beaten down defending their assessments. And they blame George Tenet" -- the C.I.A. director -- "for not protecting them. I've never seen a government like this."
The irony is that it was Cheney who played a leading role in cherry-picking the intelligence that would make it into the administration's final case to Congress and the U.N. -- the same Cheney who is making this absurd and (surprise) deceptive argument today. As Hersh reported:
"The Vice-President saw a piece of intelligence reporting that Niger was attempting to buy uranium," Cathie Martin, the spokeswoman for Cheney, told me. Sometime after he first saw it, Cheney brought it up at his regularly scheduled daily briefing from the C.I.A., Martin said. "He asked the briefer a question. The briefer came back a day or two later and said, 'We do have a report, but there's a lack of details.'"

The Vice-President was further told that it was known that Iraq had acquired uranium ore from Niger in the early nineteen-eighties but that that material had been placed in secure storage by the IAEA, which was monitoring it. ... According to a former high-level C.I.A. official, however, Cheney was dissatisfied with the initial response, and asked the agency to review the matter once again. It was the beginning of what turned out to be a year-long tug-of-war between the CIA and the Vice-President's office.

As the campaign against Iraq intensified, a former aide to Cheney told me, the Vice-President's office, run by his chief of staff, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, became increasingly secretive when it came to intelligence about Iraq's WMDs. As with Wolfowitz and Bolton, there was a reluctance to let the military and civilian analysts on the staff vet intelligence.

... "There's so much intelligence out there that it's easy to pick and choose your case," the former aide told me. "It opens things up to cherry-picking."
On the surface, to those who have not read Hersch's articles (in other words, 99.995% of the public), Cheney's argument sounds reasonable. The Dems must counter-attack very quickly on this and not allow our frighteningly dishonest veep to muddy this issue.

posted by Frederick Maryland at 10:25 AM




Something I Don't Get

I'm a little confused by the conservative spin on "intelligence failures" in the wake of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report (The liberal spin is easy: It's the neocons' fault.) I think it goes something like this:
The intelligence agencies, and particularly the CIA, gave the President bad information. He put his faith in the quality of the CIA's work. Everything he said--about WMDs, Iraq-al Qaeda links, the ease of a postwar transition to a stable and democratic Iraq, and so on--was based on what the CIA told him. If anything he said has since turned out to be incorrect, the people to blame aren't the President or his advisors but those who gave him faulty intelligence. Based on what the President thought was true at the time, he made all the right decisions.
This is internally coherent; in other words, one might argue with the factual assertions, but if those assertions are correct, the argument is logically consistent and conceivably correct.

Here's what I don't get. If the administration had been misled by bad intelligence, wouldn't they stop repeating claims that have since been shown to be either flatly wrong or unsupported by reliable evidence? Yet administration officials, particularly Dick Cheney, are still going around asserting that, e.g., there's evidence that Saddam and al Qaeda were working together. Maybe they were innocent dupes of CIA zealots who wanted to get Saddam no matter what, but now that they know they were duped, shouldn't their public statements reflect what they now know to be the truth? Have the scales not fallen from their eyes (yes, I know that happened in Damascus, not Baghdad, but at least it's in the same neighborhood)?

It almost makes you think that the administration's repeated misstatements reflect something other than misplaced faith in the CIA.

As the President so memorably explained (video), "Fool me once, shame on--shame on you. Fool me--you can't get fooled again."

posted by Arnold P. California at 10:11 AM




Daily Darfur

Conditions in Darfur are so bad that even aid workers are beginning to fall sick. Others are warning

"We don’t have the capacity to address the basic minimum needs," she continued, adding that the available aid was "nowhere near sufficient to address the immediate concerns of the population, let alone the deteriorating situation over the next few months".

The director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's Committee on Conscience says

We do not need to know more in order to act. Genocide is a real and present threat in Darfur.

Let the lawyers write their memos and have their intriguing legal discussions of what constitutes evidence for "intent to destroy." But don't wait to act while they are doing so. Canada, the United States, the European Union, the African Union, the Arab League and the entire United Nations need no further legal advice. All they need is political will.

The time for action in Darfur is now.

Sudan's foreign minister threatens that any attempt at imposing sanctions on the country will only make matters worse by complicating cooperation between Khartoum and international aid organizations.

Meanwhile, Colin Powell says Sudan's government is not doing enough to end the crisis in Darfur and is urging the UN to get ready to act against Khartoum if it fails to rein in the Janjaweed.

Khartoum claims that it has so far taken 46 Janjaweed fighters in custody

"Tens of Janjaweed militias have been apprehended in the last few days and they will be brought to justice," Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail told reporters here.

That's right: "tens." You can see just how serious they are.

posted by Eugene Oregon at 9:33 AM




The Newest al Qaeda Link




posted by Frederick Maryland at 9:26 AM




Senator Box Turtle

Last Thursday, freshman Republican Senator John Cornyn (R-Tex.) delivered a speech to the Heritage Foundation on the issue of gay marriage, which is scheduled to come to a vote this week. Under a box labeled "clarification" on page A2 of today's Washington Post, the newspaper notes that the excerpt it printed from Cornyn's speech was only in the senator's printed text and was not actually spoken by Cornyn.

Clarifications such as this one are generally the result of a telephone call by someone ona senator's staff. If you had read the excerpt in Monday's Post (not available on the website), you might understand why the senator' staff was embarrassed and why even Cornyn may have had second thoughts about speaking these ridiculous words:
"It does not affect your daily life very much if your neighbor marries a box turtle. But that does not mean it is right .... Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife."


posted by Frederick Maryland at 9:02 AM


Monday, July 12, 2004


Shock and Awful

One effect of the increase in the number of citizens who don't quite trust this administration is the rising suspicion that the Republicans will try to steal or improperly manipulate the election. Of course, events like the planned (and now retracted) Florida (shout-out to Jeb) felon purge, which conveniently left Hispanic felons on voter rolls and excluded thousands of African-American nonfelons, adds to the cynicism (in Florida, Hispanics tend to vote Republican, and African-Americans overwhelmingly vote Democrat). Everything from electronic voting machines to new voter ID requirements to Florida-style purges has been suggested as--depending on the writer--possible, likely, or certain sources of scullduggery (or is that SkullandBonesduggery? With Kerry also an S&B alum, the appellation doesn't seem to fit).

Anyhow, the latest election-manipulating mechanism is the possibility that the administration will try to postpone the election if Bush looks like losing, citing terrorist activity as a pretext. As much as I don't trust these guys, it is worth considering what we would do if there were genuine interference with the election.

Professor Rick Hasen's excellent election law blog has two posts (here and here) on the subject today, with links to the comments of other academics (I recommend Ned Foley's e-mail contribution in particular). Hasen makes some good points, particularly regarding (a) the need to agree on rules in advance (anyone who lived through Florida 2000 can understand why); (b) the need for the rules to give as little discretion as possible to election officials (ditto); and (c) the need for the decision to rest somewhere other than the White House, an obviously interested party, or the Dep't of Homeland Security, which the White House controls.

Hasen reports an emerging cyber-consensus that an attack that "merely" causes widespread shock and grief shouldn't disrupt the election schedule; only an attack that makes it physically difficult or impossible for people to cast their votes or for the votes to be counted should trigger any kind of change in the process. (For instance, I voted in the New York primary election on the morning of September 11, 2001; that election was postponed and redone a few weeks later, over no one's objection). In the context of a national election, even that standard raises some difficult questions: if a 9/11-type attack happened here and in DC again on Election Day, should the election be postponed everywhere, or just in NYC and DC? and if the latter, what happens to the very common-sense legal requirement that the presidential election be held on the same day in all states?

posted by Arnold P. California at 5:48 PM




Knock Yourself Out

From the Washington Times

President Bush has decided that excoriating Democrats for blocking his judicial nominees is a potent political strategy that he will exploit in both the presidential race and congressional elections.

I hope that he makes it an issue just so that I can keep pointing out this

Reagan - Judges Confirmed During First Term: 164
Bush I - Judges Confirmed During First Term: 194
Clinton - Judges Confirmed During First Term: 202
GW Bush - Judges Confirmed During First Term: 198

Reagan - Percentage of Nominees Confirmed During First Term: 88%
Bush I - Percentage of Nominees Confirmed During First Term: 73%
Clinton - Percentage of Nominees Confirmed During First Term: 81%
GW Bush - Percentage of Nominees Confirmed During First Term: 88%

And now for a purely technical complaint - the Times concludes the above-mentioned article with this paragraph

Out of the 254 nominees sent by the Bush administration to the Senate, nearly 200 have been confirmed. Six nominees to the circuit court have been denied confirmation votes; two of those nominees were subsequently appointed by Mr. Bush during a Senate recess, but have yet to be confirmed. Dozens more have been stalled in the Judiciary Committee.

Bush has not sent 254 nominees to the Senate, he has sent 254 nominations. At the end of the 107th, 30 nominations were returned and Bush re-nominated them in the 108th. Bush has only nominated 224 individuals, but has 254 nominations because of the 30 renominations.

It makes a difference because 198 confirmations out of 254 nominations gives a misleading impression that Bush had a confirmation rate of 78%, which is well below the actual confirmation rate of 88%.

posted by Eugene Oregon at 1:47 PM




A Postscript on Paterno

As Eugene noted in this post, Vice President Cheney will be campaigning this week in Pennsylvania and will make a joint appearance with GOP congressional candidate Scott Paterno, son of the well-known Penn State football coach.

Eugene quoted from a post that our fellow blogger Arnold had made some time ago, detailing the younger Paterno's allegation in a college-era column that Bill Clinton was guilty of contract murders -- 56 murders, to be precise.

Paterno has portrayed many of his college columns as youthful exuberance gone overboard. Yet Paterno is only 31, and his college-era columns were written 7-8 years ago. One might otherwise be willing to cut him a break, but, on Paterno's website, the closest thing to an 'apology' he offers is this arrogant statement:
"I do not regret my columns so much as I disagree with some of the positions I took in them."
So what are we to conclude from this? That he knows he falsely accused someone of murder, but he doesn't regret making such an outrageous allegation? Very lame.


posted by Frederick Maryland at 11:38 AM




The Silly Season

Sometime in the summer, Britain enters the "silly season," when Parliament is in hiatus and there is so little real news that political reporters end up covering lots of pointless but titillating stories.

Anyway, this summer, the political conventions are looking like they'll provide Americans with plenty of silliness. The latest is the Dems' decision to have Ron Reagan speak at the convention in Boston (take that, Zell Miller!). It's not as if the junior Reagan shares his father's politics, so he can't rationally be seen as anointing Kerry & Edwards as his father's successors, which would be a ludicrous claim anyway. But he's not significant enough in his own right to merit a spot at any meaningful event. He'll be there solely because of his parentage and solely for symbolic purposes that shouldn't make an ounce of difference to a rational voter.

Then again, I suppose Maria Shriver will be at the GOP convention to support her husband when he speaks, so if the Republicans can have a Kennedy onstage, why can't the Democrats get a Reagan?

posted by Arnold P. California at 11:35 AM




Another Meaningless Bush Promise

An editorial in today's San Diego Union-Tribune:
Four years ago, presidential candidate George Bush declared that the common-sense federal ban on assault weapons should remain on the books, saying "It makes no sense for assault weapons to be around our society."

President Bush has the opportunity to use the power of his office to ensure that the statute, enacted in the wake of a shooting spree in San Francisco's financial district 11 years ago, does not expire as scheduled on Sept. 13.

Last month, a presidential spokesman said that Bush still supports the assault weapons ban, but is waiting for the House to act. An aide to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., added that were the president to push for the ban it would probably be reauthorized. The aide conceded, however, that without word from the White House, the chances for passage are remote.

The president's critics contend that Bush is trying to have it both ways on this politically contentious issue. They claim that while the president pays lip-service to congressional reauthorization of the ban, he is counting on House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, to see to it that the measure never makes it to a floor vote. This cynical speculation is supported by DeLay's repeated boasts to do precisely that.

DeLay's defiance is consistent with his carrying water for the National Rifle Association ... Never mind that the ban is favored by the public at large, as well as every former president from Gerald Ford.

In 1994, former President Ronald Reagan, supporting the ban when it was making its way through Congress, wrote, "While we recognize that assault weapon legislation will not stop all assault weapon crime, statistics prove that we can dry up the supply of these guns, making them less accessible to criminals. We urge you to listen to the American public and to the law enforcement community and support a ban on the further manufacture of these weapons."

So much for the NRA's contention that Reagan never supported the ban. To the contrary, while a deeply divided Congress was debating this issue a decade ago, Reagan placed numerous calls to undecided House members urging them to approve the measure.

President Bush could make a single phone call to Speaker Hastert and put an end to the procedural game-playing that is preventing the reauthorization of the assault weapons ban from coming to a vote.



posted by Frederick Maryland at 11:30 AM




Demagogue Redux

In honor of the fact that Dick Cheney will be making a campaign appearance in support of Scott Paterno, I'm reposting this post Arnold made three months ago

One of the few things Paterno has accomplished in his 31 years on the planet is writing a series of op-eds for the college newspaper in the mid-90s. Among his columns celebrating collegiate drug and alcohol abuse was an endorsement of the wingnut theory that Bill Clinton was a serial killer.

Anyone who has information that is damaging to Clinton's presidency has conveniently, and mysteriously, died. The list of Clinton dead makes Charlie Manson look like a petty criminal. Among those I haven't discussed is Luther Parks, and it illustrates most clearly what happens when you threaten Bill Clinton.

Parks was owed $81,000 from Clinton for providing security for the former Governor. He had kept a file about Clinton's dealings when he was providing security. After publicly threatening to talk if he wasn't paid, he was gunned down in Little Rock, Ark. by four or five assailants. His son was quoted as saying ". . . they had my father killed to save Bill Clinton."

That is what happens to people who threaten this president. They die, they die fast and they die before they can do any damage.

[edit]

OK, we all have youthful indiscretions, so maybe he's turned over a new leaf. Except that the Clinton-is-a-murderer column is posted on Paterno's official campaign website.

I guess Paterno needs all the help he can get because, aside from being a complete idiot, polls show him trailing Rep. Tim Holden by 40 points.

posted by Eugene Oregon at 10:52 AM




Daily Darfur

Relief workers say that local authorities in Darfur are sending the message that hundreds of thousand of internally displaced refugees may soon be "forced" to return home and that any forced return would result in enormous fatalities.

Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) leader John Garang, set to become Sudan's first vice-president under a planned accord ending the 21-year war between the north and south, says "There's no way you can make peace for southern Sudan while you also make war in Darfur" and pledges to stop it.

Newsweek has an article on Darfur that suggests that Garang may have orchestrated the rebellion in Darfur as a negotiating tactic in his own dealings with Khartoum.

The Boston Globe says "a slow-motion genocide has been taking place [in Darfur] while the rest of the world either pretends not to notice or finds excuses for refusing to intervene."

Sudan and Chad have agreed to deploy a joint force along their border provided that Sudan first disarms the Janjaweed.

Sudanese officials have accused the SLM/A and JEM of abducting a key tribal leader and two other prominent figures in North Darfur.

Italian authorities finally granted permission to a ship carrying 37 refugees - many from Darfur - to dock after it had been forced to wander the Mediterranean for three weeks.

posted by Eugene Oregon at 9:22 AM



Weblog Commenting by HaloScan.com