Echidne: The Longest Revolution, Part I

Or the Woman Question, if you wish. When I was a very young goddess with soft scales and all I thought that this gender business was easy: just share things equally and let everyone have a piece of the cake. Some day I will tell the story of how I lost my innocence and what happened next, but right now I want to talk about Linda Hirshman's recent article in the American Prospect, entitled Homeward Bound. It has created quite a furore in the feminist blogosphere and some very good debate, too. You might do a lot worse than reading the posts by Bitch PhD and 11D and the attached long comments threads.

Hirshman's article talks about the elite women who decide to drop out of their careers and stay at home when they have children. In this she follows the general fashion in writings about women these days: it seems that we are all white, highly educated and homeward bound, that our education was a waste and our biologies the destiny. Where she differs is in her take on all this. She is definitely not delicately analyzing the problem or bemoaning the death of feminism or even really ridiculing the uppity ex-career women who are now ladies-who-lunch. Rather, she is giving us a feminist bootcamp and telling us how to change things. More about that in The Longest Revolution, Part II. In the first part I want to address the validity of Hirshman's basic premise and why the blogosphere discussion on the article is so heated.

Echidne: The Longest Revolution, Part II

Feminists call the women's movement of the 1960s and 70s, especially in the United States, the second wave of feminism. The first wave (which ended in the 1920s) won women the vote and the right to have some sort of a presence in the public sector. The second wave opened women the doors to most occupations. These waves, and others like them in earlier history, are not sudden inexplicable events. They are caused and made possible by societal and economic changes. The second wave, for example, grew out of the post-war attempt to redomesticate women, the already growing female labor market participation rate, and the political developments of the era which focused on equality and justice.

It is the nature of political movements to die when their main goals have been achieved, and this is what happened after both the first and the second wave. The backlash against emancipating women can be observed in the 1930s and at least since the 1980s.

Digby: "Cultural Discomfort"

The New Republic and The LA Times this week both feature articles about the Minutemen of Herndon, Virginia. The TNR piece is framed as a cautionary tale for liberals who think that the Minutemen are out of the mainstream:

Bill explains that he "slid into the Minutemen" because he was disturbed by the way his neighborhood was changing, and the other Minutemen standing with him nod in agreement. "Dormitory-style homes" have popped up on their streets, Bill says, and the residents come and go at strange hours. Their neighbors' children are intimidated and no longer like to play outside, in part because "we've got about 17 cars coming and going from our neighbors' houses." Matt, another Minuteman who lives in nearby Manassas, claims that the police have busted prostitution rings operating out of nearby properties. Bill doesn't want his name printed, he tells me, because he worries about retaliation from the local Hispanic gang, MS-13. Pointing to the cluster of day-laborers across the street, he explains to me that the Herndon 7-11 is "a social gathering place, too." Taplin has publicly objected to a regulated day-laborer site set to open in Herndon on December 19--proposed in order to combat the trespassing, litter, and nuisance complaints that have arisen in conjunction with the informal 7-11 site--because he worries that even a regulated locale wouldn't change "their behaviors." Even on the coldest mornings, more than 50 workers often convene at the 7-11, and Bill judges that sometimes only 10 or 20 get hired. "When," he asks me, "is it ever a good thing for 40 men to hang out together?"

Digby: Memory Hole

Jane is reporting that Rove's lawyer Luskin told Fitzgerald that "inveterate gossip" Viveca Novak told him that Rove was Matt Cooper's source, which sent him and Karl rummaging frantically through the e-mails to refresh Karl's sketchy memory. Apparently, it took them five months to find it, but whatever.

If Novak confesses that she did this, it certainly gives the lie to all this high minded posturing we've heard from all the journalists about their do or die committment to their promises of confidentiality. This little scenario requires that Cooper or his editor blabbed to Novak who then blabbed to Rove's lawyer! Oh Lord, bless the majesty of the First Amendment that guarantees Freedom of the Press and Anonymous Juicy Gossip.

Digby: Tear Down That Wall

Here's a provocative post on immigration by Brad Plumer: The Case for Open Borders. Click through to all the links and you will find some very informative data. (I especially recommend this article by Daniel Drezner.) It's not a plan I'm necessarily endorsing, but it's a different way of looking at things. With problems this complicated and politically treacherous we need to be open to fresh thinking if only to question whether some of our assumptions are still valid.

Digby: Friends With Benefits

This Lincoln Group story is amazing. I have nothing to add to the substance that Laura Rozen and Billmon haven't already covered with great insight. Psyops is one of Rummy's favorite little hobbies. It's no surprise that he's been using it in every way he can get away with.

But I am interested in the fact that General Pace is on the record being against it saying "I would be concerned about anything that would be detrimental to the proper growth of democracy." This is the second time in two days that Pace is playing the straight arrow to Rummy's sleaze. Bob Fertik sent me an e-mail pointing out something interesting that I overlooked in that Pace-Rummy public disagreement the other day.

Digby: Leftist Scandalmongers

A fascinating Ron Reagan and Monica Crowley show today in which the topic is how the Democrats are failing everyone on Iraq because they are spineless and unfocused and in disarray and can't speak with one voice and have no leadership. I can't get enough of blaming Democrats for the mess the Republicans have made.

But, this is a doozy. I just heard David Limbaugh say the following in response to Arianna Huffington saying that there needs to be a bi-partisan Truman Commission to sort out how much of the 200 billion we've spent has been lost to graft and corruption:

"I just wish the left would stop focusing on all these scandals."

Digby: Political Grease Monkeys

If a partisan impeachment, unprecedented recall elections, bogus voter roll purges, uncheckable voting machines and Supreme Court chosen presidents didn't convince you that the Republicans are trying to undermine the fundamental electoral processes of our Democratic system, this one should lay any questions you have to rest:

Justice Department lawyers concluded that the landmark Texas congressional redistricting plan spearheaded by Rep. Tom DeLay (R) violated the Voting Rights Act, according to a previously undisclosed memo obtained by The Washington Post. But senior officials overruled them and approved the plan.

Digby: Heckuva Job

I can't believe what I'm seeing. CNN is reporting yet another propaganda boondoggle --- FEMA's "Recovery Channel" in New Orleans. One segment even features a military officer talking about all the good work that FEMA is doing rebuilding the schools. CNN investigated and found out the school in question was really two hours away from new orleans and that virtually all the schools in new orleans are in shambles.

My favorite part was the story about how "our Commander In Chief lent a hand" in the rebuilding.

Bush in Iraq, Slouching Toward Genocide

By Robert Parry

December 1, 2005

Despite pretty words about democracy and freedom, George W. Bush’s “victory” plan in Iraq is starting to look increasingly like an invitation to genocide, the systematic destruction of the Sunni minority for resisting its U.S.-induced transformation from the nation’s ruling elite into second-class citizenship.

The Sunnis, an Islamic sect that makes up about 35 percent of Iraq’s 26 million people, are being confronted with a stark choice, either accept subordination to the less-educated Shiite majority or face the devastation of Sunni neighborhoods, the imprisonment of many Sunni males and the deaths of large numbers of the Sunni population.

Juan Cole - 12/03/05

18 GIs killed in 72 Hours
Anti-Prison Demonstrations in Baghdad

From Wednesday to Friday, guerrillas in Iraq killed 18 US troops. The most tragic single incident came on Friday, when guerrillas used old Baath rocket parts to make an enormous bomb that killed 10 Marines near Fallujah and wounded 11. CNN points out that Marine convoys tend to spread out to limit such casualties, so the death of 10 GIs in one incident suggests just a horrific explosion. There were said to be 600,000 tons of munitions stored in Iraq, one of the more militarized societies in the world, and over 200,000 tons are probably still unaccounted for.

Bottle of Blog: Speaking Of Stupid, Stupid, Stupid...

[...]

Plan for victory, huh? I mean, I think it's great to have a plan for victory. Though, I think--and it's just my humble opinion--that you should have a plan for victory before you go to war:

WASHINGTON - In March 2003, days before the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, American war planners and intelligence officials met at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina to review the Bush administration's plans to oust Saddam Hussein and implant democracy in Iraq.

Near the end of his presentation, an Army lieutenant colonel who was giving a briefing showed a slide describing the Pentagon's plans for rebuilding Iraq after the war, known in the planners' parlance as Phase 4-C. He was uncomfortable with his material - and for good reason.

The slide said: "To Be Provided."

Billmon: Land of Lincoln

Last summer I took a long, speculative look at a company called the Lincoln Group, which appeared to have parlayed its Republican Party connections into a whopping big contract with the Pentagon's special ops propaganda machine -- the JPOSE (Joint Psychological Operations Support Element) to use the proper Orwellian acronym.

Now the Los Angeles Times has obtained a little more information on what the Lincoln Group has been giving the taxpayers for their money -- which appears to be a bunch of bribes paid to Iraqi newspapers to regurgitate official Cheney Administration talking points. (Sorry you had to sit this one out, Armstrong)

As part of an information offensive in Iraq, the U.S. military is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the U.S. mission in Iraq.

Survey of Historians: Bush is the worst president ever

by John in DC - 12/02/2005 11:06:00 PM

The Republicans were right. Bush is number one.

There are some numbers. The History News Network at George Mason University has just polled historians informally on the Bush record. Four hundred and fifteen, about a third of those contacted, answered -- maybe they were all crazed liberals -- making the project as unofficial as it was interesting. These were the results: 338 said they believed Bush was failing, while 77 said he was succeeding. Fifty said they thought he was the worst president ever. Worse than Buchanan.

This is what those historians said -- and it should be noted that some of the criticism about deficit spending and misuse of the military came from self-identified conservatives -- about the Bush record:

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

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

Inuits Transformed by Global Warming

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 5:00 a.m. ET

MONTREAL (AP)-- While Canada's isolated northern aboriginals are not sitting at the same table as the 180 nations attending the U.N. Climate Change Conference, they have a front-row seat to the chilling effects of global warming.

From eroding shorelines, to thinning ice and loss of hunting and polar bears, Canadian Inuits of the Arctic north have seen rising temperatures transforming their lives.

''Environmental changes of all kinds are coming at a rate and to an extent that may exceed the threshold of Arctic peoples capacity to respond,'' states a report released Friday on the sidelines of the conference that is reviewing and expanding on the Kyoto Protocol, which places greenhouse gas emissions caps on industrialized nations.

For Some Marines, Deaths of Comrades Fuel Doubts

By DAVID M. HALBFINGER

OCEANSIDE, Calif., Dec. 2 - Half a world away and a day later, the deadly blast of a roadside bomb in Falluja stopped young marines in their tracks here on Friday.

This latest improvised explosive device - the military's bloodless jargon for every soldier and marine's worst fear, the death you don't see coming - claimed the lives of 10 marines and wounded 11 more, the worst attack on American troops in four months.

Families were still being notified, so word had scarcely begun to spread in Oceanside, on the doorstep of Camp Pendleton, or in Jacksonville, N.C., home to Camp Lejeune, the two bases that military officials hinted would bear the brunt of the mourning.

Wearying Wait for Federal Aid in New Orleans

By ADAM NOSSITER

NEW ORLEANS, Dec. 2 - They are the faces and voices of a city's desperation. Stepping wearily up to a Federal Emergency Management Agency help center here, all have a similar story of ruin in the past, anxiety over the future and frustration in the present, suffered differently each time.

Young, middle-aged and old, these citizens of New Orleans, wiped out by Hurricane Katrina and now urgently seeking government assistance, spoke Friday of sleeping in a truck and on a floor, living out of a car and waiting for the help that never seems to come. Trickling into the crowded center in the Uptown neighborhood here - hoping for a trailer, a loan, cash, anything - they were grimly resigned to waiting, and waiting some more.

Leak Ruling Has Mystery, 8 Blank Pages

By ADAM LIPTAK

There are eight blank pages in the public version of a decision the federal appeals court in Washington issued in February. The decision ordered two reporters to be jailed unless they agreed to testify before a grand jury investigating the disclosure of the identity of a C.I.A. operative, Valerie Wilson. What is in those pages is one of the enduring mysteries in the investigation.

In a filing yesterday, the special prosecutor in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, told the court that he had no objection to the unsealing of parts of those pages, and he gave hints about what they say.

The pages, in a concurring opinion by Judge David S. Tatel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, analyze secret submissions by Mr. Fitzgerald. Judge Tatel suggested, in a terse and cryptic public summary of what he wrote in the withheld pages, that testimony from the reporters, Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, was needed to determine whether a government official committed a crime in identifying Ms. Wilson.

Scientists Say Slower Atlantic Currents Could Mean a Colder Europe

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

Scientists say they have measured a significant slowing in the Atlantic currents that carry warm water toward Northern Europe. If the trend persists, they say, the weather there could cool considerably in coming decades.

Some climate experts have said the potential cooling of Europe was paradoxically consistent with global warming caused by the accumulation of heat-trapping "greenhouse" emissions. But several experts said it was premature to conclude that the new measurements, to be described today in the journal Nature, meant that such a change was already under way.

Inventing Sin: Religion and Homosexuality

No matter their own scandals, religious institutions through history have a consistent scapegoat: homosexuals.

A Dig led by Larry Gross

There they were, lined up in all their finery across the top of the front page of The New York Times of March 31, 2005, occupying perhaps the most prime piece of real estate in all of journalism: Sheik Abed es- Salem Menasra, deputy mufti of Jerusalem; the Rev. Michel Sabbagh, the Latin patriarch; Archbishop Torkom Manoogian, the Armenian patriarch of Jerusalem; Rabbi Shlomo Amar, the Sephardic chief rabbi; and Rabbi Yona Metzger, the Ashkenazi chief rabbi. What brought together these religious leaders more accustomed to squabbling over slivers of land in the Holy City? They came together to denounce plans by international gay leaders to hold a WorldPride festival and parade in Jerusalem, saying it would desecrate the city and convey the erroneous impression that homosexuality is acceptable.

“This is not the homo land, this is the Holy Land,” said Rabbi Yehuda Levin of the Rabbinical Alliance of America at the news conference, adding that the proposed celebration of the right to be gay would mean “the spiritual rape of the Holy City.”

How Bush Created a Theocracy in Iraq

Posted on Dec. 2, 2005

By Juan Cole

The Bush administration naively believed that Iraq was a blank slate on which it could inscribe its vision for a remake of the Arab world. Iraq, however, was a witches’ brew of dynamic social and religious movements, a veritable pressure cooker. When George W. Bush invaded, he blew off the lid.

Shiite religious leaders and parties, in particular, have crucially shaped the new Iraq in each of its three political phases. The first was during the period of direct American rule, largely by Paul Bremer. The second comprised the months of interim government, when Iyad Allawi was prime minister. The third stretches from the formation of an elected government, with Ibrahim Jaafari as prime minister, to today.

Anatomy of a Victory

[from the December 19, 2005 issue]

George W. Bush's plan to privatize Social Security, the centerpiece of his second-term agenda, is dead. Conservative pundit William Kristol argues that this Bush defeat began the unraveling of his presidency: "The negative effect of the Social Security [campaign] is underestimated," says Kristol. "Once you make that kind of mistake, people tend to be less deferential to your decisions." There was an "entire Republican agenda, based on the idea that we reform these entitlement programs," says New York Times columnist David Brooks. "That's gone now because of the failure of Social Security." A remarkable progressive mobilization caused Bush's defeat--and progressives can learn much from the anatomy of that victory.

For Bush, privatization seemed within reach. He was building on a multiyear, multimillion-dollar conservative campaign that had already convinced influential pundits that Social Security was in trouble and needed reform. Conservative groups pledged to spend more than $50 million on outside ad campaigns. Bush's plan was designed to reassure seniors and those nearing retirement that their benefits wouldn't be touched. It appealed to younger workers by offering the chance of getting rich in the stock market. And the President didn't need overwhelming public support; with House Republican discipline assured, Bush had only to convince five Democratic senators up for re-election in red states to oppose a filibuster. After making Social Security privatization a focal point of his 2005 State of the Union address, Bush quickly visited five of those states to send nervous senators a message.

(Movie) Zombies Attack George Bush

Joe Dante's brilliant anti-war horror show.
By Grady Hendrix
Posted Friday, Dec. 2, 2005, at 4:05 PM ET

Just when things looked like they couldn't get any worse for President Bush, here come the zombies to vote him out of office. They arrive courtesy of Joe Dante's Homecoming, a one-hour movie made for Showtime's "Masters of Horror" series that airs tonight and tomorrow and will be rebroadcast throughout December. One part satire of soulless Beltway insiders, one part gut-crunching horror flick, Homecoming kicks off when the flag-draped coffins of soldiers killed in Iraq burst open and the reanimated corpses of dead veterans hit the streets, searching for polling places where they can pull the lever for "anyone who will end this evil war."

The mandate for Showtime's "Masters of Horror" series was to give one-hour slots to name-brand shock auteurs such as Takashi Miike and John Carpenter, granting them total artistic control in exchange for low budgets. So far, most of the directors have squandered their creative carte blanche on extra boobs and more blood, but Joe Dante has elected to do something actually terrifying: engage with the real world.

Do As I Say, Not As I DoD

Will the Pentagon ever value nation-building as much as war-fighting?
By Fred Kaplan
Updated Friday, Dec. 2, 2005, at 6:04 PM ET

A Pentagon directive issued this week might herald the most dramatic upheaval of the U.S. armed forces in 20 years—or it might dissolve upon first contact with reality, like so many reform plans and nostrums before it. We'll know in the next few months, or maybe weeks, whether the order gets taken seriously or waved off as empty rhetoric.

Department of Defense Directive 3000.05, signed by Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England on Nov. 28, declares the following to be new Defense Department policy:

Stability operations are a core U.S. military mission. … They should be given priority comparable to combat operations and be explicitly addressed and integrated across all DoD activities, including doctrine, organizations, training, education, exercises, materiel, leadership, personnel, facilities, and planning.

ATTYTOOD: Expert: America is losing the war of fake ideas!

We love the idea of "contrarian" thinking...in theory. In reality, as this famous case right here in Philadelphia proved, a lot of contrarian thinking goes against the grain because it's also...well, kind of stupid.

In that vein, let's hear it for the newly revamped Los Angeles Times and a retired-general-turned prof named Walter Jajko for thinking waaaay outside the box today. Jajko's op-ed has the cheery title, "It's propaganda time." A more accurate headline would have been: "It's propaganda time...oh and by the way that's a good thing!"

Jajko knows a thing or two about propaganda, apparently. The retired Air Force brigadier general was an assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Oversight from 1994 to 1998. He now hangs his hat at the Institute of World Politics, which, according to a Wall Street Journal blurb, is "rooted in American values: of democracy, of free markets, of traditional Judeo-Christian concepts about the just use of force."

Rice to warn Europe to back off over detainees

By Saul HudsonFri Dec 2, 3:25 PM ET

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is expected to give allies in Europe a response next week to their pressure over Washington's treatment of terrorism suspects: back off.

For almost a month, the United States has been on the defensive, refusing to deny or confirm media reports the United States has held prisoners in secret in Eastern Europe and transported detainees incommunicado across the continent.

The European Union has demanded that Washington address the allegations to allay fears of illegal U.S. practices. The concerns are rampant in among the European public and parliaments, already critical of U.S. prisoner-abuse scandals in Iraq and Guantanamo, Cuba.

Third party group, Santorum campaign use same footage

KIMBERLY HEFLING

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - If the grandfather and grandson walking together in Sen. Rick Santorum's Internet ad look familiar, it could be because the same two actors are in a television ad that a third-party group is running in support of Santorum.

A spokeswoman for Santorum, R-Pa., has repeatedly denied any connection between Santorum and the group, Americans for Job Security.

The campaign for Bob Casey Jr. - the leading Democratic challenger in his 2006 Senate race - said Friday the coincidence is too much to be ignored.

Congress Researchers Fault EPA Studies

By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer
Fri Dec 2, 5:08 PM ET

Researchers who work for Congress say the Environmental Protection Agency skewed its analysis of air pollution legislation to favor President Bush's plan.

EPA's analysis "works in favor of" Bush's plan by overstating some costs of competing bills, said a report Friday by the Congressional Research Service. The 2002 Bush plan, dubbed "Clear Skies," remains stalled in Congress.

"Although it represents a step toward understanding the impacts of the legislative options, EPA's analysis is not as useful as one could hope," the report concludes.

US backed Timor invasion

From correspondents in Washington
03-12-2005
From: Agence France-Presse

THE US knew well in advance of and explicitly approved Indonesia's invasion of East Timor in 1975, newly declassified documents say.

Released this week by the independent Washington-based National Security Archive (NSA), the documents showed US officials were aware of the invasion plans nearly a year in advance.

They adopted a "policy of silence" and even sought to suppress news and discussions on East Timor, including credible reports of Indonesia's massacres of Timorese civilians, according to the documents.

East Timor is today an independent nation.

The people of East Timor voted in favour of breaking away from Indonesia in a UN-sponsored ballot in August 1999 before gaining full independence in May 2002 after more than two years of UN stewardship.

The movie, the media, and the conservative politics of Philip Anschutz

"Greediest executive in America" teams up with Walt Disney Pictures for film about Christ's "resurrection"

On December 9, "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," a $200 million dollar film adapted from C.S. Lewis' children's book of the same title, will open on several thousand screens across the country. If it performs well at the box office, Disney and conservative billionaire Philip Anschutz -- whose company co-produced the movie -- could have a "Lord of the Rings"/"Harry Potter"-type franchise on its hands, as six other Narnia-related titles are waiting in the wings.

"The Chronicles" -- which many have called the most eagerly anticipated film of the holiday season -- is a joint production of Walt Disney Pictures and Anchutz's Walden Media, his "family friendly" entertainment company.

Why Iraq Has No Army

The Atlantic Monthly | December 2005

An orderly exit from Iraq depends on the development of a viable Iraqi security force, but the Iraqis aren't even close. The Bush administration doesn't take the problem seriously and it never has

by James Fallows

Cursor's Media Patrol - 12/02/05

'How (Not) to Withdraw from Iraq' Tom Engelhardt finds news coverage of the public debate over "pullout, withdrawal, withdrawals, draw-down" shifting into "full-frontal anonymity mode," and heralds "the return of Vietnamization."

"Iraqi and American officials in Iraq say the single most important fact about the insurgency is that it consists not of a few groups but of dozens, possibly as many as 100," reports the New York Times. And a new study says the insurgency "remains as robust as ever and could grow a good deal stronger."

Finder's Fee "Bring in 10 people and you can earn $20,000," says an Army National Guard official, touting a new scheme to address the falloff in recruiting. Plus: "Maybe you miss the adventure ..."

As 'oil company executives retool responses on energy task force roles,' a Harris poll finds that 90 percent of Americans feel that big companies have too much influence on government, up from 80 percent in 2003.

The Nation joins the more than 200 Web sites that have pledged to publish the "Al-Jazeera Memo" should it leak out.

In C.I.A. Leak, More Talks With Journalists

By RICHARD W. STEVENSON and DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 - A conversation between Karl Rove's lawyer and a journalist for Time magazine led Mr. Rove to change his testimony last year to the grand jury in the C.I.A. leak case, people knowledgeable about the sequence of events said Thursday.

Mr. Rove's lawyer, Robert D. Luskin, spoke in the summer or early fall of 2004 with Viveca Novak, a reporter for Time. In that conversation, Mr. Luskin heard from Ms. Novak that a colleague at the magazine, Matthew Cooper, might have interviewed Mr. Rove about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the case, the people said.

Michael Kinsley: Business As Usual: Corrupt

Friday, December 2, 2005; Page A23

It used to be said that the moral arc of a Washington career could be divided into four parts: idealism, pragmatism, ambition and corruption. You arrive with a passion for a cause, determined to challenge the system. Then you learn to work for your cause within the system. Then rising in the system becomes your cause. Then, finally, you exploit the system -- your connections in it, and your understanding of it -- for personal profit.

And it remains true, sort of, but faster. Even the appalling Jack Abramoff had ideals at one point. But he took a shortcut straight to corruption. On the other hand, you can now trace the traditional moral arc in the life of conservative-dominated Washington itself, which began with Ronald Reagan's inauguration and marks its 25th anniversary in January. Reagan and Co. arrived to tear down the government and make Washington irrelevant. Now the airport and a giant warehouse of bureaucrats are named after him.

Paul Krugman: Bullet Points Over Baghdad

by Paul Krugman
The New York Times
December 2, 2005

The overthrow of Saddam Hussein was supposed to provide the world with a demonstration of American power. It didn't work out that way. But the Bush administration has come up with the next best thing: a demonstration of American PowerPoint. Bullets haven't subdued the insurgents in Iraq, but the administration hopes that bullet points will subdue the critics at home.

The National Security Council document released this week under the grandiose title "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" is neither an analytical report nor a policy statement. It's simply the same old talking points - "victory in Iraq is a vital U.S. interest"; "failure is not an option" - repackaged in the style of a slide presentation for a business meeting.

Greenspan: U.S. deficit may hurt economy

DEC. 2 4:24 P.M. ET Outgoing Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned Friday that America's exploding budget deficit and a protectionist backlash against soaring trade deficits could disrupt the global economy.

On a day when he was being honored in London for his nearly two decades in the world's highest profile economic job, Greenspan restated some familiar worries.

He said U.S. deficits are set to soar with the pending retirement of 78 million baby boomers and he suggested that Congress consider trimming Social Security and Medicare benefits because the government probably has promised more than it can afford, especially in health benefits.

Watchdog Groups Push for Investigation of Reed

The Associated Press

Thursday 01 December 2005

Austin - Three Texas watchdog groups asked a Texas county official Thursday to investigate former Christian Coalition founder Ralph Reed, who worked with lobbyist Jack Abramoff to press state officials to shut down two Texas tribal casinos.

Texans for Public Justice, Common Cause of Texas and Public Citizen filed their complaint with Travis County Attorney David Escamilla.

They said Reed, who is running for lieutenant governor in Georgia, failed to register as a Texas lobbyist in 2001 and 2002, when he received a reported $4.2 million from Abramoff and his partner Michael Scanlon to push for the closure of casinos operated by the Tigua tribe of El Paso and the Alabama-Coushatta tribe of Livingston in East Texas.

Wis. Governor Vetoes Malpractice Suit Bill

Wis. Governor Vetoes Malpractice Suit Bill

Saturday December 3, 2005 6:46 AM

By TODD RICHMOND

Associated Press Writer

MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Gov. Jim Doyle vetoed legislation that would have capped the amount of money medical malpractice victims could win in court for their pain and suffering, an issue that has been a political flash point in states across the country.

Republican lawmakers drafted the measure to limit non-economic damages to $450,000 for adults and $550,000 for minors after the state Supreme Court struck down Wisconsin's previous cap as unconstitutional.

The court said then that there was no rational basis for the limit, and Doyle, a Democrat, said in announcing his veto Friday that the court likely would strike down the proposed caps for the same reason.

Messiahs and Imperialists

In the Fall issue of Dissent, John Judis revisits a perennially fascinating topic: the religious roots of American foreign policy. There are a couple ways of look at this issue. Judis spent a lot of time in his last book, The Folly of Empire discussing how America's image of itself as God's chosen nation—as Abraham Lincoln said, the "last, best hope on earth"—has inspired the idea that the United States has a "calling" to transform the world. Not only that, but American often casts its conflicts in terms of good and evil, which, as Walter Russell Mead pointed out, means that it tends to fight viciously and rarely, if ever, accept defeat.

FBI Plants Fake Candidate in W.Va. Race

December 3rd, 2005 @ 1:05am

By LAWRENCE MESSINA
Associated Press Writer

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - Thomas Esposito's campaign for the Legislature seemed to be following the usual pattern. The longtime Democratic mayor issued press releases, raised money and bought newspaper ads. Signs bearing his name popped up in yards around rural Logan County.

But less than a month before the May 2004 primary election, Esposito dropped out, saying he had to withdraw because of his ailing mother-in-law.

The real reason surfaced only later: The FBI had planted Esposito among the field of candidates to help find evidence of vote-buying in southern West Virginia.

Federal prosecutors say the gambit worked.

FBI Is Taking Another Look at Forged Prewar Intelligence

By Peter Wallsten, Tom Hamburger and Josh Meyer, Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON — The FBI has reopened an inquiry into one of the most intriguing aspects of the pre-Iraq war intelligence fiasco: how the Bush administration came to rely on forged documents linking Iraq to nuclear weapons materials as part of its justification for the invasion.

The documents inspired intense U.S. interest in the buildup to the war — and they led the CIA to send a former ambassador to the African nation of Niger to investigate whether Iraq had sought the materials there. The ambassador, Joseph C. Wilson IV, found little evidence to support such a claim, and the documents were later deemed to have been forged.

New find in Uruguay 'missing' dig

Forensic experts in Uruguay have unearthed remains of a person believed to be one of the victims of the military rule in the 1973-85.

A skull was found at army barracks near the capital Montevideo after officials were sent a hand-drawn map anonymously.

It was a second find in a week after recently-elected President Tabare Vazquez had ordered the excavations.

Real News from Project Censored

Cheney's Halliburton stock options rose over 3,000 percent last year
Reviewed by Brian Fuchs

The value of Dick Cheney's 433,333 Halliburton stock options has risen from $241,498 in 2004 to $8 million in 2005, as Halliburton continues to rake in billions of dollars from no bid/no audit government contracts.
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Cheneys_stock_options_rose_3281_last_1011.html


Agency charged with spending oversight in Iraq left country in '04
Reviewed by Charlene Jones

The chief Pentagon agency in charge of investigating Defense Department spending in Iraq pulled out of the war zone in October 2004. Therefore the bulk of money spent in Iraq is not receiving public scrutiny.
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/12927316.htm


Detainees murdered while in US custody
Reviewed by Matt Johnson

At least 21 detainees were victims of homicide while being held in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. The detainees died during interrogations conducted by Navy SEALS, Military Intelligence, and the CIA.
http://action.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/102405/
http://www.aclu.org/International/International.cfm?ID=19298&c=36


Reporters Without Borders received funding from NED
Reviewed by Lesley Amberger

Reporters without Borders has received funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, an organization created in 1983 by former president Ronald Reagan during a time when military violence replaced traditional diplomacy in resolving international matters.
http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/05/1744720.php


The dark side of chocolate
Reviewed by Sarah Randle

The Ivory Coast of Africa is the origin of almost half of the world's cocoa, which is harvested by approximately 286,000 children between the ages of nine and twelve-12,000 are there as a result of child trafficking. Many are sold by their families, work 80 to 100 hours a week, and are often beaten and starved.
http://corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12754


Barrick Gold to dynamite ice-age glaciers
Reviewed by Michelle Salvail

Chileans are protesting Barrick Gold's proposed Pascua Lama open-pit mine on the border of Chile and Argentina. The powerful multinational mining corporation plans to "relocate" three glaciers, which are the primary water source of Huasco Valley. Cyanide leaching will poison the water supply and create "an environmental and social nightmare."
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12447


US military displaces Sunni populations
Reviewed by Ned Patterson

The US military displaced entire populations of Sunni cities ahead of the constitutional referendum in Iraq. The majority of Sunnis have been threatening to vote against the US-engineered constitution.
http://mambo.agrnews.rack2.purplecat.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1161&Itemid=70


UN accommodates human rights abuse in Haiti
Reviewed by Matt Johnson

Under the eye of UN peacekeepers and armed with US weapons, Haitian police forces have fired on unarmed demonstrators associated with the opposition Lavolas party on several occasions.
http://www.haitiaction.net/News/HIP/5_8_5/5_8_5.html


Mexico defies US and joins International Criminal Court
Reviewed by Bailey Malone

Mexico formally joined the International Criminal Court on October 28 as its one hundredth member, refusing to sign a bilateral agreement with the US to exempt Americans from the court's jurisdiction over war crimes and crimes against humanity.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1102-03.htm


Lockheed Martin becomes big player in prisoner interrogations
Reviewed by Charlene Jones

Lockheed Martin, the world's biggest military company, has acquired Sytex, which provides "personnel and technology solutions to the Pentagon's Northern Command, the Army's Intelligence and Security Command, and the Department of Homeland Security." Consequently, Lockheed Martin has become one of the biggest recruiters of private interrogators-unaccountable to any legal authority or disciplinary procedure. http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12757



Boeing whistleblowers say planes must be grounded
Reviewed by David Abbott

A current whistleblower lawsuit accuses Boeing of using thousands of dangerously defective parts in the construction of airplanes sold to the US government, mostly for military use. A Mother Jones investigation further determines that at least 1,600 Boeing commercial jets-many still flying-are likely to have the same "flight safety critical" defects.
http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2005/10/flightrisk.htmlhttp://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2005/10/flightrisk2.html

David Sirota: A PLAN to Fight Against the Stealth War on Workers' Wages

The right-wing's stealth assault on workers' wages rages on in America at the state and local level. But every so often, we get a big victory. Today is one of those days, as the New Mexico Court of Appeals rejected Big Money's efforts to gut Santa Fe's living wage ordinance. The ruling has major national implications.

As attorney Paul Sonn, who defended the living wage ordinance, said "It’s one of the first appeals court rulings that addresses a local wage ordinance. It’s a sweeping confirmation that cities have the power to raise wages to protect local workers. It’s a real important ruling. It will be looked to across the country."

'St. Pete Times' Reacts to Landing on Bill O'Reilly's 'Enemies List'

By Dave Astor

Published: November 30, 2005 7:05 PM ET updated 1:00 PM Thursday

NEW YORK How do the St. Petersburg Times and New York Daily News feel about being featured on an "enemies list" that columnist/TV host Bill O'Reilly unveiled Tuesday?

"We reject Mr. O'Reilly's characterizations of our journalism but appreciate that he reads us regularly," Times Executive Editor Neil Brown said wryly, when reached Wednesday by E&P.

Brown added that he doesn't think the Times will lose subscribers and advertisers because of the O'Reilly list. "People make up their own minds," he said.

A Daily News spokesperson said Wednesday that the paper would have "no comment" about being named by O'Reilly.

Report: Two CIA Flights Stopped in France

Fri Dec 2, 8:35 AM ET

Two flights chartered by the CIA made stopovers in France in 2002 and 2005, French newspaper Le Figaro said Friday, adding to likely questions facing U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when she visits Europe next week.

A French Foreign Ministry official said authorities were checking with civil aviation authorities whether the flights, first mentioned Thursday in the New York Times and Britain's Guardian newspaper, did indeed take place.

"It is perfectly possible there were flights," said spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei. The ministry had previously said it had no knowledge of any CIA flights in France.

Le Figaro said the first flight identified took place on March 31, 2002. The Learjet private plane stopped in the northwestern town of Brest on its way from Iceland to Turkey, with a planned stop in Rome, the newspaper said.

Justice Staff Saw Texas Districting As Illegal

Voting Rights Finding On Map Pushed by DeLay Was Overruled

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 2, 2005; Page A01

Justice Department lawyers concluded that the landmark Texas congressional redistricting plan spearheaded by Rep. Tom DeLay (R) violated the Voting Rights Act, according to a previously undisclosed memo obtained by The Washington Post. But senior officials overruled them and approved the plan.

The memo, unanimously endorsed by six lawyers and two analysts in the department's voting section, said the redistricting plan illegally diluted black and Hispanic voting power in two congressional districts. It also said the plan eliminated several other districts in which minorities had a substantial, though not necessarily decisive, influence in elections.

10 Marines Killed in Bombing Near Fallujah

By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer 18 minutes ago

Ten Marines on foot patrol were killed and 11 wounded by a roadside bomb near Fallujah, Iraq, in one of the deadliest attack on American troops in recent months, the Marine Corps announced on Friday. A brief statement said the Marines were from Regimental Combat Team 8, of the 2nd Marine Division.

They were hit Thursday by a roadside bomb, which the military calls an improvised explosive device, or IED, made from several large artillery shells, the Marines said. IEDs are the most common cause of U.S. casualties in Iraq.

The Marines were attacked outside of Fallujah, about 30 miles west of Baghdad. Of the 11 who were wounded, seven have returned to duty, the Marine Corps statement said. It added that Marines from the same unit continue to conduct counterinsurgency operations throughout Fallujah and surrounding areas.

Vacation photo from the 2004 RNC?

How could you possibly mistake us for Fascists?

Did the Jew Press put you up to it?

Or was it the queers?

Reader Michael takes issue with my analogy of Republican supporters as “Good Germans.”

Which is precisely why it's a bad analogy, DG. The Nazis had not a lot of electoral support from the average Germans. They were the new kids on the block and they were promising everyone the moon--so people figured, hey, let's give them a try. It wasn't about indifference to the outcome, it certainly wasn't about supporting their party platform--it was about being stuck in a seemingly never-ending spiral of economic malaise and political paralysis, and wanting a change.

Digby: Clean Up The Mess

I've always thought that in order to really put a monkeywrench into the modern GOP's political machine it was important to take out prime movers Rove, Delay, Reed and Norquist. The CIA leak scandal has wounded (perhaps mortally) Karl Rove. Ronnie Earle has weakened Delay in preparation for the coup de grace Abramoff scandal that may just take down him, Reed, Norquist and a bunch of others in short shrift.

It doesn't mean that the machine will be irreparably broken, but it won't work as smoothly as it did with the original parts. Those men have unique gifts that they honed over a long period of time to create a very efficient political mechanism. It may not be that any one of them going down would make the difference, but all of them going down at virtually the same time certainly does.

Digby: It Ain't Over Rover

How odd. A new reporter is being subpoenaed in the Fitzgerald investigation and the press is actually reporting details about it. Shocking breach of DC etiquette, what what?

A second Time magazine reporter has been asked to testify in the
CIA leak case, this time about her discussions with Karl Rove's attorney, a sign that prosecutors are still exploring charges against the White House aide.

Viveca Novak, a reporter in Time's Washington bureau, is cooperating with Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, who is investigating the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity in 2003, the magazine reported in its Dec. 5 issue.

Digby: Mexamerica

It's clear that Bush is going to try to change the subject with a big push on the immigration issue. This article in TIME discusses the various pressures on both parties.

Having spent a good part of my almost 50 years in California, I have observed that the immigration issue is usually a sign of a weak economy or some other form of discontent. It's been around forever and rears its head every once in a while as people perceive a "crisis" and then it goes underground again.

Digby: Clean Break

Mickey Kaus has been flogging his "scoop" about Libby calling up Russert to complain about Chris Matthews using the allegedly anti-semitic term "neocon." We would only know this for sure if Russert would reveal his conversation with Libby and he won't because he isn't a journalist, he's a talk show host. Just as Jay Leno wouldn't want to upset Jessica Simpson, Russert doesn't want to upset the White House.

Kaus brings up something interesting, however, to explain Libby's bone deep hatred for Wilson. (We know what Rove's reason was --- "he's a Democrat.")

Digby: Better Stop Sobbin' Now

The Duke-stir has been a prick for years. He said that the liberal leaders of congress should be lined up and shot. He calls for the death penalty for drug dealers and then cries at his son's sentencing hearing for possession of 400 lbs of marijuana and asks for mercy because his son has a good heart. Here's how the conservative San Diego Tribune editorial board described him back in 1998:

Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, R-Escondido, responded to a heckler at a San Diego forum on prostate cancer by gesturing toward him with his finger and declaring, “(expletive) you.” During his remarks at the weekend event, the congressman also described a rectal procedure he had received as “just not natural, unless maybe you’re Barney Frank,” a reference to the openly gay lawmaker from Massachusetts.

Luskin's Friendly Chat

Since Luskin supposedly unveiled some sort of exciting eleventh hour evidence that gave Fitzgerald so much pause I wondered if maybe Viveca Novak had been called to provide exculpatory evidence for Rove. (I would have thought that Fitzgerald would have moved a little quicker with that thrilling new angle, however, if it could have closed this investigation.)

The Washington Post article today says Novak and Luskin are personal friends and:

Unlike Cooper, Viveca Novak is not seeking to protect a confidential source and was not subpoenaed to testify.

Digby: Call 911

PACE: It is absolutely responsibility of every U.S. service member if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene, to stop it. As an example of how to do it if you don't see it happening, but you're told about it, is exactly what happened a couple of weeks ago. There was a report from an Iraqi to a U.S. commander that there was a possibility of inhumane treatment in a particular facility. That U.S. commander got together with his Iraqi counterparts. They went together to the facility, found what they found, reported it to the Iraqi government, and the Iraqi government has taken ownership of that problem and is investigating it.

Digby: Victory Strategy

Here's Bush today:

I'm giving a speech tomorrow that outlines the progress we're making in training Iraqis to provide security for their country. And we will make decisions about troop levels based upon the capacity of the Iraqis to take the fight to the enemy.

And I will make decisions on the level of troops, based upon the recommendations by the commanders on the ground. If they tell me we need more troops, we'll provide more troops. If they tell me we've got a sufficient level of troop, that'll be the level of troops. If they tell me that the Iraqis are ready to take more and more responsibility and that we'll be able to bring some Americans home, I will do that. It's their recommendation.

Digby: Dancing With The Mediawhores

In case anyone missed this funny, revealing piece on Mike Isikoff by John Amato of Crooks and Liars, check it out.

Digby: Nice Tries

Josh Marshall is collecting "nice tries," which are the brownnosing, he said/she said statements by the media implying that all this nasty corruption business is a bi-partisan matter.

It's obvious that the "culture of corruption" charge is scaring the GOP because they've clearly put the hammer down on the media to portray the looming scandal tsunami as something "everybody does." This, of course, is utter bullshit. As Marshall says, it comes from the proximity to power and the Democrats are way out of that game.

Cursor's Media Patrol - 11/29/05

With 700 Sunni men said to have "disappeared" recently, and reports of "Iraqi authorities ... torturing and abusing prisoners in jails across the country," a Los Angeles Times investigation quotes a U.S. military officer as saying: "The Mahdi army's got the Iraqi police and Badr's got the commandos. Everybody's got their own death squads."

The Guardian reports on an article by Martin van Creveld, "one of the world's foremost military historians," who argues that "Bush deserves to be impeached" for "launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 B.C sent his legions into Germany and lost them."

In an interview, van Creveld recommended that after impeachment, Bush officials "spend their time in prison reading Clausewitz and Sun Tzu." Plus: "Atrocity fatigue" and the "crime of the century."

Reporting on Center for Public Integrity research, which found that 'Cheney sidesteps travel disclosure rules,' the Washington Post notes that "Cheney has given 23 speeches to think tanks and trade organizations and 16 at academic institutions since 2001 -- apparently all at taxpayers' expense."

'Villains Honoring Villains' Reviewing recent "incremental steps" at national parks, Bill Berkowitz asks, "Is total privatization coming down the pike?" Berkowitz also looked at how Rep. Richard Pombo 'steers public lands to private hands.'

The Good News—Bush Finally Has a Plan

The bad news—it's an ill-defined muddle.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2005, at 6:17 PM ET

Listen to this story on NPR's Day to Day.

The most remarkable thing about the document President George W. Bush released today, titled National Strategy for Victory in Iraq, is that it was released today (and written not much earlier—it's authored by the National Security Council and dated November 2005).

It is symptomatic of everything that's gone wrong with this war that, after two and a half years of fighting it (and four years after starting to plan it), the White House is just now getting around to articulating a strategy for winning it.

‘Iraqis want Saddam to run for election’

AMMAN: Iraqis have asked Saddam Hussein’s defence team to mull the possibility of fielding the ousted dictator as a candidate for future elections, one of his lawyers said in remarks published on Wednesday.

“Iraqis have asked the defence team to study the legal conditions to present Saddam Hussein as a candidate for elections, first as an MP then as president,” Jordan’s Al-Dustour daily quoted former Qatari justice minister Najib al-Nuaimi as saying.

“If this contradicts the legal system then president Saddam will be nominated simply as a candidate,” he said, without specifying if Saddam could try to run in the December 15 election.

Memo: Alito Urged Government to Challenge Roe v. Wade

By Fred Barbash
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 30, 2005; 5:12 PM

Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. was an architect of the Reagan administration's failed 1985 attempt to have the high court consider overruling Roe v. Wade, according to a memo from the period released today.

Alito, then assistant to the solicitor general, urged his boss to use a case before the court to "make clear that we disagree with Roe v. Wade and would welcome the opportunity to brief the issue of whether, and if so to what extent, that decision should be overruled."

How Ruling Powers Distort Morality So That It Does Not Restrain Them

by Andrew Bard Schmookler

http://www.opednews.com

I’ve been taking a look, lately, at what power can do to morality, and it’s not a pretty sight.

In a wise and fortunate society, ruthless and amoral forces are kept out of power—blocked by effective constitutional checks backed up by the society’s “moral capital” endowing its elites with a genuine love of the greater good.

America, regrettably, is not now in that fortunate position. And nowhere is that clearer than in the way our present rulers have been working to bend and distort those “Christian” moral values they love to trumpet.

If one knew nothing of the Gospels, but instead only learned of Christian values from our current ruling forces, one would think that Jesus’ moral concerns focused on sex. But the red letters in my Bible show that he had almost nothing to say about sex. The moral issue that seems to have concerned him most involved not such private matters but rather how the rich and powerful treat the poor and vulnerable. “The least of these, my brethren.”

God And Caesar in America: An Essay on Religion and Politics (Paperback)

by Former Senator Gary Hart

BUZZFLASH REVIEWS

Former Colorado Senator Gary Hart has written the most compelling, cogent contemporary treatise for the separation of church and state in America that we have come across. Titled "God and Caesar in America: An Essay on Religion and Politics," Hart's work is in the tradition of Tom Paine.

This is a trenchant, earnest commentary that combines Hart's personal experience as a child raised in a Church of the Nazarene household (he attended a Nazarene College), his years as a Yale Divinity student, and his career as a Yale Law School educated attorney and elected politician. Although his faith-based upbringing combined with his years as a national leader in the Senate provide him with a unique perspective, it is the eloquent, impassioned analysis that Hart applies to the interjection of religion into politics that makes his short book so insightful.

George Bush, Meet Reality

President's speech on Iraq strategy conjures a dreamworld

by James Ridgeway
November 30th, 2005 1:27 PM

WASHINGTON, D.C.--President Bush’s speech this morning at the Naval Academy is a reflection of his stubborn, narrow-vision approach to governing. More and more, what he says is devoid of reality. To listen to Bush is to enter a dreamworld.

Faced with incontrovertible facts of increasing costs ($6 billion a month), soldier deaths day after day(2,100), growing disenchantment in Congress (The Senate is demanding periodic reports on how the war is faring), the failure of the Iraqi security forces to protect the country,all signs of a coming defeat, he keeps on keeping on with pledges of total victory. He won’t set "artificial deadlines" for withdrawal. "No war has ever been won on a timetable - and neither will this one," the National Strategy for Victory in Iraq says.

Army analysts foresee bleak road ahead in Iraq

UNDATED A couple of top Army analysts say the U-S shouldn't expect so much for Iraq's future.

Andrew Terrill and Conrad Crane advise against setting a schedule to withdraw of U-S troops. But a new study from the Army War College experts says an American presence in Iraq probably can't go on more than three more years.

Terrill and Crane also think it's increasingly unlikely that coalition forces will "crush" the insurgency before withdrawing.

They also believe it's "no longer clear" the U-S will be able to train an Iraqi military that can secure the country.

Terrill and Crane say the U-S may have to "scale back" expectations for a future Iraq and accept a relatively stable but undemocratic state.

Standing Tall Against McCarthy

By Molly Ivins, Texas Observer. Posted November 29, 2005.

George Clooney's film 'Good Night and Good Luck' echoes Texan John Faulk's own heroic struggle against McCarthyism.

Watching the new film "Good Night and Good Luck" about Edward R. Murrow reminded me of John Henry Faulk and his own heroic struggle against McCarthyism. Well, okay, Johnny did actually wage a gallant and valiant fight, but since it was John Henry, it was also weird and funny and full of improbable characters -- what is it about Texans that we can't even be heroic without being comical?

In 1955, Johnny Faulk was a successful popular entertainer with a network radio program featuring his impersonations of the down-home Texas characters he invented (actually, a horrifying number of them were based on real people -- in fact, he was related to several of the prototypes). He appeared on television quiz panels and hosted CBS's morning program, being funny and folksy with pipe in hand.

The GOP's Culture of Corruption

By Stephen Pizzo, News for Real. Posted November 30, 2005.

Only now is the general public starting to learn how corruption swept through the GOP after the party's rise to majority status in the '90s. But it didn't happen suddenly.

The old saying goes that even a broken clock is right twice a day. So when Democrats accuse Republicans of fostering a culture of corruption, it proves the old saying true. (That's once; the other time they've been right lately is in calling for an early withdrawal from Iraq.)

We saw further evidence of the GOP's culture of corruption yesterday when California Republican Rep. Randy Cunningham resigned from Congress after admitting to taking $2 million in bribes from a defense contractor.

A Growing Wariness About Money in Politics

By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 29, 2005; A01

For several years now, corporations and other wealthy interests have made ever-larger campaign contributions, gifts and sponsored trips part of the culture of Capitol Hill. But now, with fresh guilty pleas by a lawmaker and a public relations executive, federal prosecutors -- and perhaps average voters -- may be concluding that the commingling of money and politics has gone too far.

After years in which big-dollar dealings have come to dominate the interaction between lobbyists and lawmakers, both sides are now facing what could be a wave of prosecutions in the courts and an uprising at the ballot box. Extreme examples of the new business-as-usual are no longer tolerated.

Bewilder Thy Father and Mother

By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, November 30, 2005; A23

The number one holiday shopping nightmare this year isn't taking place at the malls or the big-box outlets. It's at our senior centers, where Americans over 65 are trying to figure out which private health insurance plan to enroll in to get their prescription drugs paid for under Medicare's new Part D, which takes effect Jan. 1.

As seniors tell the tale, navigating the competing plans is no more complicated than mapping the human genome. In most states, Medicare recipients are presented with dozens of asymmetric options. The plans cover some drugs but not others, with discounts (or not) for generics. Some offer supplemental insurance to cover the gaping hole in the middle of the program (a patient's annual drug expenses exceeding $2,250 are not covered under the law, though coverage kicks back in once the yearly bill tops $5,100); some don't. Some plans re-price their options every day, a boon to seniors who want to make the selection process their life's work.

Drugmakers Win Exemption in House Budget-Cutting Bill

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 30, 2005; A08

As part of a House budget bill that reduces spending on Medicaid prescription drugs, pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Co. and other businesses secured a provision ensuring that their mental health drugs continue to fetch top price at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars to the states.

The provision -- inserted by Rep. Steve Buyer (R-Ind.), whose district flanks Lilly's Indianapolis headquarters -- would largely exempt antipsychotic and antidepressant medications from a larger measure designed to steer Medicaid patients to the least expensive treatment options. The House Energy and Commerce Committee approved Buyer's amendment this month over the strenuous objections of Chairman Joe Barton (R-Tex.) and the National Governors Association. It survived unchallenged in the $50 billion budget-cutting bill that narrowly passed the House just before Congress left for Thanksgiving recess.

Hurricane Recovery: A Forgotten Priority?

By Terry M. Neal
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 30, 2005; 9:09 AM

The television cameras have mostly left the Gulf Coast, but the region continues to reel from the devastation caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

More than two months after the storms, leaders in both political parties seemingly have backed away from some of their initial pledges to support reconstruction whatever the cost. As Manuel Roig-Franzia and Ceci Connolly wrote in The Washington Post on Tuesday, "financial aid from Washington, once expected to reach $200 billion, has stalled out at about $70 billion."

The Congressional Black Caucus, seeking to jumpstart the recovery effort and reassure the region's residents that Washington has not forgotten them, has unveiled a comprehensive proposal to aide the poor and other vulnerable citizens most affected by the storms.

Report on FBI Tool Is Disputed

Justice Dept. Criticizes Post Article on 'National Security Letters'

By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 30, 2005; A08

The Justice Department has criticized as misleading and inaccurate a Washington Post report about the FBI's expanded power to collect the private records of ordinary Americans while conducting terrorism and espionage investigations.

The Nov. 6 article detailed the dramatic increase in the use of "national security letters," a three-decade-old investigative tool that was given new life with the passage of the USA Patriot Act in 2001. The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year, a hundredfold increase over historic norms, the article said.

Instead of merely enabling the FBI to review in secret the customer records of suspected foreign agents, national security letters allow investigators to secretly scrutinize some records of U.S. residents and visitors who are not alleged to be terrorists or spies, the article said.

Bush Releases Detailed Strategy Plan

By Daniela Deane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 30, 2005; 11:27 AM

President Bush, facing increasing opposition to the war in Iraq, went on the offensive today, releasing a detailed strategy plan and then delivering a major speech in an attempt to show the country that the administration has a clear strategy for victory in Iraq.

In a 45-minute speech at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, an emotional Bush again rejected a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Iraq, saying conditions on the ground rather than "artificial timetables set by politicians in Washington" would dictate when American forces could return home.

Wikipedia gets Swift Boated

John Byrne

The upside of an open-source encyclopedia is that anyone can provide detailed information. The downside of an open-source encyclopedia is that anyone can provide detailed information.

This became readily apparent when a aquiline-eyed reader noticed that Swift Boating was defined as "accurate and truthful," and that Cindy Sheehan was dubbed a "left wing moonbat."

France Upholds Law That Smooths History

By NATHALIE SCHUCK, Associated Press WriterTue Nov 29, 4:02 PM ET

France's parliament voted Tuesday to uphold a law that puts an upbeat spin on the country's painful colonial past, ignoring complaints from historians and the former French territory of Algeria.

The law, passed quietly this year, requires school textbooks to address France's "positive role" in its former colonies.

France's lower house, in a 183-94 vote, rejected an effort by the opposition Socialists to kill the law. Passage would have been unusual, since the effort to overturn the law came from the conservative government's political enemies.

The law has embarrassed conservative President Jacques Chirac and threatens to delay the signing of a friendship treaty between France and the North African nation of Algeria. France's one-time colonial jewel won independence in 1962 after a brutal eight-year conflict France only recently called a war.

On Today Show, O’Reilly Compares Murtha With Hitler Sympathizers

Bill O’Reilly on the Today Show this morning:

These pin-heads running around going, “Get out of Iraq now” don’t know what they are talking about. These are the same people before Hitler invaded in WWII that were saying, “He’s not such a bad guy.” They don’t get it.

Labor's Lost Story

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, November 29, 2005; A21

Decades ago, Walter Reuther, the storied head of the United Auto Workers union, was taken on a tour of an automated factory by a Ford Motor Co. executive.

Somewhat gleefully, the Ford honcho told the legendary union leader: "You know, not one of these machines pays dues to the UAW."

To which Reuther snapped: "And not one of them buys new Ford cars, either."

The historian William L. O'Neill tells this story in "American High," his fine and appropriately titled book about the 1950s, a time when "autoworkers were the best-paid production line operatives in the world." It helps explain why General Motors' layoffs of 30,000 workers, announced last week, have become a new litmus test in American politics.

Bush's Can't-Lose Reversal

Wednesday's speech will set the agenda for withdrawal from Iraq.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Monday, Nov. 28, 2005, at 7:14 PM ET

Brace yourself for a mind-bog of sheer cynicism. The discombobulation begins Wednesday, when President George W. Bush is expected to proclaim, in a major speech at the U.S. Naval Academy, that the Iraqi security forces—which only a few months ago were said to have just one battalion capable of fighting on its own—have suddenly made uncanny progress in combat readiness. Expect soon after (if not during the speech itself) the thing that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have, just this month, denounced as near-treason—a timetable for withdrawal of American troops.

And so it appears (assuming the forecasts about the speech are true) that the White House is as cynical about this war as its cynical critics have charged it with being. For several months now, many of these critics have predicted that, once the Iraqis passed their constitution and elected a new government, President Bush would declare his mission complete and begin to pull out—this, despite his public pledge to "stay the course" until the insurgents were defeated.

N.C. Judge Declines Protection for Diebold

N.C. Judge Declines to Protect Voting Machine Maker Diebold Inc.; Vendor May Pull Out

By GARY D. ROBERTSON Associated Press Writer
The Associated PressThe Associated Press

RALEIGH, N.C. Nov 28, 2005 — One of the nation's leading suppliers of electronic voting machines may decide against selling new equipment in North Carolina after a judge declined Monday to protect it from criminal prosecution should it fail to disclose software code as required by state law.

Diebold Inc., which makes automated teller machines and security and voting equipment, is worried it could be charged with a felony if officials determine the company failed to make all of its code some of which is owned by third-party software firms, including Microsoft Corp. available for examination by election officials in case of a voting mishap.

The requirement is part of the minimum voting equipment standards approved by state lawmakers earlier this year following the loss of more than 4,400 electronic ballots in Carteret County during the November 2004 election. The lost votes threw at least one close statewide race into uncertainty for more than two months.

Nowhere to run

After what has been described as the most foolish war in over 2,000 years, is there a way out of Iraq for President Bush, asks Brian Whitaker

Tuesday November 29, 2005

There is a remarkable article in the latest issue of the American Jewish weekly, Forward. It calls for President Bush to be impeached and put on trial "for misleading the American people, and launching the most foolish war since Emperor Augustus in 9 BC sent his legions into Germany and lost them".

To describe Iraq as the most foolish war of the last 2,014 years is a sweeping statement, but the writer is well qualified to know.

He is Martin van Creveld, a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and one of the world's foremost military historians. Several of his books have influenced modern military theory and he is the only non-American author on the US Army's list of required reading for officers.

U.S. Lacks Plan to Curb Terror Funds, Agency Says

By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: November 29, 2005

WASHINGTON, Nov. 28 - The government's efforts to help foreign nations cut off the supply of money to terrorists, a critical goal for the Bush administration, have been stymied by infighting among American agencies, leadership problems and insufficient financing, a new Congressional report says.

More than four years after the Sept. 11 attacks, "the U.S. government lacks an integrated strategy" to train foreign countries and provide them with technical assistance to shore up their financial and law enforcement systems against terrorist financing, according to the report prepared by the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress.

Bush Renews Push to Overhaul Immigration

By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
Published: November 29, 2005

TUCSON, Nov. 28 - President Bush kicked off a new effort on Monday to unite Republicans behind an overhaul of immigration laws. He emphasized the need to choke off the flow of illegal immigrants while trying to address conservatives' concerns about his plan to grant temporary legal status to millions of illegal workers already in the United States.

On the first of two days of appearances in two border states, Arizona and Texas, Mr. Bush tried to stake out a middle ground on an issue that has divided Republicans, saying the nation did not have to choose between upholding its immigration laws and being compassionate to the millions of workers who travel here desperate to make a living.

Rep. Cunningham Enters Guilty Plea, Resigns

Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.) pleaded guilty today to fraud, conspiracy to commit bribery and tax evasion. Shortly after entering his plea, Cunningham announced that he is immediately resigning his seat, though he had already announced that he would not seek reelection next year.

According to The Associated Press, Cunningham admitted "he took $2.4 million in bribes to steer defense contracts to conspirators." The defense contracting firm at the center of the scandal is MZM Inc., which is run by Mitchell Wade.

Moyers Has His Say

Former Now host on media bias and his feud with former CPB Chairman Ken Tomlinson

By John Eggerton -- Broadcasting & Cable, 11/28/2005

Bill Moyers became the central figure in absentia in the controversy surrounding former Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson. It was Tomlinson who pointed to Moyers' Now newscast on PBS as a chief reason for his efforts to bring “balance” to public broadcasting by adding conservative shows. Moyers has since left Now and is currently president of the Schumann Center for Media & Democracy. He spoke with B&C's John Eggerton in the wake of a CPB Inspector General report concluding Tomlinson had violated the law by dealing directly with a programmer during the creation of a show to balance Moyers' program.

You are the exemplar of liberal PBS bias, according to Ken Tomlinson. Was your show liberally biased?

Right-wing partisans like Tomlinson have always attacked aggressive reporting as liberal.

We were biased, all right—in favor of uncovering the news that powerful people wanted to keep hidden: conflicts of interest at the Department of Interior, secret meetings between Vice President Cheney and the oil industry, backdoor shenanigans by lobbyists at the FCC, corruption in Congress, neglect of wounded veterans returning from Iraq, Pentagon cost overruns, the manipulation of intelligence leading to the invasion of Iraq.

Harris' staff quick to quit

They leave for better jobs, Katherine Harris says, but turnover worries watchers

by JEREMY WALLACE
jeremy.wallace@heraldtribune.com

In just under three years, U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris has had four chiefs of staff, four district directors and four press secretaries.

Harris has had to replace key people on her staff every nine months, a rate of staff turnover that far exceeds most of those in Congress.

Testimony from Rove's former assistant may solidify case that he misled leak inquiry, lawyers say

Jason Leopold and Larisa Alexandrovna

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will present evidence to a second grand jury this week in his two year-old investigation into the outing of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson that could lead to a criminal indictment being handed up against Karl Rove, President Bush’s deputy chief of staff, attorneys close to the investigation say.

Rove has remained under intense scrutiny because of inconsistencies in his testimony to investigators and the grand jury. According to sources, Rove withheld crucial facts on three separate occasions and allegedly misled investigators about conversations he had with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper.

'Villains Honoring Villains'

The Bush Administration is winning the battle to institute public/private partnerships on America's cash-strapped public lands. Is total privatization coming down the pike?

In mid-October, The Yosemite Fund, a private-sector partner of Yosemite National Park, announced that it bestowed its "Corporate Protector of the Year" award on Delaware North Companies Parks & Resorts at Yosemite, Inc. (DNC), at a ceremony held October 1 at Yosemite's Wawona Hotel. Bob Hansen, the President of The Yosemite Fund gave the award to Kevin Kelly, the President of DNC Parks & Resorts, and thanked him for the contributions the company has made "to the Campaign for Yosemite Falls, a monumental restoration project spearheaded by The Yosemite Fund in 1997 which came to fruition in April 2005."

Cursor's Media Patrol - 11/28/05

A lawyer for Jose Padilla says he was told that "the government still asserts it has the power to hold his client ... regardless of the outcome of the criminal case against him," and a New York Times review of six prominent terrorism cases quotes a law professor as saying that "The position of the executive branch is that it can be judge, jury and executioner."

"A key element of the drawdown plans, not mentioned in the President's public statements, is that the departing American troops will be replaced by American airpower," writes Seymour Hersh, who tells Wolf Blitzer that "We don't know how many bombs are dropped, where. Nobody reports publicly as they did ... in Vietnam."

As it's suggested that Vice President Cheney's "mind seems to have slipped its moorings and is drifting out into the sea of fantasy," Sidney Blumenthal illuminates 'Cheney's shadow play,' noting that "The origin of Cheney's alliance with the neo-conservatives goes back to his instrumental support for Team B."

A Washington Post report that 'Some veterans feel lives enlarged by wartime suffering,' prompts War In Context to ask: "Where is a culture heading when it idealizes the experience of the dismembered warrior and starts to suggest that the trauma of war can become a rite of passage?"

Stars & Stripes 'Letter to the Editor': War based on a lie

Capt. Jeff Pirozzi at Camp Taqaddum, Iraq speaks out.--Dictynna

Weapons of mass destruction? I’m still looking for them, and if you find any give me a call so we can justify our presence in Iraq. We started the war based on a lie, and we’ll finish it based on a lie. I say this because I am currently serving with a logistics headquarters in the Anbar province, between the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi. I am not fooled by the constant fabrication of “democracy” and “freedom” touted by our leadership at home and overseas.

This deception is furthered by our armed forces’ belief that we can just enter ancient Mesopotamia and tell the locals about the benefits of a legislative assembly. While our European ancestors were hanging from trees, these ancient people were writing algebra and solving quadratic equations. Now we feel compelled to strong-arm them into accepting the spoils of capitalism and “laissez-faire” society. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy watching Britney Spears on MTV and driving to McDonald’s, but do you honestly believe that Sunnis, Shias and Kurds want our Western ideas of entertainment and freedom imposed on them? Think again.

Why China Must Change

Thomas I. Palley
November 28, 2005

Dr. Thomas Palley was chief economist of the US–China Economic and Security Review Commission. Prior to joining the Commission, he was director of the Open Society Institute’s Globalization Reform Project. He has written for The Atlantic Monthly, American Prospect and The Nation magazines. He can be reached at www.thomaspalley.com.

For the past five years, the global economy has been flying on one engine. That engine is the U.S. consumer who has been on a consumption binge financed by borrowing—in turn backed by a housing price bubble. This situation poses the threat of a serious hard landing when that engine eventually stalls, as it must. Ever-inflating house prices and rising debt-to-income levels are not sustainable. And as the late Herbert Stein, chairman of President Nixon’s Council of Economic Advisers, wryly observed: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”

This view, regarding the global economy’s excessive dependence on the United States and the financial fragility of the U.S. economy, is not just held by progressive economists. It is also shared by Wall Street. Thus, Stephen Roach, chief economist for Morgan Stanley, recently wrote in the Financial Times (Nov. 4, 2005): “there is now about a forty percent probability of a hard landing in the next twelve months.” And in a research brief, Roach singles out China as being particularly dependent on the U.S.: “China’s export prowess is balanced on the head of a pin—a pin made in America. Fully thirty-five percent of Chinese exports go to the United States.”