Meet the Fundies

Here are a few of the Texans who are bringing Christian Fundamentalism into state politics

by Steve Satterwhite

Every soul who testified at the Texas Senate State Affairs Committee hearing on May 19 on the topic of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage and civil unions had more to say than they could cram into the three minutes made available to each speaker. There were so many people who wanted to testify that the hearing was held in a packed Senate Chamber instead of a committee room. For upwards of 10 hours, they took their turns, the on-deck speaker sitting beside the one who was already testifying.

BWC tried to hide hedge fund losses, ousted exec alleges

By JOSHUA BOAK
BLADE STAFF WRITER

COLUMBUS - Executives at the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation deleted correspondence, misled auditors, and undermined the state agency's investment division to cover up a $215 million loss in a Bermuda hedge fund, said Jim McLean, the bureau's recently fired chief investment officer.

Claiming that he was sacked because he campaigned within the bureau to publicly disclose the losses, Mr. McLean filed an appeal with the state's Personnel Board of Review on Sept. 23 to regain his job.

"I simply want to clear my reputation," Mr. McLean said in an interview. "I feel like I tried to raise this issue, tried to raise the alarm and, because of that, I was placed on administrative leave and subsequently fired."

Webmaster for site with Iraqi corpse pics accused of obscenity

By TRAVIS REED
Associated Press Writer

A man who runs a pornographic Web site that includes pictures of Iraqi war dead has been arrested on sexual obscenity charges.

Chris Wilson, a 27-year-old former policeman from Lakeland, was taken into custody Friday night on one felony and 300 misdemeanor indecency counts unrelated to the grisly pictures from Iraq. The charges come a week after his site made national news and launched a Pentagon investigation into how war zone photos of charred and dismembered bodies described as victims of U.S. attacks could have surfaced.

Polk County sheriff's officials said he was charged because the Web site also features sexually explicit pictures and videos that users send of women who are supposedly their wives and girlfriends - including those who appear to be active-duty soldiers.

Sheriff's officials insist the charges are unrelated to the Iraq pictures, but Wilson's lawyer, Lawrence Walters, disagreed.

MI5 unmasks covert arms programmes

Document names 300 organisations seeking nuclear and WMD technology

Ian Cobain and Ewen MacAskill
Saturday October 8, 2005
The Guardian

The determination of countries across the Middle East and Asia to develop nuclear arsenals and other weapons of mass destruction is laid bare by a secret British intelligence document which has been seen by the Guardian.

More than 360 private companies, university departments and government organisations in eight countries, including the Pakistan high commission in London, are identified as having procured goods or technology for use in weapons programmes.

Molly Ivins: Flim-Flam and Hoo-Hah

Everybody and his dog in the political commentating trade now agrees the Bush administration is experiencing hard times -- the going is getting tough, and Bush is getting testy.

Sometimes it helps to draw back from what's going on, to see if any patterns emerge from the chaos of daily events. In the news biz, attempts to see the Big Picture are known as thumbsuckers and regarded with appropriate contempt.

On the famous other hand, it's also sometimes the only way to see the much bigger stories that seep and creep all around us without anyone ever calling a press conference, or issuing talking points, or having gong-show debate over them.

Everybody and his dog in the political commentating trade now agrees the Bush administration is experiencing hard times -- the going is getting tough, and Bush is getting testy. Bush always gets testy under stress. This is not news.

Digby: Drive By

In case anyone's wondering what is the real reason that Porter Goss is refusing to make public the CIA IG report, here's a little clue:

George Tenet is not going to let himself become the fall guy for the September 11 intelligence failures, according to a former intelligence officer and a source friendly to Mr. Tenet.

Digby: The Enigma

Remember, there is one guy who knows for sure who leaked what and would have very likely been in on any subsequent cover-up --- The King of the Undead, Count Novakula.

The Daily Howler - 10-07-05

PIERRE RECITES! Will you still object to the corps when they start pimping nonsense you like? // link // print // previous // next //

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2005

ELITISM U: Some e-mailers were inclined to believe that elitism is driving opposition to Miers (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 10/6/05). It’s always pleasing to think the worst of the other tribe—in this case, of conservative pundits—but the claim is hard to credit. Conservatives have championed Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown, for example, and neither woman has an “elite” or Ivy educational background; Owen went to Baylor and Baylor Law School, Brown went to Sacramento State and UCLA Law. Among other women proposed for the job, Edith Brown Clement went to Alabama and Tulane Law, Edith Jones went to Cornell and Texas Law. When the White House brought the charge of sexism/elitism, it was sliming its own with a weak, stupid claim, and Brit Hume took the prize for toady conduct when he rushed to pimp it on Wednesday evening.

Juan Cole - 10/07/05

Arguing with Bush and the GWOT

Bush articulated his War on Terror yet again on Thursday. But I think the American public has heard all this over and over again and it is increasingly just not convinced.

It is time for another installment of the ever-popular "Arguing with Bush" series.

Bush, predictably, began with September 11:

"Recently our country observed the fourth anniversary of a great evil, and looked back on a great turning point in our history. We still remember a proud city covered in smoke and ashes, a fire across the Potomac, and passengers who spent their final moments on Earth fighting the enemy. We still remember the men who rejoiced in every death, and Americans in uniform rising to duty. And we remember the calling that came to us on that day, and continues to this hour: We will confront this mortal danger to all humanity. We will not tire, or rest, until the war on terror is won."

21 Killed around Baghdad
Jaafari denies Allegations against Iran

Guerrilla violence killed 21 persons, including a US soldier, around Baghdad on Thursday.

Reuters reports the following violence outside Baghdad:
' KIRKUK - Gunmen shot dead five Oil Ministry security guards and wounded another three as they were driving to the northern city of Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad. Lieutenant Jawaad Abdullah said they were shot in the town of Uthaim, south of Kirkuk.

MOSUL - Gunmen killed Salem Ayoub Sillo, a local prison chief, and his driver in the northern Noor district of Mosul, a police source said.

Guest Editorial: Arato on Iraqi Constitution

If I Were an Iraqi…….

Andrew Arato, New School University

' Had I been A French citizen during the referendum on the European Constitutional Treaty in May I would have voted Yes. I admit, the making of that Constitution through the European Convention and the subsequent Inter Governmental Conference had serious democratic procedural deficits.

Billmon: I Spy

The New Pravda adds to the speculation that Patrick Fitzgerald may soon put Karl Rove and/or Scooter Libby and/or their "high-level unindicted co-conspirators" in the same category as the AIPAC 3 -- i.e. espionage agents:

Recently lawyers said that they believed the prosecutor may be applying new legal theories to bring charges in the case.

One new approach appears to involve the possible use of Chapter 37 of the federal espionage and censorship law, which makes it a crime for anyone who "willfully communicates, delivers, transfers or causes to be communicated" to someone "not entitled to receive it" classified information relating the national defense matters.

Billmon: Back to the Future

If this were 1994, instead of 2005, Newt Gringrich would be chortling with delight over the latest CBS poll, which shows the blue funk the voters have been since Katrina is getting worse, not better:

The public's concerns affect their view of the state of the country. 69 percent of Americans say things in the U.S. are pretty seriously off on the wrong track — the highest number since CBS News started asking the question in 1983. Today, just 26 percent say things are going in the right direction. (emphasis added)

Rove Assured Bush He Was Not Leaker

By Murray Waas, Washington-based journalist, for National Journal

© National Journal Group Inc.
Friday, Oct. 7, 2005

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove personally assured President Bush in the early fall of 2003 that he had not disclosed to anyone in the press that Valerie Plame, the wife of an administration critic, was a CIA employee, according to legal sources with firsthand knowledge of the accounts that both Rove and Bush independently provided to federal prosecutors.

Cursor's Media Patrol - 10/07/05

Left I on the News notes that "Bush gave us 16 more words," and Juan Cole writes that "Bush's attempt to conflate the regimes he doesn't like with al-Qaeda makes nonsense of his whole vision," and "as for the rest of your speech, it is all made up as you go along, just like your whole administration."

Craig Crawford writes that "a news media outlet was persuaded to join a conspiracy of silence until the government was ready to announce the news ... which happened to coincide with White House strategy for Bush's speech and also just so happened to serve as a neat distraction from Rove's latest bad news."

'The Other Hurricane' Mike Davis writes that after Katrina, "walking among the ruins of the Lower Ninth Ward, I found myself worrying more about [an] EOS article than the disaster surrounding me."

Salon reports that President Bush's reelection may have been made possible by a Toledo Blade reporter with close ties to the Republican Party, who is said to have sat on the story of potential campaign violations by the central figure in "Coingate," Tom Noe.

Mary Mapes Hits Bloggers and MSM in Upcoming Book

By E&P Staff
Published: October 07, 2005 2:15 PM ET

NEW YORK Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post might have a bigger scoop than he thought. In his online column this morning, as a final, almost throwaway item, he quoted from the first chapter of the forthcoming book by former CBS producer Mary Mapes that covers, among other things, her controversial experience with the Dan Rather/Bush/National Guard “60 Minutes” segment.

Among the excerpts: "I was incredulous that the mainstream press -- a group I'd been a part of for nearly twenty-five years and thought I knew -- was falling for the blogs' critiques. I was shocked at the ferocity of the attack. I was terrified at CBS's lack of preparedness in defending us. I was furious at the unrelenting attacks on Dan. And I was helpless to do anything about any of it."

Reporter turns over notes in CIA leak case

By Adam Entous 12 minutes ago

A New York Times reporter has given investigators notes from a conversation she had with a top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney weeks earlier than was previously known, suggesting White House involvement started well before the outing of a CIA operative, legal sources said.

Times reporter Judith Miller discovered the notes -- about a June 2003 conversation she had with Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby -- after her testimony before the grand jury last week, the sources said on Friday. She turned the notes over to federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and is expected to meet him again next Tuesday, the sources said.

Miller's notes could help Fitzgerald establish that Libby had started talking to reporters about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her diplomat husband, Joseph Wilson, weeks before Wilson publicly criticized the administration's Iraq policy in a Times opinion piece, the sources said.

Bedlam erupts in Congress over oil refinery vote; 'Shame, shame'

RAW STORY

A controversial bill that offered abandoned U.S. military bases to private industry for the construction of oil refineries and granted federal insurance to refiners ensnared in litigation passed by a razor-thin margin in the House Friday afternoon 212-210 as Democrats chanted "shame, shame, shame."

The vote, which was supposed to take five minutes, lasted 45. About a dozen Republicans reversed their votes as the Republican leadership circled the chamber pressuring members of their party to ensure the bill's passage.

Beaten Saudi TV presenter flees

Ed Vulliamy
Friday October 7, 2005
The Guardian

Rania al-Baz, a Saudi Arabian television presenter who shocked her country by publishing photographs of herself after being beaten by her husband, has left for France, apparently never to return.

"I won't go back," Ms Baz said in Paris yesterday, clearly exhausted. "At the moment I don't have anywhere to live. I will try to find work here or in London." Asked the reason for her departure, she would only say: "I was not safe any more in Saudi Arabia. Now, I must rest, remain quiet for a few days, and think about my children, who are still back in Jeddah."

Refinery Construction Bill Is Drawing Broad Criticism

By FELICITY BARRINGER
Published: October 7, 2005

WASHINGTON, Oct. 6 - A Texas congressman's bill to give the oil industry incentives to increase refinery capacity would gut air-quality protections that currently govern the refining and power industries, Democrats, environmental groups and state and local regulators are charging.

The legislation's sponsor, Representative Joe L. Barton, the Republican chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said that no new domestic refineries had been completed in the past three decades.

Grand Theories, Ignored Realities

By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Published: October 7, 2005

In his authoritative and tough-minded new book, "The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq," the New Yorker writer George Packer reminds us that the decision of the Bush administration to go to war against Iraq and its increasingly embattled handling of the occupation were both predicated upon large, abstract ideas about the role of America in the post-cold war world - most notably, a belief in pre-emptive and unilateral action, the viability of exporting democracy abroad, the urge to streamline the military and the dream of remaking the Middle East.

Card-check strategy on NLRB radar

Thursday, October 06, 2005
Alison Grant
Plain Dealer Reporter

The chairman of the National Labor Relations Board says his prime objective is reviewing Ohio and Michigan cases on card-check, labor's top strategy in recent years for adding members.

The NLRB agreed to hear the volatile issue in June 2004, but has not acted on it because the board is missing several members.

NLRB Chairman Robert Battista, appearing at a law seminar Wednesday in Cleveland, said card-check will be first on his agenda when President Bush nominates people to fill the vacancies. He predicted that will happen in late October or early November, though he said he has gotten no word on timing from the White House. The Senate has to approve the nominees.

Outside Inquiry Sought on Prosecutor's Demotion

By PHILIP SHENON
Published: October 7, 2005

WASHINGTON, Oct. 6 - The ranking Democrats on three House committees called Thursday for an outside investigator to determine why a prosecutor in Guam was demoted in 2002 after opening a criminal investigation of Jack Abramoff, the Washington lobbyist now at the center of a federal corruption investigation.

The Democrats said in a letter to the Justice Department that an outside investigator was needed to determine if the prosecutor, Frederick A. Black, the acting United States attorney on Guam, was demoted as a result of "political manipulation of Justice Department officials" by Mr. Abramoff, a major Republican fund-raiser.

US set to reconsider agricultural subsidies

My guess is they will try to put this off to lessen impact to elections--Dictynna.

By Jeremy Grant in Washington and Alan Beattie in London
Published: October 6 2005 22:55 | Last updated: October 6 2005 22:55

The US administration on Thursday said the country needed to “think beyond the boundaries of current farm policy” in a sign that it was prepared to reconsider decades of reliance on direct agricultural subsidies for its farmers.

The comments, made by US agriculture secretary Mike Johanns, are the first clear sign that the US is preparing to make a case to lawmakers and the country’s powerful farm lobby that the US may need to remove trade-distorting subsidies that make the US vulnerable to legal challenge in the World Trade Organisation.

Bill Moyers: Caring for Creation

October 07, 2005

Bill Moyers is a broadcast journalist and former host the PBS program NOW With Bill Moyers. This piece is adapted from the keynote address Moyers presented to the annual convention of the Society of Environmental Journalists in Austin, Texas, on October 1, 2005.

I don’t fit neatly into the job description of an environmental journalist, although I have kept returning to the beat ever since my first documentary on the subject some 30 years ago. That was a story about how the new Republican governor of Oregon, Tom McCall, had set out to prove that the economy and the environment could share the center lane on the highway to the future.

Those were optimistic years for the emerging environmental movement. Rachel Carlson had rattled the cage with Silent Spring, and on the first Earth Day in 1970, 20 million Americans rose from the grassroots to speak for the planet. Even Richard Nixon couldn’t say no to so powerful a subpoena by public opinion, and he put his signature to some far-reaching measures for environmental protection.

Where Charter Is Least Of Worries

"Unveiling of constitution in Samawah reveals just how unsophisticated Iraq's democracy is, and how loyal the majority is to the Shiite tribal, religious and political leaders steering the country."

Local Issues Top List In Town in S. Iraq

By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, October 7, 2005; Page A12

SAMAWAH, Iraq -- The first copies of the draft constitution that would remake Iraq arrived in this sandy provincial capital in U.S. military helicopters, offloaded with a phalanx of neatly pressed and jacketed Iraqi officials keen to explain the charter.

U.S., Australian and British soldiers carted about half a dozen boxes filled with copies of the charter into the dilapidated, sparely furnished government offices for tribal, religious and political leaders of Muthanna province to peruse late Wednesday afternoon.

Rove to Testify Again in Grand Jury's CIA Leak Probe

Prosecutor's Warning That Bush Adviser Could Be Indicted Suggests New Information May Have Emerged

By Carol D. Leonnig and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, October 7, 2005; Page A04

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove will again testify to a grand jury that is in the final stages of investigating whether senior Bush administration officials illegally leaked the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame to the media more than two years ago, a source familiar with the arrangement said yesterday.

Report Warns Democrats Not to Tilt Too Far Left

By Thomas B. Edsall
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 7, 2005; Page A07

The liberals' hope that Democrats can win back the presidency by drawing sharp ideological contrasts and energizing the partisan base is a fantasy that could cripple the party's efforts to return to power, according to a new study by two prominent Democratic analysts.

In the latest shot in a long-running war over the party's direction -- an argument turned more passionate after Democrat John F. Kerry's loss to President Bush last year -- two intellectuals who have been aligned with former president Bill Clinton warn that the only way back to victory is down the center.

Political Capital Running on Low

By Terry M. Neal

Friday, October 7, 2005; 8:51 AM

The Harriet Miers nomination marks one of those rare instances in Washington where the president sees his allies on the right becoming critics while critics on the left have gone mostly silent. President Bush, meanwhile, is left somewhere in the middle trying to use whatever political capital he has left to avoid the embarrassment of rejection.

Right Sees Miers as Threat to a Dream

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 7, 2005; Page A01

If there has been a unifying cause in American conservatism over the past three decades, it has been a passionate desire to change the Supreme Court. When there were arguments over tax cuts and deficits, when libertarians clashed with religious conservatives, when disputes over foreign policy erupted, reshaping the judiciary bound the movement together.

O'Reilly compared Irish immigration to enslavement of African-Americans

On the October 4 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly equated trans-Atlantic Irish immigration in the 19^th century to the historical enslavement of African-Americans and their forced removal from Africa. The Irish coming to the United States "had to leave the country, just as Africans had to leave -- African-Americans had to leave Africa and come over on a boat and try to make in the New World with nothing," O'Reilly said.

O'Reilly was commenting on a caller's response to his assertion that the prison population is "disproportionately African-American." The caller said that the "reason for that" is "slavery," adding, "If you take someone's language, someone's history, and someone's culture, and then you just release them out into the world, you think they're going to be successful as a people?"

Waltons’ and Wal-Mart’s Charitable Giving Acts as Façade for Conservative Political Agenda & Personal Financial Gain

NCRP report profiles Walton family and Wal-Mart corporate philanthropy that furthers personal and corporate bottom lines

WASHINGTON, D.C.—A new NCRP report reveals more than just charitable intentions in Wal-Mart’s seemingly generous, but systematically self-interested philanthropy. The Waltons and Wal-Mart: Self-Interested Philanthropy chronicles the philanthropic and political activities of the Walton family through their family foundation and through their Wal-Mart corporate empire, painting a picture of a family and corporation with increasing financial and political prowess.

“The Waltons’ and Wal-Mart’s philanthropy deserves more scrutiny than praise. Giving by the family and the corporate foundation exemplifies the family’s true priorities and agendas,” said Jeff Krehely, deputy director of NCRP. “Not only are they deflecting public scrutiny with their shameless public relations campaigns, they are doing so while simultaneously using quasi-public dollars to advance an agenda of personal enrichment cloaked in philanthropy. We encourage the media, nonprofit advocates, and policy makers to step up oversight efforts of corporate philanthropy, as these vast concentrations of wealth have the potential to change the policy landscape, and not necessarily in the best interests of the public,” said Krehely.

The Bradblog: 'Non-Partisan' 'Voting Rights' Group Founder Works for White House!

ACVR's Jim Dyke Moonlights to Push Bush Supreme Court Nominee

'Honesty and Integrity' in the Bush-Era Now at it's Bushiest Level of All Time!

{Blogged by Brad on the road...} Jim Dyke, the liar who helped found the "non-partisan" American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR), is boning up on his "non-partisan" creds of late...

{Blogged by Brad on the road...}

Jim Dyke, the liar who helped found the "non-partisan" American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR), is boning up on his "non-partisan" creds of late by working for the White House to help them push Harriet Miers through the nomination process.

DeLay Meeting, RNC Actions Coincided

Financial Transactions Began on Day Texan Met With Fundraiser

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 7, 2005; A05

Former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) met for at least 30 minutes with the top fundraiser of his Texas political action committee on Oct. 2, 2002, the same day that the Republican National Committee in Washington set in motion a series of financial transactions at the heart of the money-laundering and conspiracy case against DeLay.

During the meeting at his Capitol office, DeLay conferred with James W. Ellis, the head of his principal fundraising committee in Washington and his chief fundraiser in Texas. Ellis had earlier given the Republican National Committee a check for $190,000 drawn mostly from corporate contributions. The same day as the meeting, the RNC ordered $190,000 worth of checks sent to seven Republican legislative candidates in Texas.

Say What?

Bush's speech was a sad, demoralizing spectacle.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Thursday, Oct. 6, 2005, at 2:23 PM PT

President Bush's speech this morning, billed as a major statement about Iraq and the war on terror, was a sad spectacle—so ripe with lofty principles, so bereft of ideas on what to do with them. He approached the podium amid growing disapproval of his performance as a war president, ratcheting chaos and violence in Iraq, continuing terrorist attacks worldwide—and pleaded for nothing more than staying the course, with no turns or shifts, for a long, long time to come.

King of Zembla: Deliberate Speed

A couple of days ago we quoted, half in jest, a comment from Hullabaloo suggesting that Judy Miller spent three months in jail as a favor to the White House, to prevent Patrick Fitzgerald from handing down indictments in the Plame case until John G. Roberts could be installed as Chief Justice. (Our eminent colleague Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake endorses the same hypothesis here, and reinforces it with a link to Steve Perry of the Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages here.) After all, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is up on three separate charges with more to come, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is inquiring about the availability of Martha Stewart's old cell, and Messrs. Libby and Rove are surely tired of glancing upward at the sword and waiting for the single horsehair to snap. The President's father, as he left office, slipped the noose that special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh had prepared for him by pardoning anyone who could testify to his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal as he left; Bush the younger may not have the luxury of waiting until the end of his term. Looking at Harriet Miers, and Harriet Miers's anemic C.V., and the right wing's bitter reaction to Harriet Miers's nomination, it is increasingly difficult to avoid the conclusion that Mr. Bush, for reasons best known to himself, means to pack the Court with presidential-jock-sniffers.

What are Ms. Miers's qualifications again? As Mr. Bush keeps explaining, he knows her heart. And that heart, we're betting, is practically brimming over with leniency for Mr. Bush, should he need it.

Echidne: Apocalypse Now?

For the Republican party, that is. A Salon article, well worth sitting through an ad if you don't subscribe, suggests that the Republican party is dancing at the edge of a precipice. Why? Because of all the different fraud scandals that have cropped up at the same time. The writer of the article, Sidney Blumenthal, has a theory about the way the Republicans do politics:

For 30 years, beginning with the Nixon presidency, advanced under Reagan, stalled with the elder Bush, a new political economy struggled to be born. The idea was pure and simple: centralization of power in the hands of the Republican Party would ensure that it never lost it again. Under George W. Bush, this new system reached its apotheosis. It is a radically novel social, political and economic formation that deserves study alongside capitalism and socialism. Neither Adam Smith nor Vladimir Lenin captures its essence, though it has far more elements of Leninist democratic-centralism than Smithian free markets. Some have referred to this model as crony capitalism; others compare the waste, extravagance and greed to the Gilded Age. Call it 21st century Republicanism.

The Daily Howler - 10/06/05

BUT WHO WILL TEST THE TEST-MAKERS! Michael Winerip thrills the soul with a look at one state’s easy test: // link // print // previous // next //

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 6, 2005

BUT WHO WILL TEST THE TEST-MAKERS: Last June, the shills were out in force, pandering to the brilliant Mayor Bloomberg. Test scores had risen among New York City’s fourth-graders, and everyone knew that it just had to be due to the mayor’s brilliant policies. (Bloomberg even said so himself!) Of course, fourth-grade scores had risen all over the state of New York (details below), in districts where Bloomberg had no connection. But so what? People like the Times’ Gail Collins have played this game with urban children for decades. It isn’t worth seeking the truth about their lives and their interests; it’s all about pimping the perfumed and powerful. Here was the laughable, know-nothing way the Times editorialized on the subject:

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL (6/6/05): Skeptics, including Mr. Bloomberg's political opponents, of course rushed to challenge the results, suggesting that the test was too easy or that teachers spent too much time on test preparation. And it is indeed the case that city test scores rise and fall and rise again over time. But the latest results suggest that the schools are making progress—and that Mr. Bloomberg has every right to take a bow.

As noted, since test scores had jumped all over the state, there was every reason to suspect that the tests may have been “too easy.” But Collins scoffed at the tiresome “skeptics”—and rushed to blow smoke at the mayor. (Headline: “Kudos for the Education Mayor.”) But then, mainstream press pseudo-liberals have shilled this way about urban schools for the past forty years. They always say things are getting better—and that their prince gets to take a deep bow. In doing so, they sell out urban kids’ interests, of course. But so what? It makes their perfumed class feel good. And that’s what this is often all about.

Billmon: Karl's Moment of Truth?

Well, I can't make heads or tails out of all the rumors and reports flying around, and I wouldn't know a target letter from a poison pen letter, but Larry O'Donnell has an outstanding won/loss record so far, so let's just go with him:

What this means is Rove's lawyer, Bob Luskin, believes his client is defintely going to be indicted. So, Luskin is sending Rove back into the grand jury to try to get around the prosecutor and sell his innocence directly to the grand jurors. Legal defense work doesn't get more desperate than this. The prosecutor is happy to let Rove go under oath again -- without his lawyer in the room -- and try to wiggle out of the case. The prosecutor has every right to expect that Rove's final under-oath grilling will either add a count or two to the indictment or force Rove to flip and testify against someone else.

Billmon: Feminist in the Woodpile

Well some of the wing nuts have their bowels in an uproar again over the Miers nomination, thanks to, of all people, The Chronicle of Higher Education, which reports that Church Lady pushed for the creation of a lecture series in "women's studies" at the SMU Law School.

Now every good wing nut knows that "women's studies" is just a fancy feminist euphemism for "radical commie lesbian anti-American Satan worshiping" studies, but this is even worse. Just look at some of guest lecturers subsidized by Ms. Miers and her sisters in the SMU Radical Wymyn's Collective:

A feminist icon, Gloria Steinem, delivered the series's first lecture, in 1998 . . . In the following two years, the speakers were Patricia S. Schroeder, the former Democratic congresswoman widely associated with women's causes, and Susan Faludi, the author of Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (1991). Ann W. Richards, the Democrat whom George W. Bush unseated as governor of Texas in 1994, delivered the lecture in 2003.

Susan Faludi? Gloria Steinem??? Oh say it ain't so Harriet, say it ain't so.

Billmon: Party Animal

What comes around for Tom DeLay also goes around, it seems. And everybody gets to wet their beak (or another part of their anatomy) along the way:

Tom DeLay deliberately raised more money than he needed to throw parties at the 2000 presidential convention, then diverted some of the excess to longtime ally Roy Blunt through a series of donations that benefited both men's causes.

When the financial carousel stopped, DeLay's private charity, the consulting firm that employed DeLay's wife and the Missouri campaign of Blunt's son all ended up with money . . .

Great party, huh?

Billmon: Silent Minority

If the Rovians are looking for good news -- or at least, news that isn't disastrously bad -- about the Miers nomination, the latest Gallup poll may have some for them. It shows that, by almost a 2-to-1 margin, self-identified conservatives are proclaiming themselves reasonably satisifed with Shrub's crony crone:

Among respondents who described themselves as conservative, 58 percent said the Miers pick was excellent or good, and 29 percent thought it was only fair or poor.

CNN makes a big deal out of the fact that this is a less favorable response than the right-wing love rapture that greeted John Roberts (77% good or excellent, 13% fair or poor.) But to me that doesn't seem nearly as significant as the fact that all the anguished caterwauling in Right Blogostan (and in George Will's op-ed factory) doesn't seem to represent the mainstream of conservative opinion out in that bizarre constructed reality sometimes known as "meat space."

Billmon: Rush Job

I mentioned yesterday that Limbaugh had jumped ship on the Miers nomination -- which is obviously a big setback for the cause, since the dittoheads are exactly the kind of passive, obedient sheep the RNC high command needs to hear bleating her praises in unison.

But now that he's in the water, Rush can't seem to figure out what to do next -- join up with the sharks or holler for someone to haul him back into the boat.

Cursor's Media Patrol - 10/06/05

"An anguished James Dobson prayed ... for a sign from God," and White House envoys reportedly "got pummeled" when they tried to quell a "conservative uprising" by explaining "what's different about this trust-me moment as opposed to the other ones."

Iraq "may be too far gone to be salvaged," argues Robert Dreyfuss, but "if the United States would get out of Iraq, give the Arab League and the UN a chance to manage things there, and take part in Arab-led talks with the Sunnis, catastrophe might be averted."

'A Ghost in the Media Machine' Following a report that marks "the fourth time the GAO has uncovered the White House's illegal use of taxpayer money to produce 'covert propaganda,'" MediaCitizen calls on "the public to do what our elected officials are unwilling or unable to..."

Pop Goes the Real Estate Bubble

by NICHOLAS VON HOFFMAN

[posted online on October 5, 2005]

The Big One isn't the long-predicted California earthquake or even a hurricane named Katrina. The genuine big one will arrive with a deafening pop, the sound of the real estate bubble bursting. In the past few years there have been plenty of false sightings, but now comes something truly ominous: a 13 percent drop in Manhattan real estate prices in a mere three-month period ending October 1.

As if that were not bad enough, more unsettling news of the same nature is reported in Boston, Washington and San Francisco, the places that have led the national upward zoom in real estate prices for the past several years.

Pat Tillman, Our Hero

by DAVE ZIRIN

[from the October 24, 2005 issue]

"I don't believe it," seethed Ann Coulter.

Her contempt was directed at a September 25 San Francisco Chronicle story reporting that former NFL star and Army Ranger war hero Pat Tillman, who was killed in Afghanistan last year, believed the US war on Iraq was "f***ing illegal" and counted Noam Chomsky among his favorite authors. It must have been quite a moment for Coulter, who upon Tillman's death described him in her inimitably creepy fashion as "an American original--virtuous, pure and masculine like only an American male can be." She tried to discredit the story as San Francisco agitprop, but this approach ran into a slight problem: The article's source was Pat Tillman's mother, Mary.

Mary and the Tillman family are relentlessly pushing for answers to the questions surrounding Pat's death in Afghanistan. They want to know why it took the Pentagon five weeks to tell them he died in a tragic case of friendly fire. They want to know why they were unwitting props at Pat's funeral, weeping while lies were told by eulogizing politicians. Mary is now hoping that a new Pentagon inquiry will bring closure. "There have been so many discrepancies so far that it's hard to know what to believe," she said to the Chronicle. "There are too many murky details."

Domestic Defense

Could proposed new intelligence-gathering powers for the Pentagon lead to spying on U.S. citizens? The question is being asked as the White House considers new roles for the military inside America's borders.

WEB EXCLUSIVE

By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball

Newsweek

Updated: 7:02 p.m. ET Oct. 5, 2005

Oct. 5, 2005 - The Pentagon would be granted new powers to conduct undercover intelligence gathering inside the United States—and then withhold any information about it from the public—under a series of little noticed provisions now winding their way through Congress.

Citing in part the need for “greater latitude” in the war on terror, the Senate Intelligence Committee recently approved broad-ranging legislation that gives the Defense Department a long sought and potentially crucial waiver: it would permit its intelligence agents, such as those working for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), to covertly approach and cultivate “U.S. persons” and even recruit them as informants—without disclosing they are doing so on behalf of the U.S. government. The Senate committee’s action comes as President George W. Bush has talked of expanding military involvement in civil affairs, such as efforts to control pandemic disease outbreaks.

Breaking America's grip on the net

After troubled negotiations in Geneva, the US may be forced to relinquish control of the internet to a coalition of governments

Kieren McCarthy
Thursday October 6, 2005
The Guardian

You would expect an announcement that would forever change the face of the internet to be a grand affair - a big stage, spotlights, media scrums and a charismatic frontman working the crowd.

But unless you knew where he was sitting, all you got was David Hendon's slightly apprehensive voice through a beige plastic earbox. The words were calm, measured and unexciting, but their implications will be felt for generations to come.

Senators Accuse EPA of Minimizing Health Hazards in New Orleans

By John Heilprin Associated Press Writer

Published: Oct 6, 2005

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Bush administration was accused Thursday by senators in both parties of minimizing health hazards from the toxic soup left by Hurricane Katrina, just as they said it did with air pollution in New York from the Sept. 11 attacks.

More than a month after the storm, compounded by Hurricane Rita, Environmental Protection Agency officials said 1 million people lack clean drinking water around New Orleans. Some 70 million tons of hazardous waste remain on the Gulf Coast.

While EPA officials have warned of serious health hazards from bacteria, chemicals and metals in the region's floodwaters and sediment, they haven't taken a position on New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin's aggressive push to reopen the city.

"EPA may not be providing people with the clear information they need," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. "EPA should be clear about the actual risks when people return to the affected areas for more than one day."

Rove Said to Testify in CIA Leak Case

By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press WriterThu Oct 6, 3:25 PM ET

Federal prosecutors have accepted an offer from presidential adviser Karl Rove to give 11th-hour testimony in the case of a CIA officer's leaked identity but have warned they cannot guarantee he won't be indicted, according to people directly familiar with the investigation.

The persons, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because of grand jury secrecy, said Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has not made any decision yet on whether to file criminal charges against the longtime confidant of President Bush or others.

The U.S. attorney's manual requires prosecutors not to bring witnesses before a grand jury if there is a possibility of future criminal charges unless they are notified in advance that their grand jury testimony can be used against them in a later indictment.

Air Force Sued Over Religious Intolerance

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: October 6, 2005

Filed at 11:52 a.m. ET

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -- A New Mexico man sued the Air Force on Thursday, claiming senior officers and cadets at the Air Force Academy illegally imposed Christianity on others at the school.

The suit was filed in federal court by Mikey Weinstein, an academy graduate and outspoken critic of the school's handling of religion.

Over the past decade or more, the suit claims, academy leaders have fostered an environment of religious intolerance at the Colorado school, in violation of the First Amendment.

Dems Fight Efforts to Cut Food Stamps

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: October 6, 2005

Filed at 11:56 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democrats are fighting attempts to make cuts in food stamps and conservation programs at a time when people are coping with hurricanes and drought.

''Right now the difference between life and death for many Americans is the food stamp program,'' said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont. ''We should not, we cannot, cut the very nutritional programs that are literally saving lives.''

Effectiveness of Tax Breaks Is Questioned

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 - Proposals to use tax breaks for rebuilding areas devastated by the recent hurricanes may provide only limited help to people and businesses that suffered actual losses, according to many economists.

The biggest beneficiaries could turn out to be companies from outside the devastated areas that have big federal contracts to carry out cleanup and reconstruction work.

President Bush has proposed a plan to turn much of the Gulf Coast into a giant "opportunity zone" in which businesses would receive special tax write-offs for new equipment and construction.

In Congress, some lawmakers are pushing more ambitious plans for the damaged areas that would eliminate taxes on capital gains and inheritance taxes and give companies a tax credit for each worker in the area they hire.

FEMA to Hold Re-Bid on Katrina Contracts

Thursday October 6, 2005 4:01 PM

AP Photo WCAP102

By LARA JAKES JORDAN

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts for Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts that were handed out with little or no competition will be re-bid to prevent any waste or abuse, FEMA chief R. David Paulison said Thursday.

``I've been a public servant for a long time, and I've never been a fan of no-bid contracts,'' Paulison told a Senate panel investigating the Federal Emergency Management Agency's response to the hurricane. ``Sometimes you have to do them because of the expediency of getting things done. And I can assure that you we are going to look at all of those contracts very carefully.''

Emails may show DeLay role in illegal fundraising case

RAW STORY

A series of memos in the case against ex-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay would seem to indicate that the powerful Republican had firsthand knowledge of the illegal activities engaged in by the political action committee he founded in Texas, RAW STORY has learned.

The memos were circulated last week on Capitol Hill, and posted by bloggers Thursday.

Several of the memos identify DeLay as a leading player in the committee's activities. Perhaps the most damning indicates that DeLay wanted to see a list of attendees for an event paid for by corporate donors that is under investigation.

BBC will report Bush told Palestinian leaders that God

RAW STORY

President George W. Bush allegedly told Palestinian ministers that God had told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq - and create a Palestinian State, the BBC will report in a program slotted to run Oct. 17, RAW STORY can reveal.

The BBC errantly posted a press release link on their website early, revealing the documentary's contents.

In Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs, a major three-part series on BBC TWO (at 9.00pm on Monday Oct. 10, Monday Oct. 17 and Monday Oct. 24 British time), Abu Mazen, Palestinian Prime Minister, and Nabil Shaath, his Foreign Minister, describe their first meeting with President Bush in June 2003 to BBC reporters.

Three Men and a Party

At last, Democrats get a clue.
By Bruce Reed
Updated Thursday, Oct. 6, 2005, at 8:43 AM PT

Thursday, Oct. 6, 2005

Triple Play: If you asked my fellow Democrats in Washington to name the three best things that have happened to their party in the past month, most would say: 1) Tom DeLay's indictment; 2) the conservative crackup over Harriet Miers; and 3) yesterday's indictment of ex-White House aide and Abramoff pal David Safavian, coupled with swirling rumors that much bigger fish will soon be indicted in the Plame case.

Wrong answers! All three highlights from the Republicans' Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week were great fun for my side to watch, but they merely give Democrats an opening. We can't indict our way back to the majority. The jury we have to convince is the American people.

U.S. 'Lacks Moral Authority' In Iraq

by Pamela Hess
UPI Pentagon Correspondent
Baghdad (UPI) Oct 05, 2005

"I don't know if I have the moral authority to send troops into combat anymore," a senior American general recently told United Press International. He knows what his power means -- that on his word hundreds or thousands of young men would step into danger.

"I'm no longer sure I can look (a soldier or a Marine) in the eye and say: 'This is something worth dying for.'"

Clean-Air Advocates Criticize GOP Gas Bill

Measure Set For Passage Friday Would Weaken Pollution Laws, Experts Say

By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 6, 2005; Page A08

A House bill ostensibly aimed at easing the nation's energy crisis would dramatically weaken pollution laws by relaxing environmental standards on both oil refineries and aging power plants, several clean-air experts said.

The GOP's Gasoline for America's Security (GAS) Act -- which is expected to pass the House tomorrow -- would ease permitting rules for oil refineries, instruct the president to designate new refinery sites on at least three retired military bases and relax air pollution controls on thousands of industrial facilities across the country.

High fuel prices to persist says US energy chief

By Edward Alden and Christopher Swann in Washington
Published: October 5 2005 20:16 | Last updated: October 6 2005 00:27

Higher energy costs exacerbated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita could persist for several years, Samuel Bodman, US energy secretary, warned on Wednesday.

Mr Bodman told a meeting of reporters: “Both oil and natural gas availability have been severely impaired and the effects of this will reverberate through the economy of this country for some time. The main thing that US citizens can do is conserve. We simply have to do it.”

He predicted that conservation could make “a major dent” in demand.

US petrol imports last week hit a record 1.4m barrels a day, the Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday.

Blair says possible Iran links to Iraq bombs

Reuters
Thursday, October 6, 2005; 8:01 AM

LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Thursday that evidence pointed to Iran or its Lebanese Hizbollah allies as the source of explosives used in roadside bombs in Iraq, although Britain did not have conclusive proof.

A senior British official first made the accusations in an anonymous briefing on Wednesday, saying London believed Iran and Hizbollah were to blame for armor piercing explosives used to kill British troops in Iraq.

Blair said the accusations were not proven but were worrying. He also said they may have been an attempt by Iran to intimidate Britain over its tough stance in negotiations over Tehran's nuclear program.

Changes Cited in Bird Flu Virus

Deadly Strain Acquiring Mutations Similar to Those in Reconstructed 1918 Virus

By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 6, 2005; Page A03

The strain of avian influenza virus that has led to the deaths of 140 million birds and 60 people in Asia in the past two years appears to be slowly acquiring genetic changes typical of the "Spanish flu" virus that killed 50 million people nearly a century ago, researchers said yesterday.

How far "bird flu" virus has traveled down the evolutionary path to becoming a pandemic virus is unknown. Nor is it certain that the much-feared strain, designated as influenza A/H5N1, will ever acquire all the genetic features necessary for rapid, worldwide spread.

DeLay, Successor Blunt Swapped Donations

By JOHN SOLOMON and SHARON THEIMER
The Associated Press
Thursday, October 6, 2005; 7:48 AM

WASHINGTON -- Tom DeLay deliberately raised more money than he needed to throw parties at the 2000 presidential convention, then diverted some of the excess to longtime ally Roy Blunt through a series of donations that benefited both men's causes.

When the financial carousel stopped, DeLay's private charity, the consulting firm that employed DeLay's wife and the Missouri campaign of Blunt's son all ended up with money, according to campaign documents reviewed by The Associated Press.

Senate Supports Interrogation Limits

90-9 Vote on the Treatment of Detainees Is a Bipartisan Rebuff of the White House

By Charles Babington and Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, October 6, 2005; Page A01

The Senate defied the White House yesterday and voted to set new limits on interrogating detainees in Iraq and elsewhere, underscoring Congress's growing concerns about reports of abuse of suspected terrorists and others in military custody.

Forty-six Republicans joined 43 Democrats and one independent in voting to define and limit interrogation techniques that U.S. troops may use against terrorism suspects, the latest sign that alarm over treatment of prisoners in the Middle East and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is widespread in both parties. The White House had fought to prevent the restrictions, with Vice President Cheney visiting key Republicans in July and a spokesman yesterday repeating President Bush's threat to veto the larger bill that the language is now attached to -- a $440 billion military spending measure.

FEMA Asks Floridians to Repay $30 Million in Aid Given After 2004 Hurricanes

By ABBY GOODNOUGH
Published: October 5, 2005

MIAMI, Oct. 4 - The Federal Emergency Management Agency is asking more than 7,600 Florida households to pay back about $30 million in aid they received after last year's hurricanes, an agency spokeswoman said.

In most cases, the agency wants the money back from storm victims who eventually got insurance settlements, said the spokeswoman, Frances Marine.

Soldier Reports More Abuses to Senator

By ERIC SCHMITT
Published: October 5, 2005

WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 - An Army captain who has reported new allegations of detainee abuse in Iraq met Tuesday with Senator John McCain and staff aides on the House Armed Services Committee and gave them additional accounts of abuse in Iraq that other soldiers had sent him in recent days, Congressional aides said.

The officer, Capt. Ian Fishback, in a brief interview after his half-hour meeting with Mr. McCain declined to describe the new information he gave the senator or, in a separate meeting, to the House aides. But Captain Fishback said that since he and two other former members of the 82nd Airborne Division last month accused soldiers in their battalion in Iraq of routinely beating and abusing prisoners in 2003 and 2004, several other soldiers had contacted him and asked him to relay to lawmakers their own experiences.

Clinton Lends His Expertise and an Ear in Louisiana

By STEPHANIE STROM
Published: October 5, 2005

BATON ROUGE, La., Oct. 4 - He kissed babies, hugged their parents, felt their pain and smiled for cellphone photos. Bill Clinton was back in his element on Tuesday on a tour of Louisiana, and at times even seemed to forget his status as a former president.

"I'll get on that," he assured a man trying to square the abundance of supplies he had seen delivered to the shelter with the paucity of blankets and mouthwash inside.

Administration Urges Court to Strike Down Assisted-Suicide Law

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: October 5, 2005

Filed at 12:24 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Newly installed Chief Justice John Roberts on Wednesday sharply questioned a lawyer arguing for preservation of Oregon's physician-assisted suicide law, noting the federal government's tough regulation of addictive drugs.

The 50-year-old Roberts, hearing his first major oral argument since succeeding William H. Rehnquist at the helm of the court, seemed skeptical of the Oregon law, and the outcome of this case was as unclear after the argument as before.

Some Experts Say It's Time to Evacuate the Coast (for Good)

By CORNELIA DEAN
Published: October 4, 2005

PENSACOLA, Fla. - As the Gulf Coast reels from two catastrophic storms in a month, and the Carolinas and Florida deal with damage and debris from hurricanes this year and last, even some supporters of coastal development are starting to ask a previously unthinkable question: is it time to consider retreat from the coast?

Yes, said Howard Marlowe, president of Marlowe & Company, a lobbying firm that represents counties and local governments, often in seeking support for coastal infrastructure, like roads, sewers and beach replenishment. "I think we need to be asking that and discussing that, and the federal government needs to provide leadership," Mr. Marlowe said.

Anatomy of a peace movement: Military families increasingly

Miriam Raftery

Photo by Leon ThompsonBack in the 1960s, anti-war protesters became archetypes of the countercultural revolution -- hippies and college students clad in love beads, sandals and tie-dyed clothing. The image of actress Jane Fonda standing atop a gun barrel in North Vietnam came to symbolize the era, branding all who opposed the war as communist sympathizers.

Bush Switching Priority From Social Security to Taxes (Update2)

Oct. 5 (Bloomberg) -- The Bush administration is beginning to segue from its failed effort to overhaul Social Security to rewriting the tax code, an issue that is fraught with its own political challenges.

President George W. Bush said yesterday there is a ``diminished appetite'' for changing the way Social Security is funded, the first time he's conceded congressional action is unlikely this year. His comments came four days after the White House directed its tax advisory panel, headed by former Senators Connie Mack and John Breaux, to recommend ways to revamp the tax code by Nov. 1, ending an indefinite delay in its work.

Hurricanes Destroyed 109 Oil Platforms: US Government

Washington (AFP) Oct 04, 2005

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed 109 oil platforms and five drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, but only a small portion of production will be lost for good, the US government said Tuesday.

Rita accounted for most of the damage in a region that ordinarily produces nearly one-third of US crude oil imports, Interior Secretary Gale Norton said in presenting a preliminary assessment report.

The Working Mommy Trap

E.J. Graff
October 05, 2005

E.J. Graff, a Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center resident scholar, most recently collaborated on Evelyn Murphy’s book Getting Even: Why Women Still Don't Get Paid Like Men—And What To Do About It.

You can almost set your watch by it. Every year or two, the elite media declare yet again that feminism is dead, and that most women yearn to stay at home and tend babies. The most recent incarnation of this story came in the September 20 New York Times , which in a front-page feature described young women who attend Yale—and who (gasp!) say they might step out of the job market for a few years while their kids are young. To say the highly anecdotal trend story was full of holes would be to put it mildly; its few “facts” and most of its presuppositions have been blown apart by the blogs.

Harold Meyerson: The Right's Dissed Intellectuals

Wednesday, October 5, 2005; Page A23

You could cut the disappointment with a knife. "This is the moment for which the conservative legal movement has been waiting for two decades," David Frum, the right-wing activist and former Bush speechwriter, wrote on his blog a few moments after the president dashed conservative hopes by nominating Harriet Miers to succeed Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court.

Bypassing all manner of stellar Scalia look-alikes, the president settled on his own in-house lawyer, whose chief virtue seems to be that she's been the least visible lawyer in America this side of Judge Joseph Crater. Miers has authored no legal opinions that can be dissected, no Supreme Court briefs that can be parsed, no law review articles that can be torn apart.

Storms Show A System Out Of Balance

GOP Congress Has Reduced Usual Diet of Agency Oversight

By Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 5, 2005; Page A21

Four hurricanes had hit Florida in 2004, and the evidence was overwhelming that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had totally botched its response. Some of the hardest-hit counties, complained Florida lawmakers, were overlooked, while other counties out of harm's way had received lavish relief -- to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, much of it for damage that could not be documented.

Republican Reps. Katherine Harris and Mark Foley, along with other members of the Florida delegation, asked the two House committees with FEMA jurisdiction to hold hearings on what went wrong. "This, of course, is not just a Florida issue," the lawmakers wrote the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on March 3. "FEMA disaster assistance affects virtually every state."

A New Worry for Insurers

Firms Looking at Whether Climate Change Could Affect Their Bottom Lines

By Dean Starkman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 5, 2005; Page D01

The devastation and cost of Hurricane Katrina provided a new hook for a faction of the insurance industry that is trying to raise public awareness of global warming and push the topic onto the political agenda.

Some of the industry's largest companies have sided with environmental groups in recent years to argue that global warming exists and that man-made causes are adding to the severity and cost of natural catastrophes.

How Rotten Are These Guys?

By Robert Parry
October 5, 2005

The separation of the Bush political machine from organized crime is often like the thin layer of rock between a seemingly ordinary surface and volcanic activity rumbling below. Sometimes, the lava spews forth and the illusion of normalcy is shattered.

In the weeks ahead, a dangerous eruption is again threatening to shake the Bush family’s image of legitimacy, as the pressure from intersecting scandals builds.

So far, the mainstream news media has focused mostly on the white-collar abuses of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay for allegedly laundering corporate donations to help Republicans gain control of the Texas legislature, or on deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove for disclosing the identity of a covert CIA officer to undercut her husband’s criticism of George W. Bush’s case for war in Iraq.

Honoring the Confederacy

In Alabama, a well-known Supreme Court candidate lauds an antebellum slave trader and appears with hate group leaders
By Heidi Beirich and Mark Potok

Tom Parker, Republican candidate for the Supreme Court of Alabama, isn't shy about touting his conservative credentials. He despises "liberal judges" who are "trying to take God out of public life." He is an "ardent opponent" of gay marriage, and "a national leader in the fight against Political Correctness." He underlines his close ties to Christian Right leaders like Phyllis Schlafly and James Dobson.

Most importantly, of course, Parker is running as the protégé of Roy Moore, the Alabama chief justice ejected from his job after defying a federal court order to remove his two-ton Ten Commandments monument from the Supreme Court rotunda.

The Dumbing-Down of the U.S. Army

And some modest proposals for countering the trend.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2005, at 1:41 PM PT

Further evidence that the war in Iraq is wrecking the U.S. Army: Recruiters, having failed to meet their enlistment targets, are now being authorized to pursue high-school dropouts and (not to mince words) stupid people.

This year the Army set a goal of recruiting 80,000 active-duty soldiers, but it wound up with just 73,000—almost 10 percent short. As a result, the Army Times reported this week, the Pentagon has decided to make up the difference by expanding the pool—by letting up to 10 percent of new recruits be young men and women who have neither graduated high school nor earned a General Equivalency Diploma.

Atrios: Foxy

David Schuster reminisces:

At the time I started at Fox, I thought, this is a great news organization to let me be very aggressive with a sitting president of the United States (Bill Clinton)," Shuster said. "I started having issues when others in the organization would take my carefully scripted and nuanced reporting and pull out bits and pieces to support their agenda on their shows.

"With the change of administration in Washington, I wanted to do the same kind of reporting, holding the (Bush) administration accountable, and that was not something that Fox was interested in doing," he said.

Cursor's Media Patrol - 10/04/05

Slate's Bruce Reed argues that "the fair question to ask ... is not how good a lawyer she is, but how good a hack?", and an American Prospect article wonders about 'The Things She Couriered.' Plus: 'The Ponzi Victims Catch On.'

As five more Americans are killed in a new Iraq offensive, a Newsweek poll suggests that President Bush has "found his floor" -- with support for his Iraq policy at 33 percent.

effrey St. Clair investigates 'The Great Green Scare,' wherein "the FBI is acting as a federally-funded paramilitary force for the cancer industry and Extinction, Incorporated," while "on Fox News, blinking eco-terrorist alerts have replaced Tom Ridge's color-coded threat level."

Although authorities "have yet to confirm a single incident of gunfire at helicopters" in New Orleans after Katrina, Knight Ridder reports that "the mere rumor that they had was enough."

The News-Press reports that it and two other Florida papers are suing "to make FEMA open its books to show who got money -- and how much -- after four hurricanes raked Florida in 2004."

David Neiwert: Extremists and the ESA

Monday, October 03, 2005

When the House voted 229-193 to gut the Endangered Species Act this week (as predicted,) it didn't simply represent an anti-environmental movement run amok in the halls of power -- though that visage was plenty visible.

If you scratch very far beneath the surface, you'll also recognize the fine hand of right-wing extremism. Indeed, the House approval for Rep. Richard Pombo's disingenuously titled "Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2005" [PDF file] actually represents a major advancement in the extremist Patriot movement's agenda within the mainstream.

Digby: The Machine Justice

I think it's kind of cute that so many conservatives are expressing such angst at the choice of Harriet Miers this morning. Seems they thought that the Bush administration was about conservative ideology. Funny.

The Bush administration is about setting up the legal and institutional framework for a Republican majority for the next generation. That is Karl Rove's raison d'etre, beyond Junior, beyond conservatism, beyond ideology.

Digby: Lone Star Parallel

It's been done before. Is it something in the bar-b-que sauce?

If confirmed, Miers will have to recuse herself from potentially dozens of cases concerning this administration; but that will not be her biggest problem on the Court. Rather, her most significant challenge will be her ability to do a professional u-turn. Can she take the one quality that means the most to the president who just nominated her--loyalty--and leave it completely behind as her work address moves several blocks east?

Protest is criminalised and the huffers and puffers say nothing

The police abuse terror and harassment laws to penalise dissent while we insist civil liberties are our gift to the world

George Monbiot
Tuesday October 4, 2005
The Guardian

'We are trying to fight 21st-century crime - antisocial behaviour, drug dealing, binge drinking, organised crime - with 19th-century methods, as if we still lived in the time of Dickens." Tony Blair, September 27 2005.

"Down poured the wine like oil on blazing fire. And still the riot went on - the debauchery gained its height - glasses were dashed upon the floor by hands that could not carry them to lips, oaths were shouted out by lips which could scarcely form the words to vent them in; drunken losers cursed and roared; some mounted on the tables, waving bottles above their heads and bidding defiance to the rest; some danced, some sang, some tore the cards and raved. Tumult and frenzy reigned supreme ..." Nicholas Nickleby, by Charles Dickens, 1839.

Brad Debates ANN COULTER on Republican Ethics (or lack thereof)!

Blogged by Brad on 10/1/2005 @ 10:44am PT...

{Blogged by Brad in Portland, OR} Just finished my hour on the Ron Insana Radio Show with Ann Coulter...Well, half hour with Coulter. She left at the bottom of the...

Prior to the show, when Ron asked her off air if she would be able to stay for the full hour, she said "Well, I had it down for 30 minutes, so I'll have to let you know at the bottom of the hour if I can stay."

Conservatives want to ensure their viewpoint heard at colleges; Eye federal funding

RAW STORY

Some Republicans are pushing a measure through the House of Representatives meant to ensure that students hear "dissenting viewpoints" in class and are protected from retaliation because of their politics or religion, the (paid-restricted) Wall Street Journal reports Tuesday. Colleges say the measure isn't needed, but with Congress providing billions of dollars to higher education, they are worried. Excerpts.
#

The measure's chief promoter, Marxist-turned-conservative activist David Horowitz, says an academic bill of rights will protect students from possible political "hectoring" and discrimination by their professors. "We have enough institutions in America that are political. Let's keep [universities] above that fray," he adds.

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Natural Unborn Killers
The bigotry of Bill Bennett's low expectations.
By William Saletan
Posted Monday, Oct. 3, 2005, at 11:22 PM PT

Is it morally acceptable to predict the criminal propensity of unborn children based on the color of their skin?

That's what former education secretary and drug czar Bill Bennett did last Wednesday on his radio show. When a caller suggested that legal abortions had depleted the tax base for Social Security, Bennett counseled against such utilitarian arguments. "I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could—if that were your sole purpose—you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down," Bennett volunteered. "That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky."

A Double Standard

Editor's Note: TomPaine.com is pleased to introduce a special guest blogger this week. While executive editor Alex Walker is away on vacation, Beth Shulman will be blogging in her place. Shulman, a frequent TomPaine.com contributor, is a lawyer and author who is passionate about making the U.S. economy work for working people. Shulman’s book The Betrayal of Work: How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 30 Million Americans was published in 2003.

Remember The Memo

As the noose tightens at the White House, the State Department memo may be the key piece of Plame evidence.

By Michael Tomasky
Web Exclusive: 10.03.05

Think it’s fair to say that the combination Sunday of the Walter Pincus-Jim VandeHei piece in The Washington Post and George Stephanopoulos’ bombshell on television’s This Week felt like a tug on the noose around the White House’s neck?

The Post article noted that Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor looking into the Valerie Plame investigation, could bring conspiracy indictments against Karl Rove and Scooter Libby -- even if he fails to pin down evidence that they violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

Stephanopoulos did them one better: He said to George Will on This Week that a source told him that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney “were actually involved in some of the discussions” about how the White House should deal with Joe Wilson and Plame, his wife.

DeLay Queries Go To Thatcher's Office

Bloomberg News
Tuesday, October 4, 2005; Page A12

Staff members for Margaret Thatcher, Britain's former prime minister, have been questioned in a probe of Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), who is charged with criminal conspiracy regarding corporate political donations, her office said.

"An approach was made to her office to clarify certain points regarding a meeting with Congressman DeLay," said her spokesman, Mark Worthington.

DeLay Is Indicted on Two New Charges

Money Laundering Alleged in Texas

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 4, 2005; Page A01

A Texas grand jury indicted Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) yesterday for alleged involvement in money laundering related to the 2002 Texas election, raising new and more serious allegations than the conspiracy charge lodged against the former House majority leader last week.

The surprising new indictments followed by a matter of hours a motion by DeLay's Texas legal defense team to quash last week's charge on grounds that the Texas prosecutor in charge of the case lacked authority to bring it. The lawyers alleged that the crime of conspiracy was not covered by the state election law at the time of the alleged violation.

Once More, Bush Turns To His Inner Circle

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 4, 2005; Page A01

About two weeks ago, White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. told presidential counsel Harriet Miers to add another name to the Supreme Court selection process she was leading. The new candidate: Harriet Miers.

"What do you mean me?" she asked, according to a colleague.

Billmon: Bill Bennett's Modest Proposal

It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.

Oliver Wendall Holmes
Buck v. Bell
1927

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress.

Mark Twain
Following the Equator
1897

When Bill Bennett mused on the potential crime-fighting efficacy of aborting all African-American babies last week, I wonder if he was aware that his little "Socratic" exercise was echoing one of the vilest episodes in American intellectual history: the eugenics movement of the early 20th century.

Billmon: Conspiracy Theory

Jim VandeHei and Walter Pincus at the Washington Post offer a new theory about Patrick Fitzgerald's legal intentions in the Plamegate investigation. They suggest Tom DeLay may not be the only Republican capo looking at a conspiracy charge:

A new theory about Fitzgerald's aim has emerged in recent weeks from two lawyers who have had extensive conversations with the prosecutor while representing witnesses in the case. They surmise that Fitzgerald is considering whether he can bring charges of a criminal conspiracy perpetrated by a group of senior Bush administration officials. Under this legal tactic, Fitzgerald would attempt to establish that at least two or more officials agreed to take affirmative steps to discredit and retaliate against Wilson and leak sensitive government information about his wife. To prove a criminal conspiracy, the actions need not have been criminal, but conspirators must have had a criminal purpose.

It's not clear to me from the story what that criminal purpose would have been. If using the White House propaganda machinery to try to discredit a critic is a crime, then every administration since John Adams could be considered a criminal enterprise. Presumably, then, the crime would have been the leak of Plame's name -- not under the torturous and possibly inapplicable Intelligence Identities Protection Act, but under one of the sections of the Espionage Statute, perhaps the same ones being used against the AIPAC Three.

Billmon: What a "Secure" Province Looks Like

A standard riff at the modern version of the 5 o'clock follies -- military press briefings in Baghdad or at the Pentagon -- is that the insurgency in Iraq is limited to "only" four provinces. I say "only" because one of them (Anbar) is the size of North Carolina, while two of the others contain Baghdad and Mosul, the country's largest and third-largest cities.

The rest of Iraq, we are told, is a peaceful oasis of tranquility and harmony -- save for the stay riot, suicide bombing, death squad mass execution and/or British jail break operation. Ergo, the war is being won.

But Tom Lasseter, the Knight-Ridder reporter who's made something of a gig for himself pointing out the gap between fantasy at the top and reality on the ground -- basically by letting the guys actually fighting the war tell their own stories -- has done it again. He recently filed this report from the province of Diyala, which lies to the east of Baghdad, well outside the Sunni Triange:

Commanders for the 3rd Infantry Division in Diyala said the number of attacks there had dropped from about a dozen a day last year to seven. Roadside bombs, they said, have decreased by a third. The latter trend, though, hasn't held up this month. In September 2004 there were 72 roadside bombs detonated or found, but 106 this month.

"They say attacks are down. Well, no [shit]," [Staff Sgt. Donnie] Hendricks said. "We're not patrolling where the bad guys are."

Billmon: Battle Cry of the Republicans

So what I really want to know is this: If Patrick Fitzgerald does end up indicting a passel of senior Cheney administration officials for conspiracy -- or perjury or obstruction of justice or whatever else he can think up -- will Blogs for Bush declare civil war?

And if they do, who will they fight it with? The American Public Prosecutors Association?

Billmon: A Crony on the Court

It appears Shrub has found his own Abe Fortas :

President Bush named White House Counsel Harriet Miers, 60, to be associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court today.

Miers, who was Bush's personal attorney in Texas, was the first woman elected president of the Texas Bar Association and was a partner at the Texas law firm of Locke Liddell & Sapp before coming to Washington to work in the Bush administration. (emphasis added)

Billmon: Where's Roman Hruska When We Really Need Him?

It appears that many on the right are less than impressed by Harriet Miers's legal qualifications for the highest court in the land.

Democrats, on the other hand, are either blowing kisses or remaining neutral, despite the fact that her primary asset seems to be that her nose fits very nicely in lower end of George W. Bush's rectum.

Meanwhile, paper-trained conservatives, as well as the pseudo-Christian groups that look to the daily RNC talking points for theological guidance, are sucking up whatever inner reservations they may have and praising Miers with carefully modulated praise.

Billmon: An Emily Litella Moment

During the nuclear showdown earlier this year, do you remember all that talk from conservatives about how the judicial filibuster was a constitutional abomination, a flagrant violation of (small d) democratic principles, a crime against law and nature, and proof positive that the (big D) Democratic Party was the incarnation of living evil?

Well, you can forget about all about that now (except the last part, of course.) From the American Spectator blog, via Bull Moose:

Just spoke with a staffer for a conservative member of the Judiciary Committee whose boss is extremely unhappy about the nomination of Harriet Miers . . . There is now talk among some conservatives about a filibuster of the Miers nomination . . .(emphasis added)

Billmon: Where's Roman Hruska When We Really Need Him?

It appears that many on the right are less than impressed by Harriet Miers's legal qualifications for the highest court in the land.

Democrats, on the other hand, are either blowing kisses or remaining neutral, despite the fact that her primary asset seems to be that her nose fits very nicely in lower end of George W. Bush's rectum.

Meanwhile, paper-trained conservatives, as well as the pseudo-Christian groups that look to the daily RNC talking points for theological guidance, are sucking up whatever inner reservations they may have and praising Miers with carefully modulated praise.

Billmon: Freakazoids

What's happening over in Right Blogostan right now is simply amazing. It's like the political equivalent of Yugoslavia -- and Tito just died.

Suddenly all the repressed anger and resentment at Bush and Rove is boiling over. Hordes of wing nuts are almost literally howling (in ALL CAPS) about the metric tons of shit they've put up with -- the round-the-clock pork festivals, the federal entitlement for drug companies, the congressional leadership so corrupt it would make Boss Tweed blush, the bloody quagmire in Iraq, Mike Brown, the New Deal on the Mississippi, etc. etc.

KEEP IT SEALED KEEP IT SECRET

EXCLUSIVE: Secret paper links Thatcher to freebies probe

By Bob Roberts Deputy Political Editor

A DOCUMENT linking Margaret Thatcher to a US corruption probe is so explosive civil servants have been asked to ensure it remains "sealed".

The 79-year-old former Premier is said to have met Congressman Tom DeLay in Britain while he was on a suspected favours-for-freebies scam.

In return for his free holiday, DeLay - who resigned as Republican leader of Congress last week after being accused of laundering political funds - allegedly backed legislation favourable to lobby groups.

Al Franken: Just Deleted From David Frum's Blog

David Frum, former White House speechwriter, has come down hard against Miers. From his blog at the National Review:

Harriet Miers is a taut, nervous, anxious personality. It is impossible to me to imagine that she can endure the anger and abuse - or resist the blandishments - that transformed, say, Anthony Kennedy into the judge he is today.

Nor is it safe for the president's conservative supporters to defer to the president's judgment and say, "Well, he must know best." The record shows I fear that the president's judgment has always been at its worst on personnel matters.

But earlier this morning, he came down even harder--and then quietly backpedaled. Some time between 9:52 AM and 10:18 AM this morning, he removed a paragraph from between the two paragraphs posted above. Here it is, recovered from the cache in my Google Desktop search:

She rose to her present position by her absolute devotion to George Bush. I mentioned last week that she told me that the president was the most brilliant man she had ever met. To flatter on such a scale a person must either be an unscrupulous dissembler, which Miers most certainly is not, or a natural follower. And natural followers do not belong on the Supreme Court of the United States.

Why the retreat?

Cursor's Media Patrol - 10/03/05

A 'Longtime Confidante' is President Bush's pick to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, and "what she lacks in experience she makes up for in devotion."

The Boston Globe reports on an FBI counterterrorism investigation that was launched after the discovery that "some of the vehicles used in deadly car bombings in Iraq ... were probably stolen in the United States."

As President Bush prepares to rally wavering Americans with a speech, the White House is said to have "cranked up a campaign to convince Americans they are winning the war."

A USA Today survey finds almost no support among the nation's governors for President Bush's suggestion for "federalizing emergency response to catastrophic events," which one governor recently said "would be a disaster as bad as Hurricane Katrina."

Rev. Pat Robertson: Dead End or No End in Sight?

Criticism that Robertson received after advocating the assassination of Venezuela's democratically elected president hurt the feisty multi-millionaire televangelist, but will it mark the end of his political influence?

Stunned by his "700 Club" commentary advocating the assassination of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, several of the Rev. Pat Robertson's evangelical brethren quickly, and publicly, condemned him for it. Since in their estimation, the Rev. Robertson now plays a diminished role in national politics, some conservative commentators thought the "liberal" media blew the story out of proportion. Meanwhile, Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, was looking out for Robertson's business interests.

When 'Connected' means 'Corrupted'

[posted online on September 27, 2005]

Crony capitalism is the name of the Republican game. Its guiding principle is to take care of your friends and leave the risks of the free market for the suckers. That would be John Q. Public.

From Halliburton's overcharging in Iraq to Enron's manipulation of the California energy crisis and now the emerging hurricane reconstruction boondoggle, we witness what happens when the federal government is turned into a glorified help desk and ATM machine for politically connected corporations.

But the defining case study on the deep corruption of the Bush Administration and the GOP is emerging from the myriad investigations of well-connected Republican fundraiser and lobbyist Jack Abramoff. For starters, Abramoff, a $100,000-plus fundraiser for George W. Bush's presidential campaigns, is under federal indictment on wire fraud and conspiracy charges. He is also under Congressional and FBI investigations.

25 Questions About the Murder of New Orleans

by MIKE DAVIS & ANTHONY FONTENAT

[posted online on September 30, 2005]

We recently spent a week in New Orleans and southern Louisiana interviewing relief workers, community activists, urban planners, artists and neighborhood folks. Even as the latest flood waters from Hurricane Rita recede, the city remains submerged in anger and frustration.

Indeed, the most toxic debris in New Orleans isn't the sinister gray sludge that coats the streets of the historic Creole neighborhood of Treme or the Lower Ninth Ward but all the unanswered questions that have accumulated in the wake of so much official betrayal and hypocrisy. Where outsiders see simple "incompetence" or "failure of leadership," locals are more inclined to discern deliberate design and planned neglect--the murder, not the accidental death, of a great city.