The Medical Money Pit (Paul Krugman column)

by Paul Krugman

A dozen years ago, everyone was talking about a health care crisis. But then the issue faded from view: a few years of good data led many people to conclude that H.M.O.'s and other innovations had ended the historic trend of rising medical costs.

But the pause in the growth of health care costs in the 1990's proved temporary. Medical costs are once again rising rapidly, and our health care system is once again in crisis. So now is a good time to ask why other advanced countries manage to spend so much less than we do, while getting better results.

'John Brown, Abolitionist': A Soldier in the Army of the Lord

By BARBARA EHRENREICH

THIS may not be the most auspicious time for a sympathetic biography of a religious fanatic who repeatedly sought to advance his cause through violence. Even before the war on terrorism, John Brown had been largely relegated to a loony sidebar of American history. The high school history textbooks that the sociologist James Loewen surveyed in 1995 either brushed Brown off or labeled him insane, while, at a loftier level of intellectual discourse, Michael Ignatieff accused him of ''sadistic self-righteousness.'' So it takes courage, if not a touch of Brownian madness, to argue, as David S. Reynolds does in his absorbing new biography, ''John Brown, Abolitionist,'' that Brown was not the Unabomber of his time, but a reasonable man, well connected to his era's intellectual currents and a salutary force for change.

Change to the Clean Air Act Is Built Into New Energy Bill

By MICHAEL JANOFSKY

Published: April 16, 2005

ASHINGTON, April 15 - Deep in the energy bill that was approved by a House committee this week, under a section titled "Miscellaneous," is a brief provision that could have major consequences for communities struggling to clean up their dirty air.

If it becomes law, it would make one of the most significant changes to the Clean Air Act in 15 years, allowing communities whose air pollution comes from hundreds of miles away to delay meeting national air quality standards until their offending neighbors clean up their own air.

Billmon: Kulturkampf

"Whenever I hear the word culture, I release the safety-catch on my Browning!"

German playwright Hanns Johst
(Often attributed to Hermann Goering)
1933

I was busy with various trivial pursuits -- such as making a living -- this week, so I missed out on the big blogosphere debate about pop culture and the Democratic Party.

It began with an op-ed in Monday's Wall Street Journal by a flack for Joe Leiberman, spread to Kevin Drum's blog (thanks to guest poster Amy Sullivan) and from there quickly metastasized through the lymph nodes of the left side of the blogosphere.

Fortunately, this particular political tumor is responding well to chemo and already seems to be going into remission. So I probably should just keep my mouth shut and leave bad enough alone.

Billmon: Man of the Hour

Since today is tax day, I thought it might be appropriate to pay homage to that Republican icon of the way things ought to be (and, it appears, will be) -- John D Rockefeller.

Now that our beloved Chamber of People's Deputies has passed the permanent estate tax repeal -- or, as Kevin Drum likes to call it, the Republican Trust Fund Baby Act of 2005 -- the Glorious Conservative Cultural Revolution has moved one step closer to its dream of recreating the Gilded Age of American capitalism -- back when men were men, women were women, and five-year-old children were gainfully employed.

Judicial review hasn’t been controversial for 200 years

University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein has a tremendous piece in the LA Times today, arguing among other things, “What we are seeing, for the first time, is a fundamental challenge to the rule of law itself.” Sunstein was referring, of course, to the recent efforts launched by today’s Republican crusaders against the federal judiciary.

Was Sunstein being overdramatic? Hyperbolic, perhaps? I’d argue not. Exhibit A:

Washington Times reporter Stephen Dinan: “You’ve been talking about going after activist judges since at least 1997. The [Terri] Schiavo case gives you a chance to do that, but you’ve recently said you blame Congress for not being zealous in oversight.”

Tom DeLay: “Not zealous. I blame Congress over the last 50 to 100 years for not standing up and taking its responsibility given to it by the Constitution. The reason the judiciary has been able to impose a separation of church and state that’s nowhere in the Constitution is that Congress didn’t stop them. The reason we had judicial review is because Congress didn’t stop them. The reason we had a right to privacy is because Congress didn’t stop them.” (emphasis added)

Consider the significance here. The Majority Leader of the House of Representatives is lamenting the fact that the federal judiciary has the authority to review laws passed by Congress and, when appropriate, find them unconstitutional. That’s what “judicial review” is. It was established over 200 years ago by Chief Justice John Marsall in a little case called Marbury v. Madison. This is part and parcel of the American system of government — and Tom DeLay isn’t shy about expressing his disappointment about it.

Lies, damn lies and then, well, more lies

Guest Post by Morbo

It drives me crazy that some fundamentalist Christians insist that their dogmatic faith bestows upon them a superior form of ethics and morality — and then proceed to act like complete and utter sleazeballs.

Fundamentalists claim to worship an awesome God who holds them to a higher standard of behavior. Time and again I’ve heard them sneer at anyone skeptical of organized religion, any person who dares hew to a secular ethic. Without a belief in God, fundamentalists arrogantly insist, there is nothing to stop men from behaving like beasts.

Recently, I had occasion to hear a speech given by David C. Gibbs III, the Florida fundamentalist Christian attorney who represented Terri Schiavo’s parents, Robert and Mary Schindler. What I heard made me sick.

Gibbs basically accused Michael Schiavo of attacking his wife. Speaking during a right-wing conference in Washington, D.C., Gibbs asserted that no one knows why Terri Schiavo collapsed 15 years ago. Initial suspicions that she had a heart attack or suffered from an eating disorder were ruled out, he claimed.

“The third leading theory — and as you can see, the first two seem to be sort of eliminated — is that there was some form of foul play, that some form of strangulation or violence occurred, and again at the hand of the husband possibly, that actions were taken that caused her for about five minutes to not have oxygen reach into her brain.”

No one defends the Spanish Inquisition — except this guy

Guest Post by Morbo

Under Republican rule, the quality of “experts” testifying at Congressional hearings has definitely taken a dive.

Case in point: On Wednesday the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Property Rights heard testimony on the Federal Marriage Amendment. One of the witnesses, who was called by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), was Gerard Bradley, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame.

So far so good. It’s not unexpected that a conservative law prof at a prominent Catholic university would favor this amendment. Ho hum.

What makes Bradley interesting is that he once wrote an article defending the Inquisition — kind of. It’s called “One Cheer for Inquisitions” and it ran on a website called Catholic.net.

Bradley’s argument is somewhat obtuse, but he seems to be asserting that there was not one Inquisition and that the idea of a single, powerful Inquisition that ravaged Europe has been deliberately conjured up by people to — get ready — provide ammunition for the idea that church and state should be separate.

Robert Parry: David Rockefeller & October Surprise Case

Adapted from Parry's Secrecy & Privilege

On March 23, 1979, late on a Friday afternoon, Chase Manhattan Bank Chairman David Rockefeller and his longtime aide Joseph Verner Reed arrived at a town house in the exclusive Beekham Place neighborhood on New York’s East Side. They were met inside by a small, intense and deeply worried woman who had seen her life turned upside down in the last two months.

Iran’s Princess Ashraf, the strong-willed twin sister of the Iran’s long-time ruler, had gone from wielding immense behind-the-scenes clout in the ancient nation of Persia to living in exile – albeit a luxurious one. With hostile Islamic fundamentalists running her homeland, Ashraf also was troubled by the plight of her ailing brother, the ousted Shah of Iran, who had fled into exile, first to Egypt and then Morocco.

Digby: Response

I wrote this short little piece for In These Times about the difference between the right and left blogosphere. It is a very superficial sketch of how the two spheres operate differently. It evoked the expected furious response from the usual suspects because I quoted from Garance Franke-Ruta's investigative piece on the right wing blogosphere.

The first thing that seems to bother people is my description of what I believe to be the main difference between the right and the left blogospheres --- which is that the right is a fully engaged part of the Republican party infrastructure while the left is a unique political constituency. But, except for the fact that Republicans are indulging in dirty tricks like the Thune bloggers (and it looks like others coming down the pike) I'm not really making a value judgment about those differences. Indeed, I have my doubts about both systems and wonder if the Democrats wouldn't benefit from a bit more message discipline.

Digby: Doing Our Part

I have written in the past that I would love to watch the Sunday gasbag shows with some of America's incisive social critics of the past. I can only imagine what Mark Twain or HL Mencken would say at the spectacle of Tim Russert and five pompadoured members of the clergy disgorging scripture with all the unctuous insincerity of a South Carolina push poller. You know it would be wicked.

This article by Richard Byrne in The American Prospect discusses Sinclair Lewis, one of the greats, and specifically notes just how relevant Elmer Gantry is today. (Considering the Big Tent Revival Senator Frist and the Dogbeater Dobson are putting on the Sunday, it's almost eerie.)

Juan Cole - April 16, 2005 Part 3

Disputes Prevent Selection of Tamim Governor (Kirkuk)

al-Zaman/ AFP: An Iraqi official in Tamim province describes the situation in the city of Kirkuk. Disputes among Kurds, Turkmen and Arabs have prevented the newly elected provincial council from being seated, and therefore they have been unable to select a governor. He said that Kirkuk is a microcosm of Iraq, and that the current tensions make the situation dangerous.

Juan Cole - April 16, 2005 Part 2

Sistani Discourages Shiite MPs from joining Cabinet

Al-Zaman/ AFP: An aide close to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani said Friday that Sistani prefers it if the members of parliament from the United Iraqi Alliance decline posts as cabinet ministers. He says that they should instead concentrate on drafting the permanent constitution. The aide gave the interview to al-Zaman but declined to be identified.

Juan Cole - April 16, 2005

Saturday, April 16, 2005

7 Iraqis Killed, 16 Wounded Friday in String of Bombings
Two Marines Killed

Guerrillas in a town near Baghdad took 60 local Shiites hostage and are threatening to kill them, unless Shiite inhabitants leave the area.

This incident is the most worrying explicit Sunni-Shiite conflict I can remember, and I find it alarming. Shiites could lash out at Sunni Arabs over it.

PM Carpenter on the Estate Tax

April 15, 2005

Dead dumb and radical

With the help of Orwellian word-spinster Frank Luntz, modern conservatives have managed to convince the average American of at least two things: The estate tax is really a “death tax”; and what’s more, no matter what you call it, the tax is as un-American as lib’rulism. True to form, the House has voted to repeal the insidious thing.

For the moment let’s overlook their cheesy word game of “death” vs. “estate” tax, and look instead at the cheesy “un-American” angle -- an adjectival abuse in right-wing lexicography that always translates into “un-conservative.” If you’re a regular auditor of unltraconservative shenanigans, it won’t surprise you to learn that their verbal straining offends the historical truth. For the estate tax is, in fact, as American and conservative, politically speaking, as the country is old.

Former Northern Waters library head rewarded for taking on the FBI

$25,000 prize slated for library foundation
By RICK OLIVO
The Daily Press
Last Updated: Friday, April 15th, 2005 10:09:21 A

The former head of Ashland's Northern Waters Library System has been named as winner of a prestigious First Amendment award.
Joan Airoldi, a librarian and library director in Whatcom County in rural Washington State, challenged an FBI effort to search patron records as an unconstitutional fishing expedition by federal officials.

Left Business Observer: Social Security, revisited

It's uncanny reading Paul Krugman's New York Times column these days—his stuff on Social Security sounds like what LBO was saying in 1998. His February 1 piece was all about how the Trustees of the Social Security system are projecting absurdly low economic growth rates, about half the long-term average, even though proponents of privatization assume that the stock market would continue to return its historical average. That couldn't happen, unless the standard measure for evaluating the dearness or cheapness of stock prices, the price/earnings ratio (which compares stock prices to underlying profits), were to scale unprecedented and ludicrous heights. The numbers Krugman used to illustrate the point are a bit different from LBO's seven-year-old vintage, but not by much.

Audit Finds Charter School Misspent Millions

By Jennifer Coleman, The Associated Press

Published: April 15, 2005

SACRAMENTO—C. Steven Cox ran what was the state’s largest charter school network, enrolling thousands of students at dozens of campuses, but investigators say he routinely looted millions from the public schools to enrich his friends and family, leading to the schools’ collapse last summer, according to a state audit.

A yearlong state-ordered investigation into the finances and corporate structure of the Victorville-based California Charter Academy and its private management firm, Educational Administrative Services Corp., found millions of dollars were spent on hefty executive salaries, perks and questionable contracts awarded to Cox’s friends and family.

“The magnitude of waste of precious education funds outlined in this audit is appalling,” state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell said Thursday.

Juan Cole - April 15, 2005 Part 3

Oil for Food Scandal taints (gasp!) Houston

We've had to put up for months with blowhards like Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota jumping up and down about the Iraq food for oil scandal at the United Nations. Coleman even called for the resignation of Kofi Annan, who hasn't been shown to have behaved improperly himself. Of course, it was clear all along that if fully investigated, the scandal would touch all kinds of oilmen in the United States, as well.

Juan Cole - April 15, 2005 Part 2

Secret Service Still Hasn't Caught Bin Laden

Shouldn't the Secret Service be out trying to find Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri?. The most prominent organized group that I know of trying to kill the president is at large, its leaders taunting us.

Juan Cole - April 15, 2005

Guerrilla War Leaves 24 Dead in Iraq

The Financial Times reports that guerrilla actions, including bombings and ambushes, left at least 24 persons dead on Thursday in Iraq. There were bombs in Baghdad, as well as shootings and assassinations elsewhere. Police were killed near Kirkuk and a bomb exploded in Basra, hurting two civilian passersby (the target was a police vehicle)

One official took comfort from the evidence that the suicide bombings in Baghdad mainly killed motorists and street sweepers, rather than more strategic personnel, leading to the conclusion that today's suicide bombers are not as well-trained.

Avedon Carol at Sideshow: A few things

Xymphora is pretty sure Raymond Lemme didn't commit suicide. He was the guy from the Florida Inspector General's office who was assigned to investigate Clint Curtis' allegations that Republican Tom Feeney had asked him to write a program to cook the Florida vote. Local police ruled that Lemme, a happily married man eagerly planning his daughter's wedding, had suddenly decided to slash his wrists. At first they said there were no photos of the death scene; but then the pictures turned up on the Internet and were confirmed as authentic by the embarrassed police. The photos clearly contradicted the original suicide report on several points - presenting evidence, for example, that Lemme had been beaten before his death. The investigation was reopened after Curtis' Congressional testimony - and then abruptly shut down after local police spoke to a never-identified 'someone' in the Florida state government." Lemme joins a long list of inconvenient people who very suddenly, and without reason, used unusual abilities (such as being able to check out of a motel while dead) in order to kill themselves - and did so just in time to make life less difficult for certain Republicans. If I were Clint Curtis, I'd be in hiding.

Digby: Sissy Assassins

I'm awfully touched that so many Republicans have gone all Claud Raines over these mean Tom Delay and George Bush t-shirts. Indeed, they are so shocked and appalled that according to Crooks and Liars, they are even issuing death threats to Cafe Press, the outfit that distributes the offending items.

The liberal left is completely out of hand. (Michelle Malkin calls us the "pro-assassination" left which is something I'm hearing more of lately and wonder just when this latest delusion seized the wingnuts and what it means. Usually this sort of thing is projection which is a bit alarming.) In any case it appears that we liberals are now not only a bunch of sissies, we are also ruthless killers. Which is interesting, if incoherent.

Digby: Suicide Pact

I am edified to learn that Dr Bill Frist, cat slayer, and Dr James Dobson, dauchshund beater, are joining hands to kill the independent judiciary. (As I have said before, while it's true that not all animal abusers become serial killers, it is true that the vast majority of serial killers were once animal abusers. Not that I'm saying that Frist and Dobson are serial killers ... let's just say that they are in some pretty disgusting company.)

As the Senate heads toward a showdown over the rules governing judicial confirmations, Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, has agreed to join a handful of prominent Christian conservatives in a telecast portraying Democrats as "against people of faith" for blocking President Bush's nominees.

Digby: The Limits Of Politics

Good post on the culture wars...--Dictynna

For your daily pop culture diatribe, I cannot recommend this post by Matt Yglesias highly enough.

Any worldview that can't stand up in the midst of a vibrant cultural ocean needs to rethink itself more than it needs to try and dragoon political forces into supporting it. I often feel that America's religious traditionalists ought to engage in more self-congratulation. Despite -- or, I would argue, because of -- its inability to entrench itself as a European-style official religion, certain strains of American Protestantism have established themselves as far and away the most robust and viable religious force in the developed world. Traditionalists are perfectly capable of doing as I suggest -- fighting the fight in the background society, contesting secular culture in the cultural domain. There's all this stuff out there. Let it fight, let's argue, write, sing, film, etc. But preserving that sort of vibrancy -- the integrity, one might say, of America's various communities -- requires us not to subordinate the value of everything to the values of politics, and not to try and turn everything into the subject of collective political decision-making.

That's it exactly. Politics can't do everything. And everything isn't politics. Democrats can offer real solutions to real people's problems, but not all of them. We can help mitigate the risk of the free market and provide some protection from the more predatory aspects of capitalism. We can guarantee that every person be treated equally under the law and we can ensure our civil liberties. But politics cannot dictate culture and everytime it tries it creates far more problems than it solves.

Feds Lay Down For Rudolph

If Eric Robert Rudolph weren't a cold-blooded murderer on the verge of spending the rest of his life in a federal penitentiary he'd make an excellent legal analyst. Amidst an ugly 11-page manifesto (think Timothy McVeigh meets Paul Hill meets the Unabomber) Rudolph cogently described why the feds cut him a sweetheart deal that spares him a possible death penalty.

The Justice Department chickened out, Rudolph surmised, because federal lawyers figured they never could get a unanimous jury in the South to recommend a death sentence for a man convicted of trying to stop the practice of abortion — even though he chose to do it by bombing a clinic and killing a cop (and by bombing the 1996 Olympics and killing an innocent bystander). "They were afraid," Rudolph boasted in his diatribe, "that in at least one jurisdiction they were going to run into this recalcitrant pro-life juror who would hang the jury and deliver a political defeat and embarrassment to Washington's efforts to make an example out of the person who assaulted their specially protected policy of child murder."

My view of why the feds backed down is not dissimilar — just a bit more diffuse.

Wall St. Suffers Worst Day in Two Years

By MICHAEL J. MARTINEZ, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK - Wall Street suffered its worst single day in nearly two years Friday, with the Dow Jones industrial average falling 191 points for its third straight triple-digit loss. Deepening concerns over economic growth and higher prices led to the worst week of trading since August.

Location, Location—Deduction

The mortgage-interest deduction costs taxpayers billions, but it won't go away anytime soon.
By Daniel Gross
Posted Thursday, April 14, 2005, at 2:55 PM PT

There's a cancer at the heart of our increasingly complex tax code. A special deduction that disproportionately benefits the wealthy and distorts economic activity has grown rapidly in size and could cost taxpayers nearly $100 billion annually by 2009. Eliminating it would allow us to reduce levies on income and rationalize the system. According to Martin Sullivan, a contributing editor of Tax Notes, its existence "means the economy has less business capital, lower productivity, lower real wages, and a lower standard of living."

Who wouldn't want to excise such a tumor from the mighty American economy? President Bush, Congress, oh, and you, too.

We're talking about the home-mortgage-interest deduction, which has become too successful to be killed and perhaps a little too successful for our own good.

Daily Howler - April 15, 2005

CARNEY’S KNOWLEDGE! When Coulter called Hillary Clinton “pond scum,” Jay Carney knew how to play it

FRIDAY, APRIL15, 2005

CARNEY’S KNOWLEDGE: For all we know, it may be true! It may be true that flamboyant public crackpot Ann Coulter is one of the world’s “most influential people,” as Time magazine judges this week in its annual hackery issue. Indeed, that’s precisely the problem we’ve discussed here for years, most recently in yesterday’s post (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 4/14/05). It’s true: Kooky-con pundits like prime nutcase Coulter do gain influence in the culture when “liberal spokesmen” act like cowards, refusing to challenge their absurd, phony work. When the mainstream press corps takes a pass on discussing Coulter’s bad faith, average Americans remain uninformed. And her influence grows in the culture.

Half-baked observations of a VLWC conference

by kos
Fri Apr 15th, 2005 at 08:09:24 PDT

Update [2005-4-15 11:9:24 by Armando]: By Armando. Placed on the top cuz markos posted in the middle of the night. I think it is an important post.

Anytime a liberal points out the well-greased parts of the Republican Noise Machine, the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, some winger cries about the supposed Left Wing machine -- CBS News, NY Times, and, well, some other people.

There is an important distinction, and one that really, really makes all the difference. Their machine talks to each other. It coordinates. It works off the same playbook. It strategizes.

Our so-called liberal machine does none of that. Period. Our supposed media organs are genuinely trying to conduct legitimate journalism. Our think tanks are generally ignored. Our issue groups fight each other for turf, and show little gusto for anything outside their immediate area of expertise.

So guess which is more effective?

Echidne of the Snakes: Onward, Wingnut Soldiers!

Friday, April 15, 2005

The next battle has been planned out for you. It consists of a nationwide rousing up of all sleeping fundamentalists to believe that the judiciary is in cahoots with the Devil and the Democrats are Anti-Christs:

As the Senate heads toward a showdown over the rules governing judicial confirmations, Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, has agreed to join a handful of prominent Christian conservatives in a telecast portraying Democrats as "against people of faith" for blocking President Bush's nominees.

Fliers for the telecast, organized by the Family Research Council and scheduled to originate at a Kentucky megachurch the evening of April 24, call the day "Justice Sunday" and depict a young man holding a Bible in one hand and a gavel in the other. The flier does not name participants, but under the heading "the filibuster against people of faith," it reads: "The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people of faith."

David Neiwert: Minutemen and the mainstream

Thursday, April 14, 2005

It should be clear by now, I hope, that one of the chief achievements, as it were, of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is that the infiltration of the extremist agenda in mainstream conservatism has become rampant in the past months since the 2004 election, embodied by the Schiavo mess.

Even more noteworthy, perhaps, has been the mainstream embrace of the far-right extremists operating the Minuteman Project, and the extent to which they are being portrayed both by media and officialdom as jes' plain folks.

Bush, Palestinians, Israelis in Negotiations

Is it the fruit of the Iraq war? The death of Arafat? The Brits think it's due to their patient lobbying through the course of the first Bush administration. Whatever the reason, the US, and that means the Bush administration, is more closely involved in peace negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians than it has ever been before.

Talking Points Memo: Sick, Dark and Demented

Hyperbole? I don't think so. According to a piece by David Kirkpatrick in tomorrow's Times, Bill Frist is going to participate in a big anti-filibuster telecast, sponsored by the Family Research Council, in which Democratic opposition to President Bush's most conervative judicial appointments will be cast as a Democratic war against believing Christians.

Italian Journalist: U.S. Lied

(CBS) In February, Italian reporter Giuliana Sgrena was taken hostage in Iraq. But after 28 days, she was rescued by an Italian intelligence agent, Nicola Calipari.

Sgrena and Calipari thought they’d escaped to safety, when an American patrol opened fire on their car. Sgrena was wounded; Calipari, an Italian national hero, was killed.

The incident has driven a wedge in the coalition. Last week in Rome, President Bush expressed his regret in person to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

A Dirty Little Footnote to the Energy Bill

By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO

WOODBURY, Conn., April 12 - A freshly painted, six-foot-high steel tank is this rural town's hope for cleaning up a smelly gasoline additive that is fouling its water system. The additive, methyl tertiary butyl ether, has seeped into two of three wells that supply water for 2,000 residents.

In a few weeks, the carbon filtration system housed by the tank will begin treating the well water. The water company plans to expand treatment to a reserve well, 1,000 feet away, where the level of the chemical tested last September at more than twice the federal recommended limit. The filtration unit is expected to cost about $1 million the first year and $250,000 to operate each year afterward, said Rich Henning, a spokesman for United Water, a private company that supplies Woodbury and three other communities in Connecticut.

US already moving toward a flat tax

Bigger tax breaks for wealth produces a system in which the middle class pays about the same as the rich.

By David R. Francis | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Billionaires are paying not much more taxes, proportionately, than those Americans who are merely prosperous.

It's a sign that, even without the formal adoption of a so-called "flat tax," America's tax system is getting flatter.

Caught On Tape: The Right-Wing’s Stalinist Solution

First reported in Dana Milbank’s column last Sunday, here’s the audio of laywer and author Edwin Vieira explaining how he would deal with the U.S. Supreme Court.

Vieira’s words came at the “Confronting the Judicial War on Faith” conference last week. The conference hosted several GOP congressmen and was scheduled to include a speech by Tom DeLay (DeLay had to phone in comments because he was in Rome for the pope’s death).

In case you’re wondering, Vieira left off the first part of the useful “slogan,” which goes like this: “Death solves all problems: no man, no problem.”

(Posting at "Think Progress"

Stars & Stripes: Letter to the Editor

Stars and Stripes

Iraq mission ‘stupid’

In response to “‘Because we gave our word’” (letter, April 6), about people who are dodging military service and refuse to serve overseas: Yes, I did give the oath, I did swear to uphold the Constitution against foreign and domestic enemies. I swore to preserve freedom, but what they left out was to preserve freedom of other countries. Iraq had nothing to do with Sept. 11. I understand fighting for freedom when it’s necessary, and Afghanistan was necessary, but not Iraq.

How many troops are left in the United States? If there were an attack on U.S. soil right now, God forbid, they’d get all the way to Iowa before we could attempt to stop them. By the time we could get all our troops back home, the entire country would be lost.

Did ill-gotten stock gains pay for Bush smears on Kerry and McCain?

We had never heard of the billionaire Wyly brothers of Texas until we spent a day following George W. Bush across New York State on the chilly weekend before Super Tuesday in 2000. While we there, last-minute ads by a group with the oxymoronical name of "Republicans for Clean Air" started appearing on the TV. They showed sooty smokestacks and accused chief rival John McCain of opposing clean energy while praising Bush's record in Texas, the same record that most full-time environmentalists had found appalling.

It may have been the last time that W. pretended to tack to the political left, but he won that New York showdown and McCain was effectively out of the race. The Wylys, Sam and Charles, paid $2.5 million to rush those ads on the air -- pocket change for investors who'd made $4.4 billion selling a software company and had formed another company paid big bucks to invest the University of Texas' money right after their friend Bush became governor.

Lambro plugged misleading Heritage Foundation Social Security calculator

Washington Times chief political correspondent Donald Lambro promoted a new online Social Security benefits calculator, created by the conservative Heritage Foundation, without informing readers of a crucial flaw in the calculator's methodology. The calculator greatly underestimates the benefits that most workers are scheduled to receive under current law. This flaw allows Heritage to claim that "[w]orkers would receive a higher rate of return under President Bush's plan for personal retirement accounts than they would under the existing Social Security system," as Lambro described in his April 14 article.

Billmon: Krazy Kristian Kook (James Dobson)

Or a Klever Kreepy Knave with a shrewd political plan?

According to Josh Marshall, the Rev. James Dobson, DD (Doctor of Divinity, or Daffy Duck, or both) claims to smell the odor of a burning cross drifting from our nation's highest court:

Genuine, certified nutcase. James Dobson compares the "men in white robes, the Ku Klux Klan" to the "black-robed men" on the Supreme Court.

Josh says you can listen in on Dobson's rant by going here and advancing to time stamp 22:52.

I haven't listened to the audio myself (bad for my blood pressure) but if Dobson really said what Josh says -- and I'm sure he did -- then either Focus on the Family needs to change its name to Focus on the Fruitcakes, or the Christian right is getting ready to fight the Mother of All Armageddons to help the Rovians push their court-packing, filibuster-busting judicial juggernaut through the Senate.

I suspect it's the latter. Yes, Dobson's crazy, and yes, he does think God has a direct line to the religious radio receiver embedded in his pineal gland. But I think he's more cunning crazy than crazed crazy. If Dobson has taken to comparing the likes of Clarence Thomas and Anton Scalia to the Grand Dragons and Exalted Cyclopses of the Knights Invisible, there's probably a fairly shrewd tactical reason behind it.

Billmon: Straight from the Ass's Mouth

The organizers of last week's "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith" hate rally apparently have confirmed my hunch about what they're up to. From the Nation:

The threatening tenor of the conference speakers was a calculated tactic. As Gary Cass, the director of Rev. D. James Kennedy's lobbying front, the Center for Reclaiming America, explained, they are arousing the anger of their base in order to harness it politically. The rising tide of threats against judges "is understandable," Cass told me, "but we have to take the opportunity to channel that into a constitutional solution."

(And major props to Max Blumenthal for having the stones to go in among those lunatics without a syringe full of thorazine in his hand -- and a fist full of reloads in his pocket.)

But according to Rev. Kennedy's mouthpiece, the desired "constitutional solution" isn't breaking the Senate filibuster, it's the religious right's favorite pet piece of legislation: The "Constitution Restoration Act," which would essentially make it an impeachable offense for a federal judge to hear any complaint that any government agency or official had violated the constitutional separation of church and state (which, of course, according to the right Rev. Kennedy, doesn't exist.)

Billmon: High Fidelity

Color me cynical (with a heavy base coat of paranoid) but am I the only one who suspects the White House might have had an ulterior PR motive in "leaking" George Jr.'s iPod list?

I know: What a horrible thing to say about the fine, upstanding pod people who run the White House communications shop. But still, this bit of pseudo-news definitely has the same feel to it as the late Lee Atwater's leak to Time magazine that old man Bush's favorite snack food was pork rinds.

Billmon: Gin Rummy

People often think satire is easy, but it's really not -- as any long-time reader of Whiskey Bar can tell by the number of attempted gags that have fallen flat and landed with a dull thud on the bottom of my home page.

You keep throwing them up and hoping they'll stick, but inside you accept the fact that most of them won't. As an aspiring comedy writer, I know that if I can get a good laugh with one in ten jokes, I'm doing pretty good.

Which is why it really frosts my shorts when a fossilized old bureaucrat like Donald Rumsfeld pops up in Baghdad and delivers -- seemingly without effort -- howlers like this one:

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, on a surprise visit to Iraq, warned the country's new interim leaders on Tuesday against political purges and cronyism that could spark "lack of confidence or corruption in government."

Cronyism. Lack of confidence or corruption in goverment. From Donald Rumsfeld. Secretary of Defense in the Bush administration. Totally deadpan, too. Not a hint of a smile. And with perfect timing.

Billmon: Gunga Din

I see the Poles have decided to take the next exit ramp off the Iraqi circular highway of death -- kind of like the Capital Beltway, except with less traffic and more explosions.

This puts Warsaw proudly in the ranks of the Coalition Formerly Known as the Coalition of the Willing -- an organization whose membership list will never be quietly yanked from the White House web site because it will never be posted there.

GlobalSecurity.org has been keeping tabs of coalition comings and goings (mostly the latter.) The latest casualty count, dated March 15, can be found here.

Billmon: Tom Turtle

The snapper eats invertebrates, carrion, aquatic plants, fish, birds and small mammals. It is an excellent swimmer: Individuals displaced 2 miles have returned to their capture sites within several hours. Snappers strike viciously when lifted from water or teased and can inflict a serious bite.

The Audubon Society
Field Guide to North American Reptiles & Amphibians
1979

Particular politicians often remind me of particular animals. Dick Cheney, for example, is obviously a pit bull. Joe Biden is a badger -- or when I'm really mad at him, a skunk. Denny Hastert is a grizzled old polar bear -- who needs to go on a diet. And so on.

But offhand, I can't think of anyone (in the politics business or anywhere else for that matter) who reminds me so much of a particular species as Tom DeLay does. And that species is Chelydra serpentina -- the common snapping turtle.

The physical resemblance itself is striking:

Why make an enemy of Russia?

William Pfaff International Herald Tribune
Wednesday, April 13, 2005

PARIS U.S. and European Union policies toward Russia are more dangerous than they may seem. What has been happening on Russia's borders could reasonably be interpreted by the government of President Vladimir Putin as a Western campaign to detach and alienate the neighboring states that Moscow describes as its "Near Abroad."

In an important respect, Putin's government has invited this interference on its frontier. It has combined complacence with complaisance in corrupt leadership in Belarus, Ukraine and the former Soviet republics in Central Asia.

When the Soviet Union was dissolved by Boris Yeltsin in 1991, time should have been up for the whole system. Yeltsin told the leaders of the former Soviet states to take as much freedom as they could manage. In fact, most took as much power, and as much of their states' wealth and resources, as they could.

The Online Beat: John Bolton vs. Democracy

by John Nichols

"Im with the Bush-Cheney team, and I'm here to stop the count."

Those were the words John Bolton yelled as he burst into a Tallahassee library on Saturday, Dec. 9, 2000, where local election workers were recounting ballots cast in Florida's disputed presidential race between George W. Bush and Al Gore.

Bolton was one of the pack of lawyers for the Republican presidential ticket who repeatedly sought to shut down recounts of the ballots from Florida counties before those counts revealed that Gore had actually won the state's electoral votes and the presidency.

Bush Threw Us a 'Curveball'

column left by Robert Scheer

[posted online on April 5, 2005]

Last October, just weeks before the presidential election, I wrote a column stating that the acting director of the CIA was suppressing a report to Congress that was potentially embarrassing to President Bush's campaign. The report had been completed by the CIA's own independent inspector general four months before the election, yet the agency rebuffed Congress' request that it be made public.

Now, thanks to last week's release of another report, that of the Bush-appointed Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, we learn that the embargoed CIA report centered on the outrageous case of the now-infamous Iraqi informant known by the code name, "Curveball."

Unfortunately for the American people, we were to an embarrassing extent persuaded to go to war based on the fantasies of this known liar, the main source of the Administration's claim that Saddam Hussein had a functioning biological weapons program. It was Curveball, an Iraqi chemical engineer who defected, who was the inspiration for then-Secretary of State Colin Powell's statements before the United Nations that the United States knew Iraq possessed mobile bio-weapons labs.

Perhaps even more disturbing is the presidential commission's finding that Curveball's unreliability was withheld from the unwitting Powell, even as the Administration was pushing him out onto the world stage to trade his prodigious credibility for world support for the invasion.

The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

lookout by Naomi Klein

[from the May 2, 2005 issue]

Last summer, in the lull of the August media doze, the Bush Administration's doctrine of preventive war took a major leap forward. On August 5, 2004, the White House created the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, headed by former US Ambassador to Ukraine Carlos Pascual. Its mandate is to draw up elaborate "post-conflict" plans for up to twenty-five countries that are not, as of yet, in conflict. According to Pascual, it will also be able to coordinate three full-scale reconstruction operations in different countries "at the same time," each lasting "five to seven years."

Fittingly, a government devoted to perpetual pre-emptive deconstruction now has a standing office of perpetual pre-emptive reconstruction.

Katha Pollitt on Adrea Dworkin

subject to debate by Katha Pollitt

Andrea Dworkin, 1946-2005

[from the May 2, 2005 issue]

I first heard of Andrea Dworkin in 1968. She had been arrested in an antiwar demonstration and jailed at the old Women's House of Detention in Greenwich Village, where male doctors subjected her to brutal internal exams. Her name was in the news because she had gone public with her story. My good, kind, radical, civil libertarian parents thought this was ridiculous. What did she expect, this privileged white woman, this "Bennington girl"? It wasn't that they didn't believe her, exactly. It was that they didn't see why she was making such a big, princessy fuss. It was like getting arrested and complaining about the food.

Andrea Dworkin died on April 9 at 58--she of the denim overalls and the wild hair and wilder pronouncements. Although she denied ever uttering the most famous soundbite attributed to her, that all intercourse is rape, she came pretty close: "Fucking is the means by which the male colonizes the female"; "in seduction, the rapist often bothers to buy a bottle of wine." She argued that pornography was an instruction manual for rape, that women had the right to "execute" rapists and pedophiles; toward the end of her life she declared that maybe women, like the Jews, should have their own country. The counsel of despair, and crazy, too--but by then Dworkin was ill, not much in demand as a speaker and several of her major books were out of print. The 1980s were long over: On campus, the militant anti-rape marches and speakouts of Take Back the Night had morphed into cheery V-Day, which marries antiviolence activism to a celebration of women's sexuality.

Being too clean could be hazardous to your health

Public release date: 13-Apr-2005

Blacksburg, Va. – Researchers at Virginia Tech have discovered that the use of antimicrobial soaps and other products may unnecessarily be directly exposing consumers to significant quantities of chloroform. Peter Vikesland, assistant professor in civil and environmental engineering, has shown in his research that when the chemical triclosan, present in many antimicrobial soaps, reacts with chlorine in tap water, chloroform is produced. Chloroform is classified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a probable human carcinogen.

'Termite guts can save the planet,' says Nobel laureate

Public release date: 13-Apr-2005

The way termite guts process food could teach scientists how to produce pollution-free energy and help solve the world's imminent energy crisis. Speaking at the Institute of Physics conference Physics 2005 in Warwick today, Nobel laureate Steven Chu urged scientists to turn their attention to finding an environmentally friendly form of fuel. In an impassioned plea to some of the world's brightest minds, he explained how he's leading by example, and encouraged others to join the effort which "may already be too late."

Chu, who shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1997, has begun studying termite guts – one place in nature where a key hurdle for carbon-neutral energy supply has already been solved. Termite guts take indigestible cellulose, which makes up the bulk of all plant material grown on earth, and convert it to ethanol, which even today is a versatile and popular fuel.

Contact: david reid
david.reid@iop.org
44-7-946-321-473
Institute of Physics

Will cancer vaccine get to all women?

Public release date: 13-Apr-2005

New Scientist

Will cancer vaccine get to all women?

DEATHS from cervical cancer could jump fourfold to a million a year by 2050, mainly in developing countries. This could be prevented by soon-to-be-approved vaccines against the virus that causes most cases of cervical cancer- but there are signs that opposition to the vaccines might lead to many preventable deaths. The trouble is that the human papilloma virus (HPV) is sexually transmitted. So to prevent infection, girls will have to be vaccinated before they become sexually active, which could be a problem in many countries.

In the US, for instance, religious groups are gearing up to oppose vaccination, despite a survey showing 80 per cent of parents favour vaccinating their daughters. "Abstinence is the best way to prevent HPV," says Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council, a leading Christian lobby group that has made much of the fact that, because it can spread by skin contact, condoms are not as effective against HPV as they are against other viruses such as HIV.

"Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful, because they may see it as a licence to engage in premarital sex," Maher claims, though it is arguable how many young women have even heard of the virus.

Contact: Claire Bowles (UK)
claire.bowles@rbi.co.uk
44-207-611-1210 Kyre Austin (US)
kyre.austin@reedbusiness.com
1-617-558-4939

Political Animal: DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS....

Are the pharmaceutical studies published in leading medical journals truly the products of dispassionate science? Ask Betty Dong:

Betty J. Dong, a pharmacologist, had been contracted in 1987 by Flint Laboratories to run a clinical trial comparing Synthroid, Flint's synthetic version of thyroid hormone, to that of three competing formulations. At the time, Synthroid was the market leader and the most expensive drug in its class. Dong and Flint signed a lengthy agreement detailing the design of the study, and both sides fully expected the results would show that Synthroid was superior.

Political Animal: HEALTHCARE IN AMERICA....

In TNR this week, Benjamin Healy reviews Uninsured in America: Life and Death in the Land of Opportunity, which provides an up close look at what healthcare is like in America for the 40 million who lack insurance:

Rotting teeth are a consistent motif among their interviewees, and with a poignancy not often found in policy books, the authors peg tooth decay as a reliable barometer of one's employability and caste status. As one uninsured woman who works part-time in a call center (and therefore out of public view), tells them: "I've gotten toothaches so bad, so that I just literally pull my own teeth. They'll break off after a while, and then you just grab ahold of them, and they work their way out ... The hole closes itself up anyway." As the insured reader guiltily and involuntarily runs his tongue over his teeth upon reading these lines, the authors' caste argument essentially proves itself.

[...]

Good old American healthcare. Best in the world, baby, best in the world.

—Kevin Drum 2:33 PM

Political Animal: $50/BARREL OIL....

Yesterday Matt Yglesias mused out loud about high oil prices:

I understand clearly why individual purchasers are displeased to see their gas bills high (and don't get me started about the heating oil this past winter) but in broader economic terms it's hard to see the looming crisis here....Are these high prices really something that should be an independent source of economic concern? I don't see it.

This is worth a bit of countermusing, I think. The problem here is not high oil prices per se, it's the reason behind the high oil prices.

Iraq: The Real Election

By Mark Danner

Just past dawn on January 30, Iraq's Election Day—the fourth of the US occupation's "turning points," after the fall of Baghdad, the capture of Saddam Hussein, and the "handover of sovereignty"—I stood at the muddy gates of Muthana Air Base outside Baghdad watching the sun rise, pink and full, into a white-streaked sky; then, feeling a sudden tremor beneath my feet, I started abruptly: the explosion was loud and, judging by the vibrations, not far off.

David Neiwert: The old Injun disguise

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

American white men have a colorful history when it comes to dressing up as Indians, dating back at least to the Boston Tea Party. They also have quite a history of using the ruse to make money, while simultaneously victimizing the Indians they're pretending to be.

One of the very last Indian wars, the Sheepeater War of 1879, was a classic case of this. Having seen how deeply the Nez Perce War of 1877 had enriched the towns of LaGrande and Baker in northeastern Oregon, which had served as supply depots for the cavalry, community leaders in the Yankee Fork mining district in south-central Idaho decided that a little Indian war was just what was needed in their neck of the woods.

Juan Cole: April 14, 2005 Part 2

Neoconning the Media

Eric Alterman's "Neoconning the Media: A Short History of Neoconservatism" is a must-read account of the movement and its main institutions and media outlets.

Alterman lists "half of the New Republic" as among the assets of the Neocons. That's about right, though I suspect that the other half (In the Barefoot And Naked Blog accounting that would be: John Judis, Spencer Ackerman, Michelle Cottle, Mike Crowley) is not as connected to the editorial direction and especially ownership of TNR as the Neocon half.

Michelle Goldberg at Salon.com isn't so generous.

Juan Cole: April 14, 2005 Part 1

At least 17 Killed by Bombs, 4 US Contractors Wounded

AP reports that guerrillas detonated a car bomb near a US convoy, killing five Iraqis and wounding 4 US contractors. Two other explosions in the capital did little damage. A fourth set a fuel tanker ablaze near two US Humvees. AP adds:

"Near Kirkuk, 12 policemen gathered to help dismantle an apparent decoy bomb were killed by another explosion Wednesday, police said. Three others were injured."

Ghazi al-Yawir, a vice president of Iraq, is complaining that the new elected government (dominated by religious Shiites and by Kurds) is not doing enough to reach out to the alienated Sunni Arabs. He is incensed by the decision to reduce the number of ministries going to Sunnis from 6 to only 4. Further alienating the Sunni Arabs could deepen and prolong the civil war.

Daily Kos: DLC, the GOP's best friend

by kos
Wed Apr 13th, 2005 at 13:48:09 PDT

This NRSC press release (PDF) is a long screed against MoveOn.org. Typical drivel. But, wait, what's this?

BUT MOVEON IS OUT OF STEP WITH RANK-AND-FILE DEMOCRATS [...] DLC CEO Al From: "You've Got To Reject Michael Moore And The MoveOn Crowd." (NBC's "First Read," March 1, 2005) "Rank-And-File Democrats `Are More Like Us Than MoveOn,' Which [Al] From Called A Group Of `Elites, People Who Sit In Their Basements All The Time And Play On Their Computers.'" (NBC's "First Read," March 1, 2005)

Whose conscience rules?

By Ellen Goodman | April 10, 2005

TO BEGIN with, I don't believe that anyone should be compelled to do work they regard as unethical. History is full of heroes who rebelliously followed their consciences. It's also full of people who shamefully followed orders.

For that matter, I believe that companies and institutions should have a code of ethics. What is the alternative to corporate responsibility and public morality? Enron?

So I approach the subject of conscience clauses rather gingerly.

AAAS 'respectfully declines' invitation to controversial Kansas evolution hearing

Public release date: 12-Apr-2005

American Association for the Advancement of Science

AAAS 'respectfully declines' invitation to controversial Kansas evolution hearing

AAAS on Monday declined an invitation from the Kansas Board of Education to appear at a May hearing on teaching evolution in public schools after concluding that the event is likely to sow confusion rather than understanding among the public.

In a letter to George Griffith, science consultant to the Kansas State Department of Education, association CEO Alan I. Leshner sided with the leaders of the Kansas science community who have described the hearings as an effort by faith-based proponents of "intelligent design" theory to attack and undermine science.

"After much consideration," Leshner wrote, "AAAS respectfully declines to participate in this hearing out of concern that rather than contribute to science education, it will most likely serve to confuse the public about the nature of the scientific enterprise."

AAAS is the world's largest general science organization and the publisher of the journal Science; Leshner also serves as the journal's executive publisher.

Leaders of the Kansas science community have called for a boycott of the hearing, and thus far, representatives of state and national science groups have refused to testify.

Edward W. Lempinen
elempine@aaas.org
925-945-1937

Ginger Pinholster
gpinhols@aaas.org
202-326-6421

How 10 US school districts improved science and mathematics learning

Public release date: 13-Apr-2005

New AAAS report explores how 10 US school districts improved science and mathematics learning

WASHINGTON, D.C.- Ten U.S. school districts have achieved significant improvement in science and mathematics performance by developing ambitious programs that set high standards, and then closely tracking what works and what doesn't work in helping students learn, according to a new AAAS report.

The 22-page report, "A System of Solutions: Every School, Every Student," identifies 10 U.S. K-12 school districts, serving some of the nation's major inner-city areas, and discusses the systemic practices that helped them improve student performance and close the gap between minority and non-minority students.

Contact: Lonnie Shekhtman
lshekhtm@aaas.org
202-326-6434
American Association for the Advancement of Science

Daily Howler - April 13, 2005

KRISTOF CORRUPTED! Kristof and his cohort will lie until liberals and Dems make them stop:

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 13, 2005

KRISTOF CORRUPTED: For the record, there are things we agree with—or may agree with—in Nicholas Kristof’s boo-hooing lament. For example, this claim may be accurate:

KRISTOF (4/12/05): We also need more diverse newsrooms. When America was struck by race riots in the late 1960's, major news organizations realized too late that their failure to hire black reporters had impaired their ability to cover America. In the same way, our failure to hire more red state evangelicals limits our understanding of and ability to cover America today.

It’s possible: Some newspaper might do better work if it employed more “red state evangelicals.” (We note that Kristof, like other Bernie Goldberg-style analysts, doesn’t show an actual problem with current religious coverage.)

Digby: Comment of the week

On the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy:

An open Letter to David Horowitz:

April 13, 2005
Dear Mr. Horowitz:

I see that your list is a tad short of 1000 so I would like to nominate myself for inclusion. You probably have never heard of me (unless you followed the Boston Symphony where I played for 27 years). I feel my political mojo has faded with my aging and I fear encroaching irrelevance (remember the good old days!) so I’m hoping you will help me out, since I can claim many points of contact, some of them admittedly rather casual, with people on your list, to wit:

I went to a summer music camp with Carol Gilligan (she was Carol Friedman then) and have remained in contact with her ever since. Another fairly regular presence at this camp was Pete Seeger, which should tell you all you need to know. Some years later, I taught at the place and in varying years had in my choruses both Arlo Guthrie (who really belongs in your list) and Frank Rich, although he was only thirteen at the time.

Digby: Believe It

This whole argument about pop culture reminds me of a conversation I had in 1977. I was sitting around with my friends and somebody put "God Save the Queen" by the Sex Pistols on the stereo. Afterwards, I said I thought it wasn't really music --- to which a friend of mine replied that I sounded just like his parents when he first played the Beatles. I was only 21 at the time, so this hit me pretty hard. I never forgot it.

The Rude Pundit: History Loves a Big Ol' Chomp O' Ass

The 'Rude Pundit' lives up (or down) to his name--be warned!--Dictynna

4/12/2005

History Loves a Big Ol' Chomp O' Ass:
Man, those judge-hatin' motherfuckers in the Congress and on the right love to pretend that they're takin' the nation back to its alleged "roots." Look at the Constitution, they shout and wave, forgettin' that the judiciary was created to keep an eye on the other two branches of government. Oh, how they wave the Federalist Papers around, especially #78, written by repressed gay Alexander Hamilton, and they quote it endlessly.

The vampire corpse of Phyllis Schlafly quoted it while promoting her book from last year on how she perceived the judiciary as fucked-up: "Our Constitution's Framers designed the judicial branch to be the least powerful of the three branches. Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 78 that the judiciary 'will always be the least dangerous' branch of government because it has the least capacity to 'annoy or injure' our constitutional rights." Actually, Hamilton said that it was the "least dangerous" because it can't summon the military or write laws. But knowing that would require reading past the first couple of lines of the document.

The creepy intellectual wannabes of the conservative bathhouse known as the Heritage Foundation also see Hamilton as siding with them: "As Alexander Hamilton correctly noted in Federalist 78, it is the province and duty of judges to say what the law is rather than what they want it to be. Judges faithful to their constitutional role exercise legal 'judgment' to enforce the original understanding of the law." Do we need, really, to define the word "judgment"? Has it gotten that stupid? Well, yeah, since supporters of Ten Commandments fetishist ex-judge Roy Moore and the batshit insane Jesus babblers at the Family Research Council also quote Hamilton out of context.

Concerns raised about 1997 U.S. mad cow tests

Last Updated Wed, 13 Apr 2005 14:30:53 EDT

CBC News

GENEVA, N.Y. - The United States did not properly analyze two suspected cases of mad cow disease in 1997, years before it showed up in Canada and devastated this country's beef industry, a CBC News investigation suggests.

INDEPTH: Mad Cow Disease

Dr. Masuo Doi, the U.S. Department of Agriculture veterinarian who initially investigated both 1997 cases, says he is haunted by fears that the right tests were not done and that his own department did not properly investigate whether the cow had BSE.

Doi is now retired and speaking for the first time about his concerns.

Beetles Get Politically Prominent Names

ITHACA, N.Y. - President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have shared a common political vision for most of their careers. Now each will share something else _ a slime-mold beetle named in his honor.

Two former Cornell University entomologists, who recently had the job of naming 65 newly discovered species of slime-mold beetles, named three species after the American leaders, dubbing them: Agathidium bushi Miller and Wheeler, Agathidium cheneyi Miller and Wheeler and Agathidium rumsfeldi Miller and Wheeler.

A wake-up call for the Sane Majority

by Gene Lyons

Does it strike you as odd that persons calling themselves Christians are furious that the U.S. Supreme Court found executing juveniles unconstitutional? Do you find even odder that such individuals describe themselves, straight-faced, as adherents of the "culture of life"? Are you surprised to learn that people called conservatives would quote Joseph Stalin? Yes, that Joseph Stalin, the former Soviet dictator and mass murderer. And no, I am not making this up. It happened recently at a Washington conclave held by something called the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration. If not household names, many in attendance were familiar controversialists, representing right-wing groups like the Family Research Council, the American Conservative Union, etc. Catholic anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly spoke, along with unsuccessful GOP Senate nominee Alan Keyes and Alabama’s Judge Roy" Ten Commandments" Moore. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, having fled the jurisdiction—er, left town to attend the pope’s funeral, addressed the group on TV. But the real headline-maker was Edwin Vieira, allegedly an expert in constitutional law.

Don Wildmon's American Family Association Journal linked Judaism to criminality, hostility toward Christianity

In the March issue of American Family Association Journal, a publication of Donald E. Wildmon's right-wing evangelical activist group, the American Family Association (AFA), author Randall Murphree suggested that a Jewish upbringing leads to hatred of Christians, and by extension, a criminal lifestyle. Describing the background of a man who has a "ministry to the homeless," Murphree wrote in his article, "Homeless by Choice":

The Athens, Ohio, man grew up in a Jewish home and developed a hostile attitude toward Christ. As a teenager, he used drugs, sold drugs and accumulated quite a juvenile crime record. But after a high school friend persistently witnessed to him, Keith accepted Christ during his junior year in high school.

Echidne of the Snakes: The "Ownership Society"

This must be a Luntz meme, though of course George Bush is selling it. Luntz is the Republican Rasputin who decides how wingnut philosophy is sold. To interpret the contents of Luntz memes correctly you must always ask what the exact opposite meaning from the obvious one might be. Or something very close to that.

Take the idea of the "ownership society". It sounds like a society where everybody owns something, where everybody is prosperous and self-sufficient. It sounds like a very good thing.

In reality, an "ownership society" for the wingnuts means something quite different: the very rich will get to keep everything they have, whereas most other people will get to keep very little.

Digby: Prove It

Matt Yglesias and Atrios both got to this post by Amy Sullivan before I could, but since it's one of my hobby horses, I can't help but weigh in. Sullivan makes the case again that the Democrats could gain from bashing Hollywood because a lot of parents are uncomfortable with the sexual innuendo on "Friends". Or something like that.

After the election we all argued quite a bit about this sort of thing because the religious right jumped on an initial bit of analysis that said that "moral values" were the primary reason people voted for Republicans. It turned out to be a lot more complicated than that, but it set off a division in the party, I think, between those who believe that we can achieve a majority by competing for social conservative type votes through religious rhetoric, those who believe that we will win a majority by competing for libertarian type votes through appeals to individual liberty, and those who believe we will win through a muscular foreign policy message.

Digby: She Can Boast (lyingly)

Via DC Media Girl, I see that Ann Coulter has been named as one of TIME magazine's 100 most influential people:

In her books, Coulter can be erudite and persuasive, as when she exposes the left’s chronic softness on communism. But her signature is her gleeful willingness to taunt liberals and Democrats, to say out loud what some other conservatives dare only think--that Bill Clinton is a "horny hick," for example, and his wife "pond scum." It’s what makes Coulter irresistible and influential, whether you like it or not.

Here's the opening passage of Coulter's "erudite and persuasive" exposure of the left's chronic softness on communism in her influential book "Treason":

Liberals have a preternatural gift for striking a position on the side of treason. You could be talking about Scrabble and they would instantly leap to the anti-American position. Everyone says liberals love American, too. No they don't. Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy. This is their essence. The Left’s obsession with the crimes of the West and their Rousseauian respect for Third World savages all flow from this subversive goal. If anyone has the gaucherie to point out the left's nearly unblemished record of rooting against American, liberals turn around and scream "McCarthyism!"

Digby: This, I'm Worried About

Honestly, people are killing their children with diets of disguting food. I recognize their freedom to do this if they want to, but it is a real problem nonetheless. I'd be a lot more sympathetic to their complaints about how difficult it is to raise kids in popular culture if they cared as much about this very serious physical health issue. I'm not a purist in this way. I like a Big Mac and fries now and again myself. And I'm not suggesting that everyone serve tofu and green tea to their toddlers. But from what I see at the grocery store --- and the statistics on childhood obestity and diabetes bear this out -- childrens' health is becoming demonstrably compromised by the way they are eating and the sedentary lifestyle they are leading.

Digby: Exploding Bandwagon

Noam Scheiber, who I often endorse wholeheartedly on other issues, explicitly lays out the divide in the Democratic party as I did, as being between "social libertarians" and "communitarians" which is, in my opinion, a weasel word for "kinda socially conservative" in this context.

He says that Democrats began losing because they were perceived as being immoral and licentious, going all the way back to 1972's "abortion, amnesty and acid." It was, in his opinion, only when Bill Clinton said that abortion should be "safe, legal and rare" that we began to lose that perception. But we've been backsliding ever since. Indeed, according to him, every election we have lost or won in the last 30 years has been because we are either perceived as moral or immoral to the moderates who swing elections.

Digby: Light Of Reason

Arthur Silber wades into the now legendary Horowitz Bérubé smackdown (which if you haven't read it is one of the most satisfying series of blog posts in blogdom) with characteristically interesting insights:

Given the statement in his own “Academic Bill of Rights,” on what grounds can Horowitz possibly maintain these blatantly irreconcilable positions? Whenever he accuses anyone of “shar[ing] negative views of the Bush Administration” with known terrorists (or more briefly, of “hating America”), one can simply reply: “But, Mr. Horowitz, you yourself believe that ‘there is no humanly accessible truth that is not in principle open to challenge.’ So how do you know that anyone hates America, or that the invasion of Iraq was legitimate, or that occupying Iraq was a wise move in the war against terrorism? In fact, given your own statements, how do you know anything at all?”

Digby: Smear Boats Are A Comin'

If anyone is wondering about this Hillary swift boat style smear book that Drudge is flacking on his site, be advised that the alleged liberal who wrote it is actually the right wing fuck who writes Walter Scott's Personality Parade -- a piece of Sunday morning trash I stopped reading when he wrote that Chelsea Clinton was an "apple that doesn't fall far from the tree" drunken party girl.

Juan Cole: April 13, 2005 Part 3

Ash-Sharq al-Awsat does a report on Fallujah in which it alleges that of the residents who have returned after the US assault, many are living in tents because their homes are uninhabitable.

Juan Cole: April 13, 2005 Part 2

Ash-Sharq al-Awsat/ AFP: Hundreds of Iraqis demonstrated Tuesday in Samarra, demanding the withdrawal of American troops from their city. Clan elders and school and university students participated in the rally, which came in response to a call from the municipal council and the Association of Muslim Scholars. The demonstrators gathered close to the Malwiyah Mosque, among the most famous and recognizable of Iraq's early Islamic monuments. They carried placards reading, "Leave our sacred city, you strangers!" and "Let the Prisoners Go!" and "No, no to enmity . . . Leave, leave, America!" They burned an American flag. Police and Iraqi army men fanned out around the site of the demonstration. No American troops showed up, and they stayed at some distance from the demonstration.

Juan Cole: April 13, 2005 Part 1

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

At least 10 Dead in Deadly blasts in Mosul, Telafar

Wire services report that a suicide bomber killed five Iraqis in Mosul, and another killed five Iraqis in the largely Turkmen city of Telafar. Guerrillas attempted to assassinate a deputy interior minister, but killed his bodyguard and injured three others, while he escaped.

David Neiwert: Corrections Department

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

In a couple of previous posts, I unfairly characterized the coverage of the Irving-Lipstadt trial by T.R. Reid of the Washington Post.

Specifically, in the first post, I charged that Reid hadn't attended the trial itself, but only became involved in coverage of the trial at its tail end. I clarified this further in the second post, but let the charge remain uncorrected.

It is clear to me, after some conversations with Mr. Reid, that he did in fact attend at least several days of the trial itself.

The Paris Hilton Tax Cut

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Tuesday, April 12, 2005; Page A21

The same people who insist that critics of Social Security privatization should offer reform proposals of their own are working feverishly to eliminate alternatives that might reduce the need for benefit cuts or payroll tax increases.

I refer to the fact that House Republican leaders have scheduled a vote this week to abolish the estate tax permanently. Under a wacky provision of the 2001 tax cut designed to disguise the law's full cost, Congress voted to make the estate tax go away in 2010, but come back in full force in 2011.

Sound, fury signifying nothing

By Ed Quillen
Denver Post Columnist

The right-thinking response to the Terri Schiavo case reminds me of my own actions on some warm afternoons when I sat on the swing on our front porch. I'd be reading a magazine or just gazing off at Tenderfoot Hill when our dog would start barking and running up and down the fence in response to a pedestrian on the sidewalk.

Naturally, I'd yell at the dog to shut up. This was not for the dog's benefit. It was for the ears of the pedestrian. It was my way of saying "Yes, I know my dog is annoying you. I care about this, and as you can tell by my shouting, I am trying to do something about it." Even so, I didn't actually get up and do anything about the dog, like put her in the backyard, or spend time trying to teach her not to bark at pedestrians.

Similarly, the blustering about Terri Schiavo was not for her benefit, but for a public facade. It was a way for politicians to say "I care about life," without actually doing anything to make sure more Americans lived.

Rockefeller Aide's Tie to 1980 'October Surprise' Mystery

Some of the most intriguing documents discovered in the House “October Surprise” Task Force files related to Joseph Verner Reed, a longtime aide to Chase Manhattan Bank Chairman David Rockefeller. Starting in early 1979, Reed played a key role in getting the Carter administration to let the Shah of Iran into the United States, the act that sparked the seizure of the U.S. Embassy and 52 American hostages in November 1979.

The Task Force documents suggest that Reed also knew about attempts by the Reagan-Bush campaign to disrupt President Jimmy Carter’s negotiations to free the hostages before Election 1980, preventing what then-vice presidential candidate George H.W. Bush dubbed Carter’s “October Surprise” of a last-minute hostage release.

American Workers Hit Hard Under Conservative Leadership

April 12, 2005

Despite a growing economy and soaring corporate profits and CEO salaries, America's workers experienced declining wages last year for the first time in fourteen years. Wage growth in 2004 and the first two months of 2005 trailed inflation, compounding the problems for a middle class already squeezed by higher housing, energy and health costs. At the same time, corporate America saw record profits as businesses squeezed more productivity out of workers without raising pay.

PM Carpenter: The sorry mess of the media

April 12, 2005

Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times' mea-culpa specialist, is a strange duck. For some time now he has written less as a liberal commentator and more as a media referee, pointing out personal fouls here and there and blowing the whistle on those he believes are playing without gentlemanly poise.

For example, he recently importuned liberals – yes, liberals – to tone down their anti-administration rhetoric, which seems like asking the FDA to go easy on drug companies. We were becoming too strident, said Mr. Kristof, with Bush-bashing now resembling the Clinton-bashing of yesteryears.

The Gilded Age Is Back In Vogue

April 12, 2005 Warren Goldstein

OK class, it's time for a history quiz. Don't worry. It won't affect your grade, just the future of your country.

Say you were living in an era of American history marked by a growing gap between rich and poor, increasing insecurity for the middle and working classes, wholesale political corruption, daring corporate chicanery and an executive branch dedicated to helping the rich get richer. When were you living?

Research questions belief that private schools are better than publics

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Students do better in private schools, according to common wisdom -- and some well-regarded data now more than two decades old.

But a recent study of standardized math scores in more than 1,300 public and private schools says the opposite may be true, according to Sarah and Christopher Lubienski, education professors at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Chemical present in clear plastics can impair learning and cause disease

Low doses of the environmental contaminant bisphenol–A (BPA), widely used to make many plastics found in food storage containers, including feeding bottles for infants, can impair brain function, leading to learning disabilities and age–related neurodegenerative diseases, according to Yale researchers and colleagues.

Bolton's appalling confirmation-hearings performance.

war stories
It's Time To Write a Dear John
Bolton's appalling confirmation-hearings performance.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Monday, April 11, 2005, at 3:56 PM PT

John Bolton, George W. Bush's astonishingly brazen choice to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, came off badly at his confirmation hearings today—bloodless, evasive, and mendacious—in ways that should give senators cause to reject him, regardless of whether they agree with the president's policies or even with the substance of Bolton's views.

Daily Howler - April 12, 2005

CAMELOT LOST! Kennedy said he wouldn’t check with the pope. But Novak scolds solons who won’t: // link // print // previous // next //
TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 2005

AS A MATTER OF FACT, YES—THEY’LL BE PUNISHED: In this morning’s lead editorial, the Washington Post provides describes the cost of killing the estate tax for good. But in their closing paragraph, the eds indulge in some clueless self-contradiction:
WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL (4/12/05): The estate tax is a tough vote for some lawmakers in part because of the enormous amount of misinformation surrounding it. House members who fear that a vote for the more responsible Pomeroy alternative will be used against them should ask themselves two questions: Will my constituents really punish me for a vote to exempt 99.7 percent of estates from taxation? And how can I justify adding to the deficit, or cutting other programs, to underwrite a costly tax break for the extremely rich? In that first sentence, the editors note the load of disinformation surrounding the fearful “death tax.” But right after that, they seem to suggest that it’s silly for members of Congress to think they’ll be punished for retaining the tax. “Will my constituents really punish me for a vote to exempt 99.7 percent of estates from taxation?” they ask. But duh! The answer to that question is yes, precisely because of the disinformation the press lets the pseudo-right spread.

Digby: Poison Embrace

Busy, busy, busy has this great screenshot of an ad by the wingnut "Moving America Forward" featuring those great conservatives Oliver North, Ronald Reagan, John Bolton and ... Joe Lieberman.

It occurs to me that the Democrats should start doing the same thing to John McCain. If McCain runs in '08, it would be nice to have him saddled with being the Democrats favorite conservative. Why take the chance that he could get the nomination? Let's taint him.

Digby: Now It's A Democracy Not A Republic?

From Joe Klein to Ed Koch to every wingnut in the land, the meme of the week is that Democrats are undemocratic because we believe in an independent judiciary and will use the illegitimate minority cudgel of the filibuster to thwart the will of the people. Shame, shame on us.

Yes, we do desire that judicial nominees not be ideologically so removed from our way of thinking as to turn the country in a completely different direction --- like proclaim for the first time, for instance, that the government derives its authority from God rather than the governed. And yes, since the Republicans repealed all the tools they used to accomplished the same tempering of ideology when a Democrat was president, we have threatened to use the only tool at our disposal, the filibuster. This means we have no respect for the majority and are attempting to thwart the will of the electorate, who evidently voted en masse for a radical reform of the judiciary in the last election. Who knew?

Juan Cole / Informed Comment: 04/12/05 Part 1

Competent Intelligence Urged by Rumsfeld

Ironies of Iraq today:

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is afraid that the new Shiite religious government in Iraq will purge ex-Baathists placed in the army and intelligence services by US ally Iyad Allawi, a long-term CIA asset. Rumsfeld said that competent persons should be retained. This is the same Rumsfeld whose own deputy, Douglas Feith, set up a grossly incompetent cell in the Pentagon to cherry-pick intelligence and produce a false image of Iraq as bristling with weapons of mass destruction and in league with al-Qaeda.

James Wolcott: We Can't Say We Weren't Warned

I'm fascinated with the stock market, not just as a money-making (or money-losing) proposition, but as a laboratory for sentiment and a theater of folly. One of the things I've learned about the market is to heed one's elders. They know best. When every hotshot was predicting a Nasdaq to infinity and beyond in the late nineties, it was the wise owls--Richard Russell of Dow Theory Letters, Warren Buffett, Sir John Templeton, Seth Glickenhaus--who warned of stocks burning up on reentry into the earth's atmosphere. They were discounted at the time as stodgy, outmoded, stuck in the transistor age as information technology made traditional metrics and industries obsolete--Buffett in particular was chided for not holding tech stocks--and the business magazines splashed one young startup stud or portfolio manager after another on the cover along with articles that cried RETIRE RICH! and FIRE YOUR BOSS!

Videos Challenge Accounts of Convention Unrest

By JIM DWYER

Published: April 12, 2005

ennis Kyne put up such a fight at a political protest last summer, the arresting officer recalled, it took four police officers to haul him down the steps of the New York Public Library and across Fifth Avenue.

"We picked him up and we carried him while he squirmed and screamed," the officer, Matthew Wohl, testified in December. "I had one of his legs because he was kicking and refusing to walk on his own."

Falling Fortunes of the Wage Earner

By Steven Greenhouse

Published: April 12, 2005

eginning in the mid-1990's, pay increases for most workers slowly but steadily outpaced the rate of inflation, improving the living standards for nearly all Americans. But an unexpected reversal last year in those gains has set off a vigorous debate among economists over whether the decline is just a temporary dip or portends a deeper shift that may cause the pay of average Americans to lag for years to come.

Even though the economy added 2.2 million jobs in 2004 and produced strong growth in corporate profits, wages for the average worker fell for the year, after adjusting for inflation - the first such drop in nearly a decade.

American TV's information gap creates a new world of danger

James Robinson talks to veteran CBS correspondent Tom Fenton on the blinkering of US news by corporate bosses

Sunday April 10, 2005
The Observer

Anyone who has travelled to America knows how difficult it can be to find out what is happening back home, particularly if a TV set in a hotel bedroom is your main source of information; the US networks seem to regard foreign news as an expensive turn-off.

Americans In Iraq Until 2009

Apr 11 2005

Dossier plans 'prove Brits will stay'

By Rosa Prince

THE US Army plans to remain in Iraq until at least 2009, secret documents obtained by the Mirror reveal.

Contract tender forms for civilian workers disclose a huge expansion of interrogation and detention centres in Iraq to remain in place for a minimum four more years.

Yesterday Labour MP Alan Simpson claimed the revelation means that British forces will also have to stay the distance.

He said: "This is obviously the real withdrawal timetable. British soldiers will be used to protect US profits. Those who die are blood money for corporate America."

James Dobson compared Supreme Court justices to the KKK

On his April 11 radio broadcast, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson continued his tirade against what he has termed "judicial tyranny." With Mark Levin, author of Men In Black: How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America (foreword by Rush Limbaugh), as his guest, Dobson likened Supreme Court justices to the Ku Klux Klan

Digby/Hullabaloo: Location Location Location

Kevin says something today that I think is odd:

It's one thing to stretch logic enough to conclude that a fertilized piece of DNA in the womb is a human life that deserves the full protection of the law, but it's quite another to conclude that a fertilized piece of DNA in a petri dish is a human life that deserves the full protection of the law. Especially when the petri dish version might hold the key to curing grandpa's Parkinson's.

I actually think the opposite is true.

DFA Anne Arundel

16 April 2005

The Medical Money Pit (Paul Krugman column)

'John Brown, Abolitionist': A Soldier in the Army of the Lord

Change to the Clean Air Act Is Built Into New Energy Bill

Billmon: Kulturkampf

Billmon: Man of the Hour

Judicial review hasn’t been controversial for 200 years

Lies, damn lies and then, well, more lies

No one defends the Spanish Inquisition — except this guy

Robert Parry: David Rockefeller & October Surprise Case

Digby: Response

Digby: Doing Our Part

Juan Cole - April 16, 2005 Part 3

Juan Cole - April 16, 2005 Part 2

Juan Cole - April 16, 2005

Saturday, April 16, 2005

PM Carpenter on the Estate Tax

April 15, 2005

Dead dumb and radical

Former Northern Waters library head rewarded for taking on the FBI

Left Business Observer: Social Security, revisited

Audit Finds Charter School Misspent Millions

15 April 2005

Juan Cole - April 15, 2005 Part 3

Juan Cole - April 15, 2005 Part 2

Juan Cole - April 15, 2005

Avedon Carol at Sideshow: A few things

Digby: Sissy Assassins

Digby: Suicide Pact

Digby: The Limits Of Politics

Feds Lay Down For Rudolph

Wall St. Suffers Worst Day in Two Years

Location, Location—Deduction

Daily Howler - April 15, 2005

Half-baked observations of a VLWC conference

Echidne of the Snakes: Onward, Wingnut Soldiers!

David Neiwert: Minutemen and the mainstream

Bush, Palestinians, Israelis in Negotiations

Talking Points Memo: Sick, Dark and Demented

Italian Journalist: U.S. Lied

A Dirty Little Footnote to the Energy Bill

US already moving toward a flat tax

Caught On Tape: The Right-Wing’s Stalinist Solution

Stars & Stripes: Letter to the Editor

Did ill-gotten stock gains pay for Bush smears on Kerry and McCain?

14 April 2005

Lambro plugged misleading Heritage Foundation Social Security calculator

Billmon: Krazy Kristian Kook (James Dobson)

Billmon: Straight from the Ass's Mouth

Billmon: High Fidelity

Billmon: Gin Rummy

Billmon: Gunga Din

Billmon: Tom Turtle

Why make an enemy of Russia?

The Online Beat: John Bolton vs. Democracy

Bush Threw Us a 'Curveball'

The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Katha Pollitt on Adrea Dworkin

Andrea Dworkin, 1946-2005

Being too clean could be hazardous to your health

'Termite guts can save the planet,' says Nobel laureate

Will cancer vaccine get to all women?

Will cancer vaccine get to all women?

Political Animal: DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS....

Political Animal: HEALTHCARE IN AMERICA....

Political Animal: $50/BARREL OIL....

Iraq: The Real Election

David Neiwert: The old Injun disguise

Juan Cole: April 14, 2005 Part 2

Juan Cole: April 14, 2005 Part 1

Daily Kos: DLC, the GOP's best friend

Whose conscience rules?

AAAS 'respectfully declines' invitation to controversial Kansas evolution hearing

AAAS 'respectfully declines' invitation to controversial Kansas evolution hearing

How 10 US school districts improved science and mathematics learning

New AAAS report explores how 10 US school districts improved science and mathematics learning

13 April 2005

Daily Howler - April 13, 2005

Digby: Comment of the week