Digby: Shaking 'Em Up

Just in case there's any question about what the Religious Right is up to:

An audio recording obtained by the Los Angeles Times features two of the nation's most influential evangelical leaders, at a private conference with supporters, laying out strategies to rein in judges, such as stripping funding from their courts in an effort to hinder their work.

[...]

"There's more than one way to skin a cat, and there's more than one way to take a black robe off the bench," said Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, according to an audiotape of a March 17 session. The tape was provided to The Times by the advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Juan Cole - April 23, 2005 Part 2

Moussaoui Pleads Guilty
Trial Begins in Spain

Zacarias Moussaoui pled guilty Friday to September 11- related charges. But he appears actually to have been envisaged as a "second wave", and wanted to hijack a plane and fly it into the White House. Moussaoui is clearly mentally disturbed and his being unbalanced led to his arrest. He told the instructor at his flight school that he only wanted to learn to fly the plane, and was uninterested in knowing out to land!

Juan Cole - April 23, 2005

11 Killed, 26 Wounded in Bombing of Shiite Mosque

AFP reports that a bomb killed 9 and wounded 26 at a Shiite mosque in Baghdad on Friday. Other sources put the death toll at 11. Shaikh Sadruddin al-Qubanji, the clerical representative of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq in Najaf, said in his own Friday sermon, ' warned the faithful at prayers in the Shiite holy city of Najaf that they faced “calculated terrorist acts aimed at dividing Shiites and Sunnis." '

Daily Howler - April 22, 2005

THINGS FALL APART (PART 4)! How bizarre is Ann Coulter? Deep in the weeds, let us show you:

OUR SUGGESTION: If you want to understand your world, we’ll suggest you read every word of today’s lengthy but incomparable HOWLER.

THINGS FALL APART (PART 4): Today, we were planning to take a look at the way Cloud’s piece sought to normalize Coulter—sought to make her seem like a jolly good person, a person just like you and me. For instance, we planned to ooh-and-aah with Time’s admiring scribe at how varied her circle of friends is:

CLOUD (4/25/05): One consequence of Coulter's feline aggression is that she wins not only enemies (including one who hired a private investigator to look into her past) but creepily devoted fans. She has had discussions with the FBI about her stalkers, one of whom sent flowers every day for six months...

Fixing Army Retention

Don't forget to check the responses to the post--Dictynna.

Posted by Mother on April 14, 2005 - 4:08pm

We have written a lot on "This is Rumor Control" about recent US military recruitment and retention failures, but admittedly have not delved into solutions to the problem. If the Army is going to sustain the current engagement in Iraq and be prepared to respond to other unforeseen (not really that unforeseen) crises in, say, Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, North Korea or Iran, this is a problem it must solve. If nothing is done to fix the problems of the all-volunteer military, reinstituting the draft could become the only solution. So what do we do? A new study from RAND has some recommendations to address current retention problems.

Environmental factors, particularly air pollution, increases risk of myocardial infarction

Exposure to air pollutants increases the risk of fatal myocardial infarction (MI), particularly pollutants caused by motor traffic. This is the conclusion of a new thesis published by Karolinska Institutet.

Cardiovascular diseases are the most common cause of death in Sweden and other Western European countries. Known risk factors include age, gender, hereditariness, smoking, hypertension and high blood lipid levels. However, the part played by the external environment still remains something of a mystery. Exposure factors that are thought to compound the risk include passive smoking, air pollution, noise pollution and the chemical composition of drinking water. Even if such environmental factors give only a small increase in risk, they can have serious consequences for public health bearing in mind the prevalence of the disease and their widespread and indiscriminate affect on people.

900,000-year-old ice may destroy US case on Kyoto

Barbara McMahon in Rome and Paul Brown
Saturday April 23, 2005
The Guardian

An Italian expedition to the Antarctic has taken a sample of ice which is more than 900,000 years old and could give scientists evidence of past climate changes which would discredit global warming doubters.

The ice core, which is double the age of previous samples, will show how much carbon dioxide there was in the atmosphere during previous warm and cold phases in the climate and whether the current concentrations caused by burning fossil fuels are likely the lead to catastrophic global warming later this century.

Children, Pull Out Your Chickens

'Let's quiet down, children. Now that we've finally gotten rid of that terrible Supreme Court decision, I can again lead you in prayer.

'So children, let's get ready for our morning prayer. Did everyone remember to bring their chicken?

'Mary, where is your chicken? That's all right, Mary. Don't cry. As I told you yesterday, if you can't afford a chicken, the school is required to provide one. I've got plenty of extra chickens up here by the prayer mats, meditation crystals and peyote buds. Did anyone else forget to bring their chicken?

'As you know from your schedule, children, today I will lead you in a Santeria prayer. It's a recognized, ancient religion. Now I know some of you have complained that many of these prayers don't represent your beliefs. But remember, they do represent the sincere beliefs of many Americans. I promise you that eventually we will lead the class in a prayer representing your own religion.

'But you'll have to be patient. There are hundreds of Christian denominations with all sorts of beliefs in the United States. And there are hundreds more non-Christian religions recognized in America. If your religion isn't on our list, just let us know and we'll make sure it's added. We don't want to leave anyone out. That's not the American way.

'Be thankful'

Digby: Battlefield Biloxi

Battlefield Biloxi

Mississippi is among the first states in the nation to make it lawful to allow religious documents to be posted on public property.

By signing the law today, Gov. Haley Barbour "thrills" the Christian conservative base of the Republican Party, which he'll need if he plans to seek re-election or launch a presidential campaign, said Larry J. Sabato, director of the director of the Institute of Politics at the University of Virginia.

The law gives permission to those in authority of public buildings to post The Ten Commandments, excerpts of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and the motto, "In God We Trust."

Digby: Falling Star

Arnold is beatable. From the LA Weekly:

Arnold Schwarzenegger could well be a one-term governor. Unbelievable as that seemed at the beginning of the year, which the action superstar entered as arguably the most popular governor in California history, it may end up that way.

[...]

A telling scene came last week at a strange little event at the Capitol. Billed as a “Thank You, Arnold” rally, heavily promoted with blast e-mails, robocalls and talk radio, it was a complete bust. A mere 100 supporters turned up to see the strange duo of Hollywood libertine Tom Arnold (the comedian who was Schwarzenegger’s sidekick in True Lies) and abstemious conservative 2003 gubernatorial candidate Tom McClintock.

Digby: The Even Greater Generation

Here's an interesting little factoid from Utopian Turtletop

WW2 v. WOT -- ONE MONTH TO GO

1,347: Number of days from the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, to VJ Day (Victory in Japan) on August 15, 1945.

1,317: Number of days from the airplane-bombing of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, to today.

If Osama makes it to May 21, he will have survived the self-declared world's only superpower in a presidentially-declared war longer than Tojo, Hitler, and Mussolini combined.

The Incredible Shrinking President

Ezra makes an interesting observation today:

That reminds me: Is anyone else thinking Bush term two looks a lot like Clinton term one? Tough fights on nominations, unpopular cultural battles (gays in the military then, Schiavo now), collapse of primary domestic initiatives (Health Care reform then, privatization now), ethical investigations weakening friendly congressional leaders, and so on. The resemblance is quite close.

Digby: Comedia del Morte

Miguel Estrada says that Ann Coulter is "lively and funny." John Cloud wonders if she is really a "hard right ironist." She herself thinks that she's wickedly hilarious.

Well, this certainly is.

And the really, really cool thing is that this is a talking doll. Here's an example of the hilarious one-liners she gets off: (click here to hear her do a perfect impression of Amber Waves in "Boogie Nights.")

"Liberals can't just come out and say they want to take our money, kill babies and discriminate on the basis of race."

Digby: Authenticity

Terrence Samuel writes a very interesting article on legislative strategy in The American Prospect that I hope gets wide readership. He discusses the fact that the Democrats have found "their inner no" and are realizing that as the opposition party their primary job must be to stop the other side from doing their worst. Tom DeLay and his minions are going to continue to screech that democrats have no ideas and no beliefs and that is why they are opposing the GOP agenda. Aside from being an asinine statement, it is also overlooking one important thing and it's something that Samuel mentions in his final paragraph:

Juan Cole - April 22, 2005 Part 3

Al-Qaeda Fights on in Mecca

Two Muslim radicals and two policemen died Thursday in a running gun battle between the authorities and the jihadis in the Muslim holy city of Mecca. The Saudis said that the gunmen were linked to al-Qaeda. There has been a string of such violent incidents between the Saudi military and the jihadis during the past 4 years.

Juan Cole - April 22, 2005 Part 2

The New McCarthyism at Columbia

My extended op-ed on the Columbia affair ("The new McCarthyism: A witch hunt against a Columbia professor, and the New York Times' disgraceful support for it, represent the gravest threat to academic freedom in decades") is out in Salon.com.

I had earlier addressed the controversy briefly here.

Juan Cole - April 22, 2005 Part 1

Guerrillas Shoot down Helicopter, Killing 11 (6 Americans)

AP reports that guerrillas shot down a helicopter carrying civilian security guards on Thursday. A jihadi website claimed that the guerrillas executed the one survivor of the crash, a Bulgarian. There are thousands of civilian security guards in Iraq of various nationalities. If the Iraqi guerrillas are now able to import more sophisticated shoulder-fired missile launchers, like SA-14s, they could become extremely deadly to US military helicopters, as well. (I don't know what weapon they used to down this helicopter.)

The Poor Man: Michael Moore Is Fat

The latest faith-based initiative:

Evangelical Christian leaders, who have been working closely with senior Republican lawmakers to place conservative judges in the federal courts, have also been exploring ways to punish sitting jurists and even entire courts viewed as hostile to their cause.

An audio recording obtained by the Los Angeles Times features two of the nation’s most influential evangelical leaders, at a private conference with supporters, laying out strategies to rein in judges, such as stripping funding from their courts in an effort to hinder their work.

The discussion took place during a Washington conference last month that included addresses by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who discussed efforts to bring a more conservative cast to the courts. […]

The leaders present at the March conference, including Perkins and James C. Dobson, founder of the influential group Focus on the Family, have been working with Frist to eliminate the filibuster for judicial nominations, a legislative tool that has allowed Senate Democrats to stall 10 of President Bush’s nominations. Frist is scheduled to appear, via a taped statement, during a satellite broadcast to churches nationwide Sunday that the Family Research Council has organized to build support for the Bush nominees.

From the Mad Mullahs at the National Review

Via DeLong, we find Daniel P. Moloney (rumored to be hiding somewhere on border between Afghanistan and 5th Avenue) raging against the moral Nazism of The Decadent West:

What Pius XII diagnosed as the sin of the 20th century — the loss of a sense of personal guilt and sin — Benedict XVI thinks helped make great evil seem so ordinary. This is the theological solution to Hannah Arendt’s puzzle about how such boring bureaucrats as Himmler and Eichmann could bring about the Holocaust. The Nazis taught, repeatedly and in numerous different ways, that there is no God, no sin, and no personal guilt. Relentless propaganda made it easy for people to avoid feeling guilty, and, since everyone was complicit, nobody was made to answer for his sins.

In this regard, the consumerism and relativism of the West can be just as dangerous as the totalitarianism of the East: It’s just as easy to forget about God while dancing to an iPod as while marching in a Hitler Youth rally. There’s a difference, to be sure, but hardly anyone would contest the observation that in elite Western society, as in totalitarian Germany, the moral vocabulary has been purged of the idea of sin. And if there’s no sense of sin, then there’s no need for a Redeemer, or for the Church.

So, really, aside from a few admitted differences, like the Holocaust and World War II, “elite Western society” is really just like Nazi Germany, because it doesn’t ache to be Christianized by the Mad Mullahs of NRO. Fascinating. Come to think of it, I don’t suppose the (elite, cosmopolitian, liberal, intellectual) Jews who died at Auchwitz felt much need for the Church, either. But that’s a column for another day.

Timely Quote

From John F. Kennedy via Andrew Sullivan via Talking Points Memo--Dictynna

"I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute -- where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote -- where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference ... I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish -- where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source -- where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials." - president John F. Kennedy.

Thomas Frank: What's the Matter with Liberals?

By Thomas Frank

1.

For more than thirty-five years, American politics has followed a populist pattern as predictable as a Punch and Judy show and as conducive to enlightened statesmanship as the cycles of a noisy washing machine. The antagonists of this familiar melodrama are instantly recognizable: the average American, humble, long-suffering, working hard, and paying his taxes; and the liberal elite, the know-it-alls of Manhattan and Malibu, sipping their lattes as they lord it over the peasantry with their fancy college degrees and their friends in the judiciary.

Conservatives generally regard class as an unacceptable topic when the subject is economics—trade, deregulation, shifting the tax burden, expressing worshipful awe for the microchip, etc. But define politics as culture, and class instantly becomes for them the very blood and bone of public discourse. Indeed, from George Wallace to George W. Bush, a class-based backlash against the perceived arrogance of liberalism has been one of their most powerful weapons. Workerist in its rhetoric but royalist in its economic effects, this backlash is in no way embarrassed by its contradictions. It understands itself as an uprising of the little people even when its leaders, in control of all three branches of government, cut taxes on stock dividends and turn the screws on the bankrupt. It mobilizes angry voters by the millions, despite the patent unwinnability of many of its crusades. And from the busing riots of the Seventies to the culture wars of our own time, the backlash has been ignored, downplayed, or misunderstood by liberals.

The Politics of Intolerance

By Charles Cutter (www.cuttersway.com)
Apr 22, 2005, 06:53

Deb Comer, an American living in the United Kingdom, writes to ask: "What is happening to our country? Why do so many people appear to be part of God-based hate groups?"

To answer her question, it’s necessary to understand the fundamental goal of the fundamentalist Christians: To deny basic human rights to segments of society they deem unworthy in their god’s eyes. They believe that Americans should reject the Constitutional concept of equality in favor of their religious caste system. They seek to legally stigmatize all non-fundamentalist Christians.

Historically, Christianity has been used to justify such atrocities as the genocide of Native Americans and the institution of slavery; current favorite targets include women, gays, atheists, and pro-choice supporters.

2 Evangelicals Want to Strip Courts' Funds

Fri Apr 22, 7:55 AM ET

By Peter Wallsten Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — Evangelical Christian leaders, who have been working closely with senior Republican lawmakers to place conservative judges in the federal courts, have also been exploring ways to punish sitting jurists and even entire courts viewed as hostile to their cause.

The end of oil is closer than you think

Oil production could peak next year, reports John Vidal. Just kiss your lifestyle goodbye

Thursday April 21, 2005
The Guardian

The one thing that international bankers don't want to hear is that the second Great Depression may be round the corner. But last week, a group of ultra-conservative Swiss financiers asked a retired English petroleum geologist living in Ireland to tell them about the beginning of the end of the oil age.

They called Colin Campbell, who helped to found the London-based Oil Depletion Analysis Centre because he is an industry man through and through, has no financial agenda and has spent most of a lifetime on the front line of oil exploration on three continents. He was chief geologist for Amoco, a vice-president of Fina, and has worked for BP, Texaco, Shell, ChevronTexaco and Exxon in a dozen different countries.

"Don't worry about oil running out; it won't for very many

Climate Research Faulted Over Missing Components

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

Published: April 22, 2005

The Bush administration's program to study climate change lacks a major component required by law, according to Congressional investigators. The program fails to include periodic assessments of how rising temperatures may affect people and the environment.

The investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, conclude in a report to be released today that none of the 21 studies of climate change that the administration plans to publish by September 2007 explicitly address the potential effects in eight areas specified by a 1990 law, the Global Change Research Act. The areas include agriculture, energy, water resources and biological diversity.

Private Accounts, Public Accountability

By MARTIN MAYER

SO few specifics of President Bush's Social Security proposal have been made public that it is difficult to say which will make trouble. But one person who should be seriously concerned about the details is Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve.

According to many reports, the Bush plan would require retirees who have chosen "personal accounts" to use most or all of the money in those accounts to purchase annuities to supplement the payments that will remain after the government recalculates their Social Security benefits. How large an annuity that retirees can buy - and thus what standard of living they may expect - will be determined largely by interest rates set by the Federal Reserve. That's a lot of power to concentrate in one conference room on Constitution Avenue.

Paul Krugman: Passing the Buck

By PAUL KRUGMAN

The United States spends far more on health care than other advanced countries. Yet we don't appear to receive more medical services. And we have lower life-expectancy and higher infant-mortality rates than countries that spend less than half as much per person. How do we do it?

An important part of the answer is that much of our health care spending is devoted to passing the buck: trying to get someone else to pay the bills.

According to the World Health Organization, in the United States administrative expenses eat up about 15 percent of the money paid in premiums to private health insurance companies, but only 4 percent of the budgets of public insurance programs, which consist mainly of Medicare and Medicaid. The numbers for both public and private insurance are similar in other countries - but because we rely much more heavily than anyone else on private insurance, our total administrative costs are much higher.

Abramoff's former firm held three fundraisers for senator investigating him

By John Byrne

A simmering battle between factions of a Native American tribe in Iowa has raised new questions about the dealings of tribal lobbyist Jack Abramoff, his relationship with a conservative advocacy group and donations to members of Congress, RAW STORY has learned.

Cisneros Probe Faces Cut-Off

Associated Press
Friday, April 22, 2005; Page A04

The Senate agreed yesterday to cut off money to the decade-long investigation of former housing and urban development secretary Henry G. Cisneros, which has cost nearly $21 million.

Billmon: Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree

I sold you and you sold me . . .

And it looks like it may be time once again for the religious wackos to be sold down the river by their GOP "allies":

Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), a leading advocate of the “nuclear option” to end the Democrats’ filibuster of judicial nominees, is privately arguing for a delay in the face of adverse internal party polls.

And by "adverse," the Republicans apparently mean: Even our own mothers will hate us if we go to the mat on this one.

Billmon: Indecent Exposure

An indecent discussion of media indecency...--Dictynna

Via Atrios, I see that Blah3 spotted another piece of evidence that this is Be Kind to Rabid Conservatives Week at Time Warner Inc.

I'm just surprised the CNN whores didn't use the ol' computer graphics package to doodle some devil horns on the head of the gay guy. And maybe give him a pitchfork to wave around.

Echidne of the Snakes: "W" is For Women. Gag.

In fact, George Bush and his wingnuts care so much for the women of this world that they are prepared to have as many as 68,000 more of them dead:

The US government is trying to block the World Health Organisation from endorsing two abortion pills which could save the lives of some of the 68,000 women who die from unsafe practices in poor countries every year.

The WHO wants to put the pills on its essential medicines list, which constitutes official advice to all governments on the basic drugs their doctors should have available.

Last month, an expert committee met to consider a number of new drugs for inclusion on the list. They approved for the first time two pills, to be used in combination for the termination of early pregnancy, called mifepristone and misoprostol. In poor countries where abortion is legal, doctors currently have no alternative to surgery.

David Neiwert: Minutemen uber alles

Thursday, April 21, 2005

Well, the Minutemen apparently are running low on volunteers -- their Web site currently features an urgent plea for volunteers "on the border to the end of April." According to my sources, the project's numbers have been in precipitous decline in the past week, while the Project is officially supposed to last until April 30.

That hasn't prevented them from declaring victory anyway, even before they've officially wrapped up their three-ring anti-immigration circus:

The Magic Wands Bush Won't Wave

By Dan Froomkin

Special to washingtonpost.com
Thursday, April 21, 2005; 11:56 AM

For months, the stock White House response to question about high gas prices has been to call for passage of President Bush's energy plan -- as if the two were related.

So it was a bit of a shock yesterday when Bush himself bluntly acknowledged what's been obvious to most observers for quite a while now: That his energy proposals won't lower gas prices in the short term one bit.

Moon's Dance

By Rory O'Connor, AlterNet
Posted on April 20, 2005, Printed on April 22, 2005

What role is Reverend Sun Myung Moon -- major media mogul and motivating force behind the Washington Times daily newspaper, the United Press International news service, and many other journalistic properties - playing in the ongoing nuclear negotiations between North Korea's leaders and the Bush Administration?

Neil Bush, Ratzinger co-founders

President's younger brother served with then-cardinal on board of relatively unknown ecumenical foundation

BY KNUT ROYCE AND TOM BRUNE
WASHINGTON BUREAU

April 21, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Neil Bush, the president's controversial younger brother, six years ago joined the cardinal who this week became Pope Benedict XVI as a founding board member of a little known Swiss ecumenical foundation.

The charter members of the board were all well-known international religious figures, except for Bush and his close friend and business partner, Jamal Daniel, whose family has extensive holdings in the United States and Switzerland, public records show.

House Resources chairman disses key provision of energy bill

From Ted Barrett
CNN Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Shortly before the House began debate Wednesday on an energy bill aimed primarily at making the country less dependent on overseas oil, a House committee chairman involved in the legislation bluntly dismissed a key provision to boost the use of hydrogen fuels.

House Resources Committee Chairman Richard Pombo, R-California, a key proponent of drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, whispered, "This is bulls--t," to House Majority Whip Roy Blunt as the two men stood listening to Rep. John Doolittle, R-California, talk about the benefits of hydrogen fuel at a crowded Capitol Hill news conference.

The remark, which was meant to be private, was overheard by a CNN reporter standing next to Blunt.

Clinton impeachment was retaliation for Nixon, says retiring congressman

By Andy Shaw

April 21, 2005 — Republican Congressman Henry Hyde made some surprising comments Thursday on the impeachment hearings of President Bill Clinton. He now says Republicans may have gone after Clinton to retaliate for the impeachment of Richard Nixon. Hyde is stepping down after this term.

Senator aiming to nix federal weather forecasts enjoyed AccuWeather money

Some worry that bill is bad idea in wake of hurricanes

By John Byrne | Raw Story Editor

A conservative Republican senator who proposed that federal meteorologists be forbidden from competing with companies such as AccuWeather and the Weather Channel, has received nearly $4,000 from AccuWeather's founder and executive vice president since 2000, RAW STORY has discovered.

Oil Companies Lose Effort to End Suits Over Contaminated Water

By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO

Published: April 21, 2005

A federal judge ruled yesterday that major oil companies must defend dozens of lawsuits accusing them of fouling groundwater by using a gasoline additive that has become a political liability in the proposed energy bill.

The ruling means that plaintiffs can proceed with some 80 lawsuits against oil companies asserting that the additive, methyl tertiary-butyl ether, or MTBE, fouled groundwater. The suits were brought by water providers, towns, counties and cities, including New York City and the state of New Hampshire. First filed in state courts, the suits were consolidated last year in federal court in New York.

Billmon: Debt to Society

"Bankruptcy should always be a last resort in our legal system. If someone does not pay his or her debts, the rest of society ends up paying them."

George W. Bush
Signing Ceremony for Bankruptcy "Reform" Bill
April 20, 2005

Billmon: Liar Liar, Pope on Fire

The 78-year-old German cardinal steadily built support before and during the two-day conclave, according to these accounts. He ate breakfast with African and Asian cardinals. He assured U.S. prelates that he was in tune with their efforts to deal with child sexual abuse by priests. He sought to allay fears that he would set back attempts at interfaith dialogue.

Washington Post
At Conclave, A Prediction And Promise
April 21, 2005

Consortium News: John Bolton & the Battle for Reality

Undersecretary of State John Bolton has been called a "kiss up, kick down kind of guy" for pressuring mid-level U.S. intelligence analysts to embrace administration conclusions. But Bolton's abrasive style is not simply a personality flaw; it's a strategy that's been prevalent since the Reagan years for ensuring that the American people get a slanted perception of reality. April 19, 2005

Juan Cole - April 21, 2005

Assassination Attempt on Allawi

70 Bodies Recovered in Iraqi Massacres

Retired Gen. John Keane, back from a fact-finding trip to Iraq, told The Hill that he thinks the Iraqi guerrilla opposition is planning "spectacular" attacks to derail th political process in the country. His thesis was given some support by events on Wednesday.

A suicide bomber attempted but failed to assassinate outgoing prime minister, Iyad Allawi, on Wednesday, detonating his car bomb near Allawi's convoy.

Talking Points Memo: Is anyone listening to this?

In remarks yesterday before the Bond Market Association -- one of the hardest partying groups on the street -- Treasury Secretary John Snow explicitly linked the administration's efforts to cut the deficit to the push to partially phase-out Social Security. The logic of that statement points to only one conclusion: the deficits the administration has run up with upper-income tax cuts will be reduced by benefit cuts in Social Security.

Andrew Bacevich on the New American Militarism

We are now in an America where it's a commonplace for our President, wearing a "jacket with ARMY printed over his heart and 'Commander in Chief' printed on his right front," to address vast assemblages of American troops on the virtues of bringing democracy to foreign lands at the point of a missile. As Jim VandeHei of the Washington Post puts it: "Increasingly, the president uses speeches to troops to praise American ideals and send a signal to other nations the administration is targeting for democratic change."

Digby – Harry Started It

David Brooks says that if it weren't for Roe vs Wade we wouldn't be having all this nastiness in our political discourse. And the fight over the judiciary -- my gawd -- nobody would even think of it:

Justice Harry Blackmun did more inadvertent damage to our democracy than any other 20th-century American. When he and his Supreme Court colleagues issued the Roe vs. Wade decision, they set off a cycle of political viciousness and counter -viciousness that has poisoned public life ever since, and now threatens to destroy the Senate as we know it.

Daily Howler - April 21, 2005

THINGS FALL APART (PART 3)! Cloud has mastered a standard script—with Coulter, it’s just good solid fun

DON’T MISS ONE EXCITING INSTALLMENT: On Tuesday, some readers had trouble accessing Part 1 of our series. Why not visit our incomparable archives? We finish our series tomorrow:

PART 1: Time’s latest store-bought pimps Ann Coulter. See THE DAILY HOWLER, 4/19/05.

PART 2: Coulter makes “errors” like other scribes breathe. See THE DAILY HOWLER, 4/20/05.

And now, for Part 3 of our series:

Digby: The Pope Show

My cable has been out for several days so until this morning I hadn't had the pleasure of watching "The Pope Show" on CNN for a while. In fact, I thought that it might be on hiatus since the old pope was dead and the new one had been named. Not so. The show has been renewed. Now it's "The New Pope Show." (They were going to call it "God's Rottweiler" but it didn't focus group well among dog lovers.) Episode one was today. He led a mass and had a photo op. He also plays the piano. Wadda guy.

Digby: Unlawful Combatants

The word that Moussaoui may be pleading guilty today reminds me that we haven't heard anything about the alleged dirty bomber, Jose Padilla, for a while. His name will be remembered in history as the the Supreme court ruling that held that the government could keep someone imprisioned with no due process indefinitely simply by moving him or her from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. As it happens, The Talking Dog did a lengthy and interesting interview with Padilla's lawyer just this week

Digby: Ball Gag

So Howard "I couldn't even beat a stiff like Bill Jones" Kaloogian has another one of his fun little smear jobs up on his "Moving America Back To The Dark Ages" site. (He is, for those who don't know, one of the guys who instigated the California Recall.)

David Neiwert: Black Robes

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

It begins, it seems, with right-wing extremists threatening judges on the radio for failing to bend the law to their desires. Then you have right-wing fringe transmitters spewing the same kind of hatred of the judiciary on multiple TV appearances, and Oxycon-artist radio hosts ranting out the same lines over the nation's airwaves.

Next thing you know, you have House leaders threatening retribution for judges who refused to jump through their hoops, and Senators warning judges that they might be bringing violence upon themselves for making decisions people don't like. Suddenly, a focused, heavily organized campaign springs into action, poised to combat those evil liberals who pervert the normal American way of life -- the dark, dreaded men in black robes. (And hey, just coincidentally in time, you can buy the book!)

Huh? Where did this come from? This wasn't even an issue in the last election! It all seems like it's coming out of far right field, doesn't it?

Juan Cole - April 20, 2005 Part 2

Outgoing Interior Minister Warns on Iran, Badr Corps

Falah al-Naqib, the interior minister in the expiring government of Iyad Allawi, warned Tuesday that melding the Shiite Badr Corps into the new Iraqi security forces would be a mistake. He also blamed Iranian intelligence for the rumors that Sunni guerrillas had taken over 100 Shiites hostage at Mada'in (a charge that is completely implausible, by the way).

Juan Cole - April 20, 2005 Part 1

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

20 Killed, 42 Wounded
US Troops Humiliate Member of Parliament

Guerrillas killed some 20 persons in Iraq on Tuesday and late Monday night, according to ash-Sharq al-Awsat. In the upscale Sunni Azamiyah district of Baghdad, a suicide bomber killed 4 National Guards and wounded 38 persons when he attacked a police recruitment center. Gunmen assassinated Baghdad University professor Fu'ad al-Bayati. In Khalidiyah west of Baghdad, guerrillas fired on National Guard members, killing 5 and wounding 4.

The "corporate coauthor:" Ghostwriting in medical journals

(14 April 2005: VIDYYA MEDICAL NEWS SERVICE) -- In a commentary titled "The Corporate Coauthor" published online by the Journal of General Internal Medicine on April 14, Adriane Fugh-Berman M.D., adjunct associate professor of physiology and biophysics at the Georgetown University School of Medicine, recounts her experience of being asked to "author" a ghost-written article funded by a pharmaceutical company. Fugh-Berman declined, and penned a commentary about her experience for JGIM instead.

"The pharmaceutical industry relies on ghost-written publications in peer-reviewed journals as part of their marketing plans," said Fugh-Berman. Physicians rely on information in the medical literature to make treatment decisions, so hidden sponsorship of articlesâ€"and lectures at medical conferences is not only unethical, but can compromise patient care.

In her commentary, Dr. Fugh-Berman reports that she was approached by a medical education company working for a well-known pharmaceutical manufacturer. The company asked her to lend her name as "author" to a completed manuscript that reviewed herb-warfarin interactions. The pharmaceutical manufacturer was developing a competitor to warfarin and had apparently commissioned the article to highlight problems with warfarin.

No Laughing Matter

DeLay and Co. are doing their best to undermine the principles of democracy. No joke.

By Michael Tomasky
Web Exclusive: 04.19.05


I was in Morgantown, West Virginia, last weekend visiting my mom when a neighbor called, a local professional with whose son I played high-school baseball. He asked me what I was up to these days, and after I'd explained what the Prospect was and so forth, he said (paraphrasing): “Listen, I'd like to ask you about something. I guess some people might call me an extremist or something, but I think that this country is in very serious danger. “

Polluter-Friendly Energy

Frank O'Donnell
April 20, 2005

Frank O'Donnell is president of Clean Air Watch, a 501 (c) 3 non-partisan, non-profit organization aimed at educating the public about clean air and the need for an effective Clean Air Act

It seems fitting that an organization called The Annapolis Center—identified by The Wall Street Journal as a polluter front group—will give an award next week to Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Barton appears to be working diligently to earn their accolades as he tries to shepherd energy legislation through the House of Representatives this week.

Billmon Dissects Coulter's TIME Spread

Caution--frequent sexual references--Dictynna.

Scoundrel Time

Luce's politics had hardened in the postwar years and Time had become increasingly Republican. He had been stunned by Truman's defeat of Dewey in 1948. Then in the fall of 1949 China had fallen, the Democratic administration had failed to save Chiang, and that was too much. Truman, and even more, Acheson, would have to pay the price. Time was now committed and politcized, an almost totally partisan instrument. The smell of blood was in the air. There was a hunger now in Luce to put a Republican back in power.

David Halberstam
The Powers That Be
1979


When I saw that Time magazine had chosen Ann Coulter as its Miss April, my first instinct – after I stopped retching, I mean – was to suspect an ulterior political motive.

I mean, Ann may think her cover photo was unflattering (a crime against humanity would be my term for it)

Daily Howler - April 20, 2005

THINGS FALL APART (PART 2)! Coulter makes “errors” like other scribes breathe. But store-bought John Cloud couldn’t find them

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20, 2005

BERNSTEIN WATCHES THINGS FALL APART: Congratulations to Carl Bernstein, perhaps our frankest press bigfoot. On last evening’s Special Report, Jim Angle cited a recent speech by the Watergate worthy:
ANGLE (4/19/05): Former Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein, who helped break the Watergate story, says journalism nowadays is squandering the public's trust, insisting the, quote, "triumph of the idiot culture in news, particularly TV news, has weakened journalist drive for the truth."

At a press convention in Kansas, Bernstein said, quote, "The consequences to a society that is misinformed and disinformed by the grotesque values of this idiot culture are truly perilous. For the first time in our history," he went on, "the weird, the stupid, the coarse, the sensational and the untrue are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal."

David Neiwert: 10 Years Later

Tuesday, April 19, 2005
And you may ask yourself,
Well, how did I get here?

How did we reach the point, as a nation, where treat the terrorists in our midst as "anomalies" -- despite their long record of wreaking havoc in our own back yards -- while embarking on a global "war on terrorism" that involves invasions and occupations of foreign lands?

How did it come to pass that, on the 10th anniversary of the second-worst act of terrorism on American soil -- the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City -- one of the nation's best-known newsmagazines completely ignores the date and its meaning (that's right; there's not a story in either the April 18 edition of Time or the Ann Coulter edition of April 25), and instead devotes its cover to plumping for a woman who has made light of the bombing?

I think Digby has nailed it just about right:

It has become clear to me that we are frogs being slowly boiled to death. And the media are enjoying the hot tub party so much that they are helping to turn up the heat.

Digby Hits the 'Coulter' Nail on the Head

I've been having some major Adelphia cable problems so posting is sporadic and I apologize. It's been a rough couple of days for me anyway. Seeing Ann Coulter feted on the cover of Time magazine as a mainstream political figure instead of the deranged, murderous extremist she actually is was quite a shock. And then a friend sent me the links to the Free Republic thread discussing the death of Marla Ruzicka, which made me so nauseous that I had to shut down for a while.

It has become clear to me that we are frogs being slowly boiled to death. And the media are enjoying the hot tub party so much that they are helping to turn up the heat.

Ann Coulter is not, as Howie Kurtz asserts today, the equivalent of Michael Moore. Michael Moore is is not advocating the murder of conservatives. He just isn't. For instance, he doesn't say that Eric Rudolph should be killed so that other conservatives will learn that they can be killed too. He doesn't say that he wishes that Tim McVeigh had blown up the Washington Times Bldg. He doesn't say that conservatives routinely commit the capital offense of treason. He certainly doesn't put up pictures of the fucking snoopy dance because one of his political opponents was killed. He doesn't, in other words, issue calls for violence and repression against his political enemies. That is what Ann Coulter does, in the most coarse, vulgar, reprehensible way possible.

Put a Tiger In Your Think Tank

ExxonMobil has pumped more than $8 million into more than 40 think tanks; media outlets; and consumer, religious, and even civil rights groups that preach skepticism about the oncoming climate catastrophe. Herewith, a representative overview.

Battlespace America

The new Pentagon can peruse intelligence on U.S.citizens and send Marines down Main Street.

Peter Byrne
May/June 2005 Issue

In early 2004, Sahar Aziz, a law student at the University of Texas at Austin, organized a conference called "Islam and the Law: The Question of Sexism." The seminar attracted several hundred people. Unbeknownst to Aziz, who is Muslim, in the audience were two Army lawyers in civilian attire. They reported to military intelligence that three Middle Eastern men had asked them "suspicious" questions about their identity during a refreshment break. A few days later, two military intelligence agents materialized on campus, demanding to see a video-tape of the seminar along with a roster of attendees.

Aziz didn't respond and instead helped arrange a press conference. When the Wall Street Journal highlighted the episode in a story about domestic intelligence gathering by the military, the Army's Intelligence and Security Command acknowledged that the agents "exceeded their authority" and introduced "refresher training" on the limits of the military's jurisdiction.

As it turns out, though, it may be the public that needs a refresher course on the role of its military forces. In 2002, the Defense Department updated its Unified Command Plan, which made the already blurry lines between civilian and military even less legible. Since then, all over America, law enforcement and intelligence agencies have been making information about the public available to a Pentagon power center most people have never heard about: U.S. Northern Command, or NORTHCOM, located at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs. Hidden deep inside Cheyenne Mountain, more than 100 intelligence analysts sift through streams of data collected by federal agents and local law en- forcers–continually updating a virtual picture of what the command calls the North American "battlespace," which includes the United States, Canada, and Mexico, as well as 500 miles out to sea. If they find something amiss, they have resources to deploy in response that no law enforcement agency could dream of. They've got an army, a navy, an air force, the Marines, and the Coast Guard.

IRS Flaws Expose Taxpayers to Snooping, Study Finds

By REUTERS

Filed at 5:14 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Computer-security flaws at the U.S. tax-collection agency expose millions of taxpayers to potential identity theft or illegal police snooping, according to a congressional report released on Monday.

The Internal Revenue Service also is unlikely to know if outsiders are browsing through citizens' tax returns, because it doesn't effectively police its computer systems for unauthorized use, the Government Accountability Office found.

The report was released three days after the deadline for filing personal income-tax returns, and at a time when concerns about identity theft and computer security are running high.

Divorce Rate: It's Not as High as You Think

By DAN HURLEY

How many American marriages end in divorce? One in two, if you believe the statistic endlessly repeated in news media reports, academic papers and campaign speeches.

The figure is based on a simple - and flawed - calculation: the annual marriage rate per 1,000 people compared with the annual divorce rate. In 2003, for example, the most recent year for which data is available, there were 7.5 marriages per 1,000 people and 3.8 divorces, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

But researchers say that this is misleading because the people who are divorcing in any given year are not the same as those who are marrying, and that the statistic is virtually useless in understanding divorce rates. In fact, they say, studies find that the divorce rate in the United States has never reached one in every two marriages, and new research suggests that, with rates now declining, it probably never will.

Drug Benefit Disparities Cited

The Medicare prescription drug benefit available next year will cost senior citizens an average of $722 annually. But retirees with chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart disease can expect to pay about double that amount and will face gaps in their coverage for as long as five months, according to projections being published today.

Climate of Denial

One morning in Kyoto, we won a round in the battle against global warming. Then special interests and pseudoscience snatched the truth away. What happened?

Bill McKibben
May/June 2005 Issue

It was around eight in the morning in the vast convention hall in Kyoto. The negotiations over a worldwide treaty to limit global warming gases, which were supposed to have ended the evening before, had gone on through the night. Drifts of paper—treaty drafts, industry talking points, environmentalist press releases—overflowed every wastebasket. Delegates in suits and ties were passed out on couches, noisily mouth breathing. And polite squadrons of workers were shooing people out of the hall so that some trade show—tool and die makers, I think—could set up its displays.

Finally, from behind the closed doors, word emerged that we had a treaty. The greens all cheered, halfheartedly—since it wasn't as though the agreement would go anywhere near far enough to arrest global warming—but firm in their conviction that the tide on the issue had finally turned. After a decade of resistance, the oil companies and the car companies and all the other deniers of global warming had seen their power matched.

Or so it seemed. I was standing next to a top industry lobbyist, a man who had spent the last week engineering opposition to the treaty, huddling with Exxon lawyers and Saudi delegates, detailing the Venezuelans to change this word, the Kuwaitis to soften that number. Right now he looked just plain tired. "I can't wait to get back to Washington," he said. "In Washington we'll get this under control again."

Is Low-Cost Wi-Fi Un-American?

We have Big Media to thank for saving Americans from themselves. Just as the notion of affordable broadband for all was beginning to take hold in towns and cities across the country, the patriots at Verizon, Qwest, Comcast, Bell South and SBC Communications have created legislation that will stop the creeping socialism of broadband community Internet before it invades our homes.

And to think that Americans might want to support high-speed access at costs below the monopoly rates set by these few Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Today, monthly broadband packages offered by the national carriers hover above $30, barring access to millions of Americans who can’t afford the sticker price.

Faith-Based Pandering

Totally by mistake, I was summoned to meet Sen. Bill Frist shortly after he first arrived in Washington. This happened because someone in Frist's office confused me with the congressional affairs correspondent of the National Journal, Richard E. Cohen, but I stayed to meet Frist anyway and found him impressive. Time and tide have changed my view. He is now the Senate majority leader and an undeclared but neon-lit presidential candidate who is getting into shape for the long run to the White House by shedding anything that weighs him down. In his case it's principles.

Michael or John: how to oppose all forms Boltonism

Bolton:	Michael Bolton	John R. Bolton
Primary hair issue:	Stole Robert Plant’s ‘do and chest hair	Has been wearing the same unconvincing hairpiece since 1972
Early inspiration:	Stevie Wonder	Jesse Helms
spent 1981 in:	Blackjack	The Reagan Administration
later in the decade, teamed up with:	Laura Branigan	Ed Meese
has also been linked with:	Peabo Bryson, Patti Labelle, and BabyFace	Ahmad Chalabi, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith
most controversial quote:	‘Love is a Wonderful Thing‘	‘I’m with the Bush-Cheney team, and I’m here to stop the count’
Works to rid the world of:	poverty, homelessness, and sexual abuse	The UN and non-proliferation treaties
If confirmed, will destroy:	TBD	The UN
If NOT confirmed, will destroy:	a bunch more good songs	TBD
Editors’ opinion:	Sucks	Sucks

Verdict: in order to save ’60s soul music and the United Nations, President Bush should appoint Michael Bolton Ambassador to the UN, and, by executive order, appoint John Bolton to fulfill the remainder of Michael’s contract with Columbia. Although he is not “bound by laws prohibiting torture,” according to his current Attorney General, we request that the President not have either Bolton sing any songs written by the previous Attorney General John Ashcroft.

April 14, 2005 at 5:49 pm

Juan Cole - April 19, 2005

Badr: Foreign Troops Unneeded

The Badr Corps claims to be in military control of Muthanna province, including the city of Samawah. Regional Badr leader Hadi al-Amiri said Monday that Samawah is secure, and there is no need for Australian troops to be deployed there. The Dutch used to be stationed in Samawah but have gone home, and are due to be replaced by 450 Australian troops. In fact, local policing in Samawah has been supplied by the Badr Corps of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq for some time. At one point the Dawa Party militia was also patrolling there. Al-Amiri's comment is the opening salvo in a struggle for control of the Iraqi south, where Shiite religious parties now control the provincial councils and therefore the police and bureaucracy.

Riotous Real Estate

By Mike Davis

Last February the sirens howled in Hollywood as the LAPD rushed reinforcements to the 5600 block of La Mirada Avenue. While a police captain barked orders through a bullhorn, an angry crowd of 3000 people shouted back expletives. A passerby might have mistaken the confrontation for a major movie shoot, or perhaps the beginning of the next great L.A. riot.

In fact, as LAPD Captain Michael Downing later told the press: "You had some very desperate people who had a mob mentality. It was as if people were trying to get the last piece of bread."

Without Delay (Hendrick Hertzberg column)

A current Washington joke, in the mordant style that used to be a Moscow specialty, has it that Republicans and Democrats have finally found something they can agree on: Tom DeLay must stay as the Majority Leader of the House of Representatives.

Juan Cole - April 18, 2005

Ex-Baathists Excluded
Police Poorly Trained

The United Iraqi Alliance (Shiite religious parties) who now dominate the Iraqi government are insisting on purging the Iraqi government of former members of the Baath Party and trying any who might be associated with crimes. They are also dismissive of attempts to reach out to Sunni guerrilla movements. The interim government of Iyad Allawi, himself an ex-Baathist, had appointed to intelligence and military positions a number of former Baath officers associated with the Iraqi National Accord, who had worked with the US CIA against Saddam after breaking with him. Since most ex-Baathists are Sunni, and since most Sunni Arabs who amount to anything in Iraq had at least some tenuous relationship to the Baath party, the upshot of deputy speaker Hussein Shahristani's vindictive comments is actually a long-term and massive marginalization of the Sunni Arab community. This marginalization will likely prolong and deepen the guerrilla war.

David Neiwert: Teens and the terrorism laws

One of the more troubling aspects of anti-terrorism laws generally -- and the Patriot Act in particular -- has been the likelihood that they are open to a kind of prosecutorial abuse: namely, that they can be used to charge people whose crimes have little or nothing to do with terrorism.

This was especially clear in the case of the Patriot Act's "sneak and peek" provisions that allow federal agents to conduct searches of people's homes without ever notifying them. These provisions were already available to the FBI in terrorism investigations; what the Patriot Act did was enable law enforcement to use them in non-terrorism-related cases. And sure enough, as TalkLeft's TChris reported recently, there has been a dramatic expansion of sneak-and-peek warrants since Bush took office.

Now comes an Associated Press report out of Michigan that says that teens who are suspected of plotting attacks on their schools are being charged under anti-terror laws:
LANSING -- Michigan's use of an anti-terrorism law to curb school violence has sparked debate over the law's intent and raised an important question among prosecutors, school officials and others: When is a troubled teen a terrorist?

David Neiwert: Seeping into the system

Saturday, April 16, 2005
Since the creep of right-wing extremism into mainstream conservatism is a major topic of this blog, I'd be remiss in not bringing to your attention a recent report from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting's Steve Rendall describing some of the more noxious examples of this trend in the mainstream media:
Racism, in fact, may be gaining a firmer foothold in American media institutions as its promoters adopt more stealthy and sophisticated ways of presenting it. Consider two recent episodes in which David Brooks and John Tierney, both conservative New York Times writers, touted the work of Steve Sailer, a well-known promoter of racist and anti-immigrant theories.

Following the November elections, David Brooks used his column (12/7/04) to celebrate something he called the "natalist" movement. Natalists, said Brooks, defy Western trends toward declining birth rates by having lots of children and leaving behind the "disorder, vulgarity and danger" of cities to move to "clean, orderly" suburban and exurban settings where they can "protect their children from bad influences." According to Brooks, natalists are more churchgoing and conservative than their less wholesome neighbors in more liberal urban areas, and are an increasingly important political force.

David Neiwere: DeLay's Golden Oldies

Considering the focus being leveled at House Majority Leader Tom DeLay right now regarding his fondness for junkets with lobbyist Jack Abramaoff, it might be worthwhile to revisit one of the previous incidents involving such a trip, uncovered by Jeff Stein for Salon back in 1999, describing garment factories in Saipan that are more slave dens than manufacturing plants:

David Neiwert: The Rudolph manifesto

Sunday, April 17, 2005

Probably no news event of the past year has made me as queasy as watching

Eric Rudolph 'confess'

o his crimes as part of his plea agreement. What was especially disturbing was the way Rudolph turned his public confession into a defacto manifesto, justifying his murderous spree and clearly issuing a clarion call to other True Believers to take up his mantle.

Daily Howler - April 18, 2005

SMIRKING RICH! Frank Rich still won’t tell his readers that Whitewater was a fake scandal: // link // print // previous // next //
MONDAY, APRIL 18, 2005

THROW THE BUMILLER OUT: It’s the journalistic car wreck that just keeps on happening! In this morning’s New York Times, Elisabeth Bumiller pens her weekly “White House Letter”—and this time, it’s Dear Leader’s love of baseball that provides the setting for the soft-soap sponge-bath she hands George Bush every week.

Billmon: Fuel Shortage

For the financial markets, last week had a ugly feel to it, both on Wall Street and globally. It wasn't a crash, certainly, but also more than just a garden-variety correction. It felt like the preliminary stages of a sea change in sentiment -- the kind that either accompanies the popping of a bubble, or causes it, depending on your economic point of view.

The Dow dropped 420 fast points in the final three days of the week, interrupted by nothing that could be called a significant countertrend rally. This despite positive earnings surprises from both GE and Citigroup.

When the market ignores good news from those two, it's essentially a storm flag for the entire economy, since between them you have a pretty good proxy for GDP, particularly now that shuffling electrons with dollar signs attached to them has become such a big part of the U.S. economy. While first quarter earnings may yet be OK, the market is looking further ahead -- and seeing a sharp slowdown in both sales and profits.

Billmon: Playing for Keeps

John McCain, (R-Arizona) and former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Viagra)*** have both touched on something that's especially worrisome -- freaking scary might be the better term -- about the modern GOP and its approach to governing.

The Senate is ''not always going to be Republican,'' former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, the 1996 GOP presidential candidate, is reminding fellow Republicans. ''Think down the road,'' he advises . . .

''Someday there will be a liberal Democrat president and a liberal Democrat Congress,'' Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told MSNBC last week. ''Do we want a bunch of liberal judges approved by the Senate of the United States with 51 votes if Democrats are in the majority?''

***That is as cold as it gets--Dictynna.

Billmon Does History: War Party

You probably know who this is:

new falwell.jpg

But what about this guy:

paisley.jpg

And him?

new king james.jpg

If you'd like to know how three stupid white men -- two living, one dead -- help explain the violent course of the American history, the outcome of the 2000 presidential election, and the invasion of Iraq, then read on.

White male #1 is Jerry Falwell, political preacher par excellence, founder of the Moral Majority, and more recently peddler of some truly loopy conspiracy theories involving the 42nd president of the United States.

White male #2 is Falwell's U.K. counterpart: Ian Paisley, Presbyterian minister, leader of one of the more extreme Protestant parties in Northern Ireland, and a ferocious opponent of the devil, the IRA and the Good Friday peace accords -- not necessarily in that order.

And white male #3 (deceased) is, or was, King James I, defender of the faith, protector of the realm, first of the Stuart line to sit on the throne of England. More than any other single person, he's responsible for creating the tribe -- and the cultural tradition -- that produced Falwell and Paisley, as well as Andrew Jackson, the Alamo, George Wallace, the NRA, Ross Perot, the Oklahoma City bombing and the current shape of the U.S. electoral map.

Cancers from US nuclear testing set to double: study

FALLOUT: Hundreds in the Marshall Islands have developed cancer as a result of US bomb tests, and many more are likely to contract the disease

AFP , MAJURO, MARSHALL ISLANDS
Monday, Apr 18, 2005,Page 7

Advertising Advertising
A US study has found that the number of cancers caused by hydrogen bomb testing in the Marshall Islands is set to double, more than half a century after the tests were conducted in the tiny Pacific nation.

The study by the US government's National Cancer Institute (NCI) estimated 530 cancers had already been caused by the tests, particularly the explosion of a 15 megaton hydrogen bomb code-named Bravo on March 1, 1954.

LED Evolution Could Replace Light Bulbs

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: April 17, 2005

Filed at 5:26 p.m. ET

NEW YORK (AP) -- If a time traveler from a hundred years ago were to visit a home today, much of the technology would be completely alien. The television, cordless phone and computer would probably leave him flabbergasted. But on seeing a light bulb, he might say, ''Ah! Here's something I recognize. A few of those grace my home, too.''

If the visitor comes back in 15 years, the fruit of Thomas Edison's bright idea may be gone. The likely replacement: light-emitting diodes, or LEDs.

A Whiff of Stagflation (Paul Krugman column)

By PAUL KRUGMAN

In the 1970's soaring prices of oil and other commodities led to stagflation - a combination of high inflation and high unemployment, which left no good policy options. If the Fed cut interest rates to create jobs, it risked causing an inflationary spiral; if it raised interest rates to bring inflation down, it would further increase unemployment.

Can it happen again?

Last week fears of a return to stagflation sent stock prices to a five-month low. What few seem to have noticed, however, is that a mild form of stagflation - rising inflation in an economy still well short of full employment - has already arrived.

True, measured unemployment isn't bad by historical standards, and inflation is in the low single digits. But inflation is creeping up, and it's doing so despite a labor market that is in worse shape than the official unemployment rate suggests.

More are believed involved in writing Schiavo talking points memo

The decision by Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL) not to overhaul his staff in the wake of the now-infamous Terri Schiavo talking points—which urged Republicans to take advantage of the tragedy for political gain—has raised ire among the senator's own supporters, RAW STORY has learned.

In a piece set to splash Monday, Roll Call's Mary Ann Akers will reveal that at least two other staffers were believed to have helped draft the talking points the senator passed out on the Senate floor.

GOP Leaders' Pledge Loyalty to the Religious Right's Agenda

Secret and Ties

GOP Leaders' Pledge Loyalty to the Religious Right's Agenda at Secret Meetings with the Family Research Council and Council for National Policy

by Bill Berkowitz
for MediaTransparency.org

POSTED ARRIL 17, 2005--

In the mid-1990s, during a speech to the Montana Christian Coalition, Ralph Reed, then the national Christian Coalition's executive director and more recently a top advisor to President Bush, advised the group to heed the words of the ancient Chinese military philosopher Sun Tzu. "The first strategy and in many ways the most important strategy for evangelicals is secrecy," Reed suggested. "Sun Tzu says that's what you have to do to be effective at war and that's essentially what we're involved in, we're involved in a war. It's not a war fought with bullets, it's a war fought with ballots."

The neoconservative movement's 180-degree turn

By Michael Kinsley

April 17, 2005

THE TERM "neoconservative" started out as an insult, and is still used that way. When people say that the selection of Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank marks the triumph of neocons in Bush administration foreign policy, they are generally not indicating pleasure. Cynics say they are indicating anti-Semitism: A neocon is a Jewish intellectual you disagree with. That's way too harsh. But what does neoconservative mean?

Rich Lowry, a conservative of the non-neo variety writing in the current issue of The National Interest, defines a neocon as someone with a "messianic vision" of using American power to spread democracy, an indifference to the crucial distinction between what would be nice and what is essential to national security, and excessive optimism that we can arrange things according to our own values in strange and far-away lands.

Wow. It was not always thus.

Yemen Warns of Secret Extremist Schools

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: April 16, 2005

Filed at 8:40 p.m. ET

SAN`A, Yemen (AP) -- Underground religious schools that promote extremist forms of Islam are drawing more than 300,000 young students across Yemen, the country's prime minister said Saturday.

Prime Minister Abdul-Kader Bajammal warned that the religious education promoting the ideas of Wahhabism, a strict form of Islam, ''will bring a disaster to Yemen and this generation.'' He promised to eliminate the underground schools, which he estimated numbered about 4,000 and drew about 330,000 students.

Get Tom DeLay to the Church on Time (Frank Rich column)

By FRANK RICH

Published: April 17, 2005

A scandal is like any other melodrama: It can't be a crowd pleaser unless the audience can follow the plot. That's why Monica Lewinsky trumped Whitewater, and that's why of all the story lines ensnaring Tom DeLay, the one with legs is the one with the craps tables. It's not just easy to follow, but it also has a combustive cultural element that makes it as representative of its political era as Monicagate was of the Clinton years. As the lies and subterfuge of the go-go 1990's coalesced around sex, so the scandal of our new "moral values" decade comes cloaked in religion. The hair shirt is the new thong.

Agent Provocateur: Interview with Melissa Boyle Mahle

Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON

Published: April 17, 2005

As a former C.I.A. spy stationed in the Middle East, are you surprised by the new Robb-Silberman report faulting the C.I.A. for being ''dead wrong'' about weapons in Iraq?

No. We're talking about an organization in desperate need of visionary reform.

Why is the C.I.A. so ineffectual?

The problem is structural. We don't talk to one another. There's too much possessiveness. It's a me-against-you mentality in terms of information. The C.I.A. needs an out-of-the-box thinker and leader.

Whom would you suggest?

We need Bill Gates.

What do you think of Porter Goss, the new head of the C.I.A.?

He has not been able to articulate a vision or capture the imagination of the agency. He thinks he can rule by memo from the seventh floor of Langley.

I’m Sick And Tired of These Jackasses…

Joshua Holland (7:24PM) link

There must be a shortage of conservative commentators who can put together a cogent and honest argument. Today the Los Angeles Times--that liberal rag--debuted David Gelernter, their new columnist, and boy is he full of it.

Gelernter--a Yale computer science professor and a Weekly Standard contributor, takes every hawkish smear and distortion against liberals and puts it all in a bucket, never skimping on the paté, in this doozy of a column:

Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith of the U.S. Army was the first Iraq war soldier to win the Congressional Medal of Honor -- posthumously. On April 4, 2003, a group of American soldiers building a POW compound were slammed by a surprise attack. Smith organized a defense, then moved under fierce fire to an unprotected machine gun. He kept firing as the wounded were brought to safety and the attack driven off. Meanwhile he was hit, fatally.

OK, a heroic military ideal. It's a good start--whips us right into a patriotic lather. But I bet those damn liberals are somehow going to disparage his legacy. You watch--that's what they do.

Is Reverend Moon dealing with North Korea?

By Rory O'Connor

NEW YORK, April 15, 2005 -- What role is Reverend Sun Myung Moon - major media mogul and motivating force behind the Washington Times daily newspaper, the United Press International news service, and many other journalistic properties - playing in the ongoing nuclear negotiations between North Korea's leaders and the Bush Administration?

Although the evidence is circumstantial, it appears as if Moon - a self-styled "Messiah" who has called America "Satan's Harvest," and who has given speeches titled "The Last Days are Coming to America" - may also be functioning as a middleman between George W. Bush and Korean dictator and junior Axis of Evil member Kim Jong Il.

Moon's idiosyncratic politics and theology have long identified six countries - the United States, Russia, China, Japan, and North and South Korea - at the center of an anticipated apocalyptic confrontation, a final Armageddon-like battle, in which Moon and his Unification Church would play a key role.

In Real Estate Fever, More Signs of Sickness

By Daniela Deane

Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 17, 2005; Page A01

Matt Marshman watched it happen in one Germantown neighborhood in February. Each house that went up for sale cost about $15,000 more than the last. And the houses were all very much alike.

"We could see the prices going up every day," said Marshman, who with his wife Tracy Hernandez managed to buy the third house that they wanted there. The four-bedroom Colonial was listed for $30,000 more than other sellers had asked for a similar house just three weeks earlier. The couple eventually won a bidding war by offering $26,000 more than the asking price.

The Unregulated Offensive

Imagine turning back the clock on the Constitution to 1937, when laws to protect workers and wilderness were considered unconstitutional. Now read a story about Republican radicals who want to do just that. But not if you're planning to sleep well. 4/17--Buzzflash

The Unregulated Offensive

By JEFFREY ROSEN

Published: April 17, 2005

I. Justice Thomas's Other Controversy

If you think back to Clarence Thomas's Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1991, what most likely comes to mind are the explosive allegations of sexual harassment made by the law professor Anita Hill. Years from now, however, when observers of the court look back on the hearings, they may well focus on a clash that preceded Hill's accusations -- an acrimonious exchange that few remember today.

Early in the hearings, Joseph Biden, the Delaware Democrat who was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, voiced a concern about Thomas's judicial philosophy. In particular, he singled out a speech that Thomas gave in 1987 in which he expressed an affinity for the ideas of legal scholars like Richard A. Epstein. A law professor at the University of Chicago, Epstein was notorious in legal circles for his thesis that many of the laws underpinning the modern welfare state are unconstitutional. Thomas tried to assure Biden that he was interested in ideas like Epstein's only as a matter of ''political theory'' and that he would not actually implement them as a Supreme Court justice. Biden, apparently unpersuaded, picked up a copy of Epstein's 1985 book, ''Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain,'' and theatrically waved it in the air. Anyone who embraced the book's extreme thesis, he seemed to be suggesting, was unfit to sit on the court.

Right Wing Think Tank's Ideas Shifted As Malaysia Ties Grew

By Thomas B. Edsall

Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 17, 2005; Page A01

For years, the Heritage Foundation sharply criticized the autocratic rule of former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, denouncing his anti-Semitism, his jailing of political opponents and his "anti-free market currency controls."

[...}

Heritage's new, pro-Malaysian outlook emerged at the same time a Hong Kong consulting firm co-founded by Edwin J. Feulner, Heritage's president, began representing Malaysian business interests. The for-profit firm, called Belle Haven Consultants, retains Feulner's wife, Linda Feulner, as a "senior adviser." And Belle Haven's chief operating officer, Ken Sheffer, is the former head of Heritage's Asia office and is still on Heritage's payroll as a $75,000-a-year consultant.

Everything you know (about the Stock Market) is wrong

By John Steinberg | RAW STORY COLUMNIST

By all rights columnists should read far more than they write. Unfortunately, time spent reading is time not spent writing, and my editor has yet to tell me I should write less and read more. Most of my reading material these days is electron-based, but I do digest an actual physical book now and again. And because I have a column to fill, books lead to book reports.

My reading list tends to wander all over the map. I am a sucker for “everything you know is wrong” books – books that challenge assumptions that are so ubiquitous that you didn’t even know you were making them. And boyoboy do I have one of those to share with the class.

My most recent conquest was Benoit Mandelbrot’s The (Mis)Behavior of Financial Markets (Richard Hudson gets a co-author credit). I tend to avoid books on finance, as I get headaches from the fumes given off when watching paint dry, but this one was different.

Mandelbrot is of course the pioneer of the concept of fractals, or the theory of roughness. A “fractal is a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be subdivided in parts, each of which is (at least approximately) a reduced-size copy of the whole. Fractals are generally self-similar and independent of scale.” That sounds rather imposing, but Mandelbrot manages to give us a pretty good Complete Idiot’s Guide to the concept that underlies such disparate applications as chaos theory and computer animation. The body of the text is formula-free and quite accessible to the mathematically challenged.

Despite the accessibility of the text, Mandelbrot has little trouble making a deeply troubling point – that the fundamental assumptions underlying the workings of every aspect of our financial markets are simply wrong.