The (Editorial) Thief

Climate Change vs Mother Nature: Scientists reveal that bears have stopped hibernating

2006-12-21T10:43:00.000-06:00

Bears have stopped hibernating in the mountains of northern Spain, scientists revealed yesterday, in what may be one of the strongest signals yet of how much climate change is affecting the natural world.
In a December in which bumblebees, butterflies and even swallows have been on the wing in Britain, European brown bears have been lumbering through the forests of Spain's Cantabrian mountains, when normally they would already be in their long, annual sleep.
Bears are supposed to slumber throughout the winter, slowing their body rhythms to a minimum and drawing on stored resources, because frozen weather makes food too scarce to find. The barely breathing creatures can lose up to 40 per cent of their body weight before warmer springtime weather rouses them back to life.
But many of the 130 bears in Spain's northern cordillera - which have a slightly different genetic identity from bear populations elsewhere in the world - have remained active throughout recent winters, naturalists from Spain's Brown Bear Foundation (La Fundaci�n Oso Pardo - FOP) said yesterday.
The change is affecting female bears with young cubs, which now find there are enough nuts, acorns, chestnuts and berries on thebleak mountainsides to make winter food-gathering sorties 'energetically worthwhile', scientists at the foundation, based in Santander, the Cantabrian capital, told El Pais newspaper.
'If the winter is mild, the female bears find it is energetically worthwhile to make the effort to stay awake and hunt for food,' said Guillermo Palomero, the FOP's president and the co-ordinator of a national plan for bear conservation. This changed behaviour, he said, was probably a result of milder winters. 'The high Cantabrian peaks freeze all winter, but our teams of observers have been able to follow the perfect outlines of tracks from a group of bears,' he said."

I Love Carl Sagan

2006-12-20T19:56:00.000-06:00

Introductions are so hard. Do I begin with the guilt I am feeling for writing such an 'off the cuff' piece, meant to honor a man, who brought all the facts in my head together into one logical view. Maybe, I begin with the an anecdote concerning the miracle of life, and tie it back to a famous quote, book, or theory of his. Then again, maybe I should just continue to ramble.

I read "Cosmos" during high school. I dragged a chair to the river, cleared some brush (which took more than one day) plopped the chair down, and read it over the next few weeks. It was summer, the river was flooded and came up to my feet. The solitude was refreshing, and not in the way growing up in a small town can't be. When you first realize how truly lonely we are in this universe your feelings of despair, loneliness, and aimlessness: well, they sort of float down the river.

One might be inclined to think that learning of our universal solitude might make depression sink in a little more. But, Sagan had a way of turning our infinitesimally small human ability into a beacon of pulsar hope and supernovae light. He made me marvel in my own existence and intelligence.

Did you know Komodo dragons can reproduce without sexual activity. Yeah, thats right, they can fertilize their own eggs; virgin dragons if you will. Literally. Mary has nothing on dragons. In "The Dragons of Eden" he illuminates so many quirks and foibles of life and evolution it is enough to leave your head spinning. From the evolution of the forebrain in mammals from birds from reptiles from fish, to the inability of the right eye to understand what the lefthand is drawing in patients who have undergone hemisphere removal, and the theories of recapitulation. Oh my.

Before Sagan the knowledge I obtained was all strewn about on a plane. After Sagan, that plane gained dimension, and I saw the world for what it was: round. I can't continue, there is simply too much to say of the man and his writings, and I have to work early. I LOVE YOU CARL!

Stanley Crouch: MTV, still clueless after all these years

2006-08-08T00:20:00.001-05:00

Last week, MTV celebrated its 25th anniversary, marking a quarter of a century after having conceived of the first actually new thing in popular television entertainment since "American Bandstand" and "Soul Train."
The music video became a big deal through MTV and not only updated the old "soundies" once shown in movie theaters to feature singers and instrumentalists. It also revolutionized the making of films by acclimating its audience to the extremely fast crosscutting that had been pioneered in television commercials, where the faster the message arrived, the better. In the process, the MTV audience learned to see much more quickly and recognize what sometimes quite surreal montages were saying or what they were alluding to - no small accomplishment.

Of course, that is not the whole story of MTV, which also came to project the most dehumanizing images of black people since the dawn of minstrelsy in the 19th century. Pimps, whores, potheads, dope dealers, gangbangers, the crudest materialism and anarchic gang violence were broadcast around the world as "real" black culture.

At first, far too many black people were taken in by the cult of celebrity and the wealth that came to these gold- toothed knuckleheads and mindless hussies to realize what was happening. The lowest possible common denominator was seen as the norm. The illiteracy and rule-of-thumb stupidity was interpreted as a "cultural" rejection of white middle-class norms.

It was as if these dregs had the same heroic position in our time as the largely uneducated Southern black poor of the civil rights movement. Those Southern black people, like the marvelous Fannie Lou Hamer, proved to this nation and to the world that they not only deserved their constitutional rights, but had something both noble and soulful to add to our American understanding of the richness of the human spirit. We are a much greater nation because of the success of the civil rights movement. As they emerged from beneath the bloody rock of segregation, those Southern black people brought to our national identity a compassion and a bravery of immeasurable value.

Unfortunately, the crabbed thug culture that was popularized through MTV brought nothing big with it other than some paychecks.

Twenty-five years later, Christina Norman is the president of the network - and a black woman with a new problem on her hands. Part of that problem is Lisa Fager, a black woman who is president and co-founder of Industry Ears (industryears.com). Fager is disturbed by an MTV "satire" called "Where My Dogs At?" which has a cartoon figure strongly resembling Snoop Dogg who enters a pet store with two black women walking on all fours with leashes around their necks. At the end of the "parody," they defecate on the floor.

Fager's problem is that the spot was shown at 12:30 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon and will, no doubt, perpetuate among younger viewers the misogynist and dehumanizing images we have become accustomed to in too many rap videos.

That's the way big money goes. We can be sure that Christina Norman will have a simplemindedly liberal justification for the material, but I doubt that Lisa Fager will want to hear it. Nor will the millions of black women who oppose this kind of material and are beginning to rise into the sorts of positions that will make them an influential special-interest group. I don't know how long it will take, but change is on the way.

Stanley Crouch: MTV, still clueless after all these years

2006-08-08T00:20:00.000-05:00

Look out Gallup, Harris and Zogby -- it's Sean Hannity!

2006-07-24T13:45:00.000-05:00

It's no secret to anyone who's accidentally tuned into the Hannity & Colmes show on Fox News and thought they stumbled across an over-the-top Saturday Night Live sketch, that Sean Hannity doesn’t have a real firm grasp on reality. I mean, this is the same man who once offered a liberal guest the Hobson's choice of "Is it that you hate this president or that you hate America?"

Hannity's also been known to claim that the Constitution doesn't say anything about the separation of church and state and, in a May 2004 edition of his television show, asked a clergyman if they could "pray for the re-election of George Bush."

So it didn’t really surprise me today when I went to Hannity's web site and saw a poll on the front page that asked his erudite fans "What do you think about WMD's being found in Iraq?" This is on his main page right now, not four years ago.

Note to Sean: You may want to stop praying for Bush and give him a call with this news. I'm sure he'll be happy to hear it.

Hannity started college but never finished -- he didn't drop out to join the military either -- so it looks like he never got to take a statistics class where one might learn about clean survey methodology, because the choices given to his viewers and listeners on the WMD question are, well, I'll just show you.......

Bush Snubs Science in Deference to Snowflakes: Margaret Carlson

2006-07-23T22:15:00.000-05:00

July 20 (Bloomberg) -- The day before Tuesday's U.S. Senate
vote backing embryonic stem-cell research, Republican Sam
Brownback appeared with several Snowflakes, the name given to
children born from frozen embryos. It was a lovely tableau, proof
of the wisdom of kissing every baby on the campaign trail.
With polls showing a large majority of Americans favoring
federal funds for such research, Snowflakes are the last redoubt
of a minority of a minority within the Republican Party adamantly
opposed to it.
President George W. Bush mounted a similar pageant at the
White House before a House vote in May 2005 to expand federal
funding, his little guests wearing T-shirts saying, ``This embryo
was not discarded.''
That's true for his T-shirt-wearing visitors and about 125
others born of ``adopted'' embryos, those left after couples
undergoing fertility treatments have had their children and no
longer need the extra embryos produced as backup. Yet they're a
fraction of those approximately 400,000 unimplanted specks --
with the feelings, soul and brains of a gnat -- at clinics across
the country that the Senate bill would rescue for research.
Bush yesterday exercised his first-ever veto to stop that
from happening, an action that spokesman Tony Snow explained was
motivated by a conviction that ``murder's wrong.''
No argument there. But if salvaging a few embryos to be used
in research is murder, what is the production of thousands of
embryos destined for destruction?"
Big Lies

Bush and Senator Rick Santorum, a Pennsylvania Republican, along with Brownback of Kansas, the most ardent exponent of Bush's view, would have us believe the extra embryos are lovingly and humanely kept in perpetuity. They know that isn't so, just as everyone knows their other claims are big lies: that the stem cell lines in use at the time of Bush's August 2001 decision to limit federal funding for research would be enough for scientists to proceed, and that adult stem cells are just as useful.

Bush ignores what is happening to embryos left over from in vitro fertilization. No politician wants to commit political suicide by taking on infertile yuppies. In fact, the president went out of his way to praise IVF in the speech announcing his policy in 2001.

I don't want the president to shut down fertility clinics because they're committing murder. I want him to open the door to stem-cell researchers because they aren't. I want him to acknowledge that my brain-damaged brother is as worthy as any infertile couple of being rescued by an embryo. Instead, he chooses to favor one over the other with no recognition of the contradiction.

Not the Money

It can't be that one uses federal funds and the other doesn't. Leaving aside that hospitals doing in vitro fertilization treatments get federal funds, and some insurance plans pay for it, if it's really murder we're talking about, the issue can't be who's paying for it.

Fertility treatments get a pass and always will, until that day when the photo-op of a grandmother with Alzheimer's can compete with the baby born of a frozen embryo, like the little one Santorum kept clutching in the anteroom of the Capitol on Tuesday.

Santorum fears slippery slopes. So, you moral ninny, the reasoning goes, you think embryonic stem-cell research is OK? Well what about pregnancies induced for research? What about cloning Dolly the Sheep? Britney Spears? Well, he didn't go there but his argument is so shaky, he might as well have.

Still Waiting

I called Santorum's office to find out if his fierce protection of embryos makes him want to regulate fertility clinics, especially now with Bush's charge of murder. I was told someone would get back to me. When I called again, I was promised an answer by 3 p.m. yesterday. I'm waiting.

The atmosphere on the Senate floor during the vote was strikingly congenial compared to three weeks ago when Republicans accused Democrats of ``cutting and running'' in Iraq. They're lucky that Democrats no longer recognize a winning issue when they have one and are happy to welcome them into the fold, including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist.

As a physician and a prospective presidential candidate, Dr. Frist found himself on a political respirator after becoming the congressional doctor of record for Terri Schiavo, the brain- damaged Florida woman who was maintained on life-support against her husband's wishes. Frist finally broke with the president and returned to his original belief that embryonic stem-cell research holds the best hope for the medical breakthroughs that only occur with federal backing. It may not save his political life, but it may eventually save others.

Next Year

Senator Arlen Specter, a warrior for stem-cell research, spoke minutes before the vote. When challenged earlier by Brownback to say when life begins, Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, said he didn't know, but he said he didn't believe it started in a Petri dish. Specter -- his hair just returning after chemotherapy for Hodgkin's lymphoma -- said he was ``a lot more concerned at this point about when my life is going to end.''

At the White House yesterday, Bush again surrounded himself with Snowflakes as he vetoed the legislation. The House of Representatives failed to override his rejection of the bill last night, so the Senate won't bother to act.

The fight isn't over. Four Republican senators who voted with Bush -- Mike DeWine of Ohio, Jim Talent of Missouri, Conrad Burns of Montana and Santorum -- are in tough re-election races. If they all lose, Specter will have enough votes to override a Bush veto next year. Holding an hourglass with the sands of time running out as he spoke, Specter was a picture as compelling as any Snowflake. He'll get this done, if it's the death of him.

All the News That's Fit to Bully - New York Times

2006-07-09T19:41:00.000-05:00

By FRANK RICH
TWO weeks and counting, and the editor of The New York Times still has not been sentenced to the gas chamber. What a bummer for one California radio talk-show host, Melanie Morgan, who pronounced The Times guilty of treason and expressly endorsed that punishment. She and the rest of the get-the-press lynch mob are growing restless, wondering why newspapers haven't been prosecuted under the Espionage Act. 'If Bush believes what he is saying,' taunted Pat Buchanan, 'why does he not do his duty as the chief law enforcement officer of the United States?'
Here's why. First, there is no evidence that the Times article on tracking terrorist finances either breached national security or revealed any 'secrets' that had not already been publicized by either the administration or Swift, the Belgian financial clearinghouse enlisted in the effort. Second, the legal bar would be insurmountable: even Gabriel Schoenfeld, who first floated the idea of prosecuting The Times under the Espionage Act in an essay in Commentary, told The Nation this month that the chance of it happening was .05 percent.
But the third and most important explanation has nothing to do with the facts of the case or the law and everything to do with politics. For all the lynch mob's efforts to single out The Times %u2014 'It's the old trick, go after New York, go after big, ethnic New York,' as Chris Matthews put it %u2014 three papers broke Swift stories on their front pages. Even in this bash-the-press environment, the last spectacle needed by a president with an approval rating in the 30's is the national firestorm that would greet a doomed Justice Department prosecution of The Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times.
The administration has a more insidious game plan instead: it has manufactured and milked this controversy to reboot its intimidation of the press, hoping journalists will pull punches in an election year. There are momentous stories far more worrisome to the White House than the less-than-shocking Swift program, whether in the chaos of Anbar Province or the ruins of New Orleans. If the press muzzles itself, its under-the-radar self-censorship will be far more valuable than a Nixonesque frontal assault that ends up as a 24/7 hurricane veering toward the Supreme Court.

Will this plan work? It did after 9/11. The chilling words articulated at the get-go by Ari Fleischer (Americans must "watch what they say") carried over to the run-up to the Iraq war, when the administration's W.M.D. claims went unchallenged by most news organizations. That this strategy may work again can be seen in the fascinating escalation in tactics by the Bush White House's most powerful not-so-secret agent in the press itself, the Wall Street Journal editorial page. The Journal is not Fox News or an idle blogger or radio bloviator. It's the establishment voice of the party in power. The infamous editorial it ran on June 30 ("Fit and Unfit to Print"), an instant classic, doesn't just confer its imprimatur on the administration's latest crusade to conflate aggressive journalism with treason, but also ups the ante.

The editorial was ostensibly a frontal attack on The Times, accusing its editors of not believing America is "really at war" and of exercising bad faith in running its report on the Swift operation. But an attack on The Times by The Journal's editorial page is a shrug-inducing dog-bites-man story; the paper's conservative editorialists have long dueled with a rival whose editorials usually argue the other side. (And sometimes the Times opinion writers gleefully return the fire.) What was groundbreaking and unsettling about the Journal editorial was that it besmirched the separately run news operation of The Journal itself.

By any standard, The Journal is one of the great newspapers in the world, whether you agree with its editorials or not. As befits a great newspaper, its journalists are fearless in pursuit of news, as tragically exemplified by Daniel Pearl. Like reporters at The Times, those at The Journal operate independently of the paper's opinion pages. Witness The Journal's schism during the Enron scandal. Its editorial page belittled the scandal's significance most of the way, resisting even mild criticisms of Enron (it was "partly a victim of its own success") until it filed for bankruptcy. The dearly departed Ken Lay, after all, was the leading Bush financial patron; to the Journal editorialists, the "Clintonian moral climate" of the 1990's was a root cause of Enron's problems. Meanwhile, The Journal's investigative reporters had gone their own way months earlier, helping unearth the scandal. So much so that Mr. Lay tried to argue his innocence in the spring by testifying that a "witch hunt" by the paper's reporters had more to do with his company's demise than he did.

It was a similarly top-flight Journal reporter, Glenn Simpson, who wrote his paper's Swift story. But the Journal editorial page couldn't ignore him if it was attacking The Times for publishing its Swift scoop on the same day. So instead it maligned him by echoing Tony Snow's official White House line: The Journal was merely following The Times once it knew that The Times would publish anyway. As if this weren't insulting enough, the editorial suggested that the Treasury Department leaked much of the story to The Journal and that a Journal reporter could be relied upon to write a "straighter" account more to the government's liking than that of a Times reporter.

This version of events does not jibe with an e-mail sent by The Journal's own Washington bureau chief, Gerald Seib, on the day the Swift articles ran. "I was surprised to see your news story about the New York Times 'scoop' on the government program to monitor international bank transactions," Mr. Seib wrote to Joe Strupp of the trade publication Editor & Publisher. "As you could tell from the lead story on the front page of The Wall Street Journal today, we had the same story. Moreover, we posted it online early last evening, virtually at the same time The Times did. In sum, we and The Times were both chasing the story and crossed the finish line at the same time — and well ahead of The Los Angeles Times, which posted its story well after ours went up."

In other words, The Journal's journalists were doing their job with their usual professionalism. But by twisting this history, the Journal editorial page was sending an unsubtle shot across the bow, warning those in the newsroom (and every other newsroom) that their patriotism would be impugned, as The Times's had been, if they investigated administration conduct in wartime in ways that displeased the White House.

Any fan of The Journal's news operation expects it to stand up to this bullying. But the nastiness of the Journal editorial is a preview of what we can expect from the administration and all of its surrogates this year. In "The One Percent Doctrine," the revelatory book about wartime successes and failures now (happily) outpacing Ann Coulter at Amazon.com, the former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind explains just how tough it is for a reporter in this climate: "to report about national affairs and, especially, national security in this contentious period demands at least a spoonful of disobedience — a countermeasure to strong assurances by those in power that the obedient will be rewarded or, at the very least, have nothing to worry about."

The trouble is we have plenty to worry about. For all the airy talk about the First Amendment, civil liberties and Thomas Jefferson in the debate over the Swift story and the National Security Agency surveillance story before it, there's an urgent practical matter at stake, too. Now more than ever, after years of false reports of missions accomplished, the voters need to do what Congress has failed to do and hold those who mismanage America's ever-expanding war accountable for their performance in real time.

As George Will wrote in March, all three members of the "axis of evil" — Iraq, Iran and North Korea — are "more dangerous than they were when that phrase was coined in 2002." So is Afghanistan, which is spiraling into Taliban-and-drug-lord anarchy, without nearly enough troops or other assistance to secure it. On the first anniversary of the London bombings, and on a surging wave of new bin Laden and al-Zawahiri videos, the two foremost Qaeda experts outside government, Peter Bergen and the former C.I.A. officer Michael Scheuer, both sounded alarms that contradict the insistent administration refrain that the terrorists are on the run.

We can believe instead, if we choose to, that all is well and that the press shouldn't question our government's account of how it is winning the war brilliantly at every turn. (The former C.I.A. analytical chief, Jami Miscik, decodes this game in "The One Percent Doctrine": the administration tells "only half the story, the part that makes us look good," and keeps the other half classified.) We can believe that reporters, rather than terrorists, are the villains. We can debate whether traitorous editors should be sent to gas chambers or merely tarred and feathered.

Or we can hope that the press will rise to the occasion and bring Americans more news we can use, not less, at a perilous time when every piece of information counts.

George W. Bush Is Dead To Me

2006-07-08T16:48:00.000-05:00

Nation cringes as the worst president ever continues long, painful slog to the end
by Mark Morford
It is like some sort of virus. It is like some sort of weird and painful rash on your face that makes you embarrassed to walk out the door and so you sit there day after day, waiting for it to go away, slathering on ointment and Bactine and scotch. And yet still it lingers.
Some days the pain is so searing and hot you want to cut off your own head with a nail file. Other days it is numb and pain-free and seemingly OK, to the point where you think it might finally be all gone and you allow yourself a hint of a whisper of a positive feeling, right up until you look in the mirror, and scream.
George W. Bush is just like that.
Everyone I know has had enough. Everyone I know is just about done. There is this threshold of happy deadened disgust, this point where the body simply resigns itself to the pain, a point where the disease, the poison has seeped so deeply into the bones that you just have to laugh and shrug it all off and go for a drink. Or 10.
I was having cocktails recently with a group of people, among whom were two lifetime Republicans, each in his 60s, corporate businessmen, one admittedly slightly more moderate than the other (to the point where, after once hearing a senator read off a long list of Bush's hideous environmental atrocities, actually let his conscience lead his choice and ended up voting for Kerry) but nevertheless both devoted members of the party.
Bush came up, as a topic, as a cancer, as a fetid miasma in the air. They were both shaking their heads. They were sighing heavily. They were both, in a word, disgusted. The more staunchly conservative of the two even went so far as to say he was so embarrassed and humiliated by this president, by this administration, so appalled at all the war atrocities and the wiretapping and the misuse of law, the fiscal irresponsibility and the abuse of the lower classes and the outright arrogance, that if the Dems could somehow produce a decent moderate candidate with a brain, he'd have zero problem switching allegiances and voting for him. Or her."
It may not sound like much. It may not seem like a major shift. But it is, in its way, sort of massive. For thoughtful Repubs with a conscience (they actually exist, I have seen them), there is little left to defend. There is little this administration has done among all categories of ostensible GOP values that they can look to with any sort of pride. Medicare? Shrinking the budget? Smaller government? Less intervention in our lives? Reduced spending? Increased respect in the international community? Responsible international citizen? Ha. Name your topic, BushCo has failed. Spectacularly. Intentionally.

Indeed, countless Dems were disappointed with Clinton's behavior during Monicagate. Many were ashamed that he would cheapen the office so badly by such trashy moral behavior.

But that was just a cheap little affair (our allies never understood all the fuss anyway). This was never the attitude toward Clinton's politics, his capacity to understand complex issues, his astounding political savvy. No one anywhere doubted he made the country richer, more environmentally conscious, more stable, more respected and admired. Clinton was globally adored not only for his charisma but for his contributions to world peace. Plus he could actually point to Afghanistan on a map.

What a difference a handful of years makes. Now, overseas, we are a joke. A threat. A toxin. We are considered reckless and arrogant and ignorant, dangerous not just to the rest of the world but to the overall health of the planet. No one anywhere understands how a man like Bush can be the leader of the Free World, stolen election or no.

Sure, smarter Europeans know full well that the United States is deeply divided between the pseudo-religious right-wing warmongers who control a tiny cadre of the powerful elite, and, well, everyone else. It does not matter. America's reputation as a powerful and respected diplomatic peacekeeper, as the nation that sets the standards for human rights and economic freedom and choice, is hobbled. Crippled. Is very nearly dead. How quickly can we recover? How much damage has been done? History will tell, and it will be ugly indeed.

Interesting feature interview with Al Gore in Rolling Stone recently. Gore mentions two amazing things: one is the discussion he's had with generals regarding Iraq, with one coming right out and admitting that Bush's disastrous Iraq war will go down as the worst invasion in American history, our greatest misstep, our most costly and debilitating mistake. Among top brass in the know, of this there is little question.

The other was about the discussions Gore's had with various major corporate CEOs about Gore's pet issue, global warming, and how obvious it is that 15 minutes after BushCo leaves office, we will have a radically new global warming policy. In other words, Bush won't do a thing about it in the next two years, despite how obvious it shall become that we are in crisis, simply because he can't risk finally coming out and admitting yet another enormous policy disaster. Not to mention how nearly six years of enviro policy abuse, from air quality to water to forestry to pollution deregulation on all his industrial pals, can't be undone with a smirk and a prayer.

Which is just another way of saying we are currently stuck. We are swirling around the bottom of the drain, clinging on to anything that might hold us from going under for just a little while longer. We have to let the neocon disease run its course, and just pray that at the end of it all the scarring and the pain and damage will not be so permanent, and so hideous, that we can't be seen in public for a decade.

This is where it stands: Bush can in no way risk alienating the ultra-right-wing bonk-job contingent that put him in office (they are, considering Bush's 32-percent approval rating, the only ones left even remotely supporting him -- even though, according to many estimates, they're starting to abandon him, too), and hence all policy and all agenda items from here on out will be even more vicious and desperate in an attempt to shore up the base. Hence trying to mutilate the Constitution to ban gay marriage. Hence attacking the New York Times and claiming newspapers are endangering American lives.

In other words, Bush's latest nasty, Rove-designed salvos and upcoming attacks to save a sliver of power and pride and sneering GOP control are just the beginning.

However -- praise Jesus and pass the scotch -- they are the beginning of the end.

The Treason Card - New York Times

2006-07-07T13:36:00.000-05:00

By PAUL KRUGMAN
The nature of the right-wing attack on The New York Times an attack not on the newspaper's judgment, but on its motives seems to have startled many people in the news media. After an editorial in The Wall Street Journal declared that The Times has what amount to treasonous intentions that it 'has as a major goal not winning the war on terror but obstructing it' The Journal's own political editor pronounced himself 'shocked,' saying that 'I don't know anybody on the news staff of The Wall Street Journal that believes that.'
But anyone who was genuinely shocked by The Journal's willingness to play the treason card must not have been paying attention these past five years.
Over the last few months a series of revelations have confirmed what should have been obvious a long time ago: the Bush administration and the movement it leads have been engaged in an authoritarian project, an effort to remove all the checks and balances that have heretofore constrained the executive branch.
Much of this project involves the assertion of unprecedented executive authority %u2014 the right to imprison people indefinitely without charges (and torture them if the administration feels like it), the right to wiretap American citizens without court authorization, the right to declare, when signing laws passed by Congress, that the laws don't really mean what they say.
But an almost equally important aspect of the project has been the attempt to create a political environment in which nobody dares to criticize the administration or reveal inconvenient facts about its actions. And that attempt has relied, from the beginning, on ascribing treasonous motives to those who refuse to toe the line. As far back as 2002, Rush Limbaugh, in words very close to those used by The Wall Street Journal last week, accused Tom Daschle, then the Senate majority leader, of a partisan 'attempt to sabotage the war on terrorism.'
Those of us who tried to call attention to this authoritarian project years ago have long marveled over the reluctance of many of our colleagues to acknowledge what was going on. For example, for a long time many people in the mainstream media applied a peculiar double standard to political speech, denouncing perfectly normal if forceful political rhetoric from the left as poisonous "Bush hatred," while chuckling indulgently over venom from the right. (That Ann Coulter, she's such a kidder.)

But now the chuckling has stopped: somehow, nobody seems to find calls to send Bill Keller to the gas chamber funny. And while the White House clearly believes that attacking The Times is a winning political move, it doesn't have to turn out that way — not if enough people realize what's at stake.

For I think that most Americans still believe in the principle that the president isn't a king, that he isn't entitled to operate without checks and balances. And President Bush is especially unworthy of our trust, because on every front — from his refusal to protect chemical plants to his officials' exposure of Valerie Plame, from his toleration of war profiteering to his decision to place the C.I.A. in the hands of an incompetent crony — he has consistently played politics with national security.

And he has done so with the approval and encouragement of the same people now attacking The New York Times for its alleged lack of patriotism.

Does anyone remember the editorial that The Wall Street Journal published on Sept. 19, 2001? "So much for Florida," the editorial began, celebrating the way the terrorist attack had pushed aside concerns over the legitimacy of the Supreme Court decision that installed Mr. Bush in the White House. The Journal then warned Mr. Bush not to give in to the "temptation" to "subjugate everything else to the priority of getting bipartisan support for the war on terrorism." Instead, it urged him to use the "political capital" generated by the atrocity to push through tax cuts and right-wing judicial appointments.

Things have changed since then: Mr. Bush's ability to wrap his power grab in the flag has diminished now that most Americans no longer consider him either competent or honest. But the administration and its supporters still believe that they can win political battles by impugning the patriotism of those who won't go along.

For the sake of our country, let's hope that they're wrong.

The Road From K Street to Yusufiya - New York Times

2006-06-26T14:11:00.000-05:00

By FRANK RICH
AS the remains of two slaughtered American soldiers, Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker and Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, were discovered near Yusufiya, Iraq, on Tuesday, a former White House official named David Safavian was convicted in Washington on four charges of lying and obstruction of justice. The three men had something in common: all had enlisted in government service in a time of war. The similarities end there. The difference between Mr. Safavian's kind of public service and that of the soldiers says everything about the disconnect between the government that has sabotaged this war and the brave men and women who have volunteered in good faith to fight it.
Privates Tucker and Menchaca made the ultimate sacrifice. Their bodies were so mutilated that they could be identified only by DNA. Mr. Safavian, by contrast, can be readily identified by smell. His idea of wartime sacrifice overseas was to chew over government business with the Jack Abramoff gang while on a golfing junket in Scotland. But what's most indicative of Mr. Safavian's public service is not his felonies in the Abramoff-Tom DeLay axis of scandal, but his legal activities before his arrest. In his DNA you get a snapshot of the governmental philosophy that has guided the war effort both in Iraq and at home (that would be the Department of Homeland Security) and doomed it to failure.
Mr. Safavian, a former lobbyist, had a hand in federal spending, first as chief of staff of the General Services Administration and then as the White House's chief procurement officer, overseeing a kitty of some $300 billion (plus $62 billion designated for Katrina relief). He arrived to help enforce a Bush management initiative called 'competitive sourcing.' Simply put, this was a plan to outsource as much of government as possible by forcing federal agencies to compete with private contractors and their K Street lobbyists for huge and lucrative assignments. The initiative's objective, as the C.E.O. administration officially put it, was to deliver 'high-quality services to our citizens at the lowest cost.'
The result was low-quality services at high cost: the creation of a shadow government of private companies rife with both incompetence and corruption. Last week Representative Henry Waxman, the California Democrat who commissioned the first comprehensive study of Bush administration contracting, revealed that the federal procurement spending supervised for a time by Mr. Safavian had increased by $175 billion between 2000 and 2005. (Halliburton contracts alone, unsurprisingly, went up more than 600 percent.) Nearly 40 cents of every dollar in federal discretionary spending now goes to private companies.
In this favor-driven world of fat contracts awarded to the well-connected, Mr. Safavian was only an aspiring consigliere. He was not powerful enough or in government long enough to do much beyond petty reconnaissance for Mr. Abramoff and his lobbying clients. But the Bush brand of competitive sourcing, with its get-rich-quick schemes and do-little jobs for administration pals, spread like a cancer throughout the executive branch. It explains why tens of thousands of displaced victims of Katrina are still living in trailer shantytowns all these months later. It explains why New York City and Washington just lost 40 percent of their counterterrorism funds. It helps explain why American troops are more likely to be slaughtered than greeted with flowers more than three years after the American invasion of Iraq.

The Department of Homeland Security, in keeping with the Bush administration's original opposition to it, isn't really a government agency at all so much as an empty shell, a networking boot camp for future private contractors dreaming of big paydays. Thanks to an investigation by The Times's Eric Lipton, we know that some two-thirds of the top department executives, including Tom Ridge and his principal deputies, have cashed in on their often brief service by becoming executives, consultants or lobbyists for companies that have received billions of dollars in government contracts. Even John Ashcroft, the first former attorney general in American history known to immediately register as a lobbyist, is selling his Homeland Security connections to interested bidders. "When you got it, flaunt it!" as they say in "The Producers."

To see the impact of such revolving-door cronyism, just look at the Homeland Security process that mandated those cutbacks for New York and Washington. The official in charge, the assistant secretary for grants and training, is Tracy Henke, an Ashcroft apparatchik from the Justice Department who was best known for trying to politicize the findings of its Bureau of Justice Statistics. (So much so that the White House installed her in Homeland Security with a recess appointment, to shield her from protracted Senate scrutiny.) Under Henke math, it follows that St. Louis, in her home state (and Mr. Ashcroft's), has seen its counterterrorism allotment rise by more than 30 percent while that for the cities actually attacked on 9/11 fell. And guess what: the private contractor hired by Homeland Security to consult on Ms. Henke's handiwork, Booz Allen Hamilton, now just happens to employ Greg Rothwell, who was the department's procurement chief until December. Booz Allen recently nailed a $250 million Homeland Security contract for technology consulting.

The continuing Katrina calamity is another fruit of outsourced government. As Alan Wolfe details in "Why Conservatives Can't Govern" in the current Washington Monthly, the die was cast long before the storm hit: the Bush cronies installed at FEMA, first Joe Allbaugh and then Michael Brown, had privatized so many of the agency's programs that there was little government left to manage the disaster even if more competent managers than Brownie had been in charge.

But the most lethal impact of competitive sourcing, as measured in human cost, is playing out in Iraq. In the standard narrative of American failure in the war, the pivotal early error was Donald Rumsfeld's decision to ignore the advice of Gen. Eric Shinseki and others, who warned that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to secure the country once we inherited it. But equally reckless, we can now see, was the administration's lax privatization of the country's reconstruction, often with pet companies and campaign contributors and without safeguards or accountability to guarantee results.

Washington's promises to rebuild Iraq were worth no more than its promises to rebuild New Orleans. The government that has stranded a multitude of Americans in flimsy "housing" on the gulf, where they remain prey for any new natural attacks the hurricane season will bring, is of a philosophical and operational piece with the government that has let down the Iraqi people. Even after we've thrown away some $2 billion of a budgeted $4 billion on improving electricity, many Iraqis have only a few hours of power a day, less than they did under Saddam. At his Rose Garden press conference of June 14, the first American president with an M.B.A. claimed that yet another new set of "benchmarks" would somehow bring progress even after all his previous benchmarks had failed to impede three years of reconstruction catastrophes.

Of the favored companies put in charge of our supposed good works in Iraq, Halliburton is the most notorious. But it is hardly unique. As The Los Angeles Times reported in April, it is the Parsons Corporation that is responsible for the "wholesale failure in two of the most crucial areas of the Iraq reconstruction — health and safety — which were supposed to win Iraqi good will and reduce the threat to American soldiers."

Parsons finished only 20 of 150 planned Iraq health clinics, somehow spending $60 million of the budgeted $186 million for its own management and administration. It failed to build walls around 7 of the 17 security forts it constructed to supposedly stop the flow of terrorists across the Iran border. Last week, reported James Glanz of The New York Times, the Army Corps of Engineers ordered Parsons to abandon construction on a hopeless $99.1 million prison that was two years behind schedule. By the calculation of Representative Waxman, some $30 billion in American taxpayers' money has been squandered on these and other Iraq boondoggles botched by a government adhering to the principle of competitive sourcing.

If we had honored our grand promises to the people we were liberating, Dick Cheney's prediction that we would be viewed as liberators might have had a chance of coming true. Greater loyalty from the civilian population would have helped reduce the threat to American soldiers, who are prey to insurgents in places like Yusufiya. But what we've wrought instead is a variation on Arthur Miller's post-World War II drama, "All My Sons." Working from a true story, Miller told the tragedy of a shoddy contractor whose defectively manufactured aircraft parts led directly to the deaths of a score of Army pilots and implicitly to the death of his own son.

Back then such a scandal was a shocking anomaly. Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration, the very model of big government that the current administration vilifies, never would have trusted private contractors to run the show. Somehow that unwieldy, bloated government took less time to win World War II than George W. Bush's privatized government is taking to blow this one.

Access for Sale

2006-06-26T14:03:00.000-05:00

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, June 26, 2006; 1:00 PM
It's not exactly breaking news that money buys access in Washington. But it's always worth noting who's selling what and for how much -- especially when the White House is involved.John Solomon writes for the Associated Press: 'Wanted: Face time with President Bush or top adviser Karl Rove. Suggested donation: $100,000. The middleman: lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Blunt e-mails that connect money and access in Washington show that prominent Republican activist Grover Norquist facilitated some administration contacts for Abramoff's clients while the lobbyist simultaneously solicited those clients for large donations to Norquist's tax-exempt group.'Those who were solicited or landed administration introductions included foreign figures and American Indian tribes, according to e-mails gathered by Senate investigators and federal prosecutors or obtained independently by The Associated Press. . . .'A Senate committee that investigated Abramoff previously aired evidence showing Bush met briefly in 2001 at the White House with some of Abramoff's tribal clients after they donated money to Norquist's group.'The 2002 e-mail about a second White House meeting and donations, however, was not disclosed. The AP obtained the text from people with access to the document.'The tribes got to meet Bush at the White House in 2002 again and then donated to Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, or ATR.'In another instance, Norquist made 'a special effort -- at Abramoff's request -- to introduce a British businessman and an African dignitary to Rove at another ATR event in summer 2002.'The White House response? 'The White House said Rove was unaware that Norquist solicited any money in connection with ATR events in both 2001 and 2002 that brought Abramoff's tribal clients and others to the White House.'

We Need Chloe! - New York Times

2006-06-24T19:54:00.000-05:00

You'd think Michael Chertoff would have something more important to do.
The hapless homeland security chief could snatch more money away from American locales most likely to be hit by Al Qaeda. Or let another wonderful city fall into a watery abyss. Or go on TV and help cable news hype the saga of the Miami gang of terrorist wannabes who look like they couldn't find the local Sears, let alone the Sears Tower.
These guys were so lame they asked an informant for boots, radios, binoculars, uniforms and cash, believing he was Al Qaeda %u2014 and that jihadists need uniforms.
Instead, the cadaverous Chertoff was gallivanting on stage yesterday morning with some fictional counterterrorism experts from '24.' The producers, writer and three actors from the Fox show appeared at an event sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center.
Drawing on his old scripts, Mr. Reagan was a master at mixing fiction and fact, but he was a piker compared with the Bush crowd.
The audience included Clarence Thomas and his wife, Ginny, who held a dinner at the Supreme Court Thursday for the Tinseltown terror brigade. Rush Limbaugh, who said that Dick Cheney and Rummy were huge fans of '24,' was master of ceremonies for the panel, titled, ' '24' and America's Image in Fighting Terrorism: Fact, Fiction or Does It Matter?'
It doesn't in this administration.
Better to have a panel in praise of Jack Bauer than admit we have no real Jack Bauers to find Osama and his murderous acolytes. Better to pretend that rounding up a bunch of Florida losers whose plan was more "aspirational than operational," as one F.B.I. official put it, is a great blow in the war on terror than to really turn our intelligence agencies and Homeland Security into the relentless, resourceful and fearsome organizations they are in fiction — and should be, given the billions spent on them.

Lulled by our spy thrillers and Tom Clancy novels, we used to take for granted that our intelligence agencies were just as capable as heroes on the screen. Jack Ryan, either the Harrison Ford, the Alec Baldwin or even the Ben Affleck version, could have gotten Osama single-handedly in the two hours allotted.

Even though they still haven't captured the fiend behind 9/11, W. and Dick Cheney still blend fact and fiction by using 9/11 to justify their wrongheaded venture in Iraq.

As the vice president told CNN's John King this week, when he was asked about his claim that "we would be greeted as liberators" in Iraq: "It does not make any sense for people to think that somehow we can retreat behind our oceans, leave the Middle East, walk away from Iraq, and we'll be safe and secure here at home. 9/11 put the lie to that."

In a macabre metric of improvement, Dr. Death also noted that things were looking up. "There are a lot more Iraqis becoming casualties in this conflict at present because they are now in the fight," he said cheerily.

Some of W.'s closest allies have begun privately calling Vice "an absolute disaster," but when will W. realize how twisted his logic is?

In the new book "The One Percent Doctrine," Ron Suskind writes that C.I.A. officials referred to Mr. Cheney as "Edgar," as in Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, and that W. had to ask his domineering second to pull back a little at meetings and not offer him advice in crowded rooms so they could continue to pretend that Mr. Cheney was not the puppet-master.

On the homeland security set, Mr. Chertoff, flanked by the actors who play the beautiful technogeek Chloe and President Logan, seemed a little fuzzy about whether the fancy technology on "24" exists.

He noted, "One thing you don't see on '24' is when the computer's crashing and having to get the I.T. people to come in to reboot and get the computer working again." Given that the F.B.I. is struggling to get a computer system that can simultaneously search for "flight" and "schools," his answer was not all that funny.

Asked about the slashing of anti-terrorism money given to New York, he replied that "we've put a lot of extra money into northern New Jersey." (Wow, I feel better already.)

Mr. Limbaugh slyly suggested the producers give Jack Murtha a cameo as K.G.B. chief. He praised "24" for giving torture a good name.

This past season, the show began exploring what happens when a Nixonian president becomes so obsessed with national security that he starts undermining the country's laws.

That's the kind of fiction you hate to see become fact.

Truthdig - An Atheist Manifesto

2006-05-23T19:54:00.000-05:00

Editor's Note: At a time when fundamentalist religion has an unparalleled influence in the highest government levels in the United States, and religion-based terror dominates the world stage, Sam Harris argues that progressive tolerance of faith-based unreason is as great a menace as religion itself. Harris, a philosophy graduate of Stanford who has studied eastern and western religions, won the 2005 PEN Award for nonfiction for The End of Faith, which powerfully examines and explodes the absurdities of organized religion. Truthdig asked Harris to write a charter document for his thesis that belief in God, and appeasement of religious extremists of all faiths by moderates, has been and continues to be the greatest threat to world peace and a sustained assault on reason.
An Atheist Manifesto
Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind is not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of 6 billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girl s parents believe at this very moment that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this?
No.
The entirety of atheism is contained in this response. Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle. The obvious must be observed and re-observed and argued for. This is a thankless job. It carries with it an aura of petulance and insensitivity. It is, moreover, a job that the atheist does not want.
KEEP READING...

Will the Real Traitors Please Stand Up? - New York Times

2006-05-14T08:00:00.000-05:00

Beginnng: WHEN America panics, it goes hunting for scapegoats. But from Salem onward, we've more often than not ended up pillorying the innocent. Abe Rosenthal, the legendary Times editor who died last week, and his publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, were denounced as treasonous in 1971 when they defied the Nixon administration to publish the Pentagon Papers, the secret government history of the Vietnam War. Today we know who the real traitors were: the officials who squandered American blood and treasure on an ill-considered war and then tried to cover up their lies and mistakes. It was precisely those lies and mistakes, of course, that were laid bare by the thousands of pages of classified Pentagon documents leaked to both The Times and The Washington Post.
This history is predictably repeating itself now that the public has turned on the war in Iraq. The administration's die-hard defenders are desperate to deflect blame for the fiasco, and, guess what, the traitors once again are The Times and The Post. This time the newspapers committed the crime of exposing warrantless spying on Americans by the National Security Agency (The Times) and the C.I.A.'s secret 'black site' Eastern European prisons (The Post). Aping the Nixon template, the current White House tried to stop both papers from publishing and when that failed impugned their patriotism."

2006-05-12T00:48:00.000-05:00

"A state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens."

Sandra Day O'Conner

Ethics Shmethics

2006-05-03T19:08:00.000-05:00

MOLLY IVINS: "AUSTIN, Texas -- Either the so-called 'lobby reform
bill'
is the
contemptible, cheesy, shoddy piece of hypocrisy it
appears to be ... or
the
Republicans have a sense of humor.

The 'lobby reform' bill does show, one
could argue, a sort
of
cheerful, defiant, flipping-the-bird-at-the-public
attitude that could
pass
for humor. You have to admit that calling this an
'ethics bill'
requires
brass bravura.

House Republicans returned last week from
a two-week recess
prepared to vote for 'a relatively tepid ethics bill,'
as The
Washington
Post put it, because they said their constituents
rarely mentioned the
issue.

Forget all that talk back in January when
Jack Abramoff was
indicted. What restrictions on meals and gifts from
lobbyists? More
golfing
trips! According to Rep. Nancy L. Johnson of
Connecticut, former chair
of
the House ethic committee, passage of the bill will
have no political
consequences 'because people are quite
convinced that the rhetoric of
reform
is just political.'

Where can they have gotten that idea? Rep.
David Hobson,
R-Ohio,
told the Post, 'We panicked, and we let the
media get us panicked.'

By George, here's the right way to think of it.
The entire
Congress lies stinking in open corruption, but they
can't let the media
panic them. They're actually proud of NOT cleaning
it up.

The House bill passed a procedural vote
last week 216 to
207,
and it is scheduled for floor debate and a final vote
on Wednesday --
which
gives citizens who don't like being conned a
chance to speak. Now is
the
time for a little hell-raising.

Chellie Pingree of Common Cause said,
'This legislation is
so
weak it's embarrassing.' Fred Wertheimer,
president of Democracy 21 and
a
longtime worker in reformist vineyards, said: 'This
bill is based on
the
premise that you can fool all of the people all of the
time. This is an
attempt at one of the greatest legislative scams that
I have seen in 30
years of working on these issues.'

Come on, people, get mad. You deserve to
be treated with
contempt if you let them get away with this.

I'm sorry that all these procedural votes
seem so picayune,
and
I know the cost of gas and health insurance are
more immediate worries.
But
it is precisely the corruption of Congress by big
money that allows the
oil
and insurance industries to get away with these
fantastic rip-offs."

I'm Tired of Bushes and Clintons

2006-05-03T17:22:00.000-05:00

Every presidential election since 1980 has had a Bush or a Clinton on a major party ticket. And the pundits say we're likely to see a Clinton atop the next Democratic ticket.
Unlike the last seven presidential elections, I dream of a 2008 contest that is Bush- and Clinton-free. Our country needs new leadership and fresh ideas beyond the realm of just two families.
Of course, influential political families are as old as the Republic. Our nation's first vice president and second president was an Adams; his son was our sixth president. A Republican Roosevelt dominated U.S. politics at the turn of the 20th century; a Democratic Roosevelt, his distant cousin, was even more dominant decades later (joined by our country's greatest first lady, a Roosevelt by birth as well as marriage, who toiled for human rights for years thereafter.) Then came the '60s and the brothers Kennedy...but both John and Robert were killed before the age of 47.
Those earlier eras were marked by hope or social progress. By contrast, the Bush-Clinton era is marked in many respects by political regress and decline. And as major national problems fester, neither Team Bush nor Team Clinton are willing to seriously address them.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not in any way equating the Clintonites with the extremists in today's White House. No one comes close to Bush recklessness and fecklessness. But I believe that until we sweep away the Bush-Clinton era and transcend narrow Bush-Clinton debates (and non-debates), we won't be able to put our country back on the road to social progress."

Lunch Period Poli Sci

2006-04-30T13:05:00.000-05:00

New York Times: "College is still probably a good idea, but everything you need to know about America you can learn in high school. For example, if you want to understand American class structure you'd be misled if you read Marx, but you'd understand it perfectly if you look around a high school cafeteria.
The jocks sit here; the nerds sit there; the techies, drama types, skaters, kickers and gangstas sit there, there and there. What you see is not class in the 19th-century sense, but a wide array of lifestyle cliques, some richer, some poorer, but each regarding the others as vaguely pathetic and convinced of its moral superiority. Similarly, when it comes to politics, high school explains most everything you need to know. In 1976, Tom Wolfe wrote an essay for Commentary in which he noted that our political affiliations are shaped subrationally. He went on to observe that especially when we are young and forming our identities, we make sense of our lives by running little morality plays in our heads in which the main characters are Myself, the hero, and My Adolescent Opposite, the enemy. 'Forever after,' Wolfe writes, 'the most momentous national and international events are stuffed into the same turf. The most colossal antagonists and movements become merely stand-ins for My Adolescent Self and My Adolescent Opposite. 'If My Opposite, my natural enemy in adolescence, was the sort of person who seemed overly aggressive, brutish and in love with power, I identify him with the 'conservative' position. If My Opposite, my natural enemy in adolescence, seemed overly sensitive, soft, cerebral and incapable of action, I identify him with the 'liberal' position.'"

Republican Retreat

2006-04-11T07:22:00.000-05:00

My friend Marc just sent me the following from the National Review's blog. It's written by George Conway, a Republican heavily involved making Paula Jones a household word (i.e., he's really REALLY Republican). Yet, here is what he has to say about not just George Bush, but the entire Republican party.And again, he's writing this on the Web site of the uber-conservative National Review:I'm disgruntled, too, and I'm going to get it all of my chest this morning: I've never voted for a Democrat in a general election in my life, and I don't expect to anytime soon, but it's been impossible for me over the past couple of years to get enthused about the Republican party.I voted for President Bush twice, and contributed to his campaign twice, but held my nose when I did it the second time. I don't consider myself a Republican any longer. Thanks to this Administration and the Republicans in Congress, the Republican Party today is the party of pork-barrel spending, Congressional corruption %u2014 and, I know folks on this web site don't want to hear it, but deep down they know it's true %u2014 foreign and military policy incompetence.Frankly, speaking of incompetence, I think this Administration is the most politically and substantively inept that the nation has had in over a quarter of a century. The good news about it, as far as I'm concerned, is that it's almost over.In one fell swoop, George Bush isn't just turning independents off of the Republican party, he's turning die-hard Republicans away.The Democratic party has been handed a gift from God with George Bush. He is the ONLY issue we should be talking about between now and election day. And I'd say we hit on the specific messages Conway spells out: fiscal irresponsibility; corruption; and incompetence. Our goal? To woo every moderate to the Democratic party, and to horribly cripple the Republican party so even its Terri Schiavo base wants out.Remember when the war on terror was Bush's strong point? Now even Republicans are willing to call Bush incompetent on that very issue. Before Rove and Mehlman wake up later this summer and yet again try to brand Democrats as wimps. And before Democrats find themselves facing another congressional resolution authorizing force against Iran. We need to unify and strike back hard, and now, against a president who is both hated by his own party and falling apart at the seams.Come on gang, message message message. We can do better than 'we can do better.'"

The Impeachment Agenda

2006-03-31T20:07:00.000-06:00

It's an odd scenario, isn't it, when the Republicans are talking more about impeachment than Democrats. The GOP released a web ad today warning Americans that a Democratic Congress would vote to censure and impeach the President during a time of war. Yes, folks, this is their brilliant GOTV strategy. Vote Republican, or Bush gets the boot.
This outcome of the midterm election, of course, will come down to turnout. Democrats have a 10-15% lead in generic congressional ballots but all that is meaningless when Republicans in church buses show up to the polls in droves. As an internal GOP memo reveals, Republicans are very concerned about turnout. The memo advises GOP Chair Ken Mehlman that turnout could parallel that of the election in 1982 or 1984, where Republicans showed up in normal numbers, but the polls were flooded by Democrats 'because they were angry.'
It goes without question that President Bush and this Congress have given us a lot to be angry about, with the energy of a 'throw the bums out!' strategy building in our party. Democrats have a lot of work ahead of them in GOTV efforts, but they do have that palpable desire to 'throw the bums out!' working in their favor.
And herein lies the GOP's problem. Their chosen method to galvanize their base is to keep the bums in. One bum, specifically, the Bum-in-Chief Bush. In its video (which is set to the music of bombs bursting, because you can never have enough fear-mongering in a Republian ad), the GOP warns that a Democratic Congress will impeach the President during a time of war. The implication being that you should vote for Republicans to save Bush's job.
The 'keep the bum in' strategy may have worked back when Bush's GOP approval was in the high 90s (back in 2001/2002). It may have even worked in mid-December, when 87% of Republicans approved of Bush's performance. But these days, Bush is only polling at around 70-74% among the party faithful.
One in four or one in three Republican voters is already unlikely to head Mehlman's call to action. Will a call to stave off censure or impeachment motivate the remaining conservatives to come out and vote? Or will many of them--especially those who feel that Bush has abandoned their conservative values--secretly wish that the guy is fired? "

Matthews: "They don't want the whole truth out and that's the fact."

2006-03-25T14:50:00.000-06:00

(On 'Imus in the Morning,' today)
Matthews: 'Well I am just going to stick to this point that the president led us in there with the background music of American culture. Everybody was led to believe that we were getting payback, we were avenging what happened on 9/11 and that we are going to get them. Vice President Cheney said we are going to attack terrorism at its base. Over and over the language was, this is where it came from, in fact most recently the President suggested that it was always the hot pursuit, like a new York police chase, we chased them back into their country. We pursued the terrorists back to Iraq and it's all nonsense. The reason there are terrorists in Iraq today like Zarqawi is we created the opening by blowing the country apart.
From the beginning it's been not true. Now you can't prove motive and you can't prove somebody lies, but from the beginning everything about how they've got WMD's, they are a threat to us, they are going to bomb us with a nuclear weapon, this country is going to be an easy liberate, it's going to be a cake walk. As Cheney said as recently as ten months ago the insurgents are in their last throws. Everything that is said is not true. And right to the end here, here we are now and it's not a civil war and when Allawi the prime Minster is saying it is a civil war and here is the president quoting his own people that it's not a civil war. I mean the denial has been continuous. So you really can't count on the administration to tell you what is going on. That is just the fact. You've got to check it out.
By the way, the president said this week that he wants the whole truth about what is going on in Iraq, the whole truth and that the media isn't telling the whole story. I'll tell you what we are not telling. We are not showing pictures of the twenty five hundred bodies coming back because they won't let us show the pictures. They don't want the whole truth out and that's the fact.'"

Truthdig - Cartoons - Luckovich - Makin' Good Progress

2006-03-23T07:32:00.000-06:00

Luckovich - Makin' Good Progress

Posted on Mar.�22,�2006

By Mike Luckovich

MiamiHerald.com | 12/14/2005 | �

2006-03-21T07:48:00.000-06:00

Sweets again

2006-03-20T12:55:00.000-06:00

President Bush is a man of steely discipline, but it appears the commander in chief has not gained complete mastery over his sweet tooth.In a new book by author Stephen Mansfield, 'The Faith of George W. Bush,' the following passage appears on page 173: 'Aides found him face down on the floor in prayer in the Oval Office. It became known that he refused to eat sweets while American troops were in Iraq, a partial fast seldom reported of an American president.'Seldom reported -- and apparently little observed. When the White House sent out the shared 'pool report' of Bush's roundtable interview with reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Australia, it became apparent that the president had fallen off the candy wagon.'And he was relaxed. Very relaxed,' was the description. 'As a reporter began to ask about the Middle East . . . Mr. Bush popped a butterscotch Lifesaver in his mouth. He smacked the candy as he said: 'Middle East, that's right.' '"

A Stumble a Day ... - New York Times

2006-03-15T06:43:00.000-06:00

Every second-term presidency tends to get tired and falter a bit. But these days, when so many big things are going so very wrong, smaller errors seem like an echo of overall ineptitude. And since President Bush has convinced Americans that we live in a permanent state of threat from evildoers abroad, the bumbling takes on a more ominous note.
This page opposes the death penalty, so we're not going to be upset if federal prosecutors fail to execute Zacarias Moussaoui on conspiracy charges related to Sept. 11, and have to settle for sending him to jail for life. But it's unnerving that the setback for the prosecution was due to the incredible misbehavior of one of the government lawyers, a member of the Transportation Security Administration. The lawyer, Carla Martin, violated a court order and drew down the wrath of the presiding judge by attempting to coach via e-mail some witnesses expected to testify in a manner that a first-year law student should have known was a very, very bad idea. It may be irrelevant that Ms. Martin's main job is as an aviation security expert, but it doesn't make us feel any better. Minor flare-ups of bad news are also much more disturbing when they remind us of the administration's history of rewarding party loyalists and campaign workers with jobs that are far above their level of competence. Claude Allen, who recently resigned as the president's domestic policy adviser, was arrested in a bizarre case involving a scheme to collect refunds from stores for merchandise he had never purchased, from a home theater system to an item worth only $2.50. The allegations about Mr. Allen might have been classified as a sad tale of a White House official who fell victim to pressure or overwork, had it not been for the fact that the Bush administration had also nominated him for a seat on the United States Court of Appeals despite a r�sum�that's exceedingly thin on legal experience. The founding fathers understood that there would be times in American history when the country lost confidence in the judgment of the president. Congress and the courts are supposed to fill the gap. But the system of checks and balances is a safety net that doesn't feel particularly sturdy at present. The administration seems determined to cut off legitimate court scrutiny, and the Republicans who dominate the House and Senate generally intervene only to change the rules so Mr. Bush can do whatever he wants. (If the current Congress had been called on to intervene in the case of Mr. Allen, it would probably have tried to legalize shoplifting.) The Democratic Party is not exactly the last word in prescience, but even the Democrats have put their finger on the mood of the moment, focusing on the theme of administrative incompetence. They're striking the right note, but it's not a tune we can afford to listen to for the next three years."

Censure vs. Impeachment

2006-03-13T16:48:00.000-06:00

Senator Feingold is introducing a Senate resolution today censuring the president.Firedoglake is asking folks to call their Senators to see where they stand on censure. I'm wondering what you all think of the relative merits of censure vs. impeachment vs. doing nothing at all.There's no question that Bush should no longer be president. He's not capable of doing the job, and that never acceptable especially during wartime.The question remains, how best to deal with him?While I think censure is more attainable than impeachment - well, a majority isn't going to vote for impeachment while the Republicans control the congress - censure at first feels like the wimpy option. A legislative slap on the wrist. But then it got me thinking. These are the kind of symbolic votes the Republicans and the religious right excel at. What better in an election year than to make the Republicans defend George Bush's failed presidency on live TV in front of millions of Americans?But that still begs the question of whether we force the Republicans to defend Bush against censure or against impeachment? Well, while I think Bush deserves impeachment, and should resign from office regardless, I think the legacy of the Clinton impeachment has left a lot of Americans not quite ready for another round of impeachment hearings. Regardless of the merits, I'm not sure the American people are there yet - but that doesn't necessarily mean we don't start educating them to get them 'there.'Now, in order for this to work, be it impeachment or censure, the Democrats would have to get their messaging straight, otherwise the Republicans would simply Murtha the Dems, painting them as un-American wimps attaching the commander in chief during wartime, blah blah blah. Do the Dems have what it takes to launch an effective censure or impeachment campaign? (And remember, 'effective' isn't measured by whether censure or impeachment passes, it's measured by the impact this debate has on the public, on Bush's presidency, and on the coming November elections.)Lots of questions. Your thoughts?"

Web exclusive: 'How should we study religion?' by Daniel Dennett | Prospect Magazine March 2006 issue 120

2006-03-12T23:20:00.000-06:00

"A philosopher and a theologian debate the correct approach to the study of religion
Daniel Dennet/ Richard Swinburne"
I haven't read this yet, but I have read some books by Richard Swinburne in a class I had freshmen year of college that was basically a discussion & debate of science/religion/philosophy. To this day, one of the best courses. It was just an environment to be open minded, curious about the big questions, and okay w/ not having all the answers. We were talking about intelligent design years before all the recent hoopla has politicized the topic. Anyway, check this link out.

The Death of the Intelligence Panel - New York Times

2006-03-09T20:23:00.001-06:00

"The wrenching debate in the 1970's over the abuse of presidential power produced two groundbreaking reforms aimed at preventing a president from using war or broader claims of national security to trample Americans' rights.

One was the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which struck the proper balance between national security and bedrock civil liberties, and the other was the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, a symbol of bipartisan leadership. They endured for a quarter of a century %u2014 until George W. Bush and Dick Cheney left FISA in tatters and the Senate Select Committee on its deathbed in just five years. The Senate panel has become so paralyzingly partisan that it could not even manage to do its basic job this week and look into President Bush's warrantless spying on Americans' international e-mail and phone calls. Senator Pat Roberts, the chairman, said Tuesday that there would be no investigation. Instead, the committee's Republicans voted to create a subcommittee that is supposed to get reports from the White House on any future warrantless surveillance. It's breathtakingly cynical. Faced with a president who is almost certainly breaking the law, the Senate sets up a panel to watch him do it and calls that control. This new Senate plan is being presented as a way to increase the supervision of intelligence gathering while giving the spies needed flexibility. But it does no such thing. The Republicans' idea of supervision involves saying the White House should get a warrant for spying whenever possible. Currently a warrant is needed, period. And that's the right law. The White House has not offered a scrap of evidence that it interferes with anti"

Fourth Amendment luggage tape

2006-03-07T18:21:00.000-06:00

EFF Chairman Brad Templeton sez, 'Since I kept getting cards in my luggage every time I checked a bag describing how the bags had been searched 'for my protection' I designed some shipping tape that has the U.S. 4th amendment printed on it in an endless loop. You can put it on packages, or over the zipper of your luggage. Now, if they want to search your stuff, they have to literally slice the 4th amendment in half in order to do it. Ok, it may not stop them but it's a nice metaphorical statement of protest.

'Too bad we can't wrap it around our phone wires. The tape's available as a gift to EFF members who renew, or via the EFF store.'"

Iran's Best Friend - New York Times

2006-03-06T16:49:00.000-06:00

At the rate that President Bush is going, Iran will be a global superpower before too long. For all of the axis-of-evil rhetoric that has come out of the White House, the reality is that the Bush administration has done more to empower Iran than its most ambitious ayatollah could have dared to imagine. Tehran will be able to look back at the Bush years as a golden era full of boosts from America, its unlikely ally.

During the period before the Iraq invasion, the president gave lip service to the idea that Iran and Iraq were both threats to American security. But his advisers, intent on carrying out their long-deferred dream of toppling Saddam Hussein, gave scant thought to what might happen if their plans did not lead to the unified, peaceful, pro-Western democracy of their imaginings. The answer, though, is now rather apparent: a squabbling, divided country in which the Shiite majority in the oil-rich south finds much more in common with its fellow Shiites in Iran than with the Sunni Muslims with whom it needs to form an Iraqi government.Washington has now become dangerously dependent on the good will and constructive behavior of Shiite fundamentalist parties that Iran sheltered, aided and armed during the years that Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq. In recent weeks, neither good will nor constructive behavior has been particularly evident, and if Iran chooses to stir up further trouble to deflect diplomatic pressures on its nuclear program, it could easily do so. There is now a real risk that Iraq, instead of being turned into an outpost of secular democracy challenging the fanatical rulers of the Islamic republic to its east, could become an Iranian-aligned fundamentalist theocracy, challenging the secular Arab regimes to its west. Fast-forward to Thursday's nuclear deal with India, in which President Bush agreed to share civilian nuclear technology with India despite its nuclear weapons programs and its refusal to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. This would be a bad idea at any time, rewarding India for flouting the basic international understanding that has successfully discouraged other countries from South Korea to Saudi Arabia from embarking on their own efforts to build nuclear weapons. But it also undermines attempts to rein in Iran, whose nuclear program is progressing and unnerving both its neighbors and the West."

Hillary's "Hundreds:" an investigation | The Huffington Post

2006-02-27T17:00:00.001-06:00

In this AP story, Hillary says, 'What they[Rove and Bush]'re hoping is that all of their missteps, which are now numbering in the hundreds, are going to somehow be overlooked because people, instead of focusing on the '06 election, will jump ahead and think about the next one.' Righteous italic emphasis mine.

Hundreds, Madame Senator? Hundreds of missteps?! Come on! Fives or tens, maybe. Dozens at a stretch. But you can't just throw out a tantalizingly vague number like 'hundreds' and expect people to accept that -- not in this blog-smart age, no sirree Robert!

'Hundreds?' We demand a recount! Sorry. Reflex. We demand a count!

So we at the Huffington Post (which is to say 'I at the Huffington Post') decided to look at the Bush White House's real record of missteps to prove this congenital, Clintonian exaggerator's claims are just a hill of beans. Project 'Hundreds My Ass' was launched (and dissolved) this morning. Here is its final report.

The Bush Administration's missteps (fatalities only, not counting the murder penalty, which Hillary also favors):
1-9. Letting political donors steer the submarine

10-3,061. Every comfy nap between August 6 ('Bin Laden Determined to Strike In US') and September 11

3,062-5,560. US soldiers killed since '...the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy' (note: this number is only a snapshot in this ongoing misstep)

5,561-Anybody's guess, but let's be neo-conservative and say another 1,000 in the Gulf Coast (hey, some of 'em probably died of natural causes) for 6,561. 'Thanks for the update. Anything specific I need to do or tweak?'

6,562-35,097 (Iraq Body Count) or 106,562 (Red Cross study estimate, midpoint). 'We don't do [civilian] body counts.'

35,098-45,660,098. Estimated number of people worldwide killed by unsafe drinking water alone during the Bush Administration's war on the environment. (Though since most of these fatalities were current or former African and Asian babies, Bill Bennett might make the argument that if they'd lived, they would have been criminals.)

So, OK, Hillary's 'hundreds' is fair, particularly if we give her a little wiggle room to include not-immediately-lethal missteps like repeatedly compromising national security for politics and siphoning billions of tax dollars into Bush's buddies' pockets. We stand corrected and apologize to Ms. Clinton for any inconvenience."

"Actor Dies"

2006-02-27T13:00:00.000-06:00

Anybody else tired of this shit? One tv show from the 70's doesn't make you news worthy when you croak eight thousand years later.

G Bara

Peter Daou: How Far Will Bush Supporters Go? (Part 2: Iraq and Dubai) | The Huffington Post

2006-02-23T13:35:00.000-06:00

Last December I asked a question that seems increasingly pertinent with each new administration scandal: How Far Will Bush Supporters Go? When I asked the question the first time, the NSA story had just broken and I watched in amazement as a number of rightwing bloggers and pundits and politicians lined up behind the White House in support of a clear circumvention of the law.

This time it's the Dubai port deal. Once again, despite cracks in the pro-Bush edifice, several bloggers are embracing their cognitive dissonance and supporting Bush. (link, link.) The fealty is incredible. Here we have a 'leader' on whose watch America suffered the worst terrorist attack in its history saying, 'no need to worry about port security,' and his blog followers do what they do best: follow.

Which raises the issue of Bush cultism, a hot blog topic thanks in part to Glenn Greenwald. I wrote this in response to a blogger who rejects Glenn's premise: 'I am sympathetic to bloggers like Tom Maguire, under whose skin Glenn's post is lodged and stinging. Nobody wants to be seen as an intellectually dishonest sycophant. But that's exactly where many rightwing bloggers find themselves, apologists for a White House that treats the Constitution as a burden rather than a beacon, as a pest rather than a paradigm.'

Speaking of intellectual dishonesty, the ostrich-like response to the ominous turn of events in Iraq is another perfect example of how far blind allegiance to Bush will go. I know it's difficult to admit error, but isn't it about time to fess up that this whole (mis)adventure has been a disaster of epic proportions?

So again I ask, how far will Bush supporters go?"

Cheers and Jeers: Tuesday

2006-02-21T12:07:00.000-06:00

by Bill in Portland Maine

Tue Feb 21, 2006 at 06:18:42 AM PDT
From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...
And now, a brief history of George W. Bush and his Republican Congress's record of 'bipartisanship' over the past 5 years:
Democrats: We should fix the environment.
Republicans: Shut up!
We should make the Medicare prescription drug program better...
Sit down!
Can we at least let the federal government negotiate with drug companies to get lower prices?
Sit on my face and wriggle, assmunch!
Can we discuss the ramifications of the Patriot Act?
Eat our boogers!
Perhaps the deficit is getting a bit high and we should consider...
Considering is for losers!
But certainly we can agree that war-profiteering in Iraq must be stopped...
You know what needs to be stopped? �Your mouth!
Ethics violations?
Sock puppets!
You know global warming is real. �Can we at least discuss the Kyoto...
Kyo-NO!
Perhaps an exit strategy for Iraq?
Perhaps a sandpaper wedgie!?
Poverty?
[Snort!] �Poor people make lousy campaign contributors. �Deeee-nied.
Would you like to see our ideas on job-creation?
Would you like to see our ideas on sticking your head in a toilet?
Real Social Security reform?
Knee to the groin?
Basic equality for gays?
Fairy lovers.
Adequate funding for our VA hospitals?
Tch...they can deal with combat, they can deal with a little prostate cancer.
Making abortion safe, legal and, most important, rare?
Women...can't live with `em, can't imagine a threesome without `em!! �Par-tay!!!!!!!
Safeguards against price-gouging by oil companies?
Let me think about that for a moment...um...No.
But polls show that Americans want...
Here's a pole. �You know where to stick it.
And so it goes. �As palpable as my frustration is with the Democratic leadership, I save my deepest contempt for the Republican leadership and the way they've destroyed any sense of equality, fairness and compassion for Americans. �They lie, they cheat, they steal. �They bamboozle, they spin, they obfuscate. �They deceive, they stonewall, they bully. �They're uncivil, unethical and unresponsive. �It's in their DNA. �All in the name of 'drowning the federal government in the bathtub.'
I'm no think-tank intellectual, nor am I a political scientist. �But I know how to call bullshit. �So, since I haven't done it in awhile: Frist, Hastert, Boehner, Scalia, Thomas, Santorum, Hannity, Bush, Coburn, Bolton, Roberts, Coleman, DeLay, Lott, Card, Stevens, Hughes, McCain, Matalin, Hutchison, Cheney, Hatch, Brownback, Limbaugh, Thune, Rove, DeWine, McClellan, Burns and whoever else you think oughtta be on the list: I say with all the due respect you've shown us: SCREW YOU!"

The Pessimism Deficit

2006-02-19T17:17:00.000-06:00

New York Times: "A couple of weeks ago, I was doing a reading at one of those bookstores on the West Coast where at least five people will hiss like snakes and radiators if an author even mentions the names of certain senior administration officials. And that was back before members of the executive branch actually started shooting their friends.
The question-and-answer period included the usual random lineup of what I call the 'Garry Wills questions.' They're the sort of undignified 'What historical figure would you like to make out with?' queries my way-more-upstanding-nonfiction-colleague Mr. Wills never has to endure. Probably because everyone knows the Socratic author of 'Lincoln at Gettysburg' and 'Why I Am a Catholic' would answer with another question, namely, 'Do you consider Snoop Dogg to be a historical figure?' Then a man raised his hand and asked me to give him a reason to be 'optimistic' about America. Huh. That was a new one. That's how depressing things are in this country right now %u2014 citizens are coming to me for optimism. And I'm the person who came to town to read from a book that ends with me walking across Union Square from the Lincoln statue toward the Gandhi statue and noting, 'They shot him, too.' I was so taken aback by the optimism request I think I mumbled something about seeking solace in art and the land, culminating in a drippy anecdote about my sunrise flight over Mount Hood and Crater Lake while listening to 'Adagio for Strings.' But that question keeps dogging me.My go-to worldview is pessimism. I see a Times Square billboard promoting a musical that has its audience 'dancing in the aisles' and I can't help but think, 'That is a fire hazard.' But it has been my happy experience that if one moves through life in a constant state of low-key dread, then one gets to be continually pleasantly surprised. Like, suppose I was to be asked to write a guest column for a newspaper I find consistently infuriating because, for example, its arts section prints claptrap proclamations like 'No woman really loves Bob Dylan,' thereby making me want to jump in a cab with a boombox and my two copies of 'Blonde on Blonde' and plant myself on 43rd Street, blaring 'Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine' at said newspaper's windows. I would dread such an assignment until I felt the glee of getting paid to carp at said paper within its own pages. See? Pleasant surprise."

Air Force Flies Right

2006-02-19T10:08:00.000-06:00

"It seemed like the Air Force knew it had a problem with religious intolerance.
A 'Team Jesus Christ' banner was hung by the head football coach in the team locker room. Cadets of various faiths reported conversion attempts and harassment by superiors as well as evangelical prayer at official academy events. And a Lutheran minister confirmed a systemic evangelical bias by administrators, faculty, and upperclassmen.
So a draft of new guidelines on religious expression discouraged sectarian prayer at public gatherings, and warned superiors against proselytizing to subordinates. But Focus on the Family and other evangelical groups would have none of it.
According to the Washington Post, 'They launched a nationwide petition drive, sounded alarms on Christian radio stations, and deluged the White House and Air Force Secretary Michael W. Wynne's office with e-mails calling the guidelines an infringement of the Constitution's guarantees of free speech and free exercise of religion.'
The result? The Pentagon released a new draft of guidelines emphasizing the freedom of superiors to exercise their faith when it is 'reasonably clear discussions are personal, not official.'
Americans United for Separation of Church and State put it well: The revisions 'focus on protecting the rights of chaplains, while ignoring the rights of nonbelievers and minority faiths.'
The bottom line: the military caved to evangelical pressure and reaffirmed, rather than reformed, the continual eroding of the separation of church and state. One more victory for the right wing, one more slap at the Constitution."

The Blog | Mark Kleiman: Will Bush Fire Cheney, Or Quit? | The Huffington Post

2006-02-10T06:41:00.000-06:00

George W. Bush thinks that 'revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemies, and endangers our country.'
If revealing classified information is illegal, then it's a crime, right?
And George W. Bush promised that 'If somebody committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration,' right?
Now it comes out that 'Scooter' Libby has testified that his 'superiors' authorized him to reveal classified information in an attempt to discredit Joseph Wilson's account of his trip to Africa and thus to defend the idea that the Administration had a basis for claiming that Saddam Hussein had been trying to buy uranium in Niger.
Libby's boss was Dick Cheney; Libby was Cheney's chief of staff. His only other 'superior' would have been ... George W. Bush.
So either Cheney or Bush (or both) ordered the release of classified information, which according to Bush is a crime. And anyone who commits a crime has to leave the administration.
So which is it? Is Bush going to ask for Cheney's resignation, or offer his own?
Of course, the whole pretense the Administration opposes 'revealing classified information' never passed the giggle test. Bush's opposition is, of course, to revealing information that discredits his policies. That's why it's a blessing not to have an Official Secrets Act: this way, we have some hope that official malfeasance and misfeasance will come out. As Henry Kissinger said a long time ago, 'I never leak. I de-classify.'"

Party Love Blinds Republicans to Ugly Truths

2006-01-27T14:30:00.000-06:00

Bloomberg.com: Margaret Carlson: "Jan. 26 (Bloomberg) -- I've long been searching for a
unified theory to explain the Bush administration, and yesterday
I got it. According to the New York Times, a soon-to-be-released
scientific study of self-described Democrats and Republicans
shows that partisan attachment in politics is akin to being
smacked out in love.
Common sense vanishes. Rational parts of the brain go dark.
The beloved can do no wrong.
The difference between falling in love and falling in line
politically is that partisans never wake up and see that the lawn
has grown weedy and the toothpaste cap is off. They stay
infatuated to the point where countervailing information simply
doesn't sink in.
In the study, Republican partisans didn't fault George W.
Bush for supporting Enron Corp. Chief Executive Officer Kenneth
Lay even after he was indicted and his employees lost their
pensions. Nor did committed Democrats turn up their noses at John
Kerry for saying he would overhaul Social Security if elected,
something a liberal would otherwise abhor."

A President Who Can Do No Right - New York Times

2006-01-26T14:00:00.000-06:00

By BOB HERBERT
We should be used to it by now. There are a couple of Congressional committees trying to investigate the tragic Hurricane Katrina debacle, but the Bush administration is refusing to turn over certain documents or allow certain senior White House officials to testify before the committees under oath.
Senator Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat who is by no means unfriendly to the Bush crowd, said this week, 'There has been a near-total lack of cooperation that has made it impossible, in my opinion, for us to do the thorough investigation that we have a responsibility to do.'
Once again the president has, in effect, flipped the bird at Congress. He's amazing. Forget such fine points as the Constitution and the separation of powers. George W. Bush does what he wants to do. He won fewer votes than Al Gore in 2000 and then governed as if he'd been elected by acclamation. He dispensed with John Kerry in 2004 by portraying himself %u2014 a man who ran and hid from the draft during Vietnam %u2014 as more of a warrior than Mr. Kerry, a decorated combat veteran of that war.
Reality has been dealt a stunning blow by Mr. Bush. The administration's high-handedness with the Katrina investigators comes at the same time as disclosures showing that the White House was warned in the hours just before the hurricane hit New Orleans that it might well cause catastrophic flooding and the breaching of the city's levees.
That was early on the morning of last Aug. 29. On Sept. 1, with the city all but completely underwater, the president went on television and blithely declared, 'I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.'
This guy is something. Remember his 'Top Gun' moment aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln? And his famous taunt %u2014 'Bring 'em on' %u2014 to the insurgents in Iraq? His breathtaking arrogance is exceeded only by his incompetence. And that's the real problem. That's where you'll find the mind-boggling destructiveness of this regime, in its incompetence.
Fantasy may be in fashion. Reality may have been shoved into the shadows on Mr. Bush's watch. But the plain truth is that he is the worst president in memory, and one of the worst of all time. Many thousands of people %u2014 men, women and children %u2014 have died unnecessarily (and thousands more are suffering) because of his misguided and mishandled policies."

I am Sorry. Hillary is Not a Wise Choice

2006-01-25T10:34:00.000-06:00

Wed Jan 25 2006 10:50:26 ET

Most voters now say there's no way they'd vote for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton if she runs for president in 2008 - while just 16 percent are firmly in her camp, a stunning new poll shows.

CNNGALLUP found that 51 percent say they definitely won't vote for Clinton (D-N.Y.) in 2008, another 32 percent might consider it, and only 16 percent vow to back her. That means committed anti-Hillary voters outnumber pro-Hillary voters by 3-1. The poll suggests she can forget about crossover votes - 90 percent of Republicans and 75 percent of conservatives say there's no way they'd back her.

Meanwhile, 46% said they would oppose Secretary of State Rice if she ran for President - a step Rice has repeatedly said she won't take."

Bush administration no longer a credible source

2006-01-24T16:54:00.000-06:00

Molly Ivins - Creators Syndicate
01.24.06 -
AUSTIN, Texas -- We live in interesting times, we do, we do. We can
read in our daily newspapers that our government is about to launch a
three-day propaganda blitz to convince us all that its secret program to
spy on us is something we really want and need. 'A campaign of
high-profile national security events,' reports The New York Times, follows
'Karl Rove's blistering speech to national Republicans' about what a swell
political issue this is for their party.

The question for journalists is how to report this. President Bush
says it's a great idea and he's proud of the secret spy program? Attorney
General Gonzales explains breaking the law is no problem? Dick Cheney
says accept spying, or Osama bin Laden will get you?

Or might we actually have gotten far enough to point out that the
series of high-profile security events is in fact part of a propaganda
campaign by our own government? Should we report it as though it were in
fact a campaign tactic, a straight political ploy: The Republicans say
spying is good for you, but the Democrats say it is not -- equal time to
both sides?

Perhaps we have some obligation to try to sift through what it means
that our government is spying on us in violation of the law and the
Constitution.

Then there's the problem of reporting within the context of this
administration's other propaganda efforts. 'We do not torture,' and, 'We are
not running a gulag of secret detention centers,' are two of the more
recent examples, superseding the golden oldies -- like the smoking gun
in the form of a mushroom cloud.

Furthermore, the Rove offensive is not to admit that we are indeed
running a gulag of secret detention camps, but to attack those who point
it out and put them under investigation for revealing government secrets
and helping the enemy. Even without the intimidation, how do you report
something claimed by George W. Bush as though you hadn't recently heard
him say he would support John McCain's amendment barring torture -- and
then turn around and claim that he has the right to violate that law?

I genuinely appreciate the response by real conservatives on this
issue -- the libertarians, the true heirs of Barry Goldwater, the
all-government-is-bad grumps. It's called principle. But I am confounded by the
authoritarian streak in the Republican Party backing Bush on this. To
me it seems so simple: Would you think this was a good idea if Hillary
Clinton were president? Would you be defending the clear and unnecessary
violation of the law? Do you have complete confidence that she would
never misuse this 'inherent power' for any partisan reason?"

Michael Moore Statement on Canadian Election

2006-01-23T11:54:00.000-06:00

Michael Moore Statement on Canadian Election

Michael Moore is currently in production on his next movie. As an avid lover of all things Canadian, he has issued the following statement regarding Canada's upcoming election on Monday:

Oh, Canada -- you're not really going to elect a Conservative majority on Monday, are you? That's a joke, right? I know you have a great sense of humor, and certainly a well-developed sense of irony, but this is no longer funny. Maybe it's a new form of Canadian irony -- reverse irony! OK, now I get it. First, you have the courage to stand against the war in Iraq -- and then you elect a prime minister who's for it. You declare gay people have equal rights -- and then you elect a man who says they don't. You give your native peoples their own autonomy and their own territory -- and then you vote for a man who wants to cut aid to these poorest of your citizens. Wow, that is intense! Only Canadians could pull off a hat trick of humor like that. My hat's off to you.

Far be it from me, as an American, to suggest what you should do. You already have too many Americans telling you what to do. Well, actually, you've got just one American who keeps telling you to roll over and fetch and sit. I hope you don't feel this appeal of mine is too intrusive but I just couldn't sit by, as your friend, and say nothing. Yes, I agree, the Liberals have some 'splainin' to do. And yes, one party in power for more than a decade gets a little... long. But you have a parliamentary system (I'll bet you didn't know that -- see, that's why you need Americans telling you things!). There are ways at the polls to have your voices heard other than throwing the baby out with the bath water.

These are no ordinary times, and as you go to the polls on Monday, you do so while a man running the nation to the south of you is hoping you can lend him a hand by picking Stephen Harper because he's a man who shares his world view. Do you want to help George Bush by turning Canada into his latest conquest? Is that how you want millions of us down here to see you from now on? The next notch in the cowboy belt? C'mon, where's your Canadian pride? I mean, if you're going to reduce Canada to a cheap download of Bush & Co., then at least don't surrender so easily. Can't you wait until he threatens to bomb Regina? Make him work for it, for Pete's sake.

But seriously, I know you're not going to elect a guy who should really be running for governor of Utah. Whew! I knew it! You almost had me there. Very funny. Don't do that again. God, I love you, you crazy cold wonderful neighbors to my north. Don't ever change.

Michael Moore

(Mr. Moore is not available for interviews because he now needs to address the situation in Azerbaijan. But he could be talked into it for a couple of tickets to a Leaf's game.)

Bush's War on Professionals

2006-01-05T12:34:00.000-06:00

The president is determined to stop whistle-blowers and the press from halting his administration's illegal, ever-expanding secret government. But it may be too late.
by
Sidney Blumenthal
New ranges of secret government are emerging from the fog of war. The latest disclosure, by the New York Times, of domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency performed by evasion of the special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court surfaces a vast hidden realm. But the NSA spying is not an isolated island of policy; it is connected to the mainland of Bush's expansive new national security apparatus.

At the beginning of the Cold War, the National Security Act of 1947 authorized the creation of new institutions of foreign policy and intelligence, including the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency. But Bush has built a secret system, without enabling legislation, justified by executive fiat and presidential findings alone, deliberately operating beyond the oversight of Congress and the courts, and existing outside the law. It is a national security state of torture, ghost detainees, secret prisons, renditions and domestic eavesdropping.

The arguments used to rationalize this system insist that the president as commander in chief is entitled to arbitrary and unaccountable rule. The memos written by John Yoo, former deputy in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, constitute a basic ideology of absolute power.

Congress, at best, is held in contempt as a pest and, at worst, is regarded as an intruder on the president's rightful authority. The Republican chairmen of the House Armed Services and Senate Intelligence committees, Rep. Duncan Hunter of California and Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, have been models of complicity in fending off oversight, attacking other members of Congress, especially Republicans, who have had the temerity to insist on it, using their committees to help the White House suppress essential information about the operations of government, and issuing tilted partisan reports smearing critics. This is the sort of congressional involvement, at White House direction, that the White House believes fulfills the congressional mandate."

Could somebody please stop the spread of democracy in the Middle East? I do not like the way it's turning out. Iran for example has been having electi

2005-12-20T09:44:00.000-06:00

by Aaron Freeman
I do not like the way it's turning out. Iran for example has been having elections for almost thirty years, since the overthrow of the Shah, and look who wins them. Iran's election have produced presidents ranging from moderate right wingers like Abul Hassan Boni Sadr to full-tilt ultra-religious wingnuts like current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad whose politics appear to only slightly to the left of Pat Robertson.

Iraq's democracy has provided some interesting political innovations including their pre-election ritual of having 20% of the electorate bombed by a foreign power. Nonetheless Iraq democracy has turned the country from a secular, socialist state into an Islamic republic aligned with Iran. Iraq's two biggest political parties, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and DAWA are not just supported by Iran but were created in Iran during the reign of the Ayatollah Kohmeini. Which is fine, Iraqis have every right to vote in whatever government they want but does America have to pay 6 billion dollars a month for it?

Among Palestinians their first round of elections brought us President Yassir Arafat and now the big political dog is Hamas which wins election after election no matter how many of their leaders Israel blows up. Which is all fine, "Self determination," I'm down with it but I'm worried the cancer of middle east democracy will matastesize to other Arab nations. From what I read if democratic elections were held in Saudia Arabia the biggest votes would go the the Saudi Nuke Israel Party followed by the Burn Israel Party and running a close third would be the Drive the Jews into the sea party.">The Blog | Aaron Freeman: Less Democracy, Please | The Huffington Post: "Could somebody please stop the spread of democracy in the Middle East? I do not like the way it's turning out. Iran for example has been having elections for almost thirty years, since the overthrow of the Shah, and look who wins them. Iran's election have produced presidents ranging from moderate right wingers like Abul Hassan Boni Sadr to full-tilt ultra-religious wingnuts like current president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad whose politics appear to only slightly to the left of Pat Robertson.

Iraq's democracy has provided some interesting political innovations including their pre-election ritual of having 20% of the electorate bombed by a foreign power. Nonetheless Iraq democracy has turned the country from a secular, socialist state into an Islamic republic aligned with Iran. Iraq's two biggest political parties, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and DAWA are not just supported by Iran but were created in Iran during the reign of the Ayatollah Kohmeini. Which is fine, Iraqis have every right to vote in whatever government they want but does America have to pay 6 billion dollars a month for it?

Among Palestinians their first round of elections brought us President Yassir Arafat and now the big political dog is Hamas which wins election after election no matter how many of their leaders Israel blows up. Which is all fine, 'Self determination,' I'm down with it but I'm worried the cancer of middle east democracy will matastesize to other Arab nations. From what I read if democratic elections were held in Saudia Arabia the biggest votes would go the the Saudi Nuke Israel Party followed by the Burn Israel Party and running a close third would be the Drive the Jews into the sea party."

W. Won't Read This

2005-12-14T01:41:00.000-06:00

New York Times: "Never ask a guy who's in a bubble if he's in a bubble. He can't answer. 'Cause he's in a bubble. But the NBC anchor Brian Williams gamely gave it a shot, showing the president the Newsweek cover picturing him trapped in a bubble. 'This says you're in a bubble,' Brian told W. 'You have a very small circle of advisers now. Is that true? Do you feel in a bubble?' 'No, I don't feel in a bubble,' Bubble Boy replied, unable to see the bubble because he's in it. 'I feel like I'm getting really good advice from very capable people and that people from all walks of life have informed me and informed those who advise me.' He added, 'I'm very aware of what's going on.' He swiftly contradicted himself by admitting that 'this is the first time I'm seeing this magazine' - his version of his dad's Newsweek 'Wimp Factor' cover - and that he doesn't read newsmagazines. The anchor and the anchorite spent a few anodyne moments probing the depths of what it's like to be president. 'I just talked to the president-elect of Honduras,' W. said. 'A lot of my job is foreign policy, and I spend an enormous amount of time with leaders from other countries.' Brian struggled to learn whether W. read anything except one-page memos. Talking about his mom, Bubble Boy returned to the idea of the bubble: 'If I'm in a bubble, well, if there is such thing as a bubble, she's the one who can penetrate it.''I'll tell the guys at Newsweek,' the anchor said impishly.'Is that who put the bubble story?' W. asked. First he didn't know about it, and now he's forgotten it already? That's the alluring, memory-cleansing beauty of the bubble."

Can Mommy Know Best?

2005-12-10T13:39:00.000-06:00

New York Times: "Can the network nightly news anchor evolve from the Daddy chair to the Mommy chair? Will Americans ever trust a petite, pretty woman in jewel tones to deliver the news as much as they trusted tall men with dark suits and deep voices, like Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and Tom Brokaw? Can high heels match the venerable trench coat?
The network news anchor career path is laden with the same sort of gender tripwires as the one for the presidency. Who do we want to lead us through a crisis? 'Does Mommy know best?' a longtime TV industry analyst mused. 'If there's a gigantically frightening news event, people want to turn on the TV and see someone guiding them through it. Will they be comfortable with Elizabeth Vargas or even Katie Couric?' Last summer, when ABC needed a replacement for Peter Jennings, I asked a top network executive whether the 43-year-old Ms. Vargas had a shot to be the first woman to get a solo network anchor gig. Shouldn't that barrier have been broken long ago? I mean, women can read off a teleprompter as well as men. At first he sounded optimistic: she is not a news division heavyweight, but she is a lovely, competent Hispanic woman, which could mean a more diverse audience. And she might draw in younger viewers, instead of the dinosaur evening news demographic that mostly attracts sponsors like Viagra and Depends. Within 30 seconds, though, the executive got jittery. 'I know this is going to sound really sexist,' he admitted with breathtaking candor, 'but if there were another 9/11, I'm not sure if she has the gravitas to hold that anchor chair. ... Maybe it's not even sex. Maybe it's age. I just think we'd need someone with a little gray in their hair.' (The network pushed Ms. Vargas out of the anchor seat in favor of Charlie Gibson when terrorists bombed London twice in July 2005, even though his day job was doing fluff on 'Good Morning America.')"

Historians: Bush the Worst President Ever?

2005-12-05T07:15:00.000-06:00

Historians: Bush the Worst President Ever? C'mon! | The Huffington Post: "Well, the historians have gone and done it. Risking the creation of a White House Commission on Historical Quality to refute their findings with real science, an overwhelming 338 of 415 historians polled by George Mason University said Friday that George W. Bush is failing as a president. And fifty of them rated Bush as the worst president ever, ranking him above (below?) any other past president -- even those you've never heard of who were also really awful.

Why do these misguided, obviously-socialist, ivy-smoking, and (of course) American-hating intellectuals feel that Bush isn't doing his best?

Well, they look at the record ...

# He has taken the country into an unwinnable war and alienated friend and foe alike in the process;

# He is bankrupting the country with a combination of aggressive military spending and reduced taxation of the rich;

# He has deliberately and dangerously attacked separation of church and state;

# He has repeatedly 'misled,' to use a kind word, the American people on affairs domestic and foreign;

# He has proved to be incompetent in affairs domestic (New Orleans) and foreign (
Iraq and the battle against al-Qaida);

# He has sacrificed American employment (including the toleration of pension and benefit elimination) to increase overall productivity;

# He is ignorantly hostile to science and technological progress;

# He has tolerated or ignored one of the republic's oldest problems, corporate cheating in supplying the military in wartime.

Quite an indictment. It is, of course, too early to evaluate a president."

W.'s Head in the Sand

2005-12-03T11:51:00.000-06:00

New York Times: "In the Christmas spirit, the time has come for the reality-based community to reach out to the White House.The Bush warriors are so deluded, they're even faking their fakery.
This week, the president presented a plan-like plan for 'victory' in Iraq, which Scott McClellan rather pompously called the unclassified version of their supersecret master plan. But there would be no way to achieve victory from this plan even if it were a real plan. If this is what they're telling themselves in the Sit Room, we're in bigger trouble than we thought.Talk about your unknown unknowns, as Rummy would say.The National Strategy for Victory must have come from the same P.R. genius who gave President Top Gun the 'Mission Accomplished' banner about 48 hours before the first counterinsurgency war of the 21st century broke out in Iraq.It's not a military strategy - classified or unclassified. It's political talking points - and not even good ones. Are we really supposed to believe that anybody, even the most deeply delusional Bush sycophant, believes the phrase 'Our strategy is working'? The president talked about three neatly definable groups of insurrectionists. But as Dexter Filkins reported in yesterday's New York Times, there are dozens, perhaps as many as a hundred, groups fighting the U.S. Army in Iraq, and they have little, if anything, in common. Mr. Bush's presentation claimed that the U.S. was actually making progress in Iraq. But outside the Bush-Cheney-Rummy bubble, 10 more marines were killed by a roadside bomb outside Falluja, for a total of 2,125 U.S. military deaths so far. The administration must realize it needs a real exit strategy, because it's advertising for one. The U.S. Agency for International Development is offering more than $1 billion for anyone - anyone at all - who can come up with a plan to pacify and rebuild 10 Iraqi cities seen as vital in the war."

Cheney Led Cheerleaders of Iraq Invasion

2005-11-27T21:24:00.000-06:00

by Carl Hiaasen�
The loudest cheerleader for invading Iraq is on the stump once again, defending the bloody, bogged-down occupation and lambasting its critics.

Getting a war lecture from Dick Cheney is like getting dating advice from Michael Jackson."

Dumbing Down the Audience

2005-11-27T21:23:00.000-06:00

by Ralph Nader
The debate between progressives and corporatists over the state of the mass media goes like this-the former say fewer and fewer giant media conglomerates control more of the print and electronic outlets while the latter respond by saying there has never been more choices for listeners (radio), viewers (television) and readers (magazines, newsletters and newspapers combined).
Progressives add that half a dozen big companies, which control so many media, lead to a sameness of entertainment, news and advertisement overload. Corporatists counter by saying that there are more and more specialized media available for just about every taste in the audience.
I want to take a different approach here from my personal experience with the fourth estate and appearing before national audiences. There has been a non-stop decline in access for serious subjects of contemporary importance, especially those topics that challenge corporate power."

Doubling down on a bad bet

2005-11-27T14:39:00.000-06:00

Gene Lyons
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Seemingly stung by polls showing 57 percent of Americans now believe that he 'deliberately misled' the nation into war with Iraq, President Bush did what a successful con man always does in a tight spot: he doubled his bet, resorting to falsehoods so brazen as to invite citizens almost to doubt the evidence of their senses. Who are you going to believe, your president or your lying eyes?

On Veteran's Day, Bush chose another of the handpicked audiences he likes best--soldiers at a Pennsylvania Army depot--to accuse Democratic critics of a 'deeply irresponsible' effort 'to rewrite the history of how (the Iraq) war began.' Bush alleged that Congress saw precisely the same intelligence regarding Iraq's mythical WMDs the White House saw. Consequently, 'when I made the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, Congress approved it with strong bipartisan support.'

The president also claimed that a 'bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments.'

None of these things is true. Taking the last first, the Senate Select Committee on pre-war intelligence has pointedly refused to probe White House arm-twisting and selective use of evidence. Indeed, Democrats recently called a surprise closed session to demand answers, provoking GOP Majority Leader Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., to pitch a hissy-fit. Bush simply made that up.

It's also categorically false to say that Congress approved removing Saddam Hussein from power. 'Regime change' never came to a vote. The White House strenuously insisted that its October 2002 Iraq resolution was not a de facto declaration of war.

Bush vowed to work through the U.N. Security Council and to exhaust every peaceful remedy for the alleged Iraqi threat. He portrayed himself as reluctant to fight. 'I am very firm in my desire to make sure that Saddam is disarmed,' he said two days after the vote. 'Hopefully, we can do this peacefully. The use of the military is my last choice, is my last desire.'"

"Iraq Is Now A Cloud Over Everything"

2005-11-20T04:08:00.000-06:00

* this is a comment from the ' Huffington Post'.

"Here is what winning looks like in iraq.

1) Safety. Anyone can walk the street and not get shot.

2) ALL utilities up and running 24 hours a day. No more blackouts, lack
of water. No more sewage in the streets.

3) Employment. Give all Iraqis a job so they feel they have a future.

4) Functioning government. If we are fighting terrorism with democracy,
then there has to be a functioning democracy in iraq.

Accomplishing this will take at least 400,000 US troops in Iraq. It will
take maybe 200,000 more Peace Corp types to help with the infrastructure
and civil society. This will require reinstatement of the draft, repeal
of the recent tax cuts and a $50/barrel tax on oil to pay for it all. Its
called nation building and it is horrendously expensive. A true 'War
President' would be capable of the leadership to achieve this. FDR did it
in WWII. Why not Bush in 2005? It would be his finest hour.

'Stay the course' means America loses. If we are not willing to do it
right, we should not ask even a single soldier to die for a flawed policy.
Maybe the Congress will finally realize this."

Stephen Elliott: I Was Wrong About Bush

2005-11-14T06:50:00.000-06:00

Clearly, there will be no turn toward the center. There will be no contrition, no reaching out, no soul searching. There will be no road to Damascus, no trip to China. Bush and Rove are going to try to shoot their way out of this, resorting to precisely the scummy smear tactics Patrick Fitzgerald just laid bare. They're going to keep trying to Swiftboat anyone who opposes them - except that Bush's approval rating is about 37% right now, which means they're going to have to Swiftboat almost two-thirds of the U.S.. Six in ten voters now think Bush is dishonest, and yet he's going to insist, as always, that we shut up and trust him or be branded traitors. It's almost funny.

But really it's sad. I thought, perhaps, there was a moment when better natures might take over, if only in the name of self-preservation. Once again I underestimated this man's tragic stupidity. My consolation is that it can't work. The numbers are against him now. If this is really the way he wants to spend the next three years, his reputation going down in a hail of bullets while he and Turd Blossom keep jabbering about everyone else's crimes, I say: Bring It On"

Pope Gives Advice on Contradi... Creation

2005-11-12T02:55:00.000-06:00

Refered to many as “fooled by the atheism that they carry inside of them..."

He went on to add, "Fooled out of knowing the simple truth: a homophobe entity before there were ever entities removed his baton from its magic case, dipped it in universe sauce, and created everything in a week. Then he just invented the "week" right there. There weren't numbers yet, but seven was the best one, so he moved on and picked that. Then the homophobe totally got bored! Never mind he had always been alone without comparison. He had to do something, so he made one human. Just like himself. Except nothing like himself, you know. He named him Adam, so when nothing called it knew what to say. Then Adam totally got bored too! By then the homophobe entity was freaked Adam would start liking him too much anyway, so he made Eve. Out of Adams rib, that's how. Come on pay attention. Nope, neither one of them had belly buttons. But they had sex, and we all came from them. Six and a half billion in a few thousand years. Well, actually, 180 billion if you count the dead. But they're not really dead so they don't count. See, when you die you actually live forever. You can find all this in a science book don't worry. But when the snake ruined everything the magic tree grew fruit and they ate it! Only one thing could result; clothes! No, the homophobe entity didn't care about nakedness, he's invisible remember. I never said that? Well he is. Oh, you never know when he's at work either. Or why he works exactly. Or where. Or for who. Or what his plan is. But we do know this, his plan will never change. So pray to him, he might change it your way. This is all his nature. No wait, he made nature, so wait, no no, yeah, I was right, it's his nature. We know because thousands of years ago, before standards were invented and kings routinely changed written history to suite the social norms of their age, he had people write everything he said down. Not a word has been changed or exaggerated. Today he only talks to me, the pope. You know what, I don't really know why? Huh.... I'm infallable by the way. I wasn't always, but some fallables got to together and voted me perfect. Don't worry it'll all make sense when you die. No I'm exhausted, and besides, I already told you where he is. He's everywhere, except when he's nowhere. That parts always been obvious. Have a good day everyone, mass at seven."

G Bara

Some Kind of Manly: Bush Administration Says Torture is the American Way

2005-11-11T01:12:00.000-06:00

Molly Ivins: "Austin, Texas -- I can't get over this feeling of unreality, that I am actually sitting here writing about our country having a gulag of secret prisons in which it tortures people. I have loved America all my life, even though I have often disagreed with the government. But this seems to me so preposterous, so monstrous. My mind is a little bent and my heart is a little broken this morning.
Maybe I should try to get a grip -- after all, it's just this one administration that I had more cause than most to realize was full of inadequate people going in. And even at that, it seems to be mostly Vice President Cheney. And after all, we were badly frightened by 9-11, which was a horrible event. 'Only' nine senators voted against the prohibition of 'cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment of persons under custody or control the United States.' Nine out of 100. Should we be proud? Should we cry?
'We do not torture,' said our pitifully inarticulate president, straining through emphasis and repetition to erase the obvious.
A string of prisons in Eastern Europe in which suspects are held and tortured indefinitely, without trial, without lawyers, without the right to confront their accusers, without knowing the evidence or the charges against them, if any. Forever. It's 'One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.' Another secret prison in the midst of a military camp on an island run by an infamous dictator. Prisoner without a name, cell without a number."

Judith Miller's Farewell

2005-11-11T00:54:00.000-06:00

New York Times: "To the Editor:
On July 6 I chose to go to jail to defend my right as a journalist to protect a confidential source, the same right that enables lawyers to grant confidentiality to their clients, clergy to their parishioners, and physicians and psychotherapists to their patients. Though 49 states have extended this privilege to journalists as well, for without such protection a free press cannot exist, there is no comparable federal law. I chose to go to jail not only to honor my pledge of confidentiality, but also to dramatize the need for such a federal law.
After 85 days, more than twice as long as any other American journalist has ever spent in jail for this cause, I agreed to testify before the special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald's grand jury about my conversations with my source, I. Lewis Libby Jr. I did so only after my two conditions were met: first, that Mr. Libby voluntarily relieve me in writing and by phone of my promise to protect our conversations; and second, that the special prosecutor limit his questions only to those germane to the Valerie Plame Wilson case. Contrary to inaccurate reports, these two agreements could not have been reached before I went to jail. Without them, I would still be in jail, perhaps, my lawyers warned, charged with obstruction of justice, a felony. Though some colleagues disagreed with my decision to testify, for me to have stayed in jail after achieving my conditions would have seemed self-aggrandizing martyrdom or worse, a deliberate effort to obstruct the prosecutor's inquiry into serious crimes."

George W., on Iraq You're No Bill Clinton: Margaret Carlson

2005-11-10T09:22:00.000-06:00

Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) -- The current U.S. president and his
immediate predecessor are an odder couple than the one on
Broadway.
George W. Bush links with, and delinks from, Bill Clinton
at will. While he often uses him as a benchmark for what a
president shouldn't be, Bush also pulls Clinton out of the
closet to clean up messes, sometimes in the company of his
father, Bush I. Recently, Bush sent presidents 41 and 42 off to
deal with the aftermath of Katrina.
Bush's latest and most curious use of Clinton is to cite
his words as proof of the administration's reasonableness in
going to war. This comes just as the Senate is being forced into
hearings on the possible unreasonableness of the intelligence
Bush relied on for doing so.
The White House puts out talking points citing Clinton's
conviction that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction and
that he was a menace in the region. If Clinton believed it, why
shouldn't the Bush administration?
The Difference
It's a hard charge to answer because Clinton did say what
Bush says he said. But the argument misses one big fact: Clinton
signed off on a speech, not on a war; he agreed on the problem,
not the solution.
Clinton was a president who demanded every available fact
before proposing as much as uniforms in public schools. The
certainty about the danger from Saddam that made it necessary
for Clinton to rattle his saber at the dictator, as he did many
times, is different from the certainty required to invade a
sovereign country.
Clinton had many flaws, but he wouldn't have ginned up
intelligence to support a preconceived notion, nor suppress
intelligence that didn't. In the Bush administration there was a
cabal just for that."

Jane Wells: The World According To Steven Segal

2005-11-07T12:09:00.000-06:00

"I was in a hotel room in Portugal this weekend when I happened upon my first ever Steven Segal movie, and what a revelation it proved to be. Titled "Above the Law" and dating back to 1988 (as I managed to identify by cars, hairdos and ultimately content) it is a violent tale of one cop's battle against corruption. This raging battle for truth goes all the way up to "the highest levels" and in the end, despite obstacles too numerous to repeat here, the hero saves the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from assassination and exposes savage corruption in the CIA. In his closing words the hero, one Nico Toscani, speaks passionately about what can go wrong when officials are allowed to act "above the law" and, among other sins, control the media. Who knew that Steven Segal (credited as writer and producer) had created a work that not only reflected prevailing views of the CIA after the Iran Contra scandal, but was also prophetic and would have meaning down the ages.

As this administration battles its internal and external demons what is different is that there has been no house cleaning as there was in Reagan's administration. The same movie today would not have such a euphoric ending, it couldn't, because nothing in the world of politics and corruption at the highest levels is being so simply resolved. As the Kenneth Tomlinson investigation unfolds we can only hope that if there was indeed control of the media at the highest levels in truth as well as in fiction, some fearless cop with a 21st century haircut will emerge to rid this country of such an evil.

Here's looking for a real Nico Toscani! "

required reading

2005-11-02T19:02:00.000-06:00

Column by Gene Lyons: "So now they tell us. With the Bush administration spiraling into political free fall, conservative elder statesmen have suddenly begun speaking publicly about the regime's manifest failures. Meanwhile, aides whisper to reporters that the president's losing it, pitching temper tantrums, lashing out at junior staffers, and blaming everybody in the White House for his problems except himself.
'This is not some manager at McDonald's chewing out the help,' a source close to Bush told the New York Daily News. 'This is the President of the United States, and it's not a pleasant sight.'
No, I don't reckon it is. Naturally Bush, like Nixon before him, also gives the press a 'big share' of the blame.
Backstairs gossip aside, however, the most powerful indictment of the administration's malign incompetence is coming from former insiders. Col. Larry Wilkerson was Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff throughout Bush's first term. A career soldier, he has also served as director of the U.S. Marine Corps War College. In short, he's anything but a fuzzy-minded pacifist.
Last week, Wilkerson gave a speech at the New American Foundation in Washington blaming a secretive 'cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld' for seizing power from an ignorant, intellectually lazy president. They were aided by 'an extremely weak national security adviser' (Condoleezza Rice), who told Bush whatever he wanted to hear to build 'her intimacy with the president' and bolster her career.
It sounds like a comic strip: President Dilbert."

Writing in an Age of Terror

2005-10-30T12:18:00.000-06:00

Writing in an Age of Terror
By David Swanson
October 30, 2005
Remarks delivered at National Writers Union conference in Philadelphia, October, 29, 2005, opening forum with Ed Herman, Danny Schechter, and Linn Washington, on "Writing in an Age of Terror."
Obviously, if this really were an age of terror, an age in which we were all terrorized, there would be no writing. You can't write if you're terrorized. I mean, you can, but your writing will have all the clarity of a campaign speech by John Kerry, or all the relevance of the election-year literature produced by the AFL-CIO, which refused to acknowledge that there was a war in Iraq.
Every serious article about U.S. or global politics that pretends there is no war in Iraq is an example of writing in an age of terror. Every article that pretends the war is not a blatant violation of international law and a crime against humanity is an example of writing in an age of terror. But that sort of writing, during other wars, predates the commandment from Bush to feel terrorized.

Gay administrator knows pros, cons of coming out

2005-10-28T18:22:00.000-05:00

Sheryl Swoopes' coming-out party was only a couple of hours old Wednesday morning on ESPN.com when a passionately angry e-mail splashed down in my in-box.

It was a friend of mine -- an athletic administrator at a high-level Division I-A school. One of the most competent and respected professionals I know in college athletics. He's also a gay man.

He hasn't come out, not yet. Ask him a direct question about his orientation and he probably wouldn't deny it -- but the risks remain. In the machismo-drenched world of male team sports, admitting you're gay is like skydiving without checking your parachute. You hope for a soft landing, but it's still a leap of faith that could end up going very, very wrong.
And now Sheryl Swoopes is close to pushing him out.

Swoopes' public declaration in ESPN The Magazine that she is a lesbian was not the contentious issue with my friend. The issue was the following quote from Swoopes:

"The talk about the WNBA being full of lesbians is not true. There are as many straight women in the league as there are gay. What really irritates me is when people talk about football, baseball and the NBA, you don't hear all of this talk about the gay guys playing. But when you talk about the WNBA, then it becomes an issue."

continued: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?id=2206636

Paul Begala: The False Moral Superiority of the Bush White House

2005-10-28T17:26:00.000-05:00

As a former Clinton aide, the indictment of Lewis 'Scooter' Libby and the announcement that Karl Rove remains in the prosecutorial hot-seat gives me no schadenfreude. First because many of my fellow Texans in the Bush White House are friends of mine; others are acquaintances I've known for years. I feel their pain. Second, because no one who loves the White House and reveres the presidency can take joy in seeing it besmirched. And third, because the ultimate result of the alleged criminal conduct was to march 2,000 young heroes off to die in an unjust, unwise, unprovoked and unwarranted war.

The plain fact is that after a seven year non-stop investigato-rama, no senior Clinton White House official was ever even charged with wrongdoing. Much less indicted. Much less convicted. In fact, the highest-ranking Clinton official to be convicted of wrongdoing in connection with his public duties was the chief of staff to the Agriculture Secretary. Betcha five bucks you can't even name the Clinton Agriculture Secretary in question, much less his chief of staff. Unlike Nixon (whose Watergate crimes were manifest), unlike Reagan (whose White House was corrupted by the Iran-Contra crimes), unlike Bush 41 (who pardoned White House aides and Cabinet officers before they could testify against him), Bill Clinton presided over the most ethical White House staff in decades."

The Price We Pay for Bush's Kind of Loyalty: Margaret Carlson

2005-10-27T08:03:00.000-05:00

Margaret Carlson
Oct. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Though loyalty is a virtue, party
loyalty is often a vice. A particularly virulent species has
infected the administration of President George W. Bush, and it
is a danger to giver and receiver alike.
This loyalty binds the entire network of family and friends
that contrived to elect him. There is hardly a Republican who
won't twist into embarrassing contortions in order to
demonstrate it.
This loyalty fosters debilitating cronyism, putting people
like Michael Brown and Harriet Miers (if Bush gets his way) into
jobs they simply are not suited for. Loyalty to Bush's war has
put Vice President Dick Cheney, his top aide I. Lewis
``Scooter'' Libby and Karl Rove, the president's longtime
adviser, in a prosecutor's crosshairs.
This loyalty has made aides afraid to bring the president
unwelcome news. White House Counselor Dan Bartlett had to bypass
senior staff and smuggle in a tape of the evening news to show
Bush how badly things were going in Katrina-stricken New
Orleans, contrary to what his loyal aides were telling him."

"'Little Miss Run Amok"

2005-10-26T20:15:00.000-05:00

Gene Lyons
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
With everybody in Washington anticipating dramatic, possibly melodramatic, developments in the Valerie Plame CIA leaks investigation, it's worth noticing what it reveals about the appalling state of American political journalism.
As one with first-hand experience of the odd blend of arrogance, high-handedness and sheer professional incompetence in high places at The New York Times, very little in that newspaper's coverage of self-dramatizing reporter Judith Miller surprises me.
Shocking yes, surprising no.
In one very limited sense, the Times' eight-year infatuation with Whitewater was even odder than its naive boosterism about Iraq's mythical WMDs. No state secrets were involved. Any skeptical reporter with a working brain could deconstruct the coverage. Correct the errors and fill in the blanks, and the Whitewater 'scandal'--as even Kenneth Starr eventually had to conclude--basically vanished. Having written two books on the subject (one with Joe Conason), I'll spare you a rehash."

Dick at the Heart of Darkness

2005-10-26T12:42:00.000-05:00

New York Times: Maureen Dowd: "After W. was elected, he sometimes gave visitors a tour of the love alcove off the Oval Office where Bill trysted with Monica - the notorious spot where his predecessor had dishonored the White House.
At least it was only a little pantry - and a little panting. If W. wants to show people now where the White House has been dishonored in far more astounding and deadly ways, he'll have to haul them around every nook and cranny of his vice president's office, then go across the river for a walk of shame through the Rummy empire at the Pentagon. The shocking thing about the trellis of revelations showing Dick Cheney, the self-styled Mr. Strong America, as the central figure in dark conspiracies to juice up a case for war and demonize those who tried to tell the public the truth is how unshocking it all is. It's exactly what we thought was going on, but we never thought we'd actually hear the lurid details: Cheney and Rummy, the two old compadres from the Nixon and Ford days, in a cabal running the country and the world into the ground, driven by their poisonous obsession with Iraq, while Junior is out of the loop, playing in the gym or on his mountain bike. Mr. Cheney has been so well protected by his Praetorian guard all these years that it's been hard for the public to see his dastardly deeds and petty schemes. But now, because of Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation and candid talk from Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Wilkerson, he's been flushed out as the heart of darkness: all sulfurous strands lead back to the man W. aptly nicknamed Vice."

Life After Hunter

2005-10-24T14:22:00.000-05:00

Although Hunter S. Thompson is gone, his widow "is still surrounded by him, weighed down not only by his papers, which entirely fill the basement, and by his fans, who still turn up from time to time, but also by his stuff, which covers every surface, and which she will never be able to throw away."

Alec Baldwin: What Happened to the Party of Lincoln?

2005-10-24T13:50:00.000-05:00

In today's NY Times, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, in reference to the Fitzgerald/CIA leak investigation, is quoted as saying that she hoped 'that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars.'

If you check the online record you will see that this is the same Kay Bailey Hutchison that voted in favor of both counts of impeachment against Bill Clinton. More disturbingly, she writes in the Congressional record dated February 17th, 1999:

'I do not hold the view of our Constitution that there must be an actual, indictable crime in order for an act of a public officer to be impeachable. It is clear to this Senator that there are, indeed, circumstances, short of a felony criminal offense, that would justify the removal of a public officer from office, including the President of the United States. Manifest injury to the Office of the President, to our Nation and to the American people and gross abuse of trust and of public office clearly can reach the level of intensity that would justify the impeachment and removal of a leader.'

My question for today is: Why are contemporary Republicans so full of shit? And a follow-up...How did the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and General Eisenhower get taken over by such lying, thieving, self-serving scoundrels?"

The Blog | Alec Baldwin: What Happened to the Party of Lincoln? | The Huffington Post

2005-10-24T11:15:00.000-05:00

Karl and Scooter's Excellent Adventure

2005-10-23T15:00:00.000-05:00

New York Times: "THERE were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no collaboration between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda on 9/11. There was scant Pentagon planning for securing the peace should bad stuff happen after America invaded. Why, exactly, did we go to war in Iraq?
'It still isn't possible to be sure - and this remains the most remarkable thing about the Iraq war,' writes the New Yorker journalist George Packer, a disenchanted liberal supporter of the invasion, in his essential new book, 'The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq.' Even a former Bush administration State Department official who was present at the war's creation, Richard Haass, tells Mr. Packer that he expects to go to his grave 'not knowing the answer.' Maybe. But the leak investigation now reaching its climax in Washington continues to offer big clues. We don't yet know whether Lewis (Scooter) Libby or Karl Rove has committed a crime, but the more we learn about their desperate efforts to take down a bit player like Joseph Wilson, the more we learn about the real secret they wanted to protect: the 'why' of the war. To piece that story together, you have to follow each man's history before the invasion of Iraq - before anyone had ever heard of Valerie Plame Wilson, let alone leaked her identity as a C.I.A. officer. It is not an accident that Mr. Libby's and Mr. Rove's very different trajectories - one of a Washington policy intellectual, the other of a Texas political operative - would collide before Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury. They are very different men who play very different White House roles, but they are bound together now by the sordid shared past that the Wilson affair has exposed."

Woman of Mass Destruction

2005-10-22T12:04:00.000-05:00

New York Times:
by Maureen Dowd
"I've always liked Judy Miller. I have often wondered what Waugh or Thackeray would have made of the Fourth Estate's Becky Sharp.
The traits she has that drive many reporters at The Times crazy - her tropism toward powerful men, her frantic intensity and her peculiar mixture of hard work and hauteur - have never bothered me. I enjoy operatic types.
Once when I was covering the first Bush White House, I was in The Times's seat in the crowded White House press room, listening to an administration official's background briefing. Judy had moved on from her tempestuous tenure as a Washington editor to be a reporter based in New York, but she showed up at this national security affairs briefing.
At first she leaned against the wall near where I was sitting, but I noticed that she seemed agitated about something. Midway through the briefing, she came over and whispered to me, 'I think I should be sitting in the Times seat.'
It was such an outrageous move, I could only laugh. I got up and stood in the back of the room, while Judy claimed what she felt was her rightful power perch.
She never knew when to quit. That was her talent and her flaw. Sorely in need of a tight editorial leash, she was kept on no leash at all, and that has hurt this paper and its trust with readers. She more than earned her sobriquet 'Miss Run Amok.'
Judy's stories about W.M.D. fit too perfectly with the White House's case for war. She was close to Ahmad Chalabi, the con man who was conning the neocons to knock out Saddam so he could get his hands on Iraq, and I worried that she was playing a leading role in the dangerous echo chamber that Senator Bob Graham, now retired, dubbed 'incestuous amplification.' Using Iraqi defectors and exiles, Mr. Chalabi planted bogus stories with Judy and other credulous journalists.
Even last April, when I wrote a column critical of Mr. Chalabi, she fired off e-mail to me defending him.
When Bill Keller became executive editor in the summer of 2003, he barred Judy from covering Iraq and W.M.D. issues. But he acknowledged in The Times's Sunday story about Judy's role in the Plame leak case that she had kept 'drifting' back. Why did nobody stop this drift?
Judy admitted in the story that she 'got it totally wrong' about W.M.D. 'If your sources are wrong,' she said, 'you are wrong.' But investigative reporting is not stenography."

SON'S SHAVING HIS LEGS IS ROUGH FOR MOM TO HANDLE

2005-10-12T15:08:00.000-05:00

DEAR ABBY: My son, "Reed," is 14. We have always been able to talk about everything. I have always told him he could trust me and his father. I am very proud of him.

Yesterday I was shocked speechless because Reed shaved his legs! Although I almost had a heart attack, I tried to remain calm. He says that all his friends are doing it, and that the girls like it. His father sat down with him and told him that men do not shave their legs. My son says it is the fashion, and hairy legs are not "in."

Reed is a wonderful young man. People always tell me how lucky we are to have such a terrific son. Am I overreacting? I'm confused and beginning to feel the generation gap.

-- WORRIED MOM IN PUERTO RICO

DEAR WORRIED: Calm down and stop worrying. You have asked your son to trust you; now it's time to trust your son. Many perfectly normal males shave their legs -- including athletes, bodybuilders, bicyclists, swimmers and people in the public eye. And I'm sure many girls do like it, because it shows muscle definition to better advantage.

Your Credit Scores: What You Don't Know Can Hurt You

2005-10-12T15:00:00.000-05:00

I know you know your SAT score.

And I bet you know your cholesterol score.

Some of you could probably rip off the phone numbers of old boyfriends and girlfriends you haven't spoken to in 10 years.
So tell me something. If you're so good with numbers, why don't you know your credit score?

http://finance.yahoo.com/columnist/article/moneymatters/950

Deep Underground Military Bases and the Black Budget

2005-10-10T22:19:00.000-05:00

Deep Underground Military Bases and the Black Budget:
Posted on Sun Oct 09, 2005 at 09:24:42 PM PST

'I love the country I am living in more than I love my life, but I would not be standing before you now, risking my life, if I did not believe it was so. The first part of this talk is going to concern deep underground military bases and the black budget. The Black Budget is a secretive budget that garners 25% of the gross national product of the United States. The Black Budget currently consumes $1.25 trillion per year. At least this amount is used in black programs, like those concerned with deep underground military bases. Presently, there are 129 deep underground military bases in the United States."

Daily Kos: Did Ari Fleischer Testify Against Bush in Plame Case??

2005-10-08T18:45:00.000-05:00

Ari Fleischer Guilty in Leak Case? Did He Testify Against Bush?
Don't be surprised if former WH PRess Secretary Ari Fleischer is indicted soon by the Plame Grand Jury. Although in his testimony, Fleischer denied reading the INR memo on AF One, 'Comical Ari' was said to have been seen reading it. This could mean a perjury charge.
And Ari's log shows a call from Novakula the day after the July 6 Wilson article came out! Rove said Novak told him the name. Did Ari tell Robert who then told Karl? Or is that just more Karl CYA?And did Ari 'flip' for Fitz and testify against Bush?!?!
Links on the Ari Flip!
Sherlock Google's diary :: :: Among those asked if he had seen the memo was Ari Fleischer, then the White House press secretary, who was on Air Force One with Mr. Bush and Mr. Powell during the Africa trip. Mr. Fleischer told the grand jury that he never saw the document, a person familiar with the testimony said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the prosecutor's admonitions about not disclosing what is said to the grand jury.
Mr. Fleischer's role has been scrutinized by investigators, in part because his telephone log showed a call on the day after Mr. Wilson's article appeared from Mr. Novak, the columnist who, on July 14, 2003, was the first to report Ms. Wilson's identity.
In his column, Mr. Novak referred to her by her maiden name, Valerie Plame, which she had used when first employed by the C.I.A. Mr. Fleischer has told the grand jury that he did not return Mr. Novak's call, a person familiar with the testimony said.
NY Times
On the same day the memo was prepared, White House phone logs show Novak placed a call to White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, according to lawyers familiar with the case and a witness who has testified before the grand jury. Those people say it is not clear whether Fleischer returned the call, and Fleischer has refused to comment.
The Novak call may loom large in the investigation because Fleischer was among a group of administration officials who left Washington later that day on a presidential trip to Africa. On the flight to Africa, Fleischer was seen perusing the State Department memo on Wilson and his wife, according to a former administration official who was also on the trip."

OPEN LETTER TO THE PEOPLE OF "THE THIEF"

2005-10-06T14:17:00.000-05:00

To The People of "The Thief":

It is time that many people on this board start adding their flavor, taste, and opinions to articles posted on this site. Failure to do so will only create an environment which is boring, unstimulating, and useless. "The Thief" will never survive long-term if it fails to act on my suggesstion. It seems that there are only a few people on this board who actively participate and offer strong suggesstions and opinions to articles posted.

Many kudos should be given out to the individuals who have contributed to the knowledge of this website, including the "silent assasian," "collin cartier," and "27." It is quite easy to post documents on this website, but to not voice your opinion on an article is tragic and goes against the whole concept of what this site is supposed to be. I encourage every member of "The Thief" to start engaging in insigghtful dialogue and start making this website what it can be by adding comments to posted articles. Thank you.

Signed,

XXX

- Back the Nat.

With Miers, Bush Gets Fifth Vote Against Roe: Margaret Carlson

2005-10-05T11:36:00.000-05:00

Bloomberg Columnists: "Oct. 5 (Bloomberg) -- What if former President Bill Clinton had nominated his White House counsel, Bernie Nussbaum, to the Supreme Court? I can hear Bill Frist now. What does Slick Willy think he's doing -- filling a job at FEMA?
At first glance, there seems to be no other reason for
Harriet Miers's nomination to the Supreme Court other than that
she is President George W. Bush's Bernie Nussbaum. The notion
that a careerist corporate lawyer would have risen to the top of
Bush's list if she weren't down the hall is preposterous.
Unlike famous self-selector Dick Cheney, no one suspects
the modest Miers looked in the mirror and saw the best
replacement for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor staring back at her.
Only Bush could see the ``heart'' and ``character'' in Miers
that made her the perfect selection. She's been his consigliore,
fixer and confidante for more than two decades, and she thinks
the way he does.
The fact that Miers is a woman helps enormously. It looks
as if Bush listened to wife Laura, who publicly suggested he
should replace a woman with a woman. It's far more likely that
Laura publicly suggested it because he already had decided to do
so. The choice prompts automatic praise from some liberals,
excites Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and
placates Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein."

Bush Dunnit

2005-10-03T22:18:00.000-05:00

"George Stephanopolous dropped a bombshell on his show on Sunday. Toward the end, as Judd notes, he said,' Definitely a political problem but I wonder, George Will, do you think it%u2019s a manageable one for the White House especially if we don%u2019t know whether Fitzgerald is going to write a report or have indictments but if he is able to show as a source close to this told me this week, that President Bush and Vice President Cheney were actually involved in some of these discussions. ' The implication is that Bush and Cheney took part in discussions with Karl Rove, Lewis Libby and other administration spinmeisters about what to do about that pesky Joseph Wilson IV, former acting ambassador to Iraq who had stood up to Saddam in fall of 1990. Wilson had gone to Niger in spring of 2002 to check out the stories circulating in intelligence circles that Saddam had bought uranium there recently. Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney (when people are in legal trouble the tradition is to drop the nicknames) had asked the CIA about the stories. Wilson had found that the structure of the uranium industry in Niger (which frankly was in French hands) made the purchases implausible. What Wilson did not know at the time was that the stories were generated by actual documents, a set of clumsily forged letters generated by Italian military intelligence officer Rocco Martini (who claimed he was the tool of 'higher powers.')Wilson wrote his report and assumed it was passed by then CIA direct George Tenet and thence went to Cheney, who had initiated the inquiry. Wilson watched with amazement and outrage as the Bush administration went on relentlessly to hype Iraq's alleged nuclear program as a basis for the Iraq War that they got up. By May of 2003, Wilson had had enough, and he went public with an editorial in the New York Times, in which he told his story.The whole point of Bushism is to punish dissidence within the ranks immediately and ruthlessly. Wilson, a former State Department official, had to be destroyed for having stepped out of line. Everyone should remember that when former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill decided to come out with a tell-all memoir about being in the Bush cabinet for a year, he proclaimed, 'I'm old, I'm rich, and there is nothing they can do to me' (or words to that effect). Then all of a sudden the Bush administration was finding signs of classified documents in O'Neill's book, implicitly threatening him with spending the rest of his life in jail for having revealed government secrets. O'Neill feebly protested that he had not had access to classified documents. But all of a sudden he disappeared from the airwaves. He had discovered that there were, too, things that could be done to him. He must have been astonished that the Bushes of Kennebunkport would behave like Vladimir Putin. Everyone always underestimates the malevolence of the Bushes of Connecticut."

The Blog | Jane Hamsher: Oh MoDo Where Art Thou? | The Huffington Post

2005-10-03T22:07:00.000-05:00

Oh MoDo Where Art Thou?
The Judy Miller affair is perfect Maureen Dowd material. NeoCon princess with a history of spreading misinformation for her Pentagon pals across the front page of the New York Times like a fine layer of nuclear waste, the 'irresponsible martyrdom' that lead her to wrap herself in the First Amendment with all the subtlety of Norma Desmond begging for a klieg light, the paltry parade of C-list defenders and a 'compromise' so self-serving even the mouth breathers mock her. The barbs verily write themselves.

And yet not one word has MoDo written about the woman who now brags to her friends about her $1.2 million book deal. Her lip must be in utter shreds for having been bitten so hard for so long.

In fact, not a peep on Miller has been uttered by the entire Times punditry corps. One can only conclude that they have been effectively muzzled. This is a tragedy of epic proportions for the blogosphere, who are still reeling from the loss of these voices behind the $49.95 TimesSelect wall (as blogger Attaturk lamented, 'Well goodbye to bashing Bobo and Tierney....[that's] half my act.')"

Tom DeLay's House of Shame - Newsweek National News - MSNBC.com

2005-10-02T22:08:00.000-05:00

Congress has always had its share of extremists. But the DeLay era is the first time the fringe has ever been in charge.
Oct. 10, 2005 issue - A decade ago, I paid a call on Tom DeLay in his ornate office in the Capitol. I had heard a rumor about him that I figured could not possibly be true. The rumor was that after the GOP took control of the House that year, DeLay had begun keeping a little black book with the names of Washington lobbyists who wanted to come see him. If the lobbyists were not Republicans and contributors to his power base, they didn't get into 'the people's House.' DeLay not only confirmed the story, he showed me the book. His time was limited, DeLay explained with a genial smile. Why should he open his door to people who were not on the team?"

If you can believe it, "compassionate conservatism" is back

2005-09-29T12:27:00.000-05:00

Knocked sideways by public anger at the government's inept response to Hurricane Katrina, President Bush delivered a televised speech promising the moon to Gulf Coast residents left homeless and jobless by the storm. He added heartening words about the role of racism in the region's enduring poverty.
Backlit by temporary spotlights flown to New Orleans, Bush vowed to spare no expense in what he called 'one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen.' He added that 'federal funds will cover the great majority of the costs of repairing public infrastructure in the disaster zone.' Costs are estimated at $200 billion, very roughly what the United States expects to spend in Iraq this year.
And here's the beauty part: In the short run, those billions will come mostly from the governments of China and Saudi Arabia in the form of Treasury Bond purchases. Eventually, of course, the debt must be repaid with interest, but not while Bush is president. Sweet.
Pressed by reporters for a ballpark estimate, the president shrugged. Rebuilding after Katrina, he said, would 'cost whatever it costs.' He vowed not to raise taxes. Unspecified and improbable spending cuts will supposedly make up the difference.
Since Bush took office in 2001, government spending has risen almost by a third, from $1.86 trillion to $2.48 trillion, Newsweek reports. He has never vetoed a spending bill. In recently signing a $286.4 billion, pork-laden transportation bill--$250 million to build a bridge from a town of 8,000 to an island of 50 in a powerful Alaska congressman's district, for example--Bush praised himself for doing it the 'fiscally responsible way.' Instead of raising taxes, he'd borrowed the money.
Bush 'conservatism,' see, is grasshopper conservatism. Party today, let the ants pay the caterer another day. Meanwhile, two little-known millionaire-only tax cuts enacted in 2001 will take effect next year. By removing ceilings on personal exemptions and itemized deductions, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calculates they reduce income taxes for the top two-tenths of 1 percent of Americans $20,000 each. The five-year budget cost is $35 billion"

Bush's Presidency Is Exposed and Crumbling: Margaret Carlson

2005-09-29T08:20:00.000-05:00

Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Back in the days when President
George W. Bush preferred his endless summer at the ranch to
storm chasing, few mistakes stuck to him. He was like the guy
who drove through the car wash with his top down but never got
wet.
No weapons of mass destruction in a country we're stuck in?
Well, you must understand, he really thought they were there. At
this year's White House Correspondents' Association dinner, Bush
showed a video of himself pretending to look for the weapons
under his desk.
Oh what a difference a hurricane makes. Katrina exposed
something we couldn't know before: Bush's claim that he would
keep us safer than that wishy-washy senator from squishy
Massachusetts is false. Not only are we not safer than we were
before Bush took office, we're worse off.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, as its Katrina
response made tragically clear, is a mess. The Department of
Homeland Security, which Bush built from scratch, is mainly
known for a color chart, wasteful spending, a mixed bag of
airport screeners and a new chief who didn't know the New
Orleans Superdome was filled with starving, homeless hurricane
victims."

Girls, put on some clothes; this isn't America's Next Top Hoochie

2005-09-28T11:20:00.000-05:00

State News
Fredrick Paul
Opinion Section

It's summer and I'm enjoying the heat as any person would. After looking in my closet, I decide to wear some jeans and one of my tank tops. It's nice out, so I walk to class instead of catching the bus.

As I look around, I forget I am on campus because I see a girl who has left half of her clothes at home. It is ridiculous that people think they can dress like they're going to the beach. If you are that hot then you need to go to the doctor and get checked out.

I know we don't have a dress code at MSU but, ladies, we should have enough respect for ourselves to know when something is a little too revealing - especially for class. Unless you are trying to convince your math teacher to give you a 4.0 for showing off your body.
I understand that sometimes you want to look your best because you might have your eye on someone or you want to be noticed. But, trust me, showing someone everything your mama gave you is not the way. Most of the attention will not be for your personality.
Anytime I am talking to one of my male friends they complain about how there are no dateable girls here because of the way they dress.

No guy wants his girl walking around like she's for sale. So, why try and start a relationship like that? When a girl walks around campus half-dressed she is crying for attention. However, a lot of that attention will end up being the wrong kind

Continued: http://www.statenews.com/op_article.phtml?pk=31950

Media, democracy and citizenship

2005-09-28T09:28:00.002-05:00

January 2003 - We live in changing times. Significant political and economic developments and innovations in the field of communication technology towards the end of 20th century have left deep impact on many of our institutions. Globalization has given a new dimension to the capitalist economy, has altered the power and functions of the nation-state and created a global village. These events have provoked a polemical debate on democracy, the nation-state, citizenship and the role and function of media.

Within the above framework this article attempts to look at concepts such as citizenship, the role of communication in democracy, the need for democratization of media, changing priorities of the media and a new paradigm of a communication system to facilitate enlightened citizenship.

The concise Oxford Dictionary of Sociology explains citizenship. "In political and legal theory, citizenship refers to the rights and duties of the member of a nation-state or city. In some historical contexts, a citizen was any member of a city; that is, an urban collectivity which was relatively immune from the demands of a monarch of state. In classical Greece, citizenship was limited to free men, who had a right to participate in political debate because they contributed, often through military service, to the direct support of the city-state. It is argued by historians that citizenship has thus expanded with democratization to include a wider definition of the citizen regardless of sex, age, or ethnicity. The concept was revived in the context of the modern state, notably during the French and American Revolutions, and gradually identified more with rights than obligations. In modern times citizenship refers conventionally to the various organizations which institutionalize these rights in the welfare state."

Media, democracy and citizenship

2005-09-28T09:28:00.001-05:00

Media, democracy and citizenship

2005-09-28T09:28:00.000-05:00

Bush’s Petulant Pique Appointments

2005-09-25T21:31:00.000-05:00

Molly Ivins: "AUSTIN, Texas — So here are all the liberals going into a giant snit just because President Bush appointed a veterinarian to head the women’s health section of the Food and Drug Administration. For Pete’s sake, you whiners, the only reason he chose the vet is because Michael Brown wasn’t available.
If you recall, Ol’ Heckuva-Job Brownie had to go home, walk his dog and then hug his wife after exhausting himself in his triumphal handling of Hurricane Katrina. Otherwise, he’d have been Bush’s first pick.
Now, even the veterinarian doesn’t get the job — just because those professional feminists raised such a stink. What’s wrong with a vet? They know a lot about birth and udders and stuff. If the mother is having trouble giving birth, you grab the baby by the legs and pull it out — it’s not brain surgery. Then you worm ’em, you tag ’em and you spray for fleas. Why the fuss?
The only reason Bush even needed a new head of the Office of Women’s Health is because the last one, Susan Wood, quit. She was upset because the political hacks who run the agency refused to allow over-the-counter sale of the emergency contraceptive pill Plan B.
True, that decision was made against the advice of the FDA’s own scientific advisory panel and will unquestionably result in more abortions and almost certainly damage to some women’s health. But why would anyone expect the Bush hacks to pay attention to scientific and clinical evidence, fully evaluated and recommended by the professional staff? Just like the folks at FEMA, they got their jobs because they know how to set up photo-ops for Bush.
There’s a doctoral dissertation to be written about Bush appointees named during the administration’s frequent fits of Petulant Pique. These PP appointments are made in the immortal childhood spirit of “nanny-nanny boo-boo, I’ll show you.” Wood resigns in protest over the politicization of women’s health care? Ha! We’ll show her — we’ll put a vet in charge, instead.
The PP appointments are less for reasons of ideology or even rewarding the politically faithful than just in the old nyeh-nyeh spirit.
You could, for example, put any number of people at the Department of Labor who are wholly unsympathetic to the labor movement — Bush has installed shoals of them already. But there is a certain arch, flippant malice to making Edwin Foulke assistant secretary in charge of the health and safety of workers.
Republican appointees who oppose the agencies to which they are assigned are a dime a dozen, but Foulke is a partner from the most notorious union-busting law firm in the country. What he does for a living is destroy the only organizations that care about workers’ health and safety.
Here’s another PP pick: put a timber industry lobbyist in as head of the Forest Service. How about a mining industry lobbyist who believes public lands are unconstitutional in charge of the public lands? Nice shot. A utility lobbyist who represented the worst air polluters in the country as head of the clean air division at the EPA? A laff riot. As head of the Superfund, a woman whose last job was teaching corporate polluters how to evade Superfund regulations? Cute, cute, cute. A Monsanto lobbyist as No. 2 at the EPA."

Daily Dunklin Democrat: Story : Column by Gene Lyons

2005-09-22T12:44:00.000-05:00

http://www.dddnews.com/story/1119138.html">Daily Dunklin Democrat: Story : Column by Gene Lyons: "An equal-opportunity disaster
Gene Lyons
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
You know things are upside-down when President Malaprop makes sense about race. A reporter asked Bush about talk that 'there was a racial component' to who got no immediate help in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. 'My attitude is this,' the president said. 'The storm didn't discriminate, and neither will the recovery effort. When those Coast Guard choppers, many of whom were first on the scene, were pulling people off roofs, they didn't check the color of a person's skin. They wanted to save lives.'
Were the words scripted? Probably. To the limited extent he's capable of empathy, however, Bush is no bigot.
I'm less sure about Queen Mother Barbara Bush, whose stunningly callous remarks about how well things were working out for the thousands of 'underprivileged' hurricane victims in the Houston Astrodome--delivered with a condescending chuckle--will not soon be forgotten. No homes, no jobs, no schools, family members missing and feared dead, and the president's mother begrudges refugees a free meal and a folding cot in a baseball stadium. Incredible."

Boy dumped by his girlfriend is confused

2005-09-20T16:47:00.000-05:00

What do you guys think of this dilemma?

Dear Abby: 7 months ago I met a girl at a party who had an obvious attraction to me. At the time that we met, I wasn’t really interested in starting a dating relationship with her, but one thing lead to another and 3 weeks after meeting her, we were going out.

Throughout the relationship I would argue with my girlfriend and we would get mad at each other at times, but all in all I enjoyed her company and never had any serious thoughts of leaving her. While this is so, my girlfriend felt otherwise, and just recently broke up with me because, as she states, “does not feel the same way that I do about her.” While we had our share of issues, this breakup was a complete and total shock to me.

My now “ex girlfriend” wants to be just friends, but I still want to date her and give our relationship and differences a time to mature even though she says there is no possibility of ever getting back together. I am now stuck with the decision of whether or not I should continue a friendship with her, stick it out to see if she’ll change her mind, or part separate ways all together. What should I do?

Signed,

Heart Broken and Confused, Phoenix, AZ

Disney on Parade

2005-09-17T11:20:00.000-05:00

New York Times- Maureen Dowd: "The president, as he fondly recalled the other day, used to get well lit in New Orleans. Not any more. On Thursday night, Mr. Bush wanted to appear casually in charge as he waged his own Battle of New Orleans in Jackson Square. Instead, he looked as if he'd been dropped off by his folks in front of a eerie, blue-hued castle at Disney World. (Must be Sleeping Beauty's Castle, given the somnambulant pace of W.'s response to Katrina.)
All Andrew Jackson's horses, and all the Boy King's men could not put Humpty Dumpty together again. His gladiatorial walk across the darkened greensward, past a St. Louis Cathedral bathed in moon glow from White House klieg lights, just seemed to intensify the sense of an isolated, out-of-touch president clinging to hollow symbols as his disastrous disaster agency continues to flail. In a ruined city - still largely without power, stinking with piles of garbage and still 40 percent submerged; where people are foraging in the miasma and muck for food, corpses and the sentimental detritus of their lives; and where unbearably sad stories continue to spill out about hordes of evacuees who lost their homes and patients who died in hospitals without either electricity or rescuers - isn't it rather tasteless, not to mention a waste of energy, to haul in White House generators just to give the president a burnished skin tone and a prettified background?"

The Blog | Robert Smith: Five People George W. Bush Should Meet in Heaven | The Huffington Post

2005-09-16T09:01:00.000-05:00

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-smith/five-people-george-w-bus_b_7417.html">The Blog | Robert Smith: Five People George W. Bush Should Meet in Heaven | The Huffington Post: "Five People George W. Bush Should Meet in Heaven
Granted, some of these folks will be representative of an entire class, sort of like a heavenly version of a class action suit. As Bush meets these people, I'd like Laura to be there to explain how a "good man" is compatible with policies or actions related to these people.
#1. A representative of the 5 million people who have fallen into poverty during Bush%u2019s first five years as president. As Bush meets this person, it should be explained to him that people who are just above poverty level live paycheck to paycheck. Even a small rise in their cost of living can sink them financially. So these pennies-on-the-dollar raises in sales tax or health insurance or gas that have a moderate effect on wealthier people create a financial disaster for people in this class.
#2. A floating corpse from New Orleans. Or maybe the elderly woman who died in her wheelchair.
#3. Karla Faye Tucker. Yes, she was a murderer and according to the laws of Texas, she was legally put to death. But I would like Bush to explain to her how a Christian could mock a fellow Christian just before executing her.
#4. John Kerry. A merciful God would stand these men opposite each other and judge their souls and their personal merit. Let them be judged without spin, without slime, without lies. I don't know how that comparison would turn out, but I like the idea of an irrefutable judgment day between the two of them.
#5. Casey Sheehan. He would represent the soldiers killed and the soldiers maimed in the unjustified war in Iraq. He would also represent all the mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, wives, and children of those soldiers. And he would represent the thousands of Iraqis killed or wounded and their families. And Laura could stand there and explain how George is a good man."

Neigh to Cronies

2005-09-10T17:33:00.000-05:00

New York Times- Maureen Dowd: "I understand that politicians are wont to put cronies and cupcakes on the payroll. I just wish they'd stop putting them on the Homeland Security payroll.
Can't they stick their pals who failed at business in the Small Business Administration and their tomatoes over at the Oilseeds and Rice Bureau of the Ag Department? At least Bill Clinton knew not to stash his sweeties in jobs concerned with keeping the nation safe. Gennifer Flowers said that Mr. Clinton got her a $17,500 job in Arkansas in the state unemployment agency, though she was ranked ninth out of 11 applicants tested. And Monica Lewinsky's thong expertise led her to a job as an assistant to the Pentagon press officer. Gov. James McGreevey of New Jersey had to resign last year after acknowledging that he had elevated his patronage peccadillo, an Israeli poet named Golan Cipel, to be his special assistant on homeland security without even a background check or American citizenship. Mr. Cipel, however, was vastly qualified for his job compared with Michael Brown, who didn't know the difference between a tropical depression and an anxiety attack when President Bush charged him with life-and-death decisions."

Haunted by Hesitation

2005-09-09T02:01:00.000-05:00

New York Times-Maureen Dowd: "It took a while, but the president finally figured out a response to the destruction of New Orleans. Later this week (no point rushing things) W. is dispatching Dick Cheney to the rancid lake that was a romantic city. The vice president has at long last lumbered back from a Wyoming vacation, and, reportedly, from shopping for a $2.9 million waterfront estate in St. Michael's, a retreat in the Chesapeake Bay where Rummy has a weekend home, where 'Wedding Crashers' was filmed and where rich lobbyists hunt.
Maybe Mr. Cheney is going down to New Orleans to hunt looters. Or to make sure that Halliburton's lucrative contract to rebuild the city is watertight. Or maybe, since former Senator John Breaux of Louisiana described the shattered parish as 'Baghdad under water,' the vice president plans to take his pal Ahmad Chalabi along for a consultation on destroying minority rights. The water that breached the New Orleans levees and left a million people homeless and jobless has also breached the White House defenses. Reality has come flooding in. Since 9/11, the Bush administration has been remarkably successful at blowing off 'the reality-based community,' as it derisively calls the press."

Barbara Bush: It's Good Enough for the Poor

2005-09-08T09:04:00.000-05:00

John Nichols Tue Sep 6, 1:08 PM ET
The Nation -- Finally, we have discovered the roots of George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism."

On the heels of the president's "What, me worry?" response to the death, destruction and dislocation that followed upon Hurricane Katrina comes the news of his mother's Labor Day visit with hurricane evacuees at the Astrodome in Houston.
Commenting on the facilities that have been set up for the evacuees -- cots crammed side-by-side in a huge stadium where the lights never go out and the sound of sobbing children never completely ceases -- former First Lady Barbara Bush concluded that the poor people of New Orleans had lucked out.
"Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them," Mrs. Bush told American Public Media's "Marketplace" program, before returning to her multi-million dollar Houston home.
On the tape of the interview, Mrs. Bush chuckles audibly as she observes just how great things are going for families that are separated from loved ones, people who have been forced to abandon their homes and the only community where they have ever lived, and parents who are explaining to children that their pets, their toys and in some cases their friends may be lost forever. Perhaps the former first lady was amusing herself with the notion that evacuees without bread could eat cake.
At the very least, she was expressing a measure of empathy commensurate with that evidenced by her son during his fly-ins for disaster-zone photo opportunities.
On Friday, when even Republican lawmakers were giving the federal government an "F" for its response to the crisis,
President Bush' heaped praise on embattled
Federal Emergency Management Agency' chief Michael Brown. As thousands of victims of the hurricane continued to plead for food, water, shelter, medical care and a way out of the nightmare to which federal neglect had consigned them, Brown cheerily announced that "people are getting the help they need."
Barbara Bush's son put his arm around the addled FEMA functionary and declared, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."
Like mother, like son.
Even when a hurricane hits, the apple does not fall far from the tree.

Do You Know What It Means to Lose New Orleans? - New York Times

2005-09-05T14:55:00.000-05:00

By ANNE RICE

La Jolla, Calif.
WHAT do people really know about New Orlean"

United States of Shame

2005-09-03T14:01:00.000-05:00

New York Times: "Stuff happens. And when you combine limited government with incompetent government, lethal stuff happens. America is once more plunged into a snake pit of anarchy, death, looting, raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels and criminally negligent government planning. But this time it's happening in America.
W. drove his budget-cutting Chevy to the levee, and it wasn't dry. Bye, bye, American lives. 'I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees,' he told Diane Sawyer. Shirt-sleeves rolled up, W. finally landed in Hell yesterday and chuckled about his wild boozing days in 'the great city' of N'Awlins. He was clearly moved. 'You know, I'm going to fly out of here in a minute,' he said on the runway at the New Orleans International Airport, 'but I want you to know that I'm not going to forget what I've seen.' Out of the cameras' range, and avoided by W., was a convoy of thousands of sick and dying people, some sprawled on the floor or dumped on baggage carousels at a makeshift M*A*S*H unit inside the terminal. Why does this self-styled 'can do' president always lapse into such lame 'who could have known?' excuses. Who on earth could have known that Osama bin Laden wanted to attack us by flying planes into buildings? Any official who bothered to read the trellis of pre-9/11 intelligence briefs. Who on earth could have known that an American invasion of Iraq would spawn a brutal insurgency, terrorist recruiting boom and possible civil war? Any official who bothered to read the C.I.A.'s prewar reports. Who on earth could have known that New Orleans's sinking levees were at risk from a strong hurricane? Anybody who bothered to read the endless warnings over the years about the Big Easy's uneasy fishbowl."

Newly decoded, chimp DNA holds promise for humans

2005-08-31T17:35:00.000-05:00

NEW YORK (AP) — Scientists have deciphered the DNA of the chimpanzee, the closest living relative of humankind, and made comprehensive comparisons with the human genetic blueprint.
Clint the chimpanzee, whose genome sequence appears in 'Nature,' helped show there's little difference between man and ape.
Yerkes National Primate Research Center, AFP/Getty Images
It's a step toward finding a biological answer to a key question: What makes us human?
There are no firm answers yet about how humans picked up key traits such as walking upright and developing complex language. But the work has produced a long list of DNA differences with the chimp and some hints about which ones might be crucial.
"We've got the catalog, now we just have to figure it out," said Dr. Robert Waterston of the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. "It's not going to be one gene. It's going to be an accumulation of changes."
He is senior author of one of several related papers appearing in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature and being published online Thursday by the journal Science.
In the papers, Waterston presents a draft of the newly deciphered sequence of the chimp genome, in which an international team of researchers identified virtually all the roughly 3 billion building blocks of chimp DNA.
"It's a huge deal," said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, which provided some support for the project. "We now have the instruction book of our closest relative."
He said the work will help scientists analyze human DNA for roots of disease.
While the DNA comparisons don't firmly identify specific differences that played a big role in producing humans, they do indicate promising areas, said Bruce Lahn, who studies human evolution genetics at the University of Chicago but didn't participate in the project. Lahn said the research refutes a few previous ideas while providing new and better evidence for others.
Humans and chimps have evolved separately since splitting from a common ancestor about 6 million years ago, and their DNA remains highly similar — about 96% to almost 99% identical, depending on how the comparison is made.
Still, the number of genetic differences between a human and a chimp is about 10 times more than between any two humans, the federal genome institute says. It's the differences — some 40 million — that attract the attention of scientists.
Waterston and colleagues, for example, looked for genes that apparently have changed more quickly in humans than in chimps or rodents, indicating they might have been particularly important in human evolution. They found evidence of rapid change in some genes that regulate the activity of other genes, telling them when and in what tissues to become active, for example.
It would make sense that changes in these regulatory genes could have a broad impact on how organisms develop, playing a key role in human evolution, Waterston said.
With help from the chimp DNA, his team also uncovered several regions of human DNA that apparently contain beneficial genetic changes that spread rapidly among humans within the past 250,000 years. One area contains a gene called FOXP2, which previous work has suggested is involved in acquiring speech.
Svante Paabo of the Max Planck institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and colleagues report in the Science paper that genes active in the brain have changed more in the human lineage than in the chimp lineage. That wasn't the case for genes from other organs such as the heart and liver.
In a telephone interview, Paabo said that in general, "I'm still sort of taken aback by how similar humans and chimps are" in their DNA. "I'm still amazed, when I see how special humans are and how we have taken over this planet, that we don't find stronger evidence for a huge difference in our genomes."
He said he believes the key differences between the species will prove to be subtle things such as patterns of gene activity and how proteins interact.
In fact, Waterston and co-authors said they hoped documenting the overall similarity of chimp and human genomes will encourage action to save chimps and other great apes in the wild:
"We hope that elaborating how few differences separate our species will broaden recognition of our duty to these extraordinary primates that stand as our siblings in the family of life."

Show Me the Science

2005-08-30T22:56:00.000-05:00

New York Times: "PRESIDENT BUSH, announcing this month that he was in favor of teaching about 'intelligent design' in the schools, said, 'I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought.' A couple of weeks later, Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Republican leader, made the same point. Teaching both intelligent design and evolution 'doesn't force any particular theory on anyone,' Mr. Frist said. 'I think in a pluralistic society that is the fairest way to go about education and training people for the future.'
Is 'intelligent design' a legitimate school of scientific thought? Is there something to it, or have these people been taken in by one of the most ingenious hoaxes in the history of science? Wouldn't such a hoax be impossible? No. Here's how it has been done."

Destroying the National Parks - New York Times

2005-08-29T13:27:00.000-05:00

Published: August 29, 2005
Forum: today's editorials
Most of us think of America's national parks as everlasting places, parts of the bedrock of how we know our own country. But they are shaped and protected by an underlying body of legislation, which is distilled into a basic policy document that governs their operation. Over time, that document has slowly evolved, but it has always stayed true to the fundamental principle of leaving the parks unimpaired for future generations. That has meant, in part, sacrificing some of the ways we might use the parks today in order to protect them for tomorrow.
Skip to next paragraph
Recently, a secret draft revision of the national park system's basic management policy document has been circulating within the Interior Department. It was prepared, without consultation within the National Park Service, by Paul Hoffman, a deputy assistant secretary at Interior who once ran the Chamber of Commerce in Cody, Wyo., was a Congressional aide to Dick Cheney and has no park service experience."

Bob Cesca: Is Our Children Learning about Bumper Angels? | The Huffington Post

2005-08-28T12:12:00.000-05:00

HuffPo: "The crux of the debate surrounding Intelligent Design is that some people in our country believe it to be an explanation for the universe and human existence, therefore it should be included in the curriculum of our nation's public schools alongside the study of evolution.
On the scientifically accepted side (evolution), our kids learn that species are perpetually evolving based on mutation and natural selection, and that human beings share common ancestors with modern primates. On the other hand, our kids will be taught that an invisible omniscient being (or a space alien) is somehow guiding the process of the universe.
So my question is this: if we're going to include such curriculum in schools simply because it's the belief of a certain segment of our population, shouldn't we, by rights, include the following topic?
Is our children learning... about the Bumper Angels?"

Hey, What's That Sound?

2005-08-27T20:52:00.000-05:00

New York Times - Maureen Dowd: "Richard Nixon once gave me a lesson in the politics of war. Howell Raines, then the Washington bureau chief for The Times, took some reporters to meet Mr. Nixon right before the 1992 New Hampshire primary. The deposed president had requested that Howell bring along only reporters who were too young to have covered Watergate, so we tried to express an excess of Juvenalia spirit.
Before the first vote of '92 was cast, Mr. Nixon laid out, state by state, how Bill Clinton, who was not even a sure bet for the Democratic nomination at that point, was going to defeat George Bush. If, Mr. Nixon said, Bill could keep a lid on Hillary (who had worked on the House Judiciary Committee looking into the Nixon impeachment), he'd have it made. 'If the wife comes through as being too strong and too intelligent, it makes the husband look like a wimp,' he said. In his jaundiced view, the first President Bush had squandered his best re-election card: if the Persian Gulf war had still been going on, Mr. Bush could have been benefiting from that. 'We had a lot of success with that in 1972,' Mr. Nixon told us, with that famously uneasy baring of teeth that passed for a smile. Was he actually admitting what all the paranoid liberals had been yelping about 20 years earlier - that he had prolonged the Vietnam War so he could get re-elected?"